Monday, October 27, 2008

The One Year Bible

Dear Friends,


I have come to a point in my own "Spiritual Walk" where I need to be pushed to read the parts of the Bible that I am not naturally drawn to... I also am really impacted by form as well as content. I am finding the "One Year Bible" a tremendous tool for getting me back into the scriptures. It also is giving me a tool to share with a larger network of friends.

The One Year Bible is the Bible arranged in a different way. Every Day there is a portion of the Old Testament, the New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs set appart for that calander date. Having these portions already organized for reading is a great gift. In addition to this... The Missionary Community of LA InnerChange has begun to read this together... Giving us a common bond of scripture that we all are reading. It is a great tool to invite others into reading the scriptures together with the potential of reading through the whole Bible in a year. It also shakes me out of my tendency to pick the passages I like to read and to avoid the passages that are more challenging and difficult.

If you happen to have any extra copies of "The One Year Bible". We would love to have them to use as ministry tools as we challenge the Christians around us to make room for reading God's Word in their daily lives.

A few tips that I have found:

*If you miss a day... do not allow guilt get in the way... Read the reading for today first... you can always read more if you want to. Use the same attitude that Brother Lawrence teaches about prayer in his little book "The Practice of the Presence of God". Think of it as spiritual food and try to simply enjoy your food.
*Keep your copy out in the open where you will see it.
*Read a portion before or after a meal
* Note that this is also available online: http://www.oneyearbibleonline.com/
*If something inspires you, challenges you, or stirs up questions... Share this in your conversations...
*IF YOU FIND THIS PRACTICE HELPFUL THEN INVITE OTHERS INTO IT AS WELL!!!

Thursday, August 14, 2008

I am back in the mix...

Current mood: contemplative
Category: Life

I am glad to finally be settled back in LA.

This Fall is going to be about God, Art & Business...

InnerChange continues to grow in its vision and capacity. I just came back from our annual conference. We have fully adopted the historical structure of a Christian Religious Order. Do you want to go deeper with God... ask me about it and I would love to share this journey of Deepening Faith and Growing Love and Joy with you.

LA Street Productions continues to persist and grow. I am glad that there is both opportunities and resources that keep coming our way... sometimes as gift. I have decided to feature my friends who are active in LA St. Prod. as my top friends... becuase we want to help each other keep growing as artists.

Many of you know about the Book Business that I have been teaching people about in my office. If you want to do the work to make an extra $200-$300/month by maintaining an inventory of books to sell (Roughly 200 books). I can teach you the basics of how to do it and help you get started. These skills are really useful if you are going to school and want to buy your books online at a cheeper price and would like to sell your old text books back to others before they lose their value and go out of date.

Currently reading :
The Home-Based Bookstore: Start Your Own Business Selling Used Books on Amazon, eBay or Your Own Web Site
By Steve Weber

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

A MicroEnterprise Initiative Moves beyond a pilot project...

This past Weekend Christain Assembly in Eagle Rock allowed us to do a book drive at their church. We have recieved 131 boxes of books which we estimate to be about 3,100 books. This will position us to begin working on our vision to teach emerging leaders how to use various internet tools to build economic opportunities. Pray for this work. It take vision to move beyond a Santa Claus mentality to vision. What is critical is that this resource is turned into tools for learning skills that will be applied to other opportunities.

"To go well beyond teaching someone how to fish... to learn how to position oneself to own the pond if that is what is needed... Still how to fish is necessary..."

Jonathan McCracken will have a critical role in the transfer of some of the initial skills. He has done all that I have asked him to do and is bennefiting from it... and is running a small model business for others to learn from...

If you look up enterprise international you will see a video that talks about this ministy thrust...
Look at the Los Angeles story...

I literally have 2 women who are gifted evangelists... that any increase in economic freedom would mean increased evangelism & Discipleship efforts.

I have an emerging teacher who will not get his first real pay check until October. He is full of questions about God, Faith, and doubts... But he hungers for truth and justice.

I have a network of emerging artists... all in different places of faith...

I have a 2 friends who have a ministry to skatter youth in their neighborhood... once again it is economics that limit the time that they can invest in a significant network of youth.

Some of us dream of the what if we could stumble into the kind of grace that the early church in Act2 gew out of... We long for this deeper sense of community...

This is part of what will mark my efforts this summer.

Peace and Grace,
Jaw1

Friday, May 23, 2008

Family Matters...


The amazing truth is that my Dad is stable and settled into his own room in a nursing home that can care for his medical needs.

My mom Survived her opperation and is recovering... staying at my aunts house.

My Aunt Kathy is working as a Physicians Assistant at a hospital... good challenging work... but also draining at times.

The cousins are all in an intergenerational soup that is all to common. The sepparation and remarriage of Doug... my uncle to a new wife has ripped the foundation of trust in what the family knew as true. To honestly look at our story means to have to sort through a lot of pain.

I wish I could get everyone in our journey to wrestle with the honesty of many of the Biblical narratives. They openly talk of how humans maked choices that has consequences over the generations. It also points to God who continues to seek ways to intervene and impact our day to day lives.

Let us begin again... and discover in a fresh way what these stories might inform us about in our lives...

The larger stories that we reference in our hearts are the stories... Much like the stars in the sky... impacted early nautical navigation... These stories shape the landscape of our choices.

Where you go is profoundly effected by which stories you choose to pay attention to...

My Uncle Mickey served his country well and fought in the Korean war. During that war the government issued each soldier a New Testament and a pack of cigarrettes. He died of cancer. He had a military burial... and spent his life fixing and maintaining Heliocopeters. I pray that his soul found rest.

To Start Again... Again...

Today I have been reminded of the way journaling has been a means of grace to my soul. I Tim. 4:16 says, "Watch your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers." So I am back to the work of recalling and reflection... here... and I will also add a visual element to the mix... See the Link to "JawArt".