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I found YouVersion.com several months ago.  It has a lot of features that I like: Journaling sidebar, several different translations, a community aspect to reading the Bible and an amazing iPhone app.

Today is a good day to check out YouVersion because they also have a 1 year Bible Reading plan and it restarts today with Genesis 1, Psalm 1 and Matthew 1.  If you stick with it everyday, you’ll read through the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice in 2009.

If you have an iPhone or Blackberry, you can read it like I do: before I even get out of the bed in the morning.

I set up a new website for the Orchard 2 weeks ago and I’ve been working on it ever since. To be quite honest, I’m proud of myself. I don’t know why. It’s not like I mastered HTML code or anything, I just plugged all of my information into iWeb ’08 (part of my overall Mac life – which I highly recommend to anyone who’s planting a church, running ministry, or is in a vocation that calls for them to be creative or media-driven at all).

A website is a very important way to get information out to the world about your organization or cause. You must use caution, however, because once something is put out there, it’s hard to bring it back. In our world which seems to be more and more wired everyday, the internet is an important place to edify or nullify your image or message.

My case in point:

A picture from the whitehouse.gov website.

Look at the photo, then at the caption, think about the date and shake your head. (click on the picture to see the caption)

Confused? Here’s a hint: Not everyone celebrated John McCain’s birthday with a cake that year.

Last Friday night, I took two of my friends to the Doorknob of the Universe**. On the way back, I couldn’t help but wonder how that entire experience was discovered and then evolved. In my head, I guess someone just happened upon it by keen observational skills or a well-placed drunken collapse.

The most curious part happened after that, though, when said person thought: “man, this is amazing. I have to bring someone else to see this.” And then, either that modern-day Christopher Columbus or someone else who came along on later trips said, “wouldn’t this be even more delightful if people were blindfolded?!?” And so, in some valiant attempt to create even more spontaneity, they went racing for their bandannas.

That’s the nature of a truly special experience: it happens to someone and then sends them racing to bring other people to it. Along the way, they try to think of everything they can to make it even more exciting for whoever they bring along with them.

I think there is an obvious correlation here for the Church (the people, not the institution). When an experience with God truly moves us, it sends us running to find other people who we also want to enjoy it, and it sends our minds searching for the right words, the right way and the right place in which to create that kind of moment.

**I apologize for my vagueness about the DotU. I cannot reveal more about what it is, however, if you don’t know and you come to Oxford, I will gladly blindfold you and take you there too.

In an effort to shed a little bit more light on the Doorknob, I will record below a condensed version of a conversation that has happened several times here in the Velvet Ditch.

Person 1: (bored) What are we going to do now?

Person 2: (excited) We should go to the Doorknob of the Universe!

P1: What’s that?

P2: It’s the Doorknob of the Universe.

P1: Funny. No really, what is it?

P2: (being a jerk now) I already said, it’s the Doorknob of the Universe.

P1: Where is it?

P2: Can’t say. It’s the Doorknob of the Universe.

P1: Cute. How do we get there?

P2: I’ll drive you there. But you have to be blindfolded.

P1: Why?

P2: Because it’s the…

P1: …I know I know I know. You are a child.

…….and later….

P2: (reduced to begging, wins)

For some reason this morning, I’ve had breakfast with two of the great metaphors-for-goodness-and-pureness of all times.

First, I read an article in Time magazine this week about Billy Graham and his relationship with 11 former Presidents. What an incredible journey. He was there discussing the end of the world with Jack Kennedy, the first of only a few men who had access to a button that could make it happen. He was there talking about death with Lyndon Johnson, who saw his friend and running mate killed in Dallas and who vowed to never put America through that again.

It’s an interesting study in Legacy. Even in an age when political mistrust – and mistrust of powerful religious leaders – is rampant, Graham is still regarded as one of the most honest leaders ever on the national scene. Although his career as the President’s pastor was marked with controversy – an appalling conversation with Nixon about Jews; lobbying of other politicians; campaign consulting – he managed to overcome it. Perhaps it was his very honest and self-aware statement in 1981 that put him on the track of saint-like stature (and rightly so):

“Evangelicals can’t be closely identified with any particular party or person. We have to stand in the middle, to preach to all the people, right and left. I haven’t been faithful to my own advice in the past. I will in the future.”

