I Need Africa

My friend Elysa, who we traveled to Swaziland with last January sent me this video.


After watching it, I believe if you have been to Africa you will relate and want the associated T-Shirt! So MochaClub sells it!

Cardinal Drive Exit Letter

I was asked by the leadership at the church where we have been members and served in various leadership roles these past four years to prepare a statement that could be used to explain my exit and my future plans to the membership at Cardinal Drive . For brevity the leadership has decided to excerpt the statement in their presentation of it tomorrow. I let them know that they could direct anyone wishing to read the text of the statement in it's entirety to my blog. I value the many wonderful relationships we have made at Cardinal Drive and wanted to ensure everyone had the opportunity to read the full explanation behind this difficult decision.

January 04, 2009
To: Cardinal Drive Leadership & Members
RE: Resignation of Membership

After much deliberation and prayer I am officially stating our family’s decision to relinquish all leadership and ministry responsibility within the Cardinal Drive family. Christi and I both feel God is calling us to a new stage of ministry that will look different than the model of church most of us here are familiar with.

Taking this step is a very difficult one for me, I LOVE the church, and by the church I mean Cardinal Drive and the other the institutions like her I have been a part of. At her best these churches allow Jesus to shine through to the world. I have seen Cardinal Drive function as the body of Christ, and I have seen her serve as the very hands and feet of Christ.

Unfortunately, in my time here and in previous churches I have been a part of I have also seen the church be divisive, destructive, and down right anti-Christ. I have been deeply troubled seeing people who make large contributions be catered to, over those who have a much greater degree of spiritual maturity, and over those with Biblically authorized church authority. It is a tragedy that people suffering under the weight of marital issues, addictions, and moral compromise have far to often been belittled, dismissed, and abused rather than embraced, mentored, and discipled. Most troubling to my spirit is having repeatedly seen families suffering financially be treated like pariahs because the distressed the homogeneous social network of the organization.

None of these things make me love the church any less. However it does compel me to attempt an objective examination of her model of ministry. This examination has led me to the conclusion that the church's two greatest obstacles are SIZE and FORM. Both of these conclusions have brought our family to the place where we are moving forward to a model that is deeply reflective of the model of church life as seen in Acts, the model of meeting in homes daily. A church that meets "house to house" by nature is small and spry. It can react quickly and effectively to problems (fiscal, emotional, and spiritual) because it's intimacy makes it impossible to hide or to ignore these basic needs in each other. This model by it’s very nature becomes a fiscal, communal, and continual pursuit for it’s members. The close intimacy of the house church becomes a safe place to invite friends who would never fit in at, or otherwise would not attend a traditional church service. The small size and apparent deep relationship relieve the awkward stigma of visiting a church service. For some people outside the social atmosphere of church life the comfort of a home based community is a much more welcoming place to discover the abundant life of freedom in Christ.

Secondly on form, I think our style of stage and audience is destructive to the priesthood of all believers. I myself have been part of the problem where people feel there are those qualified to "DO" God's work, and others who must just support the doers. Another world is possible where Instead EVERY member has a function and each part forms together to benefit the others. A house church meeting looks different where every member becomes a conduit of the Spirit’s leading, and through discernment and mutual edification everyone becomes ministers to and for each other.

I believe the highest calling of the church has nothing to do with our buildings, our staff, or our membership roster. The highest calling of the church has to do with effectively reflecting Jesus, and corporately becoming his physical presence in our circle of influence. I personally feel led to make this calling a reality, so long as God leads us to remain here in Chicagoland, through the intimacy a house church enables.

I want it to be clear that I am not leaving Cardinal Drive out of any anger, malice, or any form of discontentment with any of my brothers or sisters at this church. It has been an honor to worship with you these past four years, and I value the relationships we have formed in many of your lives. I sincerely hope our families can continue to share life together. I am excited for the future of what God is doing at Cardinal Drive, and It is my hope that you are excited about the potential for what God is doing through our decision to plant a small house church that reflects a different model of being the body of Christ.

