No One Greater

White Flag

Church Membership

Typical comments come from members of churches who have an unbiblical view of membership.

--“This is my church, so you have to play the music just the way I want it.”

--“Look pastor, you need to remember who pays your salary.”

--“If you don’t do this program, I’ll withhold my check to the church.”

--“I’ve been a member of this church for over thirty years, so I have a right to get what I want.”

--“I don’t pay good money to this church to listen to sermons that long.”

I Am A Church Member - p.10

The Myth of UnCreativity

There is a myth about creativity that it is all about genius and talent. Certainly, there is no smoke without fire, and some people do have a particular bent for it, but the reality is that we all have far more capability to be creative than we realize.

When we were children, we were more creative than our parents and teachers could handle. We thus learned not to be creative, and most of our lessons were structured and controlled, and the lessons were so effective for many of us, we were left with the belief that we were never creative and could never be creative.

The patterns of non-creativity often carry on as we grow older and we get stuck in habits and 'I am not creative' goes from being an excuse to a description the mental ruts into which we fall.

Learning to think

Just as we can learn to swim, so also can we learn to think. People such as Edward de Bono have put significant effort into teaching thinking as an acquired skill. Socrates did it many years ago. He would answer a question with another question, forcing his disciples, including Plato and Aristotle, to think for themselves.

A simple way you can do this is to buy puzzle books, especially those that include tricky and lateral thinking games. Crosswords are another mind-bender that can help you climb out of your rut. You can also vary the method – working on jigsaw puzzles, for example, helps your visualization.

Another variant is to sign up for a class where you will have to think outside your normal patterns of thought. If you are a scientist, take an arts class. If you are an artist, study philosophy. You can also do these in your spare time. Books cost pennies and contain gold dust and gems.

Learning by doing

The army uses a term: 'muscle memory'. When you go on a long march, your muscles seem to remember how to march a long way and months later a similar march is nowhere near as hard. The same is true with creativity. Once you have opened the gates and got stuck into some really hard creative work (it is a myth that it is all fun and easy).

Get engaged in any creative activity you can. Offer yourself as an out-of-the-box thinker for other people's brainstorming sessions. Paint, sculpt or take photographs. Climb mountains and shout from the hilltops.

Do things to break your own paradigms. Wear different clothes. Get a different haircut. Enter for creative competitions. Read things you wouldn't normally read. Step outside the box and push the boundaries to expand your comfort zone.

Practice, practice

The secret is to keep on going with as many different things as your brain can take. Go on different holidays. Take up different hobbies. Drive to work by different routes.

Build yourself a regular schedule of practicing creativity. Just like going to the gym, spend quality time in practice. Plan the activities and exercises you will do, as well as the ways you will use it to enhance your life.

Many people have found simple, but valuable ideas that they have turned into profitable businesses. Do you think you could not do that? What is stopping you?

Keep generating ideas. Look around you for problems to solve. There are many opportunities all around you, right now. Look at the issues you and others are facing. Look at the little difficulties, from unscrewing a tight lid in the kitchen to lifting heavy items out of the car.

Practice may not make perfect, but it will make you a whole lot better at creativity.

T

“Inter caecos regnat strabo”
Among blind people the squinting one rules.

*

A man may be theologically knowing but spiritually ignorant. - Stephen Charnock

Free e-Book: C.S. Lewis - A Profile in Faith | C.S. Lewis Institute

Free e-Book: C.S. Lewis - A Profile in Faith | C.S. Lewis Institute

Forgiveness

"3 Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye."
Matthew 7:3-5

"14 For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, 15 but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses."
Matthew 6:14-15

These are possibly the most forgotten words from Jesus among believers today. Comparing ourselves to others, and pointing out their shortcomings usually stems from our inability to understand the grace we have received from God. If we cannot extend grace, it could be evidence that we might have never received grace. Each must examine their own heart.

Kevin Jackson and Josie Cade with Tyler Edwards

Cultural Transformation - Tim Keller

Publish Post

Give Me Faith

To Be, or Not To Be

To be a Christian means to be counter-cultural, to stand out from the crowd, to not conform to the world around us. To be outside the “norm” is often frowned upon. As a matter of fact, most people will do almost anything to fit in. Remember Milgram’s experiment? Sometimes it is easy to see when someone is trying to conform, and sometimes it is not.

There is a felt need to conform. It manifests itself in many forms, and is usually a result of a person’s desire to get along with others. People want to be accepted, and conformity is usually the quickest route. The Bible teaches that we are all descendants of Adam and Eve. It does not matter in the context of this paper whether we believe they were real people or representations in Hebrew poetry. Although I do believe in the more literal version, for this discussion they are an image that helps us to understand the origins of why people conform. If we are all inter-related as the Bible teaches, then the desire to go along in order to be accepted is an action based in our need to belong. Belonging also fulfills our need for consistency of behavior by saying, in essence, we are following the same rules as everyone else, and we are not a threat to the group. When we conform we help others by being more predictable in our behavior. Usually the overall outcome of conformity is an increase in our self-esteem because by conforming we have been accepted, and therefore we feel better about ourselves. In church this can become a mind numbing experience. I have seen members who take conformity to a dangerous level.

When members of the group (those who have conformed) obtain their identity from the group it becomes easy to overlook their own shortcomings. They find their self-worth from within the group, and with so much good going on with the group they will often relax their own standards and obtain a faulty self-image by live vicariously though others. The social impact theory tells us that people obtaining a faulty self-image, and making decisions they would not normally make is increased greatly with church size. The more people the more sheep-like they become. How important the group is to them only makes decision making worse, and a sense of belonging in a religious community is a strong motivator of behavior. However, there is a more insidious element to conforming to the extreme.

Group-think is probably the most dangerous trend we face as Christians, the church, and a nation. When conformity leads to a style of thinking where the maintenance of the group’s cohesion becomes the highest priority, dangerous thinking will usually result. Conformity that leads to unanimity as an overriding principle and motivation that acts as a filter through which everything the group does is passed thru can lead to disastrous outcomes. This is why we often see people from the church, and the political world, acting as if they are invincible, rationalizing what they do, believe they are correct in the face of facts to contrary, get upset when others point out their errors, and pressure others to conform to their beliefs. Over-conformists tend to be dogmatic (past convictions to insanity); they justify irrational behaviors, see themselves as morally superior to others, and will stereotype or vilify outsiders. Most of the time over conformity stems from pluralistic ignorance. That is when people adopt the norms of others even when they run in opposition to their own beliefs. For the sake of remaining within the allotted space, remember that to be a Christian does not mean we have to check our brains at the door. We are to love God with our heart, soul, and mind.

"It is not death that a man should fear, he should fear never beginning to live."

Marcus Aurelius

Awake My Soul

AT YOUR NAME

With my son on acoustic guitar and my daughter on vocals!!! Their proud dad on bass guitar.

Fire on the Stage!

You Gotta Watch This!!!!