Couldn’t help but smile as I watched this If you’re having trouble viewing click here.
Living life, loving god, loving people & lessons learned along the way.
Couldn’t help but smile as I watched this If you’re having trouble viewing click here.
Do you remember when angelfire was the webhosting platform and everyone had an animated gif of a yellow road sign that said under construction? Anyway, we’re working with Bryan Switalski from SWISSCO to give jimjessbaker.com a facelift. And we’re going to be working on releasing some great new content soon too So if you stop by and see things amuck know it’s beauty in the making! Aloha! Last night I made it down to Waikiki for the first time in quite a few weeks. I got there a bit late and they were already handing out pizza. I greeted Like and we chatted a bit. RK and Like just celebrated an anniversary so we chatted about their visit to a hipster Mexican resturant. A guy came through the line and made eye contact with me and exclaimed “RK’s the man.” I positioned myself to run into this guy again as he came through the pizza line, I figured if he spoke to me, that’s my open door to chat. I wondered actually if this was the same guy I met the very first week. It wasn’t. I asked him his name and he told me, this morning it slips my mind. Our handshake didn’t really lead to more of a conversation. I said hello to Cindy and then RK. Bucko came over and chatted with me. Bucko did some time and when you googled his name, mugshots would come up. So RK has been helping him with SEO and getting some new positive content to the top of google when you search his name. Today’s version of Galatians 2:20 and 2 Cor 5:17. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” 17″Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” Check out Bucko’s video here. I love this guy. Every week he’s genuinely excited to be alive and serving Jesus.
If you can’t see this video check it out on youtube here. Bucko told me about how he’s helping a guy out who’s been clean for a few weeks, and is letting him sleep on his floor. I also heard this testimony through the grapevine, but last night all the pieces came together… check this out. Bucko was walking around in near Mccully park and pointed to a homeless guy and said “Jesus thinks your amazing!” The guy walks towards him and is notably touched, tears in his eyes, and asks something along the lines of “Why’d you say that man?” I’m not sure what else transpired, but Bucko went home and then felt the Lord leading him back to that park to talk more with the guy. As it turns out the guy was going to kill himself that night, but hearing that Jesus thought he was amazing was enough to give him hope. He was invited to Tuesday night pizza night and got baptized. So last night I’m chatting with Bucko and trying to explain that I actually live in Clarksville TN, and we’re just visiting Honolulu, and Bucko lights up. “Tennessee, let me introduce you to my friend James he’s from Tennessee.” So I meet James, he’s from Chattanooga. We chatted about my limited knowledge of Chattanooga, and some civil war history of which I really need to brush up on now that I live in the South. He talked about how before moving to Hawaii he was a homeless outreach director, and how God has a sense of humor since he’s been homeless now for the past year. He shared how he’s applying for another homeless outreach job here on Island and has submitted a bunch of the paperwork required. James talked about how he’d learned a ton now that he’s actually experienced homelessness. I asked him what things he’d do differently now when it comes to outreach. He said he’d listen a lot more, and talk a lot less. He used to think that he could judge people and know what services they needed. And he also said the difference between a warm bottle of water, and an ice cold water is huge, that homeless people don’t see a lot of ice in their tents. I found out later that evening that James is the guy that was going to commit suicide. And met with Jesus because someone had the boldness to say that Jesus thought He was amazing. I’ll be honest, this week, I didn’t want to go again. But I’m always glad I did. Homelessness is a huge and difficult problem. But writing this reminds me of Matt 18. “12 “What do you think? If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one that wandered off? 13 And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he is happier about that one sheep than about the ninety-nine that did not wander off. 14 In the same way your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.” What if in our judgement of societal issues, we moved towards individuals? Is everyone down there getting back on their feet? Nope. Will people back slide? Yup. But if there’s one, is it worth it? I guess that answer is up to us. Who are you moving toward today in love? wow We’re stokked to announce that our podcast Doing Ministry Well has been featured on www.missionalaudio.com Go check it out! I heard a song on the radio last night. I recognized the guy’s voice from another song I heard previously and remember enjoying, but I didn’t know who it was. I sensed anointing as he sung and thought, these guys have to be Christians. Jess told me to turn it up so that we could hear the bands name at the end… Judah and the Lion. Yup Christians. Really loving these two tunes. I think I like the grit in his voice, and then the bright instruments, along with the syncopated vocals. Refreshing. Suits and Jacket
Take it all back 2.0 (live) cause live is usually always better. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
I’m reading and listening to the book of Joshua right now. Some people love this book, but to me it’s a little boring. A lot of names of places, and kings, and people groups… oh history books. I am sensing the consistency of God’s character though, the feeling of being up against impossible odds in different areas of our lives and having to simply trust that God is going before us, and He’s much larger than what we face. I think sometimes we can get stuck by always approaching the Bible with a magnifiying glass. It’s good to get in there and really study, but right now I’m trying to get even more familiar with the big picture. I put my bible app on 2x speed and listen. And I follow along at biblegateway.com After getting pretty bored with Joshua I deicded to see if I could find a good overview of the book on youtube. And it brought me to the bible project, which I had heard of before, Jess uses these sometimes when she teaches. The Bible Project does a great job of helping you understand the BIG picture and I love how they addressed the big question of Joshua and the question about violence and genocide that seems to be a common objection. I can’t find a podcast that talked about some of the absolite horrific things that Canaanites did in their culture, but when I do I will link it. These people were not innoncent. Anyway, I wanted to introduce you to the Bible Project if you haven’t heard of it yet and I hope it’s a good resource for you as you’re reading the Bible What have you been reading in the Bible lately? Comment and let us know.
