He Will Be Our Peace

This year, I was asked to give a Wednesday night teaching related to Christmas. I was struck by how churches will mention how there were prophecies about Jesus, but don't often speak much about those prophecies. I took the opportunity to give a Christmas message from the Book of Micah and gave a survey of the history and literary structure of the book and how it points to the coming hope in Jesus. The message concludes with a question--do we who have witnessed this fulfilled prophecy have the hope that Micah had, even in his troubled time? The handout for this lesson is available here and the link for the recording of the lesson is available here. If you would rather stream the audio than download it, click here to be taken to YouTube. There is no video of the message, but rather a picture as a background for the audio recording.

Please feel free to leave comments below or tweet at me @krkurian. Merry Christmas! He will be our peace!

EndNote APA 6th Corrected Citation File

And now for something different for my graduate school colleagues (and undergrads if you use this

too): a corrected APA 6^th Citation File for EndNote. If you’re unfamiliar with EndNote, it’s program that’s rather helpful in keeping your sources organized. If you use EBSCOhost, EndNote can save you the extra step of having to type in your references manually. This feature is improved with the use of EndNote Web. When you put this together with their Cite While You Write feature, you have a pretty powerful application that will save you time and keep you organized all the way to the point of submitting your paper. Discussing these features is beyond the scope of this blogpost, but if you want to learn how to use them, I refer you to EndNote’s YouTube page. It can take some time to learn, so I’d recommend learning some of these features before your due date is the next morning.

For my Ph.D. program, I use APA 6^th Edition citations for my papers and research in worship and psychology. I’ve noticed that EndNote was making mistakes in its citations such as putting an issue number in the citation, putting references in all caps, and not capitalizing the first word of a subtitle after a colon. These might seem little, but they add up and can become especially annoying when you consider that this program is supposed to save you time.

I scoured the Internet trying to find corrected files, but with no success. I resolved to make my own and it is now ready for consumption. My file is primarily focused on correcting issues with journal article citations. If you find other issues, please let me know and I’ll do my best to correct them. I hope that this file will be of use to you. Click the link at the bottom of this post to download the citation file, compatible with Mac and PC. I use it on EndNote X5 and haven’t tested its compatibility with other versions of EndNote. If you use the file, I would really appreciate a comment below to let me know you used it and so I know my efforts in making this file were not in vain! 

When you download this file, go to your Program Files (PC) or Applications (Mac) folder, look for EndNote, and add this file to the Styles folder. Then open EndNote, go to the drop menu above for citation styles, and click Select Another Style. Then search for APA 6^th Revised Copy. You’re ready to go. If you use Cite While You Write, you’re going to want to check your settings in Word to make sure that the citation is in the APA 6^th Revised Copy format. (If all else fails, and you need to ditch EndNote and just need your citations to look right, check out some online sources that will help you manually write citations such as Purdue OWL's webpage.)

Enjoy! And please leave a comment on how the file is for to you!

Click here to download APA 6th Revised Copy Citation File.

Word and the Mirror

Hi all,

I've posted a sermon I preached back at New Horizon Christian Fellowship in Hillsborough, NJ last September. The theme for this message is "The Word and the Mirror". This message takes a study of James 1:22-27 and examines the relationship between the Christian believer and the Bible. Later on, I ran into For Self-Examination by Søren Kierkegaard that covered a similar concept, but in more existential terms. I can't say I've read the whole book, but the portions I did read were very interesting. If this concept of the Word-as-Mirror interests you, I recommend you check out that book. Please leave comments below, I'd love to hear from you.

Embedded video not working? Click this link to view or share: http://bit.ly/SerWandM

Bind us together, Lord

So there's a lot of buzz over the terms "religion" and "spirituality". It's not necessarily a new social conversation. It's at least 40-50 years old with the Jesus People movement and it's been going on ever since. I believe this has been going on as a correction to what many have experienced as "dead religion".

Let me qualify that.

Yes, religion has Latin roots in legare which means "to bind," but this doesn't carry the terrible connotation that many unfairly give it. The word "religion" starts with re having the connotation of "again". So what I believe to be a more proper interpretation of religion's etymological roots is that religion serves to bind us together as a community (horizontally) and to bind us together with God (vertically). If I say something like "I am bound to the Kurians" or "I belong to the Kurians" I don't speak as a slave. I say that something connects me to my family, I am responsible to them, and they are responsible to me. They care for me and I care for them. Something connects us.

