Live Generously

For those of you that are a part of the New Song family, you’ve heard about our Frontline Ministry and all of the great stuff that they do.  For those of you that aren’t, our Frontline Ministry is essentially a community service, evangelism, social justice, and a million other things ministry all rolled into one.  Rarely does a day go by when folks from New Song aren’t out somewhere in North County serving people under the banner of Frontline.

Recently Edwin and Amy, the leaders of Frontline started a great blog that shares stories from the front lines and provides information about the ministry.  I encourage all of you to check it out, link to it, and visit it frequently!  The blog can be found here, and on my blog roll to the right.

Here are a few thoughts from the weekend…

* I got back yesterday afternoon from a quick weekend in Vegas. I was there for a friend from high school’s bachelor party, and it was the first time I’d been to Vegas since I was 12 years old. It was great getting to hang out with a bunch of old friends that I hadn’t seen in far too long. Las Vegas is a very odd place. On the one hand, it’s pretty spectacular. While there I had the opportunity to stuff my face with crab legs, sing at the top of my lungs in a piano bar surrounded by as many people as the place could hold, take in an amazing Cirque du Soleil show, play War (yes, War) for money at the Monte Carlo, and otherwise enjoy the many sites and sounds of the Las Vegas strip. In that respect, being in Vegas was a lot of fun. On the other hand, the Las Vegas strip was a stark reminder to me of the extreme level of brokenness that exists in our world. As I looked around at all of the glitz, glamor, and excess I was reminded of the banner that Shane Claiborne once displayed in front of the New York Stock Exchange: “There is Enough for Everyone’s Need, but not Enough for Everyone’s Greed”. That’s not the exact quote, but you get the idea. In Vegas there is so much excess, while at the same time half the world is starving to death. On the other hand, there are signs everywhere of a different, but still very real, form of poverty that exists in that city. Whether it was inebriated people stumbling down the street yelling at each other, or middle-aged Hispanic men and women wearing ill-fitting t-shirts that advertised prostitutes, the signs were everyone. From a relational standpoint, it seemed that those few city blocks were deeply, deeply impoverished. Kinda funny to say that about a place that is literally worth billions of dollars. All things considered, it was a great trip and I’m really glad I had the opportunity to be there and celebrate Lou as he prepares to enter married life. On a different level, as you can probably tell, being in Vegas raised all sorts of other thoughts that I am still processing.

One thing I did want to point out, however, is that it is really easy for me to sit here in my apartment at my computer and pass judgment on all of the wealth and excess that exists in Las Vegas. There are people and companies in that city that have more money then I can even comprehend. The danger is doing that, however, is that it can become a means of excusing myself from action. If I can point the finger at someone else (even the very vague entity of “Las Vegas”) I can ignore the fact that I myself am among the richest people in the world, and as such I myself have a deep responsibility to care for the least of these. On that level, being in Vegas got me thinking a lot about Christie and I’s finances and how we allocate our money. The reality is, we all lead lives of excess, rather than pointing the finger at those who are more excessive than we, our call is to use the resources we have to be a blessing to others. That is a reminder that I need frequently.

* On a different note, during my drive to Vegas and back I listened to the book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything. I’d heard all sorts of good things about this book at had been meaning to read it for a long time. To put it mildly, I was disappointed. The book was very well researched and well written, and it is clear that the other is a brilliant thinker. With that being said, I just did not find the subject matter to be all that interesting. He certainly made some provocative claims and backed them up with research, but for each claim he made there was (it seemed) a half hour’s worth of dry, superfluous information. The book is still in the top 200 on Amazon, and has received a ton of favorable reviews, so maybe the problem is with me and not with the book.

