I had to work on New Year’s Day morning a little over a week ago. It was a Sunday this year so we gathered as a church to worship, celebrate Communion, and to be challenged by God’s Word. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how I view church and how important the community of gathered believers is or isn’t to me.

While I had to be at church on January 1st this year I wonder if I would have made the effort to come if I had no obligation to be there. Who in their right mind really *wants* to get up early on New Year’s Day to go to church to sing songs and listen to someone talk for half an hour?

In reality I could put in my favorite Gungor album and hear a lot better music than most any church in town. I could find a podcast sermon that would probably be a lot better than anything I could hear at my church. What’s the point of making such a sacrifice to attend church?

I’ve sat with these thoughts over the past week because the reality is I doubt I would have gone to church. I’d like to think that I would but most often I choose the path of least resistance for myself before I think about those around me. Church, for most of us, is a place where we desire to “fill up our spiritual tanks” on great music and great teaching. But we can’t get those fillings in a lot of different places?

I write all this as a fairly conflicted person: Wanting to care so much about the community of believers that I choose to continually sacrifice my wants and needs for them, but at the same time desiring that I get what I want and need first.

I fear that my generation is growing up in a time where church (or the components of our program driven churches) has become so accessible that it’s diluted to the point where we don’t even understand why we *need* it. Why should we go to church early in the morning on New Year’s Day? Because it’s about the people we gather with.

Two quotes that have been a source of great conviction and encouragement for me this past week are from Lauren Winner and Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

God’s Trinitarian being suggests that we are not to simply invite people into our homes but to invite them into our lives as well. (Lauren Winner)

Self-centered love loves the other for the sake of itself; spiritual love loves the other for the sake of Christ. (Bonhoeffer)

On Sunday mornings I most often attend My Selfish Church where I value community so long as it values and benefits me. I never attend or get involved in church when it would involve me sacrificing more than I would prefer.

I believe we’re teaching the wrong message about church attendance and membership. We don’t do it because God commands it or people before us have done it that way (though those are valid reasons for church attendance and membership). We do it because we need each other. This is not some pithy statement, but the harsh reality.

The community of God’s gathered people is an instrument of His presence infiltrating our lives with skin and bones.

Much more than music and teaching, we need our brothers and sisters.

Agree? Disagree?

5 years ago today my life changed fairly dramatically. The thing with marriage is that people can tell you all about it before hand, but there’s really no way to know what you’re truly getting into. Luckily I got into it with someone fairly special.

Ask anyone the key to success in marriage and you’ll always get a different answer, but I’m sure of what the key of the first five years has been for us and I think it will be the same key for success in the next fifty.

A successful marriage is based on a willingness of each person to give up their needs and wants for the sake of the other person. The ultimate example of this in shown in the Son of God who had it good sitting at the right hand of God the Father and came down to be with us.

I do a poor job of sacrificing my needs and wants for Rose, so I’m glad to have married someone who continually teaches me how to do it better than I am currently. Sure, it does take two to tango, but it also helps to marry up.

Five years.

Many more to come.

Ever notice how in our culture we’re so aware and focused on whatever is next? What is current quickly falls away for whatever the next big thing is. The next big TV at a great price changes every 2 months. The next best phone comes out every 6 months. The next must-see movie comes out seemingly every weekend.

In our culture it’s never enough to just have a great thing, you must have the next big thing. Otherwise you’re just obsolete.

The next big thing always guarantees us more happiness, more efficiency, and more friends. When people see us with the next big thing they’ll begin to realize how forward thinking we are, and they’ll respect us for it. Or so we think.

I watched a TED talk from the one of the great thinkers of our time, Malcolm Gladwell. His first TED talk several years ago is one of the most viewed TED talks ever. In this short talk he discusses bombs, culture, and the next big thing. I found it all very intriguing as it relates to our culture.

As you could tell, Gladwell’s talk was about wars, bombs, and the Norden bomb-sight, but it wasn’t really about any of those things.

“This is the problem with our infatuation over the things we make: We think the things we make can solve our problems.”

