the view from her

This is about the clearest and most true observation about men who really love a woman. They will do three things: Profess, provide, and protect.

"How do you know if a man loves you?

“If the special person in your life is not professing his love, not providing for you or protecting you, then he does not love you.”

So if your dude isn’t telling you and others that he loves you then it may not be the real deal. He should profess it!

A man should do his best to provide for you by working hard whether it’s at McDonalds or as a CEO. Btw, income doesn’t matter, just the desire and action to provide for you.

And finally, your man should be willing to smack down anyone who would try and mess with you or give you grief. You say something unpleasant about my lady, you will deal with me. A man should protect."

That is exactly right. And really, I think it's all any woman could ask for.

So my heater died about ten days ago. In southern California, this would not normally be a big deal, but it so happens that we have had two weeks of cold and rain (30s and 40s at night). It's cold in my house. But I have realized several things.

It's always warmer in my house than it is outside (even those mornings when the thermostat reads 58). So I'm reminded to be grateful that I have a home - a basic shelter.

The electricity is still on. It's not like being in the Midwest where a snow storm knocks out the power and it's freezing. So I'm reminded to be grateful for all the comforting options I have - electric blankets, and space heaters, and microwave ovens.

And, I have a selection of coats, sweaters, sweatshirts, socks, throws and blankets to choose from in layering for warmth.

But I have been surprised by the amount of energy required just to accommodate this small inconvenience. I'm constantly adjusting, moving the space heater, planning, rearranging. I can't imagine how people without these basic comforts can manage to also carry on the activities of normal life.

And of course I'm fortunate to have saved enough money to pay for the ginormous compressor installed on my patio last night. So today I am warm, and my life is back to normal. And I'm still grateful.

Last night I went to an unusual event, offered as part of the book tour for Anne Jackson's new book Mad Church Disease. Together with musical artist Shaun Groves, Anne provided an evening that I'm sure is atypical for a promotional tour. It was focused on rest.

Anne's book is about the burnout which is often the result of working in ministry. So rather than making the evening just one more task for obtaining information on an already overflowing to-do list, Anne promoted her book on burnout by providing the antithesis: an evening of rest and meditation. Shaun sang beautiful worship music. Anne read from her book. We prayed together with the people next to us. It was relaxing, and soul-filling. I haven't read Anne's book yet, but it is getting great reviews. And if you haven't heard Shaun Groves' music, I highly recommend that you download some and give it a listen.

(Picture from @kylezimmerman)

David H. Foster writes an interesting post about when to turn the other cheek, arguing there are times when that's the wrong thing to do. Foster considers times when we hide behind the spirituality of "turn the other cheek" because we're afraid of opposition, and don't truly understand that some things must be fought for.

"The question becomes, “What is worth fighting for?” Let me tell you what’s not worth fighting for: your opinion, your style, your personality, your preferences; the things that were ingrained in you as a child, that were traditions not grounded in truth. All these things aren’t worth fighting for. But there are many that are.

"Let me say to all the men out there. Your marriage is worth fighting for...

"There’s nothing wrong with being a fighter. There is everything wrong with being small, fitful, aggravated, angry, and pissed-off at the world because it won’t give you what you want. There is everything right with fighting for truth, integrity, for your marriage and your children; for the things you believe are right and good and noble..."

So the challenge is: discerning every day what's really worth fighting for.

Since I care nothing about paraskevidekatriaphobia, I'm just going to go ahead and post about Valentine's today. And yes, I'm re-posting last year's entry, because darn it - it was just so... sweet.

All right. Tomorrow is Black Saturday. This over-sexualized, consumer-oriented and manipulatively-hyped "holiday," is possibly the most dreaded day on the entire calendar for singles without a significant other. The good news is, there's plenty of chocolate to console yourself with. So don't be bitter...sweet.

In fact, "Valentine’s Day of 2007 inspired consumers to spend $322.7 million on chocolate." So even if you don't have a semi-sweetheart, you mousse just go buy some for yourself. You mint go rent a video, something like...Chocolat, and just plan to stay in, and mocha the best of it. Though it might cream like you're missing out, maybe it's butter not to have to go to all that truffle.

Because let's face it. One thing Valentine's Day has going for it is the chocolate.

On Sunday, I posted on some kids at our church who were interviewed by ABC-TV about their commitment to go barefoot for one year.

If you live in southern California, the "Cool Kid" segment is airing on ABC-7 news sometime between 4 - 5pm today, in case you'd like to see the entire interview.

Otherwise, check out the video posted online here.

