Opening Day

Opening Day of Baseball is one of the greatest days of the year.  It starts with fresh hope.  Last year’s disappointing season is a distant memory.  Now you got new players, a new energy, and renewed hope and confidence.  I love opening day. It’s like a fresh snow on Christmas.  You know how it’s so beautiful before it gets all messed up and slushy and dirty.  This is the year that my Reds are going to win the World Series.  Before you laugh at me, understand that as of today, they are tied for first place.   Anything is possible on opening day.

I think all of us need an opening day every once in a while.  You know, a time where our lives have a new chance to make a difference or to make an impact or to reach new goals.  Sometimes we need a time where everything is possible again. 

I am learning to hang on to the opening day we are experiencing right now.  When I think about our launch of Journey Community Church I get pretty pumped.  I mean, imagine a church without a political struggle.  Imagine a church without worn out traditions and sacred cows.  Imagine a church that truly exists to reach out to others in the name and love of Christ to see the broken healed and the hurting comforted.  I love opening day.  I am going to enjoy this time because…well, let’s not even think about it.

Play ball!!!!!

Rod

Overwhelming

Have you ever felt like you were drinking out of a fire hydrant?  I mean overwhelmed and under prepared…that’s the feeling I have had recently.  The challenges of the day sometimes pile on don’t they?  What do you do to deal with it?  How do you dig out of it?

I remember a time when I was working with BT Office in Aurora Colorado and our Divisional President was about to be fired and I was the only person besides our corporate office who knew about it.  I knew when it happened I was going to be promoted and was going to have to make a lot of tough decisions involving personnel and changing the way we did business.  I also knew when it was announced there was going to be a big “backlash” of employees and probably customers.  I began to feel overwhelmed at all the responsibility I was about to take on in the climate I was about to inherit.  Panic and frustration began to set in.  I called my former boss and explained what I was facing and what I was feeling.  She gave me this advice: “When the going gets tough and you feel like you are swimming upstream without a map, put your head down and work like you have never worked before.” 

It was good advice.  Advice I am remembering and following even today, 13 years later, in a totally different environment.  It worked then and I hope it works this time too.

Take care,

Rod 

When God Seems Silent

Have you ever prayed and prayed for something and nothing seems to happen.  I mean, no direction, no sign, no voice, no nothing.  What do you do when it seems like God is silent?  Let me give you 5ome things I do to help me through these times:

1. I sit and listen.  I know, I just said that I am not hearing anything, but sometimes we don’t hear because we don’t slow down enough to listen.  Sometimes I sit and stare out a window or I go outside and sit in a chair and listen for God to enter my thoughts and I listen.  Take a notepad, sometimes things kind of “flood” in.

2. I fast.  A lot of people do this at different times, but I try to fast with no purpose other than God’s purpose.  Fasting for answers or direction is important but I think sometimes we need to fast for the direction God has in mind.

3. I relax.  Sometimes we get so intense and nervous about finding God’s voice that we find no rest.  God wants us to rest and perhaps He isn’t talking because he wants you to slow down.

4. I read.  I need to remind myself of the promises and hopes of God.  It’s easy to forget.

5. I podcast.  I often listen to pastors preach and teach.  I like people like Erwin McManus at Mosaic; Pastor Gary Hamrick from Calvary Chapel; Pastor Mark Driscoll at Mars Hill; and My buddy Todd Hudson at Southeast Christian in Parker Colorado.  Sometimes what they say applies directly to me and my situation.

Take care,

Rod

Church Planting

I found out this week in Boise that I am not planting a church…rather I am planting churches. The whole design of church planting is to have planting churches in your DNA. It makes sense. Why go through the work and effort for just one more church to be located somewhere, doing the same thing all the other churches are doing? Part of the DNA of Journey Community is going to be that we are going to plant churches as well.

I heard this week that:

If your vision is for a year—plant wheat

If your vision is for ten years—plant trees

If your vision is for a lifetime—plant people

If your vision is for eternity—plant churches

Journey is a partner in ministry with Hope Community in Reno. In the future we will begin the process of planting another new church somewhere in the U.S. or even internationally. It will be the second for Hope (Journey being their first) and it will be the first of many for Journey.

