Sans Contexte

Why a Victory Dance?

2011-05-03T11:59:00.001+02:00

Matt 5:43 “You have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven.
How do we square this verse with the victory celebration that has poured out over the news of the death of Osama bin Laden? I shed no tears for the death of this man; he sowed much evil in his life.

Should we not ask if it was right to use violence to end a person’s reign of violence? After all, if you live by the sword, will you not die by the sword?

I do think there are times when we are to sell our cloak and buy a sword:

Luke 22³⁶ He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.

It still remains that I am troubled by the hatred I’ve seen displayed at the news of his death. People dancing and waving a flag is one thing, but to rejoice and shout “rot in hell” or something like this, I find no justification for it.

Some will say, “well, they would do the same if it had been George Bush or Barak Obama.” My response to this is, “well, we are not them.” Where is our moral high ground if we react as we say they would? And, if we purport to be a follower of Christ, how can we justify this reaction?

I suppose a little good news is welcomed when the world seems rather dark, but I still am troubled over the response I have seen.

I would like to ask the question, Is there any time or place where when it is okay to react like? Seriously.

These are the thoughts that I am giving daylight to as I ponder this situation. It is a complicated issue, and there are no easy answers, but I think that we need to pull back from an emotional response and look seriously at the impact of this event, and consider carefully what our response should be.

Any thoughts?

Jacques Ellul on Social Justice

2011-04-25T21:45:00.001+02:00

...Jesus Christ has not come to establish social justice any more than he has come to establish the power of the state or the reign of money or art. Jesus Christ has come to save men, and all that matters is that men may come to know him. We are adept at finding reasons-good theological, political, or practical reasons, for camouflaging this. But the real reason is that we let ourselves be impressed and dominated by the forces of the world, by the press, by public opinion, by the political game, by appeals to justice, liberty, peace, the poverty of the third world, and the Christian civilization of the west, all of which play on our inclinations and weaknesses. Modern protestants are in the main prepared to be all things to all men, like St. Paul, but unfortunately this is not in order that they may save some but in order that they may be like all men. The Ethics of Freedom (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), 254-255

Five thought traps—the foundations for hunger, poverty and environmental catastrophes

2010-11-29T14:15:00.001+01:00

Below and in the next few posts I want to share some thoughts from authors Frances Moore Lappe and Anna Lappé, in their book Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet. The short exposure to this book as impacted my thinking in a lot of ways. Most importantly this line of thoughts is something that should be inherent in Christian thought and theology, but unfortunately it isn’t. Let me introduce the Five Thought Traps first.

1. The enemy is scarcity; production is our savior.

With the human population doubling every fifty years or so, there just isn't enough stuff to go around...like land, food, and water. To survive, we have to produce more and more.

“In the original Diet for a Small Planet, (the authors) set out to explode the scarcity myth with mountains of evidence showing the abundance—and the waste—in our food system.

For me, discovering that here in the US we feed sixteen pounds of grain and soy to cattle to get one pound back in meat was the first real wake up call. Because so much of our harvested acreage goes to feed livestock, the waste is staggering. I calculated that the grain we annually feed livestock could provide the equivalent of a bowl of food for every person on earth every day of the year! So, I thought, anyone who simply looked at the facts would be spurred to make big changes.

But I guess I didn’t appreciate the strength of this thought trap’s grip. Even now, thirty years later, the US Department of Agriculture sees no problem at all. Its economists maintain that the grain to beef ratio is “only” seven to one—as if seven pounds of feed to get only one pound back is some mark of efficiency. (To get their seven-to-one ratio, government analysts must credit grain and soy feeding with all the meat produced, although they know that more than half comes from grass, hay and other things cattle eat.)”

Next Time: 2) We are all selfish and the only thing that counts is the survival of the fittest.

Technorati Tags: Kingdom,Spiritual Formation,community

Worship – A Dialogue on the Purposes of the Church Part 3

2010-07-17T20:32:00.001+02:00

Ever watch a group of people who will stand and shout when their favorite team makes a great play or wins a hard fought game? Or how the audience at a concert will stand and applaud a talented musician who just gave a great performance?

