Live Generously

So, the expression is “Monday morning quarterback”, but I’m running a few days behind schedule.  I want to make a semi-regular habit out of blogging about whatever I talk about at Seven24, more for the purpose of reflecting further on the topic than anything else.

This last Sunday we finally got our “10 Big Questions” series off the ground.  Truth be told there is a big part of me that is relieved to have it finally started.  The weeks leading up to the series were a somewhat tenuous time of uncertainty, as it was unclear for a while whether or not the series was even going to go on. Thankfully, people turned in some good questions, we were able to select ten (or so), and will be spending the rest of the summer answering said questions.  The name of the series is a bit of a misnomer, as “10 Weeks of Big Questions” would be more accurate.  There are two topics that will be given two weeks each, while some weeks will tackle multiple questions within the same topic.

We started off the series with the question, “How do I connect with God?”

I like that question because it is practical.  We were made for intimacy with our creator, yet said intimacy is some what of a learned skill. It doesn’t just happen.  It’s not the natural by-product of church attendance, nor does it result from clapping along to worship songs. We must learn the tools to connect ourselves to God, and then use these tools to develop that connection.

I also don’t like this question.  It’s not that it’s a bad question (it most certainly isn’t) nor is it a terribly difficult question to answer (fairly easy, in fact).  I don’t like this question because it tempts me to employ virtually every tired church cliche in the book in my efforts to answer it.  It tempts me to present connecting with God as something as simple as turning on the TV or poking a facebook friend.  It tempts me to present connecting with God as something entirely divorced from character formation.

It is, of course, none of those things.

That being said, one could easily make the argument that the gospel of suburban American  individualistic Christianity has led us to believe that it is all of those things.  I’ll spare you the unnecessary rant, but suffice to say that the more I considered this question last week the more taken aback by it I was.

We are, after all, talking about God here. A God who is at once infinitely greater than we are and incalculably humble. A God who holds our breath in his hands and yet desires that we would use that breath to develop a relationship with him. The fact that we can even ask questions about connecting with God is truly remarkable, if we stop for long enough to think about it.

So this last Sunday night I spoke primarily about what “connecting with God” really is, and what it isn’t.  I talked about the ways that Jesus defies our efforts to reduce spirituality to reading our Bible and attending church.  I talked about how such practices are never the point, but are a means to an end.  The end is the imitation of Christ.  If we lose sight of the end, the means lose their significance.

I played a lot of sports as a kid, and for the most part, I enjoyed going to practice.  However, on those rare weeks when, for one reason or another, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to play in that weekend’s game, the practice lost much of its significance.  It is its relevance for the game that makes practice make sense.  When such relevance is lost, the practices become bland, boring, and frustrating.

That is the problem with practice-based Christianity.  A version of Christianity that says the definition of a healthy spiritual life is consistent Bible reading and church attendance.  Or, said differently, the ends of Christianity are practices of that sort.  I myself have bought into that lie, having characterized my spiritual life by how many “quiet times” I’ve had in a given week one too many times.

Having said all that, let me seemingly contradict myself (”seemingly” being the operative word), by saying that “practices”, or “spiritual disciplines” are still hugely important to connecting with God.  Spiritual disciplines are of immeasurable benefit in helping us to further our relationship with the God of the Bible (rather than some vague notion of god that is simply a glorified version of ourselves). It is, however, their usefulness in the game that gives these practices their vitality.

That was essentially the message I tried to get across on Sunday, and it is one I believe in deeply. Without spiritual disciplines–study, prayer, meditation, worship, accountability, confession, etc.–our faith can easily descend into Prozac for the soul. However, the practice of spiritual disciplines that do not transform us and tangibly effect our lives can lead to tired religion.  Both of these not-so-good alternatives distract of from imitating Christ, and leave us looking just like the world.

I sincerely hope that this Sunday night was a hopeful time for our group.  The reality that God wants to connect with us is very good news, as is the fact that there are concrete practices that can aid us in establishing that connection.  Perhaps the best news of all is that these practices are not to be done for their own sake, but rather they are to be done because they have the capacity to form us into the image of our Creator.

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.

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

I am quickly becoming a big fan of Relevant magazine. It is a refreshing change from the status quo of the Christian media culture, and publishes interesting articles about, as their cover advertises, God, life, and progressive culture.  I appreciate the magazine’s ability to talk about matters of faith in a real way while remaining very much, well, culturally relevant.  Their cover stories are always great, but this issue’s was particularly good.

