• low attendance today…where have all the good people gone?
• We got our sound fixed!  Thank you Jeremy from Trax Audio.
• worship was awesome.  our last song, AMAZING GRACE, hit home
• love living life with the people at Elevation, what a team
• The first two rows of the theater were packed, butt to butt, packed…never has happened before, everyone always sits so far away.
• Bill & Sandy make some great coffee…good job guys!
• the sermon was a lot of what God has been teaching me the last month…it is all about Jesus!
• Perko’s Album is out and available to purchase.  You can get one on Sunday for $10.  Two of the songs we sang today are songs Perko wrote.  Great job PERKO!
• Getting very excited for our anniversary party this next week!  3 years baby!
• Malawi missions trip applications are coming due on the 15th…
• Broncos lost to Kansas City…the sun does shine on every dogs butt once in awhile….
• Cubs lost to the Brewers…this better not be a reflection of things to come.
• Cowboys lost to the Skins…praise be to God above.
• Season premiere of Dexter is on tonight…ordered Showtime for the first time in my life.  Cheaper than buying all the episodes off of iTunes again.

Our house churches kicked off again this week.  Tonight I  am heading out to our house church in Riverdale to help lead the discussion tonight.  I’m looking forward to my time out there.

I think that most of us think that this thing we live out called, FAITH IN JESUS, is something we do internally.  Maybe the phrase, “personal relationship with Jesus” lead us to dwell on the personal aspect more than we should.  Or maybe because we westerners think so negatively towards political organization that favors the good of the group over individual wants/rights.  We have been more prone to value personal faith living then communal.

Bottom line: life is inescapably corporate. 

INESCAPABLY.

We don’t live life in a vacuum.  You are not alone.

Life is meant to be lived out in community.

This is hard for some of us to swallow.  I know it really is for me.  I love being left alone.  Yet…God, saw that it was not good that man was alone.  And so, as history goes, he created woman and humans were never alone again.

The Bible is a great point of reference in this discussion – other than three letters from Paul – the writings of the Bible are all to groups of PEOPLE.

We need to move past this idea of individualized relationships and realize that what is done in our hearts is lived out in our community.

Jesus calls his followers, HIS BRIDE.  Not an individual, but the group.

Inescapably.

Just finished up a new book from Mark Batterson titled, Wild Goose Chase.

Great book.  I am get so encouraged with the way Mark writes.  He is a truly gifted encourager and communicator.  After reading his books, I always feel like there is this great big destiny out there for me as an individual and that God has something more for me.  This book really helped me to see God’s spirit at work and how my life can connect up with God’s.

Mark does a good job of talking about truly following Jesus and not demanding or expecting God to follow us.

Maybe that is how I can end this post…do I do that God?  Do I expect you to follow me or am I following you?

Pick up the book from Amazon.com, worth reading.

What a crazy Sunday….

I was offered tickets to go to the Denver Saints game in Denver.  Which was odd since 1-I love the Broncos, 2-Have never ever been to a Broncos game or an NFL game for that matter, 3-I was not scheduled to speak this Sunday so I could have missed.  I prayed about it and felt a gut check that I needed to stay home.  I didn’t really understand it, but God knows what he is doing not me.

