All posts by Bryce Ashlin-Mayo

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“From Tablet to Table” – A Review

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Leonard Sweet’s recent release, From Tablet to Table: Where Community is Found and Identity is Formed, is a remarkable work. Len, as always, writes with an artist’s eye and a brilliant mind. I read everything Len writes and this is an exceptional addition to his collection of work.

t2t

Intending to ingest it over several sittings, I started but couldn’t stop. I began what I thought would be a multiple meal experience, taking place over several sittings, but ended up experiencing a finely cooked meal with extraordinary company. I couldn’t put it down, reading it in one sitting. Like all good meals, it consisted of great food (content), great company (an authentic voice) and lingering conversation.

As a personal recipient of his hospitality, Len and his family do what he writes in this book and the table is an open and regular part of their life and routine. In a culture wresting with identity and community, this book is a prophetic call back to the table with a poetic voice. Well done, Len!!!

Don’t miss one of Len’s most timely and prophetic books!

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Cultivating an Attitude of Gratitude

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The following will also be published in The Vermilion Standard.

We live in a culture diluted by desire. In our relative excess, we incessantly desire what we don’t have even if it is something we clearly don’t need. This desire has led to an epidemic of discontentment. Much like Jesus’ parable of the man who wants to help his neighbour with the speck of dust in their eye while being ignorant of the log in his own, this epidemic is easy to see in others, but it also exists in us. This is our problem with desire; we see it in others while we blindly struggle with it.

This epidemic exhibits two symptoms. First is the disorientation of wants and needs. We become confused and disorientated with what we need and what we want, making poor choices as a result. Second, it creates a culture of worry. We worry about what we don’t have and we worry about what we do have. Worry becomes omnipresent, reminding us that, often, we don’t own the things we have but they own us.

The bad news is, this epidemic is pervasive. It is everywhere. We all want what we don’t have, leading to a mass hysteria of want and need confusion. This confusion is compounded with the onslaught of advertisers telling us that we should deserve the bigger TV, the larger house, the faster car, and the shinier diamond. We are drowning in want and need confusion and the current of desire is pulling us away from shore.

The good news is, there is a cure to the epidemic. It is a cure that takes time, effort and discipline but it is effective. Much like the farmer who cultivates his land to ensure healthy soil, we too can cultivate our hearts and reorient the direction of our desire. That cure, according to the Bible, is prayer, gratitude, and thankfulness. As we change the direction of our desire we begin to re-orientate our sense of want and need. As we cultivate an attitude of gratitude towards God we begin to filter our ceaseless thirst of wants replacing it with contentment, generosity, and peace. As the Bible teaches:

“Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7, NIV

The Bible lays out an important cure for us that we all need to hear and begin to cultivate in our own lives. First, we need to put God at the center of our lives and bring our worries and confusion to Him. Second, we need to cultivate an attitude of gratitude with God through thanksgiving. Third, we need to pray, bringing our worries and concerns to God. As we do this, God promises His peace and contentment in our lives. As we do this, not only will we grow in contentment but we will also grow in generosity.

Our lives are diluted by desire for stuff and we need to re-direct our desire toward God in our lives with thanksgiving and prayer leading to peace, contentment, and generosity. Allow God to redirect your desire and, with God’s help, begin to cultivate an attitude of gratitude. It is time to take the logs out of our own eye, seeing the world more clearly and helping others who have sawdust in theirs.

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The Beauty of a Messy Christmas

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When we think of Christmas, it often conjures up images of perfectly trimmed Christmas trees, meticulously wrapped gifts and beautifully set tables. We love our picture perfect Christmases to be neat and clean with everything perfectly placed and arranged.

The irony of this image is that it is the opposite of the reality found on the first Christmas some two thousand years ago when Jesus, the Christ child, was born. Over the centuries, we have sterilized the reality of the situation in which Jesus was born and by doing so, have diluted the image God was displaying with the birth of Jesus.

Consider the picture the birth of Christ paints for us. Jesus was born to teenage parents at the end of a very long journey to a distant town. When they arrive, they discover that there is no room in the rustic first century “inn” and are offered a space with the animals. It is in this crowded dirty corner, with little privacy or protection from the elements, Mary gives birth to Jesus – the Son of God.

Jesus inhales his first breath in the company of animals. Jesus’ first smells are that of animal feces. Jesus’ first bed was a feeding trough. Jesus’ parents are teenagers who have journeyed a great distance together and are now sleeping in with animals. There is no crib, baby sleepers, diapers, nurses, doctors, showers, running water, bed, or heated hospital room. It is messy.

The God of the universe does not enter our existence in the sterile confines of a well-equipped hospital, but in the messiness of our world. This picture displays God’s love in the midst of our everyday broken and messy lives. The Christmas story communicates that our lives are not too messy for Jesus.