*We had another good night at church last night. There were a bunch of angles I could have taken on the passage we were studying (Mark 11:27-12:12), but I decided to focus in on fear and how it impacted the actions of the Pharisees and how it can control our lives. I think a basic reality of life is that we all live in fear on some level, and too often that fear can be absolutely paralyzing. We fear failure so we do nothing. To illustrate this point I was able to share the amusing, yet pathetic, story of the night that Christie and I officially started dating (and how I almost blew it because of, of courses, fear). What I tried to do last night was distinguish between unhealthy fear of things in the world and healthy, reverent fear of God and the hope that comes with that. I know that I need to be reminded not to fear on a fairly regular basis, so it is my hope and prayer that last night was helpful to our group.  The reality is that we worship the things that we fear (think about it, it’s true), and that makes it all the more important that we have a healthy fear of our God who loves us rather than an unhealthy fear of worldly things. It was weird being at Seven24 without being at Overdrive earlier in the day (I was driving back from Vegas). I’m fairly certain that was the first time that had happened, and the result was that when Seven24 started I didn’t even feel like it was evening yet. All and all it was a good night though…during the closing worship set I was thinking about how I really love being at New Song and how it is such a blessing getting to be a part of Seven24. Christie and I are really lucky to be here for this season of our lives.

Ok, that’s all for now…gotta get to work, finals are looming

Sitting at Pier View on a Monday afternoon (man, if I keep doing this so often I’m going to be like Ron Gollner and his St. Arbucks….only with smaller biceps).

I’m reading Stanley Hauerwas for my political theology class, and at the moment I’m reading a chapter out of his book The Peaceable Kingdom. It’s terrific, which is more than I can say for most of the other reading I’ve done this quarter.

As most of you know, a big part of my job is teaching at the college and young adult service at my church on Sunday nights. Teaching the Bible is a funny thing, because no matter how much study or practice I put in, it always seems like I actually have to give the sermon before I’m ever able to really understand what a particular passage said or what I really wanted to say about it. I’ve joked with some friends that I would be a much better teacher if I taught on Mondays. Teaching is also funny in the way that it tends to, quite literally, consume me. My wife knows that from about Saturday evening on I am rarely fully present in conversations I am having. My mind is constantly drifting to the next night’s message. This was true even this last week, as I was standing in a bar in Oceanside sipping a Red Trolley and waiting for Mike’s band to play. By Saturday night I can practically see the manuscript in my head, I can see the faces who will be there, I can even construct imaginary dialogs that I anticipate taking place when I open things up for discussion. Then Sunday night comes and goes, and I end up reflecting on the things that I said or didn’t say for the next day or so. I am a Monday morning (and afternoon) quarterback. I replay the whole thing in my head, scolding myself for mistakes and taking joy in the times when it really seemed like God spoke. More than that, though, I think through the implications of what I talked about.

Mark 11:12-25…Jesus cleanses the temple. It’s an interesting passage. Last night after I got home from church I was listening to a sermon (don’t worry, I don’t normally listen to sermons on Sunday night after attending two church services that day), and the speaker referred to that passage as Jesus’ “temple tantrum”. Say that out loud. Really, do it. It’s funny.

The passage does what so many other passages in the gospel of Mark do. It confronts us with the radical nature of Jesus’ message. And, to be honest, it does a lot to explain the temptation that a lot of Bible teachers (myself included) often feel to water down the message of Jesus to make it more sensitive to our post-modern, pluralistic, meta-narrative rejecting ears. Jesus categorically denounces the ‘appearance’ of authentic spirituality. That is offensive on a number of levels. Our society, sacred or secular, worships at the altar of appearance. Even those who claim they don’t care what people think all seem to rebel in the same ways. And yet here is Jesus, categorically cursing spirituality that is concerned only with outward appearance. Worse yet, he is suggesting that those who think they have it all together are in fact the ones most guilty of engaging in a sort of spirituality for show. That’s scary.

After leaving the temple Jesus begins speaking of things like faith in God, confidence in prayer, and mutual forgiveness. My goodness. If only we could truly learn those things. If only I myself could learn to exercise faith in God that transcends intellectual belief. If only I could manifest a faith in God that would summon in me radical obedience. Obedience beyond Bible reading, prayer, and the avoidance of the more noticeable personal sins. If only that could manifest in me a bigger heart for justice. If only that could manifest in me radical generosity. If only that could manifest in me real love for my neighbor (I realize even the tax collectors do that, but if I’m honest I realize that I need to work on loving my enemies and my neighbors). That is what real faith is. That is the sort of faith that Jesus desires to awaken in his disciples in that day and this. The faith to say mountains can be moved. The faith to say we don’t need to buy into this system of Wal Mart, American imperialism, and systemic economic injustice. Heck, faith to believe that the church need not simply be a place that provides spiritual entertainment for an hour and a half a week, but instead can be a true community of the risen that lives by radical faith and radical obedience.

