Today, as you probably know, is Good Friday, the day when we remember the death and suffering of Christ. For me, “Good” Friday has always felt like a bit of a misnomer. It’s always felt like there wasn’t too much “good” about it. Our Savior was bruised and crushed. What good could come of that?

It’s overwhelming to think what our Savior endured. It all began that Thursday evening when Christ returned from his passionate, pleading prayer with his Father. Someone Christ had placed into his inner circle, one of only 12 in the world, had betrayed him. Turned his back for money. The guards seized him violently and dragged him back into town to appear before the Sanhedrin. Right as He’s entering this, the most difficult period of his earthly existence, the 11 disciples that were left ran away and denied Him. They hid away in locked rooms while their Lord endured a beating at the hands of his fellow countrymen. He was spat upon. Mocked. Beaten. Lied about. All leading to a false conviction. Crushed.

So He was led before the Roman leaders. Again abused and beaten. After some legal wranglings, He was brought before a tribunal of the Roman leader, Pilate, and an angry mob of Jewish people. Pilate’s wife tried to warn him about Christ’s innocence. Pilate tried to get the people to release Jesus. Instead they stood below and screamed “CRUCIFY HIM! CRUCIFY HIM!” Pilate, so distraught at what he was about to do, washed his hands to declare his innocence. Then, subjecting himself to the will of the people, sent Christ away for punishment and crucifixion. Christ’s innocence was crushed.

He was led to a whipping yard. Blindfolded and forced to lean over a post, He could see nothing. Suddenly, the area was filled with the CRACK! of the whip coming down. Shards of glass and stone wallowed their way deep into His flesh. Suddenly, the whip was ripped out of his back, snapping connective sinews clean off. Again the yard was filled with the crack of the soldier’s whip. Each successive time hunks of flesh, muscle, and blood came flying off Christ’s back and into the crowd. He was in such suffering and so dismembered he was barely recognizable as human. His body was crushed.

But that wasn’t all that was in store for Christ this day. The soldiers led him away and shoved a crown made of inches-long thorns into Christ’s skull. He cried out in wails of pain as the thorns drove themselves through flesh and bone alike. They mocked him. They cast lots for his clothing. His spirit was crushed.

Appearing as nothing more than a heap of blood and disemboweled flesh, the guards cast a cross over his back and screamed at him to stand up. He carried it oh so short a distance before he collapsed, weakened and exhausted from the grueling punishment he had received. A bystander named Simon was asked to take up that cross and carry it the rest of the way. They soon found themselves atop a hill just outside of the city, known as Golgotha. Here it was that Christ would breathe His last. Simon lay the cross down, and the soldiers threw Christ’s body upon it. They took massive hammers and nails longer than anyone can imagine and drove them through what was left of his hands and feet. Much like the nail pierced Christ’s muscle and bone, Christ’s cries of pain pierced the area nearby. Christ’s life was crushed.

Even in His suffering, the love of Christ was brilliantly displayed through his actions. A thief being crucified next to him asked, and received, Christ’s forgiveness. He wouldn’t save himself. He loved us too much. He even cried out to his Father, that He might forgive those who had done such horrific things to him. Christ’s human body could be crushed, but His love could never be.

Suddenly a wave of darkness swept over the land. For 3 straight hours this enveloping darkness covered all, leaving just the agonized screams of those being crucified to fill the air. At the strike of 3, he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The people whispered and wondered if maybe he was calling Elijah. Suddenly Christ spoke the words, “It is finished,” and breathed his last. All around the city the earth began to quiver and rip open. The curtain in the Temple, the great curtain that separated us from God, ripped in two. Tombs opened up and out walked dead ancestors who entered Jerusalem and spoke with many. Something big had happened. The divide between us and God had been crushed.

Many other things occurred after this. Christ’s Godhood was affirmed. His death was assured. His burial was completed. He had been crushed. So what makes this Friday so “good?” It wasn’t the crushing of Christ. It was the crushing of the divide. It was the crushing of pride. It was the crushing of sin. Our Savior was crushed, out of His mighty love, for you and I. That’s good news.

Unless you’ve been living in a hole for the last few months, you know that Toyota has had to recall millions of vehicles around the world due to mechanical problems. As you may also know, Toyota’s CEO, Akio Toyoda, gave a testimony before the US Congress several weeks ago about the situation. This series is going to feature some quotes from that testimony, and what we, as children’s ministers, can learn from what he had to say. So let’s begin.

I fear the pace at which we have grown may have been too quick.

-Akio Toyoda

In some Christian circles making this statement about any kind of ministry would be condemned as outright sacrilege. Surely if we’re growing it’s a good thing, so let’s just keep doing it! Unfortunately, this can’t always be true.

Businesses know this quite well. Take MySpace for example. They experienced explosive growth and hired a ton of people, but hadn’t planned for long-term success and stability. Now, they’re just a speck on the social media radar. Take Toyota as another example. They rapidly expanded their dealer base across the country and built plants and hired people to support this growth. As a result, they had massively increased sales of their products. However while they may have had more customers and more money rolling in, the company’s structure simply wasn’t ready for such a massive influx.

Churches are especially vulnerable to this. We may suddenly see huge growth in numbers and be simply overjoyed. Growth is good, and a sign of a healthy church. It really is a great thing. The trouble comes when suddenly our children’s ministry, already underfunded and understaffed, has suddenly swollen from 50 kids to 250 kids. What do we do now? We can recruit more volunteers, hire more staff, and throw more money into it, absolutely, but all of those things take time. If we need 50 volunteers next Sunday and we’ve only got 20 right now, you can’t train 30 more people in a week. Money and buildings and staff and volunteers and all of these other things can help, but they don’t get at the root of the problem.

