My Calling

I was reviewing some of my old notebooks and journals this morning. I have some notes from a worship conference that LGT held for the choir in October 2000, when Heather Thirsk was leading the choir. We had a weekend convention at Circle 'R' Ranch. John Stevenson was the guest speaker for the weekend.

He had a teaching from Ezekiel 44. John said that it was a word from God to him, and I added a note to say that it was a word to me as well. "To the degree that you are willing to discipline your life, it's to that same degree that I will fulfill what I have shown you."

Ezekiel 44:11 "If we're not prepared as the 'priest' when we lead worship in church, God will refuse us leading others closer to Him."

"Act as if it's all up to you, pray as if it's all up to God." Tom Timmerman, Sunday Sermon, September 2001.

Movies and Baseball

I assume that Star Wars lovers are already aware that the first official review of the upcoming Revenge of the Sith movie just hit the internet. Aint It Cool News has this article that links to the full review. It's full of spoilers and gushing fan praise about the dark violence and how this is the Star Wars movie everyone always wanted.

Every year George Lucas hosts a kind of training session for movie directors in an effort to get them to convert to digital filming. This year the guests included many famous faces, one of them being Kevin Smith, the guy that wrote this review. Kevin Smith is a fairly famous film maker and comic writer, though none of my family members knew who he was when I mentioned him.

In unrelated news, I joined the slow pitch baseball team at my church and we had an information session this past Tuesday. The baseball league is called the Samson League. Is that the same one that you guys are in? I assume that you're on the New Life team, Joel. Titus, what was the name of your church again? I think that I will be on the GTA C team.

Also, how much is it going to cost you guys to play? None of our announcements mentioned anything about a fee and I only heard about it during the information session this past week. Apparently it's going to cost me between $25 and $50 to play. In any case, I'm apparently on the third string team for my church so I can't offer any trash talk about beating you guys. It will be fun to play against you both, anyway.

Who Needs Church?

This article on Church Marketing Sucks refers to a reportedly growing trend of Christians that quit church because they don't like it for various reasons. I thought that I was referring to a few exceptions when I wrote about the same thing here but it may be more widespread than I had assumed.

Another blogger that I read recently referred to the book In the Ruins of the Church by R.R. Reno. The idea is that the Christian church, as an institution, is in ruins but that we need to remain part of the church to build it up instead of leaving it. (Disclaimer: I haven't read the book.)

I'm not one to defend the church's short comings. It's not like they're unknown issues. All you have to do is hang out with pastors for a while and you'll eventually have a conversation about the difficulties in the church and what can be done about them. My preferred m.o. is to acknowledge that there might be specific issues while challenging ourselves on what can be done about them.

The real test is not in finding problems, it's whether we do something about it ourselves. If we say that the church isn't evangelistic enough, then how many people have we personally brought to Christ? If we say that the church needs to disciple new Christians more, how many new Christians do we disciple? If we say that the church doesn't care about our community, how do we care about our community in practical ways? The list of criticisms can be quite long.

(There's another article on Church Marketing Sucks that talks about one church's approach to people sitting idly. A lot of people respond well when faced with a challenge to get involved rather than be an observer or a bystander that criticizes. That's what my recent posts about SHAPE are focused on as well.)

This test is even more stringent than that, though. We can control what we do but it's much more difficult to inspire and lead others in the same way. Pastors and church members aren't walking alone, we're walking with others and leading others. It's not just a matter of fixing the problem that we see, we also have to implement our solution with the help of others.

The guess I can summarize all of the above with the cliche that "words are cheap." But then, all I have offered here are words so how cheap is this? I'm basically offering criticism about criticism and that's quite the endless loop. I don't want to walk in circles and so I will try to move forward in action, trying to work with others to accomplish God's calling on our lives and on the church.

Odds and Ends

I went to Toronto this past Saturday to watch the Blue Jays play against the Orioles. It was a disappointing game since the Orioles lead-off hitter immediately hit a home run and the Jays failed to do anything with the opportunities that they had. It was all the more disappointing because the two teams played again today (Sunday) and Sammy Sosa hit two home runs, so we didn't even get to see those as he chases fifth place of the all-time home run list.