I once attended the matinee of a mediocre Mozart opera with a friend. When it came time for the tenor to come on stage, Plácido Domingo came out to sing the role. Everyone stood and gave him a standing ovation--before he even sang!

Compare this reaction to the picture that John gives us in Revelation 4 and 5, of the One seated on a throne surrounded by 24 Elders and angels, and the response of all creation to the Lamb seated on the throne in chapter 5.

Note what N. T. Wright says about this scene:

There are a few ideas in this quote from Wright that resonate with me:

Worship means, literally, acknowledging the worth of someone or something. All creation worships God, humans, animals, birds, et. al. because he deserves to be praised.
Humans have something more to say when they join in the song of worship: They know Why God should be praised. He has made all things, and he has ransomed saints from all languages, people and nations.

I like what Wright says: This is God’s world as it should be, and the way it is in heaven already. I get goose bumps every time I read these two chapters of the Book of Revelation.

The question is, then, how do we worship here and now in our lives that somehow hearkens beyond us and replicates this heavenly scene?

How can our worship acknowledge the worth of the one we worship? Who does that work out in a practical way?
Do we fully understand the Why of worship? Do we grasp the full implications of what it means to say that God created all things, creature, nature and human, and that he has ransomed saints from all nations, tongues and peoples, to be a nation of Priests?

For me, the practical question is how can I experience or enter into worship that is worthy of God the father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Again, Wright gives us two ideas:

First, you become like what you worship.

What happens when you worship money, sex or power? We are shaped by our desires to conform to these objects of worship. What happens when we begin to truly worship the God who created all things and has redeemed us for himself through his son Jesus Christ by the power of his spirit?

Because we are made in God’s image, worship makes us truly human.

You discover more fully what it means to be human as well as you begin to shrink as a human; you are no longer the center of the universe.

Good start, but a long journey. I think Carson Pue (p30f) has given me some insight on this journey. He has stated that we often fall into two camps in our approach to following Christ.

The first group is similar to power-boaters, for whom the destination is of primary importance. The primary concern is to get to the destination as quickly and as safely as possible, and once there, concern shifts to having fun and enjoying the destination. This is what makes the journey worthwhile.

The second group are the sailors. The journey is as important as the destination. They enjoy the various aspects of the journey along the journey as the proceed toward the destination.

I’ve discovered that I need to become more of a sailor and less of a power-boater in my walk with Christ.

I won’t dwell on the implications of the two metaphors, but hopefully they are food for thought.

Technorati Tags: worship,kingdom,Emerging,France,spiritual formation

Worship – A Dialogue on the Purposes of the Church: Who do we Worship?

2010-07-01T05:21:00.001+02:00

Sing to the Lord, all the earth. Psalm 96:1b

This post is a part of an ongoing dialogue about the five purposes of the church. The first post addressed the question of Who Do We Worship? I want to continue to interact and dialog with Marva Dawn as she dialogs about the “Who” of worship in her book How Shall We Worship?

There is an interesting observation in her book (p. 20) about the nature of our cultures today, described by social analyst Christopher Lasch as a Culture of Narcissism.

Lasch stated that social developments in the 20th century, such as the end of World War II and the rise of a consumer culture in the years that followed, gave rise to a narcissistic personality structure in which peoples’ self-concepts led to a fear of commitment and lasting relationships (including religion), a fear of aging (e.g., the 1960s and 1970s "youth culture") and a overdeveloped admiration for fame and celebrity, nurtured in part by the motion picture industry and television. The result is confusion, anxiety and uncertainty about how to live and relate in the world today (see a review of Lasch here).

Marva believes that this culture of narcissism has entered the church, which has resulted in attitudes and views that ask the question, What’s in it for me? (p. 21) Ever have anyone say to you, “I didn’t get much out of the

worship service today.”

Since worship is the response of all creation to “God’s gift of being,” any response that we have that is “hunting for what will please ourselves” can be nothing more than sin.

A couple of the results that we see in churches today is the tendency to see Sunday morning worship as an evangelistic rally, i.e., using the appeal factor of the worship service to attract those who are not yet Christ-followers by appealing to their immersion in our narcissistic culture. Thus a church can entertain and give people the impression that they have been part of a worship experience.

