Yet this doesn’t address one of the key points of struggle I have in general with charismatic theology. This struggle is that the implicit model for understanding the world (and its interaction with the spiritual world) I see most charismatics functioning under the older model where people are pushed around by good/evil spiritual forces from some spiritual realm. I don’t see this as being an incarnational worldview but rather a view that looks to the heavens to explain the actions of the world around us.

Instead I see the incarnational model being one where the God of the Universe actually dwells within us (see Pentecost in Acts 2:1-21) and that it is through this indwelling that God works in the world. We see the spirit of God work through and out of Jesus in his ministry as he preached and healed those he came in contact with.It isn’t that God couldn’t do what he wishes without us, but that God has chosen to empower people with the Spirit of God to do God’s work in the world.

So my question might better be stated through asking how can we hold the reality of God’s incarnation within us as the primary means through which God desires to establish Heaven on earth when charismatic theology general tends to imply that we must call out to a God above who might or might not act? Can we allow space for the miraculous alteration of systems and structures that lift millions out of poverty or sickness? Can there be space for the sweat of God’s people to be seen as an act of God’s power equal with or surpassing healing or deliverance? Or are we content to us God’s power as a shortcut that lets us to not expand our ability to love? How can we affirm suffering, and suffering with others as a blessing (as Christ suffered and so shall we) when we exalt God’s healing and deliverance as the ultimate form of blessing?

The issue is deeper than the means by which God chooses to exercise his power in creation. I believe that if we don’t wrestle with questions like these the charismatic church will simply become a church full of people with similar problems and no diversity as they alienate those whom do not experience the “power” of God as articulated by a few. Then it will simply become a church for some, and not for all (which is my current hope).

If you have any thoughts or additional questions to add please leave them.

Press at a National Event (USFO)

It’s a bit bizarre, but every now and then I find myself in one of those moods. Wondering what life would be like had I not walked away. After years of hard work I had achieved an incredibly unique situation, having access into a very closed off industry and getting offered several jobs every year to do whatever I wanted (magazines, event production, filming, etc). This was a deep honor, and amazing considering I wasn’t even 18 years old.

why I Walked Away

What most people didn’t know is that I had gotten to that place out of necessity and as a means to deal with a sever depression that nearly took my life twice. This in no way is meant to diminish the passion and love I had and will always have for the sport. I bring up my depression because it is a key part of the journey into skiing that started in 1999 with a simple website, and one of the key pieces that led me away from the sport in 2004. At that time I had created a social network (now defunct – MidwestSkier.com), produced internationally recognized events, produced/directed action sport films, wrote for magazines, photographed, and choreographed street marketing campaigns. Not to bad for a freshman in college.

2000-2001 Regional Interview

While my other growing passion, for my faith, wasn’t warmly received in the skiing community it became evident to me that skiing wasn’t the insurmountable passion I believed it to be. This had been unimaginable to me just years earlier (was saved in 2002), and yet I understood that if I was ever to get my mental health stable I needed to walk away from skiing. Skiing more than a passion, a career, and the love of my life, it also happened to be my escape from the pains of my life. I couldn’t adequately deal with my life without taking more time for myself.

So I resigned. At the age of 20 I was changing careers. There was no way for me to slow down without stepping out and was the hardest decision I had made in my life. I had a couple thousand hours a year in the event and a thousand more into development of the website. The event and website came out of my need to bring the freedom I experienced in skiing into the summer months, and to extend that freedom to others like me. It was time for me to focus my life on the only freedom I have found to be greater than skiing, my faith in God. It wasn’t quite done yet.

next Came the Heat

Hardest of all was not being able to express adequately what was going on to those who where friends and peers of mine. I drafted my resignation several times before I sent it out and went to sleep. Overnight everything changed as I effectively closed the doors into one of the only worlds I had known, skiing. The phone calls all stopped, i received a few messages encouraging me, but the voices who had reminded me to ‘remember them when I ruled the world’ were gone. This is when the backlash started.

My resignation had struck a nerve in the skiing community. For many standing on the outside they saw a punk kid through away their dream career because of some fake God experience. They didn’t understand how I could at my core still be the same. Insiders distanced themselves from me since it became clear that I wasn’t going to come back. Many things were said, many of them hurtful and most of them out of frustration. Hardest of all was watching close friends of mine disappear.

the Ugly Break-up

Skiing at Guzet - 2006

Somehow in the midst of everything skiing chose everyone else over me. I found myself on the sidelines longing to ride again, to get in the half-pipe and fly through the air. Being away from skiing for this many years has been very hard and bittersweet. After the dust had settled I felt like I couldn’t even head out to go skiing. I knew there were people that I had hurt, it didn’t seem like they wanted to hear from me, and so I stopped skiing. I stopped as a sort of avoidance and also because of how expensive skiing became overnight (give up all my sponsors and free tickets).

In the future I will ski more frequently. It grieves me to say that in the 6 seasons (04-05 through 09-10) that followed my resignation I have only been on skis a dozen times (though once was in france!). Since then I have begun to re-establish myself focusing on software development and in preparing to launch a church, yet I will always save a place in my heart for the first love of my life – skiing.

a Special Treat

This is the second ski video I produced: Espionage. It was released in the fall of 2003. After this we transitioned the production company to focus on promotional pieces to increase sponsorship offerings.

I know this is almost to awesome to handle. but the quote comes from a image my friend Ned posted to his twitter account. The photo I stumbled accross the next morning and thought that it was a match made to be.

