gardens over graves

"You Can't Believe What You Don't"

2009-08-31T10:58:00.000-07:00

These are interesting thoughts on belief and unbelief. Is it true what he says that you can't believe what you don't? If so, this must inform how we talk about faith and our beliefs. Addressing even the hard issues of our faith seems to be a better approaching than sweeping them under the rug and hoping others don't notice. If we aren't addressing the hard issues, it is because we ourselves doubt on some level that the object of our faith can withstand the questioning. A genuine search for truth asks the hard questions, even after having found what he/she believes to be the source of that truth. If we ever stop asking the hard questions, we either prove ourselves lazy or afraid of being wrong and unwilling to change. We must look into the face of our own doubts, if we're ever going to honestly walk with others through theirs.

My Dream Church

2009-08-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

Jason McAnally
April, 08

My Dream Church

My dream church is a church that loves God and loves others better than themselves, a people who are passionate to know the heart of God and have the heart of God for others. This will be a church for real seekers, and prayer will be at the heart of this body. Twenty-four hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year people of this church will be actively pursuing God’s heart and being empowered by God to work towards the fulfillment of His mission in the world, as only God can empower us to complete His mission. Their food will be every word that proceeds from the Father’s mouth, so they seek to hear Him through His Word and by His Spirit.
The church will be missional, and the mission of this church will be the mission of God—to restore all of creation to right relationship with the Creator and Father of all things. This will be a church that values all people and all things and is able to see the image of God in all people and the hand of God at work in all of creation. This will be a people who are fervently seeking both personal and social holiness, a people who recognize the needs of others as being their own needs and are willing to sacrifice their own wellbeing for that of their friends. They believe that all they have and all they are are God’s, and so live graciously, giving generously from the recognition that God has withheld no good gift from them. They understand that they own nothing. Instead they are stewarding God’s own resources so that He can do with them as He pleases. And He is pleased. They give all they have to know God and make Him known while believing there is no cost in this way of living.
This world is not their home. They live with heaven always in mind, but not in such a way that is escapist or leads to a lack of involvement with things on earth. Instead, they are heaven-minded in such a way that is always seeking to bring heaven to earth. The kingdom of God is coming, and it is coming in the lives of this people and the people around them as they usher God’s salvation to their homes and schools and places of work. They serve as priests to those who need to meet God and prophets to those who need to hear from God. They are teachers to all who listen and watch. They are servants to all people in all situations. They fear God, but only God. Death has lost its sting in their lives, therefore they walk in boldness living and proclaiming in freedom and joy the unadulterated good news to all who have ears.
My dream church is a church where the poor, the homeless, those who have nothing material to offer, are considered honored guests and treated as such, a church who not only reaches out to the hurting, the addicted, the oppressed, the unwanted, even the hated but who also welcomes them to be a part of their body. In this church there is no male or female, black or white or Hispanic or Asian, no rich or poor but only people created in the image of God, sons and daughters of the Most High God. I want to be a part of a church where people are not just tolerated but are loved and accepted for who they are and strengthened and encouraged to be who they were created to be.
Discipleship is not a program but simply a word to describe this type of God-centered lifestyle. Mission is not a part of the activity of this body but the driving force behind all other activities. This mission is birthed out of worship, love for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit that inspires love for all people.
My dream church is a church full of laughter and hope, a place full of grace where people are allowed and even expected to take risks, including the risk of vulnerability with one other. This is a church that is united as one, even as God Himself is one, for this pleases God, and God’s pleasure is their greatest desire.
My role within this church would be to lead and to serve, to be the first to fast and the first to pray and the first to give. I will preach and teach and lead as God the Holy Spirit leads me, but I fully expect that God will also speak to and through other members in this body. I hope to be only the first among many who are also seeking God and His will and vision for this community of believers. This is my dream church.

Atheist Believes Africa Needs God

2009-01-01T22:11:00.000-08:00

Intriguing article at Times Online UK by an atheist who believes that the continent of Africa needs God. Click on the link and check it out.

