Dreams Unlocked

Read a story about a mega-church pastor who had been cheating on his wife for the past few months. He got caught. He was fired and stripped of all his ministry credentials. And then he filed for divorce. The Christian life is a tight-rope. We can fall off either side. What keeps us tethered and balanced is our relationship with God - nothing else. The power of God flowing through our souls can keep us upright, when temptation screams all around us. But most of us neglect this primary relationship. Placing the demands of ministry ahead of all else can be devastating. Identity needs to be grounded in relational reality, not vocational reality. We are children of God, before we are pastors, leaders, teachers, etc.

Adam and I about to be inspired. Well, I had an absolutely surreal experience this past Tuesday. Somehow, I was invited to a private event at Carnegie Hall. One.org and Red.com were both celebrating their 10 year anniversaries. One.org is an anti poverty activist organization that lobbies governments and companies to do more to reduce global poverty. Red.com is an organization that encourages well known brands to donate portions of sales of speciality products to the Global Fund - which works towards an AIDS free future. I have volunteered for One since its very beginnings and have purchased Red products. But, I am still stupefied as to how I managed to get this extremely exclusive invite. The event honored Bill and Melinda Gates and Michael Bloomberg and a couple of other people I was not familiar with. Some of those who participated were: Bono The Edge Miley Cyrus Bill Clinton Joe Biden Stephen Colbert Trevor Noah Sting It was unbelievable. I had 2 tickets so de...

Adam and I out for dinner. If you are friends with me on facebook, you'll notice that I posted of my recent acceptance into the Doctor of Ministry program at Alliance Theological Seminary. I have been thinking of pursuing further education for a couple years now. Felicia and I talked and prayed and felt the timing was right for me to start now. I looked at several programs in the States, Canada and even the United Kingdom. I was trying to decide between a PhD and a DMIN. A PhD is a professional academic degree that would open doors for me to teach at a college or seminary in the future. A DMIN is also a professional degree but is  focused more on practical vocational ministry, usually in a local church. I would have loved doing a PhD, but honestly didn't think I would have been able to give the full focus the program would have required. We would have had to move and Felicia would have had to return to working full time. Consequently, I shifted to looking at variou...

Today, the other pastor I work with and I attended a large pastors conference out of town. The speaker was a mega-church pastor, well known in evangelical Christian circles. His messages were excellent - very helpful and biblically sound. The last session he took some questions and answers. One question was about how to minister in an age of terrorism and mass shootings. His answer was interesting. He went straight to a defense of police officers. He claimed that the situation is not helped when we demonize police officers. I agree. I agreed with everything he said - police, firefighters, soldiers - these men and women stand between the rest of us and complete social breakdown. I hold great respect and admiration for these people who place their lives on the line daily, so that the rest of us can live lives of security. Now, what I want to point out is what he did not say. I am still a relative newcomer to the USA - 2.5 years now. And so I have been able to observe a little ...

Last week I preached on identity. The question of self identity is one of the key questions we need to answer in order to have a meaningful life. When asked "who are you"?, most of us respond either vocationally or relationally. Vocationally - I am a pastor, doctor, home-maker, etc. Relationally - I am a Ninan - I am so and so's child, father, etc. We now live in a time where gender and racial identity seems to be becoming more and more fluid. In my sermon, I addressed that if we follow Christ, our identity gets re-defined in terms of our relationship with Christ. As followers of Christ, we are adopted into the family of God. Thus, our primary identity is that as a child of God. A Christian is someone who has God as their father. This understanding is incredibly transformational. We lose insecurity and fear as we enter into the truth of this reality. Our attempts to secure self esteem through peer or societal approval, proves moot. We are also liberate...

Yesterday, I was thinking about what the benefits of being a Christian are. What difference does being a follower of Jesus Christ? I came up with the following: 1. The ability to forgive others. Because Christ has forgiven the worst in me, I in turn can forgive the worst in others. 2. No stress. If God loves me and is caring for and  protecting and guiding me, I never have to worry about anything ever again. 3. Community. The most important human need we have is for a community of love and acceptance around us. The Church gives me this gift. There are more - what would you add?