But if worship is for God, can those outside the community of faith enter into worship? Or more bluntly, can we say that these kind of services qualify as worship?

A pastor friend made a comment to my previous post, “One of the things we teach about worship is that it includes every aspect of life, not just what we do together on a Sunday morning. Worship is also our service to God as we serve His people.”

That to me is the paradox of the question of worship: Worship is about God, but yet as we worship, we can also serve the people of God. The example I have in mind is the Milepost 13 Band that recently came to Grenoble. I saw some aspects of worship that I hadn’t notice before. They are a worship band, so their main purpose or goal was to worship God. But yet they were also evangelistic in their concerts, and one of the biggest benefits was how they served the two congregations in Grenoble –one French speaking and one English speaking, and the fellowship and community we enjoyed as a result.

So for me, this is a marvelous picture of what worship can be, it is more than an subjective experience on Sunday morning. As Marva points out, worship is the glad response to the immense grace of Triune God.” So when God’s grace is pouring out on us, we can experience the outworking of that grace through fellowship, evangelism, service, et. al., which in turn should rebound in our response to that grace.

Yes, grace is amazing!

Technorati Tags: Culture,worship,France,Kingdom,Missional,purpose

Worship: Celebrate God’s Presence. A Dialogue on the Purposes of the Church

2010-06-28T19:19:00.001+02:00

To worship the Lord is –in the world’s eyes –a waste of time. It is, indeed, a royal waste of time, but a waste nonetheless. By engaging in it, we don’t accomplish anything useful in our society’s terms. (Marva Dawn, A Royal Waste of Time)

I am starting a dialog about the core purposes of the church, , following Rick Warren’s understanding of the Five Purposes of the Church.

To start the conversation, I want to dialog with Marva Dawn, who has written extensively on the idea of worship. Marva Dawn has written a nice little volume called How Shall We Worship?, which looks at the tensions that exist in the so-called “worship wars,” i.e., the battle between traditional and contemporary worship. She takes an in-depth look at worship and its implications for the church. I would like to interact with some of her questions in a few posts.

I actually discovered Marva by accident. I came into a grad class at Wheaton one day to be told that we were going downstairs to attend a lecture by Marva Dawn. Being so full of myself at the time, I determined that I would sit in the back of the auditorium and suffer through this lecture, since sneaking out would not show respect to the professor.

As I sat and listened to this diminutive woman (who did not impress me in the least), she began to speak with a quiet and soft voice. I was slowly pushed up the aisle and out the door by the intensity and passion of her message. So, I like Marva Dawn and listen when she speaks. And which is why I am sharing her thoughts on this topic.

One reason why I like Marva is more about the questions she asks than the explication. Here are some of the questions she deals with in the introduction to How Shall we Worship?:

1. What is worship? She begins her discussion by pointing out that worship is…

“our glad response to the immense grace of Triune God.”

All of our life is worship if we live in gratitude and reverence, if coupled with a mindfulness of God and eagerness to serve Him, says Dawn.

What Dawn shows me that too much of our worship is about Me, not God. Someone once commented to me that worship is when God is the audience.

I googled the phrase “worship” to find a picture to preface this post (see above), and I began to notice that the focus of 90% of the pictures of worship had a theme similar to this picture:

What do you see when you look at this picture? --someone standing on a hill or mountain, a beautiful sky in the background, with their hands lifted to the sky, ostensibly worshipping.

But is this worship? It may say something about the subjective worship experience (who wouldn’t want to have a worship experience like this?), but it says Nothing about WHOM we worship.

Unfortunately, much of what passes for worship is summed up in this illustration:

I am not sure, but I think this is a long way from “a mindfulness of God and eagerness to serve Him," as Marva Dawn says.

I realize that worship is often a subjective experience, what lifts one person into worship of God will leave another person feeling like they’ve paid good money for a bad concert.

But we come back to Marva Dawn’s questions: “What is worship?” Is our worship biblically formed, or does it reveal the influences of the culture that surrounds the church? What do the adjectives that you use to describe worship in your church say about your church?

Why don’t our typical Sunday morning worship services cause us to tremble? Are we really encountering God?

