A Bondservant's Musings

For the second consecutive summer, my wife and I are spending a good chunk of our vacation touring US national parks. I see signs at park entrances, visitor centers, in the park brochures, etc. urging park visitors to "Leave no trace" of their visit. The gist is to pick up your garbage, recycle and not impact the park, really to reduce man's impact on the land. While we could debate how we as bible-believing Christians should interact with, use and steward the earth, the thing that strikes me about this "Leave no trace" campaign is that is opposite of what we are to do with our lives as followers of Jesus. We too are visitors, even aliens, on this earth. But God has called us to impact this world -- think people instead of the terra firma -- for His kingdom. How are we to do so? Focus on the eternal If we are going to leave a trace, we must focus on eternal things. There are only two eternal things in this world -- God's word and people. As Pastor James has ...

The food critic (great gig, huh?) on one of the local TV stations used to rate the restaurants on bread (i.e., the food) and circuses (i.e., the atmosphere). What if your small group was rated on bread and circuses? That idea struck me as I listened to Todd Dugard, the HBC Barrie Senior Pastor, teach on the HBC preaching pillar (Proclaiming the authority of God's word without apology) at Harvest U at the end of April. As Todd talked about the centrality of God's word, it struck me that our small groups need to emphasize bread (God's word) over circuses (i.e., creativity or entertainment value). Certainly we need to create a welcoming atmosphere for small group members. But that cannot be our focus as we prepare to lead the group or during the group meeting. We need to be combing through God's word in preparation for the meeting. We should teach our small group members to do the same. And we need to make sure our small group meetings don't go too many minutes at one ...