Corey Paxton

Yesterday, I had two unusually disgusting life opportunities.  You can vote on which one you would rather do.

My wife is out of town with the kids so I can finish my final paper for my 2nd to last Fuller course without a problem, and I have taken the opportunity to tear up the bathrooms and re-tile the floors in my spare time with the help of my trusty friends, Nate and Su-Min.  To re-tile the bathroom, you have to take out the toilets.

Did I mention our house was built in 1950?  I’m not sure if the toilets have been deeply cleaned in almost 60 years…….I need to sanitize my entire body.

But wait, it gets better.

Opportunity number 2-

My neighbor, Erin, dropped by yesterday with her son, Kai.  We love our neighbors by the way and they often just stop by to hang out for a bit.  Well, yesterday- Erin says with a strange look on her face- “Corey, I have a strange request- can you help me out?”

So, I said- sure, what is it?

She then said something very surprising– “I have a dead muskrat or beaver on my couch, can you help me get it out….”

So- the question- would you rather get a small, indistinguishable animal with its guts fully exposed off of your neighbor’s couch or clean 60 year old toilets?

This is a great video from communitas in New Orleans. They are doing great R&D work for the church down there.

As I watched the video and saw all the people that like Jesus but don’t like church, the question kept coming to mind: What if we invited people who are alienated by the church to help  Christians see what it would look like to follow Jesus?  It seemed like they have a pretty good idea what Jesus is about, and maybe they could help us learn what it means to follow Him.  Rather than trying to just convince people about God, we need to invite people to participate in God’s heart.

This may not be the best way to make a political decision, but if McCain is serious, I’m in.

This is exactly the kind of change we need in our country.

If you are a follower of Christ or interested in the possibilities of Jesus’ message, please read this book. Regardless of the kind of church or ministry we are in, this book will be encouraging and inspiring. Hugh writes with a great depth of insight that comes out of failure, experience, and the perseverance to not give up the hope in the new possibilities of Jesus’ kingdom. As a consultant, mentor, and church-planter, he does not recommend cookie-cutter strategies or programs to grow our ministries, but tangible practices and habits that will grow our souls by leading us back to the heart and mission of God in normal life and relationships. I stayed up until 1am last night because I couldn’t put this book down. I had to finish it.

Another book I would recommend that I read recently is Jim and Casper Go to Church. Everyone interested in Jesus should read these books.

Here’s a promo of a book that just came out by a couple CRM staff in Denver on creating incarnational -missional community. Matt and Hugh lead Missio within CRM which mentors church planters while they have the option of earning a masters at Fuller seminary. Their community, Adullam, is doing some great stuff in Denver.

In the Arts and Living section of the News and Observer, they ran a great article about the changes happening in downtown Raleigh right now. They mentioned a blog from John Morris that highlights the life of the city. It’s got some great pictures of the new building projects, night life, and arts in our home.

Overall, I’m really excited about the growth of Raleigh, and hope that it becomes an even more dynamic place. Most surveys I’ve read recently include Raleigh as one of the top places in the country to move because of the low cost of living and amount of job opportunities. Over the next 15 years, I think Raleigh is going to experience tremendous growth. I’m excited by the possibilities.

My hope is that Dorothy Dix becomes a central park area (mostly because I live 2 minutes from it), and that the city becomes more aware of how to improve South and Southeast Raleigh for the people that live there. In my short time here, I’ve already heard that North Raleigh gets a dispraportianate amount of the cities’ funding. For instance, I heard of a multi-million dollar swimming facility going into North Raleigh, whereas a major hub of Southeast Raleigh’s community life (including a public pool and memorial to MLK, Jr) has yet to be improved despite years of promises. With the continued influx of post-modern younger people into the city, I hope that we do not gentrify the poor out of their communities in our quest for improvement.

Does anyone know where we can find out more information about the cities funding in relationship to different areas of the city?

I’d like to find out more specific statistics rather than just piecing news articles and conversations I have together.

This is a follow up to my mom’s comment on my previous post that I gave no explanation of why I thought it was worth passing on.

I thought the pastor’s comments were very insightful. The mega-church is not necessarily the problem (I completely agree with Sam’s most recent post). Let me be to the point– I don’t think there is a right way “to do” church. Too often, we get too self-righteous in whatever approach to ministry we choose. God didn’t give us a model, He gave us a mission to make disciples that obey the way of Jesus in every culture to the ends of the earth.

The issue for me is not necessarily the structure, but are we aligning our structures with where God is moving to fulfill His mission in the world? The moment we think we’ve got the right model, then we lose because God’s Spirit works through people who hear and respond to Him. Our structures need to submit to His Spirit working in people, or else we end up trying to manipulate or control people.

The reason that I found the post worth passing on is that no one had even thought about the idea that Sam mentioned about planting multiple communities rather than building a bigger building.

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I found this post by our CRM President to be worth passing on.

I had a great weekend. My friend Joseph spent four days with us, got to know my whole family, and was a great blessing to our community.

Even though it rained and was real cold, we still had about 100 people show up for our kickball tournament and we were able to raise over $1200 for the Hope Center. It was great to see all the hard work come together.

In Joseph’s message on Sunday, he gave a powerful message about Jesus’ feeding of the 5,000, and how God chooses to invite us into partnership with Him to meet the needs of the world. Although the disciples thought feeding the multitudes was unrealistic, Jesus did the impossible as they surrendered what little they had to Him. He challenged us to think about what little gifts, interests, passions, relationships, connections, and resources we have that we can surrender to God to be multiplied towards meeting the needs of our neighbors, community, and world.

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 Much has been made about the shift in our culture from modernity to postmodernity.   In a book I read recently, the author gives a great analysis of ways in which the culture of “modernity” has influenced our worldview, values, and practices as people.   I found this quote particularly helpful to understand our “consumer culture’s” influence on our lives and understanding of spirituality.

 “Further, in the modern story, reality is that which is observable, measurable, and repeatable—the kinds of phenomena available, accessible, and verifiable to the five sense.  Thus, reality comes to equal the scientific method.  It should come as no surprise that in such a  world the life of the spirit is ignored or marginalized.  This view of life subsequently birthed in human beings a ravenous materialism as matters of the soul were ignored or reinterpreted within this tightly controlled version of reality.  When the life of the spirit is ignored, people will seek to feed the hunger of a neglected soul with the only nourishment available: in our context, the consumptive acquisition of material goods.  If spirituality is engaged, it is often reduced and turned into one more commodity to be packaged, sold, and consumed like so many other aspects of modern life: in a radically individualistic way.  As a result, to be human in the world of modernity means to understand oneself as a consumer who progresses by working to acquire the things and symbols of a material world that are chosen on the basis of personal preference.  Churches existing within this framework for reality are often no different. “Church shopping” has become the defining metaphor for deciding which community of faith satisfed one’s needs—it is the new mantra.  Churches rarely possess a corporate understanding of themselves as a people but rather as one more collection of individuals choosing to be together based on similar preference (music, preaching, programs, etc)……”