I do want to reiterate that our family will miss the fellowship we have had in many of your lives, and I want to let you all know that our home and our table is always open. If you want to sit down and talk more about what we are doing, and what this model looks like, we encourage you to come eat with us when you have the time. We serve an amazing God who is doing great things as he reconciles his creation back to himself! Let’s all participate with him in vigor to that cause.

In Christ,
Kevin, Christi and Family!

To anyone at Cardinal Drive who has additional questions or just a desire to talk further about this exciting step we are venturing out on, please feel free to call or email. I love and value each of you, as well as the many who have supported me in this decision through the blogging community.

Lighthouse - A Short Film

If You Miss Me Sunday Morning...

The Good New of God's incarnation among men is easily reduced as system of religion complete with rules, membership rosters, and committees. Adhering to things the group has deemed as good and avoiding those things it has deemed bad provides an easily measured marker for religious health. The frequency of participation in scheduled services and activities is a quantifiable measure to determine religious commitment. Leadership and belonging to a task force assembled to maintain or to expand the prominence of the group easily fills the time slots of one's religious responsibility. In the end the group can judge that because a person does not drink alcohol or visit the boat; because a person attends two services and one activity a week; because a person leads the coffee and donuts ministry and participates in the classroom painting ministry they're a model member in good standing. That member is spiritually healthy.

The problems arise when one realizes that the gospel preached by Jesus is unfit for the spiritually healthy. The Good News of God's Kingdom is left for the bottom feeders and the sick. This poses a dilemma for the religious body since no model of church growth is based on algorithms that attract the sick and broken. Religious success demands a new gospel, one that is quantifiable, one that attracts the kind of members who will support the bottom line and provide the resources necessary to maintain the building and employ the staff. Careful demographics to promote a homogeneous growth attracts the correct target group to increase the prominence, showcase the talent, and achieve results that out perform competing bodies and previous internal numbers.

How did we get here? Why does the current religious climate prevalent in our churches look so different than Jesus' gospel? Who is initially responsible, and what is our responsibility individually to the current situation?

I propose 3 answers that I am pursuing personally.

Answer 1: RECOGNITION THAT THE GOSPEL IS ECONOMIC

Luke 3:10-14 And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”

When the people of Israel were convicted by the reality that their membership in the right religious circle was of no spiritual value and therefore asked what did have eternal value, John responded with a model of lifestyle that reflected a new economy where food, clothing, and provision were equal among all. John proposed they stop pursuing the quest for more stuff, and instead pursue more satisfaction. John as well as Jesus in his preaching demanded a whole new alignment of our finances, and gospel alignment.

Answer 2: RECOGNITION THAT THE GOSPEL IS COMMUNAL

Mark 12:29-33"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'There is no commandment greater than these."

"Well said, teacher," the man replied. "You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself is more important than all burnt offerings and sacrifices."

When tested as to the marker of spiritual health by a religious professional of his day, Jesus responded with an unachievable commission that God's people are to live in a community of complete dependence on His nature that then manifests itself into loving others out of the same surrender each is surrendered to God. That is an all consuming command. That takes a commitment of every hour, and every thought. That takes a commitment of surrendering my rights to God, my rights to the people I am in community with. I am seeking out people and making space to be intentional in vulnerability, dependence, and responsibility. This is God's desire for our relationship with him, and his desire for our relationship with each other. This requires time daily in community with him, and in cooperation with other members of his body, so that we can mutually be Jesus, and experience Jesus in one another.

Answer 3: RECOGNITION THAT THE GOSPEL IS CONTINUAL

Matthew 8:18-22 Now when Jesus saw a crowd around him,he gave orders to go over to the other side. And a scribe came up and said to him, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go." And Jesus said to him, "Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Another of the disciples said to him, "Lord, let me first go and bury my father." And Jesus said to him, "Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their own dead."

