Missional Living

Jesus Plus Anything Ruins Everything

Nov 22nd 2010

By: tom cottar

1 comment

We have plenty of stuff about Jesus, but do we really have Jesus? I'm sure the world cares less about our buildings, our programs, our camps, and our statement of faith than they do about really seeing Jesus among us. Jesus in us. Jesus through us.

Don't get me wrong. I appreciate buildings, programs, camps and even statements of faith (some less than others…), but unless it oozes Jesus, it's just religious works. Unless it becomes missionally and incarnationally the hands and feet of Christ, it's nothing more than a Pharisee handing Jesus a bloody tampon saying, 'I made this for you'. (Isaiah 64:6)

Here are some great thoughts that may surprise you from friend/thinker/writer Len Sweet. (via theworkofthepeople.com)

<a href="http://www.vimeo.com/11922674">http://www.vimeo.com/11922674</a>

culture, media, theology, video
[repost] What I Worship 2.0

Nov 11th 2010

By: tom cottar

No comments

I give lip service to this whole God thing

Coming in here and praying and praising

Lifting up holy hands, bending holy knees,

while looking at my holy watch…

But I wonder if this is what I really worship

If you want to see my worship

Don't stand next to me here in this place

Don't look at my words and my prayers

And all of my learned motions that come

Not from my heart, but from what I have seen others do

Don't look at the way I speak, parrot like, the words I hear others say

If you want to know what I really worship

Walk with me

Follow me

Live with me

Crawl into my head and see where my thoughts go

Go through the days and weeks of my life with me

And see what I worship not by what I say

But by how I live.

You wanna know what I worship?

I worship food

In ways that are far from natural

I think about it most of the day

Chicken, pizza, cheeseburgers, steak and cheese sandwiches,

Hot wings, lasagna, shrimp tacos from Chuy's, mustard on everything, fast food, good food, greasy spoon food, barbeque Dungeoness crab from Joe's Crab Shack, Chic-fil-a waffle fries, Venti No-whip mocha from Starbucks

Mmmm…Starbucks

O great god of coffee, I bow to your caffeinated greatness

You wanna know what I worship?

I worship gadgets

If it blinks and has an Apple logo I will sing its praise

I will bring it offerings of money and time

O Lord Laptop, when I in awesome wonder

Consider all your 15 inch display

Your wireless net, your cd-rom for burning

I love your power for all the games I play

Then sings my soul, my laptop, god to thee

How Great thou art, How great thou art

You wanna know what I worship?

I worship other people

I may not walk up to you and bow to you

I don't sacrifice live chickens at your feet

But I do worship you

Putting my feelings of self-worth,

of security,

of am I good enough,

of am I smart enough, skinny enough, cool enough

In your hands

Spending most of my time trying to find new ways for you to like me

New ways to make sure that you don't leave me

Run from me

Find someone cooler

New ways to make sure you don't…

Find someone more fun.

You wanna know what I worship?

When you push past everything else

When you stop believing the lies

that even I believe

When you tear off the curtain and show the wizard

For who he really is

When you add up all of the

Time spent

And thoughts spent

And emotions spent

And energy spent

And talents spent

You find the throne of my worship

And on the throne

Sits me

You wanna know what I worship?

I worship me

and I don't want to do it anymore.

poetry, theology, worship
A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Worship Rehearsal

Nov 4th 2010

By: tom cottar

1 comment

I tweeted early this morning how God cracks me up. And I'm pretty sure the feeling is mutual. Believe it or not, as I write this, I'm a little bit giggly.

It's been one of those weeks. Sunday morning worship was filled with distractions, technical snafus, disrupting cell phones, random feedback and other noises…all which are natural, but otherwise abnormal for us.

It also became apparent that i was going to need to do some pretty heavy-duty car repairs on BOTH our vehicles soon. LIke…NOW.

On Tuesday, I had a 'run in' with a local businessman who mistreated my wife last week. He was appalled that I, as a minister, was so furious at how he treated her. I not-so-gently reminded him that (a) I am also a husband with a bride and (b) Jesus gets equally riled up when you mistreat his bride. No blood was shed…

I've had horrible email/server issues all week.

