I woke up Wednesday morning with a pretty bad sore throat (a very rare thing for me). I didn’t feel bad so I hoped it was just a one day thing. Leading worship for middle schoolers Wednesday night I could tell I was starting to fight something.

Fast forward to Sunday morning and I was in the midst of a full-on cold. The kind where you sound like a frog when you speak and feel tired all the time. And it was also one of those weekends where I could not get out of my duties of being at a practice on Saturday and leading worship on Sunday morning.

I led for the 11am service at Sunset yesterday. Here was our set:

• You’ll Come (E, Hillsong)
• From the Inside Out (C, Hillsong)
• Offering: You Never Let Go (A, Redman)
• Message
• Communion Special: By Your Side (G, Tenth Avenue North)
• Jesus Paid it All (B, Stanfill arrangement)
• You Hold Me Now (D, Hillsong)

I have a weird thing where most colds don’t affect my singing voice much. I definitely didn’t feel right, but most people told me they couldn’t tell I was sick. I think they were just trying to make me feel good because I felt pitchy and strained, but in the end none of that probably matters.

You’ll Come is a song that I have my own issues with as I shared before. We’ve sung it 4 times now and it still hasn’t caught on much. Tough to say whether or not we’ll continue to sing it as a community.

The last 3 songs were a perfect set. I love By Your Side and Jesus Paid it All. After those songs I spoke briefly about Christianity being a faith of the here and not yet. We can experience Christ’s presence now and yet we long for heaven.

Revelation 21:3-4

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

That passage led into You Hold Me Now which is a powerful song about heaven we’ve done quite a few times now. Here is a video of it (come here to watch RSS readers):

All in all it was a great morning. The band was solid and having the choir helped mask some of my vocal deficiencies. I felt like the congregation connected well with the last 3 songs. I definitely left everything my voice had to give on the stage. I had absolutely nothing left.

A great morning:

God was honored. People responded to the Gospel through music.

(Sunday Setlists)

After what has been a fairly miserable last few months weather-wise, we had a wonderful 60* day in Portland yesterday with lots of sunshine. The great part is that southern California was dealing with a nice day of rain. Not to rub it in, but hey we don’t get the chance to all that often.

I know most of you could careless about baseball, but I have a good feeling that my Twins are going to reverse the curse that Minnesota sports fans have been under since 1992. They are stacked for a great year in their new ballpark.

Blogs

1. Eugene Cho…”doesn’t live for the Jesus who eats red meat, drinks beer and beats on other men.”
2. Another great piece from Eugene Cho. This time he shares a theology of singlehood. Great work Eugene.
3. Church should be a place to be honest right? (I’ve had a lot of conversations about this at work the past few weeks)
4. Dave Ingland posted 3 questions that he asked me about the local church.
5. Anne Jackson wrote a post this week on her struggle with bi-polar. I appreciate her openness and authenticity so much.
6. Remember that post on “sportianity” I wrote on Monday? Scot McKnight wrote a great response to the Christianity Today article.

News

• The way shoes are designed may have changed how we run.
• Wonderful and heart churning article on Matt Chandler’s faith in Christ in the midst of dealing with brain cancer.
• Listen to the new Album Leaf album once through for free.
• America’s biggest rip-offs.

To those of you on the east coast, enjoy the snow. To those of you on the west coast, enjoy the warm sun.

Blessings.

For those you who haven’t heard, Tim Tebow is in a commercial being run by Focus on the Family during the Super Bowl. The ad is apparently Tim’s parents talking about the pregnancy complications they had with Tim and the difficulties they had with doctors encouraging an abortion.

The ad is controversial because typically major networks reject ads similar to the one that is scheduled to run. You might remember last year when this ad about abortion and Obama was rejected by NBC.

This week ESPN ran two opposing articles on the ad. Jemele Hill had this to say about Tebow and the ad:

“In today’s sports climate, expressing an opinion often results in serious backlash. In some cases, an athlete’s choosing to do what Tebow is doing might be professional suicide.

Tebow’s decision to appear in this ad should be considered just as courageous as Muhammad Ali’s decision to not enter the draft, or Tommie Smith’s and John Carlos’ black power salute at the 1968 summer Olympics.

No, I’m not kidding.

And yes, I’d say that if Tebow were appearing in an ad that advocated a pro-choice position.