As I reflect on this passage, and on the things that God has been doing in my own heart of late, those are the things that come to mind. The last thing I mean to do is blog about it as a sort of cathartic release that excuses me from action (imagine Derek Zoolander talking about volunteering to help under privileged children learn how to read), but I suppose all I’m doing is getting my thoughts on (virtual) paper to clarify my own thinking and perhaps see if anyone else is struggling through these sorts of issues.

Once again I stumbled across a cool piece on the God’s Politics blog hosted by Sojourners, this time by the always provocative and oft prophetic Derek Webb of Caedmon’s Call. I suppose the article, entitled “Following Jesus vs. Social Activism” , doesn’t say anything that I haven’t heard or thought about before, but in it Webb does speak frankly about the ridiculousness of following Jesus. To quote the first sentence and a half of the article, “Claiming to follow Jesus is a ridiculous thing to try and do. He’s a really hard guy to follow…”

Agreed.

Webb goes on to talk about how we are to understand following Jesus when the things that he asks us to do (love the poor, love our enemies, etc.) scandalize the very core of who we naturally are, particularly given the fact that, in his words, we are violent to the core.

Fortunately, he writes, Jesus has given us the key to understanding who he is and what he wants us to do. It’s not obsessing over the finer points of private morality that Christians so often obsess over (although it bears mentioning that we, too often, see private morality and social activism as a zero sum game (wikipedia it if you don’t know what that means…yes, I did just put a parentheses inside of a parentheses), when in fact, biblically, they most certainly are not), but instead the key is that we learn to love God and love our neighbor. It’s that, um, simple. Thus, in Webb’s words, the work of following Jesus is loving and caring for those whom it is difficult. It is that love that ought to frame and contextualize all of the other commandments we keep.

One aspect of ministry that has grated on me since the beginning is the fact that, when you’re a pastor, you hear about everyone’s junk. Don’t get me wrong, I count it a joy and privilege to be able to counsel people through difficult circumstances and walk with them as they seek healing, but often what I’m referring to doesn’t happen in that context. Sometimes people get convicted about their own behavior and tell me themselves (which I much prefer), but more frequently I get members of our church that come to me out of concern for their friend that has recently started killing kittens or binge drinking or building a nuclear warhead or making not awesome relational decisions (ok, I made up a few of those). When people come to me themselves, that usually indicates some desire to change, and that is a lot easier to deal with. It’s hearing the stuff that people in my church do when they aren’t at church that gets difficult to deal with. Frankly, and this just me being honest, loving in those circumstances is a challenge, and yet I understand that is the love that Jesus is talking about, and that tragically people often don’t think they are going to get from pastors and other church folk. And let me be clear about one thing: it’s not because I think they’re bad people. In fact it’s precisely the opposite. I think they are really good people. I think they are people that God has gifted with tremendous potential, and at times I see that potential beautifully on display. So when I hear about them denying that potential, it breaks my heart. I know they know better , and often the disappointment is crushing. I love being able to care for people people on the soul level…people are never products, or employees, or tokens to fill a role in the church, they are people…but caring for people on the soul level can be extremely painful sometimes.

And it makes me wonder: Have we, as the church, lost the picture of what it means to follow Jesus? Have we lost the picture that Derek Webb (well, and Jesus before him) paints of simply loving God and loving our neighbor? It’s easy to point the finger and blame others, but are there systemic issues that are leading to these sorts of circumstances.

