Friday, November 30, 2007 @ 2:11 pm by Josh Burcham

Missed it last week due to Thanksgiving and totally forgot that yesterday was Thursday. Here is Thursday’s Shuffle a day late. I should probably do two in a role to catch up, but I don’t think that it’s that important. This week’s shuffled five: (Remember you can click on the song title and purchase it from Amazon.)

Evermore
by Hillsong United

Route 66
by John Mayer (Cars Soundtrack)

Bless the Broken Road
by Rascal Flatts

Pulling Teeth
by Green Day

White Flag
by Shaun Groves

Ice Ice Baby
by Vanilla Ice

Barbie Girl
by Aqua

Dueling Guitars
by Doug Smith & Heitor Pereira (August Rush Soundtrack)

Friday, November 30, 2007 @ 11:42 am by Josh Burcham

As promised. Thanksgiving through pictures.


Friday we sat down and watched some of the old home movies. Those were the days. I’ll post a story later about one of those videos.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007 @ 10:58 am by Josh Burcham

Is randomness even a word? I don’t know. But here are some of my thoughts from this morning:

• I’m so glad to be done with Jury Duty. I will miss the people though. God has definitely been changing my heart. When I started jury duty I couldn’t stand most of my fellow jurors and was done with it all by the second week. But God changed my heart and I learned that all people have a story. Not that I didn’t know that; I just didn’t realize it. But I got a small glimpse into each of there lives and I had a desire to know them better. Something that is definitely out of character for me. In the end. I hope our paths cross again.
• God is this right? Are you sure? What do I do next?
• I really love my friends and family. I loved spending last week with my family. It was sweet to be able to stay with my sister and her husband and their two boys! But I did miss my family and friends back home. I’ll try and get some pictures of my nephews from last week and post them.
• I truly believe that the church is on the verge of a huge change. The way we reach out, the way we train and the way we serve. It’s changing and I want to make sure I’m on the side of the change and not get left behind.
• I miss The Office.
• I love that I can get online and read blogs and hear the thought and the wisdom from so many church leaders.
• I love that we never stop learning.
• I love that God desires us to be creative!

There it is…a snapshot of my thoughts.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007 @ 10:45 am by Josh Burcham

Don’t know if you have heard the story or not on this, but it has been blown out of context. Bill has been misquoted about there model of doing church. But Willow has found that through the research for the book Reveal that the Willow Creek Assosiation just released in August. Here is more of the story over at Tony Morgan’s Blog that he titled It’s not just a Willow-thing.: Below is a brief of his post:

I requested permission to reprint this on my blog. Here’s the full statement from the Willow Creek Association:

THE SITUATION:
The Willow Creek Association published a book called REVEAL in August 2007 about “ground-breaking” research findings regarding spiritual growth. These findings were based on survey results from seven churches and have now been confirmed through research with an additional two-dozen churches around the country, including two Canadian churches.

Some in the Christian blogging and media world point to these findings as evidence of a church model “flaw”/breakdown that applies exclusively to Willow Creek and/or the seeker movement inspired by Willow Creek thirty years ago.
This is not what the research shows.

Here are several quotes based on partial or incorrect information:

• World magazine; November 10, 2007: “‘We made a mistake’. Bill Hybels…on a study that showed the Willow Creek model had not produced spiritually mature Christians.”
• Bob Burney, Townhall; October 30, 2007: “The report reveals that what they’ve been doing for these many years and what they’ve taught millions of others to do is not producing solid disciples of Jesus Christ…Numbers, yes, but not disciples….”
• H.B. London, The Pastor’s Weekly Briefing; November 9, 2007: “Hybels goes on to say ‘If you simply want a crowd, the “seeker sensitive” model produces results. If you want solid, sincere, mature followers of Christ, it’s a bust.” Bill Hybels did not say this. Focus on the Family is printing a retraction.

FOUR FACTS ABOUT REVEAL:

1. REVEAL’s findings go well beyond Willow Creek and the “seeker” church movement.

• REVEAL’s findings are based on thirty churches besides Willow, chosen specifically to reflect a diversity of church models. We’ve surveyed traditional Sunday school model churches, missions-focused churches, mainline denominations, African-American churches and churches representing a wide range of geographies, sizes and styles. In all thirty churches, we’ve found the six segments of REVEAL’s spiritual continuum, including the Stalled and Dissatisfied segments.
• REVEAL is currently surveying five hundred churches, including more than a dozen denominations and English-speaking international churches. Early results from the first 200 demonstrate REVEAL’s segments exist across multiple church model/style/size alternatives.
• 40% of these 500 churches do not describe themselves as “seeker-focused” or “seeker-friendly”.

