How to Avoid Pain

In church we are wrestiling through questions that people have submitted. The series is called Real Questions. Next week we tackle "why is life so painful?" Here is C.S. Lewis' comment on heart break.

Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to be sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one - not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safely in the casket or the coffin of your selfishness. But, in that casket-safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, unredeemable. The only place outside heaven where you can be safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell. -C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

I think what Lewis was saying is the price tag is too high to avoid heart break. I wonder if that is part of God's answer to pain (His and ours)as well.

Innovation

Okay... this will be a different kind of blog. A friend of mine from church linked me up with another blog-pastor-guy named Ben Armon. Ben's blog on the church and innovation is copied below. Read it,then I'll blog on...

Why innovation is a joke in the church
My iPhone has opened pandora's box for me in the world of podcasting. It turns every car ride into a church service; every trip to the DMV into a conference session...

One thing I can't get over is how flippantly the Church throws around the world "innovation." Big difference between the innovation I'm hearing about in podcasts from the New Yorker conference and the TED talks... and what the church is calling innovation.

Innovation in the church has almost become formulaic.... "We have the greatest story in the world!" we cry, and then "innovatively" insert pop songs and cultural references into our services, proving that... well... look who's borrowing from who.

These days, innovation isn't recognized or rewarded in the Church until it's no longer innovation... it's commonplace. But true innovation will always leave the masses of men scratching their Selsun Blue, wondering, "Whaaa?" or "Can we really do that?" or "What's the connection?"

True innovation is completely unrecognizable while it's innovating.

Okay. So I don't really disagree with anything Ben wrote. The only question I have is when did the goal become to wow people with true innovation or even psuedo-innovation?

The goal is relavance. We live in a culture where the masses accept "god" or the concept of god but that's where it ends. The truth is they find God and usually the church irrelevant to life. The goal of any change or adaptation is not innovation it should be effectiveness (meaning they can hear and will listen) and relevancy (meaning that people connect to the message).

As one who "planted" a church and who has been plugging along for ten years in that church... I'm not overly excited about being cool or innovative (maybe I'm old). I am pumped about being effective and relevant.

Now here's the rub: effectiveness requires innovation and adaptation. I trust that you understand I'm not talking about adapting theology, but how we communicate to the people of our culture.

TEN YEARS!

Wow. Ten years ago yesterday we opened the doors to crossWinds church. I find myself comparing the decade to running a marathon. I’m allowed to make the comparison only because I ran 1/4th of a marathon a few years ago. That makes me an athlete and therefore entitled to use athletic comparisons. I digress in justification.

Anyway… at the start of race you can’t wait. You’re excited to get started. You’ve trained (hopefully). You’ve got the right equipment (shoes and shorts). You have run the race in your mind (over and over). And suddenly you’re off. The mental images are becoming reality.

At first running feels great. The early miles go by fluidly. Any hills are faced bravely and with confidence. But somewhere during the marathon runners often struggle. Doubt creeps in. The legs feel like rubber. Every breath... every step requires focused energy to keep the pavement moving beneath your feet. And suddenly you’re not so sure about this run. This is what runners call the wall. If they hit a wall early in the run… they will probably hit more of them.

Marathons by definition are long distance. Churches are the same. What we began together ten years ago is a long term venture. We started with incredible energy and some naivety. I think both are required or else we might not run at all.

We’ve had our walls. But we continue to keep breathing. We propel our feet forward. And then we get a second wind, a third wind, and so forth. And if we are going to run to the finish line we will need to keep getting “winds”. Because sometimes running is sheer pleasure and sometimes it isn't.

Two related thoughts:

1. I’m grateful to be running with you who are a part of crossWinds. As I barely whispered through choked voice yesterday, it is a privilege.

2. We never run alone. We never ever run alone.

Whether you find yourself fighting the wall today or in an exhilarating down hill stretch of your race, keep running!

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. Hebrews 12:1 NLT

Vacation Vancouver – Days 3-4-5

Friday’s Adventures As promised, we spent Friday in downtown Vancouver. Took the bus downtown (buses, “sky-trains”, “sea-buses”, and “sea-cabs” are everywhere in Vancouver). So bused to China Town and we hiked throughout the city.

