Rubber Meets the Road (and My Guys Up the Ante)

It's amazing how quickly even strong conviction can wane.

For example, my determination to live more simply after my trips to India usually bit the dust in a few weeks as I re-wrapped myself in my American comforts like a worn, handmade quilt.

Although I've talked and written about the conviction laid on my heart as I read the book 7 by Jen Hatmaker, it had almost completely worn off when my friend Marci emailed me.  She challenged a small group of us to actually live out seven months of "an experimental mutiny against excess".  (Jen's subtitle)

Just like Jen, our little group plans to devote one month to each of these seven areas:

Food
Clothes
Possessions
Media
Waste
Spending
Stress

Today I've been working at getting my "want to" back up to speed, and it wasn't easy.  I've been on an eating spree that I truthfully have no desire to break.  It took some big reminders about the reality of the majority of people in our world to get me motivated again:

• Almost one in seven people worldwide don't have enough food to sustain them.
• This makes hunger/malnutrition the number one risk to health globally, greater than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.
• Some 350 to 400 million children are hungry.
• Approximately 25,000 people die of hunger or related causes every day.

**Source:  The Hole in Our Gospel by Richard Stearns

So I brought my very-watered-down plan to dinner tonight to try to get my guys on board with me.  I don't even pretend to be as hard-core as Jen, so my plan to trim the excess of food in our house was fairly wimpy.  

Barry finally looked at me and said, "It seems like if we make it this easy, we're going to miss the point completely."  He and Nolan upped the ante for our family.

Starting Tues, Feb. 12th, our family is going to limit ourselves to seven foods for 7 days. (Hardcore for a short time makes it attainable for us!) The following three weeks we'll follow my wimpier plan. Every night we'll learn about and pray for a country whose people suffer from hunger.  I'll spell out all the details here next week.

Would anybody like to join us for the first 7 days?  I'm planning to blog every day that week, and I'd love for us to do it together.  If you blog too, we can link up to encourage our little group!  

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There's an extra this week!  My friend Karen Ehman is leading a conference call to help you write the book you've always dreamed of writing.  Here's the scoop:

Writing a Bang-Up Book Proposal–Karen Ehman

Date: Thursday, February 7, 2013 at 8:00 pm EST.

Think you have a great book idea but absolutely no clue how to put together a book proposal that meets the standards of the publishing industry? Karen Ehman has written five books with three major publishers and is also hired to write book proposals for other potential authors. In this informative and practical call she will highlight the key components that comprise a winning proposal and then give you the tools to craft one yourself. The call includes a sample book proposal template from Karen’s latest book being published by Zondervan. There will be plenty of time for Q & A.

You can enter to win a free call today by leaving a comment with the one food that you'd have to have on your list of seven!  Please also include your email so that I can contact the winner.  You can enter through midnight on Friday.  **Please post on the blog rather than sending an email.  Thanks!

Living Your Dreams--Part 2

(I apologize ahead of time for my sorry video-taping and half a head! I'm still learning. (Please don't give up on me--I'm glad you're here!)



Stoke your dreams and live your dreams by taking daily steps of obedience and persevering. I have friends who are living dreams beyond what you've imagined. Please share how God helped you to come to a place where you're living your dreams.

Living Your Dreams--Part I

I'd love for you to come back to see part 2 next week! Also, if you are a speaker, and you'd like to find out about Next Step Speaker Services, please visit us there by clicking here.

Eternal Investments

Last week I reflected on what it looks like both personally and corporately to be a true follower of Jesus rather than just a "cultural Christian"--one who embraces the term Christian because of tradition or family precedence.  You can read that post here.

As I've shared previously, my church has a new pastor.  I have to admit that I'm fairly biased in my adoration of him, because I was on the committee that helped pick him!  :)  However, I knew that our choice would have to be proven right over time.  I'm happy to report that John Mark Harrison, a man who seemed to be passionate about living brightly for Jesus in this world, is living up to everything that I believed about him.

