"What's the point of all of this..."

A question that I have asked in the past, and which many people around me have and are asking in some form is this: "Why go to church?" "What's the point?" and similarly, "What should church be, and what should churches do?" I have been on both sides of this question at different points in my life. I have been hurt by churches and wondered what the point of church is, does it really do any good? I have also been, and currently am, on staff at a church, and I have had a great opportunity to see the benefit that church can bring.

People have all sorts of reasons why they go or don't go to a church. Some people absolutely hate churches and anything that has to do with them. I have seen people become so hurt by and upset with churches that they swear to never go back. I have also seen people who don't go to church because they don't have the time or energy, it's simply another chore for them, and obviously, there are those that don't go because they don't hold religious beliefs.

I have also seen people that go to church because it is a responsibility, something they are expected to do, or something that they grew up with and has become a habit. There are also those that are forced or coerced in some way to go to church and really don't want to be there. And, of course, there are those that go to church because they love it and want to be there to fellowship and worship.

All of this makes me wonder, what should churches be doing, what should their goal and purpose be? Should churches cater to those people who want to be there and ignore those that don't or should they reach out to try and draw in those that don't want to be there and take for granted that those that do will come regardless? Or should there be something between these two?

I have come to realize that church is a very important and essential part of my life, and as I am on staff at my church I want to try and ensure that we are doing everything that we should to ensure that we are reaching people where and how they need to be reached and not hurting or pushing people away, and I do not think that we should ever be content with or "stuck" in how we are doing things, but constantly be striving to make a difference. I also believe that church should not be a place that people merely go to. That's completely useless. It should be a place that people grow in and are changed by. In the movie "To Save A Life" there is a quote:

"What's the point of all of this if you're not gonna let this change you?"

So my question is this: What are you looking for in a church? What would make you want to go to church in the first place? What would make you want to stay at a church? What would change you if you experienced it?

God Bless!

DISCLAIMER

I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I have many flaws and faults, and I always will. I post a lot of stuff on here that could be classified as "sermons" or Bible Studies. They are truths that I have learned and am learning, but they are not my truths. They are God's truths, and they are relevant to anyone and everyone reading them, including me. Please never assume that I write with any intention other than sharing the amazing truths of God, many of which I am still learning and grasping myself. Do not judge the truth or power of the truth based on my imperfections. This blog is called SADness & Truth, and these are contrasting elements. The Truth reveals how sad the SADness is and the SADness reveals how incredibly amazing the Truth is!

God Bless!

Sadness: How can you help?

For the last several months the SADness part of this has been a story from my life a childhood, and that will continue, but for this month I wanted to look at a different kind of sadness. The world that we live in today is filled with sadness and sorrow. It is easy to see that when something major happens, like the earthquake in Haiti last week. It seems that when there is some major catastrophe in he world everyone's eyes are opened for a minute to see the help that so many need, but once the need is out of the news, off CNN and Facebook, and no longer a trending topic on Twtter we forget about it, but that doesn't mean it's gone. There are people all and us everyday that desperately need our help, and yes, they are in Africa and Haiti and other places like that, but they are also here in Albuquerque, in your neighborhood, at your school or work.

How many of you walk by, talk to, or interact with in some way, people everyday who do not have enough money to pay their bills, who do not have any food to feed their children or themselves, who are living on the street, or who have any of an assortment of other needs, physical, emotional, or spiritual? They are all around us, and often, as people, and even as Christians, we seem to put on blinders, we look directly in front of us and refuse to see the need surrounding us. Either we don't want to believe there are people who have needs, it is upsetting for us to see it so we look away, or we simply do not want to have to sacrifice our time, money, emotional investment to help someone out, especially someone we don't know.

So here is the challenge. As the recent earthquake has opened everyone's eyes to hurting and needy people around the world, keep your eyes opened. Be aware of people you see throughout the day who could use a little help. Be willing to make a sacrifice to show God's love to someone. I asked everyone in X-session this week, "What can you do to help someone else?" And, I ask you the same thing.

