Here’s how:

Zachie’s Request

Now how can you possibly not respond to this picture? My grandson,

Zachie, wants you to subscribe to his Papa’s blog?

Seriously, it’s important to stay connected and updated on the conversations in this conversation about radical conversation and radical hope.

But, did you know that you do not have to visit this blog directly to stay in the loop?

We’ve got more than a few options for you so that you can stay connected and updated with all that’s going on at:

EdUnderwood.com

And just think of how disappointed Zachie will be if you don’t subscribe?

To my tens of subscirbers to this blog, I’m moving the Tipping Points to my primary website and blog–http://edunderwood.com/
The reason is simple because I’m simple: I jsut can’t keep the three blogs, edunderwood.com, jesusmovementblog.com, and tippingpointsblog.com straight any more.
I’m still writing a Tipping Point a week, but if you click on it, it will land you at the Ed Underwood site.
Thanks for reading and interacting with the convesation on this website, and I look forward to continuing the conversation at the Ed Underwood site.

I’ve been putting this off for too long.

Three Blogs, Three Communities, Three Related Topics

edunderwood.com: The most comprehensive website–”a conversation about radical hope and radical Christianity with shepherd and author, Ed Underwood.” I started this blog way before I knew what I was doing and by the time my friendJohn Saddington looked at it, it was almost unresurrectable. So, we decided to start another blog in support of my second book, Reborn to Be Wild.

jesusmovementblog: An insider’s view of the last great revival in American history, the Jesus Movement of the 60s and 70s. John Saddington crafted this blog for my more edgy and radical writing. But after I wrote Reborn to Be Wild, my heart was so re-radicalized that everything I write is somewhat edgy. This blog was a great conversation place to gather old Jesus Movement radicals. But they’re all reading the edunderwood.com website now, so I’m just going to put all my Jesus Movement musings under the category, Radical Christianity.

tippingpointsblog: Short, pithy pieces coming from my personal study and experiences as I prepare for weekly sermons and leadership as Senior Pastor of Church of the Open Door. This blog was primarily for our faith community and still goes out as a weekly email to all who are on the mailing list of our great and historic church. I’m not navigating all of these to edunderwood.com under the category of Bible Teaching and still designating them as tipping point devotionals.

One Blog, One Community of Readers, One Happier Author

But I gotta tell you, keeping up with all three blogs and keeping all of them separate just wasn’t working.

So, beginning today, 1 January 2011, the three become one. I hope those of you from each sub-community will enjoy meeting one another.

My passion in all of this continues to be to lead disciplemakers, post blogs, and write books that unleash the untamed Jesus from the redeemed hearts of Christians who get grace–in all of its unencumbered and raw glory.

So, tell me what you think?

Any suggestions you’d like me to consider as I “make the three one”?

This is your official invitation to have Thanksgiving dinner with Judy and me…at beautiful Cannon Beach, Oregon!

I’m speaking at the Thanksgiving Conference at Cannon Beach Christian Conference Center.

I promise you won’t be disappointed with the food or hospitality. This is our second Thanksgiving with our friends at Cannon Beach, and our family views it as a highlight.

We’ll be studying Psalm 103 in depth, eating a lot, celebrating Thanksgiving with some awesome worship, and, Judy’s favorite part:

NO DISHES!

Here’s all the info: http://www.cbcc.net/Conference-Fall09.htm

I’m Through With God!

A young Bible School graduate marched into my office and announced, “I’m through with God. This isn’t at all what I expected my life to look like. So I just wanted you to know that I won’t be doing anything at church anymore!”

Before I had a chance to respond, he explained his decision, careful to emphatically count off each of his supporting points on the fingers of his left hand. “I’ve been out of school for two years. I prayed for a wife, and I don’t have one yet. I prayed for a full-time position in a church, and I don’t have one yet. If I would have known that God wasn’t going to let me do these things, I could have gone to a regular college and studied engineering. I’d be making a lot of money right now.”

Nobody Gets That

After he calmed down, I jolted him with my answer: “Nobody gets that.”

