Small Parking Lots and Actually Loving Your Neighbor...

In August, I am moving to Nashville and I'm already looking for a church to join.

The following paragraph radically altered my search: 

"Ask yourself: What is my parish? Historically, churches have had vested interest in their surrounding communities. And members often lived within walking distance of the church (explaining small parking lots). Pastors lived in the parsonages attached to or near the churches, and the churches had vital roles in the life of their communities. As a society, when we became commuterized churchgoers, all that changed. Most churches have lost their community roots, with little connection to the geography surrounding their buildings." (1)

And, I would add that larger, commuterized churchogers have a great chance for lost connection to the people in the building as well as the surrounding buildings.

Hear me out.

I love my church where my pastor and many other attendees know my name, maybe even some of my story. I don't feel like just a face in the crowd. And I aim to be involved: attending on Sunday, doing service projects, belonging to a smaller community group that meets outside of church. 

BUT what if I didn't live 20-30 minutes away from my churchgoers but lived and went to church with my neighbors.

In my Nashville church search, I had fallen in love with this big church that will be about 30 minutes away from where I hope to live. I no longer plan to go there. I want to find one much closer because...

What if I saw my pastor and other churchgoers in my local grocery store, at the corner gas station, went for walks with them on weekday mornings? What if knowing a mom in my community group was sick, instead of sending a little prayer via text, I lived close enough to stop by and watch her kids while she took a nap? Or what if knowing I was stressed out of my mind during grad school midterms, a family in my church made me dinner and invited me down the street to save me from cooking and cleaning for an evening?

Maybe, like me, you are already settled into a church and have roots there. What then?

How about we live this out:

³⁶ “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?” ³⁷ Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ ³⁸ This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”    

                                                                              - Matthew 22:36-40 (NLT)

I'm ashamed to say that I do not even know my current neighbor's name. What if I did? What if we hung out, shared meals, spent time in each others homes? Went to church together?

Not only should we live out loving one another in our churches better as we see in 1 John:

¹¹ This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another...¹⁴ If we love our Christian brothers and sisters, it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead...¹⁸ Dear children, let’s not merely say that we love each other; let us show the truth by our actions.

                                                                            - 1 John 3:11,14,18 (NLT)


We should also love those in the homes around our homes AND the homes around our churches who don't know Jesus. 

Ask yourself:  "What is my parish?"
Love. Your. Neighbor.
Believers and unbelievers.




(1) = p 170 of Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt Those They Help (And how to reverse it) by Robert D. Lupton

You're More Beautiful Than You Think

You're More Beautiful Than You Think.

I'd be willing to bet on it.

As women especially, we are ridiculously hard on ourselves.

It has never been more apparent than in this recent experiment by Dove:

These women so misrepresented themselves. The sketch of what others saw was so much more grace-giving than the ones where they described how they perceived themselves to be.

We see - and focus on - flaws rather than our stronger features.

I do it too. 

I recently had a horrible breakout AND an even worse haircut that looked like a mix between Cindy Lou Who from the Grinch and a 1960s bouffant hairstyle. There was an increase in self-hate talk and a decrease in confidence. 

Thank God those are two very temporary situations. 

Skin clears and hair grows back. 

But, sadly, body image issues remain.

I recently saw this article that summarizes 9 things we should know about body-image issues: 

1. Was the video from above; here is a still-shot the article showed: 
   

2. 5'3" and 166.2 pounds: average height and weight for American women. 5'10" and 120 pounds: average for fashion models
3. Age 6: when girls start to express concerns about their own weight or shape. 40-60% of elementary girls: amount who are concerned about their weight or about becoming too fat. (AGE 6!?! No wonder this is a pervasive problem for women... we are conditioned to be concerned about our image by the time we begin elementary school.)
4. 12-13 years old: the median ages for onset of an eating disorder in adolescents. 20 million: U.S. women who suffer from a clinically significant eating disorder at some time in their life.
5.  4%: amount of women globally who consider themselves beautiful.
6. 2/3 of women globally: the amount who strongly agree that "the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty that most women can't ever achieve"
7. Researchers have found that "fat talk"—a phenomena in which a person makes negative claims about their weight to others—is an expected norm among women and a way for them to appear more modest.
8. A study published in the Journal of Eating Disorders found that while "fat talk" tended to decrease with age, "old talk" often came in to replace it, and that both were reported by women who appeared to have a negative body image
9. The only complete way to overcome the problem is to have our beliefs about body image transformed by the Holy Spirit. As Heather Davis says in the Journal of Biblical Counseling:

In pursuing worldly beauty, we strive to become this elusive image in place of who we really are. You and I are created in the image of the living God. Our purpose is to reflect His image to the world. But since the fall, we let the world inscribe its image on us. It is the very picture of sin and ultimately death. Instead of being transformed to God's image, we conform to the world's image...

