Andrew M. Barnes

A tough question was asked of me tonight…”What does it mean to live a dangerous life for Christ?”  This isn’t a tough question because I don’t know the answer, it’s a tough question because I do know the answer. 

The first answer that came to mind was from the book of James, which just so happens to be one of my favorite books of the Bible.  The verse that played again over and over in my head is from James 1:22:

“Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves.  Do what it says.”

That is simply a tough pill to swallow.  It’s easy to read that verse and think about other people who should take that verses’ recommendation, its a whole other world to make scripture a constant burden on every action and thought, thus being intentional, in your own life.

In cliche-world, this is where the ‘rubber meets the road’, and where faith is actually practiced.  Christ doesn’t promise that following him will be easy.  Even with faith, a mountain of trust is required.  That trust is what makes faith work and grow in your life. 

Sometimes you just have to walk through pile after pile of crap and just trust/have faith, not that you won’t have to keep walking through the crap, but that by walking through that crap that it will have a beneficial impact on the cause of Christ.

That is what it means to live a dangerous life for Christ.  It’s the only way worth living.

Posted under Faith, Trust, Christ, Scripture, Life, Religion

I don’t consider myself the most prolific writer of our times,  my hope would be that most bloggers wouldn’t consider themselves great writers.  However, I would say I’m a great director of information and a rather experienced ranter.  Today, I’m passing along a great article by Jonah Goldberg, Editor at Large of National Review Online entitled The Church of Green. 

Mr. Goldberg brilliantly compares environmentalism with any other form of religion.  He even quotes Bjorn Lomborg, author of the great book Cool It.  This is truely an impressive article that every single person should read, regardless of where you stand on the environmental spectrum.

 

Here are a few quotes I personally enjoyed…

“At its core, environmentalism is a kind of nature worship. It’s a holistic ideology, shot through with religious sentiment.”

“Environmentalists insist that their movement is a secular one. But using the word “secular” no more makes you secular than using the word “Christian” automatically means you behave like a Christian.”

 ”Never mind that full implementation of the Kyoto protocols on greenhouse gases would save exactly one polar bear…”

Here’s the link.

Oh, and here’s a really funny “blog” that is riddled with sarcasm.  Gotta love it.

Posted under Global Warming, Climate Change, Algore, Humor, Blogging, Politics, Environment, Religion, Conservative

Everyone knows today was Easter Sunday.

Which means a bump in church attendance across America.

For those of Elevation Church, it meant a great opportunity to reach the city with the Gospel.

I don’t think there are any words to describe what happened today.  Take a look…

• 4,800 in attendance (an increase of about thousand, correct me if I’m wrong)
• 500+ salvations

The word John Bishop chose was PHENOMINAL.  I concur.  When I first saw those numbers I just kinda stared for a few minutes.

On a sidenote- I’m not sure on the etiquette when it comes to talking about things that happen behind the scenes, but let’s just say errors plagued the technology of Elevation this  morning.  I don’t think I ever seen so many pieces of equipment get restarted as many times as this morning.  We’re talking about over an hours worth.  Beyond frustrating.  Sometimes its to the point where you just wanna say, ’hey, um God, we’re on your side.’ 

After two services you would’ve never thought we had so many equipment failures earlier.  I can’t even remember the last time we had so few mistakes and those were hardly noticeable.  I’m not sure anyone except for the handful of production guys (they’re too humble for me to post their names, except for maybe Jeremy) that call the Butler In School Dentention room ‘home’ for 6 hours every Sunday could fully appreciate how smoothly the morning went after such a rough start.  The feeling however,  is nothing compared to what the numbers above do for me.

Props to the staff, Pastor Furtick (except his shirt selection), the trillions of volunteers (except Marc Bowen), the band, and most importantly to God for showing up and doing what he does best-change lives.

So yea, you could say it was PHENOMINAL. 

By the time God is done with Elevation, we’ll probably run out of adjectives to describe what He has done.

Posted under Elevation Church, Religion

It’s the end of the year so you can expect to hear Counting Crows ‘A Long December’, hear every radio station in the world playing Christmas music, and my favorite, the argument over whether we should say ’Merry Christmas’ or ’Happy Holidays’.  Within every year there is a good and bad of everything, or what I would like to call the ’best’ and the ‘worst’.  I split my ‘best’ and ‘worst’ into several categories like Food, Entertainment, etc.  Let’s get rolling….

FOOD CATEGORY
Best Burger
Jack in the Box: I know they are fast food, this year however they introduced a new sirloin burger, you can pick grilled or regular onions, and what kind of cheese.  For the price and the size of the burger this is a good deal, it does however get messy if you decide to eat this not sitting still….like driving. 
Notables: Ruby Tuesday, In And Out Burger, Cookout

Worst Burger
Five Guys: Sorry, but I was really disappointed. 