Preaching

2008-02-06T08:20:00.000-08:00

I'm preaching Sunday at 10am at Lifebridge Church in Lexington, KY. That's all. Oh, and my parents are coming in town from Mississippi on Friday. I'm excited. Now, that's all.

www.lifebridgelex.com

a little off the mark

2008-02-01T06:12:00.000-08:00

Here's a little something I learned in my Exegesis of Revelation class. Hope you enjoy. The mark of the beast in Revelation is said to be put on either the forehead or the right hand. One's forehead is the place of perception. The right hand is the place of doing. In light of that, if one lives one's life with a world-view centered on anything but Jesus, or if one's actions are not centered on Jesus, that person has the mark of the beast. In fact, that is the mark of the beast.

If however, one's world-view and actions are centered on Christ, that person has the mark of God.

never heard that before.

If you're with PETA, this story is fiction

2007-10-25T17:19:00.000-07:00

So this story is a few weeks old now, but one I need to write down so I don't forget it. It all started about a month before when our good friend Liz borrowed our kitchen to make banana bread. She was so thankful for our hospitality that she "donated" a rotten banana to a hidden spot in our kitchen and waited for us to find it. Well, several weeks went by and all we found was a biblical plague of fruit flies, leading us to a black, soggy, maggot-y blob in the bottom of a white, insulated tea pitcher in the corner. When I found it, I was immediately disgusted with whichever roommate could have left the pitcher so disgusting before finding out that Liz was the responsible party.
Brett and I naturally began to discuss revenge, and catching one of the raccoons that terrorize our trash cans and putting it in Liz's room seemed to be the obvious solution. Of course, we can't even keep them out of our trash, so catching one seemed to be only a dream.
Well, two days later I heard my loud, unfashionable ringtone blaring across the weight room and ran to answer it, only to hear a frantic female on the other end asking me where I was and what I was doing. After telling her, she explained the reason for her unrest, describing a "wildlife problem" concerning a huge possum that had gotten stuck in hers and Maryann's trash can, and they didn't know what to do.
I told her I knew exactly what to do and called Brett. We ran home and got a plastic box.
That box was then filled with trash and a possum and a little cat food as a snack, and it was placed in a certain girl's dorm room with a banana and a note saying, "We spell payback P-O-S-S-U-M."
Yeah, that was fun.

AHOP

2007-10-06T17:31:00.000-07:00

Check out a portion of a story I wrote about my experiences with the Asbury House of Prayer here:

http://www.asburyhouseofprayer.net/

a long shot

2007-10-02T21:25:00.000-07:00

So Brett Cheek and I just emailed a guy named Andy about jobs with 24-7 Prayer in London (England, not Kentucky). Please pray for us about this (This is begging).

Thanks!

Jason

Holy Ground

2007-09-04T01:29:00.000-07:00

So the message I preached on Sunday took a turn on Saturday morning. I was doing some last minute prayer and preparation, and I felt like the Spirit had something to say. I was planning on talking about Moses and Exodus and wrapping up our 2-month series on listening to God. I wasn't ready for what He actually had to say.

Here's how it ended:

God is not silent. He is not even quiet. God is screaming through the cries of 30,000 children dying every day as a result of poverty. He is screaming through the voices of countless women and children in Thailand and India who are being forced into slavery and prostitution. God is crying out through the cries of the hopeless teenagers and men and women who are addicted to pornography, who are addicted to alcohol, who are addicted to drugs. God is crying through the voices of the 15% of Americans who suffer from severe depression. God is calling out through the desperate prayers of the lonely, of the rejected, of the sexually abused, and of the billions of people worldwide who have yet to find hope in Jesus Christ.

"God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives and God is with us if we are with them." -the prophet Bono

So the next time you encounter an overlooked homeless woman in Triangle Park or a forgotten Alzheimer's patient in the nursing home, it would be appropriate to take off your shoes, for in that moment you are on holy ground.

