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Found what seems to be a huge blessing via twitter today. I’m now following @jasonsalamun and linked through to his blog about an awesome ministry: projectchurch.net. Just as Tony Morgan posts about Perryisms, I’m totally digging on some Jasonisms. Jason Salamun posted a list titled “101 Nuggets for Church Planters” and it’s very awesome! All 101 are necessary, but here are some that really made me say “Ah ha! Someone else gets church planting!” or “Wow! I definitely need to work on this!” I’ll let you decide which is which for me

2. If you are called, you have permission.

4. Don’t just plant a church; start a movement.

6. Don’t make the church your idol.  It’s easier than you think.

14. There’s a lot of wisdom in the words of dead guys.

22. Don’t talk about church all the time to your wife.  Pace yourself.

26. You should be able to explain the vision on the back of a napkin.

29. You’ll get criticized for things you never even said or implied. Get used to it.

40. Start a church where it’s okay to be a dude.

66. Typical is boring.

74. Be intentional.

77. Prepare- but understand that you’ll never been prepared enough.

79. Stand up for the ones who can’t stand up at all.

80. Time alone with a notebook, a pen, and a Bible often lead to something special.

81. Authentic people are led by authentic leaders.

87. It will be messy.

88. When was the last time you went to a bar or sat in the smoking section of a restaurant?

92. Repeat after me, “I heart simplicity.”

100. Church all boils down to relationships.

Rock on Jason! Praise God for putting the desire to be passionate for the Lord and minister to people and open enough to help other ministers stay on-track and to share in your victories!

Scott Williams, campus pastor of LifeChurch.tv NW Oklahoma campus asks in his blog, “is diversity taboo to talk about in your team or organization?” Also, “how diverse is your church?”

As I prepare to wrap up my season leading services at a predominantly Korean-American church and begin the journey of being a Japanese-American pastor planting an intentionally diverse church I am getting feelings of misunderstanding. To some, there is a need for ethnocentric ministries to help keep individual cultures alive and well in the US. While I agree there should be some ministry that speaks to people that may have English as their second language, I think it makes the church more about one’s culture and less about God’s kingdom. Are we to minister to people based on race or are we to be light and salt in a world that doesn’t know Jesus?

When we get to heaven, there will no longer be a Chinatown, or Little Italy. It is a kingdom made up of disciples of Christ all worshipping the Lord in one voice with one love. If the kingdom of heaven should be made here on earth, then shouldn’t we cross ethnic boundaries and worship in one language with one heart to see others come to know what we know–Christ died for the world to be saved, not just me and not just you.

It would be so sad to know that diversity was a taboo subject in the church today, even though I know that the church is one of the most-segregated places in modern society.

Pastor Scott shared a thought provoking scenario. What if the world were reduced to just a population of 100 people. Keeping the ratios exactly as they are today, what would earth look like? Here is the result:

• 57 Asians
• 21 Europeans
• 14 from the Western Hemisphere, both North and South
• 8 Africans
• 52 would be female; 48 would be male
• 70 would be non-white; 30 would be white
• 70 would be non-Christian; 30 would be Christian
• 89 would be heterosexual; 11 would be homosexual
• 6 people would possess 59% of the world’s wealth and all 6 would be from the U.S.
• 80 would live in substandard housing
• 70 would be unable to read
• 50 would suffer from malnutrition
• 1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth
• 1 (yes only 1) would have a college education
• 1 would own a computer (an he/she would be blogging LOL)

Are you surprised? Are you affected? Will you help change the world through seeing Christ known in the hearts of the 70% of people that do not know him already? Will you band together in love to help see malnutrition become a thing of the past? Would you encourage young students to stay in school so that more than 1% of the world’s population can be educated to be better equipped to be leaders of the nations in the future?

I follow a lot of what is going on in the church today, particularly here in America. One thing I am getting tired of is church leadership slandering other church leaders. At the center of a lot of this is political. Take a look at the forum Rick Warren hosted last weekend at Saddleback Church here. One of the things I admire about Pastor Gregory Boyd of Woodland Hills Church in Minnesota is that he gets it and isn’t afraid to talk about it.

As Christians we should be focused on the work of the kingdom of God and not about promoting political candidates or political agenda. Is it our job to polarize Christians through our political positions or are we to show the world that it is through love that others will know we are Christ followers as in John 13:34-35.