The root is structure. Small churches tend to run like, well, small churches. They are set up structurally to be small for the rest of their existence. Ask any strategic planner and they’ll tell you: that just doesn’t work. You don’t buy a house with 1 bedroom if you’re planning to have 15 kids. Yes, you can remodel and add on, but it’s a messy thing trying to rebuild the proverbial “house” while we’re living inside of it. It may work, but your chances of getting frustrated are so much higher.  Yet ministries who want, someday, to have 5000 members still set up like a ministry with 50 members.

Your church, and especially your children’s ministry, must be structured to grow. Always be prepared for an influx of 25 more kids suddenly. Structure things so that as you grow, you’re simply filling in the structure, not rebuilding it.

I’ve started realizing there are a lot of sites that I come across that I find super cool. But I never tell you about them. So here are four awesome websites I’ve visited today that I think you should know about.

Magntize- No, it’s not misspelled. But it is awesome. Magntize is a free service that allows you to set up a free personal online profile. Everything about you goes here–websites, pictures, and more. It’s a bit like an online business card.

Movieclips- This one’s rather self explanatory: they have movie clips. The sweet part is that they have movie clips from movies made in this decade unlike a lot of other sites. Finally, a place to show your friends the movie clip you keep quoting. Every 5 seconds.

Standard Theme- Standard Theme is the theme that’s been powering this blog for about the last month. (I was a beta tester.) I must tell you, it is the most powerful, flexible theme I have ever used. Period. And it just launched today.

Yancy Devotional- Preteen music sensation and all around awesome person Yancy launched the companion devotional to her “Rock-N-Happy Heart” CD today. I think you need to check it out.

Overview:
Crave. I love that word. The analogy the author of Crave, Chris Tomlinson, uses is that of a slightly chubby child with a big spoon and an even bigger tub of ice cream. And he can’t get it in his mouth fast enough. That’s how Chris wants you to see God at the end of this book: you can’t get more of Him fast enough. And I must say that he has done an amazing job of it. Chris uses stories, quotations, and original thoughts to draw you to the place where you want God on a giant spoon.

Originality:
Chris’ book is one of the most original I’ve read in a very, very long time. He uses a unique method of tying images to his big ideas to make some great points. His thoughts on suffering and joy are beautiful. In the originality department, he gets an A+.

Overall Readablity:
Reading Crave is unbelievably easy. He does a good job of breaking up the text with stories, quotes, Scripture, and personal opinion. As with many books for the Christian market, it does assume some background in Christian-ese. And he quotes John Piper, who I find it increasingly hard to take seriously the more I follow @fakejohnpiper on Twitter. So that makes me chuckle at inappropriate moments. Other than that, very readable.

Quotes, recommendations, and more, after the jump!

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Overview:
Free Book. Sadly, it doesn’t mean free as in no cost, but free as in totally and completely focused on freedom. Not American freedom, but Christian freedom. Freedom to live life to the fullest as we’re empowered by Christ. It’s a crazy powerful message. It’s a message I am head-over-heels in love with. The author, Brian Tome, does a great job communicating this throughout his book. Let’s look a little more at how he does it.

Originality:
The discussion over whether Free Book is original or not really depends on what kind of original you mean. Is it original in the sense that the things within its pages have never been said before? No. Its basic principles and ideas are straight from the pages of Scripture. Is it original in the sense that the things within its pages haven’t been said enough? Absolutely. We as the church tend to get so caught up in the “dos and don’ts” that we forget the freedom that Christ has brought us. That’s Brian’s whole point. We need more voices like his to speak out and stand for freedom.

Overall Readablity:
There isn’t a lot to be concerned about here, but the book is definitely written to a college-educated audience. It’s not hard to read by any means in the terms of vocabulary used- it’s actually rather easy. There are just a few analogies that Brian employs at times that require some back knowledge of either major religious figures, Bible stories, or philosophers, but nothing that changes your ability to grasp the meaning of the book. It was a very enjoyable read.

Outstanding Quotation:

If you’re focused on maintaining balance–trying to satisfy all the people in every area of your life and just skating by with a little energy here and there–you probably aren’t moving, and you probably aren’t experiencing the blessings that come from a life lived in freedom.

- p. 148

Observations:
Brian isn’t afraid to be brutally honest with you in this book. He shares with you about mistakes he’s made, mistakes a lot of people make, and just generally stupid things people have done. He doesn’t try to beat around the bush. He’s especially clear about this in the third chapter, when he really gets down to defining freedom. He talks about the American definition of freedom, meaning absolute freedom from restrictions. However, he slaps that idea upside the head with his definition: “Freedom requires a decision to follow someone, because freedom is not about your isolation and independence.” Throughout the book he shares personal stories of times when he hasn’t lived life in total freedom. He’s not afraid to show you his true colors.

On the other hand, I think that at times he can take his brutal honesty too far, even to the point of “cliche” Christian honesty. One of the very first of these cliche traps he falls into is on the very first page: pastors who curse to be “cool.” I can’t fully know his intention for it, but seeing as it’s the only time in the entire book that terminology like that is used, it just feels a bit like it’s there more for bragging rights than because it actually makes a point. He also makes repeated reference to drinking beer with his buddies. While I’m not going to get the whole alcohol debate started here, it again feels like it’s more of a “look at me I’m a drinking Christian” show than actually serving to further his point.

All in all though, I think Brian has done a great job with Free Book. He’s spoken a message too many are too scared to proclaim. Freedom.

Own It:
It’s found a permanent place on my shelf, and I think it should on yours too.

O Book Reviews Rating:
3.5/5 stars

O-cquire your copy at:
Amazon
Barnes & Noble

Extremely Boring Yet Legally Required Disclosure of Material Connection:
I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255 : “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”