Hey Folks. Its been a long time since I've written anything here. Actually it's been almost 5 months! God, how time goes fast. Well, there is a reason for it, I'm not sure if you are interested in knowing it, but there is... Anyway, let's skip this part. I've been studying and thinking more than I should (I believe) recently, and I think that because of that, I've come up with some really intriguing ideas. I'll start by just filling you in since august.
That's me playing my favorite game!I Love this game
because this is where amazing happens!
To start with, Help 2 save was an non profit organization (a start up that didn't even make it out of the paper) and it's now on hold and I don't believe it will come live any soon. Why? Because it was the right idea but in the wrong time and place. I'll keep doing what God called me to do which is preaching the word and helping people and if one day He decides to take that project out of the drawer, He will let me know. So that's what happened in 5 months, A lot of confusion and SHAZAM, here I am again.
But what I want to talk about today is about this idea or interpretation I had yesterday. Really, honestly I consider myself a nobody compared to the guys out there blogging and sharing their knowledge in this area. The world of Christianity is so up to date and technological that I saw that in the Catalyst conference 2010 they brought amazing leaders from churches around America and they brought Seth Godin ( one of the most famous marketing gurus of our days) too. WOW man, that's what I'm talking about: Practical advise. How I wish I could be there, but anyway, that's not the point. The point is: There are many great leaders who offer their content, podcasts, materials for free and we can study and grow and almost have a mentorship going on virtually. I'm so amazed by that! I watch podcasts from Andy Stanley, Craig Groeshel, Mark Driscoll, Rick Warren, I'm on their FB page to check what's going on and etc because it's free and that equips me with knowledge I would never be able to put my hands in.
After a reasonable time listening and learning, I've noticed (mainly because some people are telling me this) that I'm changing, and that's good. So last night, about 2:30am God kind of gave me an interpretation of what "church life" should be like. I say it was God because I know it wasn't the Devil and I also know I'm not that smart, so by an elimination process, that's gotta be God. If you are one of those boring fundamentalists looking for a rational explanation on everything that is supposed to be supernatural, I'm sorry, I don't have one, so you have a choice: read the article or not... your call. Here we go:
"Being, doing and growing the church as the body of Christ should be like an specific game. A game of repetition. It's not a game of perfect moves. It's not about how perfect you can do it on the first time or any given time, but how willing you are to repeat it over and over and win the adversary by getting him tired... Let me put it this way: A MMA (mixed martial arts) fight, boxe, or any kind of fight really is a game of perfection. You start the fight building up to the final moment where you submit your adversary and he gives up. You try different things all the time and different strategies, and it may look like your loosing the fight until the last minute, but if you engage the right move, the perfect move in the last 10 seconds and knock your adversary out or put him to submission, you will win. It doesn't matter if he had scored 100 point and you had scored nothing. He may have hit you repeatedly over and over with the same punch, but that didn't win the fight because you applied the right move, with perfection at the end. And it had to be perfect, otherwise, he could have resisted and not submitted or simply escaped. Another game of final decision moments would be chess. You can have all strategy in the world but the game result is defined by one peace: the King. you loose your King you are dead. it doesn't matter how many towers or horses you have on the plate, you have lost the game if you jeopardize your King.
Now here comes the beauty of this: The game that I love the most, for me the most beautiful game on earth, the game of basketball, is a game of repetition. It's not a game of one perfect move. You can Dunk, fly, shoot and hoop form the middle of the court... If you don't repeat the right moves more frequently than your adversary, you will loose. I've seen incredible athletes with Super ultra godly skills playing this game, and I've been watching this game since I was 5 or 6, since Magic Johnson, John Stockton, Larry Bird, Dr J, the master of all Michael Jordan and recently Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, Josh Smith and the list goes on forever. You can shoot a hoop upside down form behind the 3 point line with less than a second to the buzzer, hit the shoot and loose the game... Why? Because the other team repeated the baskets more than you during the game... I remember when I was a young player and my coach would always say, that the games are won by the basics and not by the dunks. Free throws can win a game. As young boys we wanted to dunk the ball and we spent hours practicing the most beautiful dunk but the reality is, they don't win games, the basics do. Of course there are strategies, of course there are right and wrong moves, but what dictates the rhythm of the game isn't beauty and perfection of the moves, but how many times more you score the basket over your adversary"(Pedro) Well friends, for years I have been one of those who think being, doing and growing the church was a game like MMA or Chess. That we had to apply the right move at the right time and everything would be fine. But, for my awakening, it is not. Our adversary has been there much longer that we have and He has seen amazing things we have tried to do, no surprise for him at all. Church life is like the game of basketball. We need to score the basket everyday, day by day, repeating the moves. We've got an instruction book that contains pretty much everything. It has the strategies, it has the tactics, it even contains the mistakes made by the founders of the game.
Sure we can innovate, and use technology in our favor, but remember that in this game, we are not inventing anything, we are just trying different moves. The essence of the game can't be changed. I love technology, I do. I am all for it. I preach from my Ipad sometimes, I study with my Ipad, I read more on computer screens and Ipad screen and Iphone screens than in anything else, I know about the news around the world by push notifications. I'm all for twitter and Facebook. That's where our generation is and where we need to tackle our adversary. It's a new battle field, but the battle is the same, only the field has changed from what it was in the past. the main goal of the game is still helping people to know Jesus as their Savior so they can have eternal life and the devil will loose the game! We already know the right moves, now we just need to adapt them to this new field of technology, social networks, interactivity and etc.
Well, to conclude let me share this with you: I still remember watching the NBA games and during the commercials there would be promotional ads about NBA and at the end of that commercial with some cool songs, the NBA logo would appear with the saying: "I love this game". Now time has gone by and they have change it to "Where amazing happens". I have decided to put them all together and I ended up with this: BCC (Being THE church of Christ): I love this game BECAUSE this is where AMAZING happens!
