All posts by Bryce Ashlin-Mayo

Blog, church, incipiosermo

Rooted

Leave a comment


Who is your life rooted and built up in?  Who is your church rooted and built up in?

If you have been a follower of Jesus for any length of time, you know what the answer should be – JESUS.

“So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.” 
Colossians 2:6-7, NIV

Sometimes we are like the child in Sunday School who was asked, “what has fur, lives in a tree and collects nuts?”  The child’s response, “I know the answer should be Jesus but it sure sounds like a squirrel.”  Like the child in this story, when we are faced with questions we should know, we often answer with what we think is the right response rather than the one that reflects the true reality.

Although the question of whom we are rooted or built up in may seem like an easy question to answer, I would suggest that, for most of our lives and churches, this isn’t as definitive as it should be.  Too many of our lives and our churches, if we were to be honest, are built on something different than Jesus.  For example, our lives and churches are often rooted and built up in:

  1. Strategy – For the most part, in our lives and in our churches, we love to plan; the need to plan and to trust a plan is engrained in us.  We have emergency plans, savings plans, retirement plans, career plans, vacation plans, etc.  We love to plan, and when things get difficult, we turn to our plans for security and safety.  In our churches, we do the same thing.  We have a plethora of plans, methodologies and strategies. Because of our focus and trust in plans, strategies, and methodologies, when things get difficult, we turn to them, hope in them, and place our trust in them.  Although there is nothing inherently wrong with plans, methodologies or strategies, if they replace Jesus we have tragically and dreadfully missed the mark.
  2. Pet Theology – We all have pet theologies – minor theological beliefs.  We all have things we believe about the end times, about predestination, about spiritual gifts, etc.  None of these are bad; however, if they begin to take the place of Christ as being the most important thing in our lives and churches then we begin to become rooted and built up in them rather than in Jesus.  This reality is more prevalent than many realize, creating tribal warfare in the Church at the expense of mission and the Church’s collective witness.  When we become rooted in our eschatology, ecclesiology, pneumatology, etc., rather than in Christ, we have radically missed the mark.
  3. Celebrity – In our culture, our churches love to follow celebrity voices.  I think we like to listen to someone tell us what to believe and why.  With endless information, it is easier to trust a voice than to discern the truth ourselves.  As a result, we are addicted to celebrity leadership.  The problem is that all celebrity leaders will do one of three things.  They will all, eventually, either fail, fall or die.   They will not sustain.  If your life, or your church, is based on a person other than Christ, you are destined to fail because they will not sustain, last or endure.

I want to be clear, I am not against strategies, pet theologies, or strong leaders but when they begin to take the place of Jesus as our only hope and the Head of the Church, we end up lost in a desert of our own desires.

So, how can we tell what our lives and churches are based on?  When the next storm comes, look carefully at what happens.  Just like the roots of a tree or the foundation of a building, a storm will reveal the solidity of its roots or foundation.

  1. Strategy – If your life or church is based on a strategy or methodology, when something goes wrong, where do people turn?  Do you look to the plan or do you look to Jesus?  Do you hone in on the methodology or do you hone in on Jesus?
  2. Pet Theology – If your life or church is based on a pet theology, what happens when someone questions it?  Do you welcome the pursuit of truth and the ability to think and grow or do you demonize them, push them away, and stop listening?
  3. Celebrity – If your life or church is built up on celebrity, when something goes wrong where do you turn?  Do you turn to a celebrity or leader or do you turn to Jesus?  Is your first response a falling to your knees in submission to Jesus or is it turning your head to look at the leader for what to do next?

In your life, who are you rooted in?  Who are you built up on?  Is Jesus your way, your truth and your life?  Is Jesus your Chief Cornerstone?

In your church, what happens when things go wrong?  What happens when there is a conflict?  What happens when there is a challenge?  Do you look to a leader, a theology, a strategy, or do you look to Jesus (The Head of the Church, the Chief Cornerstone, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords)?

Who is your life rooted and built up in?  Who is your church rooted and built up in?

article, Blog, standard, technology, youarenotamachine

The Unnecessary Upgrade

Leave a comment
The following is also publish in the Vermilion Standard.

As we enter the New Year, there is a good chance you have braved and, hopefully, survived the Boxing Day shopping madness.

