FYI - I've moved to http://clayburkle.blogspot.com/.

You can't win 'em all:  Nothing like a game of Jenga to blow off some mid-week steam.  That was my remedy tonight.  The cares of the world faded away as I focused on these tiny little blocks.  Every Jenga player knows that it takes patience, touch and the nerves of a brain surgeon to piece together a Jenga win.  But it all depends on your competition.  If your competitor is distracted or jittery, they are done.

Well tonight, I overpowered my jenga-mate 4-1.  Nothing short of a landslide...yah, I know.  But what do you expect when you play a first-timer.  I actually had to teach him the rules of the game, if you can believe that.  He is really inexperienced in pressure situations and seems to lack concentration at times.  What's wrong with this guy, you're thing.   Ok...I was playing my 2 year old son.  There I said it.  And yes he did win a match, it was the first game that we played.  I knew he was pretty good at building blocks, but I didn't think he had it in him to stick it to dear old dad in our first ever competition.  I'm not supposed to lose to him when I'm actually trying (and I was) for at least another 10 years, when I'm good and ready to realize that I'm over the hill.  But I'm still young and resilient, so I rolled off 4 consecutive wins (although he hung in there) before I changed his diaper and put him in bed.  Jenga anyone?

Where has all the curiosity gone?  I was recently listening to an interview with noted historian, John Lukacs.  He shared that sometime back in the 16th century the French word used to refer to historians was 'curior' or 'curious one.'  Thus, those who sought to know where they came from and how thought, art, politics and culture developed were driven for such an understanding by an insatiable curiosity about such things.

Which leads me to look in the mirror and ask...Where are the curious ones?  Where is such curiosity that would turn off a TV a read a classic book or bypass the local theme park and go on to the historic museum.  Has curiosity about people and places and religion and language...died?  Or is there a pent up curiosity still within us.  A muscle that has atrophied from too many late nights of Seinfeld and Saturdays of MTV & ESPN. 

Without such curiosity is possible to know God?  Isn't there a holy search that we embark upon, driven by a life-and-death type of curiosity to find answers to the big questions of life?  I a reminded of first commandment, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your MIND and with all your strength (Mark 12:30)."  Might our curiosities be released so that we learn to love God with our minds.  At the next commercial break maybe we should pick up a classic allegory.  After the next movie maybe we should sit down with a systematic theology.  At the next library maybe we should thumb through a good journal.  Here's for feeding your curiosity.

The invisible sin:  Today's post is probably mostly directed to guys, because its about pornography.  With the proliferation of low-cost cable TV and satellite dishes and the instant access to the Internet, pornography is readily available free-of-charge, within the privacy and comfort of your most private space.  And more often than not - men, boys and sometimes women open the door to this insidious and destructive world.  My fear is that it is the silent demon that many Christians wrestle with.  We must shed light on this dark closet of our lives so that through exposure we might find forgiveness from shame, power over the flesh, and redemption of our hearts and minds in the area of sex.

Someone who is doing something about this is www.xxxchurch.com.  They published these staggering "Porn Reality" stats:

• Number of pornographic web sites: 4.2 Million
• People who regularly visit Internet porn web sites daily: 40 million
• Christians who said pornography is a major problem in the home: 47%
• Breakdown of male/female visitors to pornography sites: 65% male - 35% female
• 30% of unsolicited e-mails contain pornographic materials
• Women, far more than men, are likely to act out their behaviors in real life, such as having multiple partners, casual sex, or affairs.
• Porn revenue is larger than the combined revenues of all professional football, baseball and basketball franchises.
• US porn revenue exceeds the combined revenues of ABC, CBS, and NBC at $6.2 billion.

Don't let this be the invisible sin.  It is real.  It happens in our homes, in our churches and in our families.  To those who are burdened by the heavy yoke of sexual addiction I offer an alternative.  "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30

A Place or a People?  My mind raced to that simple question after a short discussion with a friend at church last Sunday.  He was sharing with me how he was inviting co-workers to our church.  He shared that he described our church as a place where people do more than go to church on Sundays, but that we are involved in life.  I was pretty happy with his description.  And my thoughts fell back to that simple question of identity, are we a place or a people.  Recent history has answered that question for us and we have been formed in the midst of its answer.  But does its answer live and breathe with he rich vitality of the gospel.

My own thinking on the subject was fertilized by the collection of essays entitled "Missional Church."  Within its pages I discovered that during the Reformation the Reformers, in a desire to correct the wanderings of the church emphasized some "true marks" of the church.  In an attempt to realign the church with Scripture they suggested that the true church is a place where the gospel is rightly preached, the sacraments are rightly administered and church discipline is exercised.  And as the modern thought grew to embrace the autonomy of the individual and capitalism and consumerism rose to power in the west the church increasingly was viewed as "a place where certain things happened." 

But does a this "place where" language accurately represent the scriptural call to go and make disciples.  Now I am not suggesting that we sell off our church buildings, but maybe more how we think about our relationship to church and how we talk about our church.  Think about how we talk about our churches (Missional Church, p.58). ...you "go to church" much the same way you might go to a store.  You "attend" a church, the way you attend a school or theater.  You "belong to a church" as you would a service club with its programs and activities."  This language is often the way I speak of my church experience.  But it has created the experience of "church hopping" where we shop churches to find which one serves us the best array of clerical delicacies. 

But I'm increasingly finding this "place where" language devoid of the power that the gospel appears to bring in the writings of Paul and the acts of the apostles.  The apostles seem to be gathering "a people who" will die to themselves and live for Christ..."a people who" will submit to another as to the Lord..."a people who" will give of their plenty to meet the needs of others.  If our church is a place where certain things happen, then we might be missing the richness of alternative-community that the gospel can create when we are a people who are faithfully living out the gospel amongst one another. 

Are we consumers shopping for a place where they play the best music, deliver the best sermon and look and dress just like us?  Will we leave if the pastor says something we don't like or the elders make a decision we don't agree with?  Then we go down the road to find another place where they don't do that.