Attention Grabber.

I try hard to not be the type of guy who takes everything in life and credits it to God or blames it on Satan..or vice versa. That was the church atmosphere I was raised in from the day I traded in the amniotic fluid for O2 and strongly believe that some good and bad things in life...just happen.

On the same note, I'm also not the type of guy who finds a Jesus story in everything that happens. I don't think that every hitchhiker or homeless person I see is an angel I'm unawaredly entertaining. I didn't think "that's how sin is" when Tobey Maquire was trying to peel off the black spider-man suit.

But....(Isn't there always a but?)

Due to the crazy few weeks that just went by (moving, sick kids, etc), we finally put up our tree and decorations last night...the 21st! We usually have a real tree and spend hours upon hours picking it out, cutting it down, setting it up and finally decorating it but this year, since we will only enjoy it for a week or so, we went with a $38, artificial Wally World special.

After assembling the tree, I was in my recliner catching up on some reading for school while, 6 ft away, my wife took decorations out of a plastic bin, one-by-one, fixed the hooks and passed them on for one of our offspring to place on the tree. I continually noticed how my eyes would subconsciously turn, how my head would fall back onto the headrest part of my chair and how I would become completely and hopelessly lost in watching my children enjoy this activity so much.

And that's where my big "but" came in. I had a rare moment. A "WWJD" moment, if you will. A "all-things-are-Jesus" moment. I thought to myself:

Do I get God's undivided attention with how much I enjoy doing what He's called me to do? And I don't mean the goo-goo-ga-ga-how-sweet-is-that attention. I mean, in a sense: Do I turn God's head?

That is all.

What Happens When There Is No One Left To Impress?

"If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness." - II Corinthians 11:30 (NIV)

We have a weakness. We like to impress. I don't mean your typical "check-out-how-clean-my-shoes-are" impress. I mean, we really like to impress and not just on a small scale. We have all been known to attempt to live beyond the means or resources that we currently have available.

Examples? Absolutely. See that picture? I designed it from scratch with nothing more than a "save picture as..." command on a google search. Then I cropped and finagled and added and fasted and prayed until I had, what I consider to be, a pretty snazzy, 30-minute discussion title logo. Impressed? No? Well, oddly enough, that doesn't really matter to me personally. I have deciphered that, for some strange reason, my desire to have and do things that are considered impressible drives me more than whether or not the product or service or item or idea I have that I want to be impressive is...impressive.

Another example. I play softball and every year I think I have to have new cleats, new pants, and about every 2 years, a new bat. Why? I really don't need those things. Last years cleats are fine, a few mud stains on softball pants only impose the idea that I'm a go-getter on the diamond (which I am) and any softball player knows that the more quality hits you can put on a bat, the better it hits. But I love for people to think that I'm top-notch in everything I do. Call it pride. Call it boastfulness. Call me a spoiled brat. All of those labels are probably true. So that's why I'm writing this therapeutic blog post.

I don't think there is anything wrong with having nice things. Where the problem comes in is when we purchase, say or do things simply to impress. This has always been my issue.

What Happens When There Is No One Left To Impress?

What happens when we graduate from high school and the peers that we always dressed to impress are gone and out of our lives for what usually ends up being forever?

What happens when we are too old or out of shape to play softball and all we have are the receipts from all the wasted transactions?

What happens when the social network du jour is played out (i.e. MySpace) and nobody even knows, much less cares, about the non-life changing feats we accomplished this week?

What happens when there is no one left to impress?

Its not just about enjoying the ride. Paul said that if he couldn't go without boasting, he would at most boast about the areas in his life where he fell short.

The moral of this story is this:

We waste so much useful time and needed finances on impressing our friends, our co-workers, and our congregations.

I think I should take Paul's advice and brag on the fact that my pride has caused me on many occasions to be grotesquely wasteful with valuable resources.

Are You A Perfect 10?

