On what path?

Last night in bible study we looked at that frustrating passage in Mark where a young man falls before Jesus asking "how to inherit eternal life". Jesus responds that this man could have eternal life if he gave up all earthly security and instead trusted in Jesus and followed him.

It was a hard discussion. What does it mean to give up all earthly security (which is mainly wealth)? And as Christians are we all called to do so? Or is it just specific calls on certain individuals? The discussion last night seemed to lean towards specific calls. Yet a part of me questions that.

There are so many faith giants such as Francis of Assisi, Mother Teressa, Dorthy Day, and others I'm forgetting, that whether knowingly or not did end up forsaking just about all earthly wealth in pursuit of following Jesus. They understood what security in Jesus meant and it comes out in their writings so crystal clear. There is something about living life and following Christ that they understood that I'm not sure I do.

I mean just think about some of these quotes:

Grant me the treasure of sublime poverty: permit the distinctive sign of our order to be that it does not possess anything of its own beneath the sun, for the glory of your name, and that it have no other patrimony than begging. - Francis Assisi

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat. -Mother Teresa

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn't touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God. -Mother Teresa

The works of mercy are the opposite of the works of war, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, nursing the sick, visiting the prisoner. But we are destroying crops, setting fire to entire villages and to the people in them. We are not performing the works of mercy but the works of war. -Dorothy Day

I left last night thinking that part of the problem today isn't necessarily that wealth gets in the way (although I know it does)...it's more so that most of us do not hear or recognize the call of Christ. That we do not hear him say "follow me". And when we do hear that call, we do not believe that call is worthy enough or powerful to follow. Is Jesus's call worth that much to me? Do I trust the power of Jesus's salvation enough to know that the best and only place for me is to follow him? I wish I was strong enough to say yes. Earthly security has a powerful hold.

California here we come

Mark your calendars!

We have our plane tickets and will be in the So Cal vicinity on and around October 3rd-16th for a bit of fund raising, seeing the family/friends, and enjoying all the wonderful California delicacies such as Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf! (Sarah's been going through some mass Pomegranate Blueberry Tea Latte withdrawals...thanks for the latest hook up on that tea mom! It will get me through till October!) We'll probably be at several churches giving updates and will probably hold a few get togethers while we are there (more info to come on those).

Lost

For all you Lost junkies out there...check this out! It's a website for the Hanso Foundation. Move your mouse over the 3rd paragraph where it says "Hanso Foundation" and a creepy voice starts talking in the background. To hear what he says more clearly, just right click on the page and click play. These people are psycho! (sorry if this is totally old news, I just discovered this site this weekend!)

If you really want to waste another 2 hours of your day, check out Lost Mysteries. They've got some fun theories.

All I can say is this show is way to complicated and horribly addictive!

Brats

We made it to the worlds largest Brat Fest this weekend (and yes that is Brats as in the phonetically sounded out "BRAUGHTS" not as in the word that rhymes with rats). The coolest part about it was that one of the Brat vendors brought in the worlds largest BBQ which is basically a oil tanker that has been cut in half and made into a gill. It's pretty much the same idea as a BBQ made out of an oil can...but on a much larger scale (that's us in front of the gill).
So we got our 4 brats, scarfed them down, listened to good old county music and tried to blend in with all the other hundred of Wisconsinites eating (as of 11:33pm Saturday) 69700 Brats. Their goal is to beat the record of 189,432 (or 17.4 miles worth of) Brats eaten at one Brat fest. You can check out more fun facts about Brats if you want at the Brat Fest website. I'm not sure why you'd want to...but it's all the craze here!
Have a Bratalicious weekend!

Life Update

Well, Matt has up and run off again to Canada. He was in Toronto last week and hits up Montreal this week (picture to left is from one of the interviews Matt filmed in Toronto). Overall he's hanging in there and having a lot of fun trying to capture the city via video. This week he gets to interview Stacy Woods' wife. Stacy Woods is the guy who started InterVarsity in Canada and the US. Since Stacy is no longer alive on earth, the next best thing is to interview his wife on how the began the movement.

Our summer intern arrive safely from Canada about a week ago now. She's been great so far! It's actually been quite nice to have someone else around the house with Matt gone so much the past few weeks. So it's been fun to get to know her and learn a bit about Canada. She'll be with us most of the summer as she interns with 2100.

On my front, I was asked to consider heading up (or basically starting) our church's "outreach" program this past week. It's been challenging to think what that might look like for a small start up church. Even just the definition of "outreach" is a intriguing one. I'm learning that if you ask 10 people what that word means, you'll get 10 different answers. Is it evangelism? Is it service projects, is it personal evangelism? Is it big large events? Is it focused on just growing the church? Is it focused on just conversions? No one at the church's leadership meeting could agree on what it meant either. But in my mind, let's get people to Jesus!!!

Overall it sounds like an interesting challenge that I'm ready to take on. It's actually been perfect timing as I've been struggling with trying to find ways to actively live out my faith in more visible ways. While I don't think this is entirely the answer, it's a good start! :)

And that's life!

"I repent"

It's far to easy to point out the blatant things in life worth repenting over. But then there are other sins, much more subtle, that we often fail to fall to our knees over. This is a powerful video pointing out just a handful of those subtle things that we often ignore or want to deny as being worth repenting of. I highly recommend checking this video out on faith visuals (click here)

Outsourcing charity

Every now and then I stumble across a quote that makes me stop and think. The following is one such quote from Dan's blog "On Journeying with those in Exile."