"And the Lord Said to Moses" and thoughts on leadership

2007-08-28T18:00:00.000-07:00

So I'm preaching at Lifebridge (www.lifebridgelex.com) on Sunday, and here is a foretaste of that. As I haven't posted in over a year, I don't have any expectations of people reading this and responding, but if you are reading and you do have thoughts, by all means comment.

The last sermon in a series our pastor and team of teachers has been doing on Listening to God, I am focusing on Moses as we find him in Exodus. Having read through Exodus several times in my many failed attempts to read through the whole Bible (at least I know Genesis and Exodus pretty well. I apparently haven't had the endurance to make it through Numbers), I noticed something. Out of all the things we praise Moses for doing--the plagues, the Exodus and the splitting of Red Sea, providing manna for the people in the desert--well, he didn't really do any of them. I mean, he couldn't really do any of them. I mean, they're kinda big. I can't even divide the waters in my bathtub (although I can't think of any good reason why I'd want to, but you know what I'm saying). I look back on the last (and only) 26 years of my life, and my resume looks a little thin compared to Moses'. I mean, he led more people out of slavery than Lincoln, and it wasn't like he "had what it takes" to me a leader. I mean, the guy's never led anything but sheep, and he says himself that he's "slow of speech" and everybody wants a leader who can give a good speech (although the US seems to be a current exception to this rule).

So what does he have? Definitely not confidence. Courage? Nope. A plan? Nadda. Drive? He's trying to pawn his calling off on his brother. I don't think so. He doesn't have much of anything that you'd want in a leader. God must not have been at Catalyst or Willow, b/c Moses doesn't really have any of the necessary ingredients to lead a little league team, much less the whole nation of Israel. I mean, Moses couldn't speak, but that's exactly what God was asking him to do to Pharaoh.

So again, what does he have? This is all I got--Within the span of just a few chapters in Exodus, you can find the phrase "And the Lord spoke to Moses..." more than 25 times. That seems significant. Either the writer of Exodus couldn't think of anything else to talk about, or he wanted the readers to see something... or, maybe that was just the most important thing to say about Moses. Moses didn't have skills or confidence or strategy or much of anything, but he did hear from the Lord...a lot.

So basically, Moses didn't have "the right skills for the job," but he did hear from the Lord, and he turned rivers into blood, a staff into a snake, led a heckuva lot of people out of slavery, divided a large body of water with previously mentioned staff. Hmm...maybe I should change the way I do ministry.

What's Your Theological Worldview?

2006-06-09T22:21:00.000-07:00

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists.

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

89%

Neo orthodox

82%

Emergent/Postmodern

71%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

43%

Roman Catholic

39%

Fundamentalist

32%

Reformed Evangelical

29%

Classical Liberal

29%

Modern Liberal

14%

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

Right and Wrong

2006-05-04T16:37:00.000-07:00

"Nobody said it was easy, but no one ever said it would be this hard."--from Coldplay's The Scientist.

Sometimes I think I should have read the fine print before signing on to follow Jesus. He's great and all, and we get along most of the time, but the problem is that when you love Jesus, you have to also love everybody He loves...and the list is long. And there are definitely people on the list that I don't even like.

There's this one guy who's particularly been a pain. I can tell you 10 good reasons why this person is a bad person. I can give you a long list as to why this person makes me angry just looking at him, and I can prove to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am right and justified in my feelings. The problem is that something inside me is telling me that I'm wrong. I don't think God heard my argument, b/c God would know that this feeling shouldn't be here. I mean, I really know I'm right. And I really know I'm pissed off. And the voice that is telling me that I'm wrong just pisses me off even more. I want to love Jesus, but why do I have to love His friends? Some of them are pretty selfish and just plain hypocritical. How does He love these people? Even more, how can He expect me to?

Whatever my personal thoughts on this, according to Jesus, even if he is wrong, if I don't love him like Christ loves me, I'm just as wrong. Gotta be honest, that's part of the gospel that I'm not a big fan of. At least not right now. I might like it more when I'm on the other side of the situation.

