ethans feet

I have never put an open ended question on my blog before, but i thought it would be a fun experiment.  I am about to begin a sermon series on The Gospel at my church and I am beginning to realize how big that phrase is.  So I would like to ask y’all to finish this sentence: The Gospel is…

And lets not give text book answers here, but personal ones.  What is the gospel to you?  Like if you were going to say, as Paul does, i gave you “my gospel”, what would that be?

Another way of asking it is this, what is the good news that Christianity has to offer?

Lately I have realized that there are (at least) two ways that I have been trying to be something that I am not.

Number 1.  I am not Mark Driscoll — so I shouldn’t try to preach like him.  Some of you might not know this but Mark was my first pastor, and for better or worse, I love the guy (I don’t love everything he says, but I still love him).  And he was a very formative presence in my life.  My first preacher, first person to recognize my call, etc.  And i think because of that I have tried to model my preaching (the thing Mark is famous for) after him.

But here’s the problem — I am no Mark Driscoll.  I don’t have his talent, his sense of humor, or his style.  I don’t prepare in the same way he does and most importantly, I don’t share with him the theology of the Bible that propels him to preach the way he does.  So why do i keep trying to model what i do after him?  Don’t know, but I’m gunna try to stop.

Number 2.  My church is never gunna be like every other church, so why am i worried about it?  All too often, I find myself thinking “I don’t want us to be like every other church” as if that’s the goal.  It’s not.  We’re never going to be like every other church — no matter how hard we try, we’re just not.  So let’s just be as faithful as we can in who we are.  Regardless if that is the same or different from anyone else.

I made a series of leadership pledges to myself the other day and one of the pledges was, “I will stop trying to be what I am not, and stop trying to make our church be something that it is not”.

OK, so I think this is awesome.

Go to www.goodsearch.com.  There you can pick any charity that hey have listed.  (For those of you that are familiar with Kupenda, yes its on their, for those of you who are not, check it out.)

After you pick a charity, I suggest you download the toolbar.  Now, here’s the cool part, every time you use there search engine a percentage of the ad. revenue goes to the charity of your choice.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, its like a penny per search, but given that Google generates a couple hundred million searches per day, obviously there is a lot of potential.

I would be thrilled if you would pick Kupenda, that way we could earn more money together.

Another blog to recommend.  Amy is a friend and colleague at CPCP and I am excited she has started this blog… it already looks way cooler than mine!

http://www.collegeparkchurchplant.com/recreationoftheheart/

This is a fantastic post on calling from someone downtown at Church of the Savior:

http://www.inwardoutward.org/?p=1109

Very timely in the life of my community.

Lately I have been vacillating wildly between great confidence and tremendous insecurity in my role as pastor.

On the one hand, I think of the things i do relatively well; I can think theologically, I am a decent communicator, and when given a chance I can usually help people towards seeing a hopeful future in whatever life crisis they are in the middle of.

But on the other hand, i read a book like Church Marketing 101 (can’t really recommend for or against this book at this point, it is good at what it is, the question is the value of what it is), or even my own denominational history text book, filled with its stories of a glorious past, and I wonder what the frick am I doing?!?   According to the marketing guys we are doing everything wrong at CPCP, and nothing I have experienced seems even in the same universe as the movement of  the spirit experienced during the birth of the denomination (Second great awakening, largely).

And yet I think of all the other pastor’s I know, from the small church pastor’s up the street to the famous guys who have written books, from Emergents to denomiantionalists to independent fundamentalists, and honestly  I don’t feel like I am all that behind any of them in my thinking or ability (I mean overall, obviously there are way better preachers, thinkers, and counselors out there, but not all in one person — at least not that i have met).

So I am beginning to wonder if the big secret of the pastoral calling, the thing that they don’t tell you at seminary, the thing that no one will write a book about, is that none of us really has a clue what we’re doing?  That we’re all just making it up as we go?

If so, I’m not sure if I find that comforting… or terrifying.

In this post Pete says what i was trying to say about doubt, but way better.