Culture Blend

Has your church joined the chorus of social stances in the last few years, whether they had any proven truth or evidence to them, even if it meant contradicting scripture?

Recently I sat down with a lifelong friend who happened to be in town. We grew up in church together and were discussing the “status” of the today’s church. He talked about, how at this year’s fine arts competition where they live, the winning human video was a group of kids who perpetuated the misinformation pushed out by the media, guzzled in by the church about the incidents in the death of George Floyd, even included a “hands up, don’t shoot”, which referenced an incident in Ferguson Missouri, and after being investigated by the Department of Justice during the Obama Administration was determined to NOT HAVE HAPPENED, yet here a group of young Christian kids, believe it did, and continued telling the lie. Not one person in the group, not one parent or pastor overseeing the group dug just a little to check authenticity or “fact check” it.

These kids went on to perform a skit referencing the 8 mins while a suspect was being detained and subdued, reacting only to the clipped video put out from a bystander. Not one kid cared to check the entire video of the incident, which we only have because the Daily Mail from the UK cared to get a copy. If they had, they would have saw a completely different story, a different narrative any sane pastor/leader/person would have put up the big STOP sign. Does the context reduce tragic results no, but it takes the “hate” narrative away, gives a full understanding, and even still you might find concern and compassion for the deceased, but based on a more complete circumstance, not the main stream false narrative.

The sad part is it is just not this group of kids. If you go back and look at Facebook profiles during that time, you see many who blacked out their profile photos in solidarity, including many pastors and other Christian leaders. The same people who should know the important of CONTEXT. I sat one Sunday and listened to a younger pastor who I respected, even though we had different political views, stand up and regurgitate the lie. I watched many respected people weep, not over truth, but lies. Manipulated facts to fit a narrative, to push an agenda, and they all became swept up in it. Just like when you see a flooded road, you listen to the warning “turn around, don’t drown”. These leaders did not just fail to turn around, they went out rented busses, loaded them with friends, family, congregants, and strangers, ignored every historical marker of warning to be cautious and drove voluntarily into the flood. Doing so, put into question EVERYTHING they have ever taught on, but shame on me for blindly following in the past.

You drive by some of these “churches”, I would really like to call them buildings where people gather to feel good about themselves, but that title is too long, they went out and spent money on banners and signs to let everyone driving by know their stance about certain lives matter, certain lifestyles are welcome. They pushed a slogan that is used by a group of pro-Marxist activists that wants to eliminate the church, but heck, they feel good about receiving their social credit for the signs. Yes, all lifestyles are welcome at church, it is a place for sinners to be redeemed and find grace, not a place to celebrate our sins. We should be celebrating RECOVERY.

God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because they completely turned from God, chose to blend with culture, and became a place of sinful desires. Do churches glance right past this story in the Bible because it deals with all too familiar circumstances all around us, or because it wouldn’t get good feedback and keep the numbers growing if we were to attempt to hold ourselves and others accountable? I challenge more churches to dive headfirst into these difficult scriptures in the Bible. Scripture that discusses God’s judgement on people who have failed to follow his laws, failed to trust him, failed to heed his warnings about blending with the culture around them. Where is the church going? Will you continue to sit back while the church is slipping further and further away from God’s word? Or will you pick up the Bible dig into the word, pray, and listen to what God has for you?

Some thought this would never happen...

Every story has a back story. 

The year was 2003, I had recently graduated from Kansas State University, Dawn was finishing school in St. Louis, and our wedding was being planned for October of the same year. Besides those events in our lives happening, another big adventure was about to start.... a move to a new town. I was going to say foreign land or strange new land, but I did not think it would be too kind to call St. Joseph, Missouri those names. The previous 23 years of my life and Dawns 21 years had taken place mostly in St. Louis, Missouri. We were making this voyage, our own Lewis and Clark Expedition across Missouri, without wagons, fording Rivers and diphtheria, but indulge my imagination for a moment. It still felt like we were heading into the unknown. We only knew 1 family in St Joseph, and we were leaving all our family and childhood friends behind. 

Our life in St. Joseph was short lived, about 18 months later, we took up residence in Kansas City, Missouri. For the next 15 years we would call that home, between a year in an apartment to the next 14 in our, what was way too big for us at the time home.  During this time, we have spent all 15 years attending and very involved in Vineyard Church, working different jobs, creating a nonprofit within our local community, starting our family,

homeschooling our kids, and developing many friendships. We have also experienced great difficulties over the years, which we were thankful for the church and friends to be able to lean on. The relationships and experiences that we had developed within our church were one of the major components that had kept us here in Kansas City. When we ran into our struggles, it would have been an option to pack up and head back to St. Louis, but we never felt compelled to do that. Looking back, it’s obvious to us now why, we had lots of life experiences we needed to complete here. 

