Monday, August 29, 2005

This one is for you Dustin... :-)

From a newspaper article in the Sun-Sentinel

If you want to visit Steve Mullins at his "office," go to the Borders bookstore in Plantation any weekday afternoon. Hang a right into the coffee bar and look for a stocky blond guy with a Macintosh G4 on one of the two grayish-teal leather couches in the corner, the most comfortable seats in the house.

Mullins, 36, is worship pastor at Sawgrass Fellowship, a Baptist congregation that meets in Sunrise. He rotates among three wireless, or Wi-Fi, hotspots, using them as his virtual office, where he can check e-mails and exchange MP3 music files with church band members.

The T-Mobile account, which costs him $30 per month, works in at least 67 Starbucks outlets, 10 Borders and 22 FedEx Kinko's in South Florida. Mullins, who doesn't have a physical office, says the cost is worth it: He gets a stimulating environment, comfy couch, and "the coffee is always on."

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Communion Thoughts From Bonhoeffer's Quote

Matt (and everyone else),

I was thinking about this line of thought in the context of communion. As a Baptist, and I’m starting to think I’m a bad Baptist, a remembrance view of the Lord’s Table is SO important. And while I still hold to that view, John 6 has some bizarre things to say that expand my little box of communion understanding.

“Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me” (John 6.54-57 TNIV—emphasis, obviously mine).

What a deep incarnational thought! Just as Jesus only did the will of the Father, so my life is only in Jesus; and that somehow communion represents that beyond my little remembrance view. There is a special added spirituality to the act, and as you say Matt, it might be in the fact that the people with whom I feast at the Lord’s Table are the body of Christ.

“Christ fulfills every authentically religious impulse in us”. Beautifully said! If Jesus does this, and accomplishes it in His body, not just a collection of individuals but a community in united under Him, then as the apostle Paul put it in Ephesians 4.8,9 we are to “live as children of light for the fruit of light consists in all goodness, righteous and truth”. This becomes our strong and passionate desire…more Jesus in “fulfillment of every good thing”!