who you know

Here's a cool study on the "Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon." Technology says it's actually seven.

please pray

Please pray for our friend Emily, whose brother Alan has just passed away unexpectedly after being hospitalized for the past number of days. Pray for Emily and the family, including Alan's wife Tiffany and their young 1-year-old son Anderson.

this day

Today I met with a former CEO of a large company, who is now a multimillionaire.

Today I met with a mentally handicap man who vacuumed up sawdust in our basement for a bottle of root beer. In seventeen years wandering the streets, it was the third time someone accepted his offer to do work to occupy his time. It was probably the eighteenth time he asked me in three months.

Tonight I took a bike ride through the woods; it was better than good.

Tonight I watched Green Street Hooligans, and witnessed a chain reaction of violence erupt over the game of futbol.

Tonight I ate grapes and drank wine; wondering how one thing leads to another.

church

Yesterday I went to the beach, one of my favorite places on earth.

There I continued to read The Shack, a novel that is equally disturbing and thought-provoking. There, on the beach, a family with a bunch of teenagers plopped down in the sand next to us. Soon, the family's middle aged friend pulled up a chair and began telling the parents about the church service they had exchanged for Lake Michigan.

"[The pastor] really nailed it," he started, telling them the precise Scripture verses the pastor had covered. "The first sermon was 23 minutes, and the second was 26 minutes."

All these numbers, I thought, triggering memories of the church I grew up in, where the ushers would stand in the back counting heads.

"We had 78 people at the first service, and 118 at..." He went onto critique the brass section, telling his listeners how "on fire" the organ player was, and on-and-on about details.

Yes, forgive me for being judgmental, but when we reduce God and spirituality to meet the expectations of the institution of our own making, we lose. When...

...church is only an hour on Sunday;

...the Holy Spirit only moves on Sunday morning, precisely between 11:21 a.m. and noon;

...worship is restricted to: organs, guitars, electric guitars, pianos, drums, acapella, hymns, old spirituals, contemporary music, etc.

We lose. Others lose. The world loses.

We become spiritual cannibals.

We miss the big picture.

And oftentimes, we don't even try to find it again.

Then, last night, at our postmodern, hip church, we made fun of the exact things I'd overheard the religious man talking about on the beach. We've been having discussions on core values of the church and what it looks like to live out our faith in our city, world, etc., and last night's discussion centered on evangelism: the speakers conjured up memories of tracks, lunatics with hellfire signs at massive public events, door knocking, the Roman's Road, etc.

What's funny is that even at our hip church, they're supposed to report how many people have been "saved" during the past month. (For the record, the pastor replies, "I don't know.")

These discussions have been trademarked with civilized, po-mo heat, and last night I added a counterpoint to something I thought was sketchy, and was ultimately rebutted by a mystical quote and referencing the Scripture verse I'd paraphrased.

I shook my head and whispered under my breath and thought of the Scripture and how right I was and how dangerous the statement had been to a room full of young impressionable people.

And then I realized I don't know who was right, or if we really disagreed at all, or if the issue at hand was situational, or if there's a hard line to follow. There's great pride in all of us.

All around us we see all these various expressions of following Christ, and we must submit to the blend of Spirit and Truth, of seeing some things clearly and others dimly through a mirror.

But when we levitate to one extreme or the other, in this case, the fruit has been indifference or cynicism. The older generation has created a comfortable system to fit God into, which has in turn caused great cynicism to seep into the bones of those who endured the institution.

But now, there's a real danger in my own life and my generation, of never moving past cynicism, of losing hope, of becoming too hip or cool or postmodern to stand for anything out of fear of offending or losing credibility or respect or getting tagged with religious stereotypes.

Last night, the verse in question was I Peter 3:15-16:

“But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ may be ashamed of their slander.” (I Peter 3:15-16)

What we've been given is Good, so Good, that no matter what "methods" we choose or feel are appropriate, that we learn to live and act as those who have been brought from death to life. And the mysterious, beautiful Triune God who has taken us from death to life, can certainly snatch us from the depths of our indifference and cynicism.

tough times

The last few emails and phone calls I've received from Zim have a common thread of discouragement, which is abnormal. I have permission to post this email from a friend, and ask for prayers for our people there.

I walk for long distances because transport costs are over head, I now survive on a single meal because it has become very expensive to feed oneself, I have to contend with not having because this is Zimbabwe, we are now the laughing stock of the world despised by our neighbors. Zimbabwe has become synonymous to poverty, corruption and a lot of negative things.