Is that why we, too often, fail to live up to our potential? Is it because we have sought to primarily find our identity is something else other than who God has made us to be? Have we found it in hollow spirituality that centers around a passive hour or two on Sundays? And if so, how do we go about changing the church from simply a community that gets together on Sundays to a community that gets together on Sundays and embraces community throughout the week that is bound by an unconditional love for God and a love for neighbor? The potential for good is that sort of model is mind blowing. Now I’ve deviated quite a ways away from the point of Webb’s article, but I’ll close with a paragraph from it that expresses what we, as Christians, are proclaiming in the world when we enact a love for God and a love for neighbor:

“How do we tell the whole story of the coming reign of God, a new way of being human and relating to God and God’s creation? We put our hands to it. We proclaim a day coming when there will be no more thirst by giving water to the thirsty. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more disease and death by caring for the lives of those whose bodies are broken. We proclaim a day coming where there will be no more war by preemptively sowing the seeds of peace.”

Last Sunday night (May 4), we did something interesting at my church.  In the year and three month history of Seven24, we’d never done anything quite like it. I’ve been so tied up with school and what not recently that I haven’t been able to reflect on it until now.  Before I tell you what we did, I must preface it with the following:

Several months ago I read the book Preaching Reimagined by Doug Pagitt. While reading the book I blogged about it extensively (take a look at my archives if you are interested), and it would certainly be fair to say that Pagitt’s thoughts, along with some other factors, have certainly changed the way I approach preaching.  Pagitt says that most of what passes for preaching in today’s church is what he calls “speaching”.  It is essentially a monologue of considerable length, which the audience listens to passively.  His argument is, basically, that speaching ‘doesn’t work’.  Its boring, it’s not engaging, and most importantly, it is largely ineffective in producing life change (more on this in a minute). What he advocates (and practices at his church) is what he calls ‘progressional dialogue’.  Progressional dialog is a more interactive form of preaching.  It involves the entire congregation, or at least all those who want to participate, and allows everyone to learn from everyone’s experiences, not just those of the up front “speacher”.

While wrestling with some of these ideas, I’ve also been in conversation with some other people in my life that are beginning to get frustrated with preaching (or specahing, as Doug Pagitt would call it).  Some that I’ve talked to complain that preaching “doesn’t work”, meaning that it fails to really facilitate life change.  I’ve seen this to be true in my own life, as I probably listen to three or four sermons a week, and very rarely can I say one of them makes a real, tangible difference in my life.  In reality, good preaching becomes entertainment, bad preaching becomes drudgery.  And, furthermore, as I give more and more sermons, I find my ability to listen to sermons is diminishing.  I remember my college pastor warning me that something like this would happen (I believe his exact words were “the hardest thing to do once you’ve been to seminary is listen to a sermon”).  All that to say, I’ve been struggling quite a bit with the relevance/importance/efficacy of sermons in our worship services.  In a sense that is hard for me, because even though they are a lot of work, I like giving sermons.  The question, though, is not “what do I like?”, the question is “how do we as a community best become the church?” And it is that second question that has forced me to look seriously at how effectively traditional preaching accomplishes that goal.

So here’s what we did last Sunday (and if you were there you can skip this paragraph): People walked in, and instead of having our band play music, we gave everyone a Bible and a sheet of paper with some instructions, and told them to find someplace to sit either in the room or someplace nearby.  With almost complete silence in the room (there was some really quiet background music), people were instructed to study the passage in Mark that we were focusing on that night by themselves.  They were told to read the passage (Mark 10:32-45, in case you were curious) through slowly a few times, and then reflect on what they thought the passage meant.  I provided a few purposefully vague  questions to loosely guide people’s thinking, but I pretty much left them on their own.  After a half hour, we came together, and I got up like I normally would to teach, but this time I had no notes, no podium, no sermon.  Instead of teaching, I facilitated a discussion.  We talked, as a community, for about 15 minutes about how that experience was for people, and then we talked for another 25 minutes about what people saw in the passage.  There wasn’t a single time (other than the very end when I spoke for maybe four minutes) that I spoke for more than two minutes uninterrupted.  It was awesome.  People shared insights and questions, and we were even able to talk a little bit about application.  It was progressional dialog to the max, and I thought it was a very cool time.  Most everyone that I talked to afterwards seemed to like it as well, and I really felt like it was a great experience for our community.  After we were done the band came up and we closed with some music.