God makes you beautiful with the beauty of His Son, Jesus. It is in gazing at God's image in Jesus Christ that you are transformed. Romans 12:1-2 says, "Therefore, I urge you, (sisters) in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind."

And, said in a different way, this is one of my all-time favorite slam poems, "You are Beautiful" by Mike Young. It is SO worth a listen! 

Some of my favorite lines of his are... 

• Saying that you're nothing does not honor me
• Humility isn't thinking less of you, it's thinking of you less
• This reality: you look just like your Daddy
• [who thinks you're beautiful?] "I do" proclaims the voice that spoke the skies 
• You are beautiful because of what I say... - God

Genesis 1:27 says: 

So God created human beings in his own image.
    In the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.

We look just like our daddy. 

As Mike Young says, the voice that spoke the skies spoke our name and when He did, He had glory on his lips. 

We are beautifully and wonderfully made in the image of the creator of the entire world. 

He does not make mistakes and He made us exactly as we are... it is a slap in His face when we insult our image or anyone else since we all represent Him. 

I hope you can live out the Romans verses above. Break you mind from distorting your image from anything but beautiful.

As the Dove campaign put it, "You're More Beautiful Than You Think."

First Guest Post: The Rantings of One Emma the Kane

1) I had a delightfully long phone date with my friend Emma last week and one of the many topics we covered was the Facebook activity around the gay marriage debate. 

2) In case you missed it, there was a ton of support online with the red and pink equal signs. There were even articles written about this facebook support, as seen here. 

3) I thought my friend brought up a pretty good point that it would be awesome if our generation would get just as public about other issues and move to action beyond simply changing their profile picture on facebook. 

4) I told her she should write a blog and she sent me her thoughts in an email below; I have highlighted points in bold that I really liked. I hope y'all enjoy the change of pace with a different writer :) 

ok so i thought id go ahead and send you this while it is still brewing and stewing in my brain!  i can tell you that an introvert's brain, well at least this one's, never really shuts off.  so here we go:

forgive my lack of eloquence...i am sick and tired of hearing all this marriage equality crap every single time i open my computer or look on facebook or turn on the tv.  every single status that i see updated on facebook is about marriage equality and everyone's new profile picture is the equality symbol they have used.  i am just sick and tired of it, pass it, don't pass it, i could care less.  really as a secular government under the constitution they should pass it, so go ahead!  just don't force churches to be perform the ceremonies if they find it against their beliefs.  if you want an honest separation of church and state then truly separate the church and the state and stop forcing churches to do things.  

more importantly, why aren't people standing outside the supreme court or the white house or where this "sit in" is being performed to demand harsher convictions for child molesters and sex offenders?  or how about the millions of girls and children being kidnapped and forced into sex slavery, or not even that, those girls that are expecting to be a sex slave because their mothers and sisters and neighbors had to follow that path if they didn't get married first.  and even in those marriages, can they expect peace and protection or the same fear of rape and abuse but by the same man instead of many men in one night?  how about we worry about those millions of child soldiers that are drugged and brainwashed to do all of the horrible things to other people that their kidnappers are doing to them, watching their parents die and then killing other children?  how about those children that are afraid to be home, afraid of their own parents, brothers, uncles, grandfathers, neighbors, teachers, babysitters because of the things they do to them behind closed doors and through the guise of "trust" and "friendship."  how about the children in north korea who are so starved that they will pick the rice out of the mud that the soldiers drop, piece by piece, just to get a bite to eat?  how about the millions of people in our own backyard that can't get a freaking job so they can no longer support their families?  how about those people also in our own backyard that are being trafficked right in front of our noses as slaves? 

how about those people that see all of these things happen but they are so self consumed that they don't do anything to stop it or help in any small way they can?  I could go on and forgive this rant, but seriously, marriage equality is a first world problem and quite frankly we have bigger fish to fry.  like i said: pass it, don't pass it, i could care less at this point.  but if you're gonna make a big stink about something like that, what about these other issues where people really need the law to support them instead of failing them over and over again?  i think we all need to rethink some priorities here.

[NOTE FROM SARAH: I don't want to offend my gay friends or take any huge stance for or against gay marriage BUT I do wish people would get as vocal or more vocal about issues where people's lives are at stake or babies or starving or women are being raped. These issues are urgent and largely ignored by the general public. Show some public support for those things. So ride this wave of activism... keep it up!!!]