Yet in all this I ask where my God is and how long it will take Him before he moves in our defense? I wait and long for that day (before we die) when Gods prophetic word on Zimbabwe will come to pass. I wait for the time when God will repay for the hopeless and defenseless poor citizens of my beloved country. I wait for the days and years when Zimbabwe will be a great nation in the things of Gods, economy, peace and harmony.

Yet till that time comes I go through each day with a heavy heart and longing to go to some country somewhere where I can enjoy even the sunset.

I don’t know what God is saying through this situation because it feels like hell. My friends once told me that it is better the world ends now and go to heaven than experience this hell.

Thanks for your prayer, they give us strength as we are burdened by the life we are going through.

save us from ourselves (a song)

“Give your food to the poor,” she says
As she takes another bite
“Give your money to the LORD,” she says
As she lays another brick

LORD, come quick
To save us from ourselves
Holy Spirit
Change us from the inside out

“Lean not on your feeble minds,” she says
“Just sign here on the doctrine line”
“He came to bring a sword,” she says
“I’ve heard of peace, but it’s time for war”

LORD, come quick
To save us from ourselves
Holy Spirit
Change us from the inside out

We bring words to these offerings
While our lips move, our bodies stand still
“We’ll hide out here til’ the levee breaks
When mountains move and Heaven shakes”

LORD, come quick
To save us from ourselves
Holy Spirit
Change us from the inside out

polarity

Tonight was polarizing.

By accident, I found myself at the party of the merger of a couple innovative companies to form this one. There, blocks from our studio, was a gathering of influential people (many of them in film and media) celebrating a new adventure.

And there, my soul was fed.

The words/feelings/senses trapped in my guts came out, through others’ voices and stories. There I talked to an artist who had already accomplished the task of painting the entire book of Revelation, and was now hard at work studying and sketching Acts. She told bits of her story of coming to Jesus at 21 in the mountains of Switzerland after living with drug dealers in the States, then eventually returning to help found a popular social justice magazine.

There I met a kindred spirit who was a missionary kid in Spain, went to a high-brow college in the U.S. to study something like sounded like rocket science, but ended up with a job placed in his lap that turned him into a writer and director now planning on going to Africa for his first feature film next year.

It was there where affirming words were spoken, Spirit-fed, yet delivered by humans.

Just an hour before, on entering the side door of our studio, a seemingly homeless man perched near our doorway asks for 65 cents. “What do you need it for?” I ask.

“Cigarettes.”

“I don’t really want you buying cigarettes,” I say. “There not good for you.” It’s humorous to entertain the thought that Mr. Cigarette cares what a seemingly “rich” young man thinks.

“Hey man, I didn’t want to lie to you,” he responds. "But I actually need more than that, but I didn't want to ask." I ask him what he needs. "Two dollars," he says.

I reason that honesty counts for something and he’s going to smoke anyways, so I go inside, grab a few bucks, hand it to him and suggest he purchase some food. By this time, another man had gathered, the two going back twenty years or more.

The conversation steers toward the purple bruises spread on the left side of Mr. Cigarette’s face, who is white, mixed with biting commentary from the man I’ll now refer to as #2, who is black.

“They all came after me, they were kicking me in the face,” Mr. Cigarette says, starting to lift up his shirt as a gesture to show the wounds. “But I took one of them,” referring to the beating.

He continues, “Now, I don’t mean to offend anyone,” Mr. Cigarette says, looking at myself and #2, “but three [n-word]…”

“Hey man, don’t say that word,” I say. “That’s not cool.”

#2 echoes my request is less graceful language.

Mr. Cigarette tries to defend his word choice, but the offense has negatively affected his audience.

“Give me a sip of that,” #2 says, as Mr. Cigarette reveals a bottle of 5 O’Clock Vodka hidden underneath his coat.

“This is why he gets his a** kicked,” #2 says. “I’ll teach him a lesson.”

Next, #2 takes a drink, walks to the side of the street, and dumps the vodka onto the red brick road, while Mr. Cigarette watches like a child locked in his baby seat.

“F___ you, man,” is the first line of explicit remarks from Mr. Cigarette. “That’s my booze. F___ you, man. You're not my friend.” I heard Oscar Wilde said something about true friends stabbing us in the front.

“Will you properly of this?” #2 says to me, trying to hand me the bottle.

I decline and weakly try to mediate on some level, but I don’t remember what I said. Talk about awkward. Doing my best to downplay the situation and make peace between the agitated parties, I turn and head toward my office. When I look back, #2 is nearly a block away, yelling that it was good to meet me, Mr. Cigarette sits in a heap stewing over lost booze.

The point of all this isn’t to tell you I gave money to a bum that was probably immediately spent on booze after I left, or that somehow I ended up at a party with important people, to make you think I’m important.

