TheyCallMePastorBryan

Wow, it’s been way too long since I’ve posted.  Unfortunately this will not be a substantial posting.  But here is a video that I have found myself watching over and over.  It’s really simplistic but I’m finding it moving.

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It’s been interesting to observe the weather in Portland this February.  We had a warm spell for quite a while that had been really looking like we were going to have an early spring but alas, it was not to be.

February has been an interesting month.  I’ve been out of Portland as much as I’ve been in and I’ve been out of town for at least part of every weekend this month.  I’m looking forward to getting back into a normal swing of things and thinking about the future of this blog and what I’ll write about.  I’m sure you’ve probably seen that in the last little while I’ve started expanding my range beyond theology.  It’s not really that I’m losing interest in theology, it’s just I start to reach a point where I start to g insane if all I’m doing is writing about church stuff and theology but not being active in it.  That sort of writing just isn’t appealing to me.

I haven’t really wrote much about what I’m doing now.  I’ve been pretty hesitant to write about what I’m doing with my ministry vocation since seeing the Anchor die as a dream.  I’ve been moved a lot lately, reflecting on John 12:24

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat is planted in the soil and dies, it remains alone. But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives. (NLT)

With that said, I’m starting to be okay with it and a little less hesitant to talk about what we’re doing now.  A year ago, after we decided it would be good to put the Anchor to rest, a couple experienced ministry friends and myself put our heads together and started dreaming about a new missional community for Southeast Portland.  It was a welcome thing and one which I’ve been excited to be a part of planning.  We spent a few months praying and planning and making sure it was something that we should be pursuing and have found ourselves really feeling like it was what we were to be a part of.

So last fall we started meeting with a small group and discussing the sort of stance that it takes to be the sort of community we hope to be.  Out of that group we’ve got about 12 folks who are continuing to pursue what that sort of missional community looks like.  I guess I share this because I’d love to have people praying for our thing.  Having already tried to lead one group and seen it fail, I know how tenuous these things are.  So please pray for us.  Pray that God would build us up and that He would be making us aware of where He is already at work in our neighborhoods.

And if you know people who are wanting to be a part of a non-traditional, missional community in Portland, put them in contact with me.  I’d love to invite them into what we’re doing, or at least tell them about it so they can dream their own dreams.

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It’s a Monday morning, and I’m having a tough time getting my brain into work mode. I’m getting there, but it just doesn’t want to focus.  I am on the other hand really digging a band called Mumford & Sons (inadvertently introduced to them by blog friend Jason Coker. Here’s a video of their song Sigh No More (lyrics underneath).

Serve God love me and men
This is not the end
Lived unbruised we are friends
And I'm sorry
I'm sorry

Sigh no more, no more
One foot in sea, one on shore
My heart was never pure
And you know me
And you know me

And man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing
Oh man is a giddy thing

Love that will not betray you, dismay or enslave you,
It will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be.
There is a design,
An alignment to cry,
At my heart you see,
The beauty of love as it was made to be .

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I received a copy of Donald Miller’s new book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years a while back, and was excited to read and review it.  I’ve been a big fan of Donald Miller since reading Blue Like Jazz and Through Painted Deserts, and so I had quite a bit of anticipation about his new book.

As I started to read it though, I got about halfway through the book and started to comment that I was unenthused about it. Miller’s beautiful memoire style is in full display and his voice continues to be great, but I found myself being pretty disappointed in his approach to story.  In as broad a stroke as I can paint, Miller uses lessons that he learns about story while trying to turn Blue Like Jazz into a movie as a means of looking at life.  What follows is a combination of exploration into the art of story through the lens of movies and personal anecdotes from Miller about how he’s seen the facets play out in his life. I found myself in the end thinking that he had covered for a lot of complaints that I’d had earlier, I just felt that looking at our lives as stories through the lens of movies was the wrong approach.  For instance, books rarely transfer well to movies (as Don illustrates through his story).  So my problem was that we end up using the bastardized version of story for movies as providing insights into how to live life.

In the end I found myself looking at it more positively than I had about halfway through, and I can see it being a great read for someone who needs an extra thought into how they might live their life more meaningfully, but it just wasn’t that impacting for me.  I’d give the book a 3.5/5.

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