I posted a pic. of me and world famous apologist Ravi Zacharias on Facebook. It garnered over 175 likes - far more than any other pic. I have ever posted online. Zacharias is arguably one of the most prominent Christian leaders in the world. He is the head of a 22 million dollar/year ministry with offices all over the world. There are hundreds who work in the ministry with over 50 itinerant speakers. He is in high demand as a speaker and people regularly line up hours ahead in order to get seats. He is an arresting speaker commingling natural charisma with a photographic memory of lengthy quotes. My history with Ravi goes back to India. There was some interaction between my parent's families and his family. I am unsure of what that interaction actually was. I know my Dad's brother worked with Ravi's ministry in India, providing leadership development training for his staff there. In the 70's and 80's Ravi spent part of his time as an itinerant evangelist wit...

Contemporary America is attempting something amazing: the creation of an autonomous free floating value matrix, which can be traced directly back to Christianity, while simultaneously severing the taproot which provides said values.  I posted this on  Facebook - it elicited a very lengthy and eloquent response from my childhood friend, Andy Tait. You can read it on my Facebook page. Andy says that "the modern west began when ties to Christianity began to fray". He gives a lengthy explanation of a variety of advances that have taken place as church and state began to separate. This has been of particular interest to me over the past 5 years. I have been studying a lot of the cultural changes happening in the West. The person who has helped me the most is Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor. He has written with the greatest insight and comprehension on the pivot, the West has taken from theism to secularity. See A Secular Age, Sources ...

Other seed fell on good soil.  It came up, grew and produced a crop,  some multiplying thirty,  some sixty, some a hundred times. On Wednesday June 17,  Dylan Roof went to a Bible Study at Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston South Carolina. An hour into the study he pulled out a gun and shot and killed 9 of the people in the study, including the pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney. The passage they were studying was the parable of the sower found in Mark 4. In this parable, Jesus teaches how the Word of God is like seed sown on a variety of soils.  Some seed missed the soil, hit the path only to be eaten up by birds.  Some fell on rocky soil and had no chance to set down roots. The sun burned them up. Some seed fell among thorns - the thorns killed the seed. But other seed.... That seed fell on good soil - that seed did not die. It came up It grew. It produced far beyond its humble beginnings. The men and women felled by Roof's gun are like...

Last week, Felicia and I attended an orientation evening at the middle school that Adam will be attending next year. It's one of those nights where the staff and administrators do their best to assure you that your kids will learn something and not grow disillusioned or bitter in the process. There are a certain type of parent who for some reason feel that they know more about kids education than the actual child educators who have both the training and experience to actually know what they are doing. Despite, the fact that these qualified men and women are there to present to us some of the plans they have for our kids education, these spritely parents feel compelled to pop up and pontificate on their personal philosophies of education. Most of these theories seem to be based on daydreams they have while dozing in their recliners while netflix plays in the background. Or (worse), they are a hodge podge of theories culled from day time talk shows and poorly written blog posts...

Adam and I - Wildwood School A couple of weeks ago, Adam and I went to Saskatchewan Canada for 6 days. A lot of my early formative years took place in Saskatchewan. After shuttling around from India-Vancouver-Toronto-Regina, my parents settled on Saskatoon Saskatchewan as the city to raise their family in. My father took a position as a neonatologist - one of the first in the province of Saskatchewan. We moved into a new developing neighborhood called "Wildwood". I was the in first Grade 3 class to attend Wildwood Elementary School. In between Wildwood, I attended an inner city school called Caswell. Castle had an "Ac-Tel" program, designed for academically gifted children. Somehow I made the cut. After elementary school, I went to Aden Bowman High School - made famous because Joni Mitchell went there. After high school, I skipped University and attended a denominational bible school with the unfortunately generic name of "Canadian Bible College"....

