Archives for December 2007

Mega-church, WillowCreek, has set the tone for church growth formulas and etc. over the last decade, or more, and recently they came out and revealed that the programs and etc. haven’t produced the spiritual growth and depth they were going for amongst their members and regular attenders. Without making any judgments on their methods, I was excited to see their humility to admit this and I’m even more excited to see what their new study, dubbed Reveal, will actual reveal about the health of the American church. I have increasingly moved away from program dependent ministry in my own life and ministry because I’m not working amongst a people or generation that gravitate towards programs, but towards relationships. So this is intriguing to me. Here is the short video but click here to watch the whole thing.

(HT-Dana)

One of my friends here in Prague (Laura)posted about a new ad campaign that is popping up across the city. The campaign’s name is Say It (or in Czech, “Řekni To”) and it’s a campaign to bring awareness and aid to women and individuals caught in Human Trafficking. Or to be honest in most cases Sex Trafficking. This has grown to be a burden of mine as I live and work in Czech, but most days I have no idea how to address this burden now as a single male. My dream one day is to pastor a church here with an active ministry reaching out and bringing justice to individuals caught in this. Here is an interesting and eye-opening portion from the website:

Human trafficking, in law often referred to as modern day slavery, is a worldwide problem. Generally speaking, it means dealing with people by different means of constraint (by force, pressure, deceit, etc.) in order to abuse them (e.g. in prostitution or forced labor). Victims of human trafficking are forced to perform various activities under appalling conditions, while another person generates substantial profits through them with almost zero outlay. Human trafficking is a serious violation of the human rights of the victim.

According to various international studies, each year from 700,000 up to 2 million people are trafficked, whereas in Europe it is from 300,000 up to 500,000 a year. It is estimated that the annual profit arising from human trafficking amounts to 8.5 up to 12 billion EURO. It is one of the most profitable forms of international organized crime, bringing its organizers profits comparable to the illegal sale of drugs or the arms trade. In the case of human trafficking, however, the risk of catching and punishing the offenders is far smaller, because they are able to exploit the dependent position of their victims, who are residing abroad illegally.

For more click HERE. May God bring freedom and justice to these victims and may the Bride of Christ, the Church, open her eyes to it and rise to the challenge!

There are moments in life where you just need to stop and thank God for His sweet, sweet goodness. I had one of those moments on Wednesday night as I was downtown for the St. Mikulas (Nicholas) Day festivities at Staromestska Namesti (Old Town Square). As I stood there snapping the pic you see above I had moment where I needed to take a mental snapshot as a praise to God for getting me back here to Prague. Similar to Kirsten Dunst’s character in Elizabethtown, but with a God-bent on it. Her character, Claire, would pretend to take a photo and it was a way for her to remember the moment; a way of sorts to go deep into the moment and not let it merely pass by as many human-beings do. There I stood in the midst of a sea of people trying to steady my hand to take a photo in focus, but I was actually attempting to steady my heart in gratitude to God. It is good to be here, my home.

Anyway, Christmas has descended upon Prague and I love it! Lights, trees, Christmas markets, seasonal scents, and little devils (or in Czech, Cert). Yes you read that right, little devils. On Wednesday they celebrated St. Mikulas Day (or St. Nicholas) and it is an experience to say the least. Of course, Mikulas, or Nicholas, is derived from the Bishop of Myra in Anatolia (which is in modern day Turkey). He is known for secret gift giving, giving away his wealth to the poor, and defending the defenseless. Click here for the Wikipedia article on Nicholas. Over the centuries different countries and regions remember him differently here in Czech it is very interesting.

Here is a quick rundown of the happenings (click here for the full article):

Traditionally, children received the visits at home, with the threesome played by family members or friends. This is still the case, although now groups of people offer to dress up as St Nicholas, the angel and Devil and visit families, for a fee. This may be worth considering if you are stuck for people to play the three roles. In other cases, the event is held outdoors, such as on Old Town Square in Prague, and there are other activities accompanying the trio’s wanderings, such as competitions and musical performances.