2. REVEAL’s findings show that Christ-followers are being developed at Willow Creek and all other surveyed churches.

• The two most spiritually mature segments, called the “Close to Christ” and the “Christ-Centered” groups, account for over 40% of the total thirty church sample. To date the spiritual profiles of those churches show a range of 30% to 60% for these two segments.
• The controversy is REVEAL discovered a Dissatisfied segment that fell out of the two most spiritually advanced segments noted above. They are sold-out Christ followers, but are disappointed in their church. The Dissatisfied segment averaged 9% over the thirty churches, ranging from 3% to 14%.
• Also, the bloggers and media point to this Dissatisfied group as proof that the “seeker” movement does not grow up disciples of Christ. The fact is this Dissatisfied group exists in every church we’ve surveyed, including the 200 churches currently in process.

3. Willow Creek’s Senior Pastor Bill Hybels said, “We made a mistake.”

• Bill acknowledged that Willow did not appreciate the undercurrent of dissatisfaction expressed by some of our strongest Christ-followers. Nor did we appreciate the Kingdom impact of training and encouraging all Christ-followers to devote themselves to a daily discipline of personal spiritual practices.
• But taking corrective action is not a new experience for Willow Creek. We’ve made a number of course corrections over the years – like adding a mid-week service in the ‘80s and building a small group ministry in the ‘90s. We’ve always been a church in motion and REVEAL is another example of Willow being open to God’s design for this local church.

4. Willow Creek will use REVEAL’s findings to take its mission to redeem people far from God to a whole new level.

• Bill would say that Willow is not simply seeker-focused. We are seeker-obsessed. The power of REVEAL’s insights for our seeker strategy is the evangelistic strength uncovered in the more mature segments. If we can serve them better, the evangelistic potential is enormous, based on REVEAL’s findings.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007 @ 5:33 pm by Josh Burcham

Sorry about the lack of posting over the last week, but with Jury Duty and being in California for Thanksgiving it’s been hard to post.

But, Jury Duty is finally over and I never have to go back into that courtroom. First think you’re probably thinking is “what was the case about?” I don’t think it is appropriate for me to post that here, where anyone can see it. But it was a Second Degree Murder trial and we were a hung jury, so they declared a mistrial and will have to try it again or plea out. By the sounds of it, they will plea out. But ask me in person and I will share it all with you.

I’m glad that I served on a jury once and it really was important for me to do so, but I never want to have to go through this all again. I think everyone should do it at least once, but it was draining and long. It really took everything out of you. Having to go day after day looking at picture after picture and hearing testimony after testimony is so much harder than I thought going into it. There were a couple days last week that were just nuts and crazy hard for all of us jurors to go through; deliberation wasn’t fun.

But all in all I’m back to blogging and hopefully I can keep up with it daily.

Friday, November 23, 2007 @ 8:08 pm by Josh Burcham

If you are thinking about checking it out…do it. It was one of my top 25 movies! I even went on iTunes the next day and bought the soundtrack and I don’t buy movie soundtracks. Here are my thoughts on life and God’s truth that I pulled from August Rush.

God has designed us to give Him glory through music. He was put a passion and an ability to be moved by music inside each of us. This movie wasn’t only moving in the music that this little boy was able to create, but the story of finding his parents through music was a great picture of God desire and our desire we should have to have intimacy with Him.

August desire deep in His soul to find his parents and knew that they were still out there wanting to find him. We know God has that desire to find us, but where is our desire to seek Him back? I think we, as Christians, have stopped seeking Jesus and desiring His intimacy. We’re gotten comfortable with who we think He is.

Take some time and step away to evaluate where you are at in your walk. Are you comfortable with your Christianity and your Savior? Or are you seeking to know Him more intimately every day? We can learn something from August Rush’s persistence and confidence in knowing and being with His parents.

Thursday, November 22, 2007 @ 10:27 am by Josh Burcham

I played this game, Call of Duty 4, last Friday at a buddy’s house and was totally sick. We only played multi-player and that was enough for me to go out and rent it. I would of bought it, but I don’t have $60 to drop on a 360 game. But I rented it and the campaign mode is crazy nuts! I is easly the coolest game I’ve ever played. Most of the time, games like this you just play the multi-player mode all the time, because the campaign is just okay. Call of Duty 4 you can play over and over again, it’s just that cool. Any task you would preform during war, this game allows you to do. If you own a 360 or PS3 I would buy this game!

Wednesday, November 21, 2007 @ 11:08 am by Josh Burcham

Sorry I haven’t been post much the past couple of days, but they have been long and draining. Jury duty might be coming to an end, they might have reached a plea (I can’t express how amazing that would be for all of us). Please be praying for it.

I’m headed to Cali for Thanksgiving with my family. Totally excited! I’ll post some pictures and such. Also, sometime this week I’ll post some other post I’ve been working on, just haven’t posted.

Have a GREAT thanksgiving!

Josh