Jesus reminds these would be disciples, that "Follow Me" is a radical realignment of the entire life structure you had previously known. Your old home is no longer your home, your old family is no longer your family. There is CHRIST and CHRIST ALONE! "Follow Me" is a challenge that requires new senses. My touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing must change so that I can feel the living God, I can experience the sweetness of his work, I can inhale the fragrance of his business, I can respond to the callings he gives. "Follow Me" requires my listening, and responding to the fact that God cares enough to desire every thought of my head be captivated by his majesty. "Follow Me" requires I am continually going alongside God to the places and communities he wants me to be a part of, it requires I am listening to his guidance to what is beneficial and what is harmful to our relationship, it requires I am a part of his Kingdom, working where he directs my hands to be. In short, "Follow Me" requires that I respond to the Holy Spirit in my body, in my mind, and in my spirit.

So that is the answers I am being led to. I am done cleaning the outside of the cup. I am accepting Christ grafted into my Spirit, being changed by His vision of a community of a new economic reality realized through committed following of His Spirit. If you miss me Sunday morning, please know I miss you too. I would love to sit down, share a meal together, and talk about our glorious Lord and where he is calling me, and where he is calling you to be more conformed to his image. If you miss me Sunday morning, know that I am obeying my Lord who demands that my god be CHRIST and CHRIST ALONE.

Being the Body You Were Born For

The classic story of the ugly duckling tells about an abused duckling, who is run off the farm by his friends and his family to live outside his home. This duckling is too different from his peers to be accepted. So he wanders about for a long time, being rejected by crowd after crowd until he finally decides to approach the beautiful swans. The duckling figures that being such a beastly sight these kings of the birds will peck him to death, but instead as he approaches them, he looks into the water to see in his own reflection that he has matured into a beautiful swan as well, and he is accepted and finds peace finally being among his own.

Since my high school years, through college, working in a church, and my time since then, I have always felt like an ugly duckling in church. I relate to being pecked at by the people I thought were family. I am used to being discarded and patronized as a radical who doesn't understand the way things really work. I am thought of as being fringe and crazy. Yet, I can not change because I think the Christian faith IS CRAZY!!! As Andrew Shearman says, " Of course we are crazy, we believe in someone we haven't seen. We follow dreams. Either you're all crazy... or else God is actually trying to do something." I have never been fit in with those who are well domesticated.

The problem is not the people in the institutional church, it is the very institution itself. I had a high school teacher who told us, "institutions are threatened by movements which become institutions that are threatened by movements." The church is an institution, make no mistake it is not a body, it is not a branch of a vine. It is a hierarchical system of power that promotes those that succeed, and goes to war to against those that threaten the power base of the system.

Christ's church is not to be an institution. Christ's church is not to be a movement. Christ's church is not to be a religious system. Hans Kuhn wrote, "Christ came to start a Kingdom and all we gave him was a church" His church was never meant to be anything but the body of Christ on earth. The church when she pretends to be anything other than a body, with Christ as it's head has lost her way and become a family a squabbling pecking domesticated ducks, when she was meant to be a glorious band of swans.

I won't be an ugly duckling anymore, I am the adopted prince of the King of Ages, an heir to Kingdom of Heaven, with all authority given to me to claim a crown of righteousness. There is no place for a swan in the farmers duck pin. I will not be fed the farmers grain, when there is a world of lakes for me to feast in. I will not be kept in a pin, when soaring is my creator's intention. The institution that has replaced the body of Christ feeds people a cheap white bread version of Christianity and keeps them safe in fences of their creeds and doctrines. The duck patch is a safe place for ducklings, but it just won't do for those who want to rise up and seek out the richness of their destiny.

I am going out from here to live out the nature of Christ. I am going to be crushed by the word of God, to have my limited nature wrecked by the magnitude of a limitless God. I am soaring through the skies to hear God speak. I do not want the protection and scholarship of the institution, if it keeps from from being in the heavens of intimacy with my God.

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand it, we must act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. - Soren Kikergard

I believe Andrew Shearman wraps everything I am trying to say up perfectly in the next sentence of the sermon I quoted earlier, "If we decide to actually cooperate with him it will happen" I am finished trying to fit into the duck pin, and ready to cooperate with God, to be a people who reflects his present incarnation on earth.

I will by the grace of God, BE the body I was born for.

