TREVOR'S WRITING

I am a Christian, I love Jesus deeply, and according to my church I believe all the right things. Sometimes I wonder though, if what I say and what I do are connected. Sure, I am a Pastor and I have made some choices to do what I think Jesus would want me to do, but does my faith and my action truly interact? I read this morning in Frost and Hirsch's book that the medium is the message and as that applies to the Christian life, our actions are the message. Do my actions in my everyday existence communicate what Jesus means to me? I think all to often the answer is no...instead of communicating what Jesus means to me, my actions all too often communicate that I am selfish. Do you want to be with the kids right now? No, I'd rather watch TV. Do you care about the poor? No, I really want a new iPhone (or laptop, or car, or house, or kitchen, or book, etc.). Do you care about people in your community that are hurting? No, I don't take time to be with them, I have too many other ...

I often look at passion as a negative thing. I hear things like this...I got in an argument and I got passionate and it got me in trouble...I got caught in a moment of passion, and now she's pregnant, we didn't mean for that to happen...I better be quiet now because or my passion is going to get me in trouble. What if we looked at passion differently? What if we noticed that the problem was not so much our passion, but our direction. Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch write about this in their book The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church (this book is excellent if you love dreaming about the church, and what it could be - I will probably post more about it over the next while), they say that, "Passion is only evil when it remains in the directionless state, when it refuses to be subject to holy direction, when it will not accept the direction that leads toward God." This is a beautiful picture of passion. The Church is often kn...

I am a Christian...I believe in a dude named Jesus and I try to live my life like him...I am also a Pastor, which basically to me means that I get paid to...believe in a dude named Jesus and try to live my life like him. I am increasingly uncomfortable with that idea. I often wonder if it cheapens my christianity, or if it makes who I am unauthentic. I remember when I volunteered to work with young people I would often say things like this to the young people, "I just believe in this so much, I really love you guys, I don't get paid to be here, I do it because I truly care." I can't say that any more. I do believe that I do it because I love it, and I can't imagine doing anything else. I guess I just want to be authentic in my beliefs and in sacrificing for those beliefs...I am not sure how I do that in the situation I am in.

Seeing people is at the same time simple and difficult. I remember when I preached a sermon about 1 1/2 years ago. I spoke on the story of the good samaritan and talked about how we should learn from the people we normally look down on (those on the margins - for me...the homeless). I remember that someone talked to me afterward and challenged me on it. He said he knows a lot of people in the inner-city who are not good people at all, in fact they do a lot of evil things. What are we supposed to learn from them? At the time I said that the evil things are not what we are to learn from them, but that we can find some good. I have always felt uneasy about that conversation because I did not think I answered well. At the end of Tim Huff's book, Bent Hope, Steve Bell writes a Benediction. In it he says that Tim has an innate ablility to really see people. Not their problems and tragedies, not their lies, not the external decoys, but truly see who they are and that they are a p...

I got Jesus for President for Christmas and I really enjoyed reading it. Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw really have inspired me to think more creatively when it comes to politics. It was very interesting to read it during the inauguration of Barack Obama and seeing the hope that people put in him. It would seem that a lot of people really look to Obama as a savior of some sort. Of course there are many others who look at him as something much different than a savior as well. This book argues that Christians should not put their hope in any sort of politician or political system but that Jesus really is the only Savior that we can truly put our hope in. Living like Jesus is the way we are political. Christian's started out as being anti-empire when Rome would have nothing to do with them. Everyone was forced to say "Caesar is lord," but this was the time that Christians took their lives into their hands and instead said, "Jesus is Lord!" I think that so ma...

I have seen a disturbance in the holy water. People come to the altar to worship, but who are they worshipping. I heard a story recently from another youth pastor (thanks Jon). There was a young boy who decided to become a Christian, and give his life to Jesus. He was very excited to tell people and one of the first he wanted to tell was the worship pastor. He walked up to him and excitedly said, "I gave my life to you today!" The pastor was a little taken aback, "do you mean you gave your life to Jesus today?" "Yeah, that's what I said, I gave my life to you." The worship pastor was a little confused and asked, "son, do you think I am Jesus?" "Well, you are aren't you?" the boy said, "I mean...we sing to you every Sunday." This is a somewhat humorous (although disturbing) misunderstanding. But, I think I have seen this type of confused worship in many ways. Churches grow because people like the preaching, or because t...

Our Sr. Pastor mentioned in his sermon a while back that Jesus was 33 when he died.  I guess it struck a real cord with me because I am still thinking about it, I guess the fact that I am 34 has something to do with it.  I wonder at the things he accomplished, things that have had some staying power ( 2.1 Billion people claim to be his follower).   This has stirred me to reflect on my life, what have I accomplished in my 34 years? As I think about that I realize that the things that I pursue as "great things" are not very much like what Jesus considered to be great.  Jesus didn't start any programs, he only spoke to crowds that gathered around him naturally (he didn't do any advertising).  Jesus wasn't a dynamic personality, people were drawn to him because of who he was, not because he was a great leader, or a powerful person.  The only group he formed was a group that just kind of wandered around with him seemingly aimlessly.  He avoided crowds, had a quiet per...

