Journeying Home

I was glancing at a Christian management (I do NOT like that phrase) magazine and a title on the cover caught my eye, “Doing God’s Work at 100 mph — On Empty.” Two thoughts immediately flashed in my mind. The first one was, “That’s just wrong!” Anyone trying to “do God’s work” at such high intensity with such drained resources is doing something wrong. I wish someone had the guts to call that kind of stuff what it really is — Sin!

The second thought was, “Okay, I want to see what they have to say.” Trying to give the author the benefit of the doubt, I decided to read the article to see if they discouraged the folly of such a lifestyle and helped managers reassess not only the practical “how,” but the deeper “why” that leads to such burnout.

Let me just say, I was terribly disappointed.

The article was a roundtable between three Christians who were “seasoned managers.” They shared “their very best practices, practical tips and timeless insights.” Here’s their “best” in a nutshell:

1. Get in balance by realizing that God has called us to use our giftedness to do the things he’s appointed us to do.

2. Practice the four D’s — Dump what you can, Delegate to other people, Defer what can wait, and Do what’s left.

3. Meet with a friend twice a month for fellowship and accountability.

4. Examine why we say “Yes” to certain activities and opportunities.

5. Engage in a creative hobby.

I have to be honest. I’m not very familiar with this magazine and the article was pretty short. But this was a “Christian Management” (did I mention how I don’t like that phrase?) magazine and I was hoping for more. Christians, who are managers by occupation, are to embody, demonstrate and announce God’s presence and power in their world as much as anyone else.

How is that possible if the best advice from Christians to other Christians in the management profession is to simply practice what can be found in pretty much any other management magazine? How are these Christians supposed to be different than their non-Christian counterparts?

There was no mention of spiritual formation, lifestyle changes, or spiritual exercises. The article simply assumed that busyness and depletion were the standard fare for the Christian manager. How sad.

Now compare that advice to what Jesus says in Matthew 11:

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Now that’s good advice, the kind that will actually make a difference in the world!

Alan posted about this show, One Punk Under God. The first episode is currently free to download at the iTunes Store.

It’s a documentary about Jay Bakker, son of Jim and Tammy Faye as he attempts to plant an alternative church as well as come to grips with the legacy left him by his parents.

I think it’s a good pilot episode and I wish I had the Sundance Channel so I could watch how the story continues to unfold.

I’ve started working on a sermon for Advent, looking at Gabriel’s announcement to Mary and Mary’s Magnificat in Luke 1. As I read and reread the story, I’m more aware of how the “first Christmas” was a revolutionary proclamation. Jesus was to be the reestablishment of the Davidic dynasty promised by God in 2 Samuel 7.

Mary, a young woman around 13 to 16 years old, understood what this meant. And it seems her young life was spent in pious preparation for Yahweh’s return. Her psalm of revolution was an “in your face” confrontation with Herod:

“[Yahweh] has performed mighty deeds with his arm;

he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.

He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble.

He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel,

remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever,

even as he said to our fathers.”

Because she trusted in the covenantal faithfulness of Yahweh and was strengthened by Elizabeth in a “community of miraculous conceptions,” Mary believed the angel. She had confidence that her son would be the new king in Jerusalem, dethroning Herod and ultimately Rome and establishing Yahweh’s restorative justice in Israel and the world.

Oppressive rulers would be toppled from their thrones. Those who enjoyed wealth at the expense of the poor would be driven away empty. And the poor, the hungry, and the oppressed would finally have their day.

Mary didn’t understand how her son would bring this about. She had no way of anticipating how he would fulfill these dreams in completely unexpected ways. And she never could have imagined that Jesus would be enthroned in Jerusalem, but that his throne would be a Roman cross outside the city walls.

As I read yesterday’s gospel reading from Luke 3, I was amazed at how Luke is telling his story. I used to think his references to Roman leaders was simply a technique of anchoring his gospel historically. But in light of Mary’s Magnificat, I also think Luke is giving us a who’s who of those in line for dethronement as Jesus begins his ministry — Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, Herod and his brother, Philip, Lysanias, and the Jewish high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas.

In other words, as Jesus moves forward toward his enthronement and the fulfillment of Israel’s (and his mother’s) dream of Yahweh’s justice rolling down like a mighty river on behalf of the poor and oppressed, those who will yield to his kingship will be from the highest ranks of Roman leadership AND Jewish spirituality. All powers and authorities are being called to the carpet and must ultimately yield to King Jesus. No one is innocent and no one is exempt. Evil and injustice isn’t an “us versus them” issue. It cuts a path through every person, every government, every institution, and even every church.

So as we sing songs this Advent season like “Joy to the World, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King,” we must also be aware that our names, our governments, our institutions, our churches, our beloved ideologies and philosophies are on the list for dethronement in order to make way for King Jesus.

And trust me. This really is Good News.

This morning, the first Sunday of Advent, I’m reminded that the Advent season is preparing to celebrate Christ’s Incarnation by anticipating his future Appearing as Judge, bringing God’s restorative justice to the world.

While not speaking on the Advent season specifically, NT Wright, in Evil and the Justice of God, speaks about the individual’s Christian’s role of bringing God’s future New Creation into the present through the demanding task of “forgiving one another.” His words, linked with the poem, “Go,” that I posted about yesterday, form some great reflective material for the Advent season:

“The command to forgive one another, then, is the command to bring into the present what we are promised for the future, namely the fact that in God’s new world all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. It will still be possible for people to refuse forgiveness — both to give it and receive it — but they will no longer have the right or the opportunity thereby to hold God and God’s future world to ransom, to make the moral universe rotate around the fulcrum of their own sulk. And, as with all attempts to bring elements of God’s future world into the present one, the only way is through the appropriate spiritual disciplines. It doesn’t ‘just happen.’ None of us does it, as we say, ‘by nature.’ We need to learn how to do it; and it’s all the more difficult because the church has not been teaching us this lesson. This is where we need to understand, better than we usually have, the biblical account of inaugurated eschatology, of living in the present in the light of the future. Understanding this is difficult to begin with, but it gets easier as you try. Living by it likewise requires hard work: prayer, thought, moral attention to your own state of mind and heart, and moral effort to think and behave in certain ways when ‘what would come naturally’ would be something very different.”

Lord, as we go into your world, participating in your mission of restoration and reconciliation, may we incarnate your forgiveness and in small, but significant ways, usher in your New Creation.

This morning, the first Sunday of Advent, I’m reminded that the Advent season is preparing to celebrate Christ’s Incarnation by anticipating his future Appearing as Judge, bringing God’s restorative justice to the world.

While not speaking on the Advent season specifically, NT Wright, in Evil and the Justice of God, speaks about the individual’s Christian’s role of bringing God’s future New Creation into the present through the demanding task of “forgiving one another.” His words, linked with the poem, “Go,” that I posted about yesterday, form some great reflective material for the Advent season:

“The command to forgive one another, then, is the command to bring into the present what we are promised for the future, namely the fact that in God’s new world all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. It will still be possible for people to refuse forgiveness — both to give it and receive it — but they will no longer have the right or the opportunity thereby to hold God and God’s future world to ransom, to make the moral universe rotate around the fulcrum of their own sulk. And, as with all attempts to bring elements of God’s future world into the present one, the only way is through the appropriate spiritual disciplines. It doesn’t ‘just happen.’ None of us does it, as we say, ‘by nature.’ We need to learn how to do it; and it’s all the more difficult because the church has not been teaching us this lesson. This is where we need to understand, better than we usually have, the biblical account of inaugurated eschatology, of living in the present in the light of the future. Understanding this is difficult to begin with, but it gets easier as you try. Living by it likewise requires hard work: prayer, thought, moral attention to your own state of mind and heart, and moral effort to think and behave in certain ways when ‘what would come naturally’ would be something very different.”