Like You God, LIke You

My soap box does not look like my God's. In Hosea 13:4 - 14:4 he sends a warning needs to be read. I am highlighting a few of these verse, but you need to read the entire lecture to get the full point of the message God is bringing.

Hosea 13:12-15 The iniquity of Ephraim is bound up;
his sin is kept in store.
The pangs of childbirth come for him,
but he is an unwise son,
for at the right time he does not present himself
at the opening of the womb.

Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol?
Shall I redeem them from Death?
O Death, where are your plagues?
O Sheol, where is your sting?
Compassion is hidden from my eyes.

Though he may flourish among his brothers,
the east wind, the wind of the LORD, shall come,
rising from the wilderness,
and his fountain shall dry up;http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
his spring shall be parched;
it shall strip his treasury
of every precious thing.

Hosea 14:3-4 Assyria shall not save us;
we will not ride on horses;
and we will say no more, 'Our God,'
to the work of our hands.
In you the orphan finds mercy."

I will heal their apostasy;
I will love them freely,
for my anger has turned from them.

God is on a roll, convicting Israel of the consequence of their sin. God is disciplining these people, not punishing but disciplining. I love this about God, because in the midst of this tyrate about the outcomes of their decisions he stops to remind them of his awesome provisional love. Read 13:14 again and you see that he reminds them that He is one who will DESTROY DEATH. He is the one whose love is freely given.

I want my words and my thoughts to be like God's when I rant. You see, it is out of the very death destroying love of God that he sends correction. His warnings to them are not angry screams, but passionate calls for a course correction. His jealous anger is not motivated by a petty need for self gratification, instead it is love so pure it is holiness. My anger is rarely motivated by anything more than lazy self seeking convenience.

About 4 years ago one of my coworkers lost a young family member in a terrible train accident. After the accident he talked about how his cousin called to her son to stop him as he was walking toward the oncoming train. My heart breaks, as I remember this story, feeling the mothers pain, crying out of her love for her son hoping her words will intercede and stop the tragedy about to be poured out on him. This is the heart of God's cries.

This is his holy love as he rants. His love causes him to stop. He stops to remind himself, that there is hope! He stop to remind them that death and all it's power will be swallowed up by love. He stops to remember the price, the price any good parent would pay, to save his children from themselves. He stops, to consider again incarnation, and it's power to unite all things back into perfect peace fellowship with the unity shared among the Godhead.

Perfect love has great cost. Any love that has no element of suffering is not God love. Any love that does not cost us our very lives is not incarnation love. As the boy's mother would have taken the hit of the train upon herself, our precious God showed us what real love is through his suffering to make all things right in himself, to destroy not just the consequence of death, but the very institution of death itself.

We worship a God whose love has turned away the anger of our apostasy. We worship a God who has healed us so that all things may be made new in him. We worship a God who promises that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.(Heb 2:9) We worship a God who invites us to become like him in this radical love. We are invited to the mystery that by losing every right to our lives in this old kingdom that we are awakened to a new kingdom with an abundant life that continues perpetually as we together become his new incarnation body.

Psalm 19:14 - May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.

I just want to be like my father, my God!

Discipleship of the next Generation

You want to continue to be my people you do two things. Number one, you gladly receive these blessings I give you called children. Number two, you disciple them in your homes so that they don't look like the culture around them. The minute you stop receiving the gift of God through the womb, and the moment you stop disciplining them in your home they begin to look like the culture and the community of God begins to vanish before your eyes.

Voddie Baucham - The Centrality of the Home

Wrecked: God's Multiple Personalities

It was my first Sunday in the bigger kids class. Our family had returned from three years in Europe just in time for me to be promoted the big kids class. We had been back in the US long enough to choose a church, and I had made a couple friends already, but still I was the outsider, and now as an incoming seventh grader into the "teen class" I would stake out the identity I would hold from the next six years of my life.

The text for our study that first morning as we welcomed the newbies into teen issues was Galatians 5:19-21.

Galatians 5:19-21 The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.