Best Steak
Big Texan Steak Ranch:  While my friend nearly died attempting the 72oz steak challenge in an hour, I was having a delicious meal.  The steak was flawless and comparable to a Morton steak that I had a couple of years ago.  The big shocker here is that this steak and the whole meal was less than $40.  If you’re ever in Amarillo, TX make a stop at the Big Texan, its about the only reason to be in Amarillo.

Worst Steak
Chilis: That was a mistake.

Best Pizza
New York: No, New York isn’t a pizza company, but I doubt you’ll find a bad slice of pizza there.  Most every meal I had there was pizza based.  The slices are huge (the way they should be) and cheap, like $1.50 cheap.  Combine that with a Coke and you’re golden for the next few hours.
Notables: Pizza Hut (They brought back their stuffed crust). Hungry Howie’s

Worst Pizza
Papa John’s: Maybe I’m just sick of it.

ENTERTAINMENT
Best New Album
Fall Out Boy ‘Infinity on High’: I know this may not fit everyones taste for good music, but the album only has a couple of non-listenable tracks, that by itself is a rarity in today’s music world.  The rest of the songs are straight upbeat and rockin’ (even though most of the time I have no idea what the song is about or what they are saying).
Notables: Ben’s Brother ‘Beta Male Fairytales’

Worst New Album
The Last Goodnight: Outside of their one single, ‘Pictures of You’ which is great, the album is horrible and deserves no place in my iTunes.
Notables: David Crowder Band ‘Remedy’ (cough…horrible…cough cough)

Best New Band
Ben’s Brother: We are all better off with these guys putting out albums.  Their music isn’t too upbeat, but every song is different and full of meaning.  You can tell they had most of the creative control of the songs, you can just feel the song as they play.
Notables: Andrew Barnes Band

Worst New Band
Mike Parker Band:  I’ll probably catch crap for this one, but hear me out.  I don’t mind a good cover band, I do however have a problem with a cover band that can’t even cover those songs very well.  If you can’t rip somebody elses music well then there isn’t much hope for quality original material.  Sorry, that’s just the way it is.  I hope they surprise me with something in 2008.  I like good music, no matter who plays it….and I hate bad music, no matter who plays it.  Being a ‘Christian Worship Band’ or whatever doesn’t make bad music okay, it actually makes it worse.  Here’s a quote from a very respectable man, maybe this will shed some perspective for you…

“After all, cover bands may be able to find a gig in some bar, somewhere, every night of the week.  But no cover band ever changed the world.” -Pastor Steven Furtick  (read entire blog)

By all means, I’ll give them Best New Album of 2008 or at least a slot in the Notables, that is if they figure out that quality is more important than hype.

Best New Movie
Superbad: I just saw this one so maybe that’s why it won, but seriously excessively funny if you can get past the f-word every 6 seconds.
Notables: Apocalypto, Transformers

Worst New Movie
I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry: There should’ve been something on the cover that said something like even though Adam Sandler and Kevin James are in this movie, it is by no means actually funny at any point.  Could’ve done without the not so hidden ‘gay-is-ok’ message.  What a waste.

POLITICS
Funniest Event
The New Congress: After several years of the media telling us that President Bush’s approval rating is horribly low around 30%, the new decmocratically controlled Congress eclipses his rating to hit somewhere around 20%.  For some reason approval ratings aren’t brought up as much anymore.
Notables: Nick Mackey being apparently ‘qualified’ to be sheriff, even though he is not qualified to be a traffic cop…seriously.

Biggest Racist
Al Sharpton: It’s really hard to take him seriously about improving race relations when he spends the bulk of his time destroying people because they are white.  I’m not sure who is stupider, Imus or Sharpton, but Imus has one critical flaw: he is white.  Sorry Imus, only white cracker jokes for you.
Notables: Durham NC, Jesse Jackson, Every single person that descended on Jena, LA without knowing what really happened.

Most Overlooked Event
The Global Warming Hoax: Scientists are now starting to climb out of the woodwork saying they disagree with the IPCC, and most of that ‘opinion’ is based off of numbers and other such things.  Al Gore has already told us this year in Australia that numbers aren’t that important.  Huh, that’s just interesting.
Notables: UNCC’s Green Fee- the most unknown, misunderstood, secretive and all around disturbing piece of legislation I’ve ever run across from the SGA.  Apparently you should only expect 1 email a semester to be answered.

Man of the Year
Pastor Steven Furtick: Hands down, you may not like him, but apparently God hasn’t asked your opinion on how successful Elevation Church can be.

The awards are in the mail, unless they got lost again this year, which is probably gonna happen.

Posted under Music, Movies, Food, Racism, Religion, Environment, Sarcasm, Government, Politics, Univ. of Charlotte

It sounds stupid, but its true. 

I got about 30 mins worth of sleep last night, I know this because I remember seeing the clock at 2:30 and waking up at 3.  So I did what I normally do, I sat there in bed for three hours just thinking over things, you know the normal list of things…what would I do with $87 billion in liquid assests?, what am I going to do after college?, when am I going to graduate college?, and my favorite thought: is IHOP open?

