This article is the second in a series that will be my effort to respond to two people who visited my site searching for answers to why they were “tired” and “weary” of the church.
One of the reasons we grow tired and weary of the church is that we warp our minds to think that Christians are perfect. We tend to expect Christians to act like saints only to discover that no one is perfect. The truth is that we are all on the road to perfection. There are many bumps along the way. (more…)
In the transition from one webhost to another, I lost this story, so I am reposting it.
A few years ago, my wife and I were driving around the Wal-Mart parking lot in Gulf Breeze, FL one day. It was pouring down rain, and so we took the extra time to try to park up front. As we drove by the garden department, we saw a Wal-Mart employee standing in front of the store where they have plants displayed on the sidewalk. He was holding an umbrella in one hand, and a hose in the other. Yes, he was watering the plants in the rain. I wish I had taken a picture. We laughed about it and watched him complete his task. I told Cindy that I supposed he would go inside, find his afternoon checklist, and mark that item as completed. He did not recognize that God had already done that one for him. There’s a sermon illustration for you!
It also illustrates the difference between employees that can be self directing, and employees that require direct supervision to accomplish their tasks. Wal-Mart may be ok with this, deciding that it is better for workers to be automated rather than self directing. They may not want an hourly worker to be burdened in deciding whether or not a plant is getting enough water from the rain. During my internship at Disney, I found that Disney often employs the same practice to ensure a task is performed the exact same way every time. If you work the Jungle Cruise, for example, and deviate from your spiel by adding a joke that is not part of the script, you could lose your job. It makes sense in this instance, because the script is carefully constructed to consider the diverse cultures that may be represented on the Jungle Cruise at any given time. Disney does not expect an hourly worker to possess that level of discernment.
This article is the first in a series that will be my effort to respond to two people who visited my site searching for answers to why they were “tired” and “weary” of the church.
One of my best friends is David Smith. He is a missionary, sharing God’s love with the street kids of Lima, Peru. I try to see him whenever he comes home to visit. A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go and spend the day with him back in our old home town. His grandfather recently passed away, and one of our stops was to visit his grandmother. I have always claimed them as a third set of grandparents. It was a great visit, and we took a stroll down memory lane, looking at several photo albums from my high school years. As a family friend, I was in several pictures, and so were several others from our church youth group. We recalled the wonderful times we shared with our youth group. We were a very close community. (more…)
One of my favorite features of this website is the statistics program. It keeps track of how many people visit the site, which pages are viewed the most, what cities (and countries) my visitors are from, and even what search terms people enter to find my site. I was surprised by two people that came to my site this month by entering Google search terms. One person searched with the phrase ”I am weary of the church” and the second one searched “Why am I losing interest in the church.” These two people visited my blog looking for answers to serious questions, and looking at the current content, I know that they did not find what were looking for. This is not just a blog, but a method of evangelism, a tool for teaching, and a place for Kingdom building. You never know who is reading, and what they are searching for. I will write a reply to those two people in the near future.
Seeing as most of the people that read this blog are fellow bloggers themselves, I thought I would just put this thought out there: Christian blogs actually reach people. If someone is visiting your blog looking for Christ, will that person find Him there?
For fellow Wordpress bloggers, I suggest these plugins:
- Stat Traq Keeps statistics on who is visiting your website
- AutoMeta Puts hidden tags into your webpage that allows search engines to find your site easier.