I really understood the message of the verse; after all I was raised in the church. God didn't want me participating in any of the things in this list. I wanted to be liked by God, so I therefore did not want to do any of these things. However I had a problem sitting there in my seat this first Sunday in the teen class, already uncomfortable as the new kid: I did not know what one of these words meant. How could I be liked by God if I was negligently participating in this word of which I had never heard. I raised my hand, waited to be called on and asked, "What is an orgy?"

Continue Reading At Wrecked For The Ordinary

You Are My Portion

Here I am Lord
Falling on my Knees
Fasting in your presence
Feasting on you,
Meeting all my needs.

Lord,
You are my portion
and my all.
You are my good
Both great and small.
You are my portion
and my all
Wanting no more than you
This is my hunger call.

Here I am Lord
Hands out to receive;
In this meager offering
Emptied for you to fill,
Christ you form in me

Lord,
You are my portion
a living spring for free.
Longings quenched by you alone:
I will never be thirsty
You are my portion
a living spring for free.
You are my deepest filling.
This is my gluttony!

Random Childhood Memories MeMe!!!

Elysa tagged me for a meme and I thought it sounded fun so here goes my recollection of my top 15 random childhood memories:

15. I peed on a boys stuffed teddy bear at camp, because he peed outside the tent and that was not allowed.
14. I was a member of the Young Astronauts, Junior Mensa, and Future Problem Solvers when I was in seventh grade.
13. I pretended to be a spy and my secret name was Mark Mathis.
12. I fell off a zipline that was about 20 feet off the gound because the older kids were shaking it and I could not hold on. (Pansies in harnesses today)
11. I stole two pieces of beef Jerky from the 'shoppette' in Landstuhl and still have guilt over it to this day.
10. I agreed not to 'break up' with a girl at camp because she showed me that our church camp had a no dumping sign.
9. I once tried to cook an unopened can of Dr. Pepper on the stove top.
8. I got stuck with my brother in frozen mud in a farmers field, that my brother had told me NOT to go into, and he only came into to get me unstuck.
7. I woke up on an overnight bus ride to Holland screaming about worms and bugs...
6. I constantly told people my surgry scar was a knife wound where I had been stabbed in the hallway at school.
5. I snuck into the woods with a girl at camp to kiss, while we were in the woods I found another guy's lost football that had floated down the creek. She returned him the football after we got back from the woods and from then on she was only sneeking into the woods with him.
4. I lit my sister's bedroom on fire, and then pretended I did not know where the burning smell was coming from.
3.My brother told a guy he would fight him on a scheduled date. It was 2 days after we were moving back to the states.
2. My mom was sick and I made grilled cheese sandwiches. I poured oil in the bottom of the pan and dropped the bread with butter and cheese into the hot oil. Each sandwich weighed about 2 pounds.
1. I forged my mom's name to a progress report sent home by a teacher my mom saw everyday when she dropped her kid off at the daycare my mom worked at. (This is a great story and you should fly me into your next children's day at church to entertain your students with it, while teaching a valuable lesson)

Ok, so that was fun, I am probably laughing much harder than any of you, since I lived through them. If you are wondering why I think they are funny, you'll have to have me tel you the whole story, everyone of them is a riot.

So on with the tagging! Well actually I'll do that over on FB! Except for my brother, you're tagged Randall!

Andrew Peterson - The Good Confession

I don't know I would have believed it possible for AP to write a song better than Holy Is The Lord. I really felt it was a once in a lifetime masterpiece. AP's Holy Is the Lord was on level with Rich Mullins' Jesus.

On his new album Resurrection Letters Vol 2, AP has done just that. In the vein of Rich's own statement of faith 'Creed', Peterson has given us 'The Good Confession.'

All I know is that I was blind but now I see
that though I kick and scream,
Love is leading me.
And every step of the way his grace is making me;
with every breath I breathe,
he is saving me. And I believe.

I believe He is the Christ
Son Of The Living God!
I believe He is the Christ
Son Of The Living God!
I believe He is the Christ
Son Of The Living God!

My Lord My Savior
I Believe!