Lord, as we go into your world, participating in your mission of restoration and reconciliation, may we incarnate your forgiveness and in small, but significant ways, usher in your New Creation.

I found this wonderful poem on the Hopeful Imagination blog. It’s a great reflection for the Advent season.

Go

Go out into the world

Go speak truthfully

Go live peacefully

Go walk faithfully

Go give generously

Go share outrageously

Go listen carefully

Go welcome everybody

Go laugh loudly

Go shout passionately

Go pray fervently

Go eat healthily

Go read widely

Go grow deeply

Go forgive wholeheartedly

Go love openly

Go follow humbly

Go show kindness

Go seek wisdom

Go act justly

Go buy fairly

In Evil and the Justice of God, NT Wright states:

“This, by the way, is why genuine Christian theology is itself a redemptive activity. The effort to understand and articulate the way in which the Creator is gloriously right both to have made the world in the first place and to have redeemed it in just this way is itself part of the stewardly vocation of genuine human existence, bringing God’s order into the minds and hearts of others and thereby enabling people both to worship the true God and to serve his continuing purposes.”

Recently, I’ve been thinking about theology more as art than as science, despite the “-ology” at the end of the word. Art is creative. It expresses its creator and invites people to participate by viewing and reflection. In this light, art becomes a communal activity. We observe this in popular forms like movies. Someone at a party may ask, “Have you seen this movie?” and the reply may be, “Oh my gosh, yes! What a great movie!” And a kind of community is formed for that moment. Even if the people involved in the conversation have very different views of the movie, a form of community is formed through the discussion.

Genuine theology has a similar function. And it’s not just the specialized function of those in certain Christian roles. Like art, everyone can participate in some form. Everyone engages in theology — thinking and reflecting about God, his person and his work. And every Christian, redeemed and welcomed into Jesus’ family, should be engaging in Christian theology. As Wright says, it’s part of being an image-bearing steward over creation; it’s part of being genuinely human; it’s part of bringing God’s order into creation by helping others reshape and reimagine Godward reflection and worship properly in their minds and hearts.

This is one of the primary reasons why I love our Thursday night meetings in our faith-community. Everyone takes turns sharing the responsibility of facilitating discussion. And while some do it with “fear and trembling,” it is always a wonderful exercise for the group. We may not always articulate our thoughts clearly. We may not always understand one another. We may not always agree with one another. Yet, virtually every Thursday I leave with some sort of fresh perspective, an ember of Christian reflection stoked into greater heat and brightness by someone else’s contribution. By doing theology together, I think we are doing the tough, but essential work of spurring one another on toward greater love.

I’m almost finished with NT Wright’s newest book, Evil and the Justice of God. It is a great, but frustratingly brief start at addressing the age-old question of the problem of evil. Wright does a wonderful job of using the overarching narrative from Genesis to Revelation to demonstrate how God’s justice has been at work in his world from the very beginning until God finally does for the entire cosmos what he did to Jesus at Easter.Wright emerges from this narrative exhorting Christians to embrace the double task of “implementing the achievement of the cross and anticipating God’s promised future world.” He briefly sketches five tasks that allow Christians to engage in this work within our wider world:1. Prayer2. Holiness3. Politics and empire4. Penal codes5. International disputesI have heard Wright lecture on these areas before, so I was disappointed that only a couple of paragraphs were devoted to each issue. I hope this book is a foretaste of a larger volume that will address these and other issues in greater depth.There were a number of great quotes in this book. A lengthy one that has my mind thinking deals with the Christian’s imagination:“There is such a thing as evil, and it is to be addressed and defeated not by ignoring it on the one hand or by blasting away at it with heavy artillery on the other — even with all the smart bombs currently available, still when the shooting starts hundreds of thousands of civilians get killed — but by addressing it with the message and the methods of the cross.“In order to come anywhere near these goals, we need, as I have said all along, to learn to imagine a world without evil and then to think through the steps by which we might approach that goal, recognizing that we shall never attain it fully during the present age but that we must not, for that reason, acquiesce meekly in the present state of the present world. Once again Romans 12:1-2 comes to mind.“But the Christian imagination — shrunken and starved through the long winter of secularism — needs to be awakened, enlivened and pointed in the right direction. Each of these is important. Christians need to sense permission, from God and from one another, to exercise their imaginations in thinking ahead into God’s new world and into such fresh forms of worship and service as will model and embody aspects of it. We need to have this imagination energized, fed and nourished, so that it is lively and inventive, not sluggishly going around the small circles of a few ideas learned long ago. And the Christian imagination must be disciplined, focused and directed, as with conscience itself, so that it doesn’t simply rush madly about in all directions.”In short, I think as Wright addresses the issues of evil and implementing God’s justice in the world, he has given the contemporary church a new global vision for mission — mission that involves, but also looks beyond evangelizing people in one’s family and neighborhood or engaging in cross-cultural mission trips. The missio dei is nothing less than God saving, transforming and making right his entire creation, beginning with and then working through creation’s stewards.

For those of you who have been following the drama of the past couple of weeks, Buttercup, our pet hamster died. We’ve been holding off buying a new hamster, waiting to find one that would fit our family.We learned that our friend, Jacey, was looking for a family to adopt her hamster, Sam (pictured above). Jacey is a teacher and Sam was her class’ hamster. However, due to one of her student’s allergies, Jacey had to remove Sam from her classroom. She decided it was best if Sam was adopted by a family with kids rather than sit alone at her home. Sam is used to being handled by children, so he fits our family perfectly. We picked up Sam this evening.My kids loved Buttercup deeply. So Sam has some huge paws to fill. But considering how he took to my kids and how my kids took to him, I think he will do just fine.Welcome to the family, Sam!

NT Wright gave the William Belden Nobel Lectures at the Memorial Church of Harvard this past October. The lectures are now available on the Memorial Church’s website. I’ve been looking forward to these lectures since I learned he was scheduled to give them:

“God the Creator: The Gospel in a Gnostic World”

“Jesus the Lord: The Gospel and the New Imperialism”

“Spirit of Truth: The Gospel in a Postmodern World”

I started listening to them today and I’m enjoying them so far.

Also, NT Wright launched his series with a sermon at the Memorial Church called, “Apocalyptic and the Beauty of God.”

And, NT Wright also spoke and performed at Empire Remixed. The audio can be found HERE or HERE.

I just got word that my friend, Steve, successfully defended his doctoral project and will graduate in December. So….

Congratulations, Dr. Steve Summerell! Wooohooo!!!

Yesterday was one of the saddest days I’ve experienced recently.

As I mentioned in my last post, I knew yesterday morning would be hard for my kids. So I quickly made the video. I rushed home before they left for school. There was so much pain and sorrow in the living room as I walked in the door. So Debbie and I gathered them around the computer to watch the video. They really needed it.

The entire day was sad for me. I knew my children had to bear their sadness alone at school. I couldn’t be there to hug them and tell them it was okay. They all coped the best they could. Dani drew a couple of wonderful posters of Buttercup during her free time at school.

I also knew that the afternoon would be equally difficult. Because of that morning’s schedule we left Buttercup’s body in her cage so we could have a memorial service that evening. Coming home from school was very somber. Cathy, who normally likes to do her homework alone, studied downstairs with the two younger kids. Michael moved Buttercup’s cage into the bathroom. But seeing her body really unsettled him.

After homework, the kids prepared a special box for Buttercup. They all wanted to watch me gently move her body from her cage to the box. It was heartrending, but like a viewing, they wanted and needed to see it.