Boxing Day – the day we buy things we don’t need to replace stuff that still works.

We live in an upgrade infused culture where we upgrade everything.  If you have a traditional tube TV, you need to upgrade to a flat screen TV and, with new technology coming out this year, you will soon feel the obsessive need to upgrade to the new thin curved TVs.

Whether one is talking about appliances, phones, computers, electronics, etc., there is no doubt that our fascination with upgrading is perpetrating a lie in our collective consciousness.

Consider how an upgrade infused culture begins to effect how we look at people and relationships.  In an upgrade infused culture, we begin to believe the lie that people are disposable, consumable, and upgradable.  If you don’t like the person you are married to, perhaps outgrowing them, then it is time to find someone else even better.  If your friends are not serving your needs and causing you enjoyment, then it is time to get new friends.

If this sounds good and preferable, you may have been drinking the Upgrade Kool-Aid.

Consider this phenomenon from a different perspective.  What if all of your friends left you because you were not meeting their needs and they outgrew you?  What if your spouse, after years of life together, left you for an updated relationship?  What if you were on the other side of the upgrade transaction, left alone and abandoned at the relationship recycle center.

The Bible calls us to live in relationship with others in a way that intentionally lives outside the culturally embraced upgrade mentality.  We are called to commit to our marriage partner for life and to our friends when things get difficult.  We are called to love others even when it is painful.  We are even called to love our enemies.

In all relationships, we are called to live the Golden Rule: to love and treat others, as we would want to be loved and treated.  In other words, we are called to reject the notion of relational upgrading.

This New Year, reject upgrading in relationships and see what God might teach you as you love others and stay committed to them, even when it may, in our consumerist mentality, seem easier to upgrade.  What might God want to teach you about Himself, about yourself, and about the other people in your life?

article, Blog, mobiquity, preachinginasocialmediaculture, socialmedia, technology

Before You Give Up On Social Media…

Leave a comment

Social media is often accused of making society more narcissistic and self-centered.   Although there is truth embedded in the diagnosis, I argue against the treatment that is often prescribed.  The disease does exist but the underlying problem is not the technology – it is us.

In many ways, social media is a technology that has given everyone a platform and a megaphone.  It allows everyone a voice without filter or control.  As a result, the megaphone amplifies what we all, unfortunately, have always cared most about – ourselves.  These megaphones are addicting, ubiquitous, frustrating and, I would argue, hopeful.

In many ways, social media has taken the web of the Internet and placed interconnected megaphones of self-expression everywhere.  This reality frustrates us and, as a result, we protest, complain and even threaten to give up social media completely.  We consider and contemplate putting the megaphone down in protest.

Before you give up on social media and put the megaphone down, try turning it around.  

There are reasons people are posting information about themselves on their social media channels.  People desire to be heard, loved, respected, etc.  Social media provides a unique and amplified opportunity to express these needs but it also provides a unique and amplified opportunity to hear what is going on in the lives of our friends, family, and culture.

I often picture social media as millions of people with megaphones shouting words, ideas, pictures, links, etc. at each other in amplified fashion.  But what would it look like if we took that same technology and turned it around, allowing us hear the hurts, challenges, successes, desires, etc. of our friends, family, and culture?  What would it look like for God to use us in amplified fashion through our amplified listening and awareness of others?  What would it look like to use social media in a way that allows us a unique and amplified view of what God is doing in our world?

Before you give up on social media and put the megaphone down, try turning it around.

article, Blog, christmas, standard

Have a Wonder-filled Christmas

Leave a comment
***the following is also published in the Vermilion Standard***

As we enter the Christmas season, we enter a season of wonder.  However, our busy lives too often
mask the precious gift of wonder and dull our curiosity to uncover it.  This Christmas, I want to challenge you to seek and discover wonder and, as a result, experience a wonder-filled Christmas.

The Christmas story in the Bible is filled with accounts of wonder.  Young Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus, was filled with wonder when the angel of God came and told her she would be the mother of the Son of God.  Young Joseph, the carpenter betrothed to Mary, was filled with wonder when the angel met him, telling him to marry the virgin Mary who was with child.  The Shepherds were filled with wonder when a group of angels interrupted their normal evening outside of Bethlehem to sing and announce the birth of Christ and telling the Shepherds where they could find the new born King of the Jews.  The Wisemen, looking into the heavens, were so enveloped with wonder that they left everything to embark on a long and costly journey to follow the bright star in the East.