The whole trip was nicely nostalgic, though. My dad used to take my brother, my sister and me to Jays games once or twice every year when we were growing up. Ah, the memories.

As I mentioned previously, there are a couple of new SHAPE tests that can be taken. I recommend the third one since it deals with the "Five Languages of Love," which is something I like to keep in mind. Based on the responses to the previous tests, I do not vouch for the accuracy or quality of these tests. Heh.

My Photos

I have created a new photo website for myself. My mom spent months gradually digitizing all of the family photos that we have compiled over the past few decades so I had more than one thousand photos from which to choose. It took me about two days to compile and upload the various pictures but I think that it was worth it. Fun fun!

Here's my site: http://groups.msn.com/jagrant

In The News

Holy Pope, Batman! Yes, they elected a new pope yesterday after only two days of deliberation. (And after only three voting sessions?) He's a 78 year old guy from Germany who takes his orthodoxy seriously. From what I read, people consider him to be a safe transitional choice for pope, especially given his age. After he's gone, it's conceivable that the next pope will be more progressive in his approach, although progressive is a relative term in this case.

Recently, Jevant commented on a message that he saw on a church sign in town. "To All Our Roman Catholic Friends, Our Prayers Are With You." He thought that it was a nice gesture but he disliked the emphasis on the differences between the churches. While I would suggest that not commenting on the papal leadership would be a false unity, I think that anyone would prefer that message to this one. Check out that link, it's just a tad absurd.

And finally, I have a comment about recent Canadian politics. Shocking, I know. While our minority federal government will apparently fall apart like a bitter house of cards soon, I thought that one tactic was amusing. Previously, the opposition was given one day a week to present their own agendas. This Opposition Day would cycle around, giving each of the opposing parties one day each in a regular schedule. The Conservatives tabled a motion on April 18 to let the opposition scheduled their own days. That was seen as a direct move to set an Opposition Day with the specific idea of forcing an election and it was flatly rejected, as expected.

The thing is, this article describes how the Liberals then came in just before the end of the day on April 18 to cancel the Opposition Day that was scheduled for April 19 for the Conservatives. So this was a small part of the greater strategy with both sides trying to wrest control of the day that this government breaks down. I thought it was funny that Liberals and Conservatives both tried to usurp Opposition Days for their own ends.

To clarify what's going to happen, the Liberals have to provide six more Opposition Days before the end of the term. It's not written in stone that these have to be once a week but what can they do, bank the Opposition Days until the final week? 'S funny.

Leadership (Part II)

"You cannot be an effective leader until you properly understand the fifth commandment."
David Grant (Part I)

As the comments in the previous post said, there may be multiple ideas to explain in this statement. As easy as it is to explain what's wrong with this statement, the challenge is to explain what's right about it. It's not my quote but I'll give it a shot.

Our character, values and mehods as leaders often has a lot to do with our relationship with our parents. Honour your mother and father, Exodus 20:12. That seems pretty Freudian, of course.

As one example: Perhaps our father was demanding, judgemental and angry. In return, we become judgemental and angry about his judgement and anger, denouncing his actions and perhaps him as a person. Anytime we come across another person that seems judgemental and angry, we immediately recognize these traits and we refuse to take that kind of thing because we've seen it before. If we take on leadership roles, you might just see this attitude kick in as we work with those under our authority.

Yessir, it's the age-old adage: If we curse and say that we will never become like our parents, then guess who we become?

More than that, our parents are key to how we view authority in our lives. The lessons that we learn from their leadership to us are taken and applied as become leaders ourselves. How we encourage others, how we make decisions for a group, how we deal with problems, how we punish when needed, how we apply authority for menial tasks - it all comes into play.

If we refused to obey our parents because of character flaws that they had, regardless of whether the flaws were real or imagined, what will we do when we come under the authority of another flawed person? Since it's guaranteed that our next authority figure will be flawed, since the none of us ain't perfect, we tend to see the patterns repeat. How we reacted to our parents kicks in again as we react to a pastor or a boss at work. Yes, there is less baggage so it's easier to submit and get along but when the crisis point hits, what do we do?

A tough part about being a kid is to obey our parents when they're wrong and to have a good attitude while we do it. Sometimes we learn later that they were smarter than we thought and sometimes we are proven correct. When it comes time to submit to another authority figure, what do we do in that same situation? And when we're the leader, what do we expect others to do?

