I have added to my sidebar a section devoted to those books that are on my Amazon book wish list. I have put them there for two main reasons: one, to remind myself of the books that I really want to read - before I decide to buy other books first. Because I have such a bad short term memory, I already have forgotten the books that are on there. The second reason is to remind myself that no matter how many books I read, there are still so many more that I can learn from. I never want to stop reading and growing and thinking and chewing on books. I just received four days ago a box of five books from amazon, and I'm already looking forward to the next time I buy books. I have already read two of them (Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell and Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller), I'm halfway through The Last Word and The Word After That, I've read the first chapter of God's Politics, and the other book is a resource book on worship.
The moment I stop reading, I stop growing and learning.
Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Books That Have Impacted Me The Most (So Far)
I thought this might be an interesting list. And this interesting list is in no particular order.
- Dangerous Wonder - Mike Yaconelli. This book, which I read while I was a youth minister in Colorado, shattered my view of what to live a good life was all about. I like his second book, Messy Spirituality, but I think this one's better.
- The Wind In The Wheat - Reed Arvin. Reed Arvin was Rich Mullins' producer (as well as being a very good musician himself, as evidenced by his piano work on several of Mullins' albums). This novel is about a young man named Andrew Miracle, who lives in a small town. Yet Andrew has been born with an incredible musical talent, and his prayer is that he would be able to do great things for God. About the same time, a Nashville producer comes down to Andrew's home town, and hears Andrew and sees dollar signs. This novel is about the struggle of a young man who has a gift from God to figure out what true greatness really means in God's eyes. I read this book at least once a year, if not twice. It's a reminder to me that when we serve God, no matter how big or small our talent is, we experience true joy.
- Disciplines Of A Godly Man - R. Kent Hughes. I read this book when I was in college, and it really helped me view disciplines in a different light.
- Celebration Of Discipline - Richard Foster. I went through a time in college where I seriously thought about becoming a monk. This book was one of the reasons why I almost did.
- Your God Is Too Safe - Mark Buchanan. This is another book that I read at least once a year. It has some of my all time favorite quotes, and it's so passionate and life-changing. A must read.
- Ordering Your Private World - Gordon MacDonald. I'm not a very organized kind of guy, but this book helped me to see that I needed to organize my inner life before the outer life would ever be ordered.
- Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire - Jim Cymbala. A moving story about a church on the brink of closing its doors, when it decided to do the one thing that every church should aspire to become: a house of prayer.
- The Imitation Of Christ - Thomas a Kempis. A classic, filled with practical thoughts on imitating Jesus.
- Sacred Pathways - Gary Thomas. If I could teach material from any book, it would be this one. I'm passionate about helping people find their own unique way and personality to experience God, and this book helps on that journey. I've heard Bill Hybels reference it as one of his favorite books, and Andy Stanley even is coming out with a book based on this one, which seems kind of plagiaristic, but it's not really my call.
- Ruthless Trust - Brennan Manning. I love all of Manning's books, but I would have to say this is my favorite.
- Soul Salsa - Leonard Sweet. I was leading a small group back in Arizona, and the last thing we started to do (before I left) was go through this book. It's a great postmodern practical book. Easy to read, harder to live by.
- A Testament Of Devotion - Thomas Kelly. Another great book written by a Quaker (See Celebration of Discipline above). His main point is focusing on the center, namely Christ.
- Spiritual Leadership - Oswald Sanders. A great older book on...spiritual leadership...written by a missionary. Very compelling, very convicting.
- What's So Amazing About Grace - Philip Yancey. Yancey is my favorite Christian author, and I could have put every single one of his books down on this list, but this one's my favorite. I love his definition of grace: "There is nothing we can do to make God love us less. There is nothing we can do to make God love us more."
- No Wonder They Call Him The Savior - Max Lucado. His books are very easy to read, and play more on the emotional side of me than the intellectual side, but I love them all the same. This one is my favorite.
- Broken In The Right Place - Alan Nelson. This book came at a much needed time in my life. If you've heard the song "Blessed Be Your Name" by Matt Redman, then you'll understand that the book contains the same premise as the song - let's bless God in all times, whether good or bad.
- The Life You've Always Wanted - John Ortberg. Another great book about spiritual disciplines.
- The Cost of Discipleship - Dietrich Bonhoeffer. There are some authors when you read their books that make you wonder if they really believe what they are writing. Bonhoeffer is not one of them, and he proved he believed what he was saying by paying the greatest cost of discipleship - his life.
- A New Kind Of Christian - Brian McLaren. A great, great book. Although I attribute the works of Leonard Sweet as the impetus on my journey towards the emergent movement, this book has become the cornerstone of my decision to leave the old way of thinking behind me.
- Theirs Is The Kingdom - Robert Lupton. This book is a must read for anyone interested in inner-city missions work or just want a new perspective on the poor, homeless and downtrodden. It was required reading for my youth ministry students who were going on the L.A. missions trip with me back in the day.
- Return of the Prodigal Son - Henri Nouwen. Again, I could have listed all of Nouwen's books here, but this one impacted me the most. Shows the story of the prodigal son in a different light.
- Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller. How could I almost leave this off my list? This is my favorite book, hands down. I love the way Miller writes, I love how he says things that at first I disagree with, but as I read Scripture, chew on his words, and pray about them, I end up agreeing with him.
- Velvet Elvis - Rob Bell. How could I have not really heard of this guy, watched any of the nooma videos before this week? I'm an idiot. I'm still in the midst of this book, but I will tell you right now. Get this book. Read it. It's that good. It will change you. I have been reading it for the past couple of days, and I can't get it out of my head. Seriously, get this book.
I'm sure I'm missing some, but I think this is a good start. :^)
- Dangerous Wonder - Mike Yaconelli. This book, which I read while I was a youth minister in Colorado, shattered my view of what to live a good life was all about. I like his second book, Messy Spirituality, but I think this one's better.
- The Wind In The Wheat - Reed Arvin. Reed Arvin was Rich Mullins' producer (as well as being a very good musician himself, as evidenced by his piano work on several of Mullins' albums). This novel is about a young man named Andrew Miracle, who lives in a small town. Yet Andrew has been born with an incredible musical talent, and his prayer is that he would be able to do great things for God. About the same time, a Nashville producer comes down to Andrew's home town, and hears Andrew and sees dollar signs. This novel is about the struggle of a young man who has a gift from God to figure out what true greatness really means in God's eyes. I read this book at least once a year, if not twice. It's a reminder to me that when we serve God, no matter how big or small our talent is, we experience true joy.
- Disciplines Of A Godly Man - R. Kent Hughes. I read this book when I was in college, and it really helped me view disciplines in a different light.
- Celebration Of Discipline - Richard Foster. I went through a time in college where I seriously thought about becoming a monk. This book was one of the reasons why I almost did.
- Your God Is Too Safe - Mark Buchanan. This is another book that I read at least once a year. It has some of my all time favorite quotes, and it's so passionate and life-changing. A must read.
- Ordering Your Private World - Gordon MacDonald. I'm not a very organized kind of guy, but this book helped me to see that I needed to organize my inner life before the outer life would ever be ordered.
- Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire - Jim Cymbala. A moving story about a church on the brink of closing its doors, when it decided to do the one thing that every church should aspire to become: a house of prayer.
- The Imitation Of Christ - Thomas a Kempis. A classic, filled with practical thoughts on imitating Jesus.
- Sacred Pathways - Gary Thomas. If I could teach material from any book, it would be this one. I'm passionate about helping people find their own unique way and personality to experience God, and this book helps on that journey. I've heard Bill Hybels reference it as one of his favorite books, and Andy Stanley even is coming out with a book based on this one, which seems kind of plagiaristic, but it's not really my call.
- Ruthless Trust - Brennan Manning. I love all of Manning's books, but I would have to say this is my favorite.
- Soul Salsa - Leonard Sweet. I was leading a small group back in Arizona, and the last thing we started to do (before I left) was go through this book. It's a great postmodern practical book. Easy to read, harder to live by.
- A Testament Of Devotion - Thomas Kelly. Another great book written by a Quaker (See Celebration of Discipline above). His main point is focusing on the center, namely Christ.
- Spiritual Leadership - Oswald Sanders. A great older book on...spiritual leadership...written by a missionary. Very compelling, very convicting.
- What's So Amazing About Grace - Philip Yancey. Yancey is my favorite Christian author, and I could have put every single one of his books down on this list, but this one's my favorite. I love his definition of grace: "There is nothing we can do to make God love us less. There is nothing we can do to make God love us more."
- No Wonder They Call Him The Savior - Max Lucado. His books are very easy to read, and play more on the emotional side of me than the intellectual side, but I love them all the same. This one is my favorite.
- Broken In The Right Place - Alan Nelson. This book came at a much needed time in my life. If you've heard the song "Blessed Be Your Name" by Matt Redman, then you'll understand that the book contains the same premise as the song - let's bless God in all times, whether good or bad.
- The Life You've Always Wanted - John Ortberg. Another great book about spiritual disciplines.
- The Cost of Discipleship - Dietrich Bonhoeffer. There are some authors when you read their books that make you wonder if they really believe what they are writing. Bonhoeffer is not one of them, and he proved he believed what he was saying by paying the greatest cost of discipleship - his life.
- A New Kind Of Christian - Brian McLaren. A great, great book. Although I attribute the works of Leonard Sweet as the impetus on my journey towards the emergent movement, this book has become the cornerstone of my decision to leave the old way of thinking behind me.
- Theirs Is The Kingdom - Robert Lupton. This book is a must read for anyone interested in inner-city missions work or just want a new perspective on the poor, homeless and downtrodden. It was required reading for my youth ministry students who were going on the L.A. missions trip with me back in the day.
- Return of the Prodigal Son - Henri Nouwen. Again, I could have listed all of Nouwen's books here, but this one impacted me the most. Shows the story of the prodigal son in a different light.
- Blue Like Jazz - Donald Miller. How could I almost leave this off my list? This is my favorite book, hands down. I love the way Miller writes, I love how he says things that at first I disagree with, but as I read Scripture, chew on his words, and pray about them, I end up agreeing with him.
- Velvet Elvis - Rob Bell. How could I have not really heard of this guy, watched any of the nooma videos before this week? I'm an idiot. I'm still in the midst of this book, but I will tell you right now. Get this book. Read it. It's that good. It will change you. I have been reading it for the past couple of days, and I can't get it out of my head. Seriously, get this book.
I'm sure I'm missing some, but I think this is a good start. :^)
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Twenty Questions From Leonard Sweet's Book
I read the newest book by Leonard Sweet called Out of the Question...Into The Mystery a few months ago. However, I keep going back to one chapter that I find rather fascinating, because it's something I've never thought before concerning a certain Bible story. I'm not saying I necessarily agree with Sweet on his point, but it's still something worth chewing over, mulling over, studying and asking.
The biblical story is the story of Abraham and Isaac going up Mount Moriah after God tells Abraham to take him and sacrifice him. I'm sure we're all familiar with the story, we've probably all read it several times or at least heard sermons on the story.
Sweet's premise is this: that Abraham passed God's test of obedience, but failed the second test God was giving him, namely the test of relationship.
God expected Abraham to question God as to why He would even ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Abraham did not do so. Therefore, Abraham failed the test and the relationship between Abraham and God was never the same again.
Interesting, huh?
Sweet then gives twenty questions concerning this story that don't necessarily prove his point beyond a reasonable doubt, but are intriguing:
1. Why didn't Abraham argue with God about the killing of his innocent son like he did when God told Abraham about His intention to kill the Sodomites' sons and daughters?
2. Why did Abraham keep the planned sacrifice a secret from those closest to him? Why didn't he tell Sarah, Eliezer, or Isaac about what God had ordered him to do?
