THE MISSING INGREDIENT FOR SUCCESS

I think there is a missing ingredient in most of our lives that keeps us from really fulfilling the purposes of God for us and for His church in this world. I have read material on determination, writing down goals, perseverance, positive thinking, possibility thinking, alignment, being one with the source…you name it, I have probably read it and maybe even tried it.

But there is one concept I have not heard or even read much about in the whole ‘success /achievement’ movement.

That missing ingredient in most of our lives is embodied in the word sacrifice.

“Now wait a minute” you say “I was taught that it was more blessed to give than to receive”. You are correct. But it is possible to give and not sacrifice. Most giving is just a redistribution of time, talent, energy or wealth given out of a pool of excess. Most of the giving that is the cornerstone of the self improvement movement has little if anything to do with sacrifice.

We in the Twenty First century know little of a life of sacrifice. The word sacrifice has almost been banned from our vocabulary.

To sacrifice means to give until it hurts.

Ask a family whose loved one has been lost in military service to our country. They can tell you about sacrifice.
Ask a seasoned aged wealthy entrepreneur about building their company from the back of a pick up truck in the 1950s. They can tell you about 80+ hour work weeks, Kraft Dinner, risking life, limb and home, to stake their claim and build their business.
Talk to missionaries who, compelled by the Love of Jesus Christ, abandoned all wealth and the privilege of urban life to go and invest their lives in the lives of the worlds destitute and abandoned.
Talk to a church that is impacting their community for the cause of Christ.

Their common theme will always be, sacrifice.

Reflect, if you will, on the fact that most privately owned companies in Canada do not survive to stay in business by the third generation. That mission organization recruitment is down, that military recruitment is down, that volunteerism is down, that we have it too easy that our kids have it even easier, that the idea of a life of sacrifice has gone the way of AM Radio, that people are lost, have no purpose, lives devoid of meaning and, to quote a very old song, “if that’s all there is then let’s keep dancing” seems to be the mantra of the day. Well maybe not dancing…but certainly leave me alone to do my own thing. Or at least, don’t bother me; don’t touch my wealth or my weekend.

Sacrifice, the abandoned word in the Brave New World. I am sure glad Jesus Christ didn’t back down from His sacrifice for the world or we would all be going to hell. Maybe we are already there and we just don’t know it, or we just don’t want to recognize it or we just want to keep playing our video games while “Rome” burns.

What ever you want in life that is worth anything will cost you something…it’s called a sacrifice. Do not let anybody tell you anything different. No pain, no gain, whether in your physical life, your emotional live or your spiritual life. Get it?

GET REAL, GET RELEVANT OR GO HOME

The Church in North America is almost an embarrassment to the cause of Jesus Christ. Believers bicker amongst each other. Denominations fight over doctrinal issues. Christians change churches like they change their T shirts. They fight about worship styles, music choices, which translation of the bible is the only Authorized Version. The church is lame and lifeless and it is so because we let it be so.

No wonder know body cares to show up on Sunday. So many churches are out of date, out of touch and hell bent on preserving rituals and forms which long have outlasted their uselessness.

Power hungry leaders and power hungry parishioners fight to gain control. Submission is absent, humility dead, personal sacrifice non existent and personal preference is king. To the out side word we can be seen as nothing more than a poorly run Rotary club that reads bible verses and spends a lot of time bickering.

When will we have the courage to really get it together as the Church the Body of Christ? When will we see that a lost and dying world doesn’t give a darn about our doctrinal differences, our cute pageants, our dead formalism and never ending power struggles and war over worship styles?

We live in a lost and dying world that doesn’t even know it’s lost and dying.

Some people may have tweaked to the fact, that we as a word have a problem. With greed and financial corruption plaguing our monetary system, with divorce and adultery at an all time high, with children being exploited, with women being oppressed, with environmental pollution causing more and more cancer, with large Pharmaceutical companies driving the health care agenda, the increase in child poverty, pedophilia, pornography, prostitution and the ever changing price of gas, you would have to be so ego- centric, self absorbed and down right blind not to know there is a problem.

It is time for the church of Jesus Christ to come to the God of heaven and ask for forgiveness. It is time for the people of God to open their eyes to the death and decay that surrounds their neighborhood. It is time for the church to stand up and RISK engaging a dying world regardless of the personal cost, to risk being relevant, to pay the price to be light and salt, to risk time, creativity, money, reputation, to pick up the cross daily and follow our leader into uncertainty, darkness and the evil places of this world.

After all it cost Jesus Christ His life to give birth to The Church, perhaps it’s time we gave our very lives to save that same church from self seeking believers who have hi-jacked the church for years for their own agenda. It’s time to get real, get relevant or go home!

Jesus said “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not stand up against it”. Any body interested in “RAZING” a little hell?

