It’s been a while since I’ve been in Louisville…or at least it seems that way.  19 days!  So in many ways it was good to get here yet I knew I had that tiny apartment and questionable air mattress waiting for me.  I had my concerns about my air mattress since every week or so i seemed to need a fresh blast of air to keep it nice and firm.  I figured that upon my return, it would probably need some help to be usable.  As a made my way into the bedroom, I found the mattress as devoid of air as it could have been.  I expected this but it was even a little flatter that i figured it would be.  After a few minutes with the air pump I was back in business.  Since I had a late flight, it was about 12:30 am and I was ready for bed.  After turning off the lights and climbing on, the bed felt a little soft.  “Maybe I didn’t put enough air in it”, I thought.  I climbed off turned the pump back on and made sure it was good and full.  As i put the pump aside I heard a “psssssss…”  Oh crap!  “Maybe I left the water running or it’s a noise from the neighbors.”  Nope.  I following the noise and sure enough, I found a nice pin size hole letting out the very thing that makes an air bed work…the air.  Oh crap!  By now it’s 12:45 AM!  I have to leave for work by 7.  What to do?

Here’s where 9 years of new church work began to flit though my mind.  “I can make it work.  I can fix it.”  I really asked myself, WWMD (what would MacGyver do)?” What do I have?  Tape?  Nope.  Glue?  Nope.  What else would work?  Gum? No gum.  What I thought I needed was something sticky that I could use as a paste to plug the hole.  Let’s see what’s in the fridge.  Strawberry preserves?  Good but not useful here.  Cheese, butter, ranch dressing…nope.  Wait…how about peanut butter?  That could work.  And yes, I keep my peanut butter in the fridge.  It’s a grandma/childhood memory thing. 

Who needs MacGyver when you have peanut butter…the smooth kind.  Using crunchy would have just been stupid.  It worked!  The peanut butter was of the right consistency to stop the air.  Unfortunately, as the peanut butter warmed, it got soft and well you get the visual.  So I cleaned it up and kept looking.  I was about to give up and just sleep on the floor when I saw the answer…a shoelace.  The hole was about as big as the plastic tip.  It worked.  I inserted the shoelace and it stopped the leaking air.  It lasted me until about 6:30 this morning when the bed finally gave way.

There’s a lesson here, I think.   I could not have imagined when I bought the shoelaces, that it would be the thing that saved me a night’s sleep.  That wasn’t its purpose.  Nowhere on the package did it say great for stopping air leaking in air mattresses.  But it was what I needed to make things work.  How often do we miss opportunities to serve or participate in God’s mission because, “That’s not my purpose” or “That’s not in my job description?”    I think too often we act very self-centered when it comes to our “purpose.”  Our purpose is to be about God’s mission in the world.  Too often we pray to God, “Help me accomplish my mission or purpose in the world.”  Wrong!  We should be praying, “God, how can I help you accomplish your mission in the world?”  Feel the difference.  One is about me; the other is about servant hood.  One is self-centered; the other is God-centered.  One is safe; the other is risky as hell. One is under our control; the other is out of control.  We may have to do things that make us uncomfortable, uneasy, scary and risky.  Yet these are the things that are hope-giving, joyous, fulfilling and transforming.  The very thing we long to have and be.  We may have to associate with people who are not like us or go to place we wouldn’t normally go.   We may be called to plug holes and do things we don’t think fits “our purpose.”

So I ask, WWMD?

Oh and there was no–zero–zilch–hot water that next morning…but that’s another story.

It’s a hard thing for guys to admit.   It’s good someone finally had the guts to say it.

In an ealier post, I shared why I hate to leave Texas….

Here’s why I left Oklahoma… http://www.wintrest.com/if-celebs-moved-to-oklahoma/

(with apologies to all my friends in Oklahoma)

There were many good things to be heard during the recent National New Church Development Conference.  It’s kind of hard to put everything into a blog post so I wanted to do some more bullet point kinds of posts to simply put some of the sound bites I heard.

• The key to the future church is the recovery of the centrality of Jesus in his own movement.
• Christology lies at the heart of the renewal of the church
• If you don;t know who Jesus is, you can’t plant a church
• Jesus and religion don’t go down very well together
• It’s easy to take Jesus out of the church because it’s hard to live with him,
• Voltaire said, “God made us in his image and then we returned the favor.”
• You know Jesus has become like you when he hates the people we hate.
• Consumerism is killing the church

and the most shocking..

“Every believer is a church planter and every church a planting church.”

and my favorite quote….

“If you’re not pissing religious people off, there’s something wrong with you.”

more to come…..

…and I am addicted to buying books.  I can finally admit it because I think I hit bottom at this conference.  For the most part I hold things in check when I’m at a conference like this because while I want to buy a book I know it’s an impluse buy and I probably won’t really read it.  I gave in to my love of having them around.  Who knows maybe this time, I’ll actually read them.  Here’s what I got and if you have read any of them let me know…

• Confessions of a Reformission Rev. by Mark Driscoll
• the multi-site church revolution by Geoff Surratt, Greg Ligon and Warren Bird
• No Perfect People Allowed by John Burke
• They Like Jesus But Not the Church By Dan Kimball
• The Multiplying Church by Bob Roberts Jr.
• Organic Church by Neil Cole
• Compelled by Love by Ed Stetzer and Philip Nation
• The Tangible Kingdom by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay
• Building a Healthy Multi-Ethnic Church by Mark Deymaz
• The American Church Crisis by David T. Olsen
• Reaching People Under 40 while Keeping People Over 60 by Edward H. Hammett

Wish me luck.