I often wonder about Billy at 25. I wonder if he could imagine all the he would see and hear and do in his life. I wonder if he was as nervous about being a pastor as I am sometimes. I’m sure he did. And I’m sure he found peace in the moments where God breaks through and, instead of the usual wisdom and guidance, he brings humility. Otherwise, he would have never been able to comfort LBJ – worried about eternity – with these words:

“I am not going to Heaven because I have preached to great crowds or read the Bible many times. I’m going to Heaven just like the thief on the cross who said in that last moment: ‘Lord, remember me.’”

Congrats are in order for Billy as well for defeating Johnny Cash in the Time Magazine Old-Man-Staring-Wistfully-at-the-Camera Photo Contest:

Second, I read an article this morning on Time.com (here it is) about Mother Theresa. Apparently, she really struggled with dry spells in her faith. In fact, a new book has just been published about how she perhaps spent the last 40 years of her life feeling an intense distance from God’s presence in her soul.

The book is called Mother Theresa: Come be my Light, and it is a collection of letters that she wrote to her confessors and supervisors throughout the course of her career. The letters* show the yearnings of her heart to connect again with God in the silence of meditation and the sincerity of her prayers.

The book is barely out and yet controversy and conversation already abound about its premise. I think the bruhaha just demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the Christian faith. In a day when TV and megachurch preachers are often busy bringing the feel-good, plastic smile vibe, we forget that the life that Jesus called his followers to was very different. He was very clear that the path to following Him wasn’t all giggles and hugs and that he warned – more often than not – that it would include suffering, despair and even death.

Theresa understood that. Otherwise, there would be no way that she could have gotten up day after day and faced down death and pain and illness in the streets of Calcutta. The irony of the book and the discussion around it is that it is in fact us who really experience a great distance from God when we fail to realize that there’s a place where He can be nearer to us than even the depth of our soul. And that place is with the poor, needy and unloved. We forget that in Philippians 2, Paul reminds us that we should be like Christ and become a slave for others’ sake. In fact, the Bible is clear that we are never closer to Jesus than when we are neck-deep in the hurting cries of humanity. Theresa understood it. The peace that she missed in prayer, she found in comforting the dying. King David understood it. Although his dark nights are recorded in the Psalms, we know that his heart still sought God’s because of the way he led and cared for his people. Paul also understood this. In his letters, we see his despair peek through and then be comforted by His devotion to Jesus and His love for Jesus’ church.

What Theresa experienced in her despair was not an example of God’s unreliability, but a moment in which the true essence of Faith could be known.

*She actually specifically requested for the letters to be destroyed upon her death. Kindof weird now that they weren’t. She’s happy with Jesus and we’re here arguing about her despair.

I guess if you are going to make up a word, you might as well explain what it means.

neomodernity is, as the Drive By Truckers would say, “the duality of the Southern thang.”

I’ve been exposed to a lot of ideas and commentary about the future and present state of the Church over the last year. I’ve been versed in the modern vs. post-modern conversation for a while – even before I realized it.

The way it’s filed in my head (oversimplifying, of course), is like this:

Moderns – served well by the contemporary and traditional church – put great stock in values, Absolute Truth, family, duty, consumption and a pursuit of the essentials that often brings them to conservative American values.

Post-moderns – who are theoretically being served well by the emerging church – value community, conversation, social justice, anti-trends (that are actually still trends, i.e. U2, Donald Miller, The Office) and a pursuit of the essentials that often leaves them branded as liberals.

Many have tried to explain how these two groups evolved and even more have exposed (intentionally or not) how deeply divided they are. McLauren, McManus, Warren, Stanley, Hybels, Hyatt, Driscoll, Bell.

Hello boys, welcome to Oxford!

