Discipling Chickens

Free Range!

After having several unresolved issues with the house we were renting in town, we moved to a 17 acre farm out in the country. We are really enjoying the house and having land to spread out on and enjoy. We were able to get a dog for the kids for the first time. She's a Great Pyrenees named Dakota. The kids love to play with her in the barn and pasture. In our last house, no matter how much we cleaned it never really felt clean. There was a "dinge" about the place that made it feel constantly dirty, even when it wasn't. Brandi is really enjoying having a house that feels clean! For me, the best part has been our gradual move towards farming. We started with six female baby chickens (pullets) for laying hens. The original batch consisted of three Rhode Island Reds and three Barred Rocks. We enjoyed them so much we got another three. Then someone posted on Facebook that they needed to get rid of nine chicks so I drove out there to check them out and came home with a total of fifteen new birds of various breeds. Having 24 baby chickens is not difficult when they are all kept in a brooder (a box containing pine shavings, food, water, and a light bulb to supply warmth for the chicks), but when they get bigger it can be slightly more demanding. My Mom and Dad generously bought us what is referred to as a "chicken tractor". It's a large portable poultry pen with no bottom so chickens can forage for grass, vegetation, and bugs. It offers protection from the heat and wild creatures of the countryside, but still allows the chickens to express their chicken-ness by foraging and enjoying a natural environment. I move the pen often to provide clean ground and fresh plant life for the birds. Eventually, we purchased several white Cornish Rock chicks that would grow into meat broilers for processing and two six-month-old Rhode Island Red hens (Rosie and Henrietta). We got another portable chicken coop, this one with a roost and nesting boxes, for the two hens and a few of the older pullets that we had raised from two day old chicks. They spend the night in the coop to avoid the predators and then free range during the day when most predators are sleeping. Rosie and Henrietta started laying eggs just a few days after we got them. The kids love checking those nesting boxes every morning for eggs.

Rosie on the nest

I am surprised at how much I enjoy raising chickens. In some strange way, watching them relaxes me. Yes, they can be dirty, stubborn, and downright frustrating, but they can also be sweet, responsive, and believe it or not-intelligent! They are surprisingly easy to train. I had no idea what I was doing, but the birds made it easy. When they see me walking out to the chicken pasture in the evening, most of the hens immediately come to greet me and then file into the coop for the night without any coaxing from me. Occasionally, one of the younger hens will try to negotiate for some extra time out of the coop by stalling, but the kids and the dog make sure she ends up where she needs to be.

Alex with Silkie

Britain with Pepper

Our chicken farming experience so far has been surprisingly easy. In fact, I'm starting to wonder if I'm discipling the chickens or if the chickens are discipling me. Either way, I'd love to raise chickens for the rest of my life. Now I just need to figure out a way to raise them near the beaches of Florida where Brandi is planning for us to spend our retirement years!

7 Lies About Homeschoolers

I really appreciate the folks who made this video. There are lots of folks out there who just don't have a clue about what life is like for a homeschool family. A while back, someone actually had the nerve to accuse my wife of choosing to homeschool "because it's more convenient" for the parents. Nothing could be further from the truth, but it's totally worth it!

Enjoy!

Foregoing College to Start a Movement

Take a couple of minutes, if you can, to watch this quick video and be inspired.

Against her parents' advice, Katie Davis, an 18 year old from Brentwood, Tennessee, left everything behind to teach Kindergarten in Uganda for a year and her life has never been the same. Three years later, she's still there. She's now a mom to 14 Ugandan children and leading a movement to care for those who can't care for themselves.

People tell her they're in awe of the fact that she's "found" her calling in life. "I didn't find it", she says, "I just read the Bible and did what it tells us all to do."

Catalyst has posted an extended version of this video here.

Religion Rehab

Many people today believe that what our culture needs is more religion. I think we have too much already. Religion is that which stands between a broken world and the Kingdom of God. Jesus didn't come to start a new religion, He came to do away with the need for religion by rescuing us and setting us free to live as the children of God.

Most followers of Jesus have been contaminated by religion's influence in one way or another. I certainly have. I've been studying the life of Saul of Tarsus in the book of Acts to see how he made the transition from religionist to follower of Jesus. Every good rehab program has twelve steps, but I'll go with six.