Now, as great as the night way, I see problems with it.  Should there be no authoritative voice of truth in the church?  Should we simply trust that the Holy Spirit speaks through everyone and let everyone have equal voice?  There are certainly those who would say no, but there are plenty who would say yes as well.  Also, there is the reality that a person who studies a passage for several hours and has some level of training will be able to draw out greater insights than someone looking at it for a half hour.  That being said, the insights that an individual may draw out themselves in that half an hour, can in many cases be much more formative that any insights a professional speacher would share.

All of this leads me to a few questions:  First, to those of you who were there: Did you like doing church that way?  Did you see any problems with it?  Would you like us to stuff like that more often? Did you feel like you left having learned something? Any other thoughts or comments? Next, to the rest of you (especially my fellow professional holy people): Have you ever conducted a service like that?  Do you think it is a good idea?  What are some advantages or disadvantages of this model as opposed to the traditional music/message/music church model?  Is this something that you personally would be more inclined to engage with?  Any other thoughts?

As you can tell, I have more questions than answers at this point…I’m just wrestling through how the church can be a place that is truly forming the community of God.

Two weeks ago I started this post with the intent of finishing it up that evening…needless to say that didn’t happen, but now I’ve got a few minutes before I leave for class so I’m going to try to finish it up here.

I left off in 1:9, having just looked at the phrase, “…asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding…”, and I had talked about how the practice of community with God and the practice of spiritual disciplines fills us with a sort of “spiritual wisdom and understanding” that can then be applied outwardly in our daily lives.  Continuing on now with verse ten…

“…so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work…” wow, that’s a lot.  That being said, it nicely answers the question “what’s the point?”, or, more specifically what is the point of the things that we do in our lives to ‘grow in our relationship with God?’ The reality is that truths that we pick up from the Bible, from theology books, from sermons, etc., isn’t meant to just be brain candy, but instead is meant to inform the way that we live our lives (yes, I know, I’m the first person ever to come to that conclusion…that’s a profound insight ;-)). I mention that simply because I think the temptation exists to see our spiritual lives as a sort of lesson in obligations that don’t really mean anything.  When we fall into that trap, spirituality becomes stale and religious, and we deny ourselves the privilege of allowing  God’s Word to actually inform our lives in the real world.

Perhaps the word that most catches my attention in verse 10 is the word “worthy”.  That seems crazy to me that Paul is even implying that “walking in a manner worthy of the Lord,” is possible.  And yet that is his prayer for these people, that their lives would be something worthy of their Savior.  That is a high calling, to be sure. Paul goes on to say that evidence of a ‘worthy’ life is that it is  ‘bearing fruit in every good work’. We must remember that, as it says in Ephesians, “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” Thus our commission is not to condemn the ‘works’ of others, nor is it to embrace a sort of hollow ethereal spirituality that makes us feel good but doesn’t really make any sort of difference in our lives.  Instead, our call is to simply do good works.  Failure to do so is failure to tap into the purpose of our lives.  This shouldn’t be something that causes us guilt, but instead it should be something that is at once empowering and liberating.

The verse ends with the phrase, “and increasing in the knowledge of God.” Part of the Christian life as well is actually increasing in what we know to be true about God.  I can say with absolute certainty that I think differently about God now than I did when I was a silly 18-year-old fundamentalist (and that is being generous).  I feel I have a better understanding of God’s heart for social justice, God’s heart for peace, and God’s heart for issues including but extending far beyond personal holiness. Furthermore, I understand God’s Word a lot better than I did then.  I’ve got a long way to go, but I’m making progress  I look forward to continuing to increase in the knowledge of God for as long as I have breath.  But, just as increasing in the knowledge of anything else takes some effort, it takes effort to increase in the knowledge of God.  it doesn’t just happen.

So then the final answer to the question of “what’s the point?” is that there is external value in cultivating an internal relationship with God.  Such a relationship is meant to inform practically the way that we live, and it is my strong conviction that when we fail to do that we fail to fully engage ourselves in participation in the Kingdom of God. That being said, it is pretty phenomenal to know that God does call us not only to be filled with the knowledge of his will, but also to put it into action in a way that both pleases God and blesses the world.