5 Tips For Fire SafetyLast week I was taking a nap, and awoke to a police siren leaving the nearby park. For the next 20 minutes I heard constant sirens. I checked broadcastify to see if I could tune into the police radio but they’ve since taken off Honolulu. I sent out a tweet asking if anyone knew what was going on and someone responding saying they saw an apartment fire from the high way. When we left to go out soon after that we saw a ton of black smoke billowing out of a high rise not to far away. 3 dead in 5-alarm fire in Marco Polo Building. Here’s 5 tips for fire safety.
The idea is to do your best to prevent fires and have a plan in place that you’ve thought through and practiced in case of a worst case scenario. Can you think of any other tips? Comment and let us know.Here’s some other blog posts I’ve written on practical safety tips.
I’m not sure when i started getting interested in History, because I wasn’t always. When we lived in Honolulu from 2012-2015 near the end of that trip I went to the Bishop Museum, and learned so much about the history of the place I had been living. And I regretted not learning more while I lived there. I also regret not taking more time to visit all of the Smithsonian Museums when I grew up living so close to DC. When we moved to Tennessee in 2015, I knew I wanted to know more about the place I was going to be living. So we met up with a friend and went to the Tennessee museum. I don’t think we even got half way through so I need to get back there and finish it. But something I really questioned was: How was it possible that Europens were so much further advanced in their technology, that they could travel oceans in boats, and had firearms while the Native Americans had none of these things. I think I asked this question on facebook and someone suggested I read Guns, Germs and Steel. I think someone else mentioned that there was a movie made out of it too, so I opted for the movie and found it in 3 parts on youtube. My big take aways were that if getting your neccesities takes up a lot of your time, you don’t have time to advance. So people who were able to farm could develop faster than people who were hunting and gathering. The author mentioned 3 things for development.
Pretty fascinating stuff. That led me to World History Crash Course, which are around 15 minute videos on youtube about history. That’s what I was looking for was a big overview of history. I was skeptical that these videos would trash Christianity, but they were pretty fair about it. I drew my own timeline and put BIG events on there so I could see where things overlapped. I realized that history is a lot smaller than I thought it was in my mind. And I also realize that either I was NOT paying attention in our history classes or, our history classes didn’t teach us much. History is fun because it’s almost like a conversation, with lots of different layers. You ask a question and find it in history, and while learning more about history you get more questions. Each layer peeled back you find new things to explore. It’s also fun to think about the different ways you can look through history. Through which lens you want to view it from. I remember watching the History Of Us when it was on netflix and really enjoying that as well. I was amazed at how technology was such a big part of history and how those technological advances really helped propel the US forward. My friend Mike has read a biography on every president, I think he’s on George H Bush right now. That’s quite the endevour and a fun way to go through US history. Bigoraphys are such the opposite of a broad overview, you get to see history through the lens of one person. I’ve been listening to Bonhoffers biography on audible. I might pick up the abridged version because the full version is just to long. I keep getting drawn back to WW2. I went and visited Punchbowl Cemetary last week with some friends. And I realized I had so little knowledge of the pacific theater, my friend suggested I watch World War 2 In Color. So I’ve been watching that too and learning a lot more about what was going on during the war. It’s interesting how museums spark the questions that lead me to want to learn more. What’s your favorite museum? Coins are another fun way to look at history too. Do you enjoy history? What time period fascinates you? Let us know in the comments.