Here’s how I see this playing out differently in the South:
We are so new to post-modernity here (social trends seem to hit us 15 years late or so, a gap which is closing thanks to cable and the internet) that the majority of people of all ages are still viewing much of their world through a modern lens. At the same time, however, there is something else interesting that’s happening here and I think it has to do with the nature of Southern culture. You see, for all of our modernity, community and conversation have always been highly valued here, although they are now considered marks of a post-modern world-view in many larger cities around the country. This is, after all, the land of tailgating, front porches and literary greats (Faulkner, Grisham, Willie Morris, Welty).

And I think there’s a timid appreciation for social justice in the South too. We are only one generation removed from an era where racism burned so bright that the whole town was almost torched. And for all the people who would gladly go back, there are many more who desperately desire to move forward.

It’s this mix that makes life and ministry so interesting in Mississippi in 2007.

It’s neomodernity – one foot on one side of the argument and one on the other – breaking through.

It’s the reason we have Starbucks AND amateur wrestling, Wal-Mart AND the farmers’ market. It’s why we value hard work AND fishing. It’s how we produced both William Faulkner AND Elvis. That’s why I have one friend who considers him self very conservative, but would kiss Bono on the mouth if he would let him. That’s why I talk to people all the time who have walked away from God and the church but who consider themselves Baptist (or Methodist or Presbyterian).

Note: this post was not intended to give a full description of neomodernity. It’s actually just a theory-in-progress. Hopefully, this blog as a whole and the struggle to bring the beauty of the Gospel into this community will shed more light on the phenomenon. Stay tuned.

The post that made me finally break down and blog. More on that later.

Background:
This week at the Orchard, we talked about this never ending search for validity that seems to drive so much of humanity from such an early age. In our wrestling with newness, we talked about 2 Corintians 5:14-17, about how Jesus can make someone new and allow them to say goodbye to the old person. Before we can talk about someone being new, however, we have to talk about what makes a person who they are (old or new) beforehand. I made a list of things (personality, status, background, intelligence) and, wouldn’t you know, they all point back in one way or another to our sense of validity. Even if our intelligence or background aren’t affected by the search, the way we talk about them and the pride we have in them sure are.

Validity, we all search for it. (As evidenced by this blog post that I referred to).

There were two other interesting (and very public) searches that I happened across concerning validity. Exhibit A:

Has anyone heard this new awful song that seems to be on the radio every time I turn it on. Ugh. And that’s just the music. The lyrics perplex me, however, and I think their popularity unearths this search within.

I want a new tour bus full of old guitars
My own star on Hollywood Boulevard
Somewhere between Cher and
James Dean is fine for me
(So how you gonna do it?)

I’m gonna trade this life for fortune and fame
I’d even cut my hair and change my name

There’s more, but you can read it here.

Listen to their droning for more than 30 seconds and you want to say, “Okay, we get it Nickelback: you have lots of money. You do drugs. You are rather promiscuous. We get it. Please stop singing.”

Validity, the search continues.
Exhibit B:

You may think I’m taking an easy cheap shot here, but I read an interesting op-ed piece about him a few months ago. Apparently, along with his new reality TV show, Hef has been trying to polish up his name: setting up charities, taking up social causes, even buying the grave next to his former starlet, Ms. Monroe. Is this evidence of good ol’ Hugh finally coming through, or could it be that beneath all of the velvet and Viagra, he struggles with the same thing that every other Octogenarian does: Legacy. Validity at the end. I think the article’s writer summed it up better than I could have.

One might have thought [Marilyn Monroe], in life, had enough trouble with users and operators. But of course Hef, an exploiter to the end, doesn’t see himself that way, and what’s clear from all his legacy projects is that he wants to be remembered as anything other than what he is. We’re to think of him as Hugh Hefner, social philosopher and cultural revolutionary. Hugh Hefner, entrepreneur and Charity Events Man of the Year. Hugh Hefner, friend of Marilyn. Hugh Hefner, luckiest cat on the planet. Anything, please, but the truth about Hugh Hefner, pornographer.