Are you a Perfect 10? Are you the best? I most definitely am not. Not in appearance. Not in talent. Not in my walk with God. Nowhere. Do you know someone who is? I sure don't. Yet, everywhere we turn in society we are pressured to be exactly that. Be the perfect actor or actress. Be the best mom, dad, running back, diver, writer, singer or speaker. Guys rank girls features on a scale of 1 to 10 and I'm convinced that some girls do the same to guys. We are all pressured to believe that if we aren't THE best at whatever we do then we will not meet our full potential of success. What is this struggle that pushes and also pulls us toward a mark that no one has reached in the last 2000 years? Here's my opinion on a spiritual level:

I am convinced that even though we can not be perfect, God requires us to strive for perfection.

Your immediate thoughts are probably something like this: "What? God doesn't expect me to be perfect. That's why He offers forgiveness and grace and mercy." You are exactly right. I know that God doesn't expect me to be perfect but I know that God wants me to strive to be exactly that. II Samuel chapter 10 tells a story of King David. I won't quote the entire story but I highly recommend reading it. Here it is or here's an excerpt.

9 Joab saw that there were battle lines in front of him and behind him; so he selected some of the best troops in Israel and deployed them against the Arameans. 10 He put the rest of the men under the command of Abishai his brother and deployed them against the Ammonites.

The awesome part in verse 9 is that we see that Joab selected "the best troops in Israel and deployed them against the Arameans." The reason this is so relative to my blog is because when we back up to verse 6 we read:

6 When the Ammonites realized that they had become a stench in David's nostrils, they hired twenty thousand Aramean foot soldiers from Beth Rehob and Zobah, as well as the king of Maacah with a thousand men, and also twelve thousand men from Tob.

Put 2 and 2 together yet? We understand that the Aramean army was, by far, the largest and strongest army in the battle.

So Joab chose the best troops to fight the hardest battle. Joab divided his army into two parts and, through the telling of this story, gave them two distinctive names: THE BEST TROOPS and.....the rest.

I don't know what this story speaks into your life today but here is what I hear from it. Regardless of what I give God, whether I give him 20% or 100%, I STILL HAVE TO FIGHT. I would much rather be known as a choice soldier, one of the best troops, than to be complacent, give God less than He deserves, and be considered one of "the rest".

I WILL strive to be a Perfect 10.

Want Some Candy?

"Let the wise listen and add to their learning, and let the discerning get guidance—" Proverbs 1:5

My wife, Brooke, and I have been married since March of 2002 and we have since been overwhelmingly blessed with 4 beautiful and healthy children. Our oldest child and only daughter, Kate, will turn 8 in March and even later than that if I had any sort of say so. She is a beautiful and brilliantly curious child whose relentless questions about life and everything in it requires me, at times, to ask her for a break from serving as her encyclopedia. She's a special girl. She, fortunately, has more of her mom's personality (where it counts) than mine even though Brooke somehow can immediately identify the things Kate does that are "her daddy" and the things Kate does that are "her mama". It's a highly predictable pattern.

At the ripe old age of 3 1/2 Kate made a completely understood and conscious decision to ask Jesus to come into her heart. She blows my mind at times with the way she grasps the reality of that decision. She has never looked back and has held amazingly fast to the decision she made that night. She constantly uses words like "maybe" and "might" in situations because she fears stating an untruth. She is literally the most respectful and caring child I have ever met and, without knowing, she is always, and I mean always teaching Daddy. I just want to share a "for example" with you here.

On Friday afternoon, we picked up our oldest two from school and drove 2 1/2 hours to Macon for my niece's birthday party. We had a wonderful time eating bratwurst and doritos and watching the kids swim and play. My sister made decorated cups of candy for all the kids and gave them out as everyone was leaving a few hours later. As we were loading up the car and I was make my goodbye rounds, my wife and daughter had a seemingly normal conversation that my wife shared with me on the way home after all the kids had fallen asleep. Here's the conversation, word for word.

"Mommy? You know how the bible says that if you do something for somebody that God will do something for you or something like that?"
"Yes baby. Why?"
"Because you know how I really like Now-and-Laters but Nana (my mom) does too?"
"Yes."
"Well there weren't enough cups for any adults so I gave Nana all of my Now-and-Laters. But then Rylie (my other niece) came to me and she doesn't like Tootsie Rolls so she gave me all of hers and Tootsie Rolls are my favorite. I didn't even know she didn't like them."
"Maybe God is trying to show you His faithfulness."
"I know. That's pretty cool isn't it?"