3. Why did the very Son of God, the perfect God-man, wrestle with his Father on the cross about his own death more than Abraham wrestled with God about the death of his entirely human son?
4. If Abraham was so special to God, why didn't Abraham get translated into heaven like Enoch and Elijah?
5. Why did God no longer speak to Abraham after the outcome of this itest was known? God delivered the Mount Moriah test in person, but as Abraham was about to carry out the command, an angel intervened and saved his hand. Why didn't God show up to intervene? And after the conclusion of this episode, God never spoke to Abraham again. The intimacy of their relationship was over. Likewise, from that point on, Abraham never speaks to God, but only speaks about God.
6. How did Isaac deal with the fact that his father had to be focibly restrained from cutting his throat? Abraham may not have wounded Isaac with a knife, but he wounded him nevertheless.
7. What did Abraham and Isaac talk about on their three-day journey home? In fact, it appears more likely that Abraham returned alone to Beersheba. Abraham climbed Mount Moriah with his son, but he arrived alone when he returned from the mountain. And he never spoke to his son again. Isaac never saw his father alive again - only reuniting with his brother Ishmael to bury their dead father.
8. How can it be a good thing that Isaac and Abraham no longer "walk together" after Abraham's triumph of faith? Abraham didn't pass on the blessing to Isaac in person. He didn't even pass on his marriage instructions to Isaac personally.
9. Is it reading too much into the text to wonder why Isaac grieved for his mother when she died, but the Scriptures say nothing about his grief upon his father's death?
10. What did Abraham say to Sarah when he got back from the high place? He never seemed to explain himself to those around him. Why?
11. Why did Sarah die at the end of this story? Did she die from shock upon hearing that her son had been spared execution?
12. Why did God choose to name the people of God after Jacob and not Abraham?
13. Why did Abraham call the place of the interrupted sacrifice "The Lord Will Provide."? Isn't that a pretty wussy name to come up with after the severity of the test?
14. How could it be good that in the end, Abraham was alone? He dwelled in Beersheba. Sarah was in Hebron. Ishmael was in Egypt. Isaac was far from him. God had withdrawn from Abraham's life. Abraham ended his life separated from all those he loved the most.
15. The angel applauded Abraham for his fear of God. But the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom - shouldn't Abraham have been further along this path?
16. Abraham told his servants to stay with the animals while "I and the boy go to worship." Why worship instead of sacrifice? The word seem so cruel in its choice.
17. Isaac was of an age when he knew what was happening to him. Why did Abraham make his son carry his own funeral pyre?
18. How does Abraham's willingness to slaughter his son qualify him to be the founder of the faith? Why would such a thing as this be the litmus test?
19. Does God expect followers to commit immoral acts when commanded to do so by divine voices or holy prophets?
20. If God sometimes asks us to suspend moral judgments, how do we distinguish the true voice of God from counterfeit voices?
Again, I'm not sure I agree with his premise, but it gives you something to think about, that's for sure.
The biblical story is the story of Abraham and Isaac going up Mount Moriah after God tells Abraham to take him and sacrifice him. I'm sure we're all familiar with the story, we've probably all read it several times or at least heard sermons on the story.
Sweet's premise is this: that Abraham passed God's test of obedience, but failed the second test God was giving him, namely the test of relationship.
God expected Abraham to question God as to why He would even ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Abraham did not do so. Therefore, Abraham failed the test and the relationship between Abraham and God was never the same again.
Interesting, huh?
Sweet then gives twenty questions concerning this story that don't necessarily prove his point beyond a reasonable doubt, but are intriguing:
1. Why didn't Abraham argue with God about the killing of his innocent son like he did when God told Abraham about His intention to kill the Sodomites' sons and daughters?
2. Why did Abraham keep the planned sacrifice a secret from those closest to him? Why didn't he tell Sarah, Eliezer, or Isaac about what God had ordered him to do?
3. Why did the very Son of God, the perfect God-man, wrestle with his Father on the cross about his own death more than Abraham wrestled with God about the death of his entirely human son?
4. If Abraham was so special to God, why didn't Abraham get translated into heaven like Enoch and Elijah?
5. Why did God no longer speak to Abraham after the outcome of this itest was known? God delivered the Mount Moriah test in person, but as Abraham was about to carry out the command, an angel intervened and saved his hand. Why didn't God show up to intervene? And after the conclusion of this episode, God never spoke to Abraham again. The intimacy of their relationship was over. Likewise, from that point on, Abraham never speaks to God, but only speaks about God.
6. How did Isaac deal with the fact that his father had to be focibly restrained from cutting his throat? Abraham may not have wounded Isaac with a knife, but he wounded him nevertheless.
7. What did Abraham and Isaac talk about on their three-day journey home? In fact, it appears more likely that Abraham returned alone to Beersheba. Abraham climbed Mount Moriah with his son, but he arrived alone when he returned from the mountain. And he never spoke to his son again. Isaac never saw his father alive again - only reuniting with his brother Ishmael to bury their dead father.
8. How can it be a good thing that Isaac and Abraham no longer "walk together" after Abraham's triumph of faith? Abraham didn't pass on the blessing to Isaac in person. He didn't even pass on his marriage instructions to Isaac personally.
9. Is it reading too much into the text to wonder why Isaac grieved for his mother when she died, but the Scriptures say nothing about his grief upon his father's death?
10. What did Abraham say to Sarah when he got back from the high place? He never seemed to explain himself to those around him. Why?
11. Why did Sarah die at the end of this story? Did she die from shock upon hearing that her son had been spared execution?
12. Why did God choose to name the people of God after Jacob and not Abraham?
13. Why did Abraham call the place of the interrupted sacrifice "The Lord Will Provide."? Isn't that a pretty wussy name to come up with after the severity of the test?
14. How could it be good that in the end, Abraham was alone? He dwelled in Beersheba. Sarah was in Hebron. Ishmael was in Egypt. Isaac was far from him. God had withdrawn from Abraham's life. Abraham ended his life separated from all those he loved the most.
15. The angel applauded Abraham for his fear of God. But the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom - shouldn't Abraham have been further along this path?
16. Abraham told his servants to stay with the animals while "I and the boy go to worship." Why worship instead of sacrifice? The word seem so cruel in its choice.
17. Isaac was of an age when he knew what was happening to him. Why did Abraham make his son carry his own funeral pyre?
18. How does Abraham's willingness to slaughter his son qualify him to be the founder of the faith? Why would such a thing as this be the litmus test?
19. Does God expect followers to commit immoral acts when commanded to do so by divine voices or holy prophets?
20. If God sometimes asks us to suspend moral judgments, how do we distinguish the true voice of God from counterfeit voices?
Again, I'm not sure I agree with his premise, but it gives you something to think about, that's for sure.
New Books
I'm so happy. My order from Amazon.com came to me today, and I now have five more books to read among all the other ones I have started or have meant to start.
The five books:
Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller - this book was originally called something else, this is his first book - but it didn't sell. Now that he has sold a lot of books, the decision was made to reprint it under a different title. Which I'm glad, because the former book is being sold for a lot of money on amazon and ebay.
Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell - I watched a Nooma video for the first time yesterday thanks to Mike, and it was great - so I'm really looking forward to this book.
The Last Word and the Word After That by Brian McLaren - I'm anticipating finishing the trilogy.
Alternative Worship by Johnny Baker - This is something I've been wanting to get for awhile now, it's a book about the alternative worship scene in England. I've visited several websites of churches who have alternative worship, so I'm interested to see what this book is going to say. And there's a CD at the back.
God's Politics: How the Right Gets It Wrong, and the Left Doesn't Get It by Jim Wallis - I like Wallis a lot, his website and magazine called Soujourners are great and really where I am at right now.
Well, gotta go and get started!
The five books:
Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller - this book was originally called something else, this is his first book - but it didn't sell. Now that he has sold a lot of books, the decision was made to reprint it under a different title. Which I'm glad, because the former book is being sold for a lot of money on amazon and ebay.
Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell - I watched a Nooma video for the first time yesterday thanks to Mike, and it was great - so I'm really looking forward to this book.
The Last Word and the Word After That by Brian McLaren - I'm anticipating finishing the trilogy.
Alternative Worship by Johnny Baker - This is something I've been wanting to get for awhile now, it's a book about the alternative worship scene in England. I've visited several websites of churches who have alternative worship, so I'm interested to see what this book is going to say. And there's a CD at the back.
God's Politics: How the Right Gets It Wrong, and the Left Doesn't Get It by Jim Wallis - I like Wallis a lot, his website and magazine called Soujourners are great and really where I am at right now.
Well, gotta go and get started!
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
The Church On The Other Side, Chapter 2
Well, it's been almost a month and a half since I talked about the first chapter. I need to get back to this pet project - chewing on McLaren's book called The Church On The Other Side.
Strategy #1 (also known as chapter one) stated this: Distinguish between renewed, restored and reinvented churches, and focus on the last.
The next chapter talks about Strategy #2, which is: Clarify and simplify to "more Christians, better Christians" in authentic missional community, for the good of the world. Or in other words, as the title of this chapter states, "Redefine Your Mission."
McClaren first begins this chapter with a brief synopsis of the history of the Church and attributes the actions of the Church up to this point partly to the fact that the Church often does not have a good grip of what its mission is, or even why it should have a mission in the first place. Because of this, sometimes the Church has acted in opposite ways, one right after the other; other times the Church has acted in opposite ways at the same time.
These days, it seems that every church has some type of a mission statement or purpose statement. I've been in ministry for over ten years now, and I remember that right about the time that I started in ministry was the time when it became the right thing to do for churches to develop a nice, succinct, five point mission statement that embodied different purposes that the church exists for. However, the problem is that it doesn't mean that you are actually going to attempt to fulfill your purpose just by writing down your mission. It's kind of like New Year's Resolutions: just because you put down a list of things you resolve to do/not to do, doesn't mean that automatically you will change and be the person you want to be. You have to have some kind of a process, some kind of set goals that help you to baby step your way towards the purpose. Unfortunately, I didn't see this happen in pretty much any church I've been on staff. It's like we develop a nice purpose statement so we can put it on our website or etch it in our glass walls (which Saddleback Church has done a good job of doing), but it doesn't go much further than that.
Then, of course, came the Purpose-Driven Church, followed closely by the Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry, the Purpose-Driven Children's Ministry, the Purpose-Driven Worship Ministry, all the way to the Purpose-Driven Ministry to Portugese Chocaholics Who Slobber All Over Themselves Every Time They See A Hershey Bar.
McLaren, in this chapter, says that four values will come up to the forefront in "the church on the other side". These values are: (1) More Christians; (2) Better Christians; (3) Authentic Missional Community; (4) For The Good Of The World. When McLaren first wrote this book (at the time it was entitled Reinventing Your Church), he had only the first two values as coming to the forefront. Now that he is heavily involved in the Emergent conversation, the last two have come up as important.
And this is what really drew me to the idea of an emergent church. The first time I ever even heard about the emergent movement was at a Youth Specialties convention that I went to with the youth minister I was on staff with. I was only out of youth ministry myself for six months, and I went to the convention because Crowder and Tomlin were going to be there - but as I listened to these youth ministers and speakers talk, I felt like I might as well have been at a Star Trek Convention. What they were speaking about was that unintelligible to me. A few years later, I picked up a copy of Christianity Today that talked about the Emergent movement, and the part that started me on this journey (although I had read some books that had interested me in a fresh, new way of looking at faith, like Mike Yaconelli's books Dangerous Wonder and Messy Spirituality) was reading McLaren talking about "the circles". If you don't know about the circles, let me quote from the article "The Emergent Mystique" from Christianity Today:
----> Yet recently McLaren has started to sketch the outlines of his vision of a postmodern church. He sketches a big circle labeled "self," a smaller circle next to it labeled "church," and a tiny circle off to the side labeled "world."