To both of you that regularly read my blog, I apologize for the lack of substantive posts recently. I’ve got a lot on my mind that I’d like to write about, but unfortunately this is a particularly busy school week for me, so blogging has taken a back seat for the time being. That being said, I did want to make a few brief comments about some different things that have caught my eye.

1) One of the books I’m reading for my political theology class this week is called, The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today, by Charles Marsh, a religion professor at the University of Virginia. In it there is an amazing quote from a book called A Theology for the Social Gospel by Walter Rauschenbusch. Rauschenbusch writes:

“A Kingdom theology involves the redemption of social life from the cramping influence of religious bigotry, from the repression of self-assertion in the relation of upper and lower classes, and from forms of slavery which human beings are treated as mere means to serve the ends of others…the redemption of society from political autocracies and economic oligarchies; the substitution of redemptive for vindictive penology; the abolition of constraint through hunger as part of the industrial system; and the abolition of war as the supreme expression of hate and the completest cessation of freedom.”

Amen.

It’s always refreshing to hear voices (that are thankfully becoming more and more prevalent) that advocate a theology that includes but goes far beyond personal piety.

2) A document was released yesterday entitled An Evangelical Manifesto. The following is from the document’s website:

“An Evangelical Manifesto is an open declaration of who Evangelicals are and what they stand for. It has been drafted and published by a representative group of Evangelical leaders who do not claim to speak for all Evangelicals, but who invite all other Evangelicals to stand with them and help clarify what Evangelical means in light of “confusions within and the consternation without” the movement. As the Manifesto states, the signers are not out to attack or exclude anyone, but to rally and to call for reform.”

The document is signed by a remarkably diverse group of 80 well known evangelicals including Dallas Willard, Jim Wallis, John Ortberg, and Fuller’s president Richard Mouw, and is supposedly meant to be a bit of a self-critique. It is currently sitting on my desk, but I haven’t had a chance to read it yet (although I very much look forward to it).

The evangelical community is most definitely needs to do some soul searching, so hopefully this document will be a good start. I myself often hesitate to call myself an “Evangelical” simply because of the well-earned litany of negative connotations the word has. Right-wing evangelicalism, I fear, has alienated many young people who love Jesus but are frustrated at the disconnect between the teachings of Jesus and the public issues that tend to attract the most attention from the evangelical community. Sadly, in many cases, this leads to disengagement, rather than a creative and theological search for a more holistic, Jesus-centered spirituality. The shame that many young people feel even at what the word “Evangelical” or the word “Christian” connotes can be seen in something as simple as what Christians tend to put on the “Religious Views” field on their facebook profiles. Responses range from “I love Jesus” to “JESUS!” to “grace” to “disciple” to “the cross”, nothing listed. There is nothing wrong with that (I myself have the religious views field empty), but it does reflect, I believe, the sense of alienation that many young people feel.

The entire 17-page manifesto can be found my following the link above.

3) My wife has been studying the gospel of Luke on her own recently, and wrote a great post last night discussing some of the things that she has learned. I have enjoyed talking with her about some of her insights, and her post is well worth reading.

5) I’ve been thinking about pacifism lately. Partially because I’m reading The Politics of Jesus by noted pacifist theologian John Howard Yoder, partially because of some of the ideas from Augustine’s City of God that I just came across which expand the definition of peace far beyond the absence of armed conflict, and partially just because it seems like something Jesus is a fan of (though I’ve thought that last part for a long time). More on this later…

5) And finally…the Padres suck. They really, really suck.

The end

This is the second entry in an occasional series of reflections that I am doing on the book of Colossians.  The first entry, along with a brief explanation for why I am doing this, can be found here.

I will admit that I often find myself asking the question “what’s the point?”, when it comes to church.  Not in the why-do-we-even-bother sense, but more in the what-sort-of-a-difference-is-all-of-the-stuff- that-we-say-and-do-and-talk-about sense.  I suppose that comes from my desire to do more than just play church, and to instead really do work necessary to think through what sort of a difference church activity, spiritual disciplines, and other such activities are supposed to make.  Whether or not those sorts of questions that were on his mind when he was writing Colossians, Paul addresses them nicely in chapter 1, verses 9-10.