Photo By: junku

Summer 2010:
Doing Theology in a Global Context – GC 739 – 01
- Dr. Roberts & Dr. Stone | End of June
SPF: Self in Community – SP 600 – 10
- Daniel D. Jass | End of July

Fall 2010:
Discipleship in Community – DC 501 – 01
- Cionca | Monday 8-12 am
Introduction to Pastoral Care – PC 501 – 01
- Leih | Monday 1-5 pm
“Patron Saints” for Postmoderns – SP 707 – 01
- Armstrone | Tues 7-10:15 pm

Winter 2011:
Effective Communication from Old Testament Genres: Eat This Text I – CP 743DI – 51
-Dr. Ridder | Online
Cross-Cultural Church Planting – GC 672 – 01
- Dr. Stone | Thurs 8-10 pm

Spring 2011:
Understanding Your Audience: Scanning the Crowd – CP 762 – 01
- Durie | Thurs 5:30-7:30 pm
Systematic Theology III – TS 503 – 01
- Dr. Roberts | Thurs 1-5 pm
Christian Social Ethics - TS 505 – 01
- Walker | Mon 1-5 pm

With all of this some you might be wondering how close I am to being done with all this school. Actually pretty close. As of tomorrow (after I give my sermon and turn in my paper) I will have 88 Credits done out of the 144 needed to graduate. Each of these courses is 4 credits, plus my internship ends June 15th and that adds another 4 credits to my load. This means this time next year I will have 132 credits done! With only 3 courses left towards my Masters of Divinity.

It has already been a long journey, but it is very exciting to feel like the end is quickly approaching. And to think that I am likely going to finish in only 3.5 years is pretty exciting as well.

The message from that night was recorded, and I believe it went pretty well. I would love your feedback (in the comments or via email). So please let me know what ya think of it! The scripture part at the beginning actually took place during worship before the announcements and my message. This was the first time I had a part in the entire production of a service (and not just the message). It is pretty cool how much creativity one can pour into that 75 minutes.

I hope you enjoyed it and found it encouraging. I got help writing the message from Mike Svoboda, awesome feedback from Mark Mellen and Bill Svoboda and I did all the graphic and video editing this time around (filming help from Gabe Hymer and Jordan Prins). Looking for people who would like to help with the creative stuff this fall.

At this point the title, Excited for Life, probably isn’t making all that much sense. It isn’t that I’ve been disingenuous above, only that those feelings only express half of the reality I have the privilege I had forgotten I get to experience on a day to day basis.

The reality is that these last two weeks have pushed me into prayer about where I am at and to spend time reflecting on those things I am juggling in life (work, family, church, and seminary). I do often feel the tension and weight of my responsibilities yet it is in the midst of this tension that I’ve felt God’s pleasure through the works of my hands. It isn’t that this sense of God’s pleasure has been missing in my life, but rather I’ve just stopped appreciating it. A short next step would lead me to start ignoring it. In some ways I think I was beginning to ignore God’s pleasure in my work in little ways.

It shouldn’t be a surprise, but taking that extra time to pray and lay everything down before God again has brought the reality of His pleasure back into focus. This is so exciting to me. To experience God’s pleasure in the little things I do day by day fuels my motivation for excellence. Knowing that, as one of His sons, I represent Him in some small way it is an honor to give all I was, am and will be to him.

So I find myself here – now – Excited for Life.

Click on the Image below to play (MP3)

Please leave comments/thought! Not to bad for my 7th message I’ve given.

Our Marriage

Things are going well. We are quickly coming up on our three year anniversary in January. We have been hanging out still in Minneapolis, and our cat is getting more and more crazy as the weeks go past (check him out on twitter)

Nineteen05 – Work

Things are really starting to pick up! We just finished an update last night that has gone over very well. There is also a lot of interest from the conferences we went to this summer. It is really excited to see the years of work starting to culminate in this type of response. So much love out to all of you who are current and soon to be clients of ours. So awesome!!

Substance Church – Internship/Work

Church went multi-site last week (officially, we had a soft-launch for several weeks to work out the bugs). This has been a really exciting change and transition for us at Substance. I am still working through my Pastoral Internship there for Bethel Sem (see below). It is fun running a campus, and at the same time when I think about the reality that I lead a campus it is a bit overwhelming. I love the logistics of it, and am stretched by the amazing people I get to serve as they make their church happen every week.

We just relaunched the church on October 4th and since then I’ve been close to a dozen new people to the church who have no sort of church background to speak of within the last 5+ years. These men and women are the reason I love Substance!

Bethel Seminary – School

I am now half way through my program! This rocks my world. I can hardly believe it. My bookshelf seems to think I am more than half way through, but it has been really good. Looking forward to getting through this quarter and lightening my load a little bit so I can focus more on nineteen05. Fun to realize that after this term I’m also done with languages! Greek has been a huge challenge to me, but its actually really fun when you look at something and know what it says. Amazing!

Thats it, life is full of goodness. So that does tend to mean that this blog is not as full. Till next time!

I preached from John chapter 14 verses 23-27 and this was the second and final sermon presented for my Preaching Practicum at Bethel Seminary.

This is the Fourth sermon that i’ve given outside of a classroom since I had any professional training as a preacher.

I would really love feedback and thoughts on the style, delivery, and content of the message.

Thanks to everyone who came out!

Also if you’d like me to email you when I have preaching engagements in the future leave a comment and I’ll add you to a list. Think it’s a good idea to do that.

There is still work to be done for each course: papers and exams for OT501 and a sermon to write and deliver for preaching. But I thought it was worth celebrating regardless. Below is the sermon I gave at Woodridge Church on Sunday evening to part of their exchange service (thanks to those of you that made it out!).

There had been some very sizable changes from the way the sermon was delivered the day before in class. Even so, I don’t believe the audiance was any wiser for it, or that it really hurt my illustrations/approach. Would love to hear your thoughts!