Marc’s Musings

Reading 2 of week 1 of Outflow.

I love the whole idea of the fountain! We can’t impact our family, friends, and community/world without being filled with the Holy Spirit.

God wants to fill us as whoever we are and use us. We don’t have to become someone we’re not!

Yay!!

We just started using Outflow. I’m REALLY liking it!

It’s all about “evangelism” as a way of life, not as a manipulative program. If you’re following my sermons through Acts, you’ll know I believe deeply zealous people get so caught up in their cause that they believe the ends justify the means. Paul was fine in killing followers of Jesus because he was firmly convinced Jesus was a false prophet. God demands false prophets be put to death so Jesus’ followers would need to follow the same fate.

The Crusades, the Inquisition, the religious right’s political extremism, it’s all motivated from (mostly) a deep passion for God. But it comes out in carnal, manipulative, and often deadly ways.

Hard to see Jesus killing someone because they didn’t believe. Or sitting outside an abortion clinic screaming “murderer” at the scared woman going inside.

That affects our view on evangelism too. We so want people to not go to hell, that we feel we need to “get them saved.” And we’ve often been taught that if we miss an opportunity, their blood will be on our account.

So evangelism becomes obligation. And we do really contrived things to get people talking about Jesus or to get them “onto” our scripts where we have the answers.

Fortunately, Outflow appears to be helping us at the Vineyard Church of Waterville return to the sanity of the overflowing life Jesus promises us (Jn 10:10).

I hope to do a brief comment on each of the 5 weekly readings. So here’s the first.

I love the story of the woman at the drive-thru. Someone just pays for her meal and she knows beyond the shadow of a doubt that God loves her! This wasn’t contrived. The people paying didn’t even know she was down to her last $4.58! They were just doing something they enjoyed doing!

I love it! I love the whole grace-filled concept we talked about at kinship last night: God’s already working in people’s lives. Our joy is to see where He’s working and ask Him how we can help.

That’s a life long adventure I’m glad to be part of! I don’t even have to remember a script!

Mark Batterson has a great post (and nice invitation image) at 100,000 Invitations.

I like the idea of his church’s “marketing mantra”:

we don’t want anybody in the metro DC area to be able to deny our existence.

I too do a lot of invitation passing out and connect card passing out, especially with our current focus on “Outflow.” You never know when someone’s gonna come to the point of deciding they need to check out a church. I want to be sure the Vineyard Church of Waterville is on their mind when they do!

[Update: I love using overnightprints.com for double sided "connect" cards and incredibly cost effective postcards!]

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Yet again, Ben Arment blogs on something I preached on yesterday. Hhmm…wonder if he gets the VCW sermon podcast!!

Check out this blog post: the problem with putting God first…

Here (sic) me out on this… I’ve heard many well-intended believers cite the creed of priorities: God first, family second, and ministry third. But the problem with putting God first is that we refuse to put anything dangerous or inconvenient in his category. We take much of what God calls us to do and lump it in the category of ministry so that we don’t have to actually do it. Quiet times, sure, that goes in God’s box; that’s safe and fits well with our schedules. But too bad if something stretches our faith or makes us feel unsafe… or interrupts our family. [I think we'd be surpised to see how receptive our spouses would be to God's direction if we'd only ask them.] God is good, as CS Lewis said, but he isn’t safe. And if God is truly first in our lives, then we should be living the danger to prove it.

At the Vineyard Church of Waterville, we believe God is still speaking. Life’s much more fun that way!

After worship during kinship, I always ask, “Anybody get anything?”

Last week, one person said, “I saw a fluffy dandelion.”

An audible gasp came from across the room. Another person saw a dandelion too.

The next day, my kindergartener’s science class DVD was on…fluffy dandelion seeds!

As if that weren’t enough, another person was walking through the parking lot at the box store where he works and he got…a face full of dandelion floating seeds! First time that’s happened in the more than 3 years he’s worked there.

I know it’s probably just coincidence.

But the imagery is awesome. Dandelion seeds go everywhere. And seemingly effortlessy. We also mentioned the idea of the seed being dead.

Then today at church, a man reminded me that it’s the “dry” seed that blows easily. And his wife said that, though dry, they’re still full of life.

I think “dry but full of life” speaks much better to where many of us are.

Would you pray this with us? I’d love to have the wind of the Spirit blow all over us at VCW and produce even more fruit all over the Greater Waterville region!

I’ve recently become aware of two things about the title of my book The Get R.E.A.L. Guide to Asking for Money: Connecting Donors with What Matters to Them Most.

1. It is really long.

2. The “R.E.A.L.” raises spam alerts.

Would you help me by voting on keeping this title or choosing one of three new ones?
Click here to take survey.

As a thank you, your email will be entered into a drawing for a free copy of the book.

Click here to take survey.

To read more about the book, go to: http://fundraisingcoach.com/realsimpleguide.htm

[Update 8/27: Thanks to everyone that's responded to the book title survey!

Although a shorter one seems popular, many of you are making persausive arguments for sticking with the title I have. Most of your comments reflect that the word "fear" in the title isn't a good thing.

And many of you are nice to say that my writing makes seeming difficult things like fundraising feel "simple." I still have to get the final from my publisher but it looks like the book title will stay as it is!]

Here’s a take with no “call to action”

Hear it here

Here’s the Christianity Today editorial I referenced in the last blog post:

Editorial: Why We Like Harry Potter
The series is a ‘Book of Virtues’ with a preadolescent funny bone.
A Christianity Today editorial

January 10, 2000

You may have read newspaper accounts and heard radio reports of how Christians are fighting school boards over having the books in libraries. As a concerned parent, what should you do?