Over Thanksgiving 2019, through two different nudging of the Spirit Dawn and I both felt compelled to start a plan and process that would find us moving back towards St. Louis and family. The nudge was brought to me through way of my oldest, and a simple comment he made, that started to change my heart. Dawn felt the nudging during a conversation she was having with family about the kids getting older. On our drive back to Kansas City we started talking about the possibility of moving back to St. Louis and had put a timeline in place that would have us moving back home in no more than three years. 

With our three-year plan set, one of the concerns we had was the

hardships of leaving our church and the friendships we developed there and having to find a new one. Honestly, you would think after all the times I have seen God lead us through decisions and struggles, I should have known he would be like, don’t worry, I got this. (we all know I don’t got this). At the end of May this year, we got what we felt to be confirmation that the time is now for us to leave what had been our church home of 15 years. I reached out to a few pastors and shared with them what was on my heart and let them know our family's decision out of respect for the relationship and dedication we have had to our church. I also needed to resign from leadership over a recently developed ministries of the church. This was now closing a chapter of our lives but was also going to fast forward to the next one. 

I am going to let you in on a secret, I can make all the plans in the world, but it is better to join the ride God has planned for me. What starts as a simple event, our neighbor sharing with us they are going to move, has more depth than we would first realize. When we heard their listing price of their house, our ears perked up. Wait a minute, they are going to list for what? While talking to our other neighbor who is a realtor, we mentioned their listing price and he responded if they get X, you could probably get X+ for yours. Our mouths hit the floor. No way. 

Turning back to prayer we started feeling that maybe we should be looking to move now, not later. In our prayer God showed us that He has blessed me with a flexible job 3 years ago, the flexibility of homeschooling our children, recent closure to our church, and for further confirmation we asked God to allow our neighbor’s house to sell for a particular price (above and beyond their asking price). You would not believe our shock when we got confirmation back on July 13th, about a month ago that our neighbors house sold for the number God had shown us, which has no explanation as to why their house went for that much even our realtor neighbor was shocked at their SOLD price. 

We got it!! God is telling us to move NOW!! So, the list of projects we were planning on finishing over the next few years we were now going to tackle over the next few weeks!! By God’s strength my wife and I were able to complete all the projects by the listing deadline.  

July 19th we were sitting in a church service at a friend's church, without masks, and the pastor was preaching that weekend on Moses. He asked,  

“How many of us have been in a situation that felt impossible, and then God prepares an escape for you, and it isn’t until you walked through it you were able to look back and see God at work, even though I had a hard time in that moment. Knowing that God will guide you through situations good and bad, the question all Christians should be prepared for is, “Will you follow me?” If God is asking you to follow him, he is going to give instructions on what is next, but be prepared for the second half of the question because that is, will you follow me, wherever I lead you.”  

Our situation is not as scary as stories you might read in the Bible, we are not Jonah being told to go to Nineveh where he will surely face death, Moses being asked to confront Pharaoh to lead the people out of slavery, and definitely not being asked to build an ark! We have the benefit of going back to where we have family, old friends, and familiar roads, but we do have uncertainty. We feel God has placed it in our hearts to move back to St. Louis, which if you ask either of our parent’s they never thought they would see that day. What we are not fully aware of yet is, the why. For the last 15 years we have been resolute about not returning, yet something my son spoke to me softened my stance. God has a plan for our family, we are moving forward and excited for what he has planned.  

August 7th at 9:20 am we went live with our house on the market. The family that looked at the house at 3:00 pm that afternoon, bought our house, and we close Sept 24th. 

Since I love to quote great philosophers, I will quote the great Ozzy Osbourne, “Mamma I’m coming home”.

Literally. 

 

Firestorm called Fear...

It is ok in life to be cautious, even take calculated risks. We have all heard the term “overthinking it”, well this can happen in life when we take caution and let it be driven into fear. How can it make the change, and how can it happen so fast?

Fire

The best way to demonstrate how fear can take control is to think of your fireplace. You take the time to properly make sure you fire is built right, get all the right size sticks, some paper, logs, etc. Once you strike that match and light the fire it comes to life. At this point you typically have a pretty controlled fire. What happens once you open the damper below the fire? The controlled fire now becomes a roaring fire and consumes the wood quickly. In the fireplace at home this is a manageable situation, one we can close the damper reduce the air causing the raging fire, but what happens when that fire is out in the world?

