Exiled Community

It’s Sunday morning, and normally I would be at Church- but nearly two feet of snow have shut everything down.  So I wanted to drop a quick post that I have not forgotten the blog and will certainly start posting more frequently.  January is always a strange month in the LaMotte household- and this one was no different.

For your reading and thinking pleasure- check out Eric Park’s blog post on the theology of Avatar.  He does a great job of encapsulating the theology of the movie while encouraging Christians not to dismiss some of the movies themes (care of nature, etc.).  It is well worth your time, especially as we are in award season for movies/music/tv.

Dear Cameron Strang and the good people of Relevant Magazine:

I am one of your subscribers who has journeyed with your magazine since the beginning (Alright, not the complete beginning, maybe issue 2 or 3). I enjoy most of the articles, the music/movie reviews, and of course, slices.  In fact, the slices at http://www.relevantmagazine.com/ is what first caught my attention about the magazine.  As a Christian in his twenties (and now in my very early 30’s), I really appreciate a magazine (and website) that focuses on faith and culture.

I was pretty excited with your recent issue of Relevant Magazine.  This issues is probably my favorite issue in the last year.  I was pumped to read about Owl City and how Adam Young said, “I cling dearly to the hope and joy that is found in Jesus Christ. My faith is a big part of who I am and why I make music.”  It was great to read about Zac Levi and how he is a successful actor in Hollywood while living out his Christian faith.  I was really intrigued to read about his close connection with his pastor and that he has a home church that meets at his house.

My problem with the issue came during the interview with Vampire Weekend.  No, it had nothing to do with vampires and what vampires do on the weekend…but that I didn’t find any real discussion or connection about faith.  This got me thinking about whether a “Christian” magazine should try to incorporate faith into their articles/stories.  Which leads me to my beef lately with Relevant.  Your magazine and website focuses on God, Life and Progressive Culture- and sometimes there seems to be a compartmentalization of these three.  You can print a story about a band (Vampire Weekend) without any discussion about faith.  Because I have grown to look forward to Relevant-  I want more!

I want more because many issues of Relevant begin to look the same.  Some social justice, some bands, some witty slices.  But I want more. I don’t want to read that a band is involved with the ONE campaign.  I want to hear how their faith led them to be invovled with the ONE campaign.  I don’t want a magazine that just scratches the surface- I want to see a Relevant that goes deeper and challenges this generation to go deeper in their faith.

My subscription for Relevant will soon expire. I will have to decide whether to remain- or to look elsewhere. Either way, I wish Relevant the best.

Grace and Peace,

Steve LaMotte

Just a few days after Thanksgiving, Andrea and I received confirmation that we were expecting our second child.  As you can imagine, we were pretty excited.  On December 20th, we went to the doctors for our first ultrasound and were able to catch our first glimpse of our baby- we even saw it’s heartbeat.

Something happened between that doctors visit and this past week.  The baby stopped growing and we were looking at the reality of a miscarriage.  Friday was a difficult day as we went through 2 ultra sounds to confirm that there was no heart beat.  We were crushed by the news.  Even though we had a notion someting wasn’t right- we were hopeful that it was nothing and still anticipating our new child.  As the doctor shared the news, we were obviously quite sad.

When everything was finalized and Andrea had the DNC procedure, it was interesting how our conversation began to turn.  Our conversation turned to the joy we have because of our daughter, Abbie- and the hope that we have for what God has in store for us.  Sure, we have had moments of sadness since then, but we serve an amazing God who has blessed us richly.  Because of that, we look to the future with hope.

Isn’t that how the Psalms work out in the Bible?  Many begin speaking about the trials and tribulations that occur in life- and they end by giving God praise because ultimately God is in control.  God will bring vindication.  God will bring salvation.  This is why the Psalms are so powerful because they speak authentically about our human condition.  We suffer (Haiti earthquake), we face death, we face uncertainty- but through it all, God is faithful, and for that reason we can have hope.

For those of you who knew about the miscarriage, thank you for praying for us.  It’s appreciated.  For all of us, let us go about our days with the hope of God’s salvation and God’s provisions.

Yesterday’s post was mostly about the music at Passion.  If your someone who has been in a contemporary/modern/youngish church over the last decade, then you know the music of Passion.  Just on music alone, the Passion Conferences could hold it’s own.  I was really excited to hear the speakers of Passion and the message given.  Read more about the speakers after the jump

On Saturday night, Louie Giglio opened the conference up because, well, it’s his conference.  Thankfully, Louie is a passionate, engaging, and Christ-centered speaker.  In fact, his passion practically oozes out of his eyeballs when he speaks.  His message was framing some of the Passion vision and the Christian story that we are part of a story that is so much bigger than ourselves.  We can trade something small to be part of something large.  Giglio used the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead in John 11 where Lazarus had to die- but that the Glory of God through Jesus was revealed through Lazarus’ death.  Lazarus’ death was part of a bigger story.  Sometimes we suffer, we struggle, or we succeed- but we must remember that we go through those things to make the glory of God through Jesus Christ known.                                                                                                                                         

The Sunday morning speaker was Beth Moore.  I have always heard great things about Beth and her Bible studies- but I have to be honest, I didn’t really connect to her message.  This is petty- but her hairstyle really distracted me.  I couldn’t figure out what was on top of her head.  Was it a birds nest?  A squirrel?  She also sounded like she was yelling the whole time—-a yelling monotone.

That said, as I look back over a few things I wrote down- I found one little nuggets.  It was this, “We are not called to be a pastor, teacher, missionary, etc….but we are called to Christ and to go where ever Christ leads us.”  This is pretty important to me and Andrea as our desire is to go where ever God leads us.  We evaluate the year and where we our by that guiding principle.

Sunday evening was Francis Chan.  I heard Francis Chan at the Passion Regional Conferences in 2007 and really liked him.  He was doing his Crazy Love stuff then.  I’ve tried listening to podcast from his sermons and have had a hard time getting into them.  I had this same feeling at Passion.  I felt he was a little all over the place as he spoke.  I did get that he felt that our generation needs to put a greater emphasis on being people of the Book.  That we should tremble at the Word of God.  I certainly agree with this and this is something that I have been emphasizing in my own ministry.  Francis said some other cool things (so I am told), but I honestly missed them!

Monday morning brought Andy Stanley to the stage at Passion.  I really enjoy Stanley’s style.  I have seen him most recently at the Catalyst OneDay Conference in Baltimore in November.  One of my students summed his talk up the best when he said, “Andy’s talk was perfect for college students.”  Andy spoke about knowing who you want to be before pursuing what you want to do.  He said that many times we get those things switched around.  He encouraged everyone to think through about the things they would want family, friends, co-workers to say about us at our funeral and that those things can become guiding principles to who we are to become.   Our doing, our lifework will flow from our being.  This really made sense for our students and for me. 

We had to leave Monday afternoon and did not get to hear John Piper speak, although he provided a link to his manuscript on his website where you can read the message.

If you made it through this long post, then you deserve something special.  I have an unused Hillsong United Ticket just for you!