Banff Mountain Film Festival

I can't wait for this to happen on April 16th

Seymour Rambles About Sexuality in the Church

I couldn't have put it better myself, so I wont. Below is a post I copied from my buddy Chase Moore (C. Moore=Seymour).

Chew on this:

It’s time to begin discussing sexuality in our churches, small groups, friend groups, and relationships. For far too long the church has swept issues such as pornography, masturbation, and homosexuality under the rug; labeling them as “taboo.” To be honest, I think this is one of the biggest strongholds that the enemy has on the body of Christ; using fear and embarrassment to keep brothers and sisters from sharing what is really going on regarding their sexuality.

Let’s talk about pornography and masturbation to junior high and high school students - they have all seen the stuff already. Let’s talk about body image and the way God sees women to young girls who are struggling with eating disorders and abusive relationships. Let’s talk about homosexuality to the congregation and welcome gays and lesbians into our doors. Let’s learn how to have healthy sexual relationships according to how God wants us to do it, not how the world says to do it.

The longer these things are hidden, the more destructive they will be - period. Women, I encourage you to seek out your mentor or friends to talk to. Men, I encourage you to do the same. (Just don’t go to your boyfriend/girlfriend and spill about your addiction to porn, things will get real messy.)

Let us begin the process of learning not only how to love better, but how to enjoy God’s gift of sex and sexuality the way he intended it to be because if you haven’t figured it out by now, he created us as sexual beings.

Thankful for honesty, humility, embarrassment, healing, awkwardness, and tearing down strongholds of the enemy.

Thankful for: Dudes like Chase

a perfect day at mary jane!

berthoud pass was closed 3 hours this morning. thats just long enought to keep people away from winter park all together. thankfully , my bride and i came up last night! fresh powder. blue bird skies. no lines. best day. thank you jesus.

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

I'm honored to be a part of this new chapter at DenSem

I could listen to the words for Dr. Grounds at the beginning of this video and the those of Dr. Young at the end over and over again and still feel overwhelmingly challenged and compelled by the Gospel.

Check it out...

March Madness

I don't follow basketball and I've never filled out a bracket but I do experience a kind of March Madness of my own. It is best described by this excerpt from the Wilderness Exchange Newsletter:

"Here in the Front Range, March can be a time of great confusion. The snow is still dumping in the mountains, the local crags are getting warm and sunny, and everything is coming to life in the hills. Do you go skiing or go rock climbing? Trail running or hiking? What if it snows 16" on the night you're leaving for a weekend of climbing at Shelf?"

To climb or to ski? That is the question....

Good Morning! It's time to smile :)

Community at Denver Seminary

It happened again. The community tossed around like a rag doll today at a lunch meeting I was a part of and I felt bad for it. Poor community. You always get beat up and no one is ever satisfied with you. People are always talking about how you are not around and if you are, you aren't very good at your job. In reality, I'm not sure if people really know much about you, community. They talk about you with a glimmer in their eye like you are something we will never really meet and get to know. Then, after they use some romantic and pie-in-the-sky words, they droop their head and say things like, "Why can't we just have community round here?" or, "I sure wish there was a better community in this place." I'm sorry community but I don't think people would realize that you're here if you punched them right in the throat.

Yes, I really do think this is how people treat the issue of community and no, I do not talk to concepts.....very often.

Actually, the conversation I had at lunch today was really fruitful and I appreciated the interest our hosts had in the opinion of the students. I guess the topic of "community" just got me thinking again about how we assume that the things we cannot see do not actually exist. Or, and this is so often the case, we are so set in our definition of something that we cannot possible see it when it is right under our nose. Community, for instance, is one of those things in my opinion. I've said it before and I'll say it again and again as long as it's still true, community is a hot Christian buzz word and we love to talk about it without really talking about anything or substance.

Sometimes when I'm with a group of people and "community" is the topic of conversation I feel like a little blue haried lady sitting around with her friends playing Bridge and talking about someone behind their back for an hour and a half. What's worse is we are completely oblivious that, in many cases, our problem isn't community per se but awaremenss of what and where community is. Here are some obsevations I've made:

1. Christians often assume that they must see community in order for it to exist. Furthermore, they think that they must experience their own definition of community in order for it to exist. Why don't we ever ask where community is taking place instead of assuming it simple is not. Could it be that there isn't what some would call "community" on the campus of Denver Seminary because people are deeply involved in the communities of their local church, para church, counseling center or workplace? Dare I suggest that community can take place in some contexts and not others and that's perfectly alright?
   
2. We throw around the term "community" like everyone holds to the exact same verbatim definition of what it is. How can we do this when people rarely talk about community in the context of Scripture? If they do, they almost always use Acts 2 and end up saying things like, "Why can't we have community like that?!" I'll tell you why: YOU ARE NOT A MEMBER OF THE FIRST CENTURY APOSTOLIC CHURCH. I hate to break it to you but Acts 2 is far more descriptive than it is prescriptive. That is, although there are certainly principles to be drawn from it, it is not necessarily a mandated command for how we must "live in community." There is an wealth of information in Scripture about what community is all about but we rarely use it as a foundation for how we go about it.
3. Our personal and very unique definition of community almost always stems from a particular experience we had for a limited amount of time in a setting that was not realistic. I'm not sure why we do this but it's definitely the cause of lots of googly-eyed facial expressions, whimsically romantic language, and, sadly, lots of disappointment and failed expectations. When we look to the two year period in which we lived on campus in college and call that "real" community, we are setting ourselves up for inevitable disappointment. YOU WILL NEVER LIVE ON A COLLEGE CAMPUS AGAIN (probably). I hear the same talk from people who have worked at summer camps. "Man, I sure wish I could create that camp community back at home." No you don't. If you're an American you can probably only healthily handle about three months of living with and being around 10 people of the same gender under one roof in bunk beds. Yes, camp is awesome but it is not reality. It is a vacation from reality by it's very nature.
   

I'm going to call it quits at that. I have many more opinions on this topic but I feel better having gotten that off my chest and that's really what this blog is for anyways.

Next time: a Scriptural analysis of what community is and looks like. For now: quit complaining about lack of community and open your eyes to community that is around you.

"I'm busy" is a terrible reason to avoid commitment

Whenever people start talking about committing to a weekly or even monthly meeting or event, the response from every member in the group is always the same: "I'm just so busy right now."

BREAKING NEWS: So is everyone else in America!

busyness is the new average. We are all busy and we all have a ton of stuff going on. This is not an issue I mean to sweep under the rug since it can definitely do great harm to individuals and families alike. However, the fact of the matter is, we are all busy. Some people are legitimately busy and have very little time for much else. Others include their 10 hours of TV shows a week as a "commitment." Whatever the case may be, there are few people sitting around on their butts these days looking for things to commit to.

Even recent plummet in employment has not kept people from being busy. My dad always says, "looking for a full time job is a full time job in and of itself," and I think he's right. Most people are doing a lot of stuff which makes busyness a bad excuse and, in many cases, a cop out.

I like to look to my buddy Timmy for an example in most things and this one of them. When he hasn't called me back in a while and then we finally get the chance to talk on the phone he says, "I'm sorry I didn't make time to call you sooner." He's very careful not to say "have time." You see, Timmy understands that we are all busy and could walk around blaming the clock for not doing things. In reality, however, we make time for the things we care about and see as important. The same things goes for regular commitments. Everyone has time for a weekly or monthly small group. Everyone has time to pray for an hour a day. Everyone has time for coffee with a friend here and there. Busyness isn't the issue here. Priorities are the issue.

Before we say "I'm too busy," let's ask ourselves if we are simply not making time for things that we should.