Over the last few years I have been really thinking about the church, is it what God wants it to be? What is it that should change? What is it that should not change? As I have done this I have explored the concepts that emergent village explores, reading books by Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, and others. A lot of what they have to say, really connects with me, but I have always been left with a feeling of uneasiness in many ways. I have kept reading them and enjoying their thoughts, but lately I have become more and more int erested in the church/christian concept that is called Missional. Over the last few years I have heard missional talked about quite a bit, and have often wondered what it meant, but never took the time to really look into it. A few months back I decided to check out some definitions. When I clicked on friends of missional I was really blown away! The definition of a missional community fit so well with the thoughts that I have had about the church lately. Thi...

About a year ago, I read Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne and I remember being so overwhelmed with all the things I felt I needed to change in my life. At that point I made a decision to take one thing from each book that I read. I couldn't handle more than that. A few weeks back I finished reading Ronald Sider's book, Rich Christians in an Age of Poverty . I once again could have been overwhelmed, but I decided to take one thing, (I might cheat and take a few) here is the thing I am taking from this book. Sider talks a lot about living more simply and giving more to help the poor (especially giving to micro loan organizations), he mentions in his book that he thinks that most of the people reading the book could go 2 years without buying new clothes. I have decided to take the challenge (many people I know, especially the youth from my church, are thinking - hasn't he done that the last 15 years already?). Regardless, here are the items in my closet that I a...

I posted a few weeks ago about Rob Bell and Don Golden's book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians. I really appreciated Jearim's comments (on my Facebook ) about confession and the scripture that he used was very inspiring to me. I finished reading the book a while ago and really appreciated it. I realized that the whole idea of confession and repentance are extremely important to Rob, and that in fact may be one of the main points of the book. The whole book is about how followers of God throughout Biblical history have fallen into exile because they choose not to cry out to him, and when they do, God rescues them from that exile. This is near the end of the book: ...in exile we can slip into despair, or we can reimagine everything. Confession. Repentance. A fresh start. A clean slate. We cry out in our exile and God hears us and we experience rebirth. (p. 174) According to my understing of the book the difference is that compared to what I have learned there is a deeper understan...

Have you ever seen an interview with a major professional athlete, when they say something like, "I get paid to play a game that I love!" At which point I experience a bit of anger, jealousy and loath. I usually think something along the lines of, "well of course you should love to play a game and get paid millions of dollars to do it! Everybody would love that!" I guess I have to admit that the wishful thinking in me always wishes I would have pushed myself in some sort of sport, because then I surely would have been a professional athlete!!!??? Maybe that could be me saying that in an interview! "I get paid to play a game that I love!" In that moment I wish my Dad would have been more like Tiger Woods dad and spent hours and hours and hours and hours on the golf course with me...MAKING me a better golfer. Then I snap out of it...I would never have let my dad do that, I was way to lazy! So, I realize I will have to settle into being who I am, the non-...

The last 6 months or so, I have been easily moved to tears. It has lead to some interesting moments, like the time I was sitting at the church denomination I am a part of had their national conference and the general session speaker was speaking. He shared an emotional story that obviously struck a chord with me. I remember getting choked up, tears streaming down my face, but the crazy thing is, that is not where it stopped. I realized that I needed to hold back the sobs, I start looking around and realize that no one else was finding this particular story all that emotional (or at least I saw no other tears). I also realized that my sobs were becoming more evident to the people around me (as evidenced by the people looking away and pretending they were not staring at me). I began to really hope the speaker would move on to something funny, or perhaps something I could get mad about, anything but sad...finally he did. I am not really embarrassed that I cry, although I know a lot of men...

What keeps meat from rotting? One way to do that is to salt it, this method was widely used in Bible times. In Matthew 5:13 Jesus says to a bunch of his followers "you are the salt of the earth." In other words, the world is the meat and you are the salt, you help to keep the meat from getting rotten. Here is where I think that we have missed out on something. We (the church) keep removing ourselves from the world more and more, we look down on all the horrible things that are going on in the world and shake our head and say "tsk, tsk." There are horrible things going on in our world (sexual promiscuity, hatred, racism, oppression, drugs, alcoholism, etc.) so we withdraw ourselves from it in order to protect ourselves from these horrors. We create our "Christian bubble" and pray that no one will burst it. We make sure our kids hang out with the right crowd so that they will not be corrupted, we don't hang out in certain places so that we won't be ...