The Three Flames of Love...worth the time

Blogging is Like Exercising or Having Babies

Writing this blog is like exercising...I am inconsistent at both.
Since I have not had much to say over the past two months, I simply did not write anything. Well, I did start to exercise...but I stopped and now I will just have to start again. AND my daughter Meghan just gave birth to a healthy 8lb+, 21in long girl named Rosaleen Elizabeth, on this very day, May 17th at 11:33am.
So I am grateful for a healthy baby and mommy.
So, about every nine months or so we get a baby. It will probably take me that long to get back to exercising and some of you are hoping it will take even longer for me to start blogging again.
Thanks for listening and thanks for your prayers

PS...( Samantha 10, Rachael 9, Jeremy 7.5, Hannah 2 and Rosaleen 0)

The Coming Collapse of Evangelical Christianity or the Death of the Church as We Know It!

With the rising tide of secular atheism in the USA could we be on the verge of seeing the collapse of Evangelical Christianity as we know it?"

Please read the blog article I have reposted posted below, with a careful and open heart. I do not know how many of the predictions contained in the article may come to pass, or even if I agree with every comment. The article has challenged some of my thinking and I hope it challenges your thinking as well.


An anti-Christian chapter in Western history is about to begin. But out of the ruins, a new vitality and integrity will rise.

We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.

Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.

This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.

Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.

Why is this going to happen?

1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.

The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.

2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.

3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven mega churches, dying churches and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.

4. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.

5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to "do good" is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done. Look for ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive.

6. Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.

7. The money will dry up.

What will be left?

•Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented mega churches that have defined success. Emphasis will shift from doctrine to relevance, motivation, and personal success – resulting in churches further compromised and weakened in their ability to pass on the faith.

•Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the "conversion" of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.

•A small band will work hard to rescue the movement from its demise through theological renewal. This is an attractive, innovative, and tireless community with outstanding media, publishing, and leadership development. Nonetheless, I believe the coming evangelical collapse will not result in a second reformation, though it may result in benefits for many churches and the beginnings of new churches.

•The emerging church will largely vanish from the evangelical landscape, becoming part of the small segment of progressive mainline Protestants that remain true to the liberal vision.

•Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches will begin to disappear.

•Charismatic-Pentecostal Christianity will become the majority report in evangelicalism. Can this community withstand heresy, relativism, and confusion? To do so, it must make a priority of biblical authority, responsible leadership, and a reemergence of orthodoxy.

•Evangelicalism needs a "rescue mission" from the world Christian community. It is time for missionaries to come to America from Asia and Africa. Will they come? Will they be able to bring to our culture a more vital form of Christianity?

•Expect a fragmented response to the culture war. Some Evangelicals will work to create their own countercultures, rather than try to change the culture at large. Some will continue to see conservatism and Christianity through one lens and will engage the culture war much as before – a status quo the media will be all too happy to perpetuate. A significant number, however, may give up political engagement for a discipleship of deeper impact.

Is all of this a bad thing?

Evangelicalism doesn't need a bailout. Much of it needs a funeral. But what about what remains?

Is it a good thing that denominations are going to become largely irrelevant? Only if the networks that replace them are able to marshal resources, training, and vision to the mission field and into the planting and equipping of churches.

Is it a good thing that many marginal believers will depart? Possibly, if churches begin and continue the work of renewing serious church membership. We must change the conversation from the maintenance of traditional churches to developing new and culturally appropriate ones.

The ascendancy of Charismatic-Pentecostal-influenced worship around the world can be a major positive for the evangelical movement if reformation can reach those churches and if it is joined with the calling, training, and mentoring of leaders. If American churches come under more of the influence of the movement of the Holy Spirit in Africa and Asia, this will be a good thing.

Will the evangelicalizing of Catholic and Orthodox communions be a good development? One can hope for greater unity and appreciation, but the history of these developments seems to be much more about a renewed vigor to "evangelize" Protestantism in the name of unity.

Will the coming collapse get Evangelicals past the pragmatism and shallowness that has brought about the loss of substance and power? Probably not. The purveyors of the evangelical circus will be in fine form, selling their wares as the promised solution to every church's problems. I expect the landscape of mega church vacuity to be around for a very long time.

Will it shake lose the prosperity Gospel from its parasitical place on the evangelical body of Christ? Evidence from similar periods is not encouraging. American Christians seldom seem to be able to separate their theology from an overall idea of personal affluence and success.

The loss of their political clout may impel many Evangelicals to reconsider the wisdom of trying to create a "godly society." That doesn't mean they'll focus solely on saving souls, but the increasing concern will be how to keep secularism out of church, not stop it altogether. The integrity of the church as a counter cultural movement with a message of "empire subversion" will increasingly replace a message of cultural and political entitlement.

Despite all of these challenges, it is impossible not to be hopeful. As one commenter has already said, "Christianity loves a crumbling empire."

We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century.

We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture.

