Paul Stewart

Toms Shoes

There were a couple of big conferences last week that I missed due to my ordination ceremony.

Sounds like the National New Church Conference was a huge success, although there was some controversy surrounding Mark Driscoll and Bill Hybels.

I was also really intrigued by the Q Conference in Atlanta. They tried to create an incredibly interactive and creative experience to really encourage leaders to engage in culture. From all accounts they exceeded expectations.

One of the speakers at the Q Conference was a guy named Blake Mycoskie who started a new shoe company called Toms Shoes. Blake was one of the competitor’s on The Amazing Race and turned his fifteen minutes of fame into an opportunity to serve some kids he met who were in need of shoes.

While traveling in Argentina Tom met a number of children who didn’t have shoes, so with very little money, he bought about 200 pair of shoes, brought them in a duffle bag to Los Angeles, and sold them for enough profit to buy an extra pair for every pair he sold. He then delivered the extra pair to a child in need of shoes, placing them on the childs foot with his own hands.

I guess Toms Shoes is really taking off and for every pair of Toms Shoes that you buy, Blake gives a pair to a child.

I received some money from people for my ordination... I can just imagine people asking themselves, “What are we supposed to give someone who is being ordained?” Some people even found cards!. Anyway, I decided to buy a pair! I’ll let you know how they look when they get here.

Big Week

What a week! Here are some highlights…

- Last weekend I read an article about Jeff Zuckerburg, the founder of Facebook. He recently turned down 1 Billion dollars from Yahoo and Viacom to buy his company. Jeff started this site because his college (Harvard) didn't have a school directory and he wanted to connect with his classmates.

We don't have a church directory (we're not really that kind of church) but it's my job to help people connect with each other at Oak Hills. So I decided to start a Facebook page for Oak Hills Church. I started the group on Tuesday and with no promotion whatsoever we already have over 20 members!

- On Tuesday I was ordained with the Assemblies of God. This was a big decision for me personally, but I am so glad I did it. The ceremony was so cool. I really felt valued and appreciated by my predecessors and I am excited about serving within the tradition I was raised and helping to take it into the future.

- On Thursday I finished reading Manana by Justo Gonzalez…what an incredible book! This book was written a number of years ago and I can definitely see its influence in the theologians of today. It is so great to read theology from perspectives (Hispanic) other than my own. Definitely stretches and enlarges your view of God.

- On Sunday afternoon I shaved my head. I’ve never done that before, so for me it was a big deal.

- On Sunday night I spoke at our quarterly leaders gathering. It is so inspiring to be around our leaders and here all of the ministry “wins” from other departments. I feel like God is continuing to challenge our leaders to really “step it up” in our outreach to the community and our discipleship of new leaders. Can’t wait to see what happens this summer!

"Not My Job"

I ran across this photo from Corey Mann's blog, which he titled "Winner of the 'Not My Job' Contest."

Originality

I had the opportunity to hear Miroslav Volf speak today at Bethel Seminary. Dr. Volf is a professor of theology at Yale University Divinity School. He has written several books on the theology of grace and forgiveness including Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace and Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. These books grew out of his experiences teaching seminary in Croatia during the wars that engulfed the former Yugoslavia.

This morning he talked about the incarnation. He said the most stunning thing about the incarnation, is not that God came in the form of a man and dwelt among us, or that Jesus spoke in our language. The most stunning thing is that Jesus Christ had no agenda of his own.

Now Jesus certainly had an agenda, one that drove him all the way to the cross, but it wasn’t his own. It was the Father’s agenda.

Jesus said, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me” – John 7:16.

Jesus was mere witness to the TRUTH. He was the TRUTH because he was a witness of the TRUTH.

Today we place a high premium on originality. If you don’t add something of your own, you are not worth your salt. You are just repeating someone else.

Authenticity is prized. I have to figure out who I am and how I am unique; I need to be true to myself when I speak and if I am true to myself then I am OK… as long as my “self” is a bit original.