The story was called 7 Burning Issues, and it featured questions related to injustice, war, consumerism, faith, culture, politics, and gay rights.  You know, standard fare, nothing too difficult or controverisal ;-). To make it even better, the panel answering the questions included Brian McLaren, Shane Caliborne, N.T. Wright, and Jim Wallis, four of my favorite authors/thinkers/cool guys whose books you should all read. Their answers were all really fantastic…here are a few excerpts that really stuck out to me, with my comments in italics (hopefully this isn’t illegal!).

Wallis on social justice: “The message to Christians today is very clear.  Any gospel that isnt good news to poor people simply isn’t the Gospel of Jesus Christ; any evangelism that doesn’t include social justice ignores the perfectly integrated life and message of Jesus.

The false dichotomy of evangelism and social justice simply has to be overcome if either are going to have any sort of significant impact.  I’m reminding of a professor I had at Fuller last quarter who said that Christians must learn to “lead” with social justice, honesty, integrity, humility, and values of that sort, because if we simply “lead” with the four spiritual laws in a culture that doesn’t really much care we aren’t going to get anywhere.  That also kinda sounds like something Hal said yesterday morning in church…good works lead to good will that leads to the hearing of the good news.  There’s a lot of truth to that, and there is also a lot of truth to the idea that to be Christian is to be a person of good works.

McLaren on how we should respond to homosexuality: “When the issue of homosexuality comes up, people quickly say, “What about Romans 1? What about Leviticus?  What about 1 Corinthians 6?” I want to say, “Well, what about 1 Corinthians 13? What about James 3?”

McLaren is right on here.  Passages like 1 Corinthians 13 and James 3 must be our criterion for interpreting passages like Romans 1 and 1 Corinthians 6.  Does that mean we ignore what Romans 1 and 1 Cor. 6 say?  Certainly not.  It does simply mean that we seek to show love first.  Period.

Claiborne of interacting with culture: “part of what I think we have to do is not just figure out how we interact with the culture,  but create a new culture where we bring one another to life and call each other to the best of who God wants us to be.  So it’s not “How much secularism can I get away with?” but “How can I be set apart is a way that celebrates the distinctiveness of who we are as people in this world who are resident aliens?”

That point is absolutely huge.  At the end of the day it’s really about us as Christians changing the questions we are asking.  He is right to point out that many of us, myself included, are often seeking how much ’secularism’ or ‘worldliness’ we can ‘get away with’, which in my few reflects a major problem with our hearts.  It’s as if our goal is to resemble the world most closely, rather than setting ourselves about from the world for the purpose of living as the people of God.  I guess the question then becomes, are we willing to hold ourselves to the high standard that a new way of thinking would require of us?

And finally, N.T. Wright on money: “Money becomes a god very, very easily.  So giving it away cheerfully and wisely is a step towards really saying money is not the ruling force in our lives.”

I’m currently listening to an amazing series of messages by Andy Stanley at North Point Church where he is talking all about the heart.  One of the messages was on greed. He hammered home the point that prioritized, percentage giving is probably the most effective means of countering greed in our lives.  He added weight and credibility to the point by adding that if people are skeptical of him then they can give somewhere else.  He and Wright and correct is saying that the only way any of us can hope to get a handle on our greed is to make giving a priority.

So those are just a few small excerpts.  I highly encourage you all to pick up this issue and read the full article.  That’s all from me for now…I’m going on a mini technology fast now, so I won’t be back online until tomorrow afternoon.

So it turns out Rob is coming out with a new book.

Jesus Wants To Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile, by Rob Bell and Don Golden

Here is the synopsis of the book found on the Zondervan website:

“There is a church not too far from us that recently added a $25 million addition to their building.

Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago about a study revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty.

This is a book about those two numbers.

It’s a book about faith and fear,

wealth and war,

poverty, power, safety, terror,

Bibles, bombs, and homeland insecurity,

It’s about empty empires and the truth that everybody’s a priest, it’s about oppression, occupation, and what happens when Christians support, animate and participate in the very things Jesus came to set people free from.

It’s about what it means to be a part of the church of Jesus in a world where some people fly planes into buildings while others pick up groceries in Hummers.”

Yikes.

If there is one thing I appreciate about guys like Rob Bell and Shane Claiborne it’s that they tell it like it is.  As I read that synopsis for the first time a few days ago I remember thinking that I can’t wait to read the book.  But then I thought something else, and I didn’t particularly like it.  I thought about how they are the problem.  You know, them. The ones who build $25 million church buildings, the ones who pick up their groceries in hummers, the ones who justify war, and use fear to get people to behave in a certain way.  You know, them.