Last night we had a short memorial service, burying Buttercup in Deb’s parents’ garden. She was buried with her bedding, some of her food and a couple of dandelions, which she loved. I gave each child a special rock. I asked them to say a final good-bye and lay the rock on the site. Then we went inside and watched the video again. I think it’s brought closure for them.

Our family has been touched by death before. In the last few years, our kids have lost their great-grandfather and great-uncle. And each time it hurts. But I want my kids to process their grief. It’s an important component to love in this broken world. I don’t want to short-circuit it by telling them to “stop crying,” “get over it,” or “you’ll see them in heaven.”

I remember as a young child standing at my great-grandma’s funeral. I was hurting and beginning to cry. No one was able to help me in that moment. So I held back the tears and made a vow never to cry again. With no one there to help me grieve, it was my way as a young child to protect myself from the pain. And I never cried again until I was an adult. But the only way one can protect himself from the pain is to stay disconnected. And that’s what I did. I never really loved deeply for a long time.

But with God’s grace, I have learned to love deeply again. And at times, that means hurting deeply.

I hope moments like these past couple of days help my children realize that it’s okay to love and grieve. It’s okay to cry and mourn. And through it, to hope for a better renewed world someday.

My kids are exhausted. It seems like they have cried non-stop since Sunday morning. Tonight will also be tough when they clean Buttercup’s cage. But we’re moving forward and I think they are processing it all very well.

Life does go on. And it is.

And we are also aware that death, and other forms of evil, will strike us again and again and again. I wish I could protect my children from it. But I can’t. So I will do the next best thing. I will be there with them through it all. I will hold them, cry with them, pray with them, hope with them. And I pray that we will not become calloused, bitter or withdrawn. But like Jesus, we will somehow take evil out of commission and replace it with genuine, unending love.

I just finished reading N.T. Wright’s commentary on Romans in The New Interpreter’s Bible. Wow! I’ve studied through Romans in depth a couple of times in my Christian journey. And each time was enriching. Romans is such a exquisite literary and theological masterpiece. But this time through, with Wright as a guide, the book seems much clearer and cohesive.

I used to view Romans as Paul’s systematic theology, discussing sin, then justification, then sanctification, then practical ethics. But this always left large strands of Romans as parenthetical, lengthy rabbit-trails by an author who wanted to say too much. This approach also forced Paul to say things he wasn’t trying to say at all, redefining ideas like sin, justification, and pre-destination in ways foreign to Paul’s original intent.

But Wright’s approach to Romans brings better cohesion and integrity to all of its parts. Romans is about God’s covenantal faithfulness revealed through the royal announcement that Jesus, Israel’s Messiah, is the true Lord of the world. God’s people, in line with God’s eschatological promises, has finally been open to the nations as God’s New World has broken into this one. So in this light, Paul’s use of Old Testament narratives, especially Deuteronomy, Psalms and Isaiah, are not proof-texts of “salvation by faith” as opposed to “salvation by works” as normally assumed in the old and irrelevant debate. Rather, Paul is retelling the Jewish story of God’s faithfulness to creation, humanity and Israel around King Jesus.

Through Jesus, God has proven his faithfulness to Abraham — giving him a Jew plus Gentile family who would work with God for the full renovation and transformation of the world into God’s New Creation!

N.T. Wright gave a lecture yesterday entitled, “Where is God in ‘The War on Terror'” in Durham Cathedral.

I have always believed that our country’s approach to terrorism and Iraq was wrong and not adequately thought out. And I also think a lot of current critiques of the ‘war’ are equally wrong and not thought out. Blaming President Bush or Secretary Rumsfeld is equally shallow and immature.

I hope and pray that Tuesday’s elections and readjustments in Washington will move beyond the rhetoric of “fresh eyes” and “new perspective” and actually forge a new way forward in a very complex issue. Too many people on both sides are dying in a ‘war’ that isn’t really addressing the real issue of evil in our world. The problem is that our current direction is wrong and simply withdrawing is wrong. A new way must be paved and I hope our leaders in Washington will have the moral fortitude to deal with this issue in more than simplistic, knee-jerk ways.

Blogs come and go. I guess it’s the nature of the blogosphere or blogdom or whatever you want to call that enchanted realm where everyone has some form of voice in the worldwide community.

However, when I read Antony’s final blog post, I was saddened. He entitled it “It’s Only a Blog, After All…” But it’s not. It contained the ideas and personality of a passionate follower of Christ who influenced my thinking and personal walk with Jesus.

I respect his decision to withdraw from blogging. His reasons resonate with some stuff I’m experiencing. But I’m sad because I will miss his voice. And I believe others will as well.

Mike, over at Waving or Drowning, posts a wonderful Franciscan Benediction:

May God bless you with discomfort

At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships

So that you may live deep within your heart.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness

To believe that you can make a difference in the world.

So that you can do what others claim cannot be done

To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.

I’m currently listening to an Emergent Village podcast featuring Will and Lisa Samson, authors of a forthcoming book, Justice in the Burbs. This is an issue I’ve been wrestling with and I’m looking forward to reading this book! Unfortunately, the release date is August 2007.

Len has come up with a cool working definition of Leadership.

“Leadership is the communal process of discerning

the surprising newness of God for His people

and then forming the vehicle,

cultivating the imagination,

and selecting the practices

to take them from where they are into God’s good future.”

I like where he’s going with this definition because it emphasizes the process and community rather than a specific personality. I also like the way his definition focuses on a more organic development rather than an organizational approach. It strikes a much-needed balance between the leaders’ responsibilities in the overall life of the community and the community members’ responsibilities to actually follow Christ. In other words, if I understand the definition correctly, the leaders are facilitating from within the community’s discovery of life in Christ and enabling the whole community to embrace and live it both corporately and personally.

It’s a great definition and worth pondering and unpacking.

Having spent too many hours the last few weeks preparing a mediocre sermon for this past Sunday, I really resonated with some of Jeff Gauss’ thoughts in his post, “The Effectiveness of Sermons.” (I came across his post by way of Jan Bros’ blog.)

While I like to engage in the task of “prteaching,” a term coined by John Frye, I am becoming increasingly convinced that the role for preaching and teaching in the life of the local faith-community has become bloated. Way too many hours (and then in the case of salaried pastors, way too much money) is often spent on preparing and delivering a lecture/sermon that most people won’t remember or apply. From a straight cost-benefit analysis, the over-emphasis on preaching and teaching is a poor use of resources in the pursuit of spiritual formation.

Now that doesn’t mean we must eliminate preaching and teaching altogether. There must be a balance in our expression of worship or liturgy. And part of that balance is hearing God’s word read and taught. (And when I mean read and taught, I also mean not in the disconnected self-help style of many sermons.) But it must also be balanced with worshipful responses to the Word, with corporate prayers, with communion, with art, with service and with dialogue.

I think the role of preaching and teaching should be twofold: 1) re-imagining God’s people with the biblical vision of entering and living in God’s kingdom and 2) encouraging and equipping God’s people in the task of becoming people who actually do enter and live in God’s kingdom. Yet again (and I don’t think I can say this too much) the role of preaching and teaching must be part of a well-thought and prepared liturgy. Imagination for kingdom life must have response through worship and prayer as well as the actual entering and living the kingdom reality through communion and service.

Also, I think the sermons that are necessary for a balanced liturgy should both flow from the pastor’s own spiritual formation, yet be bigger than the pastor’s spiritual formation. First, sermons should primarily be the expression of the pastor’s apprenticeship to Christ, not the result of his or her occupational responsibility of sermon preparation. They should reflect who the pastor is becoming in his or her journey with Christ through the course of study, Scripture reading, prayers, silence, solitude, etc.

