Chris Bishop

I have a huge stack of reading right now on my desk. I am reading one right now called “Unlearning Church”. I the first chapter Michael Slaughter is talking about what thing the church has as a “radical product”. He says that

revolutionary people are this product of the church.

Now this sounds great!! Especially as today is election day…woot. We are going to flex our voting muscles and have a voice. We are going to vote in a way that we think would be best for our faith, the country, the world and all of creation.

However, what happens when people don’t show up to the voting booth? Your views aren’t counted, or worse nothing happens. Even worse is that you can’t complain when things go your way because you didn’t vote.

Now turning back to Slaughter’s comment. What if the church just sits in the chairs, but doesn’t act upon the message. The church needs to be in the streets voicing, revitalizing and causing a revolution.

What are we doing to live our faith rather than just being culturally Christian?

What is Prayer?

Seems an easy enough question, but when we get down to it, “IT” becomes something that is harder to define than we would think.

On all saint’s weekend this is what our later looked like at church.  We lit candles as an act of living prayer for those we have lost in the past year.     We pray aloud for those who gave their lives in the military, and for leaders of the church.  We named aloud the names of saints in our lives.  We even have a pumpkin on the alter with the names of every family in our congregation as an act of prayer for the saints in our church family that are still here with us.

I have heard prayer referred to as “Holy Leisure”.  I have practiced silence, drawing, walking and even napping (it’s not as hard as you would think) as forms of prayer.

But I want to know how and what prayer is to you.

But is this this thing that we call prayer?  Why pray?  What does this mean?  How Do you pray?  What do you pray?  When do you pray?  How do you feel after you pray?

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On Sunday I met Katie and Eden for lunch at McDonald’s for a very fancy meal (oh yeah big spenders). We sat down, ate and watched people play with the giant slide puzzle (you can see a guy with camo on playing with it in the pic).

We had a delightful meal and then Katie went to a meeting and Eden and I finished our food, but not before something struck me.  Eden was eating only her bun with Ketchup on it. This is
not something that is very strange I guess but it got me thinking. Katie loves Ketchup sandwiches. I was mesmerized but the fact that Eden was chomping down on a Ketchup soaked piece of bread.

I had just read a passage from Deutoeronmy 6 the day before where the people of Israel are being told how to pass on their faith to the next generation. Here is what it says:

Read the rest of this entry »

I think that this is one of the best articles that i have read in a long time.  It is just a reminder of the importance of reading.  I think that i feel most in the groove and pleased with the ministry that i am doing when I am really attacking a couple of books when i am at home. 

When work seems to overwhelm me and my books take a back seat i feel less productive.  So I encourage you to pick up a book

Training in the Art of Reading | YouthMinistry.com

Most youth directors I have met are frustrated…

…frustrated that their churches seem stuck in “the way it’s always been done,”
…frustrated that the wheels of the church grind so slowly forward,
…frustrated about feeling stuck, powerless to bring about any real change.

But the few youth leaders I’ve met who know how to catalyze and navigate strategic change tend to have one odd quality in common: They are readers.

1 Corinthians 13 paraphrased for youth workers » JakeBouma.com

This is a great post from a a guy who knows a thing or two about youth ministry (or can fake it well ). I thought that ti was a fun post, and a passage that we should all read before every day to seek being made perfect in love.   

After a crazy couple of days of retreating it seems like some of the wildness has calmed down. Now we have Vacation bible school going on and that is a ton of fun too. There was all kinds of wild stuff that went on and a great deal of messiness as well.

Go to lifeforceyouth.com to check out the rest of the pics from the retreat.

I was really impressed to see that some of the students even made it to church on Sunday after the sleepless night…. Read the rest of this entry »

I found a copy of “The Live Bible” at borders the other day.  This is the new bible put out by Group that took a couple of years to compile because of all of the pictures, poems, thoughts, and art submitted by young people.  The pages of this Bible are littered with their work and it is really neat.  I am really enjoying it.  I preached from it last weekend at the Saturday service.  It is a New Living Translation, which seems accessible to most of my youth.

It is very neat.  I want to pass it around to some youth to get their take on it.  also i would love to do something like this for our ministry.  Having kids share their stuff throughout the year and then make like a photo book or something.  Sweetness…

This week at church we have a choir camp going on that is doing a play called “Are We there yet?” It chronicles the journey of moses from baby adrift in the river to the triumphant entry to the promise land.

As I read through the scrip so that i could do a little devo with the kids today I thought about the way that Moses was a really great pastor. I was reminded of the willingness he had to serve and go out on a limb for God.

Thought then filled my mind of what kind of youth worker Moses would have been. I think that it would be fun to do a series of posts about ministry learnings from Moses…like would Moses have had wii and PS3 in his ministry to draw kids in? Well he did have some show stopping performances (with God’s help) like the stick truing into a snake thing and others. Or how about one on dealing with unruly kids…Moses style. What to do when you turn your back for one second and the next thing you know you have a golden calf in the youth room?

I think that there is some potential there…

Come to worship this Saturday for the play and be inspired to add to possible posts.

I actually preached this one this time!!! (for the most part) Read the rest of this entry »