I'm not a prophet. My view of evangelicalism is not authoritative or infallible. I am certainly wrong in some of these predictions. But is there anyone who is observing evangelicalism in these times who does not sense that the future of our movement holds many dangers and much potential?

• Michael Spencer is a writer and communicator living and working in a Christian community in Kentucky. He describes himself as "a postevangelical reformation Christian in search of a Jesus-shaped spirituality." This essay is adapted from a series on his blog, InternetMonk.com

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

WE MIGHT JUST SURVIVE THIS ECONOMIC MESS

Check out what an American writer thinks of Canada's ability to survive the economic crisis. I think it makes for very interesting reading. This could even be the start of a renewed patriotism ( I don't really think that will happen)

Economic Crisis Ok in Canada
Published Feb 7, 2009

"The legendary editor of The New Republic, Michael Kinsley, once held a "Boring Headline Contest" and decided that the winner was "Worthwhile Canadian Initiative." Twenty-two years later, the magazine was rescued from its economic troubles by a Canadian media company, which should have taught us Americans to be a bit more humble.

Now there is even more striking evidence of Canada's virtues. Guess which country, alone in the industrialized world, has not faced a single bank failure, calls for bailouts or government intervention in the financial or mortgage sectors. Yup, it's Canada.

In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada's banking system the healthiest in the world. America's ranked 40th, Britain's 44th.

Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it. Canadian banks are well capitalized and poised to take advantage of opportunities that American and European banks cannot seize. The Toronto Dominion Bank, for example, was the 15th-largest bank in North America one year ago. Now it is the fifth-largest. It hasn't grown in size; the others have all shrunk.

So what accounts for the genius of the Canadians? Common sense. Over the past 15 years, as the United States and Europe loosened regulations on their financial industries, the Canadians refused to follow suit, seeing the old rules as useful shock absorbers. Canadian banks are typically leveraged at 18 to 1—compared with U.S. banks at 26 to 1 and European banks at a frightening 61 to 1. Partly this reflects Canada's more risk-averse business culture, but it is also a product of old-fashioned rules on banking.

Canada has also been shielded from the worst aspects of this crisis because its housing prices have not fluctuated as wildly as those in the United States. Home prices are down 25 percent in the United States, but only half as much in Canada. Why? Well, the Canadian tax code does not provide the massive incentive for over consumption that the U.S. code does: interest on your mortgage isn't deductible up north.
In addition, home loans in the United States are "non-recourse," which basically means that if you go belly up on a bad mortgage, it's mostly the bank's problem. In Canada, it's yours.

Ah, but you've heard American politicians wax eloquent on the need for these expensive programs—interest deductibility alone costs the federal government $100 billion a year—because they allow the average Joe to fulfill the American Dream of owning a home. Sixty-eight percent of Americans own their own homes. And the rate of Canadian homeownership? It's 68.4 percent.

Canada has been remarkably responsible over the past decade or so. It has had 12 years of budget surpluses, and can now spend money to fuel a recovery from a strong position. The government has restructured the national pension system, placing it on a firm fiscal footing, unlike our own insolvent Social Security. Its health-care system is cheaper than America's by far (accounting for 9.7 percent of GDP, versus 15.2 percent here), and yet does better on all major indexes.
Life expectancy in Canada is 81 years, versus 78 in the United States; "healthy life expectancy" is 72 years, versus 69. American car companies have moved so many jobs to Canada to take advantage of lower health-care costs that since 2004, Ontario and not Michigan has been North America's largest car-producing region.

I could go on. The U.S. currently has a brain-dead immigration system. We issue a small number of work visas and green cards, turning away from our shores thousands of talented students who want to stay and work here. Canada, by contrast, has no limit on the number of skilled migrants who can move to the country. They can apply on their own for a Canadian Skilled Worker Visa, which allows them to become perfectly legal "permanent residents" in Canada—no need for a sponsoring employer, or even a job. Visas are awarded based on education level, work experience, age and language abilities. If a prospective immigrant earns 67 points out of 100 total (holding a Ph.D. is worth 25 points, for instance), he or she can become a full-time, legal resident of Canada.

Companies are noticing. In 2007 Microsoft, frustrated by its inability to hire foreign graduate students in the United States, decided to open a research center in Vancouver. The company's announcement noted that it would staff the center with "highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S." So the brightest Chinese and Indian software engineers are attracted to the United States, trained by American universities, then thrown out of the country and picked up by Canada—where most of them will work, innovate and pay taxes for the rest of their lives.

If President Obama is looking for smart government, there is much he, and all of us, could learn from our quiet—OK, sometimes boring—neighbor to the north. Meanwhile, in the councils of the financial world, Canada is pushing for new rules for financial institutions that would reflect its approach. This strikes me as, well, a worthwhile Canadian initiative."

So there you have it. We canadians may have done something right after all.