I say his talk was about the Norden bomb-sight, but really it wasn’t, because the talk was really about how we view the next big thing as our next step toward a better, more fulfilling life. And the problem in that is that life never got more or less fulfilling through a thing. I might have become more efficient or been able to stay in contact with more people or been able to stay more connected to the global world or been able to create wonderful things on my own through all these next big things, but none of them ever helped me have a truly better and more fulfilling life. In fact, many of these things have probably pushed me away from a more fulfilling life.

When it comes to the next big thing, we always look at and discuss all the new things we’ll be able to do and much more efficiently we’ll be able to live our lives, but we rarely (maybe never) evaluate all we’re going to give up in order to be slave to this next big thing. While I’m not advocating for never changing or adapting, our lives and our churches could sure stand for some contentment found not in things but in God and His goodness to us.

There’s always a catch when it comes to the next big thing. Don’t fall in the trap.

(For a great take on this very subject check out John Dyer’s book From the Garden to the City. John has a good understanding of how technology might not be as neutral to us as we often assume.)

One of the things I want to do in 2012 is open up this blog to other voices. Some of my favorite posts on this blog have been written by other people in part of the various blog series I’ve hosted (you can read them here). I’m not ignorant enough to believe that my writing and voice is the only one needed to be heard which is why I always try to link to other stories. I believe that more perspective is almost always better than less.

I’d love to hear from other readers of this blog and other writers in general. While this blog isn’t the biggest one out there I do receive several hundred hits each day and have a devoted number of subscribers. For some writers this will be a great chance to be read by lots of new eyes.

A few simple guidelines:

• Topics to write on:
• Theology and its relation to church ministry and life.
• Church ministry in general.
• Books.
• Holiness (after all, I’m writing a book on the subject).
• Spiritual formation.
• Your own awesome idea.
• Posts should be no longer than 500 words (I can make exceptions but this is a good rule of thumb).
• Posts should not have been posted in other spaces first. I’m looking for unique and original content.
• In rare cases the writer must be willing to work with me on simple edits.

I’m really looking forward to sharing this space with other people and broadening our perspective on life and faith.

Please submit individual posts or short proposals to either my email (tybraun @ gmail dot com) or use the contact tab up above. If you have questions contact me using either one of those ways as well.

Happy New Year friends.

I love Eugene Peterson’s translation of John 1:14.

The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.

We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.

Every Christmas I sense an urge within me toward a response.

God in all His infinite wisdom and understanding of man desired so much to show His love that He came to us. He made space for us. He is with us.

Will you make space for Him?

As my semester of seminary has finally finished I’ve been doing some thinking about the value of it all. I sit in class for hours on end each week listening to lectures while taking notes, engaging in discussion around issues of the Bible, church ministry, culture, and theology, and I wonder what the true value is at the end of the day.

I can’t start quoting too many pieces of information that I’ve memorized from the books I read the past 3 months or parts of a lecture I’ve memorized. I’ve done well enough to store all that in my short term memory so I don’t fail the final  (I think I did anyway), but it leaves fairly quickly afterward. Our culture teaches that if I can’t remember those important details word for word in a year, then I’ve lost the value of that education.

What we should be valuing in education is not memorization of information, but instead the formation of a person.

Over the past 4 years of reading book after book, writing paper after paper, listening to lecture after lecture, I can hardly pinpoint specific things that have stuck with me over the years, but I do know that I’m a different person now than I was then. The value of the education to me is not found in a pile of books I read, or the load of notebooks I’ve filled with notes from class, it’s the change that has taken place in my life through God’s Spirit and his use of the books, notes, papers, and discussions.

When I set out to get in shape for a half marathon I ran multiple times a week, for over 6 months to prepare. There was never any specific run that helped me get ready to run 13.1 miles, it was the combination of all the runs that prepared my mind and body.

It’s the same thing with education. The best education can’t be wrapped up in a single book or notebook of lectures in class, it’s the slow formation that takes place slowly but surely if we continue to allow God’s presence to work as only he can.

Let us all desire to be formed by Him.