The Mark of The Christ

2006-03-01T15:54:00.000-08:00

The Mark of the Christ
Amidst all the talk of my sin and the imposition of the black, ash cross upon my forehead, I could barely hold in the tears. I wasn't really broken over my sin like I thought I should be. I kept trying to replay all the sins I had committed over the last few days, especially the bigger ones, so that I could make myself feel as bad as I thought I was supposed to. It just didn't work. Instead of wearing the cross like a sort of scarlett letter announcing my sin, for me, the cross on my forehead was a mark of Christ's love for me. As the Israelites marked their doorposts so that the angel of death would pass over their houses, the ash cross was, for me, a sign that I have been spared. God's mercy overwhelmed any feeling of guilt that I thought I should have been experiencing.
We see a different view of Jesus with each of the seasons of the Christian year. In epiphany, the season we have just left, I believe we climbed the mountain to see the heights of Christ's love, the Light of the World that has come down into darkness. In Lent, we climb down from that mountain into the valley to witness the depths of that same love. Today, Ash Wednesday, our foreheads are marked with the depths of Christ's love for us.

Progress and Recess

2006-02-24T07:20:00.000-08:00

27Jesus resumed talking to the people, but now tenderly. The Father has given me all these things to do and say. This is a unique Father-Son operation, coming out of Father and Son intimacies and knowledge. No one knows the Son the way the Father does, nor the Father the way the Son does. But I'm not keeping it to myself; I'm ready to go over it line by line with anyone willing to listen. 28"Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. 29Walk with me and work with me--watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. 30Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly." (Matthew 11 from The Message Translation)

It doesn't take long for my schedule to fill up. Occasionally I'll actually say no to something or give up the responsibility for something else, but I usually fill it with something else, some task, some job, some class. My life is filled with a lot of doing but not that much growing. I've bought into the lie that doing a lot is progress. Jesus' way is different. All the things the Father gave His Son to do and say came out of Father and Son intimacies and knowledge. Real fruitfulness is birthed in the same place as real rest--intimacy. Living with the Father and the Son is living freely and lightly. If I'm tired and worn out and burned out (and I am), it's because I'm not living in intimacy. It's because I've believed the pride of progress--that the more I do, the more important I am. My religion has been making good grades in seminary classes, as if Greek tests are tests of knowing God. They're not. I can make 99's on my midterms and ignore the voice of God. I've somehow convinced myself that I can please God by my hard work. We live in a culture that prizes independence. We even have a document that declares it. But God is not pleased with my independence. He wants to hear my Declaration of Dependence. He wants to go over His way line by line. He wants me to walk with Him and work with Him.
In the kingdom slowing down is better than speeding up. Listening is more important than doing. Recess is better than progress. The way of Jesus is the way of a son.

Upton on Ambition

2006-01-15T21:01:00.000-08:00

Why should we be ambitious? We're the children of God.
--Jason Upton

Us and Them

2006-01-04T22:41:00.000-08:00

This post is possibly going to be difficult for me to write because the ideas that I'm having haven't completely taken shape yet, but I think that I need to get them out, so maybe you can help me with them.
I was talking to a friend on the phone recently, and she asked me what I had eaten for dinner, and I told her "stir-fry" which is an Asian type of dish with meat and vegetables cooked in a frying pan and served with rice. She responded with a comment about it being an "ethnic" meal. Oddly enough, this comment took me a little off-guard because my family had eaten this meal dozens of times, and it ceased to be for us the food of a culture vastly different from our Southern U.S. culture and had become very much a part of our own menu. It is more common to eat stir fry in our house than it is to eat fried chicken.
I'm working at school on what is called an Intercultural Worship Task Force to try to represent the many cultures present in our community within our worship. While we have had some success in this feat, having incorporated music from India, Nigeria, and our Native American cultures, among others, I don't believe that we have yet adopted these different ways of worshipping Trinity as a community, though I do believe we have made strides in that direction. When groups from cultures not normally represented in chapel (anything non-white, non-North American) lead us, it still seems like "special music" or an event, rather than a normal part of our worship to God.
I think the problem is in the pronouns. We're still singing "their" songs when we need to be singing "our" songs. I hope to see the day when there is no "them", and there is only "us", not because the minority has accepted and conformed and been swallowed by the majority, but because I adopted my Indian friend Andrew's culture when I adopted him into my family, and he adopted my culture when he adopted me into his family. I hope that we will weaved together, not blended, as one, and their songs will become our songs as our songs have become their songs. The Gospel is this: we were Them's, and Christ became one of Them, so that we(They) could become one of Us.
As Christ and the Father were one, may we also be one.