Every year it seems we hit a season where wildfires rampage across parts of the globe. What starts sometimes as small as a spark, roars into an uncontrollable inferno engulfing everything in its way. Total destruction and devastation is left behind because what started small got a gust of wind and roared to life. Fire can be extremely useful in our lives, we use it to heat our houses, cook our food, even manufacturer products, but left unattended or blown on, it can cause devastation in our lives.

Fear

Caution turns into fear when like the fire, left unattended or blown on. The source of the wind can come from strangers even close family members, it can even be unintentional by those closest to us. Regardless of where it comes from, it can be crippling. Fear takes control over us, becoming incapable of pushing forward, unable to escape. We become claustrophobic in our own thoughts. Fear though is a liar, it is a tool used to diminish you. We must stop and remember, just like the controlled fire, until an outside force intentionally injected itself into our lives we were ok. It’s not the fire that should cause us to be worried, its whose blowing the wind on our fire we need to look at. The minute we let ourselves become controlled by someone else exerting their force over us we become enslaved to their will.

Good Intentions...

Most of the time we have good intentions when we see another in a place of fear. At the same time what we think is helpful is doing the opposite. In our attempt to have empathy for their situation we ended up speaking words that act as fuel on the fire of fear. Why do we do this, it’s not intentional, its out of a good place. In my own experience, when I was dealing with trying to find work to support my family, I was told about people’s thoughts and prayers. Thoughts like “Don’t worry about what kind of job”, “Trust God, He has a plan for you” or “God’s in Control”. While they are all truth statements, none of that helps ease my fear. The fire is raging at my door, it feels like you just said to me, once the fire is done, I’ll help you rebuild your house. I DO NOT WANT TO HAVE TO REBUILD, I WANT TO STOP IT BEFORE IT GETS HERE!!

What I needed in this moment was the person to do something, not say something. Showing up at my door with a gift card to the grocery store is you coming along side me and saying, “I know you are in a rough spot, but let’s go through this together, I got you.” That is water on the fire, a grocery gift card that gave us peace for a few weeks on how we would feed our family. No one asked us about it, we do not even know who did this, but talk about bringing peace during our time of fear. Someone had a thought of how they could help us, and they acted. They acted in a way that lets us release a fear, but at the same time use their help on our time, our terms. They helped us escape the bondage of our fear, even if just a little, still a move in the right direction. One less thing to speak fear over us.

Steps To Get Out of Fear

1. Be honest with God, yourself and those around you.

First step to recovery is admitting you have a problem, right? Same goes with fear. You must be honest with everyone, let them know. The only way they can begin to help is if they know there is a problem in the first place.

2. Wait & listen

To often in a crisis we make decisions that are made in an irrational state of mind. We feel panicked and that we must do something. That is us trying to solve the problem, we need to get ourselves out of the way of ourselves. We must allow the work to be done around us, but if we are being irrational, those around us won’t even be able to get a pulse on the situation. It’s attempting to help a moving target, and people will just give up and say things like, “I tried to help, but they just really didn’t seem to want it”

3. Evaluate and remain honest

Look at your options around you, what are your choices. Stop and evaluate everything going on, including those you have around you. Get the negative Nancy’s and positive Polly’s out of your inner circle. Honestly, they are not doing you much good. Find people that speak truth, but speak life at the same time. To break the bondage of fear out of your life, you might need to hear some hard truths, but someone walking with you through your fear will understand and be there with you as you fall and need to be picked up.

Fear is a Liar

Fear will make you feel isolated, it will attempt to deceive you into believing you are the only one. It will attempt to convince you that others will judge you. Guess what, your not alone and it doesn’t matter what others might think, they have their own insecurities to deal with if they are judging you. I will be the first one to admit, I Don’t Got This. Life is full of twists and turns, taking one day at a time. I can be cautious about decisions in my life, but no longer is fear allowed to paralyze me from moving forward.

Lastly, even if the fire has burned it all down in your life. The beauty that can rise from the ashes is evidence of a new life starting, going forward from that day. All is not lost, you still have everything in front of you. Have no fear, You Got This…

My unsolicited advice to people:

Back in 2009 I was hell bent on hating the new President of the United States. I was crucial and critical of EVERY move he made. I would rant and rave about it, make facebook comments about it. Did I have any impact on the President? No.