"This has been evangelicalism's model," he says. "Fundamentally it's about getting yourself 'saved'—in old-style evangelicalism—or improving your life in the new style. Either way, the Christian life is really about you and your needs. Once your needs are met, then we think about how you can serve the church. And then, if there's anything left over, we ask how the church might serve the world."
He starts drawing again. "But what if it went the other way? This big circle is the world—the world God loved so much that he sent his Son. Inside that circle is another one, the church, God's people chosen to demonstrate his love to the world. And inside that is a small circle, which is your self. It's not about the church meeting your needs, it's about you joining the mission of God's people to meet the world's needs." <----
This was revolutionary to me. (For another take on laying a missional foundation for the church, check out the first few chapters of Dan Kimball's book Emerging Worship: Creating Worship Gatherings For New Generations. I will try to find the graphic I made to explain this missional way of thinking and post it.)
Anyway, in this chapter, I find it interesting that McLaren refers to Rwanda as an example of the first two values (more Christians, better Christians) not being successful apart from the other two values - because Saddleback Church is trying to become the discipler of the entire country of Rwanda (August 22nd issue of Time Magazine). The other thing that struck me as interesting was the section on the seeker-sensitive movement. He says this: "In all our talk about seeker-sensitive churches and services, I fear we have neglected one small detail: seeker-sensitive Christians. Christians in the new church must really love non-Christians."
How do we change the church? If we focus on making the Christians we already have "better Christians", I'm afraid that the church will become even more "bubblicious" (living in a bubble), and will have no idea how to relate to those who are unchurched. If we focus completely on "more Christians", then we have a church of immature Christians who need constant milk in order to survive, which will then cause those who are "deeper" (for lack of a better term) in their faith to leave because they aren't getting fed. That's why it's so important to focus on the last two values, because when we get our eyes off of ourselves, our own needs, the fact that the church isn't meeting our needs, and we instead focus on God's plan for us in helping to bring the world to redemption - everything else will fall into place.
Chapter 3 - coming up next!
Strategy #1 (also known as chapter one) stated this: Distinguish between renewed, restored and reinvented churches, and focus on the last.
The next chapter talks about Strategy #2, which is: Clarify and simplify to "more Christians, better Christians" in authentic missional community, for the good of the world. Or in other words, as the title of this chapter states, "Redefine Your Mission."
McClaren first begins this chapter with a brief synopsis of the history of the Church and attributes the actions of the Church up to this point partly to the fact that the Church often does not have a good grip of what its mission is, or even why it should have a mission in the first place. Because of this, sometimes the Church has acted in opposite ways, one right after the other; other times the Church has acted in opposite ways at the same time.
These days, it seems that every church has some type of a mission statement or purpose statement. I've been in ministry for over ten years now, and I remember that right about the time that I started in ministry was the time when it became the right thing to do for churches to develop a nice, succinct, five point mission statement that embodied different purposes that the church exists for. However, the problem is that it doesn't mean that you are actually going to attempt to fulfill your purpose just by writing down your mission. It's kind of like New Year's Resolutions: just because you put down a list of things you resolve to do/not to do, doesn't mean that automatically you will change and be the person you want to be. You have to have some kind of a process, some kind of set goals that help you to baby step your way towards the purpose. Unfortunately, I didn't see this happen in pretty much any church I've been on staff. It's like we develop a nice purpose statement so we can put it on our website or etch it in our glass walls (which Saddleback Church has done a good job of doing), but it doesn't go much further than that.
Then, of course, came the Purpose-Driven Church, followed closely by the Purpose-Driven Youth Ministry, the Purpose-Driven Children's Ministry, the Purpose-Driven Worship Ministry, all the way to the Purpose-Driven Ministry to Portugese Chocaholics Who Slobber All Over Themselves Every Time They See A Hershey Bar.
McLaren, in this chapter, says that four values will come up to the forefront in "the church on the other side". These values are: (1) More Christians; (2) Better Christians; (3) Authentic Missional Community; (4) For The Good Of The World. When McLaren first wrote this book (at the time it was entitled Reinventing Your Church), he had only the first two values as coming to the forefront. Now that he is heavily involved in the Emergent conversation, the last two have come up as important.
And this is what really drew me to the idea of an emergent church. The first time I ever even heard about the emergent movement was at a Youth Specialties convention that I went to with the youth minister I was on staff with. I was only out of youth ministry myself for six months, and I went to the convention because Crowder and Tomlin were going to be there - but as I listened to these youth ministers and speakers talk, I felt like I might as well have been at a Star Trek Convention. What they were speaking about was that unintelligible to me. A few years later, I picked up a copy of Christianity Today that talked about the Emergent movement, and the part that started me on this journey (although I had read some books that had interested me in a fresh, new way of looking at faith, like Mike Yaconelli's books Dangerous Wonder and Messy Spirituality) was reading McLaren talking about "the circles". If you don't know about the circles, let me quote from the article "The Emergent Mystique" from Christianity Today:
----> Yet recently McLaren has started to sketch the outlines of his vision of a postmodern church. He sketches a big circle labeled "self," a smaller circle next to it labeled "church," and a tiny circle off to the side labeled "world."
"This has been evangelicalism's model," he says. "Fundamentally it's about getting yourself 'saved'—in old-style evangelicalism—or improving your life in the new style. Either way, the Christian life is really about you and your needs. Once your needs are met, then we think about how you can serve the church. And then, if there's anything left over, we ask how the church might serve the world."
He starts drawing again. "But what if it went the other way? This big circle is the world—the world God loved so much that he sent his Son. Inside that circle is another one, the church, God's people chosen to demonstrate his love to the world. And inside that is a small circle, which is your self. It's not about the church meeting your needs, it's about you joining the mission of God's people to meet the world's needs." <----
This was revolutionary to me. (For another take on laying a missional foundation for the church, check out the first few chapters of Dan Kimball's book Emerging Worship: Creating Worship Gatherings For New Generations. I will try to find the graphic I made to explain this missional way of thinking and post it.)
Anyway, in this chapter, I find it interesting that McLaren refers to Rwanda as an example of the first two values (more Christians, better Christians) not being successful apart from the other two values - because Saddleback Church is trying to become the discipler of the entire country of Rwanda (August 22nd issue of Time Magazine). The other thing that struck me as interesting was the section on the seeker-sensitive movement. He says this: "In all our talk about seeker-sensitive churches and services, I fear we have neglected one small detail: seeker-sensitive Christians. Christians in the new church must really love non-Christians."
How do we change the church? If we focus on making the Christians we already have "better Christians", I'm afraid that the church will become even more "bubblicious" (living in a bubble), and will have no idea how to relate to those who are unchurched. If we focus completely on "more Christians", then we have a church of immature Christians who need constant milk in order to survive, which will then cause those who are "deeper" (for lack of a better term) in their faith to leave because they aren't getting fed. That's why it's so important to focus on the last two values, because when we get our eyes off of ourselves, our own needs, the fact that the church isn't meeting our needs, and we instead focus on God's plan for us in helping to bring the world to redemption - everything else will fall into place.
Chapter 3 - coming up next!
How The End Doesn't Justify The Means, Part Two
Well, I don't know if the lack of comments on part one means that no one cares about this area or not, but I really believe that the separation of the Christian faith and nationalism is vitally important for today's times, especially considering the volatile situation in Iraq.
Part one spoke about the end of World War II and how the killing of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians was justified in the eyes of most Americans at that time (and perhaps even today) because it signified the end of the war and the end of the deaths of "the good guys" by warfare. Most people would say that in this case, the end did justify the means.
But in whose eyes? Certainly not God's eyes. Although we may differentiate between the good guys (us) and the bad guys (Japan/Germany/North Korea/North Vietnam/Iraq), God doesn't. He doesn't group nations into one category of "good" and one category of "evil". I'm sure that in this war on Iraq, there have been plenty of non-evil civilians who have been caught in the crossfire and killed. I'm sure that there have been evil American soldiers that have been killed as well.
I appreciate Lee Camp's book Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World the deeper into the book I get. Although I was not expecting that a majority of this book would be about the difference between true discipleship (following the commands and teachings of Jesus) and what he calls "the Constantinian cataract" (the belief of American Christians that (1) the end justifies the means; (2) the way of Christ cannot really be relevant to matters of this world, and (3) it is our task to be in control, to run the world, to make things turn out right.) This hearkens back to the days when Constantine became emperor and established Christianity as the national religion - thus causing a majority of his constituents to become Christians in name only - for fear that they would be put to death if they didn't accept the new Christian religion. If we look at the three above beliefs, we can certainly see them in the time of Constantine.
"The end justifies the means" - it doesn't matter how you become a Christian, or what motives are behind it (fear of death, jumping on the bandwagon, promises of riches), as long as you become a Christian.
"the way of Christ cannot really be relevant to matters of this world" - Constantine had every solider in his army baptized, except for their fighting arm. Therefore, they could still fight battles and wars, yet the rest of them were totally Christian.
"it in our task to be in control, to run the world, to make things turn out right" - The Roman Empire, especially now that it has the blessing of Jesus himself, needs to enlarge its territories. The Roman Empire needs to fight its neighboring areas, to further the kingdom, and to kill infidels.
Does anyone else see any similarities between Constantine's empire, and our nation?
In the section "Christians and Warfare", in his chapter on worship, Lee Camp continues to challenge our widely held beliefs. He says:
- All extant Christian writings prior to the fourth century reject the practice of Christians killing in warfare. It is easy to understand why. Why would one want to fight and serve and empire that persecuted you? But the early Christians did not reject killing in warfare simply because it was not expedient to fight for an empire that sometimes persecuted the church. They rejected killing in warfare, in short, because it violated the way and teaching of Christ. Tertullian wondered, for example, "If we are enjoined to love our enemies, whom have we to hate? If injured we are forbidden to retaliate. Who then can suffer injury at our hands?" Clement of Alexandria proclaimed, "If you enroll as one of God's people, heaven is your country and God your lawgiver. And what are his laws?...Thou shalt not kill...Thou shalt love thy neighbor as himself. To him that strikes thee on the cheek, turn also the other."
- Faithfulness to the teachings of the Master is of first importance; everything else must find its place within the sphere of obedience to the Lord. But once the church assumes a position of privilege within society,once the church assumes a mantle of power and "responsibility" within the empire, such "faithfulness" is thought to be naive: "We must do whatever is necessary in order for the good to win." The "good guys" can now win, and the "good guys" should always win. Our task is now to do whatever is "necessary" in order to preserve and uphold the good. But such logic refuses to worship, to give full allegiance to Jesus as Lord. Disciples of Jesus do not kill their enemies because they believe the gospel. Our worship is why we don't kill our enemies. The Lamb of God, through suffering and death, has inaugurated the new aeon, in which offenses are forgiven, sins remitted, and war is learned no more.
Powerful stuff to think about. I guess in all of this, I should really tell you what I believe. I am not against the war in Iraq in theory. I understand that sometimes a nation needs to defend its citizens against terrorism and tyranny. What I am against is using Christianity as the impetus for war, for killing people. When preachers tell their constituents that the war in Iraq isn't just a physical battle, but a spiritual battle, I get mad. When God and patriotism get mixed together so that we truly believe that God is fighting "on our side", I get mad. When Christians are more concerned about the kingdoms of earth than the kingdom of heaven, I get irritated.
Hmm, I think a part three is coming.
Part one spoke about the end of World War II and how the killing of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians was justified in the eyes of most Americans at that time (and perhaps even today) because it signified the end of the war and the end of the deaths of "the good guys" by warfare. Most people would say that in this case, the end did justify the means.