But whether the occasion is big or small it will always involve groups dressed as St Nicholas and co. They look for children, who are often rather scared by the sight of the trio, and ask them about if they’ve been good or bad over the last year. Good behavior is rewarded with sweets or small toys; bad behavior is punished with coal or potatoes, although I’ve yet to witness a child being subjected to this humiliation. If a child’s misdemeanors are judged to be particularly serious then he or she may be dragged off to hell in a sack has by the devil. Once the child has been rewarded (or chastised) the trio sets off for more victims to interrogate.

Very, very interesting. I don’t want to make any judgments about the tradition, but it is interesting to see the streets of Prague littered with devil horns during Christmas.

I did witness many small children crying in complete terror as they were chastised by a cert or certs. I also found it interesting to see St. Mikulas gingerbread cookies right next to gingerbread cookies with an appearance of Satan on them.

We even had the typical Mikulas visitors to our classroom on Wednesday and I received a potato because I wouldn’t sing (I was sick and didn’t have a voice).

I did get some video of the events downtown, I’ll try to get it up soon. Thanks for stopping by! Blessings to you this Christmas season and if you are terribly interested here is another article about Czech Christmas Customs and Supersitions. Be a revolution!

So I know I have been a virtual no show in the last week and some change. I apologize about my poor blogging. After returning from my short (It was too short! I could have stayed a bit longer.) trip to Dublin I had some work responsibilities, a test in my Czech class, some random chaotic happenings, a quick 22 hour trip to Berlin for my Visa, and on top of it all I caught a bug that I can’t shake. With that being said, please pray for my health. I’ve had no voice pretty much all week and I’ve been exhausted. Yesterday and today I stayed home, which was very hard, but very needed. I feel better, but my voice is still away from me. Maybe I left it Ireland. I’m not sure. But I would appreciate some prayers for my health. God surely is trying to get me to slow down a bit; which is something I struggle with.

Anyways… Here are a couple of my favorite pics from Ireland and a couple other goodies I decided to throw in. I hope to get some posts up this weekend.

These are taken outside of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Patrick was a dude! I want to read a bit more about him, but it was fun to learn more as I looked around the cathedral. Here is a quote from Patrick, I made sure to take a picture of to remember. It Is from his Confessions and it so good. I love it because his heart for Ireland reminds me of my heart for Czech:

And after a few years I was again in Britain with my parents [kinsfolk], and the welcomed me as a son, and asked me, in faith, that after the great tribulations I had endured I should not go an where else away from them. And, of course, there, in a vision of the night, I saw a man whose name was Victoricus coming as it from Ireland with innumerable letters, and he gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of the letter: ‘The Voice of the Irish’, and as I was reading the beginning of the letter I seemed at that moment to hear the voice of those who were beside the forest of Foclut which is near the western sea, and the were crying as if with one voice: ‘We beg you, holy youth, that you shall come and shall walk again among us.’ And I was stung intensely in my heart so that I could read no more, and thus I awoke. Thanks be to God, because after so many ears the Lord bestowed on them according to their cry.

Jason and stumbled across “The Czech Inn” in the middle of Dublin. Kind of funny, especially since Jason works at The Czech Inn hostel here in Prague! Oh and I baked last weekend! That’s right, I baked! I was so proud of myself I had to take a picture.

But just when I was feeling pretty high about my domestic talents increasing I took out a load of laundry and realized one of the 4 sweaters I washed was “dry clean only” and I got this:

Yeah, that fit me a week ago, now it looks like I stole a sweater from my director’s 5 year old daughter! Praise God for the humbling moments. Ernie, my roommate, and I got a good laugh from it. Well, I have to get going. We have our AIA Christmas party tonight. Look for a blog post about Czech Christmas customs!

So in my last post I said I was going to try to snap some snowy pics of the city before it melted off. It was a success, but I was disappointed because we had much more snow at our place;

outside of my window

than we had downtown. It’s interesting to see how much a difference there can be between the amounts in such a short distance. Here are some of my favorites from the morning. Hopefully, as the Christmas decs come out we will get dumped on and I can snap some more. Enjoy these!





I hope you enjoyed these! As always you can see more pics by going all the way to the bottom right of this page and click on the flickr link. Blessings…