He shot back. “Nobody gets what?”

“What they expected.” He seemed bewildered.

I knew I could prove my point from Scripture, but I decided to tell him stories instead.

I told him about some of the ladies in Judy’s His Alone class who did everything “right” but have to move on without a husband because he decided he would be much “happier” with a new wife and family.

I told him about a friend who teaches at a seminary who lives with a disease that randomly confines him to a wheel chair and sometimes even threatens his life.

I told him about the dedicated Christian couple whose only daughter was born with such a severe birth defect that in the precious few months they had with her this side of heaven she never smiled…never acknowledged their presence in the ways most mommies and daddies long for.

I told him stories for ten minutes.

And then I told him how the Lord used each of these disappointments and tragedies to transform not only the ones suffering through the pain, but also those who were watching.

We talked. He cried. By the end of our time together, he was able to hear what I wanted to tell him when he first walked in. “It’s not what you’re expecting God to do that matters, it’s what He wants to do. Once you get that straight, you are ready to receive His very best for your life–both the expected and the unexpected.”

“For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing”(James 1:3-4, New Living Translation).

There must be some way for Christian marketers to track down my twitter account because I get these “Christian T’s” messages in my tweets.

I’m not techy enough to block them.

But I couldn’t help wondering why the Christian community is so desperate to wear their faith on their sleeve.

I have to tell you that from the perspective of someone who came out of darkness (by that, I mean I wasn’t a church kid), a lot of these t-shirt messages would just flat turn me off.

So, I’m just saying. If you’re going to wear your faith on your sleeve, please don’t wear a mean faith.

And think about what the people reading your t-shirt message are reading from your life.

So many people were saying, “Oh, I’d love to follow authentic shepherds!”

Really?

Peter encourages us to humbly submit to these leaders and to one another, being confident in God’s care.

Here’s the sermon: http://churchoftheopendoor.com/index.php?nid=145567&s=rs&grpid=23736&grpDetails=true

That’s what I have. I was driving back to LA from my hometown last night following my mother’s surgery, and the talking heads were talking their heads off…Christian talking heads decidedly included!

Then, I got up this morning and read this from Phil Yancey. I couldn’t have said it better. (Well, few can say it better than Phil Yancey):

Fumes of Ungrace

How is it that Christians called to dispense the aroma of grace instead emit the noxious fumes of ungrace? In the modern United States, one answer to that question springs readily to mind. The church has allowed itself to get so swept up in political issues that it plays by the rules of power, which are rules of ungrace. In no other arena is the church at greater risk of losing its calling than in the public square.

I fully support the right, and indeed the responsibility, of Christians to get involved politically: in moral crusades such as abolition, civil rights, and anti-abortion, Christians have led the way. And I believe the media grossly exaggerates the “threat’ posed by the religious right. The Christians I know who are involved in politics bear little resemblance to their caricatures. Nebertheless I do worry about the recent tendency for the labels “evangelical Christian” and “religious right” to become interchangeable. Political cartoons who show that Christians increasingly are perceived as rigid moralists who want to control others’ lives.

I know why some Christians are acting ungraciously: out of fear. We feel under attack in schools, in courts, and sometimes in C0ngress. Meanwhile we see around us the kind of moral change that marks society’s decay. In such categories as crime, divorce, youth suicide, abortion, drug use, children on welfare, and illegitimate births, the United States outranks every other industrialized country. Social conservatives feel more and more like an embattled minority, their values under constant attack.

How can Christians uphold moral values in a secular society while at the same time conveying a spirit of grace and love? As the psalmist expressed it, “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Behind the gruffness of many Christians with strong opinions, I’m sure, lies a deep concern for a world that has little place for God. Yet I also know that, as Jesus pointed out to the Pharisees, a concern for moral value alone is not nearly enough. Moralism apart from grace solves little.

–What’s So Amazing About Grace? (229-30)

Thank you, Phil Yancey. I needed that this morning with my horrible, pounding, election hangover.

All for grace and mercy,

Ed