]]> http://www.therieslands.com/2013/04/29/caption-please-11/feed/ 0 http://www.therieslands.com/2013/03/28/kids-say/ http://www.therieslands.com/2013/03/28/kids-say/#comments Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:05:26 +0000 Zack http://www.therieslands.com/?p=5685

One of my favorite things about this season of parenting is the conversations we have with our kids.

Between a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old we have plenty of moments that could come straight out of a parenting sitcom.

Here are a few recent ones:

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Kharis: Dad, can I have pink raisins?

Me: I don’t think they make pink raisins.

Kharis: I want pink EVERYTHING!

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Josiah: Dad, what does ‘commitfornication’ mean? (he thought it was one word)

Me: Where on earth did you hear that?

Josiah: Our teacher said that at church one time. (he hadn’t been to church in over a week)

Josiah: What is a commitfornication?

Me: <insert lame attempt at a safe-for-a-4-year-old response>

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(on the way home from picking out a new toy)

Josiah: Dad, this toy blows my mind up! I just knew that we were going to find something that would blow my mind up!

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Josiah: Dad, what is a basement?

Me: <explanation of a basement>

Josiah: So it’s something you have to buy.

Me: Well, it’s something that you have to buy when your house is being built.

Josiah: Well how do you get to the basement?

Me: You just go down stairs.

Kharis: I want some pink stairs for Christmas and then we can all go downstairs and see our basement!!!!

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What are some of your favorite kid-isms?

Are they arbitrary rules?

D.A. Carson gives a helpful explanation in The God Who Is There:

The awesome folks over at Passion have put a lot of time and effort into raising awareness and helping point to resources like EndItMovement.com

When I read that right now – right this minute – there are 27 MILLION slaves in the world… well, my brain just kind of retreats at the thought.

Considering my mortgage and the fact that I have three kids under 5 years old – my net worth is basically zero dollars. Am I just going to drop everything and fly to Thailand and go Jack Bauer in a brothel?

And then I visit a website like www.slaveryfootprint.org, which tells me that based on the size of my house and household and the age of my children and the items I own and the things that I typically eat and buy – based on my fairly “normal” “American” lifestyle…

There are about 100 slaves who contributed to my day-to-day life…

Theoretically, 100 people, somewhere in the world, are forced to work against their will so that I can have disposable diapers and cheap clothes.

So then the plausible deniability / cognitive dissonance part of my brain kicks in, and I think, “Well, ‘slavery’ is a pretty general word. I mean, I’m a ‘slave’ to my job. I’m a ‘slave’ to my mortgage. Maybe this is just a big play on words.”

But in my gut, I know that’s a cop-out.

So, with all these thoughts swimming around in my head this week, I came across this video.

I lived in this country for almost a year.

I visited these students out in the cotton fields…. and was chased away by their guards.

I watched them scramble to bribe the right people to try and get out of “going to cotton”.

I sat in the park and twiddled my thumbs because there were no students to hang out with – they were all out in a cotton field.

I listened to them tell stories about how their first experience with sex or drugs or alcohol was in a barn in the middle of a cotton field somewhere – with 30 other teenagers sleeping on the floor and no adults except the ones whose only job was to make sure they didn’t leave.

I was skeptical when they said that they needed to bring money so they could buy their own food, because there was never enough.

And there’s a really good chance that I’m wearing clothes made from that cotton right now.

So.

What am I going to do about it?

After a VERY long pregnancy (read about that here and here), we are thrilled to introduce you to our newest addition!

Benjamin (after my middle name) Raymond (after his grandpa) is finally here!

Thanks to everyone who prayed for us through this pregnancy and a HUGE thank you to all the gracious folks who have brought us meals in the past two weeks!

I’m sure we’ll post some sappy photos and videos here over the coming months, so feel free to visit from time to time!

You may have noticed that the more our family grows, the less our family blog does.

What can we say? When you have to choose between living life and writing about it – well, it’s like the John Mayer song.

Running teaches you that there’s a difference between working hard and feeling bad. Consumer culture tries to teach us otherwise. How many television commercials talk about “making life easier”? If everything you knew about life came from TV, your goal would be to live the easiest, most comfortable and unchallenging life you possibly could. You would believe that the only good feelings are sensual pleasures such as the taste of a good soft drink and the fun of driving an expensive car and lying on the beach.

But it’s just not true. Challenging and testing your mind and body, even to the point of exhaustion, failure, and breakdown, can feel as wonderful as anything else life has to offer. I suppose the enjoyment of hard work is more of an acquired taste than the taste for pleasure and fun, but once you’ve acquired it, you’re blessed with more ways to feel good, and life is better. Harder and better.

– Dean Karnazes, 50/50

Seriously: does anything make you as happy as trains apparently make this guy?

Why the heck not?

