The Big Wild Canada!

Hey yo - I just thought I would pass on a website of a great Canadian organization that works very hard to conserve and protect Canada's wild spaces. Wild spaces are becoming more and more rare as industry and development continually encroach on forests and wetland. Anyways, here is a great picture from a recent Big Wild newsletter that I thought was interesting. To see a larger version, make sure to go and check out the website and, if you're feeling earthy, join the newsletter and keep yourself informed. Enjoy.
-Jer

Hope Bouldering: New Bouldering Guide

Hope and the eastern Fraser Valley have been a playground of bouldering for local boulderers for the last ten years. Areas are scrubbed, climbed and developed, new areas are found, and then old areas forgotten. This seems to be the case with scores of really cool boulder fields around Hope, BC. To combat this, we've decided to produce some mini-select guidebooks to a few of the areas. The first mini-guidebook will cover just over 100 select problems at Hunter Creek with topo's, photo's, descriptions, and the all-mighty tick box. The Hunter Creek Select is nearly complete and will be made available early summer in a very limited print run. If you would like to get your hands on a copy, they will be for sale at Project Climbing Centre in Abbotsford or you can email fraservalleybouldering@hotmail.com
Happy sending.

Every Member a Minister

The following short article appears in this Friday's Abbotsford-Mission Times. Enjoy.

A simple drive through our beautiful little city in the country should confirm in you the suspicion that there are a lot of churches in town. The Abbotsford Bible-belt is full of them and, as a result, there are a lot of pastors who live here. It seems that I can’t go anywhere in this town without running into some pastor from some church just down the block. We’re everywhere. At your coffee shop. At the gym. Wondering if the traffic at Sumas will ever move. We are here.

Locally, there seems to be two popular and opposing perceptions of the value and worth of a pastor. The first perception is antagonistic. Often, those who hold this perception have been burned, hurt, or disenfranchised with church leadership and have decided that church leadership is synonymous with bad leadership. There are, no doubt, examples of church leadership that have been terribly destructive and should not be respected, trusted, or tolerated. However, to conclude that if one pastor is not to be trusted than all pastors should not be trusted is like saying that if country music is bad (which it is), than all music is bad. It’s bad logic.

The second view that I’ve come across in Abbotsford is that pastors can do no wrong. We hover in unattainable spiritual heights listening to praise music while conjugating Greek verbs and living a perfect and sinless life. We never drive like you do. We don’t curse, we’ve never had a fight with our spouse, and we certainly have never thought about skipping church. Business owners who hold this view often give us free coffee, cheap green fees, and discounts like you wouldn’t believe. Needless to say, my Dutch pastor friends and I really like this. And, while there is Biblical support for honoring and respecting spiritual leadership, the idea of pastor-on-a-pedestal has caused some serious dysfunction in the church.

The dysfunction is this: pastors are not the only ministers in the church. In fact, Scripture clearly outlines the idea that each person has unique gifts and abilities and has a significant part to play in the overall ministry of the church. And while the recognized pastor in your church has a unique role to play in the church, he doesn’t play all the roles. This would be like asking Roberto Luongo to single-handedly defeat the Chicago Blackhawks. It obviously doesn’t work!


Considering this, I’d like to make three affirmations about Christian ministry. First, all Christians have a unique call to some kind of Christian ministry. Each one of us follows Jesus’ example to feed the poor, preach the Good News, build inclusive communities, stand up for justice, comfort the hurting, and serve the needy. Each Christian, and not just the pastor, has the responsibility to follow Jesus into Christian ministry.

Second, there is a huge variety of ministries that you can be involved with. Changing the oil in a single moms’ car or moping up the mess that the pastors’ kid makes are not inferior to the more public ministries of teaching or leading. One is not superior to the other; they all work together for the common good, cause, and function of the church.

Finally, the type of ministry that you find yourself in will likely be centered around how God has wired and designed you. Your unique gifts and abilities combined with the hobbies, work, people, geography, or whatever that you’re passionate about should give you some indication as to what, where, how, and who you’ll serve in Christian ministry.

Simply, each Christian of the church is a minister, called into ministry, and has an important and unique role to play. And though us pastor types do enjoy what we do, we would be much more satisfied seeing each one of you finding your role and place in ministry along side of us.

Newfoundland Bouldering Vid

This bouldering video looks pretty sick...I may finally have a reason to check out the right coast!

The Wildest Dream: Mt. Everest, George Mallory, & Conrad Anker

Earlier this year I read a book about Conrad Anker's expedition to summit Mt. Everest and find the body of George Mallory. George Mallory is thought by some to be the first person to have ever summited the world's tallest peak, some 30 years before Sir Edmund Hillary claimed the first ascent. The National Geographic trailer for the upcoming film looks awesome! Check it out.

The Faces of Jesus

The following short article recently appeared in the Abbotsford-Mission Times which resulted in a flurry of emails to my inbox. I thought I'd post it here for the world of blog to enjoy.

Maybe you have noticed, or maybe you haven’t, but there seems to be an over-abundance of “Jesuses” that have taken over the modern landscape of Christian thought. The attempt to modernize and make contemporary the Biblical and historical Jesus has given us some humorous and, admittedly, some embarrassing modern depictions of Jesus. Some of these pictures of Jesus, however, have proven to be quite loyal to the person, work, and divinity of Jesus while others have been about as successful as a miracle diet pill.