But in whose eyes? Certainly not God's eyes. Although we may differentiate between the good guys (us) and the bad guys (Japan/Germany/North Korea/North Vietnam/Iraq), God doesn't. He doesn't group nations into one category of "good" and one category of "evil". I'm sure that in this war on Iraq, there have been plenty of non-evil civilians who have been caught in the crossfire and killed. I'm sure that there have been evil American soldiers that have been killed as well.
I appreciate Lee Camp's book Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a Rebellious World the deeper into the book I get. Although I was not expecting that a majority of this book would be about the difference between true discipleship (following the commands and teachings of Jesus) and what he calls "the Constantinian cataract" (the belief of American Christians that (1) the end justifies the means; (2) the way of Christ cannot really be relevant to matters of this world, and (3) it is our task to be in control, to run the world, to make things turn out right.) This hearkens back to the days when Constantine became emperor and established Christianity as the national religion - thus causing a majority of his constituents to become Christians in name only - for fear that they would be put to death if they didn't accept the new Christian religion. If we look at the three above beliefs, we can certainly see them in the time of Constantine.
"The end justifies the means" - it doesn't matter how you become a Christian, or what motives are behind it (fear of death, jumping on the bandwagon, promises of riches), as long as you become a Christian.
"the way of Christ cannot really be relevant to matters of this world" - Constantine had every solider in his army baptized, except for their fighting arm. Therefore, they could still fight battles and wars, yet the rest of them were totally Christian.
"it in our task to be in control, to run the world, to make things turn out right" - The Roman Empire, especially now that it has the blessing of Jesus himself, needs to enlarge its territories. The Roman Empire needs to fight its neighboring areas, to further the kingdom, and to kill infidels.
Does anyone else see any similarities between Constantine's empire, and our nation?
In the section "Christians and Warfare", in his chapter on worship, Lee Camp continues to challenge our widely held beliefs. He says:
- All extant Christian writings prior to the fourth century reject the practice of Christians killing in warfare. It is easy to understand why. Why would one want to fight and serve and empire that persecuted you? But the early Christians did not reject killing in warfare simply because it was not expedient to fight for an empire that sometimes persecuted the church. They rejected killing in warfare, in short, because it violated the way and teaching of Christ. Tertullian wondered, for example, "If we are enjoined to love our enemies, whom have we to hate? If injured we are forbidden to retaliate. Who then can suffer injury at our hands?" Clement of Alexandria proclaimed, "If you enroll as one of God's people, heaven is your country and God your lawgiver. And what are his laws?...Thou shalt not kill...Thou shalt love thy neighbor as himself. To him that strikes thee on the cheek, turn also the other."
- Faithfulness to the teachings of the Master is of first importance; everything else must find its place within the sphere of obedience to the Lord. But once the church assumes a position of privilege within society,once the church assumes a mantle of power and "responsibility" within the empire, such "faithfulness" is thought to be naive: "We must do whatever is necessary in order for the good to win." The "good guys" can now win, and the "good guys" should always win. Our task is now to do whatever is "necessary" in order to preserve and uphold the good. But such logic refuses to worship, to give full allegiance to Jesus as Lord. Disciples of Jesus do not kill their enemies because they believe the gospel. Our worship is why we don't kill our enemies. The Lamb of God, through suffering and death, has inaugurated the new aeon, in which offenses are forgiven, sins remitted, and war is learned no more.
Powerful stuff to think about. I guess in all of this, I should really tell you what I believe. I am not against the war in Iraq in theory. I understand that sometimes a nation needs to defend its citizens against terrorism and tyranny. What I am against is using Christianity as the impetus for war, for killing people. When preachers tell their constituents that the war in Iraq isn't just a physical battle, but a spiritual battle, I get mad. When God and patriotism get mixed together so that we truly believe that God is fighting "on our side", I get mad. When Christians are more concerned about the kingdoms of earth than the kingdom of heaven, I get irritated.
Hmm, I think a part three is coming.
Monday, August 22, 2005
Nothing Like Finding A Lost Treasure
Today I was driving by the YMCA to park by the soccer fields (which is our church property) and pray for Southwest and the building project and everything when I decided I needed some good music to listen to as well.
The problem is that I hate radio music and I only have a tape player in my Escort - which meant I had to go digging for some tapes in my trunk.
The good thing is that I found a tape that I thought I had lost a long time ago. It's by the band L.S.U., and the album is called "The Grape Prophet". What an absolutely incredible album. As for a secular artist this album sounds like, the closest I can think of is Jane's Addiction, back in their "Nothing's Shocking" days.
Anyway, the whole album is a story, an allegory about a man named Ellis who picks oranges in an orchard, when he notices that most of his fellow orange pickers have left the orchard because of someone named "The Grape Prophet". A lady orange picker encourages Ellis to check this prophet out - she tells him to "come into the fold for your future is ours and your mind, in time. Spin the callous wheel, don't let the coil spoil." He goes to a meeting, where the Grape Prophet is speaking English - and an interpreter is interpreting in English what the prophet is saying because the prophet speaks with strange words and hidden meanings. The prophet says that he "supped" with Jesus and told him secrets that he "just can't tell." Then some minor prophets encourage Ellis to come to Kansas City and check the Prophet out for himself. Ellis at the end of the album refuses and loses all of his picker friends, who go and join the Grape Prophet.
Michael Knott, who I consider one of the greatest lyricists and musicians of Christian music, wrote this album as an allegory of a situation that was taking place in The Vineyard Church in the late 1980's - early 1990's. A man from Kansas City came to the Vineyard in Anaheim (a church I visited several times when I was going to school in Southern California) and prophesied some of the same things that are on the album; notably that he had lunch with Jesus and Jesus told him all of these secrets. He encouraged people to leave Southern California and come to Kansas City to experience some of these secrets. A bunch of people left the church and joined this man (named Bob Jones) in Kansas City. I remember what a huge story this was at the time, and I wonder where the Kansas City Prophet is now.
The point behind this post - besides the fact that The Grape Prophet is an incredible album - is to always weigh what someone in the church says with what the Bible says. I'm thankful that Southwest has a senior minister who is well-grounded in Scripture and allows the Bible to be his guide to teaching; not allowing his teaching to be his guide to the Bible - which happens quite a bit in some churches. I worked for a senior minister once who would do the latter, and it was very frustrating to see people just take it in and accept what he said as the truth. The problem is that we are so biblically illiterate that we don't even know what the Bible does or doesn't say. So we trust people who are supposed to be in the Word daily to interpret Scripture for us. At some point we need to be able to feed ourselves with God's word and not be dependent on others to feed us - otherwise, we are like someone who prefers someone to chew our food for us and spit it back onto a plate for us to then digest. Yeah, that's a gross analogy, but it makes the point.
The problem is that I hate radio music and I only have a tape player in my Escort - which meant I had to go digging for some tapes in my trunk.
The good thing is that I found a tape that I thought I had lost a long time ago. It's by the band L.S.U., and the album is called "The Grape Prophet". What an absolutely incredible album. As for a secular artist this album sounds like, the closest I can think of is Jane's Addiction, back in their "Nothing's Shocking" days.
Anyway, the whole album is a story, an allegory about a man named Ellis who picks oranges in an orchard, when he notices that most of his fellow orange pickers have left the orchard because of someone named "The Grape Prophet". A lady orange picker encourages Ellis to check this prophet out - she tells him to "come into the fold for your future is ours and your mind, in time. Spin the callous wheel, don't let the coil spoil." He goes to a meeting, where the Grape Prophet is speaking English - and an interpreter is interpreting in English what the prophet is saying because the prophet speaks with strange words and hidden meanings. The prophet says that he "supped" with Jesus and told him secrets that he "just can't tell." Then some minor prophets encourage Ellis to come to Kansas City and check the Prophet out for himself. Ellis at the end of the album refuses and loses all of his picker friends, who go and join the Grape Prophet.
Michael Knott, who I consider one of the greatest lyricists and musicians of Christian music, wrote this album as an allegory of a situation that was taking place in The Vineyard Church in the late 1980's - early 1990's. A man from Kansas City came to the Vineyard in Anaheim (a church I visited several times when I was going to school in Southern California) and prophesied some of the same things that are on the album; notably that he had lunch with Jesus and Jesus told him all of these secrets. He encouraged people to leave Southern California and come to Kansas City to experience some of these secrets. A bunch of people left the church and joined this man (named Bob Jones) in Kansas City. I remember what a huge story this was at the time, and I wonder where the Kansas City Prophet is now.
The point behind this post - besides the fact that The Grape Prophet is an incredible album - is to always weigh what someone in the church says with what the Bible says. I'm thankful that Southwest has a senior minister who is well-grounded in Scripture and allows the Bible to be his guide to teaching; not allowing his teaching to be his guide to the Bible - which happens quite a bit in some churches. I worked for a senior minister once who would do the latter, and it was very frustrating to see people just take it in and accept what he said as the truth. The problem is that we are so biblically illiterate that we don't even know what the Bible does or doesn't say. So we trust people who are supposed to be in the Word daily to interpret Scripture for us. At some point we need to be able to feed ourselves with God's word and not be dependent on others to feed us - otherwise, we are like someone who prefers someone to chew our food for us and spit it back onto a plate for us to then digest. Yeah, that's a gross analogy, but it makes the point.
Friday, August 19, 2005
Guilty Pleasures List #1
I thought it would be fun for whoever reads this to get to know me a little better by finding out what some of my guilty pleasures are - you know, some of those things that even I'm surprised I like.
So, here we go:
#1: This CD. It's catchy, it's got some great guitar parts. I'm surprised these guys haven't made it as big as I think they should.
#2: This T.V. show. Debby and I discovered this show a month or so ago. We think it's funny. Although that one actor (you know who I mean) is a little over the top in every scene.
#3: This fruit. I'm not a big eater of fruits and vegetables, so I load up on this fruit. Yes, I do put sugar on top of it, leave me alone.
#4: This style of fiction. Douglas Coupland and Chuck Palahniuk are some recent authors of this literary style, although you can even trace it back to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, a great great book.
#5: This candy, specifically the Extreme Sour Belts. I just recently discovered this yummy candy. And the factory is in Cincinnati! (I see a visit coming soon!)
#6: This instrument. I play the acoustic guitar mostly, and really enjoy it - but if I had to choose any instrument to excel at, it would be this one. I even have one in my closet at home, but have never taken lessons. I don't even know how to put the strings on it.
#7: This musical duo. Yeah, they were cheesy, but the melodies and harmonies were fantastic. And her voice sounds like she's going to crawl out of the speakers every time I listen to one of their CDs.
#8: This style of music. Umm, actually no. I am just kidding.
Well, that's enough for now. I'm sure I'll think of some others for a post at a later time.
So, here we go:
#1: This CD. It's catchy, it's got some great guitar parts. I'm surprised these guys haven't made it as big as I think they should.
#2: This T.V. show. Debby and I discovered this show a month or so ago. We think it's funny. Although that one actor (you know who I mean) is a little over the top in every scene.
#3: This fruit. I'm not a big eater of fruits and vegetables, so I load up on this fruit. Yes, I do put sugar on top of it, leave me alone.
#4: This style of fiction. Douglas Coupland and Chuck Palahniuk are some recent authors of this literary style, although you can even trace it back to Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, a great great book.
#5: This candy, specifically the Extreme Sour Belts. I just recently discovered this yummy candy. And the factory is in Cincinnati! (I see a visit coming soon!)
#6: This instrument. I play the acoustic guitar mostly, and really enjoy it - but if I had to choose any instrument to excel at, it would be this one. I even have one in my closet at home, but have never taken lessons. I don't even know how to put the strings on it.
#7: This musical duo. Yeah, they were cheesy, but the melodies and harmonies were fantastic. And her voice sounds like she's going to crawl out of the speakers every time I listen to one of their CDs.