The highlight of China Town for me was seeing a truck deliver live sea food to a Chinese street store. The picture above is cod, at least that’s what I think they were. They were flopping all over the place and a few flopped right out of the container. In addition to this there were crab crawling all over. A little different than what we see in Rochester.

During the walk we saw many homeless and probably drug users. Drugs are a huge problem in Vancouver. The current strategy is to use treat addiction as a purely medical problem. This philosophy sees addiction as no different than cancer (that’s a quote of a Vancouver doctor). If they arrest and jail all the users, they go right back to using, which is expensive and ineffective. Likewise, forcing a person into treatment that they don’t want seems useless and again expensive.

So instead, they try to help the drug addicted to stay safe and hope that someday they will choose treatment. They provide clean needles, clean drugs, and hotels and safe houses. I don’t know how many of their addicts seek treatment, but I’ve got to think that the safe and clean strategy must make Vancouver an addict’s dream come true. Now I don’t have a better strategy and I’m sure I’ve greatly over simplified what is really going on. I don’t know if there is a good answer to this problem. It’s very sad.

Okay… back to the vacation. Lorri’s highlighthad to be Friday evening. She and Jeremy went on a bike ride with about a thousand bikers. The last Friday night of each month bicyclists from around the city meet downtown Vancouver and then ride throughout the city’s main arteries. It is a different pattern determined on the fly each time.

The event is called "Critical Mass". The goal: to congest traffic. The message: “see bicycles” and “make the city safer”. By the way, Vancouver is a very mild in respect to weather, so bikes are everywhere all the time.

So Lorri and Jeremy went on the ride and disrupted traffic. While waiting for the ride to begin other political protests were being organized. Lorri was invited to take her garbage, along with everyone else there and dump it on the
mayor’s front lawn (his house). This is because all city employees are on strike including the garbage services. So for about 6 weeks garbage has been piling up every where. The mayor made the mistake of saying that the strike was “not his highest priority”. These protestors were trying to help the mayor reprioritize. Lorri did not take part in the garbage protest and will not be arrested on this trip.

Kind of makes me grateful for Rochester’s faithful sanitation personnel and our wonderful bike trails through the area.

That night Jeremy went out with friends while Lorri and I found a hole in the wall Greek Pizza Shop and had a slice and wonderful Greek salad. The pizza was completely void of raw fish.

Saturday
In the morning Lorri went on a little bike ride to a wonderful and huge park about 2 miles from Jeremy’s apartment. Wonderful trails, so we went for a short walk in them with Jeremy. After, we drove Jeremy around doing some errands. He doesn’t have a car, so our rental was nice for him to get some things done.

Finally after a burger (beef!), Lorri and I left Vancouver and drove to Seattle. Besides the beauty, there is not much to report except an hour in line at the border. Get your passports!

We made it to Seattle and stopped at the “Public Market” on Pike Street. This is the place where they throw the fresh fish around. You may have heard of it. It was fun and we even bought a pound of smoked salmon; it’s one of Molly’s favorites. Sorry Molly, no t-shirt, just some smoked fish.

After walking around downtown Seattle for an hour, we drove around for about two! We wandered looking for the best views of the city. Later we stopped at the south end of Lake Washington near a Boeing factory (huge!). The lake was gorgeous… and there was a little burger shack and some docks to walk on. So we ordered fish and chips! (Yes, more fish.) And we took our food out on the dock to eat. It was very beautiful.

Finally we went to the airport only getting a little lost on the way. We were scheduled for the red-eye (12:55 AM flight). The flight was extremely over-booked and we hoped to get bumped (hotel and 300 bucks!). But apparently people make and change reservations all the time, so in the end no one was bumped and every seat was filled on the plane.

Sunday
We sat in our seats on the plane and both fell asleep until we were awakened by the pilot’s voice telling us that we were landing, 6 AM central. Lorri’s mom picked us up (she’s an early riser - God bless her) and we crawled into our bed at her home in Minnetonka at 8 AM.

Tomorrow Molly and I will be taking in the Twins’ game and then we will come home. Back to work and school on Tuesday. Thus ends the trip! Thanks for thinking about us, praying for us, and reading.