In his blog, Boyd comments:

“In my view, followers of Jesus are to be concerned with everything Jesus was concerned with – and Jesus was obviously concerned with more than people having a relationship with himself.”

What are some of those things? Well, for one Pastor Boyd speaks about racism:

Jesus revolted against racism by the countercultural way he treated and spoke about non-Jews , so his followers are to revolt against all forms of racism.”

Boyd states that, “Jesus was a revolutionary on social issues, so his followers are to be revolutionaries on social issues.” However, he concludes with these profound remarks:

Jesus was a radical social activist, so his followers must be the same. It’s just that Jesus never once placed any trust in the government of his day to address social issues. He rather just addressed social issues by how he lived and taught. So too, we who are Jesus’ followers are to place no trust in government to address social issues. We’re simply called to address them by how we live.

Following Jesus’ example, we’re to place our trust in the power of the cross – the power of self-sacrificial love – not the power of the sword. We’re to trust the power of Calvary, not Caesar. And this is why I believe those who spend their time and energy trying to control the political arena “in Jesus’ name” are profoundly missing the point. Our job is to love, serve and sacrifice for sinners – not argue about passing laws against them. For we are to know that, whatever sin we see in others, our sin is much worse (Matthew 7:1-3)”

Obviously there are many that refute what Pastor Boyd speaks about. However, isn’t the scripture clear on this that Jesus called his followers to be examples of their faith? If we live by the sword we die by the sword. If we live by love, we are keeping with the Greatest Commandment and it is through our love that world will know we are Christians.

Here is some video of Greg Boyd speaking on this a bit for the CNN series God’s Warrior’s:

Well, as I posted yesterday, Victoria Osteen is being sued by a Continental Airlines flight attendant over verbal & physical abuse and the subsequent emotional distress of it all (click here for more of the story from cnn.com). The question being raised now is what importance does Osteen’s payment of a $3,000 fine from the FAA bear on her being guilty of the charges? Osteen says nothing happened on the flight and that the flight attendant (and other witnesses) are confused about what they remember. She claims that she paid the FAA fine just to be done with the incident and to avoid embarrassment to Lakewood Church–it was not, she contends, an admission of guilt.

So, now it’s not just how she supposedly acted on the flight over not getting a stain on her seat the size of a 50 cent piece removed quickly enough, but now people are coming out and blasting her over not being truthful about the incident.

It’s all over the news, and here is a comment to a post about this from another blog site:

There is nothing frivolous about this case, and the wife is a liar. This case isn’t about the stain on the seat. The Preacher’s Wife pushed and injured the flight attendant. The wife was fined by the FAA for her conduct and she paid it, an obvious admission that she was, in fact, disorderly and combative with the flight crew. So here it is: the FAA fined her and she paid it. If she didn’t do it, then she lied by admitting it and paying the fine. Christians shouldn’t lie. Christians who do not follow their rules are crummy Christians. Therefore, the wife is a crummy Christian. The Bible doesn’t say only tell the truth when it is easy, and lie to be expedient. Either it is right or wrong to lie, no exceptions, no shades of gray.
My problem with Christians isn’t what they believe, it’s that they don’t believe what they say they believe.

Again I say this, regardless of who we are we are going to be put under scrutiny from those outside of the kingdom of grace. We can sit around and claim foul all day long or choose to ignore such things because we know God gives us mercy through his grace, but then why do we have examples of Jesus calling us to be different? Through his 3 year ministry he was faced with tremendous scrutiny and the Pharisees were just following him waiting for the opportunity to get him arrested. He never slipped up and was finally arrested on a claim of blasphemy and this required help from someone within his inner circle who betrayed him (Judas).

It’s time we took responsibility for our actions and right or wrong, we should hold onto our character and admit our shortcomings and ask for grace. Are we here for self-preservation, or are we here to bring glory to the one who saved us from eternal death? Remember, it should be all about Christ and never about us. Let us remember all that Jesus endured on his way to the cross so that we could stand here today and profess him as Lord and follow the path of righteousness in honor of his ultimate sacrifice for humanity.

PS. None of my comments are intended to incriminate or judge Mrs. Osteen. I only draw attention to the event of her trial as a means to shed light on the judgment that comes upon us if and when we do things that may cause us to fall short in the eyes of others and why it is important to consider the ramifications of our actions more seriously as the eyes of the world (and God) are upon us.