“And so, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God.”

What an amazing prayer that is.  Allow me to take one part of it at a time.

“…asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will…” The idea of ‘the will of God’ gets a lot of play in church, as it should.  On some level, all of us want to know the will of God.  Obeying the will of God may be a whole different story (too often it is for me), but I believe it would be fair to say that all of us who believe in the God of the Bible are at least marginally curious as to what his will is, particularly for our lives.  While I certainly have not cracked the code on how to determine the will of God (and would be slightly suspicious of anyone who claimed that they have), I would suggest that the choices we make, and the way in which we control our influences effects how accurately we can know and understand God’s will.  That, in my view, is a major reason why spiritual disciples such as Bible study, prayer, meditation, and church fellowship are important.  It is in those contexts that our curiosity regarding God’s will is transformed into a revelatory searching for God’s will. From those disciplines comes a sort of “spiritual wisdom and understanding” that I believe can hardly be found outside of such communion with God.  It is in our willingness to devote ourselves to these disciplines that the rubber meets the road, so to speak.  In other words, they are an indicator of our desire to know, understand, be transformed by, and apply God’s will.

Furthermore, I would suggest that this “spiritual wisdom and understanding” is something that can be applied in virtually every arena of life.  It can aid us as family members, as employees, as employers, as students, and in virtually any other situation.  I am realizing more and more that as a college pastor it is my desire not to get the students in our ministry to do more things, but instead to engage in determining what it looks like to be Christian in the contexts that they already find themselves in.  In other words, I want them to work through (as I try to do myself) how being Christian effects the way you go to school, or manage a grocery store, or work in a city parks and recreation office, or manage a golf course, or perform any of the other vocations that are represented in our community on Sunday nights.

And now I’ve got to go to class, so I’ll have to finish this post later…hopefully later on tonight…

Today, to be honest, was one of those days.

One of those days that I hear people who have been preaching for a long time talk about.

It was one of those days where, if given the option, I would have gladly crawled into a hole and stayed there instead of giving a sermon.

Don’t get me wrong, my reasons for feeling that way were completely my own issues, not anyone else’s. I had no one to blame but myself.

I had a bad attitude for most of the day, I was uncharacteristically (I hope) short with one or two people today (which I feel terrible about), I was distracted, irritated, selfish, and simply not in a good place. Honestly, the last thing i wanted to do was bare my soul for 40 minutes to a large group of people. I felt like I had nothing to give.

And now sitting here unwinding at the end of the night, I look back on the night and see it as yet another reminder that I am not the one doing the giving. We had, in my opinion, a really great night tonight. The band did a wonderful job and we had two great times of worship, and I felt like we had a great discussion about one of the more famous stories in the Bible, that of the rich young ruler. Afterwards I had many more people than usual come up to me and thank me for the message and say that they really appreciated it. It was as though God knew what I needed to hear. I went into the night discouraged and feeling defeated before I even opened my mouth. And yet God was able to use me to communicate some truth tonight about the need for us as followers of Jesus to live generous lives, and it appeared that somehow the words that came out of my mouth struck a chord with people.

It reminds me of this great, albeit rather odd, little passage in 2 Corinthians where Paul is talking about a ‘thorn in his flesh’ that was given to him to essentially keep him humble. Paul says how he pleaded with God to take the thorn away, but that God replied, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Yet another example of the somewhat backwards yet altogether beautiful values of the kingdom of God. Power, God’s power, is made perfect, not in talent, ability, perfection, strength, or anything else of the sort. It is made perfect in weakness. Add that to the list: joy being found in self-denial, fulfillment being found in generosity, little children being the example for usefulness within the kingdom of God, grace. These radically counter-cultural values simply do not make sense apart from the reality of God’s redeeming work through Jesus Christ and his continuing work in the world through his Spirit.

Tonight it sure seemed like God’s power was made perfect in a selfish guy with a bad attitude. Tonight was one of those nights where I left thinking I could do this for the rest of my life. I am grateful to a God that takes my meager loaves and fishes and makes something good out of it, and to a community that somehow knows when their pastor needs some grace and encouragement and gives him both.