Is my family perfect? No. I love them though. I wouldn't give up on them because they may have done this or that, just as I would hope that they wouldn't give up on me. There is unity there. Just because we see something bad doesn't mean we jump ship. We're bound through thick and thin. So this discussion that Jesus didn't come for religion (which apparently is characterized by only bad things) doesn't make sense. Jesus built a church after his resurrection (Matthew 16:18). That church is expressed through binding individuals to one another, with a focus on Christ. Call it want you want, but the unity found there is ontologically a religion.

Jesus didn't come to build a church that hurts people or for a church that disregards its commission to care for the poor. That would be a religion deviating from its intended design. These are our mistakes and we need to own up to them. So we continually work on them. But to say that Jesus didn't come to make a religion misses the point of what a religion is supposed to do--bind people in unity to one another and to God. And that's a bad thing?

Shouting about a new Christian spirituality like it's something new doesn't fix anything (Ecclesiastes 1:9). It divides. It spits on the tradition of 2000 years of Christians who have lived and died following Christ. What kind of hotshot are you to not listen to those that came before and might have an idea of what it's like to serve God in a world where people don't want to hear about Him? Are the rest of us in our churches completely missing what it's like to serve God? If the Church has been twiddling its thumbs for two millenia, then yeah, you might have a point.

But I'm going to venture that most churches are sincerely doing their best to follow Christ. Albeit imperfectly, but still trying. A church is supposed to be open to correction by Scripture and by those bound together as brothers and sisters. I'd be so bold to say that multiple denominations are helpful in this way by correcting one another from becoming too myopic and by being diverse enough to reach diverse populations. By removing yourself from religion, you've removed yourself from even wanting to be united in this conversation. And that helps who?

I follow Paul. I follow Apollos. I follow Cephas. I follow Christ. We were warned about this sort of division all throughout 1 Corinthians. This would be one of those times. We're not helping ourselves out by ragging on religion. We're shooting ourselves in the foot so we can make a loud noise for attention and we need to put the gun down. We're bleeding all over the place.

Not Quite According to Plan

In this Wednesday Night teaching, I explore some of the literary elements of the first three chapters of Matthew to illustrate how Jesus' life from the very beginning was already shaking the expected order. We explore how people had their plans on how things were supposed to go, and how Jesus had a different plan on how things were supposed to go. I've provided the one page handout for the class and the recording is embedded below. Because this is a Bible study, you may find it helpful to have the book of Matthew open in front of you. Biblegateway.com is  a website where you can find the Bible for free online in multiple versions. If you have an iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad, or Kindle, I can tell you of some free apps that work well.
For the handout, click here. For the recording, click here. Please let me know of any of your thoughts or reflections.

Merry Christmas!

Walking in an October Wonderland

This blog originally appeared in http://bit.ly/fllrkurian

Last weekend, I was in New Jersey for my brother’s engagement party and experienced one of the worst snow storms I can remember, and definitely the worst I can remember happening in October. It might seem counterintuitive, but I’d like to explain something to my Californian brothers and sisters:

Snow storms bring out people.

Not in the sense of having snowball fights or making snow angels, but in the sense of magnifying characteristics of people that are already present within the individual. Allow me to offer my anecdotal evidence.

At some point, I was driving my four cylinder, front wheel drive vehicle in a snow storm three other people in it uphill. Lovely. My vehicle got stuck in what I can best call a mudtrap from MXC (Most Extreme Elimination Challenge anyone?) I got out of my car, took off my suit, rolled up my sleeves and got to pushing as my mom went into the driver’s seat. Clearly I’m not going anywhere, but two cars behind me, a gentleman decides to give me some encouragement by honking his horn. Makes sense right? I’ll push harder now, thanks buddy.

Another man gets out of the car directly behind me and starts pushing. We’re still going nowhere. On the opposite side a man gets out of his car and starts giving us directions on which way for my mom to turn the wheel and when for us to push. He looks up and calls me aside and says “Look, tell the ladies in your car that if a tree falls down to stay in the car.”