But, I did have an impact. I had an impact on myself. I found myself so engrossed in the hate that I became a bitter person, I even lost friends because they didn't like the person I had become. It wasn't until I had a close liberal friend pull me aside one day and say, "Brian, you have let this engulf your life so much, you're not the fun person you used to be." It was at that point I took a step back and realized how many people in my life had started to pull back and separate themselves from me.

I made a personal change, did I become a supporter of the POTUS, heck no.

Still do not support him, but what I did was start to use critical discussion, and not fire-branded, tent revival condemnation/screaming. I also got involved in educating myself more, started attending community events, started a t-shirt line to help promote the 9-12 movement.

During this new growth, I found even within my new circles people that looked oddly familiar, they were acting how I was acting. I saw the failure in that model. I saw that doesn't accomplish anything, even worked to remove them from the circle or leave the circle myself. What I didn't do was demand anything from anyone, I didn't expect anything in return, what I did demand was that we all start having civil conversations about current events. I learned how to have a conversation with a liberal without attempting to convert them, without forcing my thought process on them, I learned that sometime the best conversation you can have is to not say anything at all and just hear the other person.

I write all of this because it's the only advice I can give to the people out there who have let hate control their everything, I see it in their posts about the current POTUS. I am not asking you to like him, you don't even need to support him. What I am asking is, respect the title, and respect YOURSELF. If we all have the same goal, end hate, then spewing fire-branded, tent revival rhetoric will never get us there. Take my word for it, it cost me many friends.

Proverbs 15:1 ESV
A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.

- Brian Bononi

It's ok to not have something...

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so I do not want to keep you from family and friends, but I did want to write something that hit me earlier...

Tomorrow many people will wake up and start their traditions, ovens on all day, houses filled with great smells, family and friends gathering together to spend time with each other. Some if your fortunate will be in St. Louis and get to watch live a football game tradition that has gone on since 1898, GO KIRKWOOD,  others will gather around televisions all day to watch the Cowboys and Lions each play their annual game.

What will happen at more homes than many will admit, is just as it time to get into the heart of cooking, realization will hit that something was forgotten. Years ago, everyone would laugh it up and joke later than evening about why there wasn't any gravy, or dessert that one year was Popsicle's from the freezer. That has all changed today though, almost every grocery store is now open on Thanksgiving. While that has provided a great relief and convenience to those who want gravy, we have overlooked what that really means.

To make sure you are not without gravy, someone else, in fact an entire team of people are going to be going without their Thanksgiving. They will miss out on the laughter and gathering, the hot prepared meals. Instead they will be standing around a place a business to ensure your Thanksgiving is perfect. Now, please understand, I do not write this because I am bitter about working, because in fact, I do not have to. But I have team members who do, this year I did not draw the short straw. But I have in the past.

I challenge anyone who forgot something this year, do not pick it up. Go without this year, create a funny story that will be told for years to come. Maybe then in the near future we can convince retailers that letting ALL of their employees spend time together with family and friends is really the perfect Thanksgiving. Life is short, and time is not unlimited. You are never guaranteed the next day, nor the next holiday. Everyone can benefit from a little more laughter, a little less work and lots of pumpkin pie.

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone.

Importance of the Electoral College

Popular Vote vs Electoral  College

I have kept mostly quiet since election results came in. While I was pleased with the results, I will remain cautiously optimistic. I have had great discussions with people with opposing views over the last week. While I disagree with their viewpoints, we have had some extremely respectful conversations. (The way it should be done, not violent protests, profanity laced tirades, defecating in public on signs, etc)

So lets look at the results, President-elect Trump is currently sitting at 290 electoral votes to Hillary's 232. Michigan has not yet been called, but he currently holds a lead. Those 16 votes move him to 306. Now the other aspect of election results are the"popular vote" results. An irrelevant metric that I feel is only used to create more angst and discord.

Currently there is a petition circulating to have Hillary declared President based off her winning the popular vote. Even though this has happened three other times in our history, many are acting as if this is the first time. What I want to do is break down why the electoral college is important.

In the 2016 election, 121 million votes were cast. Hillary is winning 61 million to President-Elect Trumps 60.3 million. A difference of 700k. There are two states that create such a close popular vote tally. California and New York. In California 8.5 million , or 7% of total national vote were cast and in New York 6.7 million, or 5 % of total national vote. In California, Hillary won 5.5 million to 3 million, a difference of 2.5 million. In New York, Hillary won 4.1 million to 2.6 million. That is a difference of 1.5 million votes. Between those two states she has a lead of 4 million votes.

