Wonderful interview about meaning in life and movies... Makes you stop and ponder life and why we do what we do...

Scott - At least here at the congregation I serve, confirmation is a decision for the youth. I ask each of them, in a one on one interview if you will with me the pastor, if they want to be confirmed. I explain what that means, about becoming a full member of the congregation with the right to vote on issues, the need to financially support the congregation. If they say no, then I will not confirm them until they say yes. Confirmation is not a right of passage, it is a step in our journey. Also I struggled with the whole decision language when I was in seminary, you see I was baptized American Baptist, and so that understanding of choosing Jesus was a part of me. There is a chose in all discipleship, and you are right as Lutherans it seems we sometimes choose to diminish this. The way I look at it now and where our choice comes in is, the question we pose to non believers is, "If you were to die tonight, where would you spend eternity?" Instead this question needs to be posed to all of us, "You are alive today, so why are you living?" Or "who or what do you live for?" Grace is a gift, but a gift is only good if you choose to use it!

I want the blood to cover me as well, and it is interesting that 53% of protestants couldn't name Luther as the spawner of the Reformation, and scary... We do not know our history but are ready to argue for the tradition of which we know so little about!

Very Nice!

Thank you for the wonderful prayer!

Knowing the facts and living them are not the same thing, but don't we have to know the facts before we can live them? It would be scary to think about the other survey about applying faith and life... I wonder where we would be in the living out our faith?

Men are allowed to cry! What a great witness to those in society, to know that men are allowed to have emotions...

Wonderful thoughts on living life and living in the moment, the here and now. As a leader in the church, I work in an office and work with my door open most of the time. This is a good thing for people dropping in, however one of the members of the church asked how I get anything done with the door open all the time. I responded that the ministry we are called to do is in the interruptions, not in what we think is important. I try to make myself available at all times, and that is not necessarily good, as I am not always in the here and now. I am like the 20 somethings with the phone out and seeing who is emailing or texting, or twittering, or facebooking... rather than being in the here and now. We need to be aware of the interruptions, but not so aware of the interruptions we lose sight of what is happening in front of us!

Could it be like, someone planted, someone else watered God brought the growth... I applied a little pressure, and set something in motion and a mother/father picked up on the motion and added a little something over there, and then God helped the whole thing just role down and cover over us all! How can we stop an avalanche though? Are there ways we hinder them from happening?

This is great! I believe unfortunately most Lutheran Congregations are like the Chinese diagram in the way they prepare for the World Cup in the way we do Evangelism... The statistics I heard on this is the average Lutheran invites someone to church once every 27 years! We do not know how to talk about our faith to our friends and our family, why do we think we can talk about Jesus to those that do not love us? How can we change this? What can we do, because the boats are not bringing any more Lutherans over, and we can not have more children, we need to talk about our faith, first with our children, and then the flood gates will open. Because children share the things they love, wether you want to hear it or not, they are so full of life and love a of something and they bubble over with it and have to tell you. If only all of us had this child like faith and shared! I mean we have the greatest gift ever given, why do we not share it?

Brian I share in your struggle. It is hard personally sometimes to stay focused on Christ in my life with all the things of life flying at you, but to be a part of a community and do God's work sometimes can be a struggle, but if you attain it, then it is a well oiled machine that works even in spite of itself. The real thing about missional community though in my understanding is this: the gathering you belong to is either a missional community or you are on a downward spiral. Meaning you are either a missional community or you are a dying community. To harsh? How do we be community about doing God's work when everyone it seems is looking out for each other. Love the question, and the conversation will be great! On a side note, I would love to win the book, I am already following you on Twitter and now linked this with my Facebook, and I'll add your blog to my network blogs on Facebook, and in a minute I'll post something on my blog (asacredrebel.wordpress.com) about this. This is a great conversation to have, I hope it develops into something so we all can grow and become better missional communities.