Supermodels

2006-01-01T01:05:00.000-08:00

In his book Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller says that we sometimes have to see someone else love something before we ourselves are able to love that thing. Tonight I found myself among a group of teenagers in Florence, Alabama as we entered into the new year in worship. Had I not been overcome by a sense of wonder at the sight, I would have probably been a little embarrassed to be a worship intern at a seminary who was standing at the back of the building looking on as the teenagers danced and sang and bowed and raised hands. I watched as they taught me through their worship how to love Jesus. But for some reason, i wasn't embarrassed at all. Perhaps because when I am desperate to learn how to love, it doesn't really matter who teaches me or who leads me in worship.
After a few minutes of standing, I decided to sit, because a slow song came on and that's what you do during a slow song. That is unless, of course, you are at a high school dance (or any dance), and then, slow songs are the only times you (if you are me) actually walk to the dance floor and dance. As I sat on one of the many futons scattered across the room, I couldn't stop staring at the 10 ft. wooden cross that faced me. There was nothing particularly special about this cross, but it spoke of a mystery that I seemed to have forgotten. It probably should have been strange to watch followers of Jesus dance around the very symbol of his death, but it was in this symbol of death that those who danced around it (as well as those of us who just sat and stared) found life. In our Lord's greatest sorrow, we find our greatest joy. So I just stared and smiled, because it was in that cross that I was able to see Someone else love something in a way that inspired and empowered me to also love that thing.

Fundamentalist Scrabble

2005-12-24T08:14:00.000-08:00

Sitting in my navy-blue plastic chair leaning forward with elbows propped upon my pressed-wooden desk, I listened eagerly to my fifth grade teacher and watched as she spelled S...A...N...T...A. on the white marker board. (We were high tech. No chalk here.) All eyes were on her as she proceeded to scramble the letters to spell another word directly beneath the first--S...A...T...A...N. Satan. I don't remember anything else said that day in class, or really the whole year for that matter, but that display stuck with me.
In recent months I have received a lot of flack because of a statement I made that I did not plan on ever teaching my future children about the existence of Santa Claus. Yes, I think that my education in fifth grade on the subject was ridiculous. No, I do not think that Santa is equivalent to Satan. My reasons are much different. The main argument made to me regarding the subject was that teaching about Santa Claus would give my children a since of imagination that would be lacking without it. This is my maini point of disagreement.
I believe Christmas is a time to celebrate the greatest show of imagination the world has ever seen--God becoming man, or even more--God becoming infant. Reindeer, elves, snowmen, and a jolly old man delivering presents every year make for a pretty good story, but compared to the story of Jesus, I think it is like comparing The Davinci Code to The Odyssey or to the other great epics. It's not that I am opposed to Santa Claus; it's just that his story is a distraction, a big distraction, from The Story. The problem is that the great story has become common, and the story that is somewhat common is now seen as imaginative. I hear as many songs about jingle bells and winter wonderlands as I do about the wonder of God incarnate. Where is our imagination?
Perhaps you're just hearing the rantings of a guy who never got a single present from Santa, but perhaps there is a greater story than that of Santa Claus that needs to be told, that needs to be heard.