Second, sermons should be guided by something larger than the pastor’s personal study. This is why I’m so attracted to the Lectionary and Church calendar. They are NOT the lazy pastor’s way of finding weekly sermon texts. Quite the opposite. Each week’s texts discipline the pastor to remain immersed in and then offer the faith-community something larger than the latest book or the pastor’s favorite Bible passages.

Third, the sermons must come from other sources than just the pastor(s). Perhaps the pastor’s greatest role in regards to sermons is not preparing and delivering them, but rather facilitating them in the context of a balanced liturgy. That might mean finding many others in the congregation who can offer a sermon or thoughts. It might mean gathering a group of ten or twelve people who pursue spiritual formation together with the pastor and from that activity, study, craft and deliver sermons as a team. It might mean finding others who can facilitate discussion around the texts and the sermon. It might mean finding others who can provide an artistic expression for the texts and sermons. (I like the examples from the Church in Bethesda, which blend Scripture, music and video.) It might mean reorganizing the role of the musical worship from being a 20- or 30-minute indulgence of personal intimacy and expression into a corporate response to the Scriptures and sermons. It might mean rethinking and reimagining communion as a corporate experience of God’s New Creation.

Whatever practices a local church embraces, it will require relinquishing the sacred notions that 1) the pastor is God’s primary spokesperson, 2) the sermon is the centerpiece of weekly worship and spiritual formation, and 3) the sermon must entertain in order to hold the congregation’s attention.

I was asked to speak this past Sunday at the Live Oak Vineyard. (The Live Oak Vineyard is the merger of the Arcadia Vineyard and the Monrovia Vineyard, which my family and I have been attending for about a year. Although our family is deeply committed to our small faith-community, attending the Vineyard has provided much-needed opportunities for my children to be involved in youth ministry.)

Michael and I were sitting together during the musical worship portion of the service. I was praying, and quite honestly, fretting over my talk because I knew I wasn’t as prepared as I needed to be. Michael, reached over, and with tears, began praying for me. It was a moving and articulate prayer. Then he got up, went to one of the communion stations and brought over elements for he and I to share together.

Frankly, the sermon was mediocre. But that moment with my son was very powerful. He was my intercessor and cheerleader yesterday. And it made me proud!

I came across this site (thechurchyouknow.com) via Darryl at Dying Church. It is clever and witty. They have produced seven videos based off of NBC’s “The More You Know” campaign of public service announcements. The video, “Attendance,” almost made me choke, I laughed so hard.

Update: I just watched the video, “Worship.” It’s about as hilarious as “Attendance.” I especially like their write-up that accompanies the worship video:

WORSHIP

Don’t get us wrong – we love musical worship, and songs have a rich heritage and important role in worship. But when songs become synonymous with worship, the latter gets confined to nicely-transitioned 20 minute packages a few times a week. Sometimes, these packages are even off-key, or incredibly painful to listen to and participate in.

Authentic fellowship, both with one another and Christ, is always worship – and doesn’t need amplification for the world to hear.

That last line is awesome!

I came across this YouTube video through Garr Reynold’s blog, Presentation Zen. It’s a great concept and tells a wonderful story through image and music. It was what I needed tonight to make me smile.

Also, the Miniature Earth presentation mentioned in Garr’s blog is great as well.

Michael is writing a book report for To Kill A Mockingbird, one of my all-time favorite books. There’s a great quote in the book describing bravery as “when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”

I like that quote. Bravery isn’t something that happens in the moment. It’s calculated character. It’s moral fiber that evaluates a situation and is actually able to do what is right even when it seems to be the most foolish thing in the world. Atticus Finch exemplified this character throughout the book, even in the face of the darkest evil and the worst outcomes. And I hope when all is said and done, I will have too.

Jason Clark has reposted a great post outlining the things he loves and hates about the emerging church. It’s a great list and all I wanted to say was “Yeah! Me too!” I loved the post two years ago and I love it now.

I’m swamped and have not had time to do any writing. It sucks, because I like to read, reflect and write. But I haven’t been able to massage my life enough to squeeze out time to really blog like I want. But I’m glad others like Len are still stoking the fires. I’ve ripped his entire post to put here because it addresses something I’ve been thinking about on and off lately.

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From an interview with Mike Frost on Smulospace.. can you relate?

I sorely wish Christian musicians would write songs that help to sustain us as exiles, as foreigners in a forbidding country. We need songs that strengthen our resolve and inspire us to act. Not silly loves songs to Jesus.



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I used to love intimate worship. I enjoyed singing songs of love and devotion to Jesus. And I still do on occasion. I like expressing my loyalty to Jesus through that medium.

But I think I’m growing up (or at least I would like to think so). I don’t simply want Jesus to be my “boyfriend.” I want him to be my Teacher, my Master, my Father, my Savior, my Lord, my Model, my Coach, my Shepherd and so much more. And most of the time I’m not going to feel the emotions of “romance” (for lack of a better word). Nor should I. I know Jesus is intimately present with me. But there’s so much more to our friendship than intimacy. Intimacy is at the core, but it’s not everything.

Jesus is about transforming this world, quite frankly, with or without me. Surely he loves me and calls me. But he calls me to God’s purpose for the world (Romans 8:28). There’s work to be done. And I need to train in order to be able to do that work cooperatively with Jesus. And I need to actually do the work that needs to be done. And like any work, it’s a combination of joy, love and loyalty with pain, struggle and failure.

Paul brings this out in Romans 8. There are two aspects of those who love God — the Spirit brings the intimate Abba-cry and the Spirit conforms us to Christ through labor pains.

I want my worship to reflect that. I want my musical worship to reflect all facets of my journey with Christ, which is why I’m finding more and more “worship songs” in “secular” music. There’s a gritty honesty in a lot of that music that seems missing in the mainstream worship music. Plus, I want my musical worship not to sacrifice sound theology for the sake of poetic expression or a simple rhyme. I’ve been cringing lately at a lot of the songs I used to sing as well as the newer stuff that comes out. I’m not sure we realize how singing a catchy, yet theologically incorrect chorus can distort our imagination and thinking. And I enjoy greater musical diversity in my musical worship. (Is it me or do all the “worship bands” sound the same?)

Also, I want my worship to expand far beyond music. It needs to incorporate silence and inarticulate prayer and spiritual disciplines and art and communion and icons and symbols and probably other elements than I’m unaware of right now.

Two significant elements of worship that I have found particularly relevant regardless of mood or circumstance are the Jesus prayer — “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner” — and the Lord’s Prayer. I love to pray them silently through my day. I can’t even begin to explain how beautiful they are as continuous expressions of worship through the day.

Sheesh! I haven’t had time to blog for a while. I’m hoping to get a better handle on my time so I can start writing again. (However, I must say that the break has been nice.)

I’m interrupting my hiatus to post a picture and a link. The blog, “Adversaria,” has a biography on NT Wright. The picture from that post is priceless, so I’m putting it here as well.

My youngest child, Christopher, turned 7 yesterday. It was a nice day. After worship service at the Live Oak Vineyard, we took Chris to Peter Piper Pizza for lunch. Then, Uncle David treated the kids to bowling in the late afternoon. Dang! They grow up so fast.

Kerri did a wonderful job closing our discussion in the Songs of Ascent. We spent a lot of time talking about quotes from Eugene Peterson’s book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, which is based on the Songs of Ascent. Last night, each member was assigned a quote from the last chapter to talk about.

My quote from the book was actually a quote from Catherine of Siena:

“All the way to heaven is heaven.”

