Library of Thoughts

Are you standing amidst a pile of Christmas boxes? As your eyes meet these old visitors, where is your heart and mind? It’s easy to throw Christmas up, and decorate as if it’s a task. Stop a minute and take a deep breath. What comes up in your heart? Sadness? Wistfulness? Does your heart and mind begin to go back to other holidays? It should… Our soul calls for integration not just of all of who we are, but of all the “when’s” in which we have been. Your soul is saying, “I’ve been here before. Take notice.” Each decoration, smell, sight is not just a doorway into what God has done in the past, it is the container in which He is speaking right this moment! Slow down, settle, and notice what your soul is saying, what God is doing as you decorate for Christmas.  Vern

Friends, I am sharing an article my son wrote that has several poignant lines about how we relate to one another… I hope you enjoy it! Vern http://theechonews.com/need-argue-christians/ How we need to argue as Christians November 16, 2018 11:00 am · C.S. Lewis and the need to remember common ground G. Connor Salter | Contributor “Christians have become known more for what they disagree on than the gospel they believe in .” Pastor Ronnie Floyd said in a discussion with Ed Stetzer, published in the April 2018 edition of Christianity Today. As hard as that sounds, Floyd knew what he was talking about. These days, every religious idea that comes up in American Christian circles seems to be divisive. Whether we’re talking about whether social justice fits Jesus’s teachings, which political theories to support, what we need to do about environmental problems – we all seem to be arguing with little consensus on anything.  Certainly, we understand some of this fr...

We make too much of leaders… we exalt them, which makes them think they are worthy of exaltation. " Do not be called leader, for one is your leader, and that is Christ ." Matthew 23:10 HCSB. You can translate it master, teacher, instructor, or… leader. I once had a guy I was discipling call me master. I quickly stopped him, and asked him to NEVER say that again. He was a 20 year veteran of the Air Force, and a retired Lt. Col.. Some thing was deeply wrong in how he understood discipleship. In our time together I invited him to explore why this mindset was so unhealthy. But in his world everyone was trying to be a leader. Adopting a "posture" of leadership… Like the person who comes into the room and waits for space in the conversation so he can speak. He isn't listening and present with those in the room. He isn't gathering information about their needs. He stands "looking and acting the part". We should make much of shepherds… Shepher...

There comes a day when in discipling, you recognize that it is not the tools or the behavioral practices that have furthered the transformation of the laborer. But the laborers greatest transformative moments revolve around the Gospel. The daily decisions to allow the gospel to rule and reign exclusively in their life. You have helped others enough to know that you can interchange disciplines and tools and produce no more fruitful labor. Produce no more obedient disciple.  It is easy to believe that the glory of God needs help. A focusing lens to make it potent. A framework to make it scaleable. So what do you do when you realized that the glory of God, through the gospel is not assisted buy your perfect practices? What is your gospel trajectory? What do you do in the future? I hear over and over from equippers that they are learning to believe that the answer is  to live in the glory of God and to train your disciples to live in the glory of God as exclusively as possibl...

These short videos touch on central concepts in disciplemaking: Harvest - 5 Video's on Discipleship

"People don't apply discipleship principles because we make it too complex. We need to make it simple." There is a movement afoot to simplify following Christ. It's premise is that the modern discipleship movement is too complex to be applied by most people. I see the point! It is sometimes, maybe often, a valid point. Some have created model's for discipleship that take 6-8 years to complete. Sifting out behavioral stages from scripture, hoping that if we order them correctly, and mentor people correctly most christians would choose to be disciples because it would be clear, demonstrated, packaged. Moving in the opposite direction, this simplification mindset says that many more will choose to follow Christ if we ignore all but the key principles and commands. It's clear, it's demonstrated, it's simple. Hard to argue with that, right? Except that both have the potential to miss the key. The power of the gospel. Both move past the gospel so qui...