The electoral college was set up to protect exactly this. Those 4 million votes only represent 3% of the total vote cast, and only .009% of the entire country population. Those two states only represent 4% of the United States of America. Looking at the map above, the sea of red is evidence of why the electoral college is important. All of the non blue counties get a fair say. Why should a few dense counties decide for everyone else. Our founders were intelligent and set up a system that would allow for growth of our nation, but still give everyone a fair say.

On another side note, I find it interesting to see how the country has changed from 1992 to 2016. As you know 1992 was when Bill Clinton won, I also posted 2008 when Barack Obama won. It is interesting to see the country has turned consistently more red each presidential election since Clinton's first four years. To think we almost allowed that family a third term in the White House!

New Passive Aggressive approach: Being Respectful!

In my short 6 months of working at my new employment I have had the pleasure of observing many different characters. I have seen different leadership styles, different management styles (yes, those can both be separate issues) and different attitudes.

Let me back track to 2004 first. It was then that I took a job in Kansas City at Jantsch Slaggie Architects. On my first day I was introduced to my new project manager Joe Stewart. The first thing Joe said to me in our team meeting was, “I am going to teach you everything I know, I am not afraid of you taking my job”. Now while at first glimpse that may come across as an extreme case of arrogance, I recognized it as pure self confidence in his ability to also grow his situation.

See what Joe had obviously learned

at some point along his career path was, you are only as great as the team around you. Using a sports metaphor, a quarterback can only be good if his line in front of him is willing to block. Without those working hard and doing the grunt work, you will never have the ability to rise up to greatness. And as you rise, so do those on your team.

The next five years we worked together we did a great job as a team. Daily I watched as I was learning and getting experiences that friends same level as me hadn't even dreamed of yet. Business trips, City Administrator meetings, Client meetings, Contract writing, and the list goes on and on. So how does that relate to today? I’m not practicing Architecture anymore.

Present Day: About two-thirds of the time at work I run the front of the store. This means at Hy-Vee that I am responsible for cashiers, courtesy clerks, customer service, custodian and the parking lot. At any given moment the front end Assistant Manager is managing at least a dozen sometimes up to three dozen different people, doing different duties and responsibilities. Meanwhile maintaining the #1 most important part, make sure the customer has the BEST possible experience.

What does this have to do with being respectful? EVERYTHING!! When I was little my parents taught me to use two very important words, Please and Thank You. Lets be honest first, I do not want to be an Assistant Manager forever, I want to continue to advance my career. In order to be successful as an Assistant Manager I need to have the strongest team around me. I have no control over who is hired, who works what shift (oh, sometimes I wish I did though), and what is going on in their personal lives. But I do have control over how I treat them. If during my 9 hour shift up front I can treat my all of my CO-WORKERS(and I emphasize that word) with the respect they deserve we as a team can be the most successful. You ask, why did I emphasize the word CO-WORKERS, well its because that is how I truly see all of them. It doesn't matter if this is your first job and you are 16, or you have been working for 50 years, we are all in this together.

• Do I expect you to show up to work, yes! But that doesn't mean I can’t still say thank you for showing up.
• When I ask the courtesy clerks to get please carts, please clean the restrooms, please pick up the trash, do I expect you to do it, YES! But that doesn't mean I can’t still say thank you for doing it.
• When I ask a cashier to please take merchandise back to a shelf, do I expect you to do it, YES! But that doesn't mean I can’t still say thank you for doing it.
• When I have all of my courtesy clerks doing projects around the store and a cashier needs assistance bagging up the groceries, does that mean I call someone else to come and do it, NOPE, I jump in and help, I assist. The cashier appreciates my willingness to “get my hands dirty”. 

Most importantly though, because of the way I treat my courtesy clerks, they have a willingness to jump in first chance they get to take over for me. Guess what, when they jump in, I even tell them Thank You!

I hear “horror” stories about clerks who hide in the parking lot, disappear for long period of times, and are slow at doing many tasks. Funny thing, I don’t have that problem. Same group of co-workers, different “quarterback”. Major difference, I’m not trying to be the all-star on the team. The All-Star is singled out and gets to play in a game without much importance, a team of successful people get to play for the big game and all be champions at the end of the day.

After each shift, I am thankful for all my co-workers who show up. I am thankful for them doing their best. I am thankful to have a team around me willing to work hard so we are all successful.

At the end of the day, my success is only defined by those around me, those willing to do the major lifting and block for me.

In conclusion, Thank You to all of my co-workers who come to work, willing to work hard, willing to help us all be successful, and give me that boost of confidence I personally need to make me think even if in a small amount, I am able to affect the lives of those around me, Thanks again!