Heaven

So I’m driving down the highway, and I see a billboard advertising a resort just a few hours away. There’s a picture of a guy golfing, and he’s saying something like this: “My wife’s at the spa, the kids are at the playground, and I’m in heaven.” What?

I just got back from a three-week family vacation to the east coast: Williamsburg, Jamestown, Wash DC, NYC, Philadelphia, and points in between. I would absolutely not have traded it for anything, especially a holiday where the various family members are shipped off to different venues. A vacation is where you don’t see your family? What’s up with that?

I can understand that we all need some time to recharge, but to advertise a vacation spot where you don’t actually have to spend time with your own family members….well, that doesn’t sound much like heaven to me. “Something for everyone” is good, but a separate “something for everyone” — not so much.

Church Fantasies

I recently read an article in the Midwest Covenant Messenger, the newsletter of the Midwest Covenant Conference. In the article, Dr. John Wenrich was quoted from a conference held this year. In talking about church growth, Dr. Wenrich stated there are two fantasies present in many churches.

  • The first fantasy is that there can be growth (numeric and otherwise) without change.
  • The second fantasy is that there can be change without some degree of pain.

I’ve been in a number of meetings and conversations, especially recently, where the subject of church growth (specifically, numbers) has come up. No one, though, is talking about making painful choices. There’s a fantasy that growth will just happen, I guess. It’s as though people are saying, “Let’s continue doing the same things we’ve always done, but just do them better!” According to Dr. Wenrich, that’s a recipe for stagnation, not growth.

My wife has a saying which has been speaking to me. She’s even drawn it up on a little poster. The saying is:

Dreams can quickly become fantasies if we are not willing to risk and bleed for our future.

I’m resolving not to have any dreams that I’m not willing to bleed for. How about you?

You can read the whole article in the Covenant newsletter here.

Anything worthy of praise

I don’t want to end my thoughts about the Willow conference on a down note. The theme was “what’s good in the world”, and I really appreciated this. The conference planners said that they understand that artsy people (and it was an arts conference) can tend to be a depressed lot. The idea was to look at the things that are going right.

I don’t consider myself an artsy guy, but I also want to look for what’s right with the world. Paul gave us the same advice, to look for anything worthy of praise.

Besides, they gave us cool wristbands that had a USB drive in them. Who couldn’t be happy with that?