That statement is so rich with meaning for me. It summarizes some cataclysmic shifts in thinking and living that I’ve experienced over the last several years. Heaven is not a distant destination that I will escape to one day, leaving an evil creation to be destroyed and replaced with some new magical place.

Nope. When God looked at creation and said, “It is good,” he never changed his mind. Heaven isn’t a magical realm where we live happily ever after. Rather, heaven and earth are the two sides of God’s one good creation. And God’s goal is to see his entire creation whole, restored and reaching his wildest dreams. In that light, Jesus taught us to pray and live “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” The goal isn’t escape, but restoration. It’s eventual joining and interlocking of the two dimensions so that God’s rule and presence fills the earth as it does heaven.

So when I finally arrive at that time and place — the threshold of God’s New Creation that is filled with his unleashed glory and presence — I want to be able to look back on my life and realize my entire journey has not only prepared me for my eternal life with God in his renewed and restored world, but also contributed to the actual renewing and restoring of that world.

One of the things I’ve appreciated about the Emerging Church conversations is the attempt to rediscover the biblical Gospel. For too long the Gospel has been held hostage by a modern, reductionist parody.

Recently, I started listening to some lectures given by NT Wright in 2006 while simultaneously making my way through his commentary on Romans. I’ll try to summarize some stuff that he’s brought up.

In Romans 1, Paul states that the Gospel is the royal proclamation that Jesus is Israel’s royal Messiah and therefore the true Lord of creation. This proclamation is a direct confrontation with Caesar’s “Gospel.” Caesar was proclaimed to be the “son of God” since his father was proclaimed to be divine, and the “savior” and “lord” of the world since he brought peace and justice through his political and military might. But where Caesar’s “Gospel” is achieved through oppression and power, Jesus’ Gospel is proven through the Spirit and the resurrection.

Paul then declares that through this royal proclamation of Jesus’ true lordship, God’s covenantal faithfulness, his transforming restorative justice that will make creation right, has been revealed. Jesus’ lordship is the climax of God’s plan to restore the cosmos, proving God’s faithfulness to creation and humanity.

So the Gospel is the good news that through Jesus, God is saving his creation. In this context, people are saved as part of this larger process. In fact, people are saved as they are swept up in God’s saving purposes for creation and thereby become God’s saving agents to creation.

This is where the importance of narrative functions. Romans reveals the climax of a story begun in Genesis, incorporating many biblical sub-themes. In the beginning, God creates a dynamic, beautiful and good creation and then creates a people through whom his nurture and order for creation are manifested. These people are given a portion of the larger world — the Garden — in which to express their responsible stewardship in anticipation of the inheritance of the whole world. Created in the image of God, they are to shine God’s person and presence into the world through their stewardship. However, instead of bringing care and order into the world, they bring distortion and chaos.

God then creates a new people, through whom he will save and restore broken creation. Similar to the first humans, the nation of Israel is given a portion of the larger world — the Land — in which to express their responsible stewardship in anticipation of the inheritance of the whole world. Blessed with the Law and other gifts to mediate God’s presence, they are to shine as a light in the darkness. However, instead, of bearing the solution to creation’s brokenness, they become part of the larger problem.

As you can tell so far, God chooses to engage his creation through human beings. This climaxes in Jesus. Jesus is the faithful human (the Second Adam) and the faithful Israelite (the Messiah, Israel’s royal representative) who ultimately on the cross bears the tension of the problem of sin and brokenness and God’s solution and restoration. God finally works through a human, a faithful representative of humankind and Israel, to accomplish what he purposed from the beginning.

God again creates a new people through Jesus, by giving them his Spirit, who in turn is restoring the image of God in their humanity and enabling them to fulfill the Torah as the true Israel. In this way, this new people becomes God’s restorative presence in a broken world, the light in the darkness. And since Christ climaxes both humankind’s story and Israel’s story, God’s new humanity and new Israel are no longer restricted to the Garden or the Land. Our realm of stewardship is the entire creation.

Paul makes this clear first in Romans 4:13, where he declares that Abraham — who is not just the father of ethnic Israel, but now through Christ’s faithfulness, the father of all God’s people — would inherit not just the land but the entire world. Paul then states more explicitly in Romans 8 that our inheritance as Spirit-indwelt people, and thus being co-heirs with Christ, is the entire creation.

The exciting aspect of this story is that we are at work with God in bringing about our own inheritance. Broken creation groans for God’s children to be revealed. God’s children, in the midst of groan creation, also groans waiting for the final redemption of our bodies. And the Spirit, in the midst of groaning people, also groans in intercession for us. And this whole process is driving forward as God works all things for the good — forming the likeness of Christ into those who called according to God’s restorative purposes.

Into this sub-theme of Spirit and Law, NT Wright makes a cool observation. Jesus and the Spirit in Acts 1 & 2 parallels Moses and the Law. As Moses ascended the mountain, hidden by the clouds, to dwell in God’s presence and then returns to give God’s people the Law, Jesus now ascends, hidden by a cloud, to dwell in God’s presence and then returns to give God’s people the means to fulfill the Law — the Spirit. In fact, the Feast of Pentecost is the celebration associated with the giving of the Law on Sinai to God’s people. Now on Pentecost, Christ gives his Spirit to God’s people so they can actually fulfill the Law. It is this same Spirit who forms the likeness of Christ in God’s people and intercedes for them as they become God’s restorative presence on earth.

So God’s salvation is not just given to human beings. Rather it is given through human beings to the entire creation. So we experience God’s salvation as we participate in the larger salvation of creation. That’s Good News!

Our kids start school today. It sucks. Our family goes through its annual Back-to-School Blues. It also sucks that the kids have to go back to school in August, an entire week before Labor Day. Sheesh!

We decided to end our summer with an extended four-day weekend. It was very nice. We took little day trips, including a day at the beach and a day in the mountains. Here’s a photo of our family roasting hotdogs at the beach.

On our trip to the mountains, Michael and I took our digital cameras and tripods to practice taking some shots. I haven’t had a chance to look through all of his pictures yet, but I noticed this one shot that was really cool. He’s showing a talent with the camera, which is great because he wants to be a professional photographer. And he’s only had his camera less than three months.

This is an untouched photo that he shot in black & white. I love the composition and texture. It really captures the surroundings, which were burned by fire a few years ago, but are now showing new growth.

I came across the article, “Pandemic Love,” by Charles Moore through Jason Clark’s blog. Moore recounts the early Christians’ response to severe plagues that ripped through the Roman Empire.

I pasted a large portion of Moore’s article in this blog. It’s a great reminder of how God’s people are to live for the sake of the world. We’re not to worry about our own safety, comfort and protection. Our lives are larger than just our current lives. Our lives are as eternal as God’s kingdom, so life and death in this dimension, although mysterious, is not all there is. It’s a mere drop in the bucket. And as frightening as risking our lives may look in this dimension, we are completely safe in our Father’s hands — even unto death.

We need to remember that even when Jesus was experiencing the great hellishness of the cross, he knew he was ultimately safe in his Father’s hands. That’s why Paul can call our most devastating crises “light and momentary troubles.” He’s not making light of human suffering. He’s viewing human suffering in this broken creation through the lens of God’s eternal kingdom that will eventually consummate an eternal New Creation of justice, goodness and beauty.

Moore’s article reminds us that we must live our lives now in anticipation of that New Creation. We must live abundant, self-giving, sacrificial lives for the sake of the world. That IS life in the Spirit. And it is the Spirit, through God’s community of renewed image-bearers, that will create the materials from which Christ will shape God’s New Creation.

We may not know how Christ will eventually renew the earth, but we can be sure that he will use everything that our Spirit-empowered lives produce now as the raw materials. N.T. Wright says that each of us is like a mason, crafting stonework in preparation for the construction of a cathedral. We don’t know how the master architect will use our work to create the building, but we know he will. We must be faithful to the portions of the building material he has commissioned us to create and trust him in designing and constructing the building.