The point, to sound completely like your Bible Camp counselor at a bonfire, is that Jesus really makes a difference. Really. In the confrontation on the street, the spirit present was not that of peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness or self-control, but a spirit of hatred, jealously, judgment, envy and drunkenness.

However, the Spirit of God, so present at the party, has taken what was broken inside all of us at one time, healed us, renewed our minds, and equipped us to take whatever is noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent and praiseworthy, to give a busted world a glimpse and invitation toward beauty.

As Paul suggests in Ephesians 4, “Think about such things.”

the multimedia men

Rapid Growth wrote an in-depth feature, "The Multimedia Men," on our downtown studio, Zimbabwe, and our hopes for the future. Please sign up for our e-newsletter updates at the bottom of our home page if you're interested.

summer to winter (a song)

Heard the summer out calling
Singing, “Winter, come in”
While my eyes keep on falling
Asleep at the wheel

And I’m sick of rejection
So tired of projections
That keep falling short
Leaving my imperfections

And my legs have grown tired
Of walking on a wire
So I reach out to You
A sinking man with the blues

Singing, “Come quick to save me
Cause I’ve fallen in too deep
Need Your oceans of mercy
Cause You promised not to leave”

the world's unhappinest nation?

The BBC reported on a study that found Zimbabwe to be the world's least happy country, while Denmark is the happiest. (The U.S. is #16.)

Zimbabwe, which is gripped by hyperinflation, and has recently seen a controversial presidential election marred by violence, was found to be the least happy nation amongst the countries covered by the survey.

I met a retired, gray-haired, thick-glasses mathematician from Denmark on the flight from Ecuador to Miami in January. He was wildly scribbling away in his notebook, dissecting a complex math problem, while I sketched a story and poetry about who I thought the man was sitting next to me.

Following our writing exercises, we spoke for nearly the entire flight, separating fact from fiction and exchanging email addresses.

Erek is agnostic, pushed away from God following the atrocities of WWII, a common story of many Europeans. He also struggles with the co-habitation of science and spirituality, a spiritual barrier to many highly-educated intellectuals with technically brilliant minds.

However, he was very interested in the story of the Waodani, of murder and forgiveness and restoration, told best through the book I was reading, Through Gates of Splendor. We've since exchanged numerous emails, mainly about the situation in Zim and world policies, issues where he is far more educated than myself.

To tangent, the BBC's study doesn't link money to happiness. Instead, it's "freedom."

"Personal freedom is even more important, and it's freedom in all kinds of ways. Political freedom, like with democracy and freedom of choice."

The study also found that the countries at the bottom of the list all struggle with widespread poverty or authoritarian governments.

It's interesting to note what Jesus said and did about both issues, combating poverty and human authority. But surprisingly, a common thread of the Zimbabweans I know, is that despite the heavy yoke (slavery) the authorities attempt to place on them, they are "free."

"If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed." -Jesus, John 8:36

moving on

We're moving on Saturday, July 5.

Our new place is only 1.2 miles away.

And we'll have a moving truck.

Shout at me if you're interested.

zim at the polls

Zimbabwe is "voting" today.

In a video clip on the BBC, Robert Mugabe, Zim's dictator and sole presidential candidate, talks to journalists after casting his ballot. A reporter asks, "How are you feeling today...?"

"Very fit. Very fit. Very optimistic. Upbeat. And hungry."

Hungry?

Hungry!?

Hungry!!!

This is one of the most backwards statements in history.

A dictator who oppresses his own people in every area of their lives, leaving (not leading) a starving nation to fend for themselves, while he sits in a comfortable castle awaiting death, daily becoming one of the richest people on the continent, casts his vote for his own rigged election, itself fueled by violence and murder and deception, and essentially shouts to the world, "I'm hungry."

Hungry for what?

Hungry for more.

More food.

More money.

More power.

More violence.

More castles.

More mirrors.

More of everything, for him, and anyone else willing to put the deaf-and-blind comfort of a few above the cries and suffering of the multitude.

But it's simply more evil.

And we must pray against evil, even "overcome evil with good." (Romans 12:21) And at times, it seems impossible, futile. "But everything is possible for him who believes," Jesus says in Mark 9:23.

The crafty look on Bob's face in the interview reminds me of the story of The Rich Man and Lazarus from Luke 16:19-31, where the rich man looks past Lazarus, a beggar outside his kingdom who longed to "eat what fell from the rich man's table."

They both die, the rich man parked in Hell, Lazarus in Heaven. From Hell, the rich man catches a vision of Lazarus, and says:

"Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire."

Abraham replies that it would be impossible to pass from one state to the next, inferring that turning off the cries of this earth, with its temporary self-indulgence, will reap eternal consequences.