1) Did an upper body workout at the Y this morning. Nothing too heavy. Just trying to maintain the old metabolism.
2) While lifting I listened to this press interview with Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady.
By the way, did you see him thread the needle time after time during Monday night's game against the Giants? The man is a phenom. Not to mention his 11-yard carry. But here's what I wanted to share with you. During the interview, Brady said very little about himself. In fact, he did the opposite. Here's what he had to say about his team:
We all gotta do it. Everyone's gotta do it. I think everyone's gotta do what they're asked to do and do it on a consistent basis. Every job is important.... That's the thing about football. There's not one position that's unimportant, and everyone's gotta be coordinated, everyone's gotta to do the right thing on every play or the play's not successful.
Priceless.
Will our churches ever get this? Just look at your church's website. Under "Ministry Team" you'll find the equivalent of a quarterback and maybe a halfback and possibly a wide receiver. Hmm. Tom Brady would be the last person to make himself out to be the "leader" on the Bucs. Imagine a church website that had this page:
Head of Our Church: Jesus Christ and him alone.
Ministers: Every single one of us. Our entire congregation is active in ministry. This ministry is given to all of us by God and is exercised through the spontaneous use of special gifts of the Holy Spirit. Our elders do not perform ministry while others watch, but help to stir up the ministry of all the members. There is no other way. Christ continues his ministry through his people, all of his people. Hence we do not equate "ministry" with clergy-status.
Elders: What we said above does not call into question that the risen Christ has placed teachers in the church as under-shepherds to lead and to facilitate the deployment of the whole congregation for the fuller exercise of every Christian's God-given priesthood. Our elders are [here you would place the names of your elders, without any distinction between staff and lay, salaried or voluntary, senior or junior, fulltime or part-time].
I think it highly unlikely that we ever see such a webpage for the simple reason that we really do not believe what we say we believe.
3) After my workout I was able to get to CVS for my booster shot. So far no side-effects.
4) Finally, John Galantis of Clearview Church was kind enough to send me a link to the podcast interview I did with Abidan Shah a couple of weeks ago. I honestly don't remember me being so passionate about a subject in a very long time. Oh wait. I can't open it! Let me work on that :-)