On Wednesday, my wife took the boys for haircuts and the youngest accidentally made off with a toy from the waiting area, so an hour-and-a-half later she had to load everyone back up in the car and return a $0.50 toy to teach a life lesson.

When they made it home, we had no electricity. After looking up and down the block for crispy-fried construction workers, she called the electric company. Seems like a computer snafu caused them to shut off our service. Not pretty.

Hours later, when we had lights again, we had pizza delivered for dinner and….our dining table broke. BROKE. Like…the table leg split in half and came crashing down on the floor. So I'm on my way to rehearsal when I get the phone call. "You are not going to believe what just happened…"

Nothing would surprise me at this point. I could've spotted Rush Limbaugh making out with Nancy Pelosi at Starbucks and thought, "I'd really like a dirty chai latte…"

I get to rehearsal and the second song we run is Matt Redman's 'Blessed Be Your Name'. You know, with the line "you give and take away, my heart will choose to say…blessed be your name..".

And I start laughing. Thinking. Praying to God who, in my head, sometimes sounds a little like Tyler Durden.

"LOL, God…you crack me up."

"Yeah", He said.

"No, seriously…I'm singing 'you give and take away'…. like the car. The table. The electricity." I'm beginning to laugh out loud..

"Dude. I didn't break your car". (yes, God says 'dude'.). "In a fallen world, stuff breaks and people act stupid. Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart…"

"Yeah, but she's really old." That made Him chuckle, I think. "I know", I said. " I don't need a car. Or a table. Or even electricity. You're the faithful One in this relationship…so….thanks for that……….love you, btw."

"What's not to love?"

And we kept rehearsing. And I kept chuckling, feeling like a little kid who snuck in to see his Daddy at work. Even if just for a second, it was by far the highlight of the day. The car repairs are being provided for, and the rest will be fine as well.

Yup. I'm a weirdo, but it still cracks me up.

theology
15 Most Influential Authors Ever

Nov 2nd 2010

By: tom cottar

1 comment

For better or for worse, all you and I will ever know is comprised of what we experience and what we read. The end. And who I am is simply the grand total of that composition.

I was recently tagged by a good friend to make a list of the most influential 15 authors in your life–good or bad. Which is not as easy for me as it may sound. I love to read, so imagine asking an alcoholic what his favorite drink is. (Answer: Whichever one is nearby.) While I’ve certainly been more influenced by music than books (an entirely different blog), here is the meme and the list. Keep in mind, this list is not a list of best authors, but the ones who’ve influentially molded me for better or worse.

15 Authors (meme):

Fifteen authors (poets included) who’ve influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag at least fifteen friends, including me, because I’m interested in seeing what authors my friends choose.

1. Len Sweet. If you know me at all, you know how much I appreciate this guy. I’ve had the honor of spending time with him (yes, over coffee!). One of the greatest thinkers/writers of our time, IMO. My favs include Nudge, Soul Tsunami, Gospel According to Starbucks, Eleven, and Jesus Manifesto.

2. Brennan Manning. A friend loaned me Ragamuffin Gospel while I was in college. I still have it and it looks like a coloring book. It was instrumental in beginning me down the path of being free from ‘religion’ and understanding the free handout of Amazin’ Grace. Ragamuffin Gospel and Abba's Child are still on my 'read every year' list.

3. The wicked smart (former athiest and Yale/Princeton grad) Greg Boyd. God At War, and the companion work Satan and the Problem of Evil were instrumental in developing a trinitarian warfare theodicy that actually makes sense in real time. (Big words for ‘understanding why God allows bad things to happen’.)

4. Anne Rice. How could I NOT include Rice? Ever since the Vampire Chronicles, her writing and character development has amazed me. Lestat and Memnoch are probably the reason I’ve seen every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. Likewise, it’s probably the same reason I hate the Twilight series. Seriously. Servant of the Bones and Angel Time are among my favorites.

5. C.S. Lewis. Duh. A close friend of J.R.R. Tolkien, I hope to continue being influenced by Clive Staples as the years go on. Favs include Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, Narnia and The Screwtape Letters.