We think you should read the Harry Potter books to your kids.

First, we should all be suspicious of the media’s hype of Christian parents objecting to the books. Reporters love the dialectic of first presenting the Christian stick-in-the-mud who objects to or is outraged by something, followed by the “reasonable” person who demonstrates how to be both moral and fun-loving. What remains unreported is that many Christians—such as Charles Colson and Wheaton College literature professor Alan Jacobs—enjoy and defend the Potter series.

Second, Christians should never apologize for rigorously scrutinizing what influences our children. A major scandal of our day is how seldom this happens. Modern witchcraft is indeed an ensnaring, seductive false religion that we must protect our children from (see “The Bewitching Charms of Neopaganism”). But the literary witchcraft of the Harry Potter series has almost no resemblance to the I-am-God mumbo jumbo of Wiccan circles. Author J.K. Rowling has created a world with real good and evil, and Harry is definitely on the side of light fighting the “dark powers.”

Third, and this is why we recommend the books, Rowling’s series is a Book of Virtues with a preadolescent funny bone. Amid the laugh-out-loud scenes are wonderful examples of compassion, loyalty, courage, friendship, and even self-sacrifice. No wonder young readers want to be like these believable characters. That is a Christmas present we can be grateful for.

Yep, I really like Harry Potter. And am enduring a minor case of HPWS: Harry Potter Withdrawal Syndrome.

Yeah, I took a while to get on the bandwagon. Three years in fact. Why would I, a Christian, waste my time reading a book that glorifies witchcraft. Dumb at best; dangerous at worse.

But I was wrong. Dead wrong. Somehow, I totally neglected the witches, wizards, and magic in Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. Even when Gandalf is one of my all time heros.

A few years ago, I really appreciated a Christianity Today editorial “Why We Like Harry.” (And I rarely “really appreciate” much from CT.) Today, Lois Nash a fellow pastor on Long Island, sent me a link to a Newsday editorial. I’m including it here in its entirety.

“Keating: Harry Potter and the Christian allegory”
Raymond J. Keating
August 13, 2007

It’s the summer of Potter. Should Christians be pleased or worried?

In July, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” hit movie theaters, and the final book in the series, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” hit stores. Both have been wildly successful.

In 10 years, seven books and 4,100 pages, author J.K. Rowling has proven to be a master storyteller. She created a fictional universe that rivals what J.R.R. Tolkien accomplished with “The Lord of the Rings” and C.S. Lewis with “The Chronicles of Narnia.”

Rowling’s “Potter” series wrestles with big issues: the journey from child to adult, power, family, friendship, the fight between good and evil, and the choice between what’s right and what’s easy. And it’s all wrapped in stories featuring fascinating characters, adventure, humor and sadness.

A hundred years from now, people will still be enjoying and discussing Lewis, Tolkien and, yes, Rowling.

Lewis and Tolkien, though, integrated Christian allegory, themes and symbolism into their works. What about Rowling?

Well, some Christians - mainly fundamentalists - have attacked “Harry Potter” for featuring witchcraft. Meanwhile, in Time magazine recently, Lev Grossman argued: “If you want to know who dies in Harry Potter, the answer is easy: God. … Rowling has more in common with celebrity atheists like Christopher Hitchens than she has with Tolkien and Lewis.”

Both Grossman and the fundamentalists are dead wrong.

Holy Scripture certainly instructs against dabbling in witchcraft. But it doesn’t prohibit using imagination in writing, reading and enjoying great fantasy tales. Those viewing “Harry Potter” as a path to the occult either haven’t read the books or they’ve failed to understand them.

As for Rowling herself, she told a Vancouver Sun reporter in 2000 that she’s a Christian. She added: “Every time I’ve been asked if I believe in God, I’ve said, ‘yes,’ because I do, but no one ever really has gone any more deeply into it than that, and I have to say that does suit me, because if I talk too freely about that, I think the intelligent reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what’s coming in the books.”

That’s evident in the “Deathly Hallows,” which is rich in Christian imagery and references if one pays attention. (Warning: Spoilers follow.) At one point, Harry - who, by the way, had to have been baptized, since he has a godfather - visits a graveyard behind a church in which people are singing Christmas carols.

One headstone carries the inscription: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” Though not cited in the book, that’s from Matthew 6:21. The tombstone for Harry’s parents features: “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” That’s in 1 Corinthians 15:26, in a section where St. Paul speaks about Jesus Christ, and how his sacrifice and resurrection conquered death.

In Christ-like fashion, Harry’s mother willingly gave her life for Harry, and later Harry chooses death to save those he loves. It is the shedding of innocent, sacrificial blood that protects against evil and overcomes death in “Harry Potter.” Meanwhile, what drives the evil Voldemort is his inability to accept death. Rowling’s unmistakable point in the “Potter” series is that there’s more. Death is not the end.

After sacrificing himself, Harry talks with Dumbledore, his deceased mentor and friend. Dumbledore advises: “Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and, above all, those who live without love.”

In 1 John 4:16, we are reminded: “God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.”

It’s possible to read “Lord of the Rings” and “Narnia” without recognizing the religious aspects. That’s even more so the case with “Harry Potter.”

But Christian themes are there nonetheless. Rowling embraces Christianity; Christians should embrace her fantastic fictional world.

Copyright © 2007, Newsday Inc.

I’m not going as far as to say you “should embrace her fantastic fictional world.” It’s fine to disagree.

And for what it’s worth, I intentionally laid the foundation of Narnia and Middle Earth for my kids before introducing them to Harry. I wanted them to say that Potter was like Narnia; not Narnia was like Potter!