A friend of mine is dying. He has lung cancer. I will not see him before he dies because he lives in another country. He recently posted his final Facebook post. He is too sick to receive visitors anymore.  I was trying to think of what I could write in the comments. I looked up 2 Corinthians 5 which talks a lot about looking forward to a new home in heaven. And then this in v.4: For while we are still in this tent, we groan under our burden, because we wish not to be unclothed but to be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life What is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Stunning! Mortality is not life - it is not all of life. Real life is coming. It is around the corner. Death is the door into real life. Mortal life ends, so that real life can begin. When my friend sheds this mortal coil, he enters into the reality of which this life is such a faint shadow. What we consider our greatest earthly joy or achievement will be unrecognizable from the...

Jesus did not die alone. There were at least 2 others crucified with him. Two thieves. One on either side. The social and emotional context surrounding him was painful. The crowds, the guards, the rulers and even one of the thieves kept mocking him: "Come down from the cross, if you are who you say you are." The death of Jesus was the ultimate vindication of the crowd - he wasn't who he said he was. We were right - he was a fraud. They all mocked .... except. Except for one of the thieves. He rebukes the other thief: "Don't you fear God, since we are under the same sentence. We are being punished justly. But this man has done nothing wrong." Amid the din of rebuke, sarcasm and ridicule came the voice of truth from a ragged dying shell of a human propped up on that Roman gibbet. The thief understood the human condition - "we are being punished justly." He understood that he was getting what he deserved. And he looked at Jesus and re...

Starbucks has embarked on a campaign. But, it is not a campaign to get people to drink more coffee. No, they want to get people talking. That is a good thing. People should talk. What should we talk about in a coffee shop? Movies? Music? Clothes? The Freudian postulate that our thoughts are merely high functioning nero-physiological reactions to external stimuli? Nope. Let's talk about race. Starbucks has instructed their lovely baristas to scrawl Race Together across your Venti Latte, along with your name and what kind of elixir you have ordered them to make for you. So, at a time when racial tensions are at a zenith of touchiness, Starbucks thinks its a good idea to have those two words slide toward you, followed by the cheery announcement of "Santosh, your chai tea is on the bar!" I am befuddled as to what I should do then. Am I actually supposed to engage my barista? Why would I? What would I say? How on earth would I be able to explain how the contemporary...

Last week I taught an Adult Education Class called "The Limits of Romantic Love". The class focused on a quote by C.S. Lewis that I had used in a previous sermon on marriage. In a section in Mere Christianity, Lewis gives his views on Christian marriage. He makes an insightful observation on the difference between romance and the deeper love that grows later in a marriage. Due to the short attention span of our current culture, once romance or emotion has dissipated from a marriage, we tend to grow bored and seek "fulfillment" elsewhere. But this is not wise. By moving on from partner to partner we miss out on the deeper love, Lewis eludes to. The hook-up culture of millennial does not build love. It might provide temporary glandular excitement. But, in the process it numbs our emotions, making this deeper love impossible. This deep love is not as exciting as romance, but is is far more fulfilling. Deep love only grows and flourishes in the hard soil of adversit...

Dorothy and me. Dorothy and King. I recently had an experience I thought I would never have in my lifetime. This past October I was introduced to an elderly African American woman in our congregation named Dorothy Cotton. Dorothy usually sits in the row behind my family near the front on Sunday mornings. She is brought to the church by a young family that lives near her. I soon discovered that Dorothy Cotton was the highest serving female in the Southern Christian Leadership Convention - the sole female permitted into Martin Luther King Jr's inner circle. She was involved in many tactical decisions at the highest level of the civil right movement. Her focus was on education. If you google here name, pictures come up of her with King at various events. This past Martin Luther King Day I was invited to have lunch with Dorothy, along with my colleague, Pastor Eric Hause. The venue for our lunch was quite intersting: a local soup kitchen. We walked in. Our newer cl...