#8: This style of music. Umm, actually no. I am just kidding.
Well, that's enough for now. I'm sure I'll think of some others for a post at a later time.
For Such A Time As This
Today I was reading the selected passages from The One Year Bible Online, and today's reading in the OT was from the book of Esther. I was reminded how great of a story the book of Esther really is. A Hebrew girl just happens to be selected out of all the women in the kingdom to be a queen. Mordecai just happens to overhear a plot to assassinate the king. Haman just happens to think that the king is about to give him honor, when really it's for the one person he hates more than anyone, Mordecai. Esther just happens to be at the right place at the right time to save her people from extermination.
For such a time as this. A young Hebrew woman courageously goes before the king and in the face of death saves the Hebrews. An egotistical leader whose life revolves around himself attempts to destroy a nation due to his anger towards one person and ends up dying in shame and dishonor. We need stories like these because they remind us of several things: that each one of us at certain times in our lives make decisions that affect more people than we realize; that God works in all situations and in all of our stories to bring about His plans and His desires; that we can have everything a person could want (just like Haman) and yet live our lives in misery because of one person; that one person can make a difference; that challenging another Christian to get out of their comfort zone and do what God wants them to do has its rewards; and to throw a huge party when we see God's faithfulness acted out in the lives of His people.
With Esther fresh on my mind, I read through the NT selected reading, which was 1 Corinthians 12. This passage talks about the body of Christ and how each person is gifted with different gifts. Each part of the body has its own unique way of contributing to the whole body. That everyone usually desires at some point to be the most important part of the body, yet each part has its own great importance. It reminds me of a story I read recently about Winston Churchill. During World War II, there was a time where England was having a hard time keeping men working in the coal mines. Many wanted to give up their dirty, thankless jobs in the dangerous mines to join the military, where they would be revered and honored as heroes. Yet their work was critical to the success of the war. Without coal, England would be in trouble in the war.
"So the prime minister faced thousands of coal miners one day and told them of their importance to the war effort, how their role could make or break the goal of maintaining England's freedom. Churchill painted a picture of what it would be like when the war ended, of the grand parade that would honor the people who fought the war. First would come the sailors of the navy...next would come the best and brightest of Britain, the pilots of the Royal Air Force...following them would be the soldiers who had fought at Dunkirk. Then last of all would come the dust-covered men in miners' caps. And churchill indicated that someone from the crowd might say, 'And where were you during the critical days of the struggle?' And the voices of ten thousand men would respond, 'We were deep in the earth with our faces to the coal.'" (From "The 17 Indisputable Laws Of Teamwork" by John Maxwell)
The miners returned to their inglorious work, reminded of the huge role that they played in the war. If God could use Esther, whose gift was really just being a beautiful woman (a courageous beautiful woman at that), can't he use each one of us, no matter what our gifts are, if we are willing to be used "for such a time as this", to change the world?
Perhaps I can give you an impetus to use your gifts in a certain area. I was reminded as I was reading 1 Corinthians 12 of the plight of some of our fellow Christians in other parts of the world who are being persecuted for their faith. 1 Corinthians 12:26 says "when one member suffers, all suffer together." Last year, I had the opportunity to put together an entire service devoted to the persecuted church. As a result I read a ton of information from periodicals, internet web sites, and more. It broke my heart to see the amount of suffering and persecution Christians in other parts of the world face. Let's make a commitment this year to be at least in prayer for the persecuted church. If you want to do something more and use your gifts "for such a time as this" to help our fellow "body parts", a good place to start would be this website, which will give you some links and resources.
For such a time as this. A young Hebrew woman courageously goes before the king and in the face of death saves the Hebrews. An egotistical leader whose life revolves around himself attempts to destroy a nation due to his anger towards one person and ends up dying in shame and dishonor. We need stories like these because they remind us of several things: that each one of us at certain times in our lives make decisions that affect more people than we realize; that God works in all situations and in all of our stories to bring about His plans and His desires; that we can have everything a person could want (just like Haman) and yet live our lives in misery because of one person; that one person can make a difference; that challenging another Christian to get out of their comfort zone and do what God wants them to do has its rewards; and to throw a huge party when we see God's faithfulness acted out in the lives of His people.
With Esther fresh on my mind, I read through the NT selected reading, which was 1 Corinthians 12. This passage talks about the body of Christ and how each person is gifted with different gifts. Each part of the body has its own unique way of contributing to the whole body. That everyone usually desires at some point to be the most important part of the body, yet each part has its own great importance. It reminds me of a story I read recently about Winston Churchill. During World War II, there was a time where England was having a hard time keeping men working in the coal mines. Many wanted to give up their dirty, thankless jobs in the dangerous mines to join the military, where they would be revered and honored as heroes. Yet their work was critical to the success of the war. Without coal, England would be in trouble in the war.
"So the prime minister faced thousands of coal miners one day and told them of their importance to the war effort, how their role could make or break the goal of maintaining England's freedom. Churchill painted a picture of what it would be like when the war ended, of the grand parade that would honor the people who fought the war. First would come the sailors of the navy...next would come the best and brightest of Britain, the pilots of the Royal Air Force...following them would be the soldiers who had fought at Dunkirk. Then last of all would come the dust-covered men in miners' caps. And churchill indicated that someone from the crowd might say, 'And where were you during the critical days of the struggle?' And the voices of ten thousand men would respond, 'We were deep in the earth with our faces to the coal.'" (From "The 17 Indisputable Laws Of Teamwork" by John Maxwell)
The miners returned to their inglorious work, reminded of the huge role that they played in the war. If God could use Esther, whose gift was really just being a beautiful woman (a courageous beautiful woman at that), can't he use each one of us, no matter what our gifts are, if we are willing to be used "for such a time as this", to change the world?
Perhaps I can give you an impetus to use your gifts in a certain area. I was reminded as I was reading 1 Corinthians 12 of the plight of some of our fellow Christians in other parts of the world who are being persecuted for their faith. 1 Corinthians 12:26 says "when one member suffers, all suffer together." Last year, I had the opportunity to put together an entire service devoted to the persecuted church. As a result I read a ton of information from periodicals, internet web sites, and more. It broke my heart to see the amount of suffering and persecution Christians in other parts of the world face. Let's make a commitment this year to be at least in prayer for the persecuted church. If you want to do something more and use your gifts "for such a time as this" to help our fellow "body parts", a good place to start would be this website, which will give you some links and resources.
Thursday, August 18, 2005
Interview With Rob Bell
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
A Preliminary Thought Concerning The Story We Find Ourselves In
I may have set a new personal record in reading a book.
Last week, I received The Story We Find Ourselves In by Brian McClaren in the mail from good ol' Amazon.com, along with several other books I've been wanting to read (including the "story I find myself in" right now, Mere Discipleship). It's interesting how often a "coincidence" happens when I read a book - it seems that many a time I will end up reading a book that talks about either what I've been thinking a lot of, or something that happens to be dominating the news. Well, I read it in an hour or so.
My first couple thoughts when I was done were: "Wow, I read that fast" and "I bet he got in trouble for this one."
You may be surprised, but I didn't find one of the parts that most people have a hard time with in this book by McLaren hard to swallow at all. It's the part about God and evolution being compatible. As the battle starts raging in the courts and in the news concerning the allowance of "intelligent design" to be taught in public schools, I find myself actually siding with those who don't want intelligent design taught. In fact, there is really only one thing that I wish public school teachers would do concerning teaching evolution in science classes - it's that I wish that they would make sure everyone knows that evolution is still just a theory. Perhaps the best theory out there (who knows), but still, just a theory.
But I digress. I guess I'm just one of those people whose faith doesn't rest on whether God created everything in six days; on whether the earth is 6,000 or 6,000,000 years old; on whether God uses microevolution or macroevolution or no evolution. It's not a big deal to me. The only thing I ask in debating these issues is that someone uses common sense and logic in doing so. I remember throwing out a comment on a website once that I was a firm believer in the old earth theory, as opposed to the new earth (earth is 6,000 years old) theory. Lucky me, I got comments from some that I must not be a Christian, that Genesis explicitly shows that the earth is 6,000 years old, and that anyone who didn't believe God created the earth in six literal days was going straight to hell. I mostly ignored those cheap shots, however, and got involved in a debate with someone over the old earth/young earth battle. One of the questions I asked was: "if the earth is only 6,000 years old, why is it that there is so much evidence that it is much older than that? Why do even certain areas of our globe just even look much older than 6,000 years old?" The person's reply was "Because God just made the earth look that way." Why? Why would he make the earth look older than it really was? What is the point? This person couldn't give me an answer, probably called me a heretic, and left the debate.
I guess I just don't believe that having differing opinions on something that we won't be able to know definitely as a "fact" anyhow is that big of a deal. (the origin of life will never be able to be proven as a fact because it's not something that we can recreate in a laboratory or experiment.) It's just not something that's essential in what we believe. And as the mantra goes, in things that are non-essential, there is liberty - freedom to believe differently than what someone else believes.
I don't know how much flack McLaren got for making his character Neo a Christian and someone who believes in evolution. I do know that the next book of his I'm going to read - the third book in his A New Kind Of Christian trilogy - has gotten him into a lot of trouble. Should be interesting. I will post more thoughts about The Story We Find Ourselves In at a future date. I keep reminding myself that I started a couple of series of blog entries on other books - The Church On The Other Side and Authentic Faith - and need to get back to them soon.
Last week, I received The Story We Find Ourselves In by Brian McClaren in the mail from good ol' Amazon.com, along with several other books I've been wanting to read (including the "story I find myself in" right now, Mere Discipleship). It's interesting how often a "coincidence" happens when I read a book - it seems that many a time I will end up reading a book that talks about either what I've been thinking a lot of, or something that happens to be dominating the news. Well, I read it in an hour or so.
My first couple thoughts when I was done were: "Wow, I read that fast" and "I bet he got in trouble for this one."
You may be surprised, but I didn't find one of the parts that most people have a hard time with in this book by McLaren hard to swallow at all. It's the part about God and evolution being compatible. As the battle starts raging in the courts and in the news concerning the allowance of "intelligent design" to be taught in public schools, I find myself actually siding with those who don't want intelligent design taught. In fact, there is really only one thing that I wish public school teachers would do concerning teaching evolution in science classes - it's that I wish that they would make sure everyone knows that evolution is still just a theory. Perhaps the best theory out there (who knows), but still, just a theory.
But I digress. I guess I'm just one of those people whose faith doesn't rest on whether God created everything in six days; on whether the earth is 6,000 or 6,000,000 years old; on whether God uses microevolution or macroevolution or no evolution. It's not a big deal to me. The only thing I ask in debating these issues is that someone uses common sense and logic in doing so. I remember throwing out a comment on a website once that I was a firm believer in the old earth theory, as opposed to the new earth (earth is 6,000 years old) theory. Lucky me, I got comments from some that I must not be a Christian, that Genesis explicitly shows that the earth is 6,000 years old, and that anyone who didn't believe God created the earth in six literal days was going straight to hell. I mostly ignored those cheap shots, however, and got involved in a debate with someone over the old earth/young earth battle. One of the questions I asked was: "if the earth is only 6,000 years old, why is it that there is so much evidence that it is much older than that? Why do even certain areas of our globe just even look much older than 6,000 years old?" The person's reply was "Because God just made the earth look that way." Why? Why would he make the earth look older than it really was? What is the point? This person couldn't give me an answer, probably called me a heretic, and left the debate.
I guess I just don't believe that having differing opinions on something that we won't be able to know definitely as a "fact" anyhow is that big of a deal. (the origin of life will never be able to be proven as a fact because it's not something that we can recreate in a laboratory or experiment.) It's just not something that's essential in what we believe. And as the mantra goes, in things that are non-essential, there is liberty - freedom to believe differently than what someone else believes.