Brett and the band played this great song called “Your Love Is Strong” by Jon Foreman tonight. The bulk of the song consists of a delightfully Switchfooty interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer, and the chorus of the song seemed like an appropriate way for me to end this post, as I have experienced its truth deeply tonight.

Your love is

Your love is

Your love is strong

Over the past several months I have studied the New Testament letter to the Colossians fairly extensively. It has emerged as my favorite of Paul’s letters, and I find myself reading at least a passage of it (usually from the third chapter) nearly every day. I am preparing to produce an audio devotional series based on Colossians, and may even make a meager attempt at a devotional book some time down the line, but before I do that, I wanted to take some times to simply reflect on whatever the text of this jewel of a letter brings to mind. So then, periodically over the course of the next month or two, I will devote a post to my reflections on certain texts in Colossians. I won’t be using commentaries, Bible dictionaries, New Testament introductions, or anything of the sort (that will come later), I’m simply going to talk about my own reaction to the text itself, for better or for worse.

Colossians 1:3-4: “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints.”

I have used those verses (or the several like them found in other NT letters) in countless devotionals, Bible studies, mentoring groups, and sermons over the course of the last several years, and yet I am still struck by them every time I read them. Paul is likely hundreds of miles away from the church is Colossae, and what has he heard about them? He has heard about their sweet sound system and their pastor who tells funny stories. He has heard about how pristine their lobby is and how well their $20 million building campaign is going. He has heard about how the church is a hip cool scene where people have, like, tattoos and piercings and stuff. Or he has heard none of those things. He has heard that the people in the church have faith in Jesus and they have love for one another. That was what most struck whoever brought the report to Paul.

Passages like this always make me ask myself, “what do you want to be known for?” The reality is that I want to be known for a lot of things. Many of which really don’t matter that much. On a corporate level, we can ask “what do we want our church to be known for?” And again, if we’re honest we admit that there are a lot of things that we want our church to be known for. One thing I appreciate about my church is our professed desire to be a church that is a good neighbor to its community. In a world where, more often than not, churches have become eye sores and inconveniences to the unbelieving world, I can’t help but wonder how the public reputation of the church was that it was a place where people had faith in Jesus and truly loved each other.

I’m reminded of a quote from Cardinal Avery Dulles in his brilliant little book (with an admittedly boring title), Models of the Church. In it he writes, “In the early centuries, the Church expanded not so much because of concerted missionary efforts as through its power of attraction as a contrast society. Seeing the mutual love and support of Christians, and the high moral standards they observed, the pagans sought entrance into the Church. If the same is not happening today, this is largely because the Church no longer appears conspicuously as the community of the disciples, transformed by its participation in the new creation.” (italics mine…it also bears mentioning that ‘pagan’ is not meant to be a derogatory term, it simply means non-Christian and non-Jew)

In other words, it was the reputation of the church, not its cool buildings, not its consumer products full of pictures of beautiful and trendy people, not even its amazing missions program, that gave the church its vitality in its early years.

I think about that and then I think about Seven24. The way we teach, the things we emphasize, the way our worship services are designed. And of course that causes me to wonder if people would speak of our community in the same way that whoever was informing Paul spoke of the church at Colossae. The answer is most certainly no.  That’s not to say that we don’t have faith in Christ (we do), and it’s certainly not to say there isn’t a deep sense of community (there is), but I do believe we still have room to grow in those areas.

I am challenged by texts like this to work towards making our community one with that sort of reputation. I should say that I don’t really like that last sentence, as it seems to imply that I consider this to be something entirely up to me, or entirely under my control, which I don’t. The real issue it seems is being willing to ask the question, “what kind of people are we becoming?”, because the reality is that our actions reflect our values and produce our reputation. What would it look like for the church, any church, to be laser focused on having faith- not just professed faith, not just the sing-worship-songs faith, but I’m-really-going-to- wholeheartedly-follow-the-radical-way-of-Jesus faith- and truly genuinely loving one another?

The reputation would be different. That much is sure.