6. Dallas Willard. Divine Conspiracy and The Spirit of the Disciplines need to be read by anyone in ministry leadership.

7. Richard Foster. The only book of Foster’s I’ve continued to hang on to is Celebration of Discipline. It absolutely changed my life. It brought freedom in areas I didn’t know I was in bondage to. His insight to 'communing with God' has been transforming to me, to say the least.

8. e. e. cummings. Cumming’s writing is crazy beautiful. ‘anyone lived in a pretty how town (with up so floating many bells down) spring summer autumn winter He sang his didn’t he danced his did’. ‘children guessed (but only a few and down they forgot as up they grew)”

9. Bill Shakespeare. I feel I can call him Bill. After that semester in college when, as an English major, I read every major work he’d written…we’re close. He’s the reason I love iambic pentameter and tragedy.

10. G.K. Chesterton. One of the men I admire most is/was Rich Mullins. So when he said, ‘You need to check out Chesterton’, I ran and grabbed the only think I could find. Luckily, it was Orthodoxy. I still remember reading, ‘Oscar Wilde said sunsets were not of any value because we can’t pay for them. But Oscar Wilde was wrong. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde.’ Thus, was the beginning of me chasing to know Chesterton.

11. Tim LaHaye. There I said it. As a Southern Baptist college student in east Texas, there were two things you didn’t question: Calvinism and Tim LaHaye. I ran into his end times, pre-tribulation theology everywhere…like mushrooms after a bad rain. It formed my theology for years.

12. Shel Silverstein. Probably most famous for The Giving Tree and A Light in the Attic, I realize how much I treasure his writing now that I am an adult and have kids of my own.

13. Chuck Palanuik. Two words that go without saying: Fight Club. His other works (like Choke and Lullaby) are sweetly twisted and expose the beauty and the fallenness of our humanity. But, because of the first rule of Chuck Club, that’s all I can say about that.

14. Edgar Allan Poe. American writer/poet best known for all things mysterious and macabre, who quite possibly invented what we know as detective-fiction. He kept me awake at night long after he was dead, not only by what he said…but by what was left unsaid. Probably the reason I wandered into the writings of #13 and #4.

15. Dr. Seuss. I’ve learned from Seuss that sometimes it’s the questions that are complicated and the answers that are simple. And he’s continually re-opened my eyes to the wonderment of living and the inherent value in each of us. After all, ‘today you are You, that is truer than true. There’s no one alive who is Youer than You.’

books, theology
The Best Thing About Halloween

Oct 31st 2010

By: tom cottar

1 comment

I don't know where you may fall on the whole 'Halloween Thing". I have friends who love Jesus who sincerely believe it's solely Satanic and part of the downfall of our ~~family-values bubble~~ world. On the other hand, I have other friends who passionately pursue Jesus and still approach Halloween with all the vigor of Quentin Tarantino and Rob Zombie.

Regardless, October 31 officially begins Chocolate Season in TomLand.

So, today I am officially declaring today 'Opening Day'. As any zit-marked, diabetic teen knows, Chocolate Season begins at Halloween, runs through Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, Valentine's Day…and doesn't officially conclude until Easter. And, in most cases, it's extended through June, to cover Mother's Day and Father's Day!

Sa-weet Lord….Gracias a Dios!

I realize Chocolate Season makes it hard to prepare for Swimsuit Season, but with all the talk these days about skin cancer, overexposure, and the damaging rays of the sun, Chocolate Season is a much better (and healthier!) option.

I hope you'll join me! Let the games begin.

culture, news, personal
Ministry Kills, Part 2

Oct 28th 2010

By: tom cottar

No comments

Remember, ministry (and life) will kill you. It’s supposed to. It’s designed to reveal God’s strength through your weakness. His success in the midst of your failure. His greatness among your feebleness. And mine.

The story goes that Mother Teresa was approached by a young man who wanted to know God’s will for his life. As he pleaded with her to pray for him, she asked why he needed her prayers.

“So I can do something great for God.”, the man replied.

“I will not pray that you will do something great for God”, she answered, “but I will pray for you.”

