Thankfullness

Here in Brazil this is a very common weekend, but most of the bloggers I used to see (here at your left) shows how Thanksgiving is important.
In the past we have a bank that every thanksgiving day made a thanksgiving event that was broadcasted at TV, but we are not used to observe this day.
It is good to reflect how we are used to thank and to have a gratifull atitude, commonly even to start some conversation it is common to complain about something, if the person agrees the conversation started.
I have posted in my brazilian blog a very nice music made by one of our gratest worship musician, Ademar de Campos:

"I am gratefull for everything I have
The biggest trasure of this world was given to me as an eternan heritage
the biggest prove of a so deep love.
I have life, happiness in all times
I have friends, family and lots of brothers
it was Jesus, my truly friend
That have done everything to give me salvation.
I will worship to the Lord in all times
His worship will be coutinously
in my lips and also in my heart
Jesus Christ is allways my song."
(Ademar de Campos)

My Arts Day

Yesterday I take our holyday (Republic day) to make something different, so I decided to attend our XXVI Arts Bienal of São Paulo. As my ladies (wife and daughter) were getting ready to go (not so fast) I took a look at Solomon Porch Visual arts lounge, very nice! It made me wonder about expressions and how poorly we have explored art expressions generally at church, I saw good examples at Solomon Porch (at their art louge), Warehouse 242 (which assign a picture to each of their services) and Quest, I don’t know so many examples.

My visit to Bienal was very funny, there are very nice things, very weird and also very funny ones, I was afraid my daughter Maria Ester would be scared of some weird installations, but she went fine. I think one of the great benefits of art is to get new point of views, see same things by different ways and get insights that you would never get in your day by day. I returned home willing to make art, to express myself by any way, may be Photoshop, or painting, don’t know.
If I wait more for it, the same will happen: nothing!
Today I read an article from Relevant about art and church: “Irrelevant to the Church”, it is ironic to realize that art and church relationship is very controversy, once you know that arts is considered the picture of the soul.

It worthed the night!

Last sunday, at service, we heard a witness of parents of a recently born baby who had a terrible disease and had to raise a great amount of money to submit him to a surgery in US, they witnessed miracles of God raising quickly the amount and also by the quick recover of their child from this rare illness. At the end, the father concluded that they were not feeling more blessed than many parents who lost their children nor less blessed than many parents who have healthy children, he witnessed that what they spent was unique to their journey with God, something that everybody have with God, but by their own way. It was great to see such wisdom!
Few moments later I noted I have the same feeling of my wife, we could left church at this moment because that was a great message, a message preached with their own life.

What's Going on in our world

Thanks to Orangejack blog, there's a site that classifies the top 100 significative words in news launched by news agencies, also links those to a picture, so you will find what is going on. Very interesting:
10x10 Words and Pictures that Define the Time

Bye Old Year!*

Yesterday, I went out to a mall to celebrate my 17 years of my date with my wife, the terrible thing to note was to see everything decorated for Christmas!
This is terrible, a great sign that the year is getting to end, as I heard from many friends, this is a kind of dispair by feeling that many things planned to this year was unfortunately not done.
I have read a nice text at Relevant Magazine: "Forever Young", I recommend for all people at their 30ies that is getting desperated by feeling time going too fast.
Dispair comes when we use to compare with whished patterns, be that comparision to younger people who happened to realize more things than us in their age or be that our comparision to our own expectations made when we were younger.
It is good to realize that our age is too few compared to eternity we have with Jesus Christ, I get very comforted when I think that God patterns are not related to accomplishments, but to relationship with Him.

*Here in Brazil, we have a song which we use to sing every new year and is like:"Bye Old Year, Happy New Year, that everything happens in the year that is borning, much money at poket, health to give and sell"

For a meaning to life

Latelly I was able to watch some movies and take advantage of my cabo subscription, so I could finally watch XMen United and Die another day (my wife loves 007 films), my difficulty to take advantage of cabo is to program yourself to be well at the time of the movie, I have been lost lots of movies because when it was at TV I was too tired or I was making anything else. There is another movie, (which I recorded in my VCR) that I was long expecting to see, The Good Girl, in Brazil the movie received another title :"For a meaning to life", this film catch my attention mainly because of Jannifer Aniston (ex-Friends) performing a drama, very far from Rachel Green.
She plays Justine a woman very upset with her life, she worked at a supermarket making up other women to sell make ups, that environment was very boring, also she was married to a pathetic house painter that used to grab is co-worker every night to her house to see TV and smoke marijuana. She looks prisioned to her life.
She met a boy, Haiden, who was also fed up with life, his parents were very far from him and just watched TV at night, he used to create some stories which the main character commited suicide at the end. They have an affair, but Justine felt greatly guilted, she even accept an invite from a creepy safety guard to attend to a Bible study meeting, she took her husband to recover her marriage but runs away when she saw a recepcionist of the hotel she usually had the affairs.
It is a disturbing movie, it is disturbing when you see some days like that, to be at night watching TV and seeing the life going away. But I thing the most disturbing thing is how we christian are providing the meaning of life for those kind of people that feel prisioned to their life, have no hope and surround us everyday. Sadly, many churches are just changing pathetic lifes in front of TV to pathetic lifes at programs in churches.
Jesus Christ gives us abundant life, living with him mean to share his redemption to all world, participate of a community of love and faith that lives fully love, Jesus have the answer that people are looking for, we have to live this answer and save people from the hell they are living now.

