WardWritings: April 2009

New Camera

This is the Madison St. Bridge in Chicago, IL. I'm playing with my new camera. Notice how the light streaks below the bridge. Thanks to pastorbuhro for showing me how to do that. I'm having fun with it and being in Chicago.

by Unknown ~ Thursday, April 23, 2009 2 comments

Beautiful Reconciliation

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created...all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together... For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind... he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him...

- St. Paul (Colossians 1)

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself... and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ...

-St. Paul (2 Corinthians 5)

There is a belief that I hold. I'm not the only one who holds this belief. Many Christians today hold this belief and many in the early church held this belief. This belief has been consistantly held by the church over several centuries.

So what is it already? It is the fact that when Adam and Eve "fell" in the Garden of Eden and God removed them, all of creation fell. Part of the reason for believing this is that God created everything together. God didn't create things in isolation from each other. God created things in a way that makes all things interconnected. This means that when Adam and Eve fell it would only make sense that all of creation fell at the same time.

If you read the verses above you can see Paul's theology in light of this belief. Paul believed that all things were created through and for the Son. After the fall all things needed to be reconciled back to God. Without going into much detail we know that the death on the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ has accomplished the means of this reconciliation. Paul doesn't stop with this. Paul believes that through this we who believe in Christ have become a new creation.

Paul also believes that we are ambassadors of this reconciliation. We are called to bring this reconciliation to all of creation. It would be easy to say, "I'm a new creation, let me sit back and enjoy it." Paul's argument is that we cannot. We are now, as part of this new creation, ambassadors with a mission.

This isn't exactly something new. Most of us hear these kinds of things at church all of the time. We have to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ. The great commission tells us to be ambassadors. There is something in here that we don't often hear preaches. Paul refers to reconciling the "whole world" and "all creation" he even gets as specific to say "all things visible and invisible, all things in heaven and on earth." Paul is talking about EVERYTHING, not just people.

God wants to reconcile everything to Him, everything He created, everything He loves and we are His ambassadors. We know how we can be ambassadors to other people. There are warehouses full of books on the subject and there have been millions of sermons preached on it.

My real point and my real question is this. How can we be ambassadors in the reconciliation of the entire earth? Maybe it's time we start thinking about this. Maybe it's about time we start doing something about this. Maybe it's about time we act like the ambassadors that God expects us to be.

The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God

-St. John of Damascus

by Unknown ~ Thursday, April 09, 2009 1 comments

More Than a Fairy Tale

My wife is amazed by some of the most common things. At least, those things that I have always viewed as common. She is amazed at how cell phones work or the internet. She doesn't grasp the concept of different algorithms of code being send via electricity through a wire into a metal box and somehow showing up as a picture of a video on a screen. She accepts that this is somehow true because she sees it everyday, but she is still amazed by it.

This may not seem like a stretch for most of us. Most of us can't read binary and most of us don't even know the definition of a hexadecimal system. So it's easy for us o understand how one might be amazed at this.

A better example of what I'm talking about is how Kim views UPS and FedEx. Kim doesn't understand how she can send something this afternoon from Indiana and it could be at someones door in Texas the next morning. She's amazed. She doesn't understand how a system could be so fast and efficient. She uses this as proof that Santa Clause is real. FedEx and UPS simply stole his secret and now they can deliver packages around the world over night.

This may seem simple or even silly, but it's actually very profound. Too often in life we get caught up with life itself. We simply expect our computers to turn on and our cell phones to connect. We don't understand how they work we just expect them too. We are rarely amazed by these little things. I think we need to be more often.

There are those things that do amaze us, at least for a little while. Things like Space Shuttles. There are really big things that we don't understand but are still amazed at. When something HUGE happens that we can't explain we are amazed.

How often are we amazed with God?

I fear that we've treated God the same way we've treated Santa Claus. He's more of a fairy tale to us. We explain away miracles and His involvement in our lives as coincidence. We really aren't amazed out how we breath and how gravity holds us on the earth. We take God and His provisions for granted more than the internet or UPS. Why? Because we've turned Him into a fairy tale. He's not really real. He's an idea of goodwill, not a loving grace filled Savior.

Let's not allow this to continue. Spend time today contemplating God's involvement in your life. How has He shown Himself to you? Do you find that amazing?

by Unknown ~ Wednesday, April 08, 2009 0 comments

Eco Theology

I just transfered all of my posts from another blog I've had to this blog. There are a couple reasons I did this. One reason was for efficiency. It's easier to maintain one blog vs. two. I've already proven that it's difficult for me to maintain the one so and I don't want to entirely abandon the other blog I had started.

Another reason for doing this was because of purpose. I had started the other blog because I felt that the purpose was different than the purpose of this blog. The truth is that the purpose of this blog i pretty general and has room for a lot of different things. Now that I have come to grips with that I want to turn all blogging attention to this blog alone.

The reason that I started the other blog is because I wish to address a theological issue that I feel has been ignored by most of the church today. Many might not agree that Ecology or the environment comes down to a theological issue, but I believe very strongly that it does. The point of that blog was to shed some light on the theological nature of ecological issues. I hope that this ultimately helps us walk closer with Christ and that we may live more obedient lives for Him.

The blog entries that were transfered are as follows: Dominion, Smog in Heaven?, First Book Review, Does God Really Care??, A Moral Issue? and Not Alarmist Theology.