One of the common misconceptions for people about the church is that it is a place for clean and sterile people who have their lives together. This is not the case. Rather, the church is a group of people who are imperfect and broken but together we follow the God who entered our brokenness, bringing salvation in Jesus for all those who believe in Him. Your messiness doesn’t scare God or disqualify you from entering into relationship with him. The good news is, Jesus routinely enters the broken and messy places but He, also, never leaves them that way.

This holiday season let the reality of the Christmas story speak to you. Know that God isn’t scared of your brokenness and messiness but if we allow Christ into our lives by faith, there is new life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” John 3:16

Discover Jesus this Christmas and never be the same.

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Using Social Media As More Than A Window

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Social media has impacted our world and our individual lives with wide sweeping effects. For the most part, we have enthusiastically and blindly entered this new reality, embracing the new abilities it offers. For the first time in history, social media has allowed us to see what is happening with our friends, family and acquaintances as well as to gather their thoughts and opinions in real-time. In addition, we can share our photos, ideas, thoughts and opinions with the world in real-time. Social media has provided equal access to a public platform that would have been, previously, only available to a privileged few.

This has led to a cultural critique of social media that people spend way too much time keeping up on what is going on with others through the large window that social media gives access to. Social media now allows everyone to be a celebrity in some sense, with our phones as paparazzi and us as the magazine editor taking clips from our lives and sharing them for the world to see. This reality also reverses itself and allows us to constantly look into other people’s lives with what seems to be an unquenchable appetite.

Personally, as an avid user of social media, I enjoy that I can see what is happening with my friends, family, and acquaintances, knowing about important life events (birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, deaths, etc.) but also discovering how people are doing, feeling, and what is happening in their lives. Social media has provided a large window into my relational world, allowing me access into the lives of my friends, family, and acquaintances that would never have been possible before.

This phenomenon has created large metaphorical windows into our relational lives. We can gaze through them and observe what is happening with others as well as, through a self-edited lens, allow people to selectively peer into ours. This relational window has also caused a temptation to voyeuristically view the lives of others as passive consumers of relationship rather than as active participants.

In our stubborn stare into the lives of others, we are often oblivious to the fact that the large window of social media also has hinges – that the window we are gazing through is actually a door. The hinge of social media makes the window a door, opening up the possibility to actively love others. The invitation for us is to walk through the threshold of relational possibility with a cadence of love. Social media, like all technology, extends our reach. It can extend our reach to peer with interest and it can extend our reach to walk with purpose.

“Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers over all wrongs.” Proverbs 10:12, NIV

What if social media extended your reach not just to know things about others but extended your reach to actively love others by genuinely being happy for them, mourning with them, encouraging them, sharing hope with them and building them up. Let’s use social media more as a door than just a window and extend love beyond us. Our world needs more love, hope, and faith (the things the Bible says will remain – 1 Corinthians 13:13); therefore, use social media to walk through the threshold of relational possibility with a cadence of love and change our world.

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A Church Technology Prediction: Screen Reversal

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Step into almost all evangelical churches and a growing percentage of mainline and Catholic churches and you will see the use of the big screen(s). Video projection has become increasingly ubiquitous in worship services in ever expanding ways: utilized for words in worship songs, responsive readings, sermon graphics, multimedia clips, etc. Consider that in a few decades the church has moved from hymns to overhead projector to video projection.

The Church has embraced the First Screen (main video screen) as a key content delivery device and atmosphere creation tool. Since then, and over about the last five years, the second screen has emerged in society and the church has begun to take notice and adapt to it in worship. Through live tweeting, YouVersion and other tools, the second screen experience is growing and will continue to grow. As it does, new tools and apps will emerge to integrate this into the worship service.

In a conversation with friends, we stumbled upon what I think will be an inevitable shift in technology usage in church over the next several years. This shift is a screen reversal. Although I think that we will still have both first and second screens, the priority of these will reverse. The handheld screens (mobile devices) that are increasingly ubiquitous will become the primary screen in the worship service, holding the place Scripture is read, responsive readings are read, participation is engaged through social network features, and words for worship are projected. The new second screen will be the large projection screen(s) that will, where needed, show the video feed, video clip, and/or create atmosphere for the room.

The initial reaction to my hypothesis will probably be disbelief and/or a fear of increased individualism as people use their individual devices. However, consider how this is less like moving forward and more like moving backwards. Just as people would use paper notebooks to take notes, printed Bibles to read, and printed hymn books to sing, the individual devices will have similar functions but would also allow for social interaction and discussion through advanced social network platforms.

In the coming years, new apps (if I could design one I would because I can see huge future potential for it) will emerge that allows for LBMDs (Locally Broadcasted Mobile Displays – A phrase I just invented) to show song lyrics, images, Bible passages, take notes, and facilitate live interaction for those in attendance physically, and in some situations, virtually online.

There are always pros and cons to every technological change. The medium is the message and all media works us over completely (combining two quotes from Marshall McLuhan ~the great Canadian media theorist). I am not arguing for or against this screen reversal or, even, discussing the impact on the worship experience (positive or negative); I am simply highlighting the shift that is on the horizon as the first and second screen switch prevalence.