Why don’t our churches seem to be affecting our culture? Why do so many people who say they are spiritual want nothing to do with our worship?

I want to address a few of these questions in order to establish a foundation (at least for me) of what worship is, not what how I do it. So, if you are interested in the discussion, come back and sit a spell, and let’s talk.

Technorati Tags: Worship,kingdom,France

Practice Resurrection

2010-03-26T15:06:00.000+01:00

I've been on an unplanned hiatus since the beginning of January. It's not that I haven't had anything to say, just have been busy, and didn't feel compelled to address anything in particular.

I've been musing over what to do with this blog. I have another blog that is more directly ministry related, and I thought perhaps it was time to retire this one. But things being as they are, I was, on the one hand. loathe to give up the name of this blog. I like it, and wasn't ready to see it disappear into the ether.

And, I still feel I need a place to pontificate and bloviate from time to time. So, I'm back.

What I think I'd like to do is take a look at a book I picked up on kindle for PC by Eugene Peterson called Practice Resurrection: A Conversation on Growing Up in Christ.

The first sentence reads:

This is a conversation on becoming a mature Christian, Christian formation, growing up to the stature of Christ.

I'm hooked --you had me at Christian Formation. According to my friend Matt, it's a great read.

There are 13 chapters and an appendix, published by Eerdmans.

So, pick up the book and join me in reading it. A few comments on the reading would be okay.

Intertextuality

2009-09-26T21:40:00.001+02:00

(I made a few revisions to this post after ruminating on it after I posted it. Hopefully the line of thought is a bit clearer as a result.)

In my studies in the Book of Acts lately I’ve been thinking about the issue of intertextuality. The term is a school of thought that attempts to investigate the interconnectedness between texts. A good way to describe it is to think of a bricoleur (handyman or craftsman) who creates improvised structures by appropriating pre-existing materials which are ready-to-hand. The bricoleur constructs new arrangements by the practice of bricolage through several key transformations: addition, deletion, substitution and transposition.

Of course, one always needs a good academic quote to explain things:

“The term “intertextuality” is of rather recent coinage in both Jewish and Christian circles. It denotes not just relationships among texts, but also relationships between texts and their cultures.”

Richard Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic period, pg. xx

“The phenomena of intertextuality – the imbedding of fragments of an earlier text within a latter one – has always played a major role in the cultural traditions that are heir to Israel’s Scripture: the voice of Scripture, regarded as authoritative in one way or another, continues to speak in and through latter texts that both depend on and transform the earlier.”

Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, pg. 14

I think the key concept here is that intertextuality “denotes not just relationships among texts, but also relationships between texts and their cultures.” In scripture, it is the enculturation of a concept from one culture to another, i.e., from ancient Hebrew culture to the Greek-Jewish culture of the New Testament.

One good example on intertextuality that recurs throughout the Jewish scriptures is God’s Passover the five books of Moses (Ex. 23:10-19; Lev. 23:4-8), with synoptic views in Ex. 12:1-13 and Deut. 16:1-8, and echoed in Ezk 45:21-24 and Ezra 6:19-22. It is picked up again in the New Testament as the writers wrestled with the idea of a New Passover taking place in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 5:7):

7 Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast- as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

Paul is the master of intertextuality,one need only to look at Romans and his understanding of Abraham (in Gen. 15) and what God wants to do for Israel.

There are obvious examples of this in the New Testament, such as the use of the texts in the Gospel of Matthew related to the coming of messiah. For example, Matt. 1:20ff:

20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet:

23 “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel”(which means, God with us).

What I see here is that there is more involved than seeing this passage as a prophecy; for me it resonates with how this fits into God’s plan for his people.

Often prophecy is used for apologetic purposes, more to support the idea how it is mathematically improbable for one person to fulfill all these prophecies of Messiah, yet here is Jesus, who fits the bill exactly. Put this prophecy on the pile with other scriptures that will rationally and intellectually prove beyond a doubt that the bible is true and God is real.

This is the same as someone describing a movie to us, giving us the bits they enjoyed, but missing the plot of the story completely.