“Why?” I ask

“Because if a power line falls, we’re all fried anyway. They’ll be safe in the car.”

Awesome. “Hey mom, if a tree falls, stay in the car.”

“Why?” said my mom already freaking out.

“JUST STAY IN THE CAR!” (Okay, not my best moment, but it felt necessary at the time. For the record, I don’t endorse yelling at your mother. But in a matter of mortality, I make an exception.)

In the meantime, some guys snapped branches on the fallen tree that blocked most of the road. Oh nice, the guy that honked a sound of encouragement has now just passed me. Oh thanks man, he gave me a thumb’s up.

Oh. Not his thumb.

One of the guys that helped me push the car ended up getting back in his car to get something…and left. This is getting better and better. Finally, two other guys showed up who I had to flag down and stand in the road to get. (It was me vs a Dodge Ram 3500. I think the only thing that stopped this guy was that he didn’t wanna get blood on his new chrome bumper.) They eventually got out of their car and pushed us up and out. I gave them all solid handshakes and went on my way, only to get stuck again about a mile away. But I’ll spare you that story.

The point is, I got to see different kinds of people come out in a snow storm and for those of you who have never experienced snow, perhaps you just did too. Some flip you off. Some push your car and then drive off when the road is cleared for them. Others will stay with you until the job is done, even if they don’t know you and there isn’t much incentive for them to help. And even more will stay in the safety of their homes, snuggled up by a fireplace wondering why anyone would be outside.

I didn’t know what kind of person I would be until I was in the snow storm. For the rest of the ride home, I’m trying to keep the tone of the car calm and collected with my cousin (thanks Hannah) as we wondered how my dad and brother were faring in their ride home in another car. It took us 90-120 minutes to get back home for what would have otherwise been a 20 minute ride.

When the four of us in my car got home, we were ecstatic to see my brother’s car on the street. Thank God, we all made it back. By the end of the trip, I drove under four power lines and got my car stuck twice. My brother luckily never got stuck (yay 4WD!), but had a similar experience with road closures and power lines and freaky, icy hills.

It could have ended very differently, but thank God it didn’t. And a lot of that had to do with the people that came out in the snow storm. My aunt and my mom praying for safe passage home, my cousin and I keeping the mood of the car calm, my brother and my dad calling to check up on us, the guy who pushed my car and left, the guys who ended up freeing my car, the man who warned us about the power lines, and maybe even the guy who gave me the bird.

It’s not a matter of whether we come out during snow storms. It’s just a matter of how.

This Christmas at home should be a blast.

Starry-Eyed Surprise

(This post originally appeared on my Fuller blog: http://shar.es/b54vE.)

Last night back in my Fuller housing complex, it was a pretty chilly night accompanied with a thick fog that rested over Los Angeles.  I was having trouble going to sleep, so I decided to sit down and look up to the sky and check out the stars. There’s only two problems with this.

1.       It’s LA.

2.       It’s a foggy night in LA.

Okay, so it doesn’t look like I’m going to have this romantic night with myself as I star gaze. But, I decided to look up to the sky anyway. I got distracted and started looking the trees above me. They were pretty to look at, but that presented another problem.

Trees ≠ stars.

Things are going great so far. But I was reminded of a trip I took a few months ago with some friends from my clinical psychology cohort and an MFT student (also a friend!). One night, we stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon and looked at the sky. I’m telling you, it made me think of God at creation like a little girl in pig tails armed with black construction paper, a glue stick, and a gigantic bag of glitter. God in his capricious creativity threw a bunch of glitter in the sky because God thought it was pretty and liked shiny things. I couldn’t agree more, great Creator of the Universe.

I missed those stars last night. But I knew I’d never see those stars unless I kept looking up. I wouldn’t see them if I stared at the trees. But you wanna know what was the most frustrating part? No matter how hard I squinted, no matter how high I jumped, no matter how badly I wanted to break into the roof access of nearby buildings after midnight, none of that would have helped me see those stars.

Some nights we see the stars. Other nights we don’t.

Some nights we look up and see the stars. Other times we can try as hard as we want to and we still won’t.

But I’m still counting for at least a star or two to break through the sheath of the LA sky. And when those stars are ready to shine again, my eyes will be waiting and I’ll greet them with a short smile. Good to see you again, stars. I knew you’d be back.