I don't know how much flack McLaren got for making his character Neo a Christian and someone who believes in evolution. I do know that the next book of his I'm going to read - the third book in his A New Kind Of Christian trilogy - has gotten him into a lot of trouble. Should be interesting. I will post more thoughts about The Story We Find Ourselves In at a future date. I keep reminding myself that I started a couple of series of blog entries on other books - The Church On The Other Side and Authentic Faith - and need to get back to them soon.
Hiroshima, Nagasake and How the End Doesn't Justify the Means (Part One)
This last week, the world commemorated (it certainly didn't celebrate) the 60th anniversary of the destruction of both Hiroshima and Nagasake by atomic bombs that helped usher in the end of World War II and that brought peace to the world after several years of bitter conflict.
Okay, let's stop there. Both conclusions are incorrect in my opinion.
First, there is a lot of speculation as to whether what took place on August 6 (Hiroshima) and August 9 (Nagasake) was really the impetus for Emperor Hirohito's decision to end the war. Most of his military leaders wanted to continue the war even after the bombs were dropped, decimating the two Japanese cities. Also, there is evidence that suggests that it was the Soviet Union's declaration of war on Japan August 9th, 1945 that persuaded the Japanese to surrender August 15th, not the Nagasake/Hiroshima devastation. The U.S. had already been dropping canisters of napalm onto Tokyo and other major Japanese cities, resulting in 100,000 to 200,000 deaths - roughly the same amount of deaths in the other two cities. In fact, it's precisely because Hiroshima and Nagasake were among the untouched cities that they were chosen (actually a different city than Nagasake was chosen, but because of cloud cover, they went on to Nagasake, lucky them) for destruction, because the destruction would be more evident on "virgin territories".
Secondly, we all know what happened after the end of World War II. The Soviet Union was found to be doing their own nuclear weapon testing. The fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties were periods of uncertainty and fear during which nuclear crisis after nuclear crisis was luckily averted. Even now, the fear is coming back (at least in my mind) because of North Korea and other developing countries who are claiming to be developing nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union has changed dramatically and we don't have much to fear from them, at least in a nuclear capacity. Those who have similar agendas as to what the Japanese had during World War II (the furthering of the empire took precedent over the lives of its citizens) are now the future of nuclear weapon crises. The detonation of the atomic bomb certainly has not brought peace.
It's interesting to research what the sentiments of American journalists and public were after World War II was over.
"Denunciations came from ideologically disparate sources. Commonweal, the liberal Roman Catholic magazine, found America's victory to be "defiled." The mainline Protestant journal Christian Century called Hiroshima and Nagasaki "America's atomic atrocity," asserting that "the United States has been morally defeated because she has been driven to use unconscionable methods of fighting." Even David Lawrence, the conservative editor of U.S. News, told his readers, "Surely we cannot be proud of what we have done. If we state our inner thoughts honestly, we are ashamed of it." In Time's cover story, James Agee was eloquent but circumspect: "The greatest and most terrible of wars ended, this week, in the echoes of an enormous event--an event so much more enormous that, relative to it, the war itself shrank to minor significance." Agee offered friends a markedly more brutal post-mortem, calling the bomb "the second worst thing to happen to the human race. The worst was Creation."
But Americans who condemned the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as immoral were a minority. Truman had the overwhelming support of the population, the polls soon showed. The bomb brought victory, and that was enough for most people. Truth to tell, many had vengeance in their hearts. "No tears of sympathy will be shed in America for the Japanese people," the Omaha World Herald predicted. "Had they possessed a comparable weapon at Pearl Harbor, would they have hesitated to use it?" As usual, the cartoonists cut closest to the quick. In an Atlanta Constitution cartoon, bodies flew every which way into the air above Hiroshima. "Land of the Rising Sons," said the caption. PM, a New York City tabloid, ran a cartoon panel that had nothing in it except a balloon containing the words "So sorry." A Fortune survey of attitudes toward the A-bomb found 22.7 percent agreeing that "we should have quickly used many more of them before Japan had a chance to surrender."" (From U.S. News and World Report, 07/31/95)
The question is: did the end justify the means? Because the war was stopped, preventing a possible invasion by U.S., English and Soviet forces of the Japanese islands, most likely creating an even bloodier mess of a war that had already claimed millions of lives, did that mean killing another hundred to two hundred thousand Japanese (mostly civilians) was a justifiable course of action?
And an even bigger question related to today's time: if it isn't justifiable back then, is it justifiable for the U.S. to play "Team America World Police" in places like Iraq, killing people in order to "win the war" on terrorism and evil (which I said in my best Austin Powers voice)? We'll look at that tomorrow.
Okay, let's stop there. Both conclusions are incorrect in my opinion.
First, there is a lot of speculation as to whether what took place on August 6 (Hiroshima) and August 9 (Nagasake) was really the impetus for Emperor Hirohito's decision to end the war. Most of his military leaders wanted to continue the war even after the bombs were dropped, decimating the two Japanese cities. Also, there is evidence that suggests that it was the Soviet Union's declaration of war on Japan August 9th, 1945 that persuaded the Japanese to surrender August 15th, not the Nagasake/Hiroshima devastation. The U.S. had already been dropping canisters of napalm onto Tokyo and other major Japanese cities, resulting in 100,000 to 200,000 deaths - roughly the same amount of deaths in the other two cities. In fact, it's precisely because Hiroshima and Nagasake were among the untouched cities that they were chosen (actually a different city than Nagasake was chosen, but because of cloud cover, they went on to Nagasake, lucky them) for destruction, because the destruction would be more evident on "virgin territories".
Secondly, we all know what happened after the end of World War II. The Soviet Union was found to be doing their own nuclear weapon testing. The fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties were periods of uncertainty and fear during which nuclear crisis after nuclear crisis was luckily averted. Even now, the fear is coming back (at least in my mind) because of North Korea and other developing countries who are claiming to be developing nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union has changed dramatically and we don't have much to fear from them, at least in a nuclear capacity. Those who have similar agendas as to what the Japanese had during World War II (the furthering of the empire took precedent over the lives of its citizens) are now the future of nuclear weapon crises. The detonation of the atomic bomb certainly has not brought peace.
It's interesting to research what the sentiments of American journalists and public were after World War II was over.
"Denunciations came from ideologically disparate sources. Commonweal, the liberal Roman Catholic magazine, found America's victory to be "defiled." The mainline Protestant journal Christian Century called Hiroshima and Nagasaki "America's atomic atrocity," asserting that "the United States has been morally defeated because she has been driven to use unconscionable methods of fighting." Even David Lawrence, the conservative editor of U.S. News, told his readers, "Surely we cannot be proud of what we have done. If we state our inner thoughts honestly, we are ashamed of it." In Time's cover story, James Agee was eloquent but circumspect: "The greatest and most terrible of wars ended, this week, in the echoes of an enormous event--an event so much more enormous that, relative to it, the war itself shrank to minor significance." Agee offered friends a markedly more brutal post-mortem, calling the bomb "the second worst thing to happen to the human race. The worst was Creation."
But Americans who condemned the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as immoral were a minority. Truman had the overwhelming support of the population, the polls soon showed. The bomb brought victory, and that was enough for most people. Truth to tell, many had vengeance in their hearts. "No tears of sympathy will be shed in America for the Japanese people," the Omaha World Herald predicted. "Had they possessed a comparable weapon at Pearl Harbor, would they have hesitated to use it?" As usual, the cartoonists cut closest to the quick. In an Atlanta Constitution cartoon, bodies flew every which way into the air above Hiroshima. "Land of the Rising Sons," said the caption. PM, a New York City tabloid, ran a cartoon panel that had nothing in it except a balloon containing the words "So sorry." A Fortune survey of attitudes toward the A-bomb found 22.7 percent agreeing that "we should have quickly used many more of them before Japan had a chance to surrender."" (From U.S. News and World Report, 07/31/95)
The question is: did the end justify the means? Because the war was stopped, preventing a possible invasion by U.S., English and Soviet forces of the Japanese islands, most likely creating an even bloodier mess of a war that had already claimed millions of lives, did that mean killing another hundred to two hundred thousand Japanese (mostly civilians) was a justifiable course of action?
And an even bigger question related to today's time: if it isn't justifiable back then, is it justifiable for the U.S. to play "Team America World Police" in places like Iraq, killing people in order to "win the war" on terrorism and evil (which I said in my best Austin Powers voice)? We'll look at that tomorrow.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
God Shed His Grace On Thee
"The apostasy from Christianity will not come about by everybody openly renouncing Christianity; no, but slyly, cunningly, by everybody assuming the name of being Christian."
These words were written by Soren Kierkegaard, a Christian author and philosopher, somewhere around 1950. Who would have known that it wasn't in his time that this "prophecy" would be fulfilled, but that it would esssentially come to fruition in the first decade of the 21st century?
The United States of America is supposedly becoming more and more Christian. When you look at polls, you see that somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of people living in the U.S. consider themselves Christians. We may look at that information and get excited about the results of our evangelism efforts - "Look at us! Our nation is becoming a Christian nation! More and more people are becoming Christians, so we must be doing something right."
In his fantastic essay in Harper's Magazine (entitled "The Christian Paradox: How a Faithful Nation Gets Jesus Wrong"), Bill McKibben doesn't argue with the poll, but disagrees with the outcome. Other polls taken have shown that our "Christian" nation may be filled with name-only Christians:
- only 40% of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, only 50% can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels.
- 12% of Americans believe that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife.
- 75% of Americans believe that the Bible teaches that "God helps those who help themselves."
And this is where McKibben goes off. He provides a very convincing argument that the above statement is truly what Americans live out in their lives - a statement which was written by Benjamin Franklin - and a statement that conveys the state of American's current "individualistic politics and culture." McKibben goes on to say that not only is the statement "God helps those who help themselves" not blblical, it is in fact counter-biblical, and that "few ideas could be further from the gospel message."
The paradox that he demonstrates in his essay is this: America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developing nations and yet the least Christian in its behavior.
"America is a place saturated in Christian identity. But is it Christian? Christ was pretty specific about what he had in mind of his followers. What if we chose some simple criterion - say, giving aid to the poorest people - as a reasonable proxy for Christian behavior?"
He goes on to show that in 2004, as a share of our economy, we rank second to last, after Italy, among developed countries in government foreign aid.
"By pretty much any measure of caring for the least among us you want to propose - childhood nutrition, infant mortality, access to preschool - we come in nearly last among the rich nations, and often by a wide margin."
He goes on to say this:
"This Christian nation also tends to make presonal as opposed to political, choices that the Bible would seem to frown upon.
- we are the most violent rich nation on earth, with a murder rate 4 to 5 times that of our European peers.
- our prison population is 6 to 7 times higher than Europe.
- we are the only Western democracy left that executes its citizens, mostly in statest where Christianity is theoretically the strongest (like Texas - my two cents here).
- our marriages end in divorce 50 percent of the time.
- teenage pregnancy is at the top of the charts."
He goes on to demonstrate what he (and I) believes is the explanation - that most Americans have replace the Christianity of the Bible, with its call for deep sharing and personal sacrifice, with a competing creed - one that is individualistic, consumeristic, and ends up being a kind of soft-focus, comfortable, suburban faith.
One of the best parts of this article for me was the example he gives of a church that demonstrates this individualistic creed - because the church he describes was located within the same community that I lived in when I was in Arizona, a church that I attended a couple of times to see what they were like, since they were booming in attendance. He also gives Joel Osteen, the popular minister (and author, gag) of Lakewood Church, a megachurch in the city of Houston. Osteen's book, Your Best Life Now, has been described as "a treatise on how to get God to serve the demands of self-centered individuals." (Ironically, the youth minister of the church I talked about above has Osteen's book as his favorite book. Hmmm.)
