Tag Archives: changing mindsets

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Gearing Up for God?

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Categories: changing mindsets, Tags: , ,

I always get just a little bit amused when I check my Facebook on Sunday mornings. So many of my friends who are believers (no offense to them whatsoever–I hold them in the highest respect) put out these little updates about getting ready for church gatherings. They range from the understated (ex., “Getting ready for church”) to the uber-caffeinated (“Hey everyone! Let’s all get ready for CHUURCCHH!”). One common thread goes something like this: “Getting my worship on.” Or “Let’s get our praise on this morning!”

I guess my first impulse (though I never act on it) is to ask: “What was your praise doing ‘off” in the first place?” 🙂

This is a preview of Gearing Up for God?. Read the full post (1159 words, estimated 4:38 mins reading time)

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Why Religion Disgusts Me

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Categories: Rantings, Tags: , ,

The title of this blog, not to mention the nearly four years’ worth of posts within it, should make this clear: I despise religion.

Please understand when I say this that before I go pointing fingers at anyone, I realize that four other fingers are pointing back at me. Before I go on this rant (if that’s what it ends up being), I want to make it clear that I’m not coming from the standpoint of someone who is totally free of religion, passing judgment on those who are not. There are very few Christians who do not have some sort of religion embedded in them, and with all my personal struggles to be free of it, I still see remnants of it in myself on occasion. I see religion as a sort of disease that afflicts us all, one in which healing is mainly gradual, as layers of it are removed from our minds. At least, that’s how it’s been for me.

This is a preview of Why Religion Disgusts Me. Read the full post (1177 words, estimated 4:42 mins reading time)

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Distorted Images of God part 5: Wrap-Up

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Categories: food for thought, Tags: ,

Part 1 here.
Part 2 here.
Part 3 here.
Part 4 here.

This series of posts has been about the numerous ways our mental picture of God commonly gets distorted–how we see Him differently than who He is. I’d like to wrap up with a few closing thoughts, including some reflections on how I think God would actually like us to see Him.

This is a preview of Distorted Images of God part 5: Wrap-Up. Read the full post (1185 words, estimated 4:44 mins reading time)

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Distorted Images of God part 4: God the Sugar-Daddy

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Categories: changing mindsets, Tags: , ,

Part 1 here.
Part 2 here.
Part 3 here.

I’m probably going to wrap this series up within the next couple of weeks, because I think we’re probably getting the idea behind it–which is that we all have some measure of distortion in our mental pictures of God, which often gives us the wrong idea about Him. But before we wrap it up, I want to tackle at least one more of the common ways we distort the image of God. I call this one “God the Sugar-Daddy.”

Need I continue?

This is a preview of Distorted Images of God part 4: God the Sugar-Daddy. Read the full post (1119 words, estimated 4:29 mins reading time)

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The Confrontational Gospel?

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Categories: changing mindsets, food for thought, religion, Tags: ,

Maybe I’ve blogged about this in one of the many earlier posts, but since I’m thinking about it this morning, I’ll just launch out and talk about it anyway.

When I was pastoring a house church in Tulsa, there was one pastor in town whom I knew briefly and tried to be friends with–but the truth was, we totally butted heads, from the first day we met. We were at someone’s house for a dinner party, and while chatting within the group, I related a story of how I’d recently seen one guy “witnessing” to another outside a Tulsa restaurant. The person doing the “witnessing” was quite literally thumping a Bible, talking very vehemently to the other guy with pointing fingers and everything.  I said nothing at the time, but at the dinner party I mentioned how I wished I could have gone to the victim (’cause that’s what he looked like) to apologize on behalf of my brother for improperly representing Christ to him.

This is a preview of The Confrontational Gospel?. Read the full post (1361 words, estimated 5:27 mins reading time)

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What Does Mission Really Look Like? (part 3)

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Categories: changing mindsets, love, missional, Tags: , , , , ,

Okay, so here’s the first post….

Aaaand the second one….

I closed out the previous post with a question: How can each of us make the transition into what I call “agenda-free” mission? Once we recognize how much unnecessary (and often damaging) baggage we have attached to mission by our institutional thinking, how do we change our thinking to participate in the mission of Christ in a more organic way, without worrying about what we might have to gain from it?

This is a preview of What Does Mission Really Look Like? (part 3). Read the full post (909 words, estimated 3:38 mins reading time)