Discussing homosexuality is like talking to a momma about her newborn baby: it could be a squirrel with a pacifier, but you’re a monster if you call it anything but beautiful.

The ‘tolerance’ emperor is naked, but anybody who points that out is being ‘intolerant’, so it’s an impossible discussion.

Millions of people will fill their cars with gasoline purchased from dictators who oppress their people and murder homosexuals and drive to the ‘kiss-in’ later this week to protest HOW a man chooses to be generous.

The hypocrisy of it is almost funny.

Except, Truth is important.

So it’s not funny.

But on the outside chance that someone reading this really does care about the Truth, and about having a fair and balanced and sustainable and consistent worldview…

I came across this video earlier this week.

The leadership at chick-fil-a designed this as part of employee training. The obvious intention is to help employees realize that every single customer is a priceless soul with a story to tell, and may be having the best or worst day of their life.

I’ve watched this twice, and teared up both times.

I just pose a question: does the company that created this video stand for hateful bigotry?

Do you imagine that they show this to their employees and then say, “Now, the one exception is if you think your customer might be gay. In that case, go ahead and give them terrible customer service. Because we hate them.”

Me neither.

After 10 1/2 months, I was kicked out of the country, along with the rest of my team.

7 years after the fact, there is a new documentary that explains why:

Visit the “Massacre in Uzbekistan” website for more info.

(photo credit)

Last weekend Steph and I did something that I highly recommend: we got away for the weekend, even though we couldn’t really afford it and didn’t have much of a plan.

When we get caught up enough to post a few of the photos we took, I’ll put together a whole blog post about our weekend, but long story short: we ended up spending the night in the heart of Charlotte, so we decided to get up and visit Elevation Church on Sunday morning.

 I’ve been familiar with Elevation for quite a while.

Steven Furtick, the pastor at Elevation, used to come speak at our Campus Crusade meetings way back when I was a college student and Elevation Church was a dream. I remember really appreciating his tenacity. I could see in him the spirit of a little boy with the balls to stand up to a giant and say, “Did you seriously just disrespect God almighty? I hope it was worth it because I’m about to feed your carcass to wild dogs.”

That tenacity has generated quite a crowd of critics for Furtick – including several people who I respect – and a lot of the folks reading this probably wouldn’t visit Elevation given the opportunity.

But I was eager to, for several reasons:

• Elevation is one of the fastest growing churches in America. I want to know why.
• When I was trying to decide whether it would be right to step down from leadership at an unhealthy church, I found myself having a one-hour phone conversation with one of the pastors at Elevation. He had never met me, but gave me an abundance of his time and counsel, and gave me some crucial parameters to help me decide how to lead my family.
• Though Furtick CAN come across as a bit imbalanced on the prosperity gospel end of the spectrum, I think he rings a bell that doesn’t get rung enough in a lot of the ‘proudly reformed’ circles I tend to run in: God IS for you.
  We all need to hear that some times.
• Elevation has been incredibly transparent in their experience going from a handful of families moving to Charlotte to start a church to a giant, multi-campus, who-knows-what-to-call-it explosion of growth. They built whole websites to share the lessons learned along the way in church planting, going multi-site, hiring staff, doing childcare, doing smallgroups…  and I read along pretty closely for the first couple of years. I had a picture in my mind of what they were going for and I was excited to see how it translated.
• I was really impressed with Steven Furtick when he participated in the Elephant Room. Several of the most popular and successful pastors in the country all but attacked him for things he has said and people he associates with, and he demonstrated a wealth of humility and wisdom in responding and sticking to his “I’m not accountable to you. I’m accountable to God.” guns.
  I wanted to know what it’s like to visit the church that he leads.

So, we woke up Sunday morning and walked over to the Elevation “Uptown” campus.

Side note: I LOVE walking in big cities. HATE driving in them. But LOVE walking in them.

Anyways:

The campus meets in what appears to be an old church that has been converted into a theater.

Do you get the irony there? It was a church, that became a theater, and now a church is using the theater for church. Get it?

It’s a BEAUTIFUL venue.

Lots of stained glass. Gorgeous architecture.

Oh, and a couple of jumbo-trons above the stage – they don’t really help the romantic effect, but they do get the job done.

Steph and I LOVE our church home, so we haven’t visited a ‘new’ church in quite a while, so it was a really fun experience to be guests in someone else’s house, so to speak.

In case you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to visit Elevation, here are a few other observations, in no particular order:

They Immediately Identified Us As ‘VIP’ Visitors

I was expecting someone at the door to ask us whether we were new and I was trying to sneak in under the radar and just observe, but they weren’t having it. Someone immediately zeroed in on us, handed us a ‘VIP’ package (every visitor is a VIP), introduced us to someone who walked us almost all the way to our seat, and he was looking for us as we walked out too. He tried to hook us up with some more gifts (which we had to twist his arm to get him to keep for someone else) and he made sure we didn’t have to pay for our parking (which is a big deal in downtown Charlotte).