McKibben doesn't give these examples to show that all of this is bad in itself, obviously some of the churches in America are doing good things, even megachurches, it's just that we "somehow manage to ignore Jesus' radical and demanding focus on others, not ourselves."
I'm reading a great book right now, recommended in John's blog, titled Mere Discipleship. Although sometimes this book gets weighed down in intellectual trains of thought (chapters 3 through 5 come to mind), the author makes a convincing argument that American Christianity has diverted from the narrow road of discipleship to the wide road of individualism, capitalism, and especially nationalism. (His section where he talks about Christians and war is incredible.)
I honestly believe that the American Christianity landslide of individualism, comfortable faith, and consumerism has gained too much momentum to stop it. Although I see the ideology of the emerging church to be refreshing, biblical and hard-hitting, I just don't see it making a huge dent in what's already happened. I firmly believe that the only way that the church will turn back to following the actual ways and teachings of Jesus will be for an intense persecution of Christianity in America to happen. Then we will see who really is on "God's side". Then we will truly find out who wants to be a disciple of Jesus, to take up his cross and daily follow him, even in the face of persecution, torture and even death. I haven't gone so far as to pray for persecution to happen to us in this country, but perhaps its high time to do just that.
I like what Roger had to say about America when we were talking one day about whether it was appropriate to do a certain patriotic song or not. He said something to the effect of: "Why do we keep saying 'God bless America?' Hasn't God blessed us enough? Why don't we say 'God bless Kenya' or 'God bless China' or a country that actually needs to be blessed?"
He had a great point. God has blessed this country, and we've gorged ourselves on His blessing. What we need to do now is to share His blessing with those who actually need it.
These words were written by Soren Kierkegaard, a Christian author and philosopher, somewhere around 1950. Who would have known that it wasn't in his time that this "prophecy" would be fulfilled, but that it would esssentially come to fruition in the first decade of the 21st century?
The United States of America is supposedly becoming more and more Christian. When you look at polls, you see that somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of people living in the U.S. consider themselves Christians. We may look at that information and get excited about the results of our evangelism efforts - "Look at us! Our nation is becoming a Christian nation! More and more people are becoming Christians, so we must be doing something right."
In his fantastic essay in Harper's Magazine (entitled "The Christian Paradox: How a Faithful Nation Gets Jesus Wrong"), Bill McKibben doesn't argue with the poll, but disagrees with the outcome. Other polls taken have shown that our "Christian" nation may be filled with name-only Christians:
- only 40% of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments, only 50% can cite any of the four authors of the Gospels.
- 12% of Americans believe that Joan of Arc was Noah's wife.
- 75% of Americans believe that the Bible teaches that "God helps those who help themselves."
And this is where McKibben goes off. He provides a very convincing argument that the above statement is truly what Americans live out in their lives - a statement which was written by Benjamin Franklin - and a statement that conveys the state of American's current "individualistic politics and culture." McKibben goes on to say that not only is the statement "God helps those who help themselves" not blblical, it is in fact counter-biblical, and that "few ideas could be further from the gospel message."
The paradox that he demonstrates in his essay is this: America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developing nations and yet the least Christian in its behavior.
"America is a place saturated in Christian identity. But is it Christian? Christ was pretty specific about what he had in mind of his followers. What if we chose some simple criterion - say, giving aid to the poorest people - as a reasonable proxy for Christian behavior?"
He goes on to show that in 2004, as a share of our economy, we rank second to last, after Italy, among developed countries in government foreign aid.
"By pretty much any measure of caring for the least among us you want to propose - childhood nutrition, infant mortality, access to preschool - we come in nearly last among the rich nations, and often by a wide margin."
He goes on to say this:
"This Christian nation also tends to make presonal as opposed to political, choices that the Bible would seem to frown upon.
- we are the most violent rich nation on earth, with a murder rate 4 to 5 times that of our European peers.
- our prison population is 6 to 7 times higher than Europe.
- we are the only Western democracy left that executes its citizens, mostly in statest where Christianity is theoretically the strongest (like Texas - my two cents here).
- our marriages end in divorce 50 percent of the time.
- teenage pregnancy is at the top of the charts."
He goes on to demonstrate what he (and I) believes is the explanation - that most Americans have replace the Christianity of the Bible, with its call for deep sharing and personal sacrifice, with a competing creed - one that is individualistic, consumeristic, and ends up being a kind of soft-focus, comfortable, suburban faith.
One of the best parts of this article for me was the example he gives of a church that demonstrates this individualistic creed - because the church he describes was located within the same community that I lived in when I was in Arizona, a church that I attended a couple of times to see what they were like, since they were booming in attendance. He also gives Joel Osteen, the popular minister (and author, gag) of Lakewood Church, a megachurch in the city of Houston. Osteen's book, Your Best Life Now, has been described as "a treatise on how to get God to serve the demands of self-centered individuals." (Ironically, the youth minister of the church I talked about above has Osteen's book as his favorite book. Hmmm.)
McKibben doesn't give these examples to show that all of this is bad in itself, obviously some of the churches in America are doing good things, even megachurches, it's just that we "somehow manage to ignore Jesus' radical and demanding focus on others, not ourselves."
I'm reading a great book right now, recommended in John's blog, titled Mere Discipleship. Although sometimes this book gets weighed down in intellectual trains of thought (chapters 3 through 5 come to mind), the author makes a convincing argument that American Christianity has diverted from the narrow road of discipleship to the wide road of individualism, capitalism, and especially nationalism. (His section where he talks about Christians and war is incredible.)
I honestly believe that the American Christianity landslide of individualism, comfortable faith, and consumerism has gained too much momentum to stop it. Although I see the ideology of the emerging church to be refreshing, biblical and hard-hitting, I just don't see it making a huge dent in what's already happened. I firmly believe that the only way that the church will turn back to following the actual ways and teachings of Jesus will be for an intense persecution of Christianity in America to happen. Then we will see who really is on "God's side". Then we will truly find out who wants to be a disciple of Jesus, to take up his cross and daily follow him, even in the face of persecution, torture and even death. I haven't gone so far as to pray for persecution to happen to us in this country, but perhaps its high time to do just that.
I like what Roger had to say about America when we were talking one day about whether it was appropriate to do a certain patriotic song or not. He said something to the effect of: "Why do we keep saying 'God bless America?' Hasn't God blessed us enough? Why don't we say 'God bless Kenya' or 'God bless China' or a country that actually needs to be blessed?"
He had a great point. God has blessed this country, and we've gorged ourselves on His blessing. What we need to do now is to share His blessing with those who actually need it.
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Stop, Please Just Stop
Please stop mixing politics and Christianity. Just stop now, please.
Justice Sunday Draws Thousands To Church
Justice Sunday Draws Thousands To Church
Thursday, August 11, 2005
An Inspiration
Jeremy Bloom is an inspiration to me - not only because he's a skier (I did some ski instructing earlier in life), not only because he's from Colorado, not only because he's a Broncos fan and played at the University of Colorado, but because he's someone who when they are told no, say yes anyway and prove the naysayers wrong.
I hope that in my life I will be like Jeremy Bloom.
Jeremy Bloom's Next Hurdle - The NFL
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Worship Is A Verb
This Sunday, I will be preaching my first message at Southwest Church. I thought it would be a good idea to do it on worship, since I am the worship arts minister. I've entitled it "Worship Is A Verb". The first half of my message is going to focus on the different words for worship in the Bible and what they signify. What I want everyone to get out of this part of my message is that worship is an action - it's something that we pursue actively, not passively (as something that just happens to us). The second part of my message will be several different characteristics of "VERB"-al worship.
Anyway, thought I'd just let everyone know what I'm planning on doing for my message.
Left Behind: The Roasting
Thanks to Zach Lind, the drummer of Jimmy Eat World, I found an interesting blog called Slacktivist. I warn you - if you really like George W. Bush, this blog might make you mad.
But that's not the reason I'm praising this blog. I have loved reading this blog for the last week or so because the author of it is going through the book Left Behind and explaining the incredible amount of inconsistencies, made-up "facts", etc. that are contained in this book. Today, he is making the case that the Israel that is spoken of in Left Behind is non-existent. Geographical errors in this book are immense. There are places mentioned in Left Behind that aren't even around anymore in today's Israel. It's almost like LaHaye and Jenkins turned their Bibles to the back where the maps are located and based their rendition of Israel on these maps.
I have to admit that I started out as a Left Behind fan. The first couple of books intrigued me in a big way. But then I started realizing that not only do these books contain a fair amount of faulty theology, they are also poorly written. After the third book, I still continued to read them, but with waning enthusiasm until finally I repented and stopped reading them. And as the blog above shows, I'm pretty confident in my assessment of Left Behind.
And if anyone tells me that they thought the movie was good, I'll probably find the nearest screwdriver and drive it into my brain.
But that's not the reason I'm praising this blog. I have loved reading this blog for the last week or so because the author of it is going through the book Left Behind and explaining the incredible amount of inconsistencies, made-up "facts", etc. that are contained in this book. Today, he is making the case that the Israel that is spoken of in Left Behind is non-existent. Geographical errors in this book are immense. There are places mentioned in Left Behind that aren't even around anymore in today's Israel. It's almost like LaHaye and Jenkins turned their Bibles to the back where the maps are located and based their rendition of Israel on these maps.
I have to admit that I started out as a Left Behind fan. The first couple of books intrigued me in a big way. But then I started realizing that not only do these books contain a fair amount of faulty theology, they are also poorly written. After the third book, I still continued to read them, but with waning enthusiasm until finally I repented and stopped reading them. And as the blog above shows, I'm pretty confident in my assessment of Left Behind.
And if anyone tells me that they thought the movie was good, I'll probably find the nearest screwdriver and drive it into my brain.
Friday, August 05, 2005
Secret, Secret, I've Got A Secret
I found this really, really interesting website.
It's called PostSecret, and it's a website for people who want to reveal a secret...anonymously. All you have to do is create a postcard with your secret on it, and send it to the person who runs the site (it's actually a blog), and he sifts through all of the postcards he receives, and posts the "best" ones.
It's a fascinating website. It's like an art exhibit of people releasing their guilt, shame, and even sometimes joy as they reveal their secret. Of course, it's only a baby step because they really aren't revealing it to anyone except the blogger, but it's still interesting.
So far, my favorite one is shown up above. I can't imagine having something haunt you for over 60 years, I really hope this person has felt some of their shame disappear as a result of doing this.
We all have secrets. Whether they be small or large, we have secrets. And we hide secrets from those who know us best and love us anyway - sometimes successfully, sometimes not so successfully. Which reminds me of a story about a drunk husband who snuck up the stairs quietly. He looked in the bathroom mirror and bandaged the bumps and bruises he’d received in a fight earlier that night. He then proceeded to climb into bed, smiling at the thought that he’d pulled one over on his wife. When morning came, he opened his eyes and there stood his wife. “You were drunk last night weren’t you!” “No, honey.” “Well, if you weren’t, then who put all the band-aids on the bathroom mirror?”
The church should be the place where we are the most authentic, honest and open about who we are - our successes, our failures, our struggles, our joys - yet the church is where we feel the least authentic. It's one of those catch-22's: we want everyone around us to accept us for who we are, yet if we reveal who we are, we are afraid that no one would accept us. So we put on our masks and our smiles and pretend that we have our lives put together perfectly. The sad thing is that we know that everyone is acting just like us, yet we still pretend that we're perfect.