By doing this, I think we miss the benefit of seeing what God is doing through out the ages to bring his plan to fruition, if we only see OT scripture as a proof text. To quote N. T. Wright:

God had a single plan all along through which he intended to rescue the world and the human race, and that this single plan was centered upon the call of Israel, a call which Paul saw coming to fruition in Israel’s representative, the Messiah (Justification, p 35).

Wright also states that failure to read scripture this way is like trying to figure out a puzzle with half the pieces missing.

So the key is to maintain the unity of the text without ignoring the bits that help us to understand what God is doing in the world.

As one writer states, it is the “absorption et transformation de l’autre text” (the absorption and transformation of another text.) It is the idea of a dialogue taking place between the writer and another text or dialogue.

I share this because as I look over the writings of the new testament and how it is related to event of the Old Testament, it leads me to rethink the role of what we commonly call prophecy. It is not that I don’t believe in prophecy, but I do believe that we should not lift stories and events about how God worked (and is working)among his people and set them up as kind of a proof text, independent of context and connection to the rest of God’s work. Kind of misses the point, I think.

(image credit here)

Technorati Tags: scripture,kingdom of God,intertextuality

Gregory Nazianzus on the Holy Spirit

2009-09-21T00:56:00.001+02:00

This is a great quote from Gregory Nazianzus on the person of the Holy Spirit:

“XXIX. This, then, is what may be said by one who admits the silence of Scripture. But now the swarm of testimonies shall burst upon you from which the Deity of the Holy Ghost (Luke 1.35; 3.22; 4.1) shall be shown to all who are not excessively stupid, or else altogether enemies to the Spirit, to be most clearly recognized in Scripture. Look at these facts:—Christ is born; the Spirit is His Forerunner. He is baptized; the Spirit bears witness. He is tempted; the Spirit leads Him up (Luke 4.1, 18). He works miracles; the Spirit accompanies them. He ascends; the Spirit takes His place. What great things are there in the idea of God which are not in His power (Acts 2. 4)?

What titles which belong to God are not applied to Him, except only unbegotten and begotten? For it was needful that the distinctive properties of the Father and the Son should remain peculiar to them, lest there should be confusion in the Godhead which brings all things, even disorder itself, into due arrangement and good order.

Indeed I tremble when I think of the abundance of the titles, and how many Names they outrage who fall foul of the Spirit. He is called the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, the Mind of Christ, the Spirit of The Lord, and Himself The Lord, the Spirit of Adoption, of Truth, of Liberty; the Spirit of Wisdom, of Understanding, of Counsel, of Might, of Knowledge, of Godliness, of the Fear of God.

For He is the Maker of all these, filling all with His Essence, containing all things, filling the world in His Essence, yet incapable of being comprehended in His power by the world; good, upright, princely, by nature not by adoption; sanctifying, not sanctified; measuring, not measured; shared, not sharing; filling, not filled; containing, not contained; inherited, glorified, reckoned with the Father and the Son; held out as a threat, the Finger of God; fire like God (to manifest, as I take it, His consubstantiality); the Creator-Spirit, Who by Baptism and by Resurrection creates anew; the Spirit that knows all things, that teaches, that blows where and to what extent He lists; that guides, talks, sends forth, separates, is angry or tempted; that reveals, illumines, quickens, or rather is the very Light and Life; that makes Temples; that deifies; that perfects so as even to anticipate Baptism (As in the case of the Centurion Cornelius, Acts 10. 9), yet after Baptism to be sought as a separate gift; that does all things that God does; divided into fiery tongues; dividing gifts; making Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors, and Teachers; understanding manifold, clear, piercing, undefiled, unhindered, which is the same thing as most wise and varied in His actions; and making all things clear and plain; and of independent power, unchangeable, Almighty, all-seeing, penetrating all spirits that are intelligent, pure, most subtle; and also all prophetic spirits and apostolic in the same manner and not in the same places; for they lived in different places; thus showing that He is unconfined.” Orations 31.29

Technorati Tags: Holy Spirit,Kingdom of God,Church Fathers

This is just a test...

2009-09-16T11:34:00.003+02:00

I've been looking for a way to post papers and articles on my blog without making them inline. Scribd has an ipaper system that looks promising. Take a look and see if it works for you. Here it is (j'espoir)

Seeking Justice