People have been drawing some interesting correlations about the current economic crisis, such as the fact that the people in charge of all the money were mostly all... men.

The New York Times points out that

"Wall Street is one of the most male-dominated bastions in the business world... Aside from issues of fairness, there’s evidence that the result is second-rate decision-making."

"That study found that men are particularly likely to make high-risk bets when under financial pressure and surrounded by other males of similar status. As for women, their risk-taking was unaffected by this kind of peer pressure."

And the Washington Post summarized it as One Gender's Crash:

"We need women in leadership positions not only because they can manage as well as men but because they manage differently than men; because they tend -- over time and in the aggregate -- to make different kinds of decisions and to accept and avoid different kinds of risk. We need women who will say no to bad decisions based on male-dominated rivalries and clubby golf course confidences. We need women to blow the whistle when risks explode and to challenge the presumptions that too many men, clustered too closely together and sharing a common worldview, can easily indulge."

I find the correlation to leadership in the Church to be striking. "We need women in leadership positions... because they manage differently." Here's why.

"It is not good for man to be alone" (Gen. 2:18). I think the articles above have provided plenty of confirmation of why that's still true. Women counterbalance men. A hundred years ago it was said that women "civilized" men. Yet man consistently shuts this helper out of much of the decision-making process. Even if you choose to interpret that verse as exclusively referring to marriage, there's still this: "God created man in his own image... male and female he created them" (Gen. 1:27). Many people aren't sure how to feel about the female aspect of God, and yet there it is. The counterbalance exists within God's own image - we are part of the same whole. Complimentarians in particular shoot themselves in the foot with this one, claiming complimentary roles and gifts, while simultaneously excluding many of those very gifts from leadership, where a representative balance of God's image would be most beneficial to the body of Christ.

Tweets from David H. Foster a couple of days ago:

If you're not a leader, you can be a leading person.

Not everyone is a leader, so stop trying to make them.

It is hard for leaders to believe that not everyone should be, can be, or even wants to lead.

Put a leading person in a leadership position and you will end up with neither.

I thought this was interesting, because as we've discussed here before, the Church seems to continually try to force "leadership" on everyone, regardless of gifting. As the old saying goes, it's like trying to teach a pig to sing: it's a waste of time and annoys the pig.

And by the way, if you haven't yet discovered Twitter, you are really missing out on an opportunity for meaningful, informative conversation with knowledgeable professionals in a variety of occupations and subjects. It's free, and it's fun.

See a sample of my Twiiter feed in the sidebar, or you can follow me at jan_lynn. Read more from David H. Foster on Twitter here.

When you manage communications at your church, the sight of a news crew in the parking lot can evoke a variety of thoughts. Fortunately for us, today it was all good.

In southern California, ABC TV produces a regular special called "Cool Kids." And it just so happens that we have some very cool kids at our church, submitted for consideration by an enterprising parent. These high-schoolers have made a commitment to go barefoot for a year. The reason? More than 300 million people in the world don't have shoes to protect their feet from injury and disease.

These kids have decided to live for a year, without shoes. They admit that here in America it's not really that big of a deal - "Everything's paved here anyway, and it's pretty clean." But their heart is to improve the lives of others in the world, and they want to demonstrate it tangibly. They've built a web page for their cause: OneYearWithoutShoes. When they're anywhere together, people inevitably ask them why they're all barefoot. They love to explain, and challenge. They're arranging "shoe drops" for people to donate shoes, and partnering with missions trips from our church to deliver shoes around the world.

I asked one mom what she really thought when her teenager told her he wasn't going to wear shoes for a year. She said, "Well, once he explained his reasons, and his heart for it, what could I say? I just told him to make sure his Tetanus shot was up to date."

Via the Ongoing Adventures of Asbo Jesus.

Words are tricky things. They have multiple meanings (check any dictionary). Combine them into sentences, and you exponentially increase their potential for misunderstanding. Consider the speaker's use of language, frame of reference, and emotions about a subject - as well as your own - and you begin to see how it's a miracle that we can communicate at all.

But knowing these variables, why do we so often rush to offense at what someone says? Especially as believers? Here are some easy examples.

He says she is softening her language to reduce the inherent offensiveness of the Gospel. She says she is merely toning down the "Christianese" in order to facilitate understanding.

She says, "Doctrine isn't the most important thing when people are starving." He says she doesn't think doctrine is important.

He says we have to make an effort to engage culture, to care for "the least of these." She says he's becoming "worldly," acting no different than them, not setting an example.