God? Please, please, please keep me teachable.

If It Makes People Comfortable, It Probably Won't Work

My Q: When is the last time that you tried something so crazy that only God could make it successful? I mean something so out there that if God stayed out, it would positively fail.

My A: Never.

I took my first steps on ministry road as a fetus when my pregnant mother gave her life to God in the early portion of 1980. Being raised in a pentecostal arena where anything and everything was allowed as long as it was blamed on the Holy Spirit and where individual church services were sorted from good to bad like we had the privilege of determining this ranking brought many pros and cons into my life (but that's another blog...that a lot of people won't like). In this blog, I want to focus on a certain con...

I don't remember anything happening in 18 years of growing up there.

And not because I have a bad memory.

I can recall week-after-week of sermons and socials, prayer meetings and youth trips, homecomings and revivals, and bake sales and sunday school but I don't remember anything ever happening that gave the church anything remotely close to it's own identity and it wasn't because we didn't have ideas. It was because, in most situations, leadership feared raising the stiff neck hair of the facilities bigwigs.

I remember one instance when I was about 15 years old. The church was doing pretty good (better than it had in a while). One Sunday morning, I asked a person with too much power in the church (yet another blog) if I could share an idea with them. It was the spring of the year and the weather was nice. My idea was to, without notice, have church outside in an empty field behind the church. People would drive up to the church, see a sign on the door that directed them around back and BOOM, something memorable.

"Uh, church outside?" "Yes."

"...and without any notice??" "Yes."

"Well, people just don't like things happening without notice and we don't want to make people mad or uncomfortable. We will think about it but why have church outside when we have this building?"

Of course it never happened. Ok. Maybe it wasn't the most innovative idea but it would have been a ground shaking event for our little carbon copy facility...all from the mind of a 15 year old boy who was craving something fresh.

Who would attend a college football game where the final score was the same every game? Not me...even if my team won every game.

As of today, the church is running less people that it ran 30 years ago. The church is doing nothing in the community. Lives are not being changed. That's not the way church is supposed to be.

All because that one idea was shot down? No.

It's more than likely because this church and 150,000 other churches across this country have placed their primary focus on making the people in the church comfortable and not on stepping out on a crazy idea limb in order to create a magnetic identity. Churches are scared to attempt something huge in a society that I believe craves just that.

Now, don't get me wrong. The inner-workings of a local church body are vital and the care and hospitality shown to church members are of great importance but not to the point where we become a windowless secret society.

What's the worst that could happen?

I dare me to do something crazy.

I Don't Even Want To Be Here.

Well, here I am.

My name is Learell Faulk. I'm not exactly sure how my first name was meant to be pronounced but we all voice it as (Luh-rel). The last name can be tricky also. Just make sure it rhymes with talk or chalk and not truck or ladyluck and you should good to go, depending on your definition of good.

A few hours ago, I had no idea about what or why to blog. Blogging, to me, seemed to be little more than another username and password combination to forget. Heck, I struggle filling up 140 characters on Twitter so how am I supposed to blog? Sure, I enjoy reading the occasional blog that finds it's way into my Twitter timeline by my new friends Mike Ellis, John Dobbs, Marshall Jones, Jr and several others but for the most part, I skipped over them and figured I would just post whatever I wanted to say directly to whatever held the title of social network du jour and save myself another process.

Until something absolutely amazing happened. What you ask?

Well, here it is.

Actually, nothing even close to amazing happened. Unless you consider jealously feeling left off the bandwagon amazing. So what? Yeah, I tend to thrive on whatever is the hot topic for the moment and sure, at some point in my 30 years I have considered myself to have been everything from your typical baseball card collector to a self-proclaimed connoisseur of WWII rifles. Why? Because it was neat at the time and even more, it grasped my attention...or the disorderly deficit thereof.

So, here we go.

I'm off on another trip known as blogging. Yes, I have a lot to say. I named this blog "Unfiltered Learell." because that, in an all-to-often horrible attempt at good taste, is who I am. If my blogs suck, tell me. If they don't suck, tell somebody else. If I suck, then you suck.

Either way, you gotta read to find out.

Welcome to my Blog. (Bienvenidos.)