She did pray. And years later, artist Kendall Payne put her prayer to a beautiful, haunting song called ‘Pray’, which cries out:

May your heart break enough that compassion enters in.

May your strength all be spent upon the weak.

All the castles and crowns you build and place upon your head,

May they all fall, crashing down around your feet.

May you find every step to be harder than the last,

So your character grows greater every stride.

May your company be of human insignificance.

May your weakness be your only source of pride.

The most beautiful thing I love about Wayne is his weakness. His insignificant balance. He is at once full of passion and life and fire…and yet weak and feeble and wounded.

Being a disciple of Christ requires the balance of both. Not the tension of both, but the balance. We must pursue our calling with everything in us. We must pour out unfailing love on our spouses and children. We must cultivate our character and integrity with diligence. And we must constantly be a genuine friend of sinners and those who would despise us.

It’s a pretty exhausting job description.

Rest assured it will drag all of your insecurities and weaknesses into the light of day.

It will expose the Imposter within you.

It will ensure that your failures and feeble attempts at success will be broadcast unsparingly.

It it will demand that your weakness reveal God’s strength (2 Cor 12:9). After all, that’s the plan, remember? In his second letter to the church in Corinth, Paul reminds them that he would not boast in himself. In fact, God Himself told Paul, “My grace is enough for you. My power is made perfect (complete) in your weakness.” Paul goes on to add that he will gladly boast…but about his weakness, so that the power of Christ will show up in him. So, for Christ’s sake, he is content with weakness, insults, hardships, persecution, and disaster. “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

Wayne’s weakness, as well as my own, reminds me of the immortal words of Tyler Durden: “Congratulations. You’re one step closer to hitting bottom…[and] it’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”

theology
Ministry Kills, Part 1

Oct 26th 2010

By: tom cottar

No comments

I recently met up with a long-time ministry friend who just got out of rehab. Let’s call him Wayne.

I first met Wayne while I was serving at my first church. He was one of ‘those guys’: the ones with an amazing journey of finding Jesus. His life-story included being raised by a cocaine-using father, being left by the untimely death of his mother, and the religious and social tension of a sister involved in lesbianism. Wayne’s conversion story was a Damascus Road of walking away from heavy drug and alcohol usage and traveling the US as the youth ministry sidekick of a famous evangelist. Since 1993, he’s been a close friend, brother, and unfiltered confidant. The Focker’s ‘circle of trust’ wouldn’t be complete without Wayne in my life. We spent summers together leading camps, training for his Ironman competitions, and learning how to minister to students while dodging paintball fire.

For years, he struggled with alcoholic relapses. Binge weekends turned into binge weeks. He started a new campus ministry that began to reach thousands of middle and high school students. Being on the road to insure it’s success and growth meant leaving the wife and kids alone in the daily grind of living. While the ministry accolades grew, the weariness of it grew as well. Without support, encouragement, and accountability, temptation and relapse were soon a part of his daily life. Nearly two years later, his wife and some friends convinced him to commit to an 8-week treatment program.

When he got out, I called to check on him. We joked around. Laughed together. Cried a little bit. When the conversation turned serious, I told him I loved him and that I was glad he was in recovery. I didn’t expect the response I got.

“In those 8 weeks, I didn’t find God. I looked…hard. I prayed and fasted. I cried. I read Scripture. I did everything I’ve told others to do, but I didn’t find Him there.”

There was a very awkward silence (as you can imagine). I struggled for a response.

But he continued. “Dude, for 8 weeks I worked in the cornfields and kitchens with alcoholics and crackheads. They became my friends and my support. Only a few of them were ‘christians’, but they are my brothers. Tom, I looked hard for God those two months and didn’t find Him. But He found me…” His voice trailed. “And for the first time ever, I feel like a friend of sinners. And I feel balanced.”

I didn’t quite know what to say.

We get so caught up in life. On the treadmill. So consumed by our calling to ministry, to teach, to fix, to do whatever we were born to do, that we become unbalanced and unstable. And in our instability and weariness, we get sucked into a devastating and destructive spiral. We mask pain, loneliness, and feelings of inadequacy with anything. Everything. Something that will get us through.