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." - James 1:27

"Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys." - Luke 12:23

God Bless!

Waves

We are only 5 days into the New Year, and already I have had a whole slew of experiences, both great and terrible. I guess that just goes to show that it really doesn't matter what year we are in, life truly is full of joy and sorrow, but through all of it there is a constant that we can grab onto and ride through the roller coaster of waves that make up life.

This past weekend I preached at our church. This was amazing and terrifying at the same time! Now, I have been leading out with Bible Studies for many many years, and I have been a licensed as a minister and been leading a youth group for 2 years, but there is a difference between that and standing up in front of the church in the role of pastor. It was amazing and exciting because it was an opportunity to allow God to speak through me. It was terrifying because I had a whole church looking at me and trusting me to teach them and faithfully relay God's word. That's a huge responsibility! Saturday night I was quite nervous, but it ended up going great, and Sunday morning went even better. It was quite amazing! I will probably post the general outline of what I talked about soon. The ironic part of the whole thing was that I, the Youth Guy, was preaching because the Pastor was out of town on a youth ski trip. :)

So that was great! Then we had a bit of a sad day as we watched the Broncos get kicked out of the playoffs, followed closely by the Steelers, and then we watched the Bengals get killed, but they are already in the playoffs so Manda was ok with them losing.

Monday turned out to be an utterly dissapointing day. I was very excited to have youth that night and start a new year with new ideas and opportunities and chances to grow as a group and for each of us to grow individually with God. However, for the 1st time in 2 years, not a single person showed up. It was very dissapointing and frustrating, and to make things worse, I learned that a large reason for this is that my family is basically going through a shattering at the moment, which I won't go into, but which is wreaking havoc on everyone involved. 

I woke up this morning amazed at how much can happen in 3 days and how different every day can be, but I also realized, even more than I have before, that life really does not and will not make sense. We can have incredible, amazing experiences that are butted up against terrible devestating ones, but we cannot allow these things to determine how we live and feel. We must rely on God, every single day, every single second. If we are with Him we can trust that we have a secure path through the fog that surrounds us, but the farther away we get the more lost, confused, and cold we become. He is our guide and lifesaver in the ocean of life, and that is an incredible hope and security!

2009 in a (Large) Nutshell

Since today is the last day of the year, and the decade for that matter, I thought that I would be typical and write about all that has happened this year, or at least the main things. It has been a strange year for sure! It has been one of the absolute best and one of the absolute worst years ever. So let's start this thing.

January:
Manda and I closed on our first house! It was so amazing! The house was a fixer-upper, but it was ours, and we were able to spend the entire month doing just that!

• Kitchen: 
• We tore up the floor and laid new tile.
• We replaced all of the handles and hinges on the cabinets
• We painted all of the cabinets
• We painted the walls and ceiling
• We replaced the light fixture
• We repaired a hole in the ceiling
• We installed baseboards

•  Living Room:
• We painted all of the walls and ceiling
• We installed baseboards
• We replaced the front door
• Office
• We painted all the walls and ceiling
• We replaced the carpet
• We installed baseboards
• Bedroom
• We painted the walls and ceiling
• We replaced the carpet
• We replaced the ceiling fan/light fixture
• We installed baseboards
• Bathroom
• We tore up the floor and replaced the tile
• We replaced the toilet
• We removed the vanity and installed a pedestal sink
• We removed the tub enclosure
• We replaced the shower head, faucet, handles, and pipes, in the bathtub
• We tiled the shower and installed a niche
• We removed the window and replaced it with glass brick
• We painted the walls and ceiling
• We installed a fan/light
• We installed baseboards

• 2nd bedroom
• We painted the walls and ceiling
• We installed carpet
• We installed baseboards
• We also replaced all of the windows in the house, had the stucco redone, replaced part of the fence, and are currently working on building a laundry room onto the back of the house.

