Is your life like a Flea Circus?

What's your lid?

More Pics of the Family

How Braveheart Should Have Ended

Very funny

Must See New Movie

I just found out about this new movie that is coming out about the story of William Wilberforce's fight to end the slave trade in England. I'm really looking forward to seeing it.

It reminds me that the difference between idealism and faith is action, and that one person of faith can change the world.

I still can't believe that people used the Bible to justify slavery and that just less than 150 years ago this still existed in our country. I wonder what people will say about our generation and the disparity of wealth that exists between the West and the rest of the world?

Peace

What do you think of this guy?

CNN.com Video

I think this guy actually raises a pretty important question: how do you distinguish between a healthy faith community and an unhealthy one? how do you know who you can trust with so many different messages out there about God?

I am really interested in what people think about this. If you haven't noticed, religion is weird and often very destructive. Even within one religion like Christianity, there are so many voices with drastically different messages that say they believe basically the same thing (jesus, bible, etc). How do you discern what is true? what is real?

This is a question I have been wrestling through and continue to for some time and am interested in knowing what you think. I'll post on it later.

Shiloah's First Week!

I am already amazed at how different my two little girls are, and we are thankful they came in this order. Here's a brief comparision:

Let's just say Hannah was not the most quiet baby, whereas Shiloah barely makes a peep. Hannah cried whenever she was unhappy, Shiloah crys when she is hungry. Wow. Shiloah has Danielle's features (looks just like her as a baby)- has long legs, really fine muscles, long fingers and toes; Hannah has Paxton features (head shape, block finger and toes like the flinstones). They are both beautifully happy little girls, but it is really exciting to already see their uniqueness.

I am getting to know more that God is very creative. The more I get to the know the differences in the people I meet with all their unique gifts and personalities and backgrounds and challenges, the more imagination I think God has. I think the uniqueness of humanity is the one of the biggest signs of God in our world. I look forward to getting to know my little girls more and seeing what new people God brings into our family's life everyday.

Here's some pics of Shiloah and Hannah:

Shiloah Nicole Paxton Arrives!

Hey everyone

Here are some pics of Shiloah. She is another precious little girl!













Let the Adventures of Shiloah and Hannah begin!

The Reign of Hannah is Coming to a Close...

Tomorrow, little miss Hannah Victoria will be sharing the throne of the house with her new sister, Shiloah Nichole. We will be waking up bright and early and heading over the hospital at 5am. We are really excited now, but it still doesn't feel completely real.

I remember when Hannah's little foot just squirted out of danielle's belly and then watching the doctors frantically pulling this slimy little girl out, and then my heart just melting. I love my girls so much. I really can't explain how love just continues to expand for them and I am really looking forward to meet Shiloah tomorrow.

The reign of Hannah has been a good one. Here's some recent pics for you as the era of Shiloah begins tomorrow

Peace

Anyone Else Excited Lost is Starting?

Two long anticipated moments in my life is happening this week. I'm having a baby, Shiloah Nichole on Saturday, and Lost is starting back up. You may be thinking, how can he right these two things in the same sentence? Well, I'll be honest with you, I'm excited about them in different ways, and have mixed emotions about both.

Last season, Lost was like a confused toddler, running here and there, with seemingly no purpose. While I love my toddler and think she is very funny, Lost lived up to its name and it was driving me crazy. I am hoping for redemption this season. I'm am excited, but we have to wait and see.

As for Shiloah Nichole, I've been experiencing a lot of mixed emotions about my second girl. I've been telling people I'm excited the whole time, but not really feeling excited. When Hannah was born, everything was new and fresh. I went to almost every doctors appointment with Danielle, stayed up talking to her belly, asked a lot of questions about "What to Expect when she is expecting." This time around, it's been a little different. I haven't been to the doctors appointment (I am watching Hannah), I pretty much crash at the end of the day (taking care of Hannah), and sadly haven't talked to Shiloah very much in the belly. Also, been feeling the tension of moving from "Dad" to "Father." I feel like it is a big difference in responsibility level going from one kid to two kid in which I officially earn the name Father. I have actually found for some kind of weird reason, I have more anxious feelings this time around than last time around. Over the last week, I have genuinely become excited about Shiloah coming, but it's definetly been different.

Okay, that's enough of my inner monologue. Maybe this is why I like Lost so much, because life just doesn't always make sense.