So with that, here’s a portion of Moore’s article on “Pandemic Love.” Let’s ask ourselves “How is God calling me, my family, and our community to live so that a piece of God’s New Creation is fashioned through our abundant, self-giving love to the world?”

“In stark contrast to such hopelessness and fear, Christians showed how their faith made this life—and even death—meaningful. Cyprian, for example, almost welcomed the great epidemic of his time, knowing that it was an opportunity for the church to give witness to the hope that was within them. He was so overwhelmed by a sense of confidence that the members of the Alexandrian church were accused of regarding the plague as a time of festival.

In the midst of intermittent persecution and colossal misunderstanding, and in an era when serving others was thought to be demeaning, the “followers of the way”—instead of fleeing disease and death—went about ministering to the sick and helping the poor, the widowed, the crippled, the blind, the orphaned, and the aged. The people of the Roman Empire were forced to admire their works and dedication. “Look how they love one another,” was heard on the streets.”

Well, the day has finally arrived. I turn 40 today. Anticipating this event has initiated a lot of personal reflection over the past twelve months. And I’m confident that it will continue to be the source of reflection in the months to come.

I didn’t realize how big a milestone this would be for me on an emotional level. It’s sobering. But in a good way. I’m not depressed or filled with regret. I’m simply very aware of who I was, who I am, and who I still dream of becoming. And although I wish I were further along in the process, I like what God has been doing.

I’m also very aware of how blessed I am. Debbie asked me last week what I wanted for my birthday. And although there are things I’d like to have, I couldn’t think of anything that I really wanted or had to have. Jokingly, she said, “It must be nice to be a man who has everything.” To which I replied, “It’s not that I have everything. It’s that I have so many great friends whom I can borrow from.”

This made me realize that perhaps the wealth of a person isn’t measured in the abundance of what he or she possesses but rather in the abundance of friends that he or she can borrow from. Friendships. That’s how wealth is truly measured. I’m glad I’m still young enough to continue exploring life fulfillment on that premise.

So on my fortieth birthday, I want to say “Thank you!” to all of the great family and friends that God has surrounded me with. All of you make my life rich.

Chris Erdman posts a timely piece about the need for the Church to pursue “white martyrdom.” It’s both brilliant, yet frightening.

“It is that martyrdom we must pursue today. We must form an alternative Christian witness against so much that popularly passes for Christianity. We must intentionally work to raise martyrs—not folks who are preoccupied with dying, but folk who are so preoccupied with life that death no longer holds power over them. If and when that happens, we just might see a church on the earth. If and when that happens, the nations will not only hear but see the gospel. And if we begin with this martyrdom of conscience, our white martyrdom, we will prepare God’s church for the more colorful martyrdom that may still come our way. Whether or not we’re ever called to bleed for our witness, the world will have a more robust and faithful Christian witness because of our efforts. And that may be the most helpful thing we can do for this warring world.”

This is so biblical. It’s right out of the Book of Revelation where the Church follows the Lamb to sacrificial death as a way of embodying the Gospel and participating in the movement of God’s kingdom from heaven to earth.

Youtube has a new superstar. It’s a 79-year old British widower whose moniker is geriatric1927. He began uploading videos about life onto Youtube only last week. So far, his first video has been viewed over 600,000 times!

He seems to be gentle man who is using the internet to build community. In the video below, geriatric1927 states that he has received over 4,700 emails from the Youtube community and that Youtube has changed his life.

One of the comments on about video said, “You’re like the Grandfather I wish I had.” It reminds me how disconnected the younger generation is from the lives, stories and wisdom of previous generations. Considering all the junk you normally find on Youtube, I’m glad geriatric1927 is finding a voice.

In chapter four of The Great Giveaway, David Fitch deals with two forms of evangelical worship services — sermon-centered worship and song-centered worship. He begins his chapter with a fundamental question, “How do you know good worship when you see it?” As a staff member at a couple different churches, this question always surfaced. And the usual answer focused around the worship event itself — the music, the mood, the activity, the emotions, the song selection, the musical style, the preaching, the worship team’s skill and performance, etc.

But Fitch answers the question, “Simply put, faithful worship reveals itself in the shape of the lives it produces.” You know worship is “good” when it produces Christlike lives.

Fitch argues that unfortunately, the typical evangelical worship service contains an inherent design flaw that prevents it from properly shaping Christlike lives. I’ll bypass Fitch’s arguments regarding the postmodern critique of knowledge (through sermons) and experience (through singing) and cut to the chase:

“Evangelicals go to church on Sunday yet are unaffected because we either sit passively in a lecture hall taking lecture notes for later use or we indulge in a rock concert/pep rally that titillates our emotions but leaves little to order our selves into the glory of God.”

Instead, worshippers need to be immersed into something larger than our selves in order to form our selves into that reality. That something is worship that “orders our desires, orients our vision and livens our words through art, symbol, prayers, mutual exchanges, participatory rituals, readings of the Word, and the Eucharist every Sunday morning.”

However, both forms of evangelical worship are incapable of immersing worshippers into this kind of life-shaping experience because they “put the worshiping self at the center of worship.” That’s the design flaw of typical evangelical worship.

If the sermon is the centerpiece of the worship event, then the listeners are at the center of worship. He or she comes to the Scriptures and sermon analyzing and deciding which portions to believe and apply.

If the singing is the centerpiece of the worship event, then the singers are at the center of worship. The songs become a vehicle of the worshippers’ self-expression to God.

Either way, the worshipper remains the center of worship, and thus in control during worship. According to Fitch, although the Holy Spirit’s involvement in worship is assumed, the Spirit cannot truly transform without permission as long as the worshipper remains in control during worship. “One’s mind when firmly in charge cannot transform itself.” Rather, in such situations, the mind can only reinforce the ways it already thinks. The results:

“Individuals enter worship and use the sermons and songs totally unaware of the fact that they are but furthering their own schemes, which are already in place… Therefore, contemporary Christian worship turns inevitably to self-indulgence based in whatever it is we bring to worship that day.”

The direction evangelicals must turn is back toward life-giving liturgy that is structured around “call and response” and incorporates art and symbol as valid mediums of truth. In other words, worship must move from the mere communication of the concept that Jesus is Lord to the holistic immersion into the reality that Jesus really IS Lord.

“By reordering our worship liturgically, embodying it through art and symbol, and re-sacralizing the mysteries of the Word and Eucharist, we can recapture the shaping of our people’s imaginations for the lordship of Christ. Such a worship may take practice and therefore require patience because we have been so addicted to appeasing our ‘selves’ in worship as opposed to shaping our ‘selves.'”

Fitch suggests several practices to restore life-giving liturgy. Because this post is already long, I will simply summarize his main points to stir our imagination:

1. Restore liturgy and make it accessible through explanation and contemporary language.

2. Pattern worship after the rhythm of “Call and Response” so that sermon and songs are not forms of self-expression, but responses to the presence of Christ made real through Eucharist, Scripture, symbol, and art.

3. Revive the Church calendar so that it reorders our whole lives around the rhythms of Christ.

4. Reinvigorate the Eucharist by both placing it as the dominant activity of worship and reviving its mystery and power.

5. Use candles and other tactile symbols so that our worship can be visualized and ritualized in a way that invites us into God’s transcendence and mystery.

6. Use the visual arts to present the narrative of God in Scriptures in a way that requires the worshippers to submit to, participate in, respond to, and enter into.