See, our parents are our model of authority. If one parent had the last word on everything and ran our house like a totalitarian regime, we're hopefully smart enough to see the problems. So when we become leaders, we vow to be better leaders - but we still approach it thinking that one person is solely in charge. We may become kinder and gentler rulers, but we still become rulers. Our parents modeled that for us.

Conversely, if our parents worked together and explained their decisions to us, if they considered our opinions, if they gave us freedom to make decisions then we approach our own leadership roles in a similar fashion. That's not to say that either approach is the ideal one, it's to say that either approach defines our view of authority.

How should a leader act? How should a leader work with others? What should we do under a bad leader or after a bad decision? What defines a person as a leader? How do view authority, even God himself? Our parents are our first and most important authority figures and that plays a large role in shaping us as leaders.

Leadership

"You cannot be an effective leader until you properly understand the fifth commandment." David Grant

Programming Articles

At work, I spend my time coding in two different programming laguages: java and dBase. The development community for dBase has a free online magazine named the dBulletin. I've written a couple of articles for this magazine before and the latest issue of this magazine had another one of my articles. I don't pretend that these articles will be of much interest to non-programmers but take a look at 'em briefly if you would like. The intros may be worthwhile, if nothing else.

Most Recent Article: XML and dBase (Link)
Previous Article: SQL Server and BDE Setup (Link)
Previous Article: Stored Procedures (Link)

Finding Your Fit

My church (GTA) is in the third week of a series in which we find our role, our piece of the puzzle in the church. There are two tests that we can do on this page on their website.

Test #1 is only ten questions and mostly a general personality test. I prefer this HOTS survey since that's the one that we have been using at my workplace for a while. (Thanks, Steve.) I'm the classic turtle, according tot he HOTS survey.

Test #2 is much longer with 110 questions in total. This one deals with our spiritual gifts and I found this one to be much more interesting. For my own sake, I'll record my totals here:

• Pastor (20)
• Music (20)
• Apostle (19)
• Exhortation (19)
• Widsdom (18)
• Leadership (18)
• Discernment (17)

This comes with the caveat that these tests are not exactly accurate but I think that this gives me a fairly good picture of my preconceived notions. Heh.

This series continues for another five weeks so we're covering a lot of territory. The acronym that we're working through is SHAPE: Spiritual Gifts, Heart, Abilities, Personality and Experiences. Our pastor is actually having an in-depth teaching session on Wednesday April 13 at 7:00 pm to delve into this spritual gifts topic further, as described here. It should be really interesting.

Movie Reviews

This past weekend I took my sister to see Sahara in the movie theatre and we watched The Final Cut on DVD.

Sahara is a good, clean adventure flick that's fun for the whole family. (DVD quote, here I come.) The pairing of Matthew McConaughey and Steve Zahn for the entire movie was inspired casting. Matthew's character is the presumed lead character but it's a buddy picture and they put that to good use for most of the movie. The part where they split up to accomplish separate goals is cliche but I'll forgive that. I also predicted the resolution of the climax of the movie twenty minutes before it happened and that seemed more annoying to me. I still loved this movie but then, what movies do I see ever see and not love?

Sahara was the #1 movie at the box office this past weekend and with good cause. It's very much in line with National Treasure, the film with Nicholas Cage that was released in November 2004. That film made $171 million with $35.1 million on the opening Thanksgiving weekend and I expect Sahara to have a similar, though somewhat lower, box office take.

Sahara is based on a book by Clive Cussler and apparently it's part of a series starring the central character of Dirk Pitt. Classic name. My sister told me that they plan to do various sequels and turn it into a long running franchise, which was news to me. The ending of the movie does set this up subtly with Dirk's boss, the Admiral (William H. Macy). This page, about half way down, details how the author came up with the idea for the character. It seems the author was a copy writer for an ad agency when he decided to do write something fun for himself as a side project. He aimed for something along the lines of Indiana Jones and other pulp fiction heroes but he tried to create something unique that didn't just rehash the premise of spies or detectives, hence the intrepid underwater explorer. I'm looking forward to it if they do continue with the other books in this series.