Having said that, I have a confession to make.  When I found out that my pastor and our deacons had made a decision to truck in SNOW to our Christmas Eve service, I reacted with cynicism and vehemence.  "How much is THAT going to cost?!" I asked my deer-in-the-headlights, deacon hubby.  "How many homeless people in downtown Raleigh could it feed?" I demanded.  Hubby defended the group's decision, but I remained unconvinced.

My heart began softening when I saw the reaction of the children sitting around me in church on Sunday when the announcement was made that there would be snow AND a sledding track.  (If you live up north, you have to just imagine how DELIGHTFUL this is to southern children!)  Children all around me began LITERALLY bouncing up and down in their seats.  "Hmmm...," I thought.  "Maybe I was wrong to react that way.  This could have possibilities."

Well, I'll just go ahead and skip to the end.  I was wrong.  An amazing 1,100 people came to our 2 Christmas Eve services, more than had ever come to any service before held at our church.  Here's the best part...drum roll please...those 1,100 people might have come for the snow, but they heard about JESUS.  He was lifted up, and now there are 10 new believers added to the family.

Now that's being the light in our community.  That's taking money and converting it to souls.  It was an eternal investment.

Do we need to invest in feeding the hungry?  Of course. And my church does a lot to make sure that's done too. Do we need to also reach out to people who don't know Jesus who are in the middle class?  Yes.  It brings me joy to know that I was wrong!

The New Normal in the New Year

Happy New Year, friends!  I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and at least a little rest.  Our family was shocked by the alarm clock this morning, but I guess it's time for a little work and structure.

Over the break, some friends and I had an interesting discussion over the lunch table.  As we talked about our various churches, this question arose, "Is it better for people to attend church week after week with unchanged lives or for them not to attend church at all?"  We talked over the pros of hearing God's Word and the power of His Spirit to move on hearts and the cons of hearts hardening while ignoring the truth of scripture week after week.

In the midst of our talk, I mused out loud about something I've been wondering.  Although the American church is statistically dwindling, does that tell the whole story?  Is it possible that those statistics only reflect the shrinking of cultural Christianity rather than the disappearance of true believers?

I didn't have any evidence, and we didn't come to any grand conclusion or earth-shattering solutions.

Just the other day, however, Facts and Trends appeared in my mailbox with a fascinating focus.

Ed Stetzer, president of Lifeway research, wrote an article called "Cultural Christianity is dying, and that's a good thing" in which he argues the very thought I had over lunch.  He divides self-proclaimed "Christians" into 3 groups:

• Census Christians--These are people who mark "Christian" on a survey simply because the other religions listed don't fit.  
• Churchgoing Christians--These folks identify themselves as Christian, because they occasionally attend church.
• Conversion Christians--People who have had a true faith  experience, classify themselves as "born again" or converted and hold a deep belief in Jesus make up this last category.

Statistically the first two groups are shrinking, and a Pew report revealed that Americans who once qualified themselves as "Christian" on surveys are now instead marking "none" in the religion column.  The "nones" have grown from 5.1 % in 1972 to 18% in 2010.

That sounds like really bad news, but is it?

Here's what Stetzer says:  "With cultural Christianity in a freefall, I see a rise in robust believers and healthy churches.  I'm not discouraged.  Effective churches will attract and keep strong believers who are motivated by their faith and not by cultural norms."

I agree.  Whenever I talk about the churches that I saw in India, I always describe them as glorious.  The church members there challenged me, because they live their faith with such passion.  They are fervent about sharing Jesus, and the light of the church is a stark contrast to the darkness of much of their culture.

I long for that to be true both of my church and of my life.  Only when we push away the form of religion that most of us grew up with as Americans in my generation will the power and light and GLORY of God be evident.  Will persecution also increase?  I believe so, but as "cultural Christianity" dies and the only reason to classify yourself as a Christian is a passion for Jesus Himself, our lives and our churches will shine like the stars that we're created to be. 

What do you think?  What are you seeing in your church?  Next week I'll share how our church reached out over Christmas with amazing results.