It's official. I'm OLD!!!
Our COG pastor, Lane Fusilier recently completed a 3-wek message series on creation vs. evolution. Lane posted a huge number of links and articles on his blog (click on his name to get to them) which show the depth to which he is fascinated by this. Apparently, based on the comments, so are a number of COG attenders. As he points out in one post, many of the high-school and university students attending COG struggle with creation and its fit to post-modernism.I am not someone who struggles with this.
By way of contrast, Al put up two excellent posts, one courtesy of Darryl Dash and one from the Hamilton Spec that resonated a lot more with me. The questions of church attendance/relevance and poverty/need seem to hit me a lot harder than evolutionary/creationist discourse. Perhaps that has to do with the fact I am geting older and busier and, with less free time on my hands, I find myself wanting to invest more in relationships that matter and less in high theological issues that have little to no bearing on living day-to-day.
We haven't been going to church very much lately. In fact, I think we have been at Sunday service maybe 5 times all year. There just isn't much that hits us lately. It's hard to get motivated enough to not only get myself out the door when I feel ambivalent about where I'm going, but that motivation is tougher when there's two kids in the mix. I am really worried that my home church and I are growing apart. It's a difficult issue to place in God's hands, but as He reminds me during prayer times, these are EXACTLY the issues He wants us to turn over to Him, so that's where it is now.
I guess the subject matter being discussed lately doesn't much feel like "Kingdom" business, although the question of "how did we get here?" is one that is fundamental to Christianity. I guess I just take it on faith that I was created by God, and that's good enough for me. No insult intended, but the last three weeks of lessons felt a bit elitist to me. I consider myself a pretty intelligent guy and everything I read and heard sailed right on over me.
I am really deep into the book of Romans right now and, reading it, I am learning so much about God's grace and how to live a strong Christian life. I intend to start blogging about my readings and learnings soon. I would love it if others who read this blog would share their thoughts on the chapters as I post. The Bible is an interpretative text, read through the lens of the individual heart and, I believe, each person will get different, yet relevant, value out of the reading.
I put together a ministry proposal involving practical applications to reach out to our community and establish deeper connections within the church, which I shared with a number of people. Everybody thinks it's great, which is encouraging, but I have not had time to develop it further. The reason for this is because of work and family commitments, which is tough enough, but also because the people I shared it with haven't challenged me or encouraged me to go forward with it, because they're too busy too. Come June, when my current work project ends, I am going to aggressively pursue this plan and see where it goes.
posted by Brian @ 7:18 AM
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