Step One: See Jesus for Who He Is-There’s only room in this story for one good guy, and you are not Him. God didn’t save you because you are a good person. He didn’t save you because you are so talented that He just had to have you playing for His team. He chose you because He knew that you were just broken enough to bring Him glory. He knew that when people saw God living in you they would know that you aren’t capable of that and give Him praise.

Step Two: Learn Humility-The hardest lessons in life are when we learn humility. Paul had to realize that while he was trying to be a powerhouse for God, he was actually a persecutor of God. God not only made Him bow before Jesus, he also had to bow before the people he had been persecuting who followed Jesus.

Step Three: Seeing Through New Eyes-When you realize that everything you ever thought about God was wrong, you have to learn to see God differently. Then you'll see yourself differently. Finally, you need to learn to see people differently. 

Step Four: Submit to the Process-Discipleship doesn’t just happen the minute you turn your life over to God. Sometimes He will tell you do things that you don’t understand (like "Go to the nutjob down the street who sees visions!"). Sometimes he’ll put you through trials (like going blind) that you also don’t understand. There is no “Miracle Grow” for spiritual maturity. You submit to God’s process and trust Him with the results.

Step Five: Resist the Temptation to Become a Sacred Superstar-Saul had been a big shot for religion. He was an important man, a "champion" of Judaism, who was on his way up in the religious ranks of his day and heading for power and prestige in his religious community. God took all of that away by saving him. The Jews turned against him and the Christians were scared to death of him. Once Saul started preaching, the presence of God was tangible and Christians recognized it. They must have been blown away by the dramatic transformation in his life and they flocked to hear him preach. There must have been a huge temptation for Saul to see his new ministry as another way to feel important and be respected, but he resisted. Every time God called, Saul walked away from the crowd and moved on to the next town to start from scratch.

Step Six: Know the Difference Between Your Desire and God's Will

Questions to consider…
What does my flesh want?
What does the crowd want?
What is God saying?

One of the hardest things in the world to do can be to choose God’s will over your own. There are times God’s will just doesn’t make any sense and our intellect screams that what we are doing is wrong, but God’s will is always proven right in the end. He has all the information and we don’t. So we follow His lead…even to our own cross.

Audio of this message is available for online streaming or free download here. 

What about you? What steps would you recommend for eradicating the religion in our own hearts and following Jesus unhindered? I look forward to reading your thoughts on this one...

This is Disciple-Making!

This is Discipling from The Foursquare Church on Vimeo.

Thanksgiving Grace Bomb

On Sunday November 20th, 2011 the volunteers at The Hope Center are going to provide needy families in our area with everything they need to have a great Thanksgiving Meal with their families. Included in the food baskets will be one frozen turkey, potatoes, stuffing, green beans, macaroni and cheese, cranberry sauce, and more. Most of the food has been donated by the people of Revolution Church, but we need approximately $250 in order to purchase the turkeys. We're getting a great deal from a local grocery store who will sell the turkeys at 59 cents per pound which is a substantial savings. We promise to make every dollar stretch as far as we can.

To make a contribution securely online, please click here. No Paypal account is required to contribute. If you prefer to contribute by check, mail your check to:

The Hope Center
P.O. Box 1193
Hanceville, AL 35077 

Thanks for partnering with us to prove the love of God to Cullman County!

UPDATE: Thanks to the generosity of many of our online friends, this project is fully funded! THANK YOU for your support!!!

Jeremy Myers: C.S. Lewis Didn't Like Church

You would think as often as C.S. Lewis is quoted in pulpits across America that he was a clergyman through and through.

Nope. Based on some of his writing, he seems to have (at least at one point in his life) disliked church services and ceremonies (almost) as much as me.

"…But though I liked clergymen as I liked bears, I had as little wish to be in the Church as in the zoo."

"It was, to begin with, a kind of collective; a wearisome “get-together” affair. I couldn’t yet see how a concern of that sort should have anything to do with one’s spiritual life. To me, religion ought to have been a matter of good men praying alone and meeting by twos and threes to talk of spiritual matters."

Read Jeremy Myers entire post  here.