7. Sing substantive music that both avoids individualist self-expression and exceeds emotional catharsis and becomes a communal response to the goodness and glory of God.

8. View the sanctuary as a sacred art gallery that displays God’s beauty and invites the worshipper to participate in God’s truth that is embodied visually and tangibly.

Mark has a good post on liturgical worship from the Orthodox tradition that captures a lot of what Fitch is saying. You can read it HERE.

Michael and Catherine, my two oldest kids, are on a week-long travel camp with the youth from Live Oak Vineyard. They left Saturday and will return on Friday.

I sure am missing them.

Janet Ruffing writes about the demon of busyness on the Church of the Savior blog. And yes, it’s a demon. It’s a power that takes on a life of its own and robs people of the abundant life God offers. It’s not morally neutral. And it’s not just a lifestyle. It’s a demon and many of us, including myself, need to experience genuine deliverance.

Matt pointed to my blog with some very kind words. So I wanted to say “Hi” to anyone coming this way from his blog.

I’ve been making my way through Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger’s book, Emerging Churches. They do a great job summarizing the significant aspects or themes of the various forms of Emerging Church.

One of the important contributions of the emerging church conversation/movement in western culture is the identifying of and responding to the rampant consumerism that has infiltrated the western Church. Here are a couple of poignant paragraphs:

“Much of marketing practice borders on manipulation by creating needs. Until one sees or experiences a product, one often does not ‘need’ it. The creation and the presentation of a product create the need. When churches decide to make entertainment their main focus, they create a continued expectation and desire for more. Marketing is not neutral; it fosters human desire as much as it satiates it“ (Emphasis mine).

A couple of paragraphs later, they write:

“Marketing churches may say they are only meeting the felt needs of individuals. But like all marketing organizations, they have a strong say in what those felt needs are. They create desires as much as they fulfill them. In that respect, they cease to be a neutral provider and instead are using their power to control individuals. Their consumers are wired to seek the fulfillment of their needs. They adopt cultural narratives that say that every person lacks something, is impoverished, and needs a particular product to be satisfied.”

And one more paragraph:

“Churchgoers associate the consumer church’s products with ‘need satisfaction.’ There are areas of an individual’s life that are ambiguous and insecure, to which the church seeks to respond by creating and offering products that will address those gaps. Consumer churches present a relationship with Jesus as the answer to widespread feelings of angst. Thus, Jesus is turned into a product that satisfies needs. The problem is that Jesus won’t satisfy individual needs, for the gospel is primarily about God’s agenda, not ours. For true satisfaction to take place, needs must be reformed and transformed to correspond to the gospel.”

These paragraphs make me think about a few things. First, the Church’s delving into marketing is as bad as delving into white magic. I know that sounds harsh. But Gibbs and Bolger make a valid point — marketing is not neutral. (David Fitch made a similar point about “effective leadership.”) Marketing is not a skill, technique or art form that one can simply use without any kind of moral and ethical ramifications. In fact, using marketing is a moral decision in and of itself. It is manipulation just like forms of magic. Regardless if one uses it for “good,” it is still contrary to God’s kingdom and will eventually violate people’s integrity. It creates a power structure that is inherently broken, easily influenced by evil, and can quickly take on a life of its own. Marketing creates needs as much as it satiates them. Therefore, it becomes similar to drinking salt water. A person thinks he or she is quenching one’s thirst. But in actuality, the thirst is getting worse and worse.

Second, Jesus’ good news of God’s kingdom coming to earth was never about satisfying individual needs. Rather, it was about aligning one’s life around God and satisfying God’s intentions for his creation. And in many cases, it requires those who enter and receive God’s kingdom to die to themselves. It requires laying aside felt or perceived needs as potentially illegitimate. It requires trusting that as God’s kingdom comes and makes everything right, it will reorganize human life in such a way to bring about God’s good purposes for our lives, not our own.

Another thing that comes to mind is that those of us in the emerging church must think and act carefully in our response against consumerism. It’s easy to shift from a consumerist model in which the local church and its leaders functioned as service providers and shift to a decentralized “do-it-yourself” (DIY) model where everyone is simply in charge of his or her own spirituality. That may work well for those of us with adequate training — who read the theology books, study Scripture, lead worship, and other activities. But, quite frankly, it leaves everyone else in the dust. And it wasn’t Jesus’ model.

Jesus, in reconfiguring both image-bearing humanity and presence-bearing Israel around himself and in anticipating the fullness of God’s New Creation upon the earth, created community. Building community wasn’t a principle for effective leadership. Jesus didn’t do it because it was the most effective way of transmitting his ideas to his students. If so, he would have gathered more students into a network of groups.

Rather, Jesus chose twelve men. As N.T. Wright has shown, every Israelite immediately understood Jesus’ symbolism. Just as Yahweh chose the twelve tribes of Israel to be his people, Jesus was reconstituting Israel around himself through twelve men. And it is especially important to note that Jesus wasn’t one of the twelve. As he calls the twelve around himself, he embodies Yahweh dwelling in the midst of the twelve.

Why bring this up? I believe that proper understanding and implementation of community is a primary answer to the consumerism in the western Church. For Jesus, community was the embodiment of the good news of God’s kingdom. It was the embodiment of humans living as the image of God. It was the embodiment of being God’s transformative presence in the world. It was the embodiment of the Trinitarian reality on earth. It was the embodiment of the human journey toward the fullness and likeness of God in human form. It was the embodiment of God’s future New Creation.

It’s important that our emerging faith-communities become collaborative communities of generous creative producers gathered around the living and resurrected Christ. Together we must follow Christ, discovering new vision, new theology, new expressions of faith, new liturgy, new ways to serve, new ways to resist, new avenues of formation, and new ways to embody God kingdom.

We are not to be a support group of individual DIYers. Rather, we are to be a family (another symbol Jesus reconfigured around himself), journeying together, creating together, and serving and supporting one another in the process. And we do this by unashamedly bringing our gifts, our stories, our personalities, and our full lives into this process. And like Jesus and his original twelve, our faith-communities become local embodied expressions of genuine humanity, called to join Yahweh in responsibly serving his world.

This is something that came to mind as I’ve been working through Fitch’s chapter on leadership in The Great Giveaway.

If someone went to a typical pastor of a typical local church and asked that pastor “Is your church a safe place for me to work through my personal sins and grow in Christ?” that pastor would probably say, “Yes.”

I believe the best-intentioned pastors really try to build an organization that houses a safe Christ-centered community of healing and formation. They try to lead a community where people can come and safely engage in worship, confession, accountability, teaching, fellowship, discipleship, service, and mission with others so that they can grow out of their sins and further into Christlikeness within the life of the faith-community.

But here’s the catch: In that typical church, the pastor is exempt from that community. He or she organizes and leads the organization, but rarely participates in the healing life of the community. It’s a safe place for the average congregation member to confess sins and engage in the various ministries to discover deliverance from those sins within the community.

But what happens to the leader-pastor when he or she confesses depression, pornography, gambling, alcoholism, lust for another congregation member, eating disorder, pride, rage, or any other kind of socially unacceptable sin or addiction. Like it or not, it is presumed that the leader-pastor is above this. Sure, the leader-pastor can admit vague sins — I got angry at my spouse, I yelled at my kids, I got angry on the freeway. But unfortunately, confessing and dealing with the dirty stuff jeopardizes his or her ministry and job.

So the leader-pastor buries it and hides it for the sake of his or her ministry. Ironically, the leader-pastor cannot participate in the necessary healing and forming life of the community that he or she leads. They’re only course of action is an individualized, and therefore stunted, attempt at spiritual formation. And then everyone’s shocked when the leader-pastor’s sins become public. They never had a chance.