Peace be with you.
Pedro Nascimento
That's me playing my favorite game!I Love this game
because this is where amazing happens!
To start with, Help 2 save was an non profit organization (a start up that didn't even make it out of the paper) and it's now on hold and I don't believe it will come live any soon. Why? Because it was the right idea but in the wrong time and place. I'll keep doing what God called me to do which is preaching the word and helping people and if one day He decides to take that project out of the drawer, He will let me know. So that's what happened in 5 months, A lot of confusion and SHAZAM, here I am again.
But what I want to talk about today is about this idea or interpretation I had yesterday. Really, honestly I consider myself a nobody compared to the guys out there blogging and sharing their knowledge in this area. The world of Christianity is so up to date and technological that I saw that in the Catalyst conference 2010 they brought amazing leaders from churches around America and they brought Seth Godin ( one of the most famous marketing gurus of our days) too. WOW man, that's what I'm talking about: Practical advise. How I wish I could be there, but anyway, that's not the point. The point is: There are many great leaders who offer their content, podcasts, materials for free and we can study and grow and almost have a mentorship going on virtually. I'm so amazed by that! I watch podcasts from Andy Stanley, Craig Groeshel, Mark Driscoll, Rick Warren, I'm on their FB page to check what's going on and etc because it's free and that equips me with knowledge I would never be able to put my hands in.
After a reasonable time listening and learning, I've noticed (mainly because some people are telling me this) that I'm changing, and that's good. So last night, about 2:30am God kind of gave me an interpretation of what "church life" should be like. I say it was God because I know it wasn't the Devil and I also know I'm not that smart, so by an elimination process, that's gotta be God. If you are one of those boring fundamentalists looking for a rational explanation on everything that is supposed to be supernatural, I'm sorry, I don't have one, so you have a choice: read the article or not... your call. Here we go:
"Being, doing and growing the church as the body of Christ should be like an specific game. A game of repetition. It's not a game of perfect moves. It's not about how perfect you can do it on the first time or any given time, but how willing you are to repeat it over and over and win the adversary by getting him tired... Let me put it this way: A MMA (mixed martial arts) fight, boxe, or any kind of fight really is a game of perfection. You start the fight building up to the final moment where you submit your adversary and he gives up. You try different things all the time and different strategies, and it may look like your loosing the fight until the last minute, but if you engage the right move, the perfect move in the last 10 seconds and knock your adversary out or put him to submission, you will win. It doesn't matter if he had scored 100 point and you had scored nothing. He may have hit you repeatedly over and over with the same punch, but that didn't win the fight because you applied the right move, with perfection at the end. And it had to be perfect, otherwise, he could have resisted and not submitted or simply escaped. Another game of final decision moments would be chess. You can have all strategy in the world but the game result is defined by one peace: the King. you loose your King you are dead. it doesn't matter how many towers or horses you have on the plate, you have lost the game if you jeopardize your King.
Now here comes the beauty of this: The game that I love the most, for me the most beautiful game on earth, the game of basketball, is a game of repetition. It's not a game of one perfect move. You can Dunk, fly, shoot and hoop form the middle of the court... If you don't repeat the right moves more frequently than your adversary, you will loose. I've seen incredible athletes with Super ultra godly skills playing this game, and I've been watching this game since I was 5 or 6, since Magic Johnson, John Stockton, Larry Bird, Dr J, the master of all Michael Jordan and recently Kobe Bryant and Lebron James, Josh Smith and the list goes on forever. You can shoot a hoop upside down form behind the 3 point line with less than a second to the buzzer, hit the shoot and loose the game... Why? Because the other team repeated the baskets more than you during the game... I remember when I was a young player and my coach would always say, that the games are won by the basics and not by the dunks. Free throws can win a game. As young boys we wanted to dunk the ball and we spent hours practicing the most beautiful dunk but the reality is, they don't win games, the basics do. Of course there are strategies, of course there are right and wrong moves, but what dictates the rhythm of the game isn't beauty and perfection of the moves, but how many times more you score the basket over your adversary"(Pedro) Well friends, for years I have been one of those who think being, doing and growing the church was a game like MMA or Chess. That we had to apply the right move at the right time and everything would be fine. But, for my awakening, it is not. Our adversary has been there much longer that we have and He has seen amazing things we have tried to do, no surprise for him at all. Church life is like the game of basketball. We need to score the basket everyday, day by day, repeating the moves. We've got an instruction book that contains pretty much everything. It has the strategies, it has the tactics, it even contains the mistakes made by the founders of the game.
Sure we can innovate, and use technology in our favor, but remember that in this game, we are not inventing anything, we are just trying different moves. The essence of the game can't be changed. I love technology, I do. I am all for it. I preach from my Ipad sometimes, I study with my Ipad, I read more on computer screens and Ipad screen and Iphone screens than in anything else, I know about the news around the world by push notifications. I'm all for twitter and Facebook. That's where our generation is and where we need to tackle our adversary. It's a new battle field, but the battle is the same, only the field has changed from what it was in the past. the main goal of the game is still helping people to know Jesus as their Savior so they can have eternal life and the devil will loose the game! We already know the right moves, now we just need to adapt them to this new field of technology, social networks, interactivity and etc.
Well, to conclude let me share this with you: I still remember watching the NBA games and during the commercials there would be promotional ads about NBA and at the end of that commercial with some cool songs, the NBA logo would appear with the saying: "I love this game". Now time has gone by and they have change it to "Where amazing happens". I have decided to put them all together and I ended up with this: BCC (Being THE church of Christ): I love this game BECAUSE this is where AMAZING happens!
Peace be with you.
Pedro Nascimento
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