Ali, Smith and Carlos championed their views at a time when not everyone supported the idea of equality, and when refusing to serve your country was considered blasphemous. Their views, to put it mildly, were thought to be inappropriate, militant and, in Ali’s case, completely anti-patriotic.” (read the whole article HERE)

Someone who disagrees at ESPN is Tim Keown who said this:

“Tebow is not an innocent, and he does not appear to be deluded. He may agree with everything Focus on the Family represents. But he’s still a young man, still breathing the fumes of a home-schooled background with two parents who believe in the inerrancy of every single word of the Bible. Now, they could be right and I could be wrong on the Bible thing — although it’s going to be hard to convince me the whole belly-of-the-whale thing wasn’t allegory — but he could be setting himself up to be associated with causes and beliefs that may not be his own. All the qualities that make him admirable — earnestness, devotion, a willingness to expound on his beliefs — make him vulnerable.” (read the whole article HERE)

I often share my opinions on this blog, because after all, it is my blog. But I think I’ll stay quiet in hopes that people with various opinions will feel comfortable sharing their thoughts. Hopefully I’m not opening a massive can of worms by blogging about this…

What do you think about Focus on the Family spending $3 million to run this ad?

What do you think about Tebow’s involvement with the controversial ad?

Is running this ad even controversial to you?

**UPDATE** Here is the actual video. Safe to say the uproar was way overdone based on what was actually aired:

It might seem weird for me to write about sports only 2 days after posting about the negative aspects of Christianity and sports interacting. But, come on…The Super Bowl is in 4 days and we all need to declare where our loyalties lie.

I’ll be honest…not much of me is happy to be watching this game without my team in it. They were clearly the better team a week ago but choked it away (the worst way to lose). And as painful as the loss was it makes it even harder to even think of rooting for the team that barely deserves to be there.

With that said, I’m picking the Colts to win on Sunday, 31-21 over the Saints.

Who do you think will win?

(RSS readers come vote in the poll HERE)

Growing up one of my favorite tv shows was “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”

So…I’m curious, not for any particular reason , just seemed like something that would be cool to know…

Where do you usually read this blog from?

(This blog is usually written from Portland, Oregon)

Have you read the cover story for the February issue of Christianity Today? It is a piece adapted from Shirl James Hoffman’s book Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sports.

The article covers a wide range of issues within the topic of sports and Christian faith, but I’ll focus on these specific areas quoted below:

“That some deep theological insights might be gleaned from such goings-on, or that God might choose to reveal himself in sports—even in those that bring out the crudest of instincts—is, of course, possible. But I believe it is unlikely. Yet even if I am wrong, this by itself doesn’t relieve Christians of the duty to seek the redemption of sports, and to point society toward a better way of playing.”

Hoffman goes up later in the article to help define the term “sportianity” which was first coined by Frank Deford.

“Sportianity is Christian theology vetted and co-opted by the dictates of the sports industry. Not surprisingly, it cannot speak truth to power. Its doctrines are promulgated far beyond the locker rooms of the NFL, the NBA, or Major League Baseball. Rationalized and systematized, it is vigorously taught to college, high school, and even younger athletes. Its themes crop up in sermons preached from evangelical pulpits and in articles from the religious press.”

“Evangelicals in the sports community have too often been followers rather than leaders, adopters of the dominant ethos rather than trendsetters who challenge it.”

And just so you can’t be mad at Hoffman for trying to get rid of the value of sports for Christian believers, he ends the article by saying this:

“I have never fallen out of love with sport. In fact, it is my love of sport that inspires my high view of its potential—a much higher view, I would argue, than is held by many who might think me a sport hater. Yet I suppose I have become a hater of what we’ve allowed sport to become, of the feeble uses to which we try to put it, of the ugly social contexts into which we insist on inserting it, and of its distortions and abuses. Most of all, I am disappointed that Christians have failed to wring from sport its full potential for underscoring that peculiar grace that they claim marks the life of the believer. But as to my love of the essence of the sport experience, there should be no doubt.”

—

I confess that I am what most would call a big time sports fanatic. I watch and follow sports almost every day and all through the year. There are few sports that I watch and become bored with. So this article hit me square between the eyes and forced me to at least think about my passion for following and engaging in sports and competition.

I also confess that while growing up and playing several competitive sports in high school, I competed in a completely un-Christlike manner. Sports for me were much more about how I performed than how I played (the difference being my attitude and my treatment of the other players).

However, I do believe that sports teach the values of hard-work, team-work, overcoming adversity (and many others), better than any other extra-curricular activity. These are qualities that must be taught and learned, they do not come ingrained within us. But I absolutely agree that we cannot justify teaching these values in order to value winning and performance in sport more. Rather we need to be teaching what it means to be a Christ-follower while engaging in competition with others.

Sadly the term “sportianity” isn’t far off from that way I have and others have treated sports…whether it be playing them or rooting for our favorite teams as they play. I hope for my sake, and for ours, that we can move beyond this while engaging in sports in a positive and influencing way.

What are your thoughts on the interaction between sports and Christianity?