David Fitch’s chapter on leadership has been an interesting read so far. I think he may be overstating his case, but it’s one worth thinking about. In fact, I saw a bit of myself in his description of why modern pastoral training sets pastors up for failure.

In a nutshell, Fitch states that pastor-leaders are formed for character failure by evangelicalism’s obsession with “effective leadership” training.

“Effective leadership” places effectiveness as the leader’s priority, perpetuating the modern myth that technique and skill can control the outcomes of organizations. This subtly trains the pastor to act, behave and lead as though he or she were in control of the church. As a result, the CEO-pastor does not serve, but leads. He or she doesn’t submit as a member of a community to the community’s gifts and discernment, but directs an organization. In most of these situations, the CEO-pastor discerns the Spirit’s leading for the organization and then uses his or her leadership skills to “make it happen” by envisioning, organizing and managing its members. This is not biblical Christian leadership.

Also interesting is the discussion that “effectiveness” is not morally neutral. The quest for effectiveness in Christian leadership means something has been sacrificed for effectiveness. Local churches must come to the realization that within Christian leadership effectiveness may not be a good thing. The typical church’s mission to share Christ or make disciples of the most people as possible is primarily a pursuit for effectiveness. In this light, the church becomes a managed system of disbursement of teaching and ministry to the most people in the most effective way. And usually in this system, the marginalized suffer.

The postmodern critique of modernism also asks who can be trusted to determine what is “effective” and therefore control outcomes the bring about that “effectiveness.” At times the pursuit for effectiveness in Christian leadership is but a guise for the leader’s attempt at control or personal success.

“Effective leadership” training also shifts the pastor’s moral behavior to become a subset of effective leadership. In other words, pastors view their moral lives from the context of their leadership. The pastor-leader maintains moral faithfulness primarily because moral failure would ruin their ministry. The pastor-leader then becomes an expert at managing his or her external life with little internal character formation. Simply put, they learn to smile on the outside when they’re seething on the inside.

Fitch taps into something important with the following words:

“Ministry can only flow out of one’s life and character. In the end, moral failures are not the worst of the problem: the worst is when leaders give off the air that they are doing things in order to be effective instead of doing things out of faithfulness to Christ and who they already are in him because of what he has already done.”

Here’s the question: Are “faithfulness to Christ” and “effective leadership” compatible in genuine biblical Christian leadership? If so, how? In the end, one must submit to the other. There will be times when what is good for the community is bad for the organization. There will also be times when success must take a back seat to what is simply good, just and right.

In just a few hours, my family and I will be going camping for the very first time. Debbie has been camping many times as a child, but we have never gone camping as a family. This will be my kids’ and my first time camping.

Fortunately we’re going with a group of 7 or 8 families (32 people in all), so I don’t feel too much pressure.

Len Hjarlmarson has a GREAT POST about Parker Palmer and how our knowledge causes violence. I like Palmer’s definition of violence:

“It is important to recognize that to do violence to each other we need not drop a bomb or hit someone with a stick. We do violence in much more subtle ways. My operating definition of violence is that violence always involves violating the integrity of the other. We do violence whenever we violate the integrity or the nature of the other, whether the other is the earth, or another human being, or another culture.”

This is why I can’t be a pacifist with any kind integrity. It’s because I have learned and perfected the subtler ways of inflicting violence and violating the integrity of others. I yell at my kids. I can vie for a position of dominance simply with a glance. I can manipulate with a carefully turned phrase. And sometimes I just get pissed off because I don’t get my way.

Len’s post reminds me of my inward nature and my propensity toward violence.

Yet, while I may not be able to view myself as a pacifist, I believe there are spiritual disciplines of pacifism or peace — exercises of solitude, silence, sacrifice, submission and secrecy. Len’s post reminds me that although I may not hit someone or kill someone, I still need to follow the Prince of Peace, in order to become a man of peace in the fullest sense.

Chris Erdman has a great post called “Jesus Christ Says ‘No’ To War.” I love his line, “War is a failure — that is an empirical fact.”

As followers of Christ, the living Prince of Peace, I cannot fathom any way we can rationalize war. Evil cannot be used to overcome evil. Violence cannot be used to overcome violence. And please don’t quote Old Testament stories about God telling Israel to go to war and kill off certain groups of people. That was a different time, culture and part of God’s developing Story for creation. Christ’s life has transformed the Story, taking it to a new place. Jesus has redefined what it means to be human and God’s people. He and his followers have given us a vision of where all of this is going — a renewed world without war, violence, murder, hatred and chaos. And like Christ, his followers are to pull the future into the present by living it now through the power of the Holy Spirit, who is divine living love.

Any argument in favor of war from a nationalistic, political or economic perspective must bow to God’s eternal perspective. Christ has come. He has inaugurated his Father’s kingdom coming to earth, a vision that must fill our imagination and must rearrange and redirect our lives. “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15).

The closest we can come to any kind of rationalization for war is to claim that in our broken world war is a terrible inevitability. Is war necessary at times? Perhaps. But that simply affirms Erdman’s claim — war is a failure. It’s our failure as human beings and more specifically our failure as the God’s people to bear God’s image and to bring his future into our present.

Erdman’s words need to be heeded:

“Jesus Christ says “no” to war. Utopian? No more so than our more approved visions for the world. Jesus Christ may be the most realistic answer the world will ever know. Love is the only power on earth worth its salt. It is the great cause and must now be dared. The state cannot do it, but the church can; it must. Only the church can lead the world into its future.”

I have always found it helpful to review the basics in order to maintain a true course in whatever I’m trying to accomplish. It helps me avoid missing the forest because of the trees.

So what are the basics of a missional community? A missional community is a group of people who have arranged their lives so that they are cooperating with God’s dream of redeeming creation by living in constant missionary engagement with the world. This involves a few things worth unpacking.

First, the members of a missional community are committed to being Jesus’ apprentices, arranging their lives to learn from him how to be like him from the inside-out. This is accomplished primarily by being with Jesus throughout one’s day by wisely practicing spiritual disciplines, worship and community, all supported by a natural rhythm of life.

It also means that this group of apprentices gathers in various ways, either formally or informally, that build the members up in love. These gatherings are “in Jesus’ name,” centering around his essence and presence. They involve worship, prayer, communion, story-telling and the full exercise of spiritual gifts. Ultimately, it’s the members’ rich participation in each other’s lives that then supports the members’ lives outside the community.

Ultimately, the previous two facets are means to a greater end — a constant missionary encounter with the world. We are called by God not for privilege but for service. We are called to be a blessing to the world by living a life of sacrificial love, and thus imitating God (Ephesians 5:1-2). As N.T. Wright has said on many occasions, what Jesus is for Israel, the Church is now for the world. Or as Wright states in his commentary on Romans 8 (I pulled this from Scot McKnight’s blog), “And, if one dare put it like this, as God sent Jesus to rescue the human race, so God will send Jesus’ younger siblings, in the power of the Spirit, to rescue the whole creation order, to bring that justice and peace for which the whole creation yearns” (p. 596).

Perhaps the primary way members of a missional community, both corporately and personally, can embody Jesus’ good news of God’s kingdom come to earth is through inclusion. To refer to Wright once again, he states that at the heart of Jesus’ kingdom practice was the practice of inclusion, especially around the table. Table fellowship became a powerful symbol and practice for Jesus as he used these moments to shatter revered social categories and welcome all into his Father’s life.

Therefore, the missional community must explore new ways to welcome everyone into their relationships, their homes, and their gatherings. The good news of God’s kingdom come to earth; the good news of God’s future New Creation dawning in the present is expressed through loving hospitality and inclusion.

Much more can be said, but right now these are the basics I need to focus on.