There were a few comments to these posts and I have not been able to get them to transfer over yet, but I will continue trying. In the mean time, please feel free to go back and look at these and comment often.

by Unknown ~ 0 comments

Pomo Part 2

Back in September of '05 I posted some of my general feelings about postmodernism. I would like for you to read it and then read this post. There are a couple of reasons. First of all, you'll understand what I'm talking about when I make a reference to it. Secondly, and probably most important, you'll realize one of the purposes of this blog. One pf the purposes is for me to see how I have grown and changed over time. I think this will be evident by comparing the two posts. I could simply delete the old post and post my current thoughts alone, but I don't want to ignore or deny who I am or who I've been.

If you read that earlier post you'll realize one thing first and foremost. I was not to fond of this thing called postmodernism. There are many in the church today who currently hold this view and I can completely relate because of how I felt at one point in time.

Today I like postmodernism. I am not claiming to be a "true postmodern" or anything like that. I don't think that it's something that you can exactly agree with or disagree with. It's simply a philosophical and cultural shift that must be acknowledged. The reason I say that I like it is because it has cause American Protestant Christians to evaluate this thing they call Christianity and it has caused them to be more serious about their faith and more honest about it as well.

I don't think one can help being a postmodern anymore than they can help being Western. It's just a fact and it must be accepted and understood.

As I mentioned, there are two main influences of postmoderism today. The first is philosophical. This is where I began to start acting like a little kid, because the philosophers labeled as postmodern fascinate me. They challenge so much of what we think and how we think and I love being challenged. Unfortunately the church has not offered much in this area. Theology (done in philosophical ways) still operated heavily in a modern context and has for the most part ignored postmodernism. This is sad because I believe that the church can offer a lot in this area just as it was able to offer a lot in the beginning of modernism. Stanley Grenz was begining to offer up some material in this area before his death and I'm hoping that there will be many to pick up his torch.

The other area is cultural. This is where things have become very controversial. The fact is that the "secular" part of society has taken culture postmodernism and embraced it. I believe that this is where our fundamental problem is. The church began to equate postmodernism with what they saw as "secular." If postmodernism is purely a secular movement and away from the church then it makes sense that the church challenge it. Another problem is that postmodernism challenges everything modern and today's protestant church's are deeply rooted in modernism. This makes it appear as though postmodernism challenges the church, which is not exactly the case.

I believe, along with many others, that we as the church need to begin to see the church in a different light. We need to understand that the church, Scripture, theology and even God existed before modernism and they will continue to exist after modernism is dead. If we can understand this one truth then we can begin understanding the role of the church in this cultural shift.

Unfortunately we are already seeing church who can't make this shift close their doors or die out. We must embrace this thing called postmodernism. It is not evil it is simply a change in history. There have been changes like this before and there will be changes like his after and God will still be God and He will still call us to follow and worship Him.

by Unknown ~ Tuesday, April 07, 2009 2 comments

Tweeting in church!

The other day I read this post on a blog that I recently began reading.

Tweeting during church

Here was my response...

I think your reaction is a little overboard. At one point in time paper notes for the sermon was a new thing, then we had power point. I don't see the difference between asking people to write down notes from the sermon and asking them to tweet their thoughts. I actually do see a difference. I think that there are more beneficial outcomes from asking others to tweet.

One benefit is that you can get on twitter that evening and see what people got out of your sermon. You know what you said, but you don't always know what others hear.

Another benefit is that if someone misses church due to illness or other they can get real time responses from their family and friends.

One more benefit is that if people in the congregation generally like the sermons and say good things about it then their followers may be inclined to ask about visiting.

Are other people going to be doing other things on their cell phones? Absolutely! They always are. This is no different than offering them a pen and paper. They can pass notes or doodle. You're not offering any more distraction, you're only offering a different one. Those who are distraction prone will still be distracted. You're offering a different incentive.

I find it very interesting that the man who calls himself The Gadget Pastor was advocating the abandonment of gadgets when it comes to a practical application in ministry. I think it's really easy to see these "gadgets" as aids to our levels of administrative productivity and yet ignore them or reject them when it comes to creatively using them for ministry.

by Unknown ~ Monday, April 06, 2009 3 comments

So I'm a Turtle

Turtle
To many guys my age this may sound cool. If you're around 25 years old and a male your first thoughts may drift to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtls. This isn't what this is about. This is about the second post I ever made on this blog. In summary a turtle is someone who likes to start things but rarely, if ever, sees them through to fruition.

This blog is a prime example of why I'm a turtle. I started this blog back in 2004 and I've only published 19 posts. This is my attempt to fight the turtle within and stay with this blog.

Updates
I want to get you up to date on my life to this point. The last time I posted was shortly after Luke's death, in July 2007. Since then a lot has happened. The most important of all things is that Kim gave birth to our firstborn son, Caedmon Asher Ward. He's the cutest baby ever. In July of this year she will give birth to our second born son, Cohen Isaiah Ward.

I also finished school. I graduated from the Community College of the Air Force with my Associates in Health Science and from Indiana Wesleyan University with my B.A. in Religion/Philosophy. I am now working on my MDiv.

We moved a couple of times. I am also looking for a job. I think that cathces everyone up.

Future

What is in store for this blog? I really don't have a clear answer for that. I want to try to post regularly. I think I can do this and I will do my best. I will continue to post my thoughts about religion etc. I really want to do some book reviews. I'm working on a few books that I'm about to finish. I will quickly get some reviews up. I may also use this as a place to interact with other blogs out there and hopefully introduce you to more blogs.

I hope you come back and comment often!

by Unknown ~ Sunday, April 05, 2009 0 comments