Man oh man, I finally got season 3 of Doing Ministry Well episode 44 posted! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat down to publish and for some reason or another just couldn’t get it done. Even this morning I ran into all kinds of technical problems. The last few times I tried to export from garage band it just would not export. A huge thank you to Bryan Entzminger from The Engaging Mission show he has been a constant podcasting encouragement to me. Honestly, without his encouragement Doing Ministry Well would have died a while ago. I got reinspired recently by the how productive Andrew Huang is. He also has a video that he posted recently about batch processing, which helped me a lot. I’ve realized that I need “systems” in my life. Things need to be orderly and make sense and be effecient. I remember learning the word erganomics and enterpenuership in elementary school, 2nd grade I think and just loving both of those words. That and propaganda… which is marketing. Interesting how I can remember learning those concepts and liking them even at a young age. So things like batch processing help me make more sense and reduce the chaos in my work flow. I’ve also realized I need encouragement to keep going. That sounds lame and immature, but it’s true. I function best if I feel what I’m doing is appreciated and it matters. I almost feel guilty for saying that, guilty because the voice in my mind says things like “I need to be working as unto the Lord.” And “I shouldn’t have to thank you for doing your job.” These kind of statements make me think I’m less than, because I’ve acknowledged that optimal Jim works best when what I’m doing is appreciated. Which leads me to wonder if others feel that way. And if that’s the case, imagine if there was a culture of encouragement and appreciation, how much more productive everyone would be. Oh gosh, am I a milenial? I think the difference here is the self esteem generation wants affirmation for showing up, I’m saying it’s nice to be affirmed when we produce something. Eh… who knows, maybe I do have some milenial tendencies. If you’re one of those work horses who can keep your head down, and do what needs to be done, and don’t ever need a word of encouragement, well done. I hope I get there someday, but for now, I’m just being honest about where I’m at. The hardest thing about vulnerability is… the fear that when I’m most vulnerable, that thing will be used against me. Anyway, I think the one thing that I will regret most on my deathbed is that I’d didn’t “produce” more. I’m so inspired by Andrew Huang and the videos that he puts out. For people that can consistenly put out creative content. I want to be pumping out more good content on a regular basis. Here’s to hoping the inspiriation continues, and the motivation keeps flowing and that when those two fail the discipline pushes me through with a little sprinkle of encouragement from you guys. What helps keep you going? Lemme know in the comments.I drove a different way to get down to outreach last night. I took Mccully down to Kalakua. It reminded me of the first year we were in Honolulu. This is how I would drive our first school of School of Biblical Studies students down in a 15 passanger van. I would drop them off at one end of the strip, and they would invite all of the homeless people they saw on their way to come get pizza at the first pavillion. I have fond memories of those students. There were only 2 native English speakers, one from Canada and the other from New Zealand. But of all the other languages represented, God did an amazing miracle that each student had someone else in the school that spoke their language. Three students were from Switzerland, two of them spoke Swiss German, and one spoke French. Our student from Africa also spoke French. There was a student from Finland, and a staff from Finland. We had two Korean students, one who was Canadian. We had two Chinese students. And we had one Japanese student and the school leader was fluent in Japanese. Pretty crazy how that worked. I was late getting down to the pavillion, no bike accidents this time. There was a guy getting a metal detector out of his car as I parked and a guy playing the congas. I wanted to talk to metal detecting guy and hear about his recent finds but he was out of sight by the time I parked and got out, and I wanted to jam with conga guy but he seemed like he really knew what he was doing and I’m no conga player. The pizza was already being handed out when I arrived at the pavillion. I found out I was standing in Pastor RK’s pet peeve zone as he shooed me away from behind the table. RK’s wife and I chatted a bit, Kelike again impressed and challenged me. As we were chatting a man was eating pizza on the otherside of the stroller where Roger was napping. Kelike said hello to him and he told her how he was waiting for her to come over and hold his hand while he was eating pizza. I stood in between them as a way to try and absorb the innappropriate comments. Kelike rolled her eyes at his multiple attempts. I wondered if I should interupt him, try and take over the conversation, but Kelike didn’t seem to phased. She actually stepped behind me and moved towards the guy and put her hand on his shoulder. “I’m not going to hold your hand but I am going to pray for you.” Then came a deluge of more innapropriate questions, “I bet you’ve never been with a black guy.” He said and kept repeating. He finally went on his way. I was so impressed that even though this guy was obviously making innapropriate comments, Kelike didn’t respond in fear, or offense, but instead moved towards him in love. Even placing a hand on his shoulder. That’s challenging. I met Will last night, he looked familiar. I don’t know if I had ever spoke with him before. He walked over with a cane. A lady named Gina who had a thick Australian accent came over and sat with us too. The conversation turned to photography, a topic of conversation I know a little something about. Will told me that he got stuck here during 9/11. And is a mechanic by trade. He doesn’t do it anymore because of his hip. Gina talked about how she was house sitting and dog sitting. She pulled out a new canon camera from her bag and said she just bought it. She also snapped some photos with an ipad mini. It sounded like Gina had some money, she was talking about going and seeing her Grandkids in Australia, and wanting to go to Mexico to travel. I’m not sure why she was down there. I think maybe she was Will’s girlfriend? It’s interesting how all of my hobbies popped up last night. I think people tend to think hobbies are a waste of time, or not productive. But they serve as connection points with people that you would never connect with otherwise. I’ve always wondered why God gave me these random passions and talents that seem to be full on for a season and then not really ever used again. I used to play drums, I used to do photography, I used to metal detect. They are all in roads for connection with people, and something for me to enjoy. Hawaii is helping me realize it’s okay to enjoy. If we’re “working” for the Kingdom all the time and not enjoying the process, we’re probably doing something wrong and we don’t have an accurate picture of who our Father really is. What’s your latest hobby? What are you enjoying? Comment and let us know. |
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by Jim Baker
So cool!