Come change the world with us!

Change the world. It’s such an undifferentiated, macroscopic goal — the main theme of every high school valedictorian’s speech. But how do you do it? We get the impression from our news cycles and history books that the way to change the world is to get famous and important so that you can make big decisions or give inspiring speeches that cause people to give millions of dollars. Changing the world in our time has become synonymous with becoming a celebrity. But the United Methodist Church has been taking a different approach as part of our “Rethink Church” campaign. This Saturday May 19th, several hundred thousand United Methodists around the world will be working together in simple, unglamorous ways to repair houses in the local community, gather food for hungry people, raise money for mosquito nets to stop malaria, stock items for our disaster relief teams, and dozens of other projects that pooled together actually have the potential to change the world.

Occupy the manger #5: Giving up on perfect

Chapter 2 in Mike Slaughter’s Christmas is Not Your Birthday is called “Giving up on perfect.” He talks about the way that Christmas has become a time when we put enormous pressure on ourselves to make it the perfect experience. I’ve been a little sheepish to hear all the chit-chat that other people have been making about all the decorations that they’re putting up: the lights, the tree, etc. So let me just come out and say that my family does not have our Christmas tree up, nor our lights, nor any of the other knicknacky things that are still in a box somewhere. We haven’t even gotten done with raking our autumn leaves yet.

Occupy the manger #4: Good news to the poor (Isaiah 61)

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me,
because the LORD has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim freedom for the captives
and release from darkness for the prisoners,
    to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor
and the day of vengeance of our God. [Isaiah 61:1-2]

Occupy the manger #1: God’s poverty

For the duration of Advent, I’m going to be focusing my blog posts on the concept of “occupying” the manger of Jesus, or making it our central focus in a time when so many things are competing for our attention. Every week in Advent, there is an Old Testament reading, a psalm, a gospel reading, and an epistle reading. I will be looking to these for inspiration as well as Mike Slaughter’s book Christmas is Not Your Birthday, which we are reading together as a congregation. My first devotion comes from Mike Slaughter’s book.