She calls it openly discussing other spiritual beliefs in order to develop a relationship. He reminds her about the narrow gate. Everybody can't be right, even a little.

A certainty of conviction often kills possibility of meaningful discussion. A willingness to pursue meaningful discussion outside of convictions is often dismissed as "she'll believe anything."

He says he is trying to accurately interpret Scripture for this time and place. She says she aligns herself with the Bible as Truth. End of discussion.

Right now, some of you are reading this and have already decided that I'm advocating some sort of relativism. Then you have already missed the point. Every one of the "couplets" above responds with an assumption about the first person's position, based on the second person's preconceived ideas and bias about the subject. For example, the statement "Doctrine isn't the most important thing when people are starving" tells you absolutely nothing about this person's doctrinal beliefs.

Every person in the world needs to read a book called Crucial Conversations. It's one of those books you have to read more than once. Here's how it explains what's happening in these conversations:

"Just after we observe what others do and just before we feel some emotion about it, we tell ourselves a story. That is, we add meaning to the action we observed. To the simple behavior we add motive... We also add judgment - is that good or bad?"

We fail to question because "we confuse subjective conclusions with steel-hard data points."

When faced with a statement that's offensive, or perplexing, or which doesn't at face value seem to align with the traditional Christian viewpoint, the first thing we must do is ask the question,"I wonder if they might possibly mean something else which I am not at this moment understanding?" And then proceed to ask more questions, such as, "Are you saying this?" Our brothers and sisters in Christ with whom we assume we disagree deserve our best attempt at understanding before condemning.

Pete Wilson, pastor at Cross Point Church in Nashville, writes a beautiful post about taking for granted the commonplace things of life. Quoting G.K. Chesterton, he provides an entirely different perspective about monotony:

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we."

I absolutely love the image of the Creator joyfully creating daisies over and over again, year after year. Pete rightfully points out that we often overlook what is common in our lives. But this also reminds me to take pleasure in my work - not to grow weary in the daily repetition of tasks and responsibilities, but to exult in the gifts and abilities he's given me and the opportunity to joyfully give them back to him day after day.

Our new February message series began this weekend. We always think of Valentine's Day when February comes around, so we thought it was a good way to remind people of God's incredible love for them, and hopefully help them see their relationship with him as an epic love story.

The tag reads:
"God's love is an epic story of scandalous love -
an obsession that spanned all time,
overcame all obstacles,
battled danger and ultimately death,
all in pursuit... of you."

Anne Jackson comments on Ted Haggard's recent television interviews. He talked about going to some pastors and leaders to discuss his issues of same-sex attraction and seek direction. These "leaders" and "pastors" (I use quotations intentionally, because they demonstrated neither leadership or shepherding) withdrew or suggested he just work harder for God. There are a lot of comments about the Church choosing to ignore sin, or keeping secrets. But I think there's a different problem. I posted this comment:

"I actually think this post highlights a different issue. While I’m sure there are many churches who choose the option of keeping some sins secret, I think this is really an example of the Church not making an effort to find a credible response to homosexuality. We’ve painted ourselves into a black and white corner, where Christians can not be gay. Then, when confronted with a gay believer, we just have no answer, so we ignore or change the subject. We’re completely unprepared, uneducated, and ignorant of changing perceptions. And really, it’s as if we don’t even care. Except we recognize that our views make us look bad, and we care about that, but just don’t know what to do about it.

The issue isn’t going away, and we harm the cause of Christ by passively clinging to outdated and cliche soundbites about hating sin but loving those gay sinners. To be clear: I’m not advocating acceptance. But the Church needs to be proactive in finding and taking a stand on this issue - one that’s intelligent, biblical, clear, realistic, and most of all - compassionate."

Seth Godin explains what it is marketers are really selling.

"Not powder or chemicals or rubber or steel or silicon or talk or installations or even sugary water.

What marketers sell is hope.

The reason is simple: people need more. We run out. We need it replenished. Hope is almost always in short supply.

The magical thing about selling hope is that it makes everything else work better, every day get better, every project work better, every relationship feel better. If you can actually deliver on the hope you sell, there will be a line out the door."

The hope marketers sell is mostly a hope that their product will actually deliver on its promises: whiter teeth, younger looking skin, minimized wrinkles, a slimmer waist, thicker hair. Godin's right - in this world, hope is usually in short supply. The key is delivering on the hope you "sell."

Churches have the truest, deepest, most unlimited amount of hope possible, and it's the real thing. And we aren't selling it - we're giving it away. So do people know it? Are we lavish and extravagant and reckless with our message?