I love that line from The Count Of Monte Cristo (a great movie, by the way), where Jim Caviezel is talking to Richard Harris about Harris' past, and Harris says "I'm a priest, not a saint." Henri Nouwen believes that people minister to others best out of their weaknesses rather than trying to convince everyone of their strengths. But again, how can that happen in the church today? Can we really change into a community of people who are authentic, honest and open with who they are as people?
I think the first step is realizing that we all fail at some point in our lives and all have struggled with temptations. When we realize this, we will cease the judgmental spirit that seems to be prevalent in Christians these days.
The musician Sufjan Stevens may be the only person to ever write an acoustic folk song about a serial killer, but write it he did. On his amazing new album "Illinois", there is a song entitled John Wayne Gacy, Jr. Stevens writes:
His neighbors they adored him for his humor and his conversation
Look underneath the house there
Find the few living things rotting fast in their sleep of the dead
If you know the story of John Wayne Gacy, Jr., you know what he's talking about. Yecchh. But then, Stevens goes on:
But in my best behavior
I am really just like Him
Look beneath the floorboards for the secrets I have hid
If our focus is on Christ, and if we realize that he is the only one who has successfully avoided sin in the face of temptation, maybe we should cut our friends, neighbors, family members, and fellow church attenders some slack when it comes to struggling. If we did that, perhaps we would be able to be more open and honest with each other, and we wouldn't need websites like PostSecret to anonymously post our struggles, thoughts, and secrets.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
Well, It Was Fun While It Lasted...
Bye Bye Forsberg
The hardest thing about following a professional sports team fanatically, as I have the Colorado Avalanche, is that in the era of free agency, you always lose the players you love.
For me, the hardest blow still is when Chris Drury was traded to the Calgary Flames for players the Avalanche don't even have anymore (he now plays for the Buffalo Sabres). I have a signed Chris Drury puck. I have video clips downloaded on my computer of some of the amazing plays that Drury made while an Avalanche player. And then he was traded.
And now Forsberg. How could you not find room under the new salary cap to keep the best player in the NHL (in my opinion, as well as many other hockey fans)?
It's going to be tough this year. I'm excited that hockey is back, but the Avalanche team I love will have different faces on it. And not Forsberg's. Or Adam Foote's, for that matter.
At least Forsberg didn't go to Vancouver. Or Detroit.
And The Other Side Of Noelle...
And here's another picture to show Noelle's "other side".
The face she is making is what we call a wombat face. It's a long story, but it's basically from a kids' book. The stuff all over her are berries from the waffles her mom made.
Picture of the Day
My father-in-law took this picture of Noelle, and I love it, so I'm posting it here. :^)
Tuesday, August 02, 2005
Challenge Of The Month: August 2005
Okay, so here's a new thing for my journal.
Each month I'm going to challenge myself to do something different, change in a certain way, etc. I am posting each month's challenge here because then you guys have the opportunity to hold me accountable and ask me how I'm doing with the challenge.
This month's challenge is starting me off on a difficult track.
Because I really like Frappuccinos. Especially in the summer.
My challenge for this month is to take the money I would normally spend on Frappuccinos and give it someone who really needs the money. Because I really don't need Starbucks. I might say I do, and by day 15 of August I may be screaming that I do, but I really don't.
Because I've been thinking a lot about how a lot of people around the world earn as much money or less per day as the cost of my favorite Starbucks drink. And I think a lot about how much money I spend on good food (like the Barbecue place mentioned below), only to have it leave me less than a day later. It all looks the same coming out, if you don't mind me being gross. So why do I spend so much money on these kind of things?
I don't know if after the month is over if I will stay away from Starbucks. Something tells me I won't. The problem is that Starbucks is such a great place to meet with people and meet new people. It just feels like a great place to be.
Today is day 2, and usually on Tuesdays I go to Barnes and Noble by the Dayton Mall, write out my weekly to do list, read a few magazines, browse a few books, and drink a frappuccino. Today I was tempted to stick with the routine. But I ended up getting a bottle of lemonade instead. Which still costs money, but definitely not as much.
So if you could all be praying for me - pray for perseverance in those times when I think I need a frappuccino, as well as pray that God would reveal where this money should go to - I would greatly appreciate it!
Each month I'm going to challenge myself to do something different, change in a certain way, etc. I am posting each month's challenge here because then you guys have the opportunity to hold me accountable and ask me how I'm doing with the challenge.
This month's challenge is starting me off on a difficult track.
Because I really like Frappuccinos. Especially in the summer.
My challenge for this month is to take the money I would normally spend on Frappuccinos and give it someone who really needs the money. Because I really don't need Starbucks. I might say I do, and by day 15 of August I may be screaming that I do, but I really don't.
Because I've been thinking a lot about how a lot of people around the world earn as much money or less per day as the cost of my favorite Starbucks drink. And I think a lot about how much money I spend on good food (like the Barbecue place mentioned below), only to have it leave me less than a day later. It all looks the same coming out, if you don't mind me being gross. So why do I spend so much money on these kind of things?
I don't know if after the month is over if I will stay away from Starbucks. Something tells me I won't. The problem is that Starbucks is such a great place to meet with people and meet new people. It just feels like a great place to be.
Today is day 2, and usually on Tuesdays I go to Barnes and Noble by the Dayton Mall, write out my weekly to do list, read a few magazines, browse a few books, and drink a frappuccino. Today I was tempted to stick with the routine. But I ended up getting a bottle of lemonade instead. Which still costs money, but definitely not as much.
So if you could all be praying for me - pray for perseverance in those times when I think I need a frappuccino, as well as pray that God would reveal where this money should go to - I would greatly appreciate it!
A Tale Of Two Elliot(t)s
I've been thinking about two deaths lately. I don't know how I started thinking about them this week - perhaps it's the funeral I went to last week. Perhaps it was from talking to a lady in a store recently who had heard 15 minutes before Debby, Noelle and I walked in that her pastor had died that morning, and that the week before she had lost a cousin to death. (Beverly, I am still praying for you.)
Anyway, these two deaths are really only connected by one thing - both of their names contain the name "Elliot(t)".
The first death I've been thinking about is the death of Elliott Smith. If you don't know who he is (was), he was an independent artist who is probably most known for writing and performing all the songs on the "Good Will Hunting" movie soundtrack. He was nominated for an Oscar for one of the songs from that movie.
I listen to his music quite a bit; it's mostly acoustic, haunting, honest and powerful. Two of his albums - Either/Or and his posthumous release From A Basement On A Hill have been staples of my listening enjoyment(?) for awhile now.
Elliott Smith was a man who had many demons, unfortunately. He became more and more moody and brooding with each release. He had a run-in with the law at a Flaming Lips/Beck concert and was in and out of rehab for drug use.
On October 21, 2003, Elliott Smith took his own life. There are some suicides by famous people that cause people to wonder if they really meant to kill themselves; perhaps it was an accident (overdoses being some of the main gossip fodder for these thoughts). There is no question that Smith meant to kill himself; he stabbed himself in the chest with a knife. Unfortunately, he never could come to terms with the demons and his past.
The other death I've been thinking about is the death of Jim Elliot. I'm reading his Journals right now - a book I haven't read since college. If you've ever wanted to be a missionary (I flirted with the idea in college), you know the story of Jim Elliot. He attended Wheaton College in Illinois, and married a woman named Elisabeth Howard in Quito, Equador. He knew that God was calling him to reach a certain violent Indian tribe - so he and four other missionaries began to fly in to the area, delivering packages and food and trying to communicate with this tribe.
On January 8, 1956, Elliot's body, as well as the bodies of his fellow missionaries were found floating in the river.
If you've heard this story, you also have heard the amazing story that the wives of these missionaries went in and ended up converting most of this violent tribe. An amazing story, most definitely.
When I think about these two deaths, I guess I do see other similarities. Both men died as young men, in the prime of their lives. Both lives were taken tragically, one taken by himself, the other by murderous tribesmen. Both leave legacies, however one legacy shines greater - through the death of Jim Elliot, thousands of Christians have been inspired to become missionaries, battling disease, persecution, jungle heat and more. Elliott Smith's music is great and all, but hopefully his death will not inspire anyone to live their lives like his.
Anyway, these two deaths are really only connected by one thing - both of their names contain the name "Elliot(t)".
The first death I've been thinking about is the death of Elliott Smith. If you don't know who he is (was), he was an independent artist who is probably most known for writing and performing all the songs on the "Good Will Hunting" movie soundtrack. He was nominated for an Oscar for one of the songs from that movie.
I listen to his music quite a bit; it's mostly acoustic, haunting, honest and powerful. Two of his albums - Either/Or and his posthumous release From A Basement On A Hill have been staples of my listening enjoyment(?) for awhile now.
Elliott Smith was a man who had many demons, unfortunately. He became more and more moody and brooding with each release. He had a run-in with the law at a Flaming Lips/Beck concert and was in and out of rehab for drug use.
On October 21, 2003, Elliott Smith took his own life. There are some suicides by famous people that cause people to wonder if they really meant to kill themselves; perhaps it was an accident (overdoses being some of the main gossip fodder for these thoughts). There is no question that Smith meant to kill himself; he stabbed himself in the chest with a knife. Unfortunately, he never could come to terms with the demons and his past.
The other death I've been thinking about is the death of Jim Elliot. I'm reading his Journals right now - a book I haven't read since college. If you've ever wanted to be a missionary (I flirted with the idea in college), you know the story of Jim Elliot. He attended Wheaton College in Illinois, and married a woman named Elisabeth Howard in Quito, Equador. He knew that God was calling him to reach a certain violent Indian tribe - so he and four other missionaries began to fly in to the area, delivering packages and food and trying to communicate with this tribe.
On January 8, 1956, Elliot's body, as well as the bodies of his fellow missionaries were found floating in the river.
If you've heard this story, you also have heard the amazing story that the wives of these missionaries went in and ended up converting most of this violent tribe. An amazing story, most definitely.
When I think about these two deaths, I guess I do see other similarities. Both men died as young men, in the prime of their lives. Both lives were taken tragically, one taken by himself, the other by murderous tribesmen. Both leave legacies, however one legacy shines greater - through the death of Jim Elliot, thousands of Christians have been inspired to become missionaries, battling disease, persecution, jungle heat and more. Elliott Smith's music is great and all, but hopefully his death will not inspire anyone to live their lives like his.
Monday, August 01, 2005
My New Favorite Eatery
I'm one of those kind of people that when I move to a new town, I want to find a place "native" to the area to eat at - somewhere that embodies the town, a place where the locals go to eat and hang out at.
I found one a couple of days ago.
It's called "City Barbecue", and there are several good things about this place.
1. It has really good barbecue.
2. It has a signed jersey of Kirk Herbstreit, who is an ESPN college football analyst, one of the best in my opinion (I guess he went to Ohio State or something).
3. They serve Shiner Bock.
4. Did I mention the barbecue? It's really good.
5. It's right next door to my new favorite ice cream place, Graeters.
6. It's located at downtown Centerville, which is a neat place to visit.
7. It's only about 5 minutes away from a Starbucks.
Anyway, we took Debby's parents there today, and they loved it too. Of course right now, they are re-paving the roads in that area, so it takes longer to get there, but the wait is definitely worth it.
I found one a couple of days ago.
It's called "City Barbecue", and there are several good things about this place.
1. It has really good barbecue.
2. It has a signed jersey of Kirk Herbstreit, who is an ESPN college football analyst, one of the best in my opinion (I guess he went to Ohio State or something).
3. They serve Shiner Bock.
4. Did I mention the barbecue? It's really good.
5. It's right next door to my new favorite ice cream place, Graeters.
6. It's located at downtown Centerville, which is a neat place to visit.
7. It's only about 5 minutes away from a Starbucks.
Anyway, we took Debby's parents there today, and they loved it too. Of course right now, they are re-paving the roads in that area, so it takes longer to get there, but the wait is definitely worth it.
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