Remember, ministry (and life) will kill you. It’s supposed to. It’s designed to reveal God’s strength through your weakness. His success in the midst of your failure. His greatness among your feebleness. And mine, too.

theology
An Open Letter, Part 2

Oct 21st 2010

By: tom cottar

No comments

(continued from Part 1…)

So, yeah, my stomach turned. What had long been unspoken expectations in ministry had finally reared its ugly and verbal head. In an instant, the tables had turned and I had become Alice, trapped in the rabbit hole, afraid I would never get out of Wonderland. I was surrounded by men and women who were destined to inherit wind. And unfortunately, I was on the same pension plan.

Balance

It’s tough to find a better metaphor for a disciple than that of a tightrope walker. I am always amazed when watching them gingerly step out onto the rope, as if testing it’s surety. Step by step they methodically walk across the cable while gravity eagerly awaits their first misjudgement.

Jesus’ life is a beautiful blueprint for balance. He walked a fine, narrow course with the legalism of the Pharisees on one side and the hopelessness of “sinners” on the other. Of course, Scripture recounts how Satan was there eagerly awaiting a fall.

As disciples (not as ministers or leaders or workers or ___________), we are called to live a life of balance. A life of work and rest. A life of recreation and re-creation. A life in which I pour in to my own kids as much as other kids. A life of community that connects with other disciples in which we can share our struggles and pains and joys and victories. Because falling off the tightrope is much easier than walking it. And much more fatal, too. It’s not the wind I want to inherit. It’s the joy of reaching what’s on the other side of the cable.

Over 25 years of ministry, I’ve seen a definite pattern. God plants within us a seed of desire and passion. A good seed. A good desire. That drive stimulates us to do what we were born to do, whether it’s in ministry, teaching 3rd graders, fixing cars, or selling insurance. And because that seed has been hardwired in us, it permeates everything we do. We lie in bed thinking about ways to grow our ministry, see our 3rd graders excel, fix the transmission, or sell more insurance policies. We attack this passion with fury and determination–which is a good thing.

But soon we grow tired and in order to keep pursuing this ‘calling’ with the same intensity, we let other areas of our life slide and refocus the efforts on our seed. Without healthy balance and rest, we turn to unhealthy behaviors to make our spiritual and emotional ends meet. Before long we’re turning to those unhealthy options more regularly…and we grow more tired. And, once again, we gird up our determination to water our seed and see our God-given passion grow and produce fruit. Unfortunately, by this point, we’re trapped on the hamster wheel of this cycle without even knowing it.

So, what are we to do?

How do you balance your life? Your ministry?

What lessons have you learned that you'd be willing to pass along to the rest of us?

theology
An Open Letter, Part 1

Oct 19th 2010

By: tom cottar

4 comments

Not long ago I had lunch with a close friend who runs a million-dollar overseas missions ministry. Before he had to leave for Sudan one weekend, we met for some great BBQ, talked about our ministries, our struggles and victories over the previous year, and caught up on some personal issues. At the end of our time together, Craig asked me, “How can I pray for you in the next few months?”

My mind raced. Our retreat was coming up. And our biggest fundraiser/service project was about to start taking shape. After that, we’d be recognizing our graduates, and launching off into the mayhem of summer. Beach Break. Camp 7.8. Middle School Mondays. Road Trip Tuesdays. Mid-week activities. Student conferences. Then…back-to-school events and football season. Ugh. I struggled to condense my mental mayhem into something verbal and…intelligible.

“Balance”, I said. “I’ve got so much looming over the horizon, I’ll neglect my family and friends if I’m not careful. I love our ministry–but it can completely consume my life sometimes. Well,…most of the time, if I’m honest.”

Behind his Prada glasses, I could see his eyes were already shrink-wrapped in tears.

“Tell me about it.” he said. “God has blessed us so much this year, it’s been phenomenal. But just this week, my 16-year-old son asked me if he could be home-schooled so that he could take these trips with me. I was excited, so I asked him if he felt God was calling him to missions. You know what he told me? He said, ‘I don’t know…I just want to be with you.’”