Consider each of these experiences of wonder in the Christmas story for a moment and one of the commonalities that pervades them all: wonder at ordinary times.  In each circumstance, the biblical characters in the Christmas story were interrupted by wonder-filled experiences in the midst of their ordinary.  Christmas reminds us that wonder isn’t so much hiding from us, but we are hiding from it.  Our preoccupied and dulled senses have become blinded to wonder in our God-created world through the intoxicating busyness of life and our self-centered lives.

This is part of the reason why we love Christmas through the eyes of a child, eyes that have yet to be clouded by skepticism and the discontent that dulls our senses to the wonder that surrounds us.

This Christmas, I would challenge you to see the God-created, incredibly beautiful and wonder-filled world around you.  A world in which God is working and a world filled with beauty on open display in the gallery of ordinary, testifying to the greatness and awesomeness of God.

Wonder is not hiding in a secret place with a secret lock solely reserved for the rich few who can afford to open it; rather, it is a gift that is found in the ordinary, available to ordinary people, in ordinary circumstances just like you.  This Christmas, open your eyes to God, open your eyes to Jesus, and see His wonder-filled creation where wonder is constantly on display in the gallery of the ordinary.  Don’t allow the dullness of skepticism, discontent and ignorance to blind you to God’s wonder proclaimed through creation and experienced through the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

article, Blog, socialmedia, standard

Five Guidelines for Social Media

Leave a comment
The following is also published in the Vermilion Standard.

We are spending more and more time online.  Although some of this time is filled with people posting and watching cat videos on YouTube or checking email, most people are spending countless hours on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.), in an inherent desire to do part of what we were created to do, participate in relationship with others.

Social media is in its infancy and we are still trying to understand this new medium and vehicle.  Like anyone understanding a new vehicle, there is a training period where one learns its abilities and limitations.  Social media is no different.  As we live increasing amounts of our lives online, knowing how to do this well is becoming increasingly apparent.  The Bible has lots to say about how we engage this new world.

Using the Bible, I would like to suggest five guidelines for life in social media:

  1. Social media is NOT a place to confront someone.  The Bible teaches that if someone has done something wrong, you are to first go to him or her privately (Matthew 18) before making it public.  Humanity’s temptation is to bypass relationship and instantly cast judgment rather than seek understanding and, with humility and love, help the person that needs confronting (Matthew 7:1-6).  Thus, a public Facebook status or Twitter tweet is not a healthy way to confront someone about something they have said or done (or not said or done) because it does so outside of relationship, understanding, and love.
  2. Social media is social – keep it that way!  The tendency with social media is that it can become a convenient means to express our love of self.  If social media is simply a means of self-promotion, it ceases to be social and ends us isolating people further.  Jesus calls us to “love our neighbour as ourselves.” (Matthew 22:39)  Thus, we need to celebrate others and foster relationships rather than just use Facebook or Twitter as a place to celebrate our own lives, family, accomplishments, etc. 
  3. Social media is public – what goes online stays online.  The Bible calls us to live lives of integrity – for our private life to be consistent with our public life.  Thus, if you are not able to tell the world about something you have done (with photographic evidence perhaps), then maybe it is a caution to you doing it in the first place.  Proverbs 20:7 says, “The righteous who walks in his integrity— blessed are his children after him!”
  4. Social media is powerful.  The Bible teaches that the tongue is extremely powerful and has the ability to be used for amazing good or tremendous evil (James 3).  Words are powerful.  They can be used to build someone up or they can be used to tear someone down.  Just as the tongue is powerful, the type or text is powerful and can extend the reach of our hatred, jealousy, selfishness, bullying, or unhealthy relationships.  Therefore, understand the power of social media and wield that power for your love of God and others, rather than for love of self at the expense of others.
  5. Social media expresses our thoughts.  Our thoughts should represent the renewed mind we are called to have in and through Christ Jesus.  Philippians 4:8 says, “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”   May what we post, view, and read, represent these qualities.  If we did this, imagine the kind of place the virtual world would be; imagine the kind of place the physical world would be.

Technology is not evil and wrong but technology does extend our reach and sometimes, like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we reach for evil and wrong things.