Amazing Grace Update

At this time, it does not appear Amazing Grace, the movie, will be coming to the range. The nearest theater showing the movie is Duluth 10 (down by the DECC). Showtimes are 12:45, 3:00, 5:15, 7:30, and 9:40. Matinees are $5.50 and regular admission is $7.50. Please let me know ASAP if you want to arrange to go together on Friday. I plan on taking my family. We would have room for up to three more people in our suburban. If you want to go together, but drive, let me know so that we can encourage more people to come with.

Amazing Grace Sunday - February 18, 2007

This Sunday, at Side Lake, we will be participating in Amazing Grace Sunday. Over 3,000 churches from across the US and Canada will be singing the classic song and taking time to pray to end the modern day slave trafficing. I will be preaching on the story of Newton and Wilberforce and from Eph. 5:11.

On Feb. 23, the movie "Amazing Grace" will be released in theaters. To check it out, including trailers, click here. As it stands, Duluth is the nearest theater scheduled to carry the movie. I have already emailed Mann Theaters to request that they bring the movie to Hibbing. If you would also like to email them, click here to go directly to a form to contact them. Explain to them that you want to see the movie and invite friends! Maybe we can still get the movie to come to Hibbing.

Please leave a comment to let me know if you will contact the theater.

Also, I would like to get a group together to attend the opening, either in Duluth or Hibbing (if we are successful!). I need to have people sign up by Wed. Feb. 21 so we can arrange group tickets with the theater.

International Adoption Center

Kim and I just got back from having Corina go through three days of testing at the University of Minnesota International Adoption Center in Minneapolis. They had occupoation therapists, audiologists, neurologists and physicians run her through every test imaginable to help get an accurate diagnosis for some of developmental delays. It was encouraging to watch this team approach of specialists who are all aware of the special needs of adopted children. We won't have the final reports and recommendations for a month or so, but we left with a distinct impression that we had gone to the right place.

I have a couple of thoughts on how this relates to church life. First, we need to be thinking about ministry from a team perspective more frequently. We have a tendency in America to think about things from a highly individualized perspective. Even in team sports, we ALWAYS award a most valuable player award. Even Michael Jordan in his prime would be hard pressed to beat a decent high school basketball team if it was 5 on one.

Second, it was amazing to see the difference that it made to have service providers who were familiar with the peculiarities of adopted kids. We have seen many professionals over the years, only to be frustrated by their lack of understanding for the difficulties we were facing. It was incredibly refreshing to have people recognize symptoms as something more than the paranoia of crazy parents! These providers recognized that our daughter is "broken" by her experiences before she came to our home and they are able to understand her in the context of this brokeness that is common to many children from similar backgrounds. Professional who measure our daughter against "normal" kids have typically only been able to tell us that she isn't "normal."

What this means for our churches is that we need to have a better understanding of what it means to be "broken," if we really want to help our unsaved friends come to know Jesus. When we look at the guy or gal hanging out in the bar and tell them they are messed up, we aren't really contributing anything of value to them. Somehow, we have to get past being judgmental in order to see that these are people that Jesus wants to redeem. Jesus wants to bring new life to replace the broken and messed up lives of the people that are all around us. We have been called to take the Gospel to them and to do that we have to stop simply condemning them and go get to know them. In the process, we might just learn a little more about how broken and messed up we are.

Super Bowl

Well, the Super Bowl party is over and the mess can wait until tomorrow, but congratulations to Tony Dungy and the Colts! Our party was not real big in numbers, but big in fun. Sorry to any of you who missed out because of the weather.

If you are seeing a video of Tony Dungy's testimony, click here for part one. He talks about his son's death and the whole talk is very encouraging. For a statement of Lovie Smith's testimony (the Bears coach), click here.

Thanks to the recent posters. It's good to know that someone is out there.