Be the change by Jason Valendy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Parable of attending morning prayer
This story was told in the book Singing the Lord's Song in a New Land. The book uses this story as a way of talking about the importance of going to morning prayer as a Korean American Christian. I think it is good to think about for when we wake up on Sunday mornings...
A man decides that he will get up early in the morning to go up the mountain to pray. The first morning, he gets up and goes up to the top of the mountain and prays. On his way back down to his house, he says to himself, "Why should God only be on the top of the mountain? God must be in the middle of the mountain." So the next morning he gets up and goes halfway up the mountain and prays. On his way back down to his house, he says to himself, "Why should God only be in the middle of the mountain, God must also be at the foot of the mountain." The next morning, he gets up and goes to the foot of the mountain and prays. On his way back down to his house, he says to himself, "Why should God only be at the foot of the mountain? God must also be in my bed." The next morning he wakes up to pray in his bed, but cannot keep his eyes open. So he falls asleep.
A man decides that he will get up early in the morning to go up the mountain to pray. The first morning, he gets up and goes up to the top of the mountain and prays. On his way back down to his house, he says to himself, "Why should God only be on the top of the mountain? God must be in the middle of the mountain." So the next morning he gets up and goes halfway up the mountain and prays. On his way back down to his house, he says to himself, "Why should God only be in the middle of the mountain, God must also be at the foot of the mountain." The next morning, he gets up and goes to the foot of the mountain and prays. On his way back down to his house, he says to himself, "Why should God only be at the foot of the mountain? God must also be in my bed." The next morning he wakes up to pray in his bed, but cannot keep his eyes open. So he falls asleep.
9 Needed Fundamental Shifts of Christian Living
Presented by Gary at the Young Adult Summit
We need to shift from:
We need to shift from:
- Being Church focused to Kingdom focused
- Maintenance leadership to Missional leadership
- Fear of failure to embrace failure (fail often to succeed sooner)
- Codependency (people have needs, we need people to keep the institution alive) to worship (aka: giving) and service
- Talking at people to Talking with people
- Counting money and people to counting relationships and missions
- Dualistic worldview (there is sacred time and there is secular time) to sacred worldview (all time is sacred)
- Judge and savior to Cultivator
- Attractional (church growth model) to Missional (ministry with people)
There was a story I heard Jerry Chism tell in a sermon yesterday which I liked.
There was a group of children at Sunday school and their teacher was running late. The children decided to play "church" in which one was the pastor, others were choir members and still others were ushers. As children are, they became tired of playing that game and someone decided that they should play "Jesus". Jesus was a game in which one person would play Jesus and others would be the disciples. After much argument on who would be Jesus it was decided that one particular boy would be Jesus. Soon Jesus was selected, the other children made him carry a cross and pretended to tie him to a tree. They called him names and insulted him to the point the boy pretending to be Jesus said, "Wait!! I have an idea, lets stop playing Jesus and go back to playing Church."
So the question I get is, am I playing Jesus or Church?
There was a group of children at Sunday school and their teacher was running late. The children decided to play "church" in which one was the pastor, others were choir members and still others were ushers. As children are, they became tired of playing that game and someone decided that they should play "Jesus". Jesus was a game in which one person would play Jesus and others would be the disciples. After much argument on who would be Jesus it was decided that one particular boy would be Jesus. Soon Jesus was selected, the other children made him carry a cross and pretended to tie him to a tree. They called him names and insulted him to the point the boy pretending to be Jesus said, "Wait!! I have an idea, lets stop playing Jesus and go back to playing Church."
So the question I get is, am I playing Jesus or Church?