Try to avoid starting a sentence with these words.

1. So.
2. So so so.
3. Right.
4. Look.
5. Good question.

 

Thanks so much for helping keep our English language civilized.

I am an athlete, a runner

Lately I have been running more than usual and entering a series of races in small towns around Champaign Urbana. Each one is a 5K and the idea is that the old guy who has the lowest overall time gets an all area award.

So it has been helping me to affirm that in every sense I am an athlete. The book I follow affirms over and over that the main picture of my life is the life of an athlete. I want to write more about this later, but it is just one among a host of big realities that I have begun understanding a bit since retiring from 30 years in ministry. Why I didn’t really get it then I am not sure. But it is starting to make sense.

I like this quote from one of my favorite runners:

A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more.
Steve Prefontaine

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/steve_prefontaine.html#USl4uFE73o2seuqb.99

So any way to get ready for a 5K, here is a good routine:

Week	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
1	CT or Rest	3 x 400 IW	2 m run	30 min tempo	Rest	5 m run	30 min EZ
2	CT or Rest	4 x 400 IW	2 m run	30 min tempo	Rest	5 m run	35 min EZ
3	CT or Rest	4 x 400 IW	3 m run	30 min tempo	Rest	6 m run	35 min EZ
4	CT or Rest	5 x 400 IW	3 m run	35 min tempo	Rest	6 m run	40 min EZ
5	CT or Rest	5 x 400 IW	3 m run	35 min tempo	Rest	7 m run	35 min EZ
6	CT or Rest	6 x 400 IW	3 m run	40 min tempo	Rest	6 m run	40 min EZ
7	CT or Rest	6 x 400 IW	3 m run	40 min tempo	Rest	7 m run	45 min EZ
8	CT or Rest	3 m run	30 min tempo run	2 m run	Rest	Rest	5K Race!

Starting to get it..

For years I was involved in evangelical church work at every level. There are some basics that I was overjoyed to discover. The I studied them, loved them, began to learn and apply them, taught them, defended them.

Then I began to GET them.

Very simply they are:
1. I am deeply loved. Preferred, thought of, defended.
2. I am designed. And I am good at what I do.
3. I am the light of the world. Not my idea. Somebody way smarter than me stated this. I always took it to be a job. But it is more of an infusion of energy.

Let me say that I am just beginning to get some handle on these.

Unfettered affirmation…Bill Russell

I was just watching a discussion between Bill Russell and Tim Duncan.

Bill was telling the story about being called by Jackie Robinson’s widow to be a pall bearer at his funeral. He asked her why. “Because you are one of his favorite athletes.”

Wow…to be placed in esteem by the best…true affirmation.

Then Russell lookied at Tim Duncan and said, “and YOU are on of my favorite athletes…”.

Wow…and Bill Russell said it face to face.

Don’t wait until after you die to affirm someone.

What happens when you eat too much…

Christians have always gravitated toward “snacking” often on the bible but never really digesting and using this great truth. The result is a spiritual flabbbynesss and lives that are no different than those of the “missing”.

 So we spend our “Christian lives” looking for good teaching that we can connect with, and the next best Bible study, but we seldom connect with that one thing that God wants to revolutioize in my life right now.

Then the pattern is to lay around in the Christian ghetto and do the church thing and just live our lives out going from one opinion to another.

The church is plagued with the same kind of obesity that society is. We are focused on consumption rather than nutrition, health and purpose.

Warrior

LifeChurch is in the second week of this huge series focused at men.  I see so many men just dissengaged…a waste.  Ironically they are typically swamped with problems. This quote which showed up on my wife’s whiteboard fits:

“Those who help plan the battle don’t battle the plan.”  

“reJesus” the Church

 

 My son Luke sent this poem to me from a friend, Nathan Brown.

My exact sentiments…

Verb PlayWhen I’m forced to spend time around zealous minister types, I keep hearing the necessity of reaching out to the “unchurched.” The obvious implication being: we need to “church” the “unchurched.”

Now, this particular verbish usage of the word “unchurch” does not appear in my fairly large dictionary. What I do see is the transitive verb that means excommunicate. This definition is clearer to me. And it helps me organize my response:

Dear friends, our deepest need is not to “church” the “unchurched,” but to “dechurch” the “enchurched” — that is to say, the excessively “churched.”

God Save Me from Your Followers

has ceased to be a humorous bumper sticker. It is now a genuine fear for many of the “unchurched” to which you refer.

And as we look for solutions, a good place to start would be to “depolitic” “enchurched” leaders. But, in the end, [and while we’re in the practice of verbing up nouns] nothing — and I reiterate — nothing supercedes the desperate need for Christians to “reJesus” the church.

Nathan Brown nub@ou.edu

Statue of responsibility.

Quoted in “Good to Great” is this cornerstone quote from Viktor Frankl:

“Freedom is only part of the story and half the truth…That is why I recommended that the Statue of Liberty be supplanted by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”

Right on Vik!

Rivers of light

James 1:17 is a famous verse aimed at comvincing us that God is not fickle. The message renders the heart of the truth as

“The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light. “

No man is an island…John Donne

“Isolated islands we’re not.To make this thing called life work,We gotta lean and support.And relate and respond.And give and take.And confess and forgive.And reach out and embrace and rely.” 

Chuck Swindoll

I love this quote and I am experiencing it more now than ever.