I truly believe this is the song, more than any other he has written up this point, AP will be remembered for. It is beautiful, mystical, and worshipful. AP truly ends his best album to date, with his best song to date. I would think he could go nowhere but down from here, but I thought that after "The Far Country" too, so here's to you Andrew, keep making music!

Encountering God At The High Places

Frank Viola has a series of books that I have mentioned here before. The first Pagan Christianity is an amazing deconstruction of the modern church congregation. The followup is entitled Reimagining Church which inspires the reader to find the kind of church community reflected in the New Testament. Both books put skin on tensions that I have felt for many years now. Both books are having a transformational affect on our family. Even as I read and am inspired to be a part of this kind of organic all consuming community of believers, there is another balancing pressure in me holding me back to my roots in the traditional model of doing church.

Here me correctly, I do believe the primary model of doing church in American Christianity is broken. I do believe that in many ways Christianity has "thrown out the baby and kept the bathwater¹" Even still, I have a love for her that is more than just a clinging to the familiar. Augustine is often credited with saying that, "The church is a whore, but she is still my mother." This is the level of deep emotion I have for the very entity that is the church, despite her harlotry that is so conformed to this world.

So in essence I agree that the church does not remotely live out the community God desires to create in her, and so I am left to wonder if God even desires to work through the traditional church congregation anymore. Those people who know the situation I am involved in within my own family, know how seriously and personally I am taking these considerations. This is not a theoretical exercise, but a prayer filled journey of direction seeking from God.

Last night, as I was reading in 1 Kings God revealed true north on this trek. All the good Bible school kids can tell you that God met with Solomon in a dream to grant him any desire of his heart, and Solomon chose wisdom. What I don't think we discuss in the classroom is where Solomon was, and what he was doing when this encounter with God took place.

1 Kings 3:3 Now Solomon loved the LORD, walking in the statutes of his father David, except he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place; Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. In Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream at night; and God said, "Ask what you wish me to give you."(NASB)

When the Hebrew people entered the land of promise, God had instructed them to among other things destroy the High Places. It was never God's desire for his people to worship in the places and ways that the Pagan nations around them worship. God wanted his people to be a peculiar people, and worship him only in the way he prescribed. Yet the people did not follow God's will in this matter. The people did not destroy the High Places, and those centers of pagan worship were synchronized into their worship and became a snare to the demise of the people's relationship with their God.

So here we find Solomon, outside the will of God, worshiping not in the tabernacle, but instead on the High Places of Gibeon, a particular favorite of the people of his time. Although the place and method of his worship is harlotry with nations God had driven out before them, his heart and offering is genuine to worship the Lord. So this night, in this place, God shows up to encounter Solomon.

God wants to encounter us so badly that he will do that in spite of our failure to recognize his best will for us. Even when we build institutions that more closely resemble the High Places of the Greek and Roman world, God will still arrive with his good gifts to those who are seeking him in genuine worship. These institutions are the same snare to our relationship with God as the High Places became to people of Solomon's time, and yet God still encounters his people in them.

I must confess I have been limiting God. I have limited his desire to shower good gifts on his precious people. I have limited his ability to pass through the doors of an institution that claims his name, yet rarely reflects his character. I have doubted the hearts of many true worshipers, who are seeking God in the only places and way they have ever been shown. I believe there CAN BE rebirth in our church congregations to the abundant life of church community. I believe God desires to encounter his true worshipers. I believe God is uniting them in the places they are to the form of people they need to be.

I desire the community of the Acts church with everything in me. I do not believe we can see systemic economic racism eliminated in this country until we learn to live in God's community. I do not believe we can meaningfully impact slavery and oppression until we live out the kind of love that will get us killed by the kingdom of this world. For our family, I do not believe we can succeed in the Nsoko orphan village without an Acts model of community. I believe God wants his people to live this way, to be marked by this radical love. I believe God wants his people back in absolute community.

God did not hand me a road map to this journey, he pointed me back to true north. I still don't know what the future looks like, but I am overwhelmed and humbled to be seeking a God who seeks to encounter us.

Never forget Justice is what Love looks like in Public!