Pray for this opportunity…it’s going to be an incredible experience.

Take care,

Rod

P.S. By the way, I am planning on “Blogging” a little more frequently at the request of some friends. Keep an eye out.

Annoying

Do you have certain things that annoy you?  For me things like people leaving their shopping carts in the parking lot instead of walking them 10 feet over to the corral. I mean, come on people its ten feet! Another one is that guy Billy Mays…you know the guy who does all those infomercials about “KABOOM” and cleaning stuff.  Man is his voice loud and grating or what.  I also get annoyed with cell phone companies.  Their rules and regs are absolutely brutal.  They have contract obligations for everything.  It’s the modern day Gestapo.   A slow foursome on the golf course is another thing that annoys me.  In fact I am getting a little fired up just thinking about it.  (If you’re a golfer, you understand).

Being annoyed! Can that really be a sin? Or is it merely a slight personality flaw?   Being annoyed usually stems from being offended when people say or do things that do not suit us.  I am not sure it’s a sin, but I know it can lead to sin.  Anger is usually a result from allowing things that annoy us to take root and grow.  

Truthfully most things that annoy me are pretty small and petty.  When I learn to let them go and try to focus on more positive things my life seems to go pretty well.  So why do I hang on to them?  Because it doesn’t suit me, it doesn’t make me happy, it rubs me the wrong way.  I hang on to them because at those times I am self-centered.  Selfish might be more accurate.  

Now I am getting annoyed at me for getting so easily annoyed!  I’ll try to get better.

Take care,

Rod

Relationships, not religions

I was reading an article yesterday in the USA Today online version.  Its headline was, Most Religious Groups in USA Have Lost Ground, Survey Finds.

Listen to how it starts out:

“When it comes to religion, the USA is now land of the freelancers. 

The percentage of people who call themselves in some way Christian has dropped more than 11% in a generation. The faithful have scattered out of their traditional bases: The Bible Belt is less Baptist. The Rust Belt is less Catholic. And everywhere, more people are exploring spiritual frontiers — or falling off the faith map completely.”

Now I don’t know about the accuracy of the data or if the interpretation is correct, but it is sad to say the least.  In this time of crisis in our country, I would hope that people would run to God and not away.  I wonder what the church should gather out of this survey.  It says that there is a higher percentage of people claiming no religious affiliation (almost doubled since 1990) at all.  

I am not sure what all this means but I am sure of what the true need is.  More people need to hear and understand what the desire of God is for their lives.  As most of my readers already know, God is not about religion and affiliation either.  He is all about relationship and fulfillment.  

Journey Community is on a mission of helping people find a relationship with God through His Son Jesus.  We want people to find an eternal purpose and day-to-day purpose for their lives.  We do not desire a religious experience…we want a real one.  Something to grab hold of everyday of our lives so when the times get tough, like they are right now, we can stand under the downpour…like the house built on the rock.

Take care,

Rod

Our first love

Gay and I went to a church yesterday where the message was about the church at Ephesus.  The message was from Revelation 2 where God speaks to the church and tells them that they were good at discerning false prophets but they forgot their first love.

I thought how easy it could be for a church to lose sight of their first love.  My first love is Jesus.  Unbelievably, it is not supposed to be the Bible, worship, or even evangelism.  My first love is supposed to be that I know Jesus in a real and intimate way.  Sometimes I can get so busy with doing the things that a church pastor is supposed to be doing that I can allow those things to be a substitute for my first love of knowing Jesus.  

Now, don’t get me wrong, all those things are great and important.  However, I want to make sure that Journey Community and Rod Idle do not forget our first love: Knowing Jesus Intimately.  I hope and pray that when people come to Journey or when they encounter Journey in town, they see that we are people who desire to know Jesus intimately, because to get to know Jesus you have to spend time with Him.   The more time you spend with Him the more you look, act, and speak like Him.  You simply reflect Him and that is when all those other good things I spoke of in the second paragraph, happen.

Let’s get to know Him.  Take care.

Rod