Passionately following Jesus

When I started writing this entry on passionately following Jesus, I did not know that Denis Ignatius was going to speak so well about the subject of passion over this past week's sunday night service before I wrote down my thoughts. It was just something that I was thinking about on my own and decided to share with the people that read this blog. If you are able to, please request through the church office a copy of last sunday night's message because he spoke really well about the subject of passionately following Jesus.

He stole my thunder (heh!) but for those of you that were not there, perhaps this blog shall give you an interesting starting point to think about the whole issue of passionately following Jesus...


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Anybody that moves to Ottawa soon begins to realize that because we are a city that is supposed to embody the culture of tolerance and inclusiveness (great values that in my opinion are now being distorted), it is extremely difficult to get anybody fired up about anything.

As a pastor and facilitator of worship, I have found that it is near impossible to get people fired up and passionate about something as polarizing as Christianity because you quickly get categorized as intolerant, fanatical or fundamentalist. It is sad, but it is true that in the church - that is supposed to be a living, breathing representation of the kingdom of God on this earth - it is unbelievably difficult to get people fired up about the person that they theoretically credit for every blessing in their lives.

Some church leaders were having a discussion one day that I happened to be a part of and one of them asked me what I thought about the word "passion" and the notion that the church is supposed to lead people to Jesus and to create passionate followers of him. I think that my answer took them by surprise...

My answer was that the church has forgotten what passion looks like. In my opinion, in the 21st century passion is best displayed by the group of men that crashed planes into the world trade center and the pentagon. Obviously what they did was a horrible, HORRIBLE act, but their dedication to their cause and their passion about it is undeniable.

As Christians, Jesus does not call us to crash planes into buildings... thankfully... but his call to his disciples and all that he spoke to when he walked this earth was not a call to a wishy-washy faith, but to a radically different lifestyle and set of beliefs that the world has continually rejected since he walked this planet as a man.

Our passion for him comes out of our relationship with him. As we grow in our relationship with Jesus and see him at work in our lives, we are inspired to share what he is doing in our lives with those around us. I think that this goes hand-in-hand with what I blogged about last week.

I have a bit of an unusual response to my weekly dose of telemarketing. Instead of hanging up on the telemarketer, I usually spend some time trying to determine whether they truly believe in what they are selling or not. I'm not very successful in getting an answer most of the time, but once, there was a guy who candidly let me know that the tone of his voice was the telling factor. If he was selling something he was passionate about, he would sound more animated than his monotonous, pre-rehearsed speech. He went on to tell me that in his office, many of them were selling products that they are not eligible for, or that they do not believe will transform your life the way they claimed they will.

As facilitators of worship we have to guard against being Jesus' dispassionate marketers because the congregation or people that we try to connect with him can see through our lack of passion and belief, and believe me, it is all downhill from there.

And now for some new age-ish quotes to end this week's blog.

“The more intensely we feel about an idea or a goal, the more assuredly the idea, buried deep in our subconscious, will direct us along the path to its fulfillment.”
- Earl Nightingale

"Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion"
- Hebbel


“Above all, be true to yourself, and if you cannot put your heart in it, take yourself out of it.”
- Unknown