Friday, February 27, 2009

Delirium!

A friend of mine does something like this every Friday and it looks fun so I thought I'd try something similar. Posts with the title "Delirium" are small parts of my youth that I absolutely loved and caused a sort of delirium in my life.

So where does Delirium come from? Partially from my user name (taken from one of my favorite bands Delirious?) Here's the dictionary.com definition:

de⋅lir⋅i⋅um

[di-leer-ee-uhm] Show IPA –noun, plural -lir⋅i⋅ums, -lir⋅i⋅a [-leer-ee-uh] Show IPA .
1. Pathology. a more or less temporary disorder of the mental faculties, as in fevers, disturbances of consciousness, or intoxication, characterized by restlessness, excitement, delusions, hallucinations, etc.
2. a state of violent excitement or emotion.


Here's the first one. This is the first album released by Judas Priest after I became a huge fan of the band. It was also the first tour I saw them on, "Screaming for Vengeance".

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Relevance

Today I was at a fantastic conference for church planters where I heard some great truths about churches and church leaders in today's world. The one that resonated with me the most concerned the "church culture".

There are so many Christians who live in a Christian bubble. Sheltering themselves from the world by only listening to Christian music, only letting their kids play in Christian sports leagues, etc. Instead of segregating ourselves, we should all be participating in the real world. That does not mean doing things you should not do and being "of this world". Rather, it means being familiar with the world by listening to secular music and watching popular TV shows that have decent content and by hanging out with non-Christian friends & co-workers, etc. If you don't understand where someone is coming from and you have nothing in common to talk about, how can you possibly minister to them?

After all, Christ said "go and make disciples of all nations...". How can we do that if shelter ourselves from the world and only hang out with other disciples?