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If you’ve spent more than a few minutes with me, then you know that I’m no animal lover. I’ll never understand why people would want a nasty, smelly, hair-shedding animal living in their house and sleeping on their couch.

Nasty.

Anyway, you’ve heard about DUI’s, but a new law that is being proposed in California (it passed the California Assembly and is waiting for a vote in the Senate) would create a new criminal activity: DWD, or Driving with Dog. If passed, it would be illegal to ride in a motor vehicle with a dog on your lap.

My question is, “Why isn’t this already a law?”

I’ll be the first to admit that I talk on my cell phone in the car…without a headset (gasp!). People get all worked up about the dangers of cell phones, but what about all the people with mangy muts running all over their car while driving? I don’t see how this is a good idea or why this new law hasn’t already been passed.

Then again, I’ll never understand why anyone would consider having a pet, so maybe I’m just missing something. Either way, good for you, California.

I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple of days, but last week I never got around to posting my notes from the final general session at the Orange Conference.

Louie Giglio spoke about leading culture and how we impact culture.

There’s a pervasive perspective that attempts to influence culture through becoming relevant. Instead, Giglio suggested that the church should strive to be transcendent. Relevance only brings the us into step with the culture (and then, therefore, behind again), but transcendence pushes us in front of and beyond culture.

He mentioned two extremes in the way Church reacts to culture:

1. Avoiding culture – pretending that culture doesn’t matter or perhaps simply ignoring it all together.
2. Cultural infatuation – making culture a modern “Golden calf”

So how do we transcend culture? What’s the story in the midst of us today?

• This story about Jesus is more about doing the Gospel than being the Gospel.
• It is supernatural acts alongside supernatural stories.
• A church that’s more about movement than walls.
• Walls are predictable, reproducible, measurable
• Movement is about wind. Nobody knows where it comes from or where it goes. It powers you forward.
• It’s about the future more than the past.
• A transcendent church is a church filled with young people.
• We need to be who we are (as opposed to conforming to culture). And that is flat out amazing.

Don’t try this at home…

Today our church held a teaching seminar with Earl Creps for some of the leadership team and volunteers. He discussed concepts regarding the missional church and how our culture demands that new methods and approaches be used in reaching people.

Here are some thoughts from the different sessions.

Session 1

• Many church operate with the assumption that people have “read the rulebook” and will respond to the church in the same ways that people did generations ago.
• The Church isn’t doing a good enough job of keeping up with population growth.
• We need to lower the threshold of entrance to the church for our community. This doesn’t mean compromising truth, but it does mean removing unrealistic (extra-biblical) expectations and requirements.

Session 2

• In discussing Acts 16 and the call to Macedonia, Earl gave some observations about people he called “God-fearing.”
• Our ministry must avoid formulas, but must have a plan.
• Paul went to synagogues first, and then the marketplace.
• We generally teach/practice a model that stops at the synagogue.
• “Christianity is not an explained religion, but a revealed religion.”

Session 3 – Missional Geometery

• Take a chance on God.
• Trusting God to do what we cannot and to lead us along the way.
• Trusting God to use us right where we are at.
• Take a chance on people.
• We are going to have to gamble that the Holy Spirit will actually change people and that we can’t force people to change.
• Jesus didn’t come to make good people better, but to make dead people live.
• Take a chance on each other.
• Being willing to throw everything up in the air and do what’s right for the whole and not yourself.
• Valuing the whole group instead of your own status/role etc.

I don’t know why, but I found this interesting.