A New Year for Reading

Hey All -

One of the best decisions I ever made in my life was establishing the discipline of reading the Bible every day. I'd list it in the top 5 choices of my life. Bible reading is something that is normally encouraged in church but often given half-hearted effort or ignored all together. One of the reasons people struggle with Bible reading is because they do not follow a plan. People tend to read the Bible with a shotgun approach, randomly selecting what they'll read each day. This is a really difficult and confusing way to approach the Bible.

When I started reading the Bible systematically through a Bible reading plan, my whole perspective on scripture, God and all of Christianity changed. At first I felt a little "unspiritual" or mechanical because I felt I wasn't necessarily reading exactly what God wanted me to for that day. I felt it might not as spirit-led. What I didn't realize was that as Christian that professes to believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and absolutely true, I am responsible to know everything that is in the book. I believed the whole book...but hadn't even read the whole book. And the reason I hadn't read the whole Bible was because I was a shotgun Bible reader.

The other thing I learned as I grew up in Christ was this -

Hebrews 4:12 - "The Word of God is living and active"

God's Word is alive. Every word of it. I used to think I needed to read a specific part of the scripture in order to hear what God wanted to speak to me. I now understand that God can use literally any part of the Bible to speak to me and adjust my thinking and my life. He is able to breathe on any scripture and bring revelation that is unexpected and exciting. This makes reading the Bible an adventure worth taking every single day - in a systematic way.

Bible reading plans have been around for 100's of years - they're nothing new or notable. But what keeps changing with technology is how easy it is to follow them. I'm not sure how you feel about digital Bible reading, but I'm down with it. Some people really like to turn their gold leaf pages and all, but I believe it's the words that are powerful, not the leather or the special feeling pages. I do still read my bible out of a leather bound book a lot of the time. But I'm also a fan of reading it on my laptop and most recently on my cell phone from a mobile website.

I found a tool this morning that I thought would be worth sharing with you. It's a pretty awesome list of Bible reading plans from the English Standard Version of the Bible. But the coolest part is that it gives them to you in several different formats - Web, RSS, Email, iCal, Mobile and Print. Meaning you can get your bible reading plan in whatever format your most likely to use it - on a website, in your RSS reading (I highly recommend google reader by the way), in your email, on your calendar, on your cell phone or even on good old fashioned paper. It even offers an audio version for you to listen to that you can podcast to your itunes and ipod. There's something for everybody.

Check it out here.

Why don't you make a resolution to read more of God's Word this year? It's easier than ever.

Happy New Year!!

Why Twitter – A Pastors Perspective

I recently signed up for an account on Twitter – yet another social networking tool. I’ve known about twitter for about 10 months but resisted signing up until now. It took me a long time to understand why I’d ever want to use it. But this thing is really growing on me and I thought I’d share a few thoughts with you in case you’re thinking about opening an account.

What is Twitter?

Quote from the twitter website – “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

When my brother-in-law Joe first told me about twitter, I couldn’t even imagine why anyone would use it. It seemed like another online time waster (who needs anything else to update?). I wasn’t interested at all. Honestly, I thought, who wants to know what I’m doing throughout the day? Who cares about that?

What eventually turned me on to twitter was opening up a facebook account this year and seeing all the “status reports” updates. This has been a really fun part of the culture in our youth ministry. Most of the young people we pastor use facebook in addition to or instead of myspace. And after every youth service or event, one of my favorite things to do is check out facebook to see the response from all the students in their status reports.

“God really moved tonight”

“I’m believing in faith and crossing into my promised land”

“My body hurts, but I had the time of my life at the mudfest”

It’s great to be able to see the influence of your life on so many people…instantly and personally. But that’s facebook and this blog is about twitter.

So twitter is like just doing the status update part of facebook with one key difference – it’s made to operate and interact with your phone through text messages instead of just the internet. That is the powerful difference of twitter. While many people use the internet every day, many do not. And many are only on at certain times. Cell phones, on the other hand, are so wide spread that virtually everybody I know has one and uses texting. People keep their phone on them all the time. It’s immediate connectivity.

But the question remains – “Who cares what I’m doing all day?”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this question as a pastor. I think many people use social networking tools to say a virtual “look at me! Pay attention to me! Like me!”. If this was the purpose of using twitter I wouldn’t be writing this blog post about it. But I’ve come up with a few reasons why I think every leader should open up a free twitter account and get people to follow them on twitter. Here they are…

1. Twitter can be used as an influencing tool.

I made a decision years ago that I want to be an influencer. I don’t want to just let life happen to me, but I want to use my life to influence people all the time with the message of the gospel. Part of what I use twitter for is sending out influential reminders to all of my “tweeps” (twitter’s word for friends). I think it’s a very powerful tool to have the ability to influence dozens (someday hundreds and thousands) of other people’s thoughts with one text message.

I got a twitter message from a tweep last week that said this –

Peter makes in plain in Acts 15:11- "We believe that we are all saved the same way, by the undeserved grace of Jesus"

Sending out a unique “God thought” on a regular basis is a simple and quick way to influence many lives.

2. Twitter lets people get to know me.

This is the amazing part of the whole social networking trend. You read someone’s thoughts online and you feel like you know them. Even though you haven’t spent one minute of actual time with them, you have a window into their mind and heart through what they write.

As a pastor of a rapidly growing youth ministry, I simply do not have enough time to invest into intimate relationships with all of those who attend our youth church. I’d love to go out to coffee with all of the 150 students in the youth church every week. There’s just not enough hours in the week and the church keeps growing.

It is important though, that the young people I pastor get to know me. When a young person feels like they know me, they are far more likely to receive from my preaching, teaching and pastoral ministry. They are far more likely to trust what is coming their way from the pulpit.

It’s amazing to me – but twitter and facebook help accomplish this task without really spending time with people individually. I’m not saying that social networking should take the place of real relationships – but I am saying it does help move the process along when there’s simply not enough time for everyone.

3. Twitter helps my friends and leaders know how to pray.

Pastor Jack Louman recently spoke at a men’s ministry meeting at our church and gave us a challenge to take a step up in the area of personal intercessors. He told me that God is going to bring people to specifically intercede for me, my family and my ministry.

As he was speaking I had the thought, “Twitter is perfect for that”.

The Apostle Paul encourages us to “pray without ceasing”. Having a tool that can simultaneously text message everyone who is committed to pray for me is a wonderful thing. It’s instant prayer covering when you need it. Oh the wonders of technology.

My good friend Brent is a missionary in Africa and is on twitter. I love getting his tweets (messages) because I know immediately how to pray for him. Phone calls and individual texts cost money…but twitter is free!

Twitter has many other uses. People are using it for all kinds of things in the marketplace. These are just the benefits I’m noticing in my first month. I want to encourage you to set up an account, follow me on your phone (you have control of which people twitter texts you about) or online, and start tweeting away. God is raising up a tight knit network of believers to change the world. I believe technology has got to be a part of that.

Ready to check it out? -- www.twitter.com

My twitter name is daschulz.