Matt Smallbone

Every couple of weeks my wife and I have two or three other couples over for dinner. I call it “Non-Church Sanctioned Small Group”. It is becoming the highlight of our fortnight.

We only really have one rule at “NCS Group”… and that is that every time we eat a three course meal. Each couple is responsible for one course, and we eat like kings. During this period there are no ice-breakers, singing, or formal Bible study… but I am finding that these nights are tremendously enriching.

There is definitely something to just breaking bread together and informally remembering the one who gave it all. I think that God is pleased with our little group.

We all kind of work in music, and our kids are about the same age… but the similarities start to dwindle from that point. We are from different continents and churches, but these people are beginning to feel like family.

As I look back at our first four-years in the USA, I can count on my fingers the number of families with whom we have shared a meal (in their home… not in a restaurant). If I remove band mates and family from the list, three fingers are enough.

That is a sad statistic.

Nashville, TN has the nicest folks I’ve ever met (there is no other town in the world in which I would rather run over someone’s dog… you’d probably get a hug and a prayer from the owner). However, there is a definite resistance to opening one’s house at meal time.

The other thing that you can’t do in the USA is just pop in to someone’s house unannounced for a visit. It is actually a very rude thing to do in the south. This has been a difficult adjustment for us to make. People would prefer that their house is totally clean before you visit.

I hate that.

I wish we could just live our lives open and honest about the state of our lounge rooms and our souls.

I think that this is why NCS group is so great. None of us pretend to be anything other than we are… and there are always toys on the floor.

Tags: breaking bread, church, NCS, small group

We have all learned to say some pretty ridiculous things.

I know people who claim that: “I’m not book smart, but I am street smart”.

I just think that they are “pretend smart”.

My least favorite of all time is:

“I love you but I don’t like you”.

I wonder whether anyone is truly capable of this.

Christians say this kind of stuff all of the time… and it is extremely unhelpful to our spiritual lives. We would be better off saying nothing at all. The only thing that crazy talk like “I love you but I don’t like you” achieves is to anaesthetize our sinful state. If we spend too much time saying weird stuff that minimizes our sin… we very quickly become self-righteous. Very soon you will find yourself needing a helper rather than a savior.

Trust me… we all need a savior.

I am realizing that there are very few groups of people left on the face of God’s green earth who are as passionate about their stuff as Mac users and Calvinists.

Both groups are super-well informed and they can talk for days about their specific interests. Neither Calvinists nor Mac users are fun to party with… but you do acquire a lot of information. They both have a strong-belief system, and it appears to be unshakable.

I guess that I have a foot in both camps… but am yet to totally dive in. I’m not convinced that I will ever need an iPad and the concept of limited atonement is a complicated pill for me to swallow. (Once upon a time I spent two-years trying to sort out the questions raised by Calvinism. I forgot about Jesus and my soul started to die).

However… the post-modern thinker in me is open to it all. I just hope to never get trapped in a broken down elevator with a representative of either group. Being caught in a 25 square foot space with a 5-point Calvinist and a Steve Jobs disciple would kind of be like hanging out in Purgatory.

Which brings me to my point…

My dad always said that you are better to have no theology than bad theology (because when it gets down to it… if you believe that God heals everything… what do you do when your three-day old child dies).

The older I get the less I feel I know about everything. I feel like I am beginning to view the world with open-eyed, childlike wonder. I am grateful for a loving and just God. Maybe that should be enough.

Anyway… I’m out. I’ve gotta go learn some songs for Sunday off my iPod whilst feasting on irresistible grace.

Peace.

Tags: Calvinism, I-pad, iPad, irresistible grace

I received the below in an email forward this morning. Heavy stuff. It’s heading was – ‘How the Apostles Died’.

Matthew – Suffered martyrdom in Ethiopia, was killed by a sword wound.

Mark – Died in Alexandria, Egypt, after being dragged by horses through the streets until he was dead.

Luke – Was hanged in Greece as a result of his tremendous preaching to the lost.

John – Faced martyrdom when he was boiled in huge basin of boiling oil during a wave of persecution in Rome. However, he was miraculously delivered from death.  John was then sentenced to the mines on the prison island of Patmos.  He wrote his prophetic Book of Revelation on Patmos.  The apostle John was later freed and returned to serve as Bishop of Edessa in modern Turkey.  He died as an old man, the only apostle to die peacefully.

Peter – He was crucified upside down on an x-shaped cross. According to church tradition it was because he told his tormentors that he felt unworthy to die in the same way that Jesus Christ had died.

James – Just The leader of the church in Jerusalem, was thrown over a hundred feet down from the southeast pinnacle of the Temple when he refused to deny his faith in Christ. When they discovered that he survived the fall, his enemies beat James to death with a fuller’s club. *This was the same pinnacle where Satan had taken Jesus during the Temptation.

James the Great – Son of Zebedee, was a fisherman by trade when Jesus called him to a lifetime of ministry.  As a strong leader of the church, James was ultimately beheaded at Jerusalem. The Roman officer who guarded James watched amazed as James defended his faith at his trial.  Later, the officer walked beside James to the place of execution. Overcome by conviction, he declared his new faith to the judge and knelt beside James to accept beheading as a Christian.

Bartholomew – Also known as Nathaniel, he was a missionary to Asia. He witnessed for our Lord in present day Turkey. Bartholomew was martyred for his preaching in Armenia where he was flayed to death by a whip.

Andrew – Was crucified on an x-shaped cross in Patras, Greece. After being whipped severely by seven soldiers they tied his body to the cross with cords to prolong his agony.
His followers reported that, when he was led toward the cross, Andrew saluted it in these words: ‘I have long desired and expected this happy hour. The cross has been consecrated by the body of Christ hanging on it.’ He continued to preach to his tormentors for two days
until he expired.

Thomas – Was stabbed with a spear in India during one of his missionary trips to establish the church in the sub-continent.

Jude – Was killed with arrows when he refused to deny his faith in Christ.

Mathias – The apostle chosen to replace the traitor Judas Iscariot, was stoned and then beheaded.

Paul – Was tortured and then beheaded by the evil Emperor Nero at Rome in A.D. 67.  Paul endured a lengthy imprisonment, which allowed him to write his many epistles to the churches he had formed throughout the Roman Empire. These letters, which taught many of the foundational doctrines of Christianity, form a large portion of the New Testament.

Man….

My initial internal reaction was, “I am committed to dying at about the age of 80 in my sleep”.

But as I thought about it more, the many and varied ways that these early followers of Jesus died showed just how much that they believed that Jesus was God. I know that this is not a sophisticated line of existential reasoning… but it strengthens my faith in a big way.

Tags: apostles

I get to meet heaps of cool people in my travels. I had the great fortune to spend Sunday night with John Carney and his family in California. He has played in the NFL for 22 years and was part of the Super Bowl Champion New Orleans Saints in 2010. Check this out!

I love my life!

Matt

PS – Holly Carney made the best breakfast of 2010. I found a nice article about Holly here.

Tags: John Carney, NFL