As for The Final Cut, apparently it was released back in October 2004. Since it only made $0.5 million at the box office, I presume that it had a limited release and that explains why I never heard of it until now. This one follows suit with Robin William's previous dramatic roles in Insomnia and One Hour Photo.

It's an interesting sci-fi movie with a couple of twists but it's not much for suspense. I just found the premise fascinating: A company sells organic chips that record every sight and sound that you ever experience, starting from the moment you're born. When you die, a professional uses these video clips to splice together a 2-hour rememory movie that is shown at your funeral. The cutter sees everything that you ever saw and can choose to show only the best parts of your life, leaving the ugliness forgotten. Cool concept even if it was a little tepid.

P.S. Did I include enough links?

Decisions, Decisions

People often comment that they're amazed at how willing our family is to turn our lives upside down. My parents took all of two months from beginning to end to move to South Korea to teach English. My brother was in Hawaii for several years as a missionary. My sister decided to go to Toronto by herself to pursue her teacher's degree after completing her ECE at Fanshawe College. I joined GTA (my current church) one week after FCCC (my old church) closed down and I was a member and on the worship team within three months.

It strikes a lot of people as odd that we can make such large decisions so quickly. Some people I know would never consider leaving their country and family behind for a new career. Others I know have agonized for years about going to post-secondary school. Some people I know take between six months and a year to join a new church.

Why did I join GTA? I accidentally heard their worship CD without knowing who recorded it and I was drawn to the worship. Throw in a couple of confirmatory clues from God and the decision was complete. For me, big decisions in life tend to be the same as small decisions. As long as God's in it, what's the problem?

I can't say that this turn-on-a-dime process is without it's faults. Some of my decisions haven't worked out so well, though I have no serious regrets. It's not that I don't put a lot of thought and prayer into my decisions because I do. I always speak to both of my parents before I make some crucial choice. I get advise where I can get it; I look for confirmation from God where He gives it; I weigh the decisions out logically and emotionally. When I finally come to a decision, though, it's full steam ahead.

No hesitation, no half measures. Sometimes it doesn't work but most of the time it does. I suppose the one spot that this really hasn't worked for me is in finding a wife, so in that one particular area I have come to the conclusion that I have to take George Costanza's approach: Do the opposite of whatever my instinct is. Heh.

Illusions

I came across this site during my many travels. It has various optical illusions that might hurt your brain. Here's one of the most crazy ones: How many people do you see?

Who's a Big Brother

Ah yes, it has finally happened. I'm finally an official, card-carrying Big Brother. I first mentioned my interest here back in September and I started the application process in early January, as I mentioned here.

I met my new Little Brother yesterday evening and I spent about two hours with him at his house. We connected immediately, much to the surprise of the Big Brothers case worker that was with us. I guess my new Little acts a little too cool sometimes in group settings. He had a PS2, so we pulled that out and compared games that we own and it was easy from then on.

He's a great seven year old and his family goes to North Park church, so the whole Christian thing was my main connection with his mother. Good to know that my case worker had such a keen sense of judgement.

We finished the evening off with a game of two-on-two football (or soccer if you prefer). My Little and I played against his older brother and one of his brothers friends. Their team started the game with three straight goals but we eventually came back and won by one goal, 7-6. There were a couple of sweet moves that my Little pulled out, including one sequence during which he defended against a two-on-one rush, stole the ball and then scored on them.

As one final note, someone may be confused by the fact that my Little already has an older brother in his family. Why am I a Big Brother if he has a big brother? The key is that he doesn't have a father living with him so I'm acting as an adult friend for him. I'm not supposed to be a father figure, just an adult male that's involved in his life.

It's going to be great!

Jason Upton

I drove to Oshawa two weeks with a few people for a worship concert with Jason Upton. He does a lot of passionate prophetic music, similar to the kind of worship that I like to do. It's the music style that I used to do in the after service times at Faith Congregational, my old church.

It was pretty good although I was expecting a little more. Some of the people that were with me were thrown off when he laid down a twenty minute sermon-type thing that didn't seem to be very focused. One person I was talking to afterwards explained that they're always a little wary when the 'angry young man' syndrome appears, which was an interesting comment.

I bought one of his earlier CDs, Faith, and I've had a great time with that CD for the past two weeks.