My life is full of programs that I have thought up, ministries that I lead. I believe in them, I think they do good things, exciting things, probably even God-ordained things. I also try to do great things with my family, fun things, family-building things, even things that intend to lead them to see a picture of what Jesus looks like. Is it possible that even these things are vanity? Is it possible that the things I hold most dear are like a vapour? I listened to two sermons on the way home from Boissevain yesterday. Both of them were from the Youth Specialties convention - NYWC last year. I have had them on my iPod for almost a year now without listening to them. Interestingly enough, after all this time they both really hit me at an appropriate time. I have been really struggling with the idea of just focusing on seemingly small things and both these sermons (one by Francis Chan and one by Phil Vischer) talked about how the only thing that really matters is that we are comple...

"The Event" happened in our family and it forced us to think about greed. I won't tell you what "The Event" was, but let's just say that one of our kids did something that will be regretted for a long time. However, this action has lead us to consider what we are teaching our children about greed. The first thing we thought of was all the things that we allow our kids to do. We let them play Webkinz, where the whole idea is making money to spend on stuff...we let them stare at the Sears Wishbook for hours on end so they can drool over all the things they want...we let them look at websites online that basically exist to sell them things...we take them to stores just to look at toys...we buy them things. All these things, we decided, encourage greed, so we thought it best to put a stop to many of these things. We told our children that we would not be buying them anything for a while (at least until they are "ungreedy" as one of the kids put it). Wh...

The Bible uses the phrase "God is love" (1 John 4), and Christians do believe that this is true. However, if you go to a Christian church you are more likely to hear what God doesn't love about us, or what we need to do in order to live up to God's standards, then you are to hear how much God loves us. My friend Graham pointed this out to me the other day and it struck me. If we look in the Bible we find a lot about what we need to do in order to become better people. If we go to church and hear only about what we need to do in order to become better people, are we missing something? Maybe we are. The problem with only hearing this is that it can lead to legalism and/or guilt. I think what we could be missing is the basis for all the morals and behaviors that are spoken of in the Bible. The basis is his love. I believe that God has made a way for us to be imperfect and still have a relationship with him. I believe that we can not do ANYTHING that can separate...

What a great way to do a concert! I really enjoyed going to see U2 at the IMAX. I have never really enjoyed a concert as much as I did doing it this way. You totally felt like you were there, the sound quality was amazing the 3d made you feel like you could touch Bono and the crowd was lovin' it. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that basically all the concerts I go to I am going with a group of people that are at least 17 years younger then me, and apparently music has changed a little over the last 17 years. U2 would probably rank as my favourite (if I really had to choose) and I liked that they were trying to say something in the concert. One of the major themes was "Coexist." The "C" being the Islamic symbol of a moon, the "X" being Judaisms star of David and the "T" being the Christian symbol of a cross. Bono at one point sang the following lines: Some graphitti was written up on a wall not too far from here It says coexist Jesu...

I just started reading this book called The Truth about Social Justice. I think it is going to be amazing. The author talks about how we should advocate for people who are poor or on the margins of society, because they often don't have people looking out for them. This could perhaps include political advocacy, but could also include personal advocacy. Here is an example that came to mind for me: If I had a son, who got addicted to drugs (I hope this does not happen, but it is not out of the realm of possibility given what kind of Father he has to live with). I would do my best to love him (probably with some tough love, and with some soft love) I would fight for him, I would strongly encourage him to quit, and I would do what I could to help him. If he decided he wanted to quit, I would probably help him out, probably paying for and supporting him in the time he needed in Rehab and whatever else he needed. The problem is, that there are many people out there who do not have ...

A few weeks ago I decided to go to a downtown Winnipeg mission for lunch to try and understand what that is like and to get to know some people down there. I wrote a sort of journal entry that I wanted to share with all of you, here it is: Just came back from am inner-city mission where I went “undercover” for a while. This morning during my morning prayer and reading time I decided that I should go there and pose as a customer in need of food and just sit around and visit with people. This morning, I went outside, shoveled the driveway (big snow storm last night), got dressed in an old jacket and some older jeans, drove the boys to school, went to church, looked after a few emails, and took care of some other business and went to the downtown library to do some work on some talks I needed to prepare. All morning I was trying to talk myself out of going, so I had built in a little accountability. I told Nicky that I was going to do this, then at the office, I told Pastor Ron that I w...

I was pointed to an interesting discussion by one of the youth in my Church (thanks Dustin)between a bunch of young people discussing whether God or Science is the answer. The discussion can be found here (if you have a Facebook account), but I will warn you there are 96 posts at the time I am publishing this. There are so many interesting comments, but I wanted to share with you a little of what happened. This was the discussion starter: i wondered...is science wrong???or is god wrong???i believe in god, but what i'm wondering, is that how come that science is more believable than god? whats the difference? (have pity i'm 14 years old) science was created by mankind... so how come mankind isn't wrong?we've been wrong before... tons of times hell we may even be wrong about everything...haha just realized science made computers...but still... we think the big bang made everything, and it did...it also made godBTW!!! god didn't make mankind... if you've been to c...