The VIP Package Includes A CD With A Welcome Message From The Pastor, And 4 Original Worship Songs

I mean… come on. That is awesome.

We listened to it on the way home, and I could tell that that’s exactly what they were hoping for.

And notice what is covered in the ‘VIP Package’: answers to every question someone might have visiting a new church.

There Is A DJ In The Lobby

Turn tables. Big speakers. Hat cocked to the side. This is not your grandma’s church.

The Music Was Really, Really Loud

I had heard about the legendary earplug dispenser on the way into the sanctuary. I didn’t notice it, but I wish I had. So. Loud.

There Was Very Little Diversity

There were at least 8 people on the stage over the course of the service (not counting anyone on the video screen), and every single one of them was wearing Toms or Justin Bieber high tops, deep v-necks, skinny jeans, etc.

In a strange way, the lack of diversity was backwards: folks in that stereotype would feel out of place in most churches in America. But in this particular context, a good ol’ boy in walmart jeans and boots would definitely feel out of place based on the crowd on stage.

For what it’s worth, I think my church only does slightly better on this one.

The Music Was Really, Really Excellent

Everyone who was up on that stage could make their living playing music (to the extent that anyone can actually make a living playing music). The songs were pretty much all new to me, and not really even my cup of tea. But the quality was sick.

They Used The Worship To Integrate The Campuses

Intermittently throughout the  worship time, they would show live footage of people worshiping at other campuses. I knew that’s what I was seeing, because it told me so: “Live feed from ____ campus.” And the really awesome/amazing thing was that they were singing the exact same part of the same song at the same time.

Then they kicked it up a notch – for the last song, the worship leader at the main campus lead the singing (over a video feed), but the in-building band continued to play along, making this crazy experience where you’re kind of worshiping in two places at once. And of course they showed other campuses throughout the song.

As someone who goes to a multi-campus church myself, I thought this was very, very cool.

It also made the transition to the ‘video pastor’ very smooth, since we never switched away from the video feed after the last song.

The People At Elevation Participate

Even at the satellite campus, there were lots of ‘amens’, raised hands, and there were several points during the sermon where people literally stood up and clapped. Haters will say that this is because they’ve been coached to exalt their pastor in all his cult personality glory, but it felt to me like they were just excited about what he was saying about God.

The Bathrooms Have Life Savers

Big bowls – overflowing with delicious life savers.

Someone say amen.

The Sermon Was Theologically Light, But I Wouldn’t Hesitate To Share It With Someone

This gets to the heart of the question that Steven Furtick was challenged to answer at the Elephant Room: Are you preaching to people who haven’t embraced Jesus, or preaching to Christians?

Furtick unapologetically says “non-christians”, and that was clear in his sermon.

I think someone unfamiliar with Jesus or someone very young in faith would have been extremely challenged and encouraged by what he said. I didn’t hear anything unbiblical, and everything he said, I think, was helpful.

Yet, the other side of the coin was clear from our conversation driving home.

As Steph put it: “I love our church even more now… I always leave repenting and more thankful for Jesus”

We are used to hearing sermons where at least 40-50% of the content is straight scripture or explanation of scripture – and Jesus is almost always the hero.

I would say that the sermon we heard at elevation was more like 20% scripture, and the rest was stories, reflections, etc.

And Jesus was kind of the hero….

You can watch the sermon right now at this link.

Conclusions

We had a really wonderful experience visiting Elevation church.

They treated us like royalty and it was a little bit like visiting cousins you don’t get to see very often.

They do something a little differently, but it’s clear that we all come from the same family.

I have no doubt that God will continue to do wonderful things through their body, and even their tenacious pastor.

I’m not expecting to wake up on August 8th and suddenly feel different because the first digit in my age has changed, but crossing the 30 barrier seems significant to me.

Most of the things that are “impressive” for someone “in their 20′s” are just expected for someone “in their 30′s”.

Kids, a mortgage, a savings account… nobody’s impressed when someone in their 30′s has those ducks in a row.

So I’m not quite freaking out, but this birthday has my attention.

How on earth am I 30 years old?

I swear I still feel like I could be in high school.

I hear John Mayer sing about “a quarter-life crisis”, and suddenly realize that the quarter-life crisis ship sailed FIVE YEARS AGO!

So turning 30 has me doing some reflecting, and also noticing things that I never used to think much about.

These days, when I go for a run and my knees bother me, I think,

“I have to keep these things working well for like 25 more years if I want to play sports with my kids when they’re in college… even LONGER if I want to play with my grandkids!

That’s like longer than I’ve been alive so far!

WAIT. NO, IT ISN’T! AHHHHH!”