Reading that synopsis made me want to blame someone else, anybody else.  Because there is a problem and it’s someone else’s fault.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t fault Rob for saying what he said…from what I can tell he practices what he preaches and his voice is often nothing short of prophetic. The points he raises are points that desperately need to be addressed.  The problem is with me and my need to find someone else to blame.  As long as there is a them then I don’t have to worry about we, and I certainly don’t have to worry about I, and how i might need to change, how I might need to look inside myself, and how I might be a part of the very problems I so despise in church, society, and the world.

This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, our need to project problems outwards.  Consider the following: We all know people that we consider to be difficult to deal with, yet few of us consider ourselves to be “difficult”.  We can all point out problems in our churches, but few of us consider ourselves to be actively contributing to said problems.  Many of us agree that we live in a culture of excess, and yet few of us are really willing to admit that we live in excess, and even fewer of us are willing to sacrifice our excess.  Many of us complain about the lack of community that exists in our culture (me being one of them), and yet few of us are willing to do the work to establish real community (I know the names of exactly zero of our neighbors). Many of us complain that large church gatherings of college students and young adults turn into nothing more than “scenes”, yet few of us are willing to do the work necessary to change that culture.

This drives me crazy. And I’m as much a part of the problem than anyone.

The bottom line is as long as we seek to project problems outward without taking responsibility for ourselves, nothing will ever get better.  That’s why I appreciate guys like Rob Bell, who are willing to name problems in society, while at the same time doing the work to be the sort of change that they believe Jesus came to make in the world. I suppose the real issue becomes, how can I live less excessively?  How can I better promote real community? How can I help the church become a real ‘community in exile’, rather than simply a ’scene’?  Progress is found in the I statements and questions rather than the they statements, because it’s really easy to throw rocks, but it’s a lot more difficult to turn the mirror inwards.

Last night at Seven24 we talked about the passage from Mark 9 where Jesus talks about sin.  You know, that whole “if your hand causes you to sin cut it off” passage.  Frankly, it’s a passage that’s pretty difficult to  tone down or otherwise marginalize. Jesus is saying in very stark terms that as his followers we must be willing to do whatever it takes to eliminate sin in our lives (though as I mentioned last night, the whole “cut it off” statement is certainly a metaphor).

As I prepared for the message over the course of the last week, the question that kept popping into my head was, “how do you talk about sin in a postmodern world?”  To talk about sin is to assert that a) it exists, and b) there is some objective criteria for determining that an act/thought/etc. is sinful. The reality is , however, whether this is the result of a cultural construct or the result of some sort of reaction to hyper-judgmental Christianity of the religious right/moral majority era, it is very difficult to talk about sin in a tactful, biblically faithful manner.  That is what I attempted to do last night, and I guess those who were present will have to evaluate how effectively that was done.

My primary thesis, that I stated last night in different words, was essentially that as Christians we have the resources to deal with sin that are unavailable to the rest of the world.  In other words, we can engage in critical self-reflection in a healthy way, knowing that our God is a God of grace who seeks to forgive us and empower us when we repent of sin rather than judge or condemn us. My hope was that all of us in the room last night, myself included, could then be honest with ourselves when it came to acknowledging our own sin knowing that we can do so without fearing judgment.  Even still, I believe engaging in that sort of reflection is difficult because it is so easy to justify and ignore our own junk while focusing on the struggles of others.  Furthermore, the whole idea of confession and repentance (especially when we involve other people in the process) is one that is both highly awkward and rarely found in our culture. I believe that, more than anything, is a reflection on the declining value we place on interpersonal relationships in our culture, but that is another story.

One verse I didn’t mention last night comes from 1 Corinthians 5. In verse 11 Paul lists a handful of vices that he insists should not be present in the church, and then proceeds to say in verse 12, “For what have I to do with judging outsiders?  Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?” In other words, Paul is urging the Corinthian church to not project their morality outward, but instead focus on maintaining the purity of the church.  When the church is pure, it is able to instead project the grace and peace and Christ towards the unbelieving world.  This, I believe, is the key to talking about sin in a postmodern world.  In the church we can talk about our own sin in a way that might seem awkward (or overly self-disclosing) because we are able to do so in a way that merits corrective, grace-filled judgment (no, I don’t think that is an oxymoron), as opposed to condemnatory judgment.  The grace of Christ, when fully understood, allows us to do that.

The alternative is to ignore our own sin, ignore our own holiness, and continue to condemn an “immoral” world that we somehow expect to be “moral” without knowing the grace and peace that comes from Christ. It is my hope that all of us who carry the name of Christ can begin to further recognize the freedom that Christs gives us to be honest about our sin, to confess our sin, and take seriously the call to Christlike living that the New Testament so often espouses.