While the Bible is quite clear on who Jesus is, it is also quite clear in its warnings to avoid teaching that presents a Jesus other than the Jesus presented in Scripture. I am continually amazed at how creatively we tend to read our own culture back into the portrait of Jesus. I’ll give you a few examples.

To begin with, there is the always popular single, white, North American and totally employable Jesus who drives a mini-van and lives in the suburbs. This Jesus often pops up in paintings with blue eyes and boyish good looks.

The 1960’s step-cousin to this Jesus is the VW hippie Jesus who wandered Palestine as a homeless peasant with some quasy-intellectual thoughts and a few witty stories to entertain the people. Hippie-Jesus was non-confrontational, totally tolerant, and staged a few sit-ins just to show how tolerant and non-confrontational he was.

The opposite of Hippie-Jesus is UFC-cage-fighter-Jesus currently being made popular by a preacher in Seattle. This Jesus can take a beating, drinks beer, eats red meat, curses, worked a construction job, and will – in this round or the next – kick some tail.

And while Moralist-Jesus disapproves of UFC-Jesus drinking beer, he definitely agrees with Political-Lobbyist-Jesus that they need to put someone in a headlock.

Of course there is also Capitalist-Jesus, Che Guevera-Jesus, Jesus Christ Superstar-Jesus, Environmentalist-Jesus, and Oprah Winfrey-Jesus. There is Jesus the Economist, Jesus MD, Houdini-Jesus, the Great Therapist in the Sky Jesus, and the unforgettable eight pound six ounce Will Ferrell baby Jesus. To name a few.

With so many versions of Jesus, it is understandable why the identity of Jesus is vague, lost, confused, misrepresented, or abused by so many. This is especially true in the Abbotsford Bible belt where, though our theology may present Jesus as both King and Saviour, often our lives present him as anything but. Largely, the picture and image of Jesus that your spouse, classmates, co-workers, and neighbours see, is the picture and image of your life. What image are you presenting? What is the picture and portrait of Jesus you are painting for the people around you?

Our claim that Jesus is “King” and “Saviour” is our claim that we organize our lives around the obedience to his teaching. If this is our claim, we arrange our lifestyle, finances, schedules, sex lives, and our eating and drinking around the unique call and commission of Jesus Christ. If this is our claim, we have the deep and ongoing responsibility of seeking out and following the Biblical picture of Jesus. Which Jesus do you represent?

Faith & Doubt

Recently I was asked to write a short piece for Pastor Chuck Swindoll and Insight for Living magazine. The Canadian edition is called Insights and is available nationally by subscription. My article deals with snowboarding, rockclimbing, uncertainty, faith, and doubt and appears this month in both print and online formats. Check it out HERE.

PHOTO: Yours truly. North Shore. Circa Old School.

Tree Hugging

Save our trees!

Marginal Living

The following article hit news stands today. Ironically, though the piece is about a slower pace of life and living, I wrote it last minute before deadline and my editor fixed it up while in the early stages of child labor. Enjoy!

The day, as it where, is broken down into many different little segments of time. Some call these segments seconds, minutes, and hours while others prefer to use more general terms such as dawn, morning, afternoon, evening, night, and bed to describe their day. Either way, these various parts of the day have a tendency to fill up very quickly with things like commutes, appointments, errands, home renovations, a second job, night school, and even the rare visit to the gym. There just never seems to be enough time!

I do most of my living in the balanced part of the day; nothing extreme. I rarely stay up when the schedule says bed and I even more rarely get up when the schedule says dawn. My mornings generally belong to breakfast and newspapers, afternoons belong to noise and appointments, and evenings belong to wrestling with my son, Seinfeld re-runs, rock climbing with friends, and reading books with few pages, large print, and even larger margins.

Actually, if you were to browse through my library you would find that the margins of most of my books are written in, drawn or doodled on, in order to highlight the noteworthy bits of the book; I use the margins of my books to highlight the content.

I love margins. They are the spaces around the content which, when re-read, generally contain the most significant parts. Likewise, I’ve found that the slower I live and the more margins I build into my day and life, the more likely it is that I am able to really notice what the content of life is saying. I am more attuned to my wife and son; I am more productive at work; I respond more honestly to injustice; I am able to notice things like a sad face in the coffee shop or a co-worker who’s had a difficult week at home. Instead of merely tasking my way through life at a frantic and unsustainable pace, I am able to slowly explore and discover what life looks like at a slower pace, in rhythm, and with margins.

In fact, I think that as one reads Scripture, there is a theme of “margins” that pops up time and again and which should orient the way we live, know, and see. Psalms 46:10 reminds us, “Be still and know that I am God.” We are to have a perspective of living biblically called “Sabbath”; the ability to find rest even amidst the commotion and busyness of life. Further, while this orientation of slow living certainly includes rest and refreshment, it is also intricately connected to a rhythmic lifestyle of working, feasting, and partying. Sabbath is much more than a particular day or time; it is a way of living.

How do you live? Are you living slow enough to care about the things you care about? Are you tuned in to the people around you; your family, friends, and strangers? Have you allowed for the time and space in your life – the margins – where you are able to truly, honestly, and significantly live? What are the margins in your life highlighting?

Welcome to Vancouver! Winter Olympics 2010

If you've ever wanted to see Vancouver from the air without leaving the captains seat at your desk, this is the way to do it!! Check it out, very cool.