(for those of you who read this, you can not tell Shiloah that I compared my excitement for her and lost in the same sentence; traci, I am now starting to understand your plight even more)

Peace

Corey

What is the church?

Luke 10

Everyone I read and talk to these days is in agreement that the calling of the church is NOT just to improve our methods, techniques, and strategies, but to get back to essence and core of who the church is called to be. One scripture that I have spent a lot of time reflecting on Luke 10 recently and I think it has a great to say to the church today about our mission and identity in the 21st century world. This is one time when we Jesus’ discipleship training, leadership development in action.

Identity: I love how Jesus sends out these 70 people two by two without mentioning their names. We really don’t know a lot about these people except that they followed Jesus in somewhat of close proximity as he went about His ministry. They weren’t the 12 disciples that were the closet in proximity to him, yet they were given a significant mission. I wonder in our churches today, what would happen if we were willing to follow Jesus without anyone knowing our name? It seems that they found their identity in the mission that Jesus sent them on and the text does not mention who they were in particular. While I do believe God created and values our uniqueness and changes our names so that we find our intended signficance (Peter, Jacob, etc), I think the first thing about discovering our identity as a church is as people sent in the image of God. After Jesus’ resurection, he came to discples and breathed His Spirit on them, not just to tell them how great and loved they are, but to sent them on His mission. “As the father, has sent me so I send you And with that He breathed the Holy Spirit on them.” I wonder how much excitement about their new identity they were filled with when they came back from their mission?

Mission: So what is this misison we are sent on? To bring the healing and restoration of the Kingdom of God being near. The church are agents of God’s reality and presence of the world. We are signs in the present of where the world is heading in the future and we are to embody that reality now. We bridge the gap between the brokeness of those around us and God and offer the healing through our very presence that only God can bring. I love how the instructions Jesus gives his discples are filled with honor, respect, and compassion for the other. They are to enter into the homes of the the people they go and enter into authentic relationship that brings healing. As the healing happens through these relationships, then they are to announce that it is because the Kingdom of God has become near to them. How opposite is that from the way mission has been talked about in the church so often? The mission has been talked about as a task of going and taking Jesus to people and annoucing the laws of the Kingdom of God rather than embodying the Kingdom of God through honor, respect, and genuine care for the other and bringing the invitation to enter into the way of healing and shalom that only God can bring. Through Jesus life, he invites us into the Kingdom of God, or reign of God, that is not a place we go, but a way of being human that never stops living. The Kingdom of God is a way of shalom- of finding reconciliation with God and other people and the world around us and to be apart of bringing hope into our broken world.

One other thing I love about this text is that they didn’t offer healing to each other before they were sent, they were sent to offer healing to others. I wonder how inadequate they felt along the way, but how much healing they experienced as God actually used them to heal others. I think it is the same for the church today. When we focus on getting the right information and spiritual nourishment, we miss the point because we are invited to find healing in the procecss of mission.

Communitas: A lot of talk these days is about community. Authentic community, healing community, etc. Starbucks has actually marketed community to us to sell their coffee even though real community rarely happens at starbucks in my experience. This text shows the basis for community grounded in mission: or communitas. The latin word, communitas, is really a community centered around a cause rather than just each other. Here we have a danger as well on either side- we can focus so much on the cause that we don’t care about each other or we can focus too much on each other that we miss the cause. We need to navigate and walk well in this tension as the church. Living in this tension is our calling that we cannot escape. We are called to be healing, missional communities that offer the healing presence of God as a community and participate in His restoration of the world.

Leadership: I love how Jesus sends out these unnamed disciples to learn through experience. Jesus is a genius when it comes to leadership. He showed them in his life by embodying a differenat way of being human, he taught them about what it looks like, called out the greatness in them by inviting them to participate, showed them a vision of what they could become, and sends them out to participate, and process their experiences with them. What would happen if the leaderhip of our churches did the same? What is we focused on sending and equiping our people to bring hope and life into the world rather than trying to do the right tactics to get more people to come and listen to us teach? Think about the brilliance of Jesus’ strategy, rather than getting everyone to come to him, people follow Him so they can be sent out. How many more people can the Kingdom of God touch, bless, and heal as people are sent out in all different directions. I think this is why he says that when he leaves, we will do greater things than him (jn 14:6) because His Spirit sends us in all different directions withou our unique gifts and abilities. How can we create spaces and opporutnites for the people of God to build these life-changing realtionships with those who are searaching for or not even yet aware that their hearts long for God? This is a huge part of our missional task as leaders.