In the trailer to the new rockumentary Call+Response Dr. Cornel West, a philosopher and composer states, "Never forget Justice is what Love looks like in Public!" These words could never be more true than this time. A quote like this must come from the Isaiah and Jeremiahs of our time.

The post, Three Year Old Sex Slave, on another blog, brings to light just how horrific this industry can be. To look away from the horrors of the slave industry is to see our brother or sister in need, and tell him to be warm and well fed. There is possibly no message I could make more sure of myself to the American church than that this, the epidemic of slavery in our time is the relevant question of Jesus in Matthew 25.

STOP BEING NAIVE!!!

Choose this day whom you will serve, Either the God's of consumerism in whose land you live.

Choose your chocolates, your clothing, and your home decor that exploits humanity even to the youngest children. Choose the comfort of ignorance of the dirty streets of our urban communities where small girls and boys are imported from destitute countries for the perverted sexual pleasure of a few. Choose the skewed reality of our entertainment companies, who preach exploitation as normative behavior.

But as for me an my house, we will serve the Lord!

Webkinz Autologin

I have two children who are avid Webkinz users. However I am often bothered by the fact that I have to come log them into the system, and if they get booted, I have to come repeat the process again. So today as I was working on some Windows automation stuff for a work project, I decided to see if I could write a small Automation script for an autologin to Webkinz.

So here is my tutorial to how to use this.

Step 1: Download and Install auto-hotkey. Don't worry about the name, we are creating a shortcut not a hot key.

Step 2: Open Autoscriptwriter (recorder) which should be under your start menu. and copy the following text into the run line:

FIREFOX

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe http://mci2.webkinz.com/loader4.php?go=loadReturnUser&aol=0&fs=0

INTERNET EXPLORER

C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe http://mci2.webkinz.com/loader4.php?go=loadReturnUser&aol=0&fs=0

Step 3: Click the red Record button and after the login Window opens, Click on the Username field and type in your child's username. Then TAB down to the Password field to type in your child's password. Finally, click on the Begin Playing button using your mouse.

Step 4: In your upper left hand corner is a stop button. Click stop and wait for the generated script to appear. Delete any extra code from bottom after your mouse click, that may have been generated while waiting for page to load. Change Sleep value from 100 to 1000. Your script should look almost identical to this one, with only the "mouseclick" coordinates being different for your screen, and the username and password belonging to your child.

FIREFOX

Run, C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe http://mci2.webkinz.com/loader4.php?go=loadReturnUser&aol=0&fs=0
WinWait, Welcome to Webkinz® - a Ganz website - Mozilla Firefox,
IfWinNotActive, Welcome to Webkinz® - a Ganz website - Mozilla Firefox, , WinActivate, Welcome to Webkinz® - a Ganz website - Mozilla Firefox,
WinWaitActive, Welcome to Webkinz® - a Ganz website - Mozilla Firefox,
MouseClick, left, 504, 487
Sleep, 1000
Send, username{TAB}password
Sleep, 1000
MouseClick, left, 504, 607

INTERNET EXPLORER

Run, C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe http://mci2.webkinz.com/loader4.php?go=loadReturnUser&aol=0&fs=0
WinWait, Welcome to Webkinz® - a Ganz website - Windows Internet Explorer,
IfWinNotActive, Welcome to Webkinz® - a Ganz website - Windows Internet Explorer, , WinActivate, Welcome to Webkinz® - a Ganz website - Windows Internet Explorer,
WinWaitActive, Welcome to Webkinz® - a Ganz website - Windows Internet Explorer,
MouseClick, left, 836, 449
Sleep, 1000
Send, username{TAB}password
Sleep, 1000
MouseClick, left, 836, 567

Step 5: Save file to Desktop as Webkinz.ahk and close Autoscriptwiter.

Step 6: Teach child to double click icon to go into Webkinz World.

A Thousand Questions

I was overwhelmed last night as I watched this video. We had gone to Willow Creek and they showed this video at the end of the service.



When the video was done I was so wondering why God still has us here. Please join us in passionate prayer that the Lord will move miraculously and sell our house despite this market so that we can get busy in the work God is doing in Swazi.