During this time we also got a new little puppy! He is a black lab, pug mix we think, and he was 6 months old when we got him. We named him, his full name, Ricky Bobby Ricardo Martin Downing. We weren't really planning on getting a dog, but he really needed a good home so we took him in, and he quickly became a part of our family! :)

However, as exciting as all of this was, none of it compared to the most exciting part of it all. We were introducing the 2nd bedroom of our house as "The Baby's Room." We were going to have a baby! We actually found out Christmas of 2008, but we'll count it as 2009. This was one of the most exciting things in our lives! Everything was going great! We had a house, a dog, and a baby! It was wonderful!

February:

However, things quickly went from great to tragic. In February we had our first doctor's appointment for the baby, who we were calling "Shrimp." We were told that everything was looking great, and we scheduled our first ultrasound, but it never happened. The next day we lost Shrimp... This was probably the hardest time I have ever had in my life. I know that some people don't understand, afterall, we were only 2 months pregnant, it's sad, but not the same as losing someone who is born, but it was. It was terrible and sad, and Manda and I both went through an extreme time of grief and questioning of how and why God would allow this to happen. We changed our minds back to the idea that we weren't going to have a little kid running around, and "The Baby's Room" changed back to "The Game Room" or "The 2nd Bedroom." While, I still do not really understand why this happened, we both made it through, and I can say that I learned a lot through it and my faith and trust in God grew through everything.

March:

I got in a car accident, and completely smashed up the front of my car...I still haven't fixed it.

April - May was pretty much life as normal, going to work, going to church, things of that nature...

June:
We came home one night to discover that Ricky was not in our back yard. He had dug under the gate and gone off to explore the neighborhood. Now this was not really a new thing. He had started getting out of the yard on a regular basis, and we would get calls from kind neighbors who had taken him in. That night, however, we received no call. We looked all around for him, drove and walked up and down the streets of our neighborhood, but we couldn't find him, and he was a black dog on a dark night. Manda finally asked a neighbor if they had seen him, and they told us that they had seen a black dog run out into the street and get hit by a car. The neighbor told us that the person that hit the dog got out, picked him up, and drove off.

We were devastated. We started calling vets all around the city, and we found one that said they had a black dog that had been brought in earlier that night that had been hit by a car. I went to go see if it was Ricky, Manda couldn't come because she was too scared they would tell us he had to be put down. When I got there I found a bruised, battered, road rashed, and limping, but ok, Ricky. He looked like he'd been hit by a car...he had. They took a bunch of X-rays, but in the end he came home with us, and after a few weeks of healing, was just fine!

July:
This is when things started to get better. We found out we were pregnant again! Now we were very excited, but also extremely nervous. We were hesitant to tell anyone, we were hesitant to get excited. What if something happened? So we had doctor's appointments, and many ultrasounds, and everything was going just fine. We named this baby "Koopa Troopa" or just "Koopa" for the time being. The "2nd Bedroom" was once again going to be "The Baby's Room!"

Manda and I also went to Seattle at the end of this month for our 3 year anniversary. It was a lot of fun, despite being the hottest it had ever been in Seattle, and we got to go see a bunch of whales out in the wild, which was completely amazing!

The second 1/2 of the year has been pretty good all around. Koopa has been growing just as she should, oh yeah, we found out we were having a little girl :), we have painted her room pink and brown, and have collected many picture of her!

 November:

Manda's car started acting up, it would randomly decide not to start. So we decided, not to spend time and money trying to fix it, but rather, to buy a new car. We sold her 1998 Honda Civic to my cousin and bought a shiny new 2007 Honda Civic Hybrid to replace it! It is beautiful!

December:

The main thing of note in December was our T-Mobile fiasco, which you can read about in my last blog, but that is all fixed now so everything is wonderful, and today looks to be a great day as well, ending out the year on a positive note! :)

So this year has definitely been full of both joy and sorrow, but through it all we have come to see how God works in the good and the bad, and we have learned, on a much deeper level, what it means to trust in Him and lean not on our own understand. Faith is not always the easiest road, but it is always the best, and God is faithful to stand by our side through it all, love us through it all, and bless us immensely!

May God Bless You, and Have a Very Happy New Year!