We've a variety of Christmas greetings for family, friends and friends we haven't yet met.

It has been a year of blessing and challenges--and most of all, of love. Emma and Ethan bring us so much of it. They grow in us a capacity to love and be loved that begins to connect us more with the love of our Abba Father. They are truly our beloved, as we all are His.

Here is a rather fine photo of them giggling and hugging near the hearth.


God went to such great lengths to love us, asking only to be loved in return.
Jesus began His human life as a helpless infant, bound to us in love like our own children. His human journey ended in the selfless giving of His life empassioned with the relentless love of a divine parent. Remember this love as we celebrate His gift to us this Christmastime.

Happy Christmas Everyone!

Please enjoy our Christmas photo page, along with our annual year in review photo page.
If you don't get the password via Email, shoot me an Email or comment on this post and I'll get it to you.

Be sure to drop us a line, a link or stop by our place for some cookies and coffee.

I remember discussions a few years ago with former members of a church plant we were a part of about how many churches were adding the word “relevant” to their mission/purpose statements, names, or subtitles, etc. I bristled at the trend because I couldn’t shake the idea (being the gen-x contrarian that I am) that if you need to come out and say you are relevant, then you probably aren’t anymore. It reminded me of my work in advertising and marketing related to writing promotional copy. There comes a point when using trendy language to describe yourself becomes antithetical, and subsequently clichéd. For example, if your church is relevant, is the one down the road irrelevant? And to whom is it relevant? And if every church claims to be relevant, then what basis does the spiritual seeker have for deciding to drop by?

Pastor and V-logger, Aaron Flores captures this in his blog entry from this past weekend: “Frequently, to be relevant or culturally engaging is mistaken for a hipper aesthetic that packages church in a more culturally user-friendly package. The argument against relevancy and cultural engagement often claims that the church has become cultural synchronistic or secular. However, relevancy and cultural engagement has more to do with marketing than with actually being genuine of a cultural context or, in other words, being in sync with culture and the secular. Like Disneyland who attracts families by its culturally relevant family entertainment for American consumers, our modern tendencies tempt us to make an attraction and monstrosity of our churches in order to market them to certain demographics.”
Amen, brother. Do read the whole thing—it goes far deeper. I love the indigenous idea later in the post.

When it becomes clear to an intended audience that terms like “relevant” are really marketing clichés employed by churches to give their product greater consumer appeal (and I would argue that it already has for those in the post-modern world), then what is left for those that reject such an appeal? Rejecting the message of the gospel on this basis is tragic. But sadly, in the suburban world I inhabit and have grown up in, many evangelical churches have thought it best to market the gospel to consumers like the flavored sugar water of Coke or Pepsi, rather than actively transforming the earthly culture they inhabit with the other-worldly culture of grace and love we find abiding in Christ.

The metaphor of The Church marketing cola is so interesting to me. How do you differentiate from the competition? Different formulas or sweeteners? Pepsi One, C2, Zero, Clear, New Coke? Product placement? Celebrity endorsements? Or rather, 40 Days of Purpose, CCM worship, The Passion, WWJD, Jabez, etc. What’s the flavor-of-the-month?

To quote Steve Jobs’ infamous question to John Sculley when he recuited him from Pepsi to join Apple Computer in the early 80s, “If you stay at Pepsi, five years from now all you’ll have accomplished is selling a lot more sugar water…. If you come to Apple you can change the world.”

I think God is asking the same question in the emerging church (sans the Pepsi and Apple part). I’m through with working so hard to “sell” sugar water. Where can I sign up to change the world?

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