There couldn’t be a stronger contrast to what Jesus was after.

Jesus was not looking to make any creative contribution to what his Father said. Something original that he could take pride in. To Jesus it was always the Father’s teaching.

Jesus said, “I do only what I see the Father doing” (John 5:19). Not what I come up with, or what I like, or what is pleasing to my audience, but only what I hear the Father say.

The astounding thing about Jesus is that he did not seek his own glory, but the glory of the Father.

When you strive for originality you are seeking glory in some sense. When we seek our own glory (as we all do) we diminish, in a paradoxical way, ourselves.

On the other hand, if you seek only the glory of the God you are serving, He will glorify you.

Jesus was obviously glorified (Phil 2:9-11). But that is because Jesus’ glory was his Father’s glory. Jesus made his Father’s glory his own.

This is the challenge: to make sure that GOD is at the center of our lives and our activities.

We always say that… but when I go to churches I often see a bunch of folks figuring out how to be creative and original and how to pedal the recent wisdom they have just discovered from reading the latest book.

Volf encouraged us to simply read the gospel in such a way that people are not impressed with how well you read it, but by what is being said.

What can be greater than God the creator, God the redeemer, God the consummator?

Our teaching, our life, our glory is not our own.

So here is what I am wrestling with… if our goal as followers of Christ is, according to Andy Crouch, to cultivate and create culture, how do we do that in a way that brings glory to the Father and not just for the sake of originality?

Leadership Summit

The speakers for the 2007 Willow Creek Leadership Summit have been announced. It looks like it will be an amazing week and I really would not want to miss it. This is the best all-around leadership conference out there.

I was reminiscing through my notes from the 2006 Summit. In session one, Bill Hybels talked about the “Life Cycle of a Leader” and gave some excellent principles on how to develop and sustain your leadership capacity over the course of a lifetime.

Here are some highlights from my notes:

- The earlier you begin leading, the more seasoned you are in the future. It is important to lead something (anything) in your twenties. Don’t just stand by and criticize, jump in, make a difference, take the lead.

- But, what do you really have to offer people in your twenties? experience? wisdom?

- The truth is that you really don’t have a lot to offer. But if you have a heart that is full on to God, a passion for him and his work, then you have all you need.

- When you are just starting out, a heart and passion for God is all you really need.

- Bill decided when he was in his early twenties that money, treasures or toys were not worthy of the investment of his one and only life.

- When you feel those feelings like, “I don’t want to make widgets all my life.” “I want to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, point people to God!”… DON”T EDIT THEM. Don’t think, “Well, I need to be responsible.”

- Take risks. Follow God! Get off the well-traveled path and follow those feelings God has placed inside of you.

- It is the wildness of your heart in your 20’s that will propel you on into the future as a leader.

- At some point you have to start adding skills to the passion you have to lead others. You have to stretch yourself, acquire new skills, to keep you chart going up.

- Read everything you can get your hands on when it comes to improving your leadership. This could be books, articles, or blogs.

- Go where leadership is taught. Keep going. One good thought will more than pay for your registration You can attend in person or purchase the DVD’s and often times download the sessions for free!

- Get around leaders who are better than you and ask great questions I love listening to podcasts where great leaders are interviewed, check out the Catalyst or Defining Moments podcasts.

- Keep leading something or you will lose your leadership edge.

So it goes.

The author of Slaughterhouse-Five (one of my favorite books), Kurt Vonnegut, died today at the age of 84. So it goes.

May Term

During the month of May Oak Hills Church will be taking a break from our discipleship classes and reaching out to our surrounding community. We will be partnering with local ministries and charities in an effort to display Christ’s love in very tangible ways.

Dates: May 2, 9, 16, 23, 30
Time: Wednesday nights, 7pm.
Location: Meet at Oak Hills Church then go out into our community.

Christian vs. Christ Follower

These videos produced by Community Christian Church have caused quite a stir. They were originally created for their "Christian No More" sermon series and then posted on YouTube. Currently they have been viewed over 500,000 times.