• the crazy started Saturday night, when Joel’s computer gave out on him in the middle of him finishing up his sermon.  You could tell Sunday morning that he wasn’t confident about what he was speaking on and what he was trying to get across.  He went longer than he normally does, which is normal when someone feels like they don’t know the material very well…they over explain themselves and go to long.  I think Joel had great points, talked about some great stuff, but you could tell he lacked confidence.  You did fine JOEL…keep your chin up and keep going!
• the right channel just decided to die on us right after our band was warming up.  We tried to fix it and actually started 10 minutes late because we were messing with the sound board and amps.  Not sure what happened, but bottom line was that the sound was terrible the whole time.  It hurt my ears, felt like there was an echo, and it just was terrible.
• we were packed out.  If a family of four would have shown up 15 minutes late, they probably would not sit together.  We had our largest attendance this year and actually all of last year as well.  What a great Sunday with new faces and everyone showing up for the Sunday gathering.  Hopefully they will come back even though we had major sound issues.
• I am very excited about our 3rd anniversary party on October 5th.  Black Island Farms in Syracuse here we come!  1pm, $5 per family, sign up on Sunday.
• House Churches kicked off this week and WOW…how awesome.  We had one new house church that opened up with 19 people!  AWESOME!
• We had a team meeting later on Sunday and it was great to hang with everyone again.  Love our team, love what we are doing, and love the plans we are making.
• Knee is still hurting…pray that the doctor will find out why or this will just be healed.
• Broncos are 3-0!
• Cubs are in the cat bird seat….go CUBS!
• Just started reading Rob Bell’s new book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians….I’ll update you later.

Here is the video we did to capture the missions trip to Cambodia. This is awesome. Thanks Brandon for all the hard work.

I’m in Springfield, Missouri this week.

Twice a year I travel to Springfield, Missouri where I do fund raising training for a batch of new missionaries that are going out all over the United States.  Actually this time there are a few missionaries that are going foreign.

I love my time training and teaching with these new missionaries.  It is so amazing to meet all these new missionaries and the projects they are working on.

This time around, there is a missionary couple that is working with Jewish people in Arizona, a couple that does comedy ministry, a few that work with secular schools in Texas, and some church planters.

I’m always encourged being around these missionaries…

My last full day in Cambodia was great.

We chartered a bus to go to the state owned and run orphange to pick up everyone there.  Then we bused them to a local waterpark (I think it might be the only one around).  We paid for the kids to get into the park and they had the time of their life.

Now, I will say from my American perspective, the water was flithy.  I watched kids pee, poop, and not even war swimsuits in this water.  The water had a greenish, brown color.

Honestly, I am very fearful of public water.  It takes a lot to work myself into getting into a public pool.  This was like my worst nightmare come true.  I only got in the water up to my ankels.  Joel got some sickness that is caused by being in water that has human waste in it, so I wasn’t completely parnoid for no reason.

These kids were all, as the Cambodians called them, “broken.”  Most of them had AIDS, HIV, or some physical defect.  They have been taught that they are paying for the sins of their past and are born into this life to pay for them.

I could tell right away that men were not in their lives very much if at all.  They swarmed to us guys.  I don’t think I walked anywhere without holding a kid’s hand.

We feed them lunch, gave them all new clothes, and sent them back to the orphanage with teddy bears.  Thanks KATHY!

I miss my kids from this day deeply.  They are so precious to God.

That Sunday when we were in Cambodia, we headed off to our only real tourist thing we did…we visited the genocide museum from the communist times of the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.

Basically to catch you up on the history of Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge was a political and military party that took over the country in 1975 until January of 1979.  During this time the people of Cambodia were treated as a means to an end, with the countries interests as the prime goal.

One of the ways in which the Khmer Rouge dealt with those in the country that did not conform, was to send them to what they called Security Offices, which were prisons really.  We visited Office S-21, which is the most notorious of the security offices/prisons.

S-21 was a secret facility for the detention, interrogation, torture and extermination of its prisoners.  After 1976, no one was ever released.

This place use to be a High School, but was converted to the secret facility when the Khmer Rouge took power.

Many of the prisoners & guards were children.

This museum is a testimony to the horrors of absolute power by humans in a political and military conquest.  It reminded me of the holocaust museum in D.C.

The people of Cambodia don’t talk to each other about the horrors from their past, but there is evidence everywhere of what they came out of.  If you ask them about it, they will freely share with you, but you can tell that in the back of their minds the idea and thought that this will happen again lingers.

The sad part for me was that because of the religious ideas of reincarnation that exist among the people of Cambodia, those who are born with any physical problems are seen as paying for their actions and that they are reincarnate Khmer Rouge soldiers.  Orphanages are filled with “the broken” and left to live out their life in hope of a better one to come.