I met with two Latino guys today that work for CityTeam, a ministry to the poor and needy.  One guy is over all the ministry arms here in San Jose for CityTeam.  He told me a story of how he used to be the lead pastor of a large Hispanic church in town.  His dream was to be the largest Hispanic congregation in the United States.  They were well on their way by having 600 members and needing to rent the local college theatre to meet in.  Everything was going well and then God dropped a message on him.  He said that God told him that “his dream was too small”.

Basically he was thinking of building one large church instead of building several small churches.  So he got his pastoral staff together and told them they had 6 months to divy up the congregation into small teams with each pastor leading a plant team.  Then they set out to plant a church in different parts of the town with each pastor.  So he dismantled his growing church and decentralized in order to reach the city in more areas and at a community level….how bold!!!!  What a vision!!!!
Now he focuses on helping communities plant a church within the community with leaders from that community.   They bring the future leaders/pastors/elders to Christ then train them to teach and equip them to start a church.  Sounds alot like what we try to do with foreign missions…..sounds alot like what Jesus said to do.

BRAVO!!!

Kitty and I met some friends for a movie tonight…..”Running With Scissors”…….I wish it were legal to smoke pot because the movie would have been much better. It was the most dysfunctional story I’ve ever seen. It reminded me of a cross between “Clockwork Orange”, “The Graduate” & “Rocky Horror Picture Show”. All of us just sat in amazement…..no so much because of the movie, but because we were amazed we just paid $9.50 each to get in. (movies are expensive in Cali.)

I’d say wait and rent this one, but I don’t think it’s worth the $4.50 to rent either.

OK…I need some help. THE WHO is coming to the Sharktank (our arena in San Jose). Tickets are $100 apiece, but this is one of the greatest bands of all time. Peter Townsend will probably break a guitar and ram it into his HiWatt Amplifier stacks, Roger Daltry will swing the mic around, and John Entwistle is perhaps one of the top 10 rock bass players of all time. Songs like “You won’t get fooled again” and “Who Are You”……I could do without “Momma’s Got A Squeeze Box”.

I’m trying to figure out if it’s really worth the $$$$$$.

I rode my motorcycle to a meeting at church tonight. Kitty called and asked if I would mind picking up some catfood and pullups for our youngest on the way home. Wanting to be the helpful loving husband/father, I said yes of course. I figured I could stick them in my saddlebags for the ride home. After finding the right size (which is a feat in itself), I proceeded thru the store with my helmet in one hand and pullups under my other arm and catfood in the other hand. It occured to me that I looked very interesting….a biker with a cat and pullups for my baby….not very tough.
I checked out, went out to my bike and guess what…..the pullups didn’t fit into the saddlebag. Not only that, but the plastic bag ripped, so I proceeded to use shock cords and tie them to the back rest on the back of the bike. It was night, so I figured it wouldn’t be to embarrasing.

California is a state that loves bikers. They are everywhere. Almost everytime I drive somewhere I see several bikers. At Cherry Street, the unimaginable happened…..I pulled up to the stoplight and heard a rumbling that didn’t sound like my pipes. Yep, here were two Harley’s pulling up next to me. They had big, black, loud Harleys and leather jackets. I was sitting on my purple flamed Victory Kingpin, just as loud, very cool bike…………but with pampers strapped to my backrest. They looked and just smiled.

So much for my coolness factor!

Today I had my Theology in Worship class at Western Seminary.  I’m loving this class, mainly because of the prof.  He really stretches us in terms of how we think about worship.  We glanced over some terms that really hit me later today when I thought more about the definitions.

In Synagogues of early Israel, they would habitually read the scripture and teach as part of the gathering there.  This time in the gathering of reading and explaining the scripture was called the “DARASH”.  This term literally means “The Search” in Hebrew.  They were searching for God in the very truthes of God.  The person that read the scripture and explained it was called the “DARSHON”.  This terms literally means “The Searcher”.  It was accepted that the person leading this time was a “searcher” like the rest of them and they were all “searching” for God.

Today we place such a high expectation that the guy teaching from the stage has all the answers.  That somehow he or she has it all together and knows the answers to all our spiritual questions.  True, you hope that those who are spiritually leading are further down the path than we are or at least have spent considerable time in the word in order to bring us something we haven’t thought about.  But how refreshing to see the teacher as “The Searcher” along with all of us.

The best teachers I’ve seen have an air of humility in their teaching, knowing that they are searching just like us….on the journey just like us.  It would be cool to maybe adopt this ancient name for a lead teaching pastor……….The Searcher.

Today I got to spend some time with my favorite person (my wife Kitty) and our lovely Chinese daughter (jia) at the mall. We came upon a store called C28. It is a Christian based clothing store that sells cool clothing with a christian message. All the latest styles and looks but with crosses and icons that are faith based. It was interesting to see a store that is not a typical bible book store selling christian stuff like that. Another surprising thing was that the stuff wasn’t churchy….it was really good! The coolest thing was talking to the shift manager there. He said that since they opened, they had led 8 people to Christ just from them coming in looking for cool clothes. “They come in because the clothes look cool, then we get to share the message behind it.” C28 has another store in the other big mall in San Jose and he said they have led 23 to Christ. This is truely being a missionary with your work and business! I applaud them.

If you’d like to check out their website, goto www.c28.com
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