"Unfortunately, just as the outsourcing of blue-collar jobs devastated life in many North American inner-cities, so the outsourcing of charity work has had a similarly devastating impact upon the life of the Church. Generally what we find are Christians who provide others with the material resources that those others need in order to engage in charitable actions. So, for example, instead of feeding the hungry, they make a financial donation to a soup kitchen; instead of clothing the naked, they give some used clothes to the Salvation Army; instead of inviting the homeless poor into their homes, they donate some money to a homeless shelter. Consequently in these (and other) ways, charity is outsourced. Christians have learned how to share material resources with the poor, while also ensuring that their actual lives are well separated from the poor. Therefore, if we are to learn to share our lives together with the poor, we must move beyond this approach to charity." -Dan

This is a pretty powerful thought. I mean sit with it for a minute. Has the giving away of monetary charity become a hindrance to living out the calling in Isaiah 58: 6-10? This is not to say that we are not called by God to be good stewards of our money and to give away as much as we can to those in need...but I'm struck by how often tithing money can seem like enough or become an excuse.

Every month Matt and I write our checks out to various organizations, feel really good about the "good deeds" we just accomplished and then go about our lives grateful that someone else is doing the dirty work of working with the poor or evangelizing. And I think that is what has been so convicting about this quote. It's confronted me with the fact that in many ways I am grateful that there is someone else "dividing their bread with the hungry and bringing the homeless poor into their house; covering those who are naked." Deep down a part of me does believe that by supporting those people monetarily, I can excuse myself%2

Happy Mother's Day

Mom this one is for you!

Family

Well, it's almost Friday! Which means Mom and Dad Hauptman are heading into town for some good old Wisconsin fun! Hey Mom and Dad! Can you say brats and fried cheese curds? Cause they are coming at you whether you are ready or not! :)

In all seriousness, I'm excited to spend a weekend with them and to be able to show them the town that I am beginning to fall in love with. And who knows, maybe a mosquito or two will drop by to say hello as well!

Food Stamp Challenge

I was on a fellow staff worker's blog and noticed his reference to a challenge in Oregon that was reported on by NPR.org. I guess Oregon is issuing a challenge to spend only $21.00 a week on food which is the typical amount someone on food stamps has to spend. Even the governor has decided to try and survive only on $21.00 a week.

His grocery store shopping trip is detailed in this, The Register Guardian, article: Governor struggles on food stamp budget:

"Coffee and organic bananas weren't the only casualties: The governor pined wistfully for canned Progresso soups, but at $1.53 apiece, they were too dear. He settled instead for a collegiate staple, three packages of Cup O'Noodles for 33 cents apiece. Kulongoski also gave up his usual Adams natural, no-stir peanut butter in favor of a generic store brand, but drew the line at saving money by buying a 21st century innovation: peanut butter and jelly in the same jar. "

What's even worse is according the the challenge rules, you have to start with empty cupboards!

It's pretty sobering to think of what $21.00 a week on grocery's would look like. Matt and I try to survive on $60-$80 a week on groceries. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes not. We'd have to cut so much out to get down to $21.00 a week. No soda, no chips, no canned soups, no instant breakfast, no bagels, no stakes, no ice cream. It'd be an interesting challenge to try for a month.

spider's in the ear?

If you haven't seen this yet (click here)...it's pretty funny! Or down right horrifing! Break out the ear plugs!

Discount

This came across my desk today and thought I'd pass the info along to anyone who wants to take advantage of it. In honor of IVP's 60th anniversary, I guess IVP is offering free shipping in May and June to anyone living in the US on orders over $25! So if you were planning on getting anything from IVP, now might be a good time :)

"'Hey Ann Marie, do all the interns get glocks?' 'No, they share one!'" -Life Aquatic

Although we will not be suppling our intern with a glock, we will be housing an intern for 2100 this summer! Our lovely Canadian intern moves in with us this next Friday and we are scrambling to clean out her room and make our apartment livable. I'm not sure what else to say here, but I do think it's pretty funny that we are having a 2100 intern housed with us for the summer! We're thinking of getting her the Team Zissou T-shirt pictured left to commemorate her time with us...or then again, maybe we should just get her some cheese.

Soccer

It always amazes me what we find our selves getting mixed up in. Our latest adventure has been helping coach a second grade soccer team. Well, it's more like Matt coaches and I sit on the side lines with the other parents trying not to laugh at the kids tripping over themselves or scoring a goal in the wrong goal post! It's been fun though. We've adopted one of the kids in particular who's mother works with us at InterVarsity. (that's her trying to dodge a ball that Matt kicked at her at 100 mph). We'll see how long this venture lasts. But at least I'm getting a tan out of it! :)

There is a pretty cool interview in Leadership with Oscar Miriu (read here), who was one of the more interesting/bold Urbana speakers this year(hear his talk here titled "The Global Church). It's a worthwhile read and not only raises for me the question of the place of American short term missions/missions in the world today, but makes me wonder if we as an American church are ready to embrace what the majority of the World Church currently things, faces and has the faith to put into action.

Cool website

So I stumbled across this really neat website called Faith Visuals that has a whole bunch of video's made for churches. A lot of 2100's stuff can be viewed there so you can check out the kinds of things Matt gets to work on! Only nothing that Matt has actually worked on so far is up there yet. We'll let you know if anything every makes it's way there. (click here to see 2100's stuff)