Since I’ve started having sleeping issues, establishing a sound breakfast plan has been closer to the forefront of my mind.  I’m not really sure why.  Anyway, this morning I was determined to make the trip to IHOP, yes, by myself.  It was 6:30am so I doubted anyone would be happy with my inviting phone call.

I’m not sure what happened when I goto IHOP but several realizations hit me.  Let me explain.  I remember driving very calming and relaxed to IHOP, I remember walking to the door and through the door of the IHOP, and I remember casually being seated.  Then something happened.  I took off…my mind exploded.  In less than 30 seconds of sitting down I had placed my complete order, less than 5 mins after that my food was there and less than 10 mins later my massive country omellete (I’ll describe it in a second), 3 pancakes, 1 orange juice, and 2 Pepsi’s were gone…inside me.  I had devoured my entire meal and before I knew it my check was there.  I was only there for 20 minutes.

While sitting there I had those several realizations that I mentioned earlier.  The first thing is that I’m not enjoying anything anymore.  Not just food, everything.  I’m rushing through life looking for something big to happen so that I can be happy.  Of course happy is just a yuppie word.  Joy is where it’s at.  That was a huge realization for me.  I had no reason to rush, I had almost two hours before I had to be at work.  Too bad this didn’t hit me until afterwards.  The people around me probably thought I hadn’t eaten in months the way I was attacking my meal…I know atleast one child cried watching me (that’s not true, but there was child there).

If I can’t find joy in the little things, I don’t deserve to find joy in the big things.  And I really believe this.  Now begins the pain staking task of finding joy in literally all the crap of life, if anything, its beyond humbling.

My second realization was that I just spent alot of money, not that that is a bad thing, just wasn’t looking to throw a wad of cash into breakfast today.

Now I am off to work, where basketball coaches and parents will probably yell at me and tell me I’m a moron for various reasons.  Man, I tell you, if I can squeeze an ounce of joy of today it will be a miracle. 

Oh yeah, the omellete, its huge, put your two fists together and then cover it with sour cream, there ya go.  That’ll be $8.

Posted under Life, Religion

I don’t think it would be a surprise to anyone if I said that I am a hardcore conservative.  Now before you start getting all pissy, allow me to explain myself and my beliefs.  First I believe everyone should have spelled out personal platform.  You probably already have one in your head whether you know or it not.  Here is mine…

• I believe in small government, that includes reducing the size of all government bodies while at the same time increasing the power of local governments in comparison to what powers they and the federal government currently have.  For the power to be with the people, the issue should be debated and decided closer to home.
• I believe in reducing taxes across the board.  If there is to be tax money going to social programs, none of it needs to be funneled in by the federal government.  The federal government should limit its spending to national security (including emergency response, military, FBI, CIA, etc.), operational costs, and national transportation issues (interstate highways, air travel, interstate rail).  I probably left one or two things off.
• States should handle the overall educational system (if a public one is to exist).  What good is it to rank all the states against each other on test scores, 1 state is always going to be last, regardless of how well the system performs.
• Issues such as capital punishment and abortion should be handled by the states.
• Providing health care is not the job of the government.  Non-profits, including churches, should be on the forefront of helping those in need domestically.  Trail lawyers need to be capped or regulated in their damage rewards in some way.
• Each state should determine ages for a person to be considered an adult in regards to voting, drinking, and smoking.
• Illegal drug enforcement should be limited to suppliers, including countries that provide them, not users who are addicted.
• Candidates should be allowed to raise as much money as possible for an election, McCain-Feingold is a joke and useless.
• Illegal immigration should be handled in terms of national security, not in terms of benefiting our economy.
• Freedom of religion is generally misunderstood.  Separation of church and state appears nowhere in the Constitution.  The government can be a Christian government, as long it doesn’t interfere with the rights of an individual to practice their own religion.  Being offended is not against the law, forcing someone to be a Christian is.
• I believe in keeping our current Electoral College, this keeps more power with the states.
• Gun Control: See 2nd Amendment.
• I believe each individual person should do their part when it comes to the environment, this means efficient recycling and creating sustainable energies.  That does not mean forcing citizens to trade in their cars or fining them for not recycling.  Oh and man made global warming isn’t happening.  If you’re reading this in 2007, you probably think I’m a moron, if you’re reading this in 2015 you are probably wondering why anyone would believe that we are causing climate change.

This is what makes me a conservative, for the most part.  I don’t bow at the feet of Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, or Rush Limbaugh, but I do listen to what they say from time to time, just like I listen to Wolf Blitzer, Anderson Cooper, Brian Williams, and Chris Matthews.  There exist no person who is 100% right on every issue, thus intellectually I can’t agree with them completely, for that reason there is no one person I have complete faith in.

Posted under Religion, Environment, Politics, Government, Conservative