The reactions are mixed... but my biggest question is why did a church called Community Christian Church do a series called "Christian No More"? If they feel this strongly about it, why don't they change their name?

You can view all of the videos HERE.

With 20 people and $30,000...

This summer OHC will be sending a team down to El Salvador to work with ENLACE to provide clean water for a small rural community outside San Salvador.

Sunday was the final deadline to sign up for the trip and we ended up with twenty people! Today was my first opportunity to really take a close look at the people who signed up to go. What a great group!

I am SO excited about this project. I first visited El Salvador about five years ago and was fortunate enough to be able to spend a day with the David Bueno, one directors of ENLACE.

David and his brother Ron are missionary kids who grew up in El Salvador. They went off and got masters degrees in things like economic development and anthropology from places like Oxford and American University. Then they returned to El Salvador and partnered with the local church to work to eliminate poverty and injustice and to transform the country. Their goal is to “equip churches to transform communities.”

This Sunday (Easter) we are taking an offering for this project and are hoping to raise $30,000 for the water tank our team will be working on. This is definitely going to be faith weekend for me, but I am really expecting God to do great things!

300

I read a review on relevantmagaizne.com the other day about the movie 300. The review was written from a “Christian” perspective. The reviewer was positive about the movie. And although he did mention the extreme amount of violence, he failed to mention the sexuality/nudity also in the movie.

I haven’t seen it, and I probably won’t, but all of this made me wonder, how should a follower of Christ respond to movies like this? Or to take the question one step further, how should a Christian respond to culture?

I recently heard an interview with Andy Crouch the director of the Christian Vision Project. He says that over the last century Christians have had a series of postures for culture. Typically we either condemn, critique, copy or consume culture.

For a while we thought the best thing we could do with culture is to just condemn it. Sort of stand outside it and resist it and be suspicious of it and try to avoid it. Of course this posture is appropriate when you are living in a place like Germany during the Holocaust. But culture doesn’t usually change when people condemn it. How many boycotts really work? Say there are eight screens at that movie theater and they are all showing movies that Christians would object to. If all we do is stay away from the movie theater, then that theater is still going to show the movies.

Christians also respond as critics, which has its place as well. Artists want people to critique their work (rather than condemn) and ask questions like “what was the artist meaning when he created this.” But when we simply critique and tell people we shouldn’t be doing this or that, people want to ask, “Well, what should we be doing?”

But I think it’s equally wrong to simply copy or consume culture. I think very often Christians are known as people who merely imitate culture but never have anything creative of our own. It's wrong when you ask people about culture and all they can discuss is what they consume, not what they create or cultivate themselves.

According to Crouch the best overall posture toward culture is that of an artist or gardener, we should cultivate and create.

The only way to change what is shown on the movie screens is to make a different kind of movie that can compete effectively with the ones that are currently showing. Merely staying home isn’t going to leave a screen blank. On the other hand, if all we do is just go to whatever movies are being shown, that isn’t going to change what’s being shown either. It’s only when you make something different that the culture of the movie theater or the movie industry will change.

The antidote to being a mere consumer is to become a creator. Life is not about waiting for Hollywood to offer you thrilling experiences, but to actually be someone who jumps into the work of making something beautiful and true and good for the world. When you become creative, when you become someone whose life is about what you’re doing with other people to shape the culture, the appeal of just consuming diminishes.

Crouch says this can start in the workplace. People are typically paid to cultivate or create something for a living. We often talk about the workplace as a very negative thing, or the best we can do is "witness" in the workplace. But most people are engaged in work that God meant for us to do. Whether you’re a filmmaker, a carpenter, an accountant or a lawyer we can all cultivate and preserve what is good and create new ways to do God’s work in the world.

Crouch says, “Christians are called to carry out their work in a way that moves the horizons of the world around them closer to what God intended the world to be like.”