Family always worths more

It is already Wednesday and I should not miss the opportunity to talk about couple’s retreat I attended last weekend. I have been writing a lot of my search for being a Jesus disciple here and now, but a great issue of that is regarding being family.
This was my first couple’s retreat after 11 years of marriage, I returned very glad for reflecting especially what it means being couple and being family.
We reflected about the liquid mind of today’s world, when you are what you consume. Consumerism have weakened the idea of conquest, as long as when you get things so easily, the feeling of preparing yourself for a travel, for a house and even for a marriage, has been made conquering not meaningful enough. For instance, when you prepare yourself for a travel to Europe, each month worths and the travel really became a dream fulfilled, but when you decide to go to Europe next week even sharing payments for next months, travel will not be as meaningful. When you know a girl and next night you can sex with her, where is the conquest? That is why liquidness of thinking today is a great hazard for the steadiness of marriage.
By marriage God gives the opportunity to be one, the closer experience we get of oneness that He have with Jesus and Holy Spirit, a great blessing, a blessing that worths investment not for the sake of marriage, but for strengthen spiritual experience with God.
The liquidity of today’s mind have hardened hearts as long as people start thinking a lot about yourself and lacks the opportunity to love, it causes people unlearning love and weaks their capability to love and share, that is why our marriage begins to be a great witness of the power and blessing of God for us.
With “New Way to Be Human” discussions, we’ve been talked about God purposing the way to be human, in this matter, purposed marriage, man and woman leaving their parents and becoming one, and all through Bible we learn how to have a very balanced marriage by love and submission. As long as man (or woman) starts to think more about himself and define his own way to drive his life, his marriage lacks the balance and his hearts starts to hard and marriage gets hazarded. This is where sin grows and life in earth becomes poorer.
I am not defending marriage for itself, as the institution that must remains, but the way of God allowed us to feel how can we be one. And how nice it is.
The theme of our retreat was more than appropriate: The Family always worths more, and I am confident of it.

Reimagining community

I have just finished to read Reimagining Spiritual Formation, I was very pleased to be presented to Solomon Porch Community. Their description about their values and the journals of some members made me feel presented to them.
I sympathize with author’s uncomfort about doing church today with yesterday mind, I also think that I could not stand with regular church expression for 10 years, mainly here in São Paulo we still have a great need of new kind of Christian expressions that fit to our reality today (faith is the same, expressions may change).
I don’t know if I could get along with this community very well, but, as I have already told, I appreciated their efforts to find a community approach instead of applying today’s regular churching approach which somewhat are close to marketing and business administration. This effort made me think about how authentic I was when I used to ministry in church.
I have reinforced some general conceptions with this book. I am glad to find a community like SP that found their own life, and set their own history and personality, it is good SP reimagined how they would go and maintained a great respect for what have done in christian history, that is a very good example.
I am a lot eager to start a new history with a new community here; sometimes I think I have everything ready in my mind to apply in a new community, which is a great mistake. Though we must have very defined values to drive a community direction, community itself will set the path as long as needs and gifts show up.
This path will be better set if communities dare to create their own patterns. I think people are usually very lazy to discover their own path, they see examples and instead of getting principles, they read that as how-to-do church, applying models that fit another reality. That is why we have some good examples and lots of bad copies of these examples.

Monday Investigation

Here's a new meme purposed by Rick Stilwell
1) Who was the first person you talked to this morning?
Andre, my former trainee, talking about weekend

2) What was the first thing you saw this morning?
My clock-radio

3) Where was the first place you went in a car today?
To office

4) When was your first phone call this morning?
My wife, as usual I call her when I got office

5) How did you decide what to wear?
I like blue, but I try not to wear one my blue shirts everyday, today was yellow shirt time.

It is not business... It is gospel

I read an article from Mark Priddy at Ooze "It's not business... it's the gospel", and I think he went deeper when I talk about Marketing and Church, he described a mind of marketers trying to sell church. As I were reading his attempts to make a campaign for the Gospel I sensed what he concluded later, a pure reducionism of the Gospel.
Thinking about making an ad campaign to bring more customers to church, and improve services to make them repeated customers, make me think that sooner we will not have the same gospel, this because these customers will change for a new one as soon as customers find a improved version of this, they will change them as they do at market. Churches will have to launch a better version later.
It is reducionism! As if following Jesus words were not enough.
I am reading the book about Solomon Porch, and I am appreciating all efforts from Doug Pagitt and his community to run out of all marketing attempts we have in church and exploring community and gospel for themself, it seemed more authentic.
When I was studying business administration university, I ever related all classes I was learning to church, I am the type of applying everything I read and do to the Kingdom, but seeing all exaggerations, I can conclude that Jesus brings much better solutions than Kotler.