(Don’t judge me… I have 2 toddlers and a pregnant wife)

Back to my rant:

It’s interesting to me that most of the folks in the Bible who did cool stuff didn’t do it until their 30′s.

The Bible basically says nothing about Jesus between ages 12 and 30.

David was anointed king as a kid, but he didn’t actually start ruling until around 30.

John the baptizer…

You get the idea.

So hey: maybe some of my best days are ahead of me.

That’s the advice I got last week.

As a ‘turning 30′ birthday gift, Steph very thoughtfully arranged for me to have lunch with someone well on the other side of 30 who I respect quite a bit, and I asked him:

“If you could go back and talk to yourself on your 30th birthday, what would you say?”

He said he would tell himself 3 things:

1 – Your best years are around the corner. The fourth decade is significantly better than any of the previous 3.

2 – Don’t waste the present worrying about the future. To the extent that it’s possible: Do your best to be fully present now.

3 – Don’t forget that you’re going to give an account to God for what He has entrusted to you.

So that’s encouraging as I look into the future.

I’m putting all this into a half-brained blog post because I want to hear what you think:

Whether you are 21 or 71 – what would be your advice to yourself going into your 30th birthday?

Leave a comment and let’s learn from each other!

Josiah is at a fun age these days.

He gets REALLY excited about… well, just about everything: fishing, golfing, baseball, soccer, movies, “battles”, books, sharks, dragons, dinosaurs, Narnia, grandma and grandpa….

And he LOVES to tell you all about whatever he’s excited about.

Last night at dinner it was:

After dinner we’re gonna play swords.

And I’m gonna have my plastic sword.

And daddy is gonna have two shields.

And I’m gonna hit him. And then he’s gonna HIT me with the pillow.

And then he’s gonna hit me again…

(insert 2 minutes of alternating hits)

And then I’m gonna BEAT HIM  UP!

He has also recently discovered the knock-knock joke.

He’s actually been working on this one for a while…

A few months ago, he would tell you his knock knock joke like this:

Knockknockwhosthereboohoodontcry!

Really fast, and no need for you to say anything.

These days he gets the whole taking turns thing, but he still doesn’t understand the humor, which makes for some real zingers.

Here are a couple of favorites from our drive home from Virginia this past weekend:

Knock knock

(who’s there?)

Orange

(orange who?)

GOLF CLUB! GET IT?!?!

And

Knock knock

(who’s there?)

Apple

(apple who?)

(long pause)

ORANGE! GET IT?!?!

Warning: this is one of those sappy posts that is borderline annoying, especially to those of you without kids. But it was a precious parenting moment…

We were at the mall this past week – all four of us – walking around after tithing eating at chick-fil-a…

Josiah was REALLY excited about going to the indoor playground at the mall. And as tends to happen when he’s really excited, he was having trouble behaving.

He desperately needed me to commit that we would make it to the playground, and I kept telling him “we will see”. I wasn’t trying to be mean, but didn’t want to make a promise and then have to take it back if the kids starting freaking out or needed to be disciplined.

He couldn’t live with that, and really wasn’t interested in going anywhere or doing anything until he got a firm ‘yes’ on the playground…

Pretty soon he started to melt down a little bit, and I got angry because he was acting so whiny and un-like the son that I usually love to parent, when Kharis, completely unprovoked, walked up to him, put her hand on his chest, and with a face full of one-year-old motherly concern, said,

“Josiah, you a good boy! It’s OK. You a good boy, Josiah!”

An addition to being totally adorable, I thought it was a really profound moment.

She didn’t try to comfort him about whether we’d go to the playground or have fun:

she just affirmed him.

We named her “grace” (albeit in ancient Greek).

Maybe it’s starting to stick!

I mean – absolutely no strings attached whatsoever.

One is a mixtape by hip-hop artist Lecrae, called “Church Clothes”. You can grab that one here.

All you need to know about Church Clothes is that it’s Lecrae, and it’s free.

Boom.

The other is a followup to one of my favorite albums ever. Seriously.

A few years back, Phil Wickham released “Singalong” – a live, acoustic album with a bunch of his hits.

But it wasn’t your typical live album.

I’m not sure whether he flew in all his biggest fans from around the world – or whether he just did a great job at getting everyone involved – but the fantastic thing about Singalong is that it is, well, a massive singalong.

Basically, Phil plays the guitar and keeps everyone on key, but the crowd does all the singing, which makes it PERFECT for blasting in your headphones and joining the fun.

Even better – just about every song is worshipful and expresses wonderfully Biblical theology about the wonder of God.

And to top it all off: Phil gave Singalong away for several weeks.

Well, if you missed that opportunity, fear not: he just released Singalong 2 - And once again, it’s free for now!

Go grab ‘em and then come back and tell me which tracks you like the best!

(My favorite on Church Clothes is the last track, and my favorite on Singalong 2 is “Wonderful”.)