His voice cracked. “What do you do with that?”

The conversation that followed was worth more to me than gold. As we talked, I found my mind wandering back to Proverbs: “He that troubles his own house will inherit wind.” (11:29) I began to recount men and women I’ve known in ministry that have lost or sacrificed spouses and children to build a ‘kingdom’. Instead of inheriting an Abrahamic blessing of a godly family, they’ve inherited wind.

At one particular ministry I served in I travelled a lot. A LOT. Which left my wife home alone with our 3-year-old and newborn sons. I was busy ‘building the Kingdom’, in and out of cities, living out of a suitcase, and racking up frequent flyer miles. Things began to be tough at home, so I invited Heather and the boys to come to Dallas for a few days while I was working, thinking we could at least be together in the evenings after work.

While driving through traffic one night, our oldest son caught a glimpse of a Holiday Inn out of the car window.

“Look, Mama!”, he exclaimed, “I see Daddy’s house!”

My heart stopped.

One day soon after, it was announced that I would have a new ‘boss’. Preparations were begun, speculations were made about who it just might be, and we were all buzzing with hopes for a new vision for our ministry areas. I’ll never forget when our director introduced him to us and to the board of trustees.

“He’s a fantastic servant of God,” he announced. “He’s served in ministry all across our state. He’s a workaholic, and a great man of God you can be proud of.”

My stomach turned. And it still turns as I write this today. The resounding lesson? Don't sacrifice your family on the altar of 'ministry'.

Or 'job'.

Or 'football'.

Or whatever your altar is.

(to be continued…)

theology
Tom Vs. Wild

Oct 14th 2010

By: tom cottar

No comments

Feral. Adj. Describing an animal that has left a domesticated state and returned to the wild. Alley cats and pigeons are examples feral animals.

A few years ago, we lived in a small central Texas town and had lots of problems with feral pigs. We lived close to the high school’s Ag barn where various animals were housed and raised before they were shown (for competition) and slaughtered. Many times, young domesticated pigs would escape and wander off in the spring…and return by fall (or the following spring), having become adapted to the wild. The problem is that they could not become redomesticated. They would live along the margin of civilization, stealing food from cattle and other farm animals, destroying fences and gardens, and even would become aggressive towards humans and livestock during the tough months of winter.

One salty, good ‘ol boy named Paul once told me, “Don’t try to keep them penned up, they’ll knock everything down trying to get out. You just have to shoot ‘em and move on.”

We have generations of hope-seeking students and adults who have left civilized church and religious life and wandered off in to the wild. Sometimes they may wander back along the margins of conventional religion, but they can never be redomesticated. They push over fences in search of hope, discovery, authentic intimacy, and significant God-experiences. They won’t fit back into the neat little boxes of ministry. (I’m not sure they ever did in the first place.)

IMO, more and more of us are wandering off and moving to the wilderness. We/they may wander close enough to feed off the traditional structures…but attempts to redomesticate them are pretty useless.

In search of the God-life, I turned feral a few years back. Funny, how I’m still on staff at a conventional, highly-organized (and marvelous!) local church. Although, as Dave Mustaine so aptly comiserated, ‘the system has failed’, God continues to change and shape me in and out of my ‘ferility’. I seem to be better suited for living in the wild than among the civilzed (though not as much as some), yet sometimes I feel like my job is to lead others to feral living. Not away from ‘church’, but away from a civilized religion…and towards a dangerous, radical, table-turning, whip-making, unpredictable, revolutionary and Feral Jesus.

A Feral Jesus that hasn’t turned his back on His Bride (the church), but calls her to a deeper experience of intimacy with Him. Pushing over civilized, religious fences. No longer living for the show (and the slaughter) to come.

Missional Living gone Feral.

theology

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Missional Living

Jesus Plus Anything Ruins Everything

[repost] What I Worship 2.0

A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Worship Rehearsal

15 Most Influential Authors Ever

The Best Thing About Halloween

Ministry Kills, Part 2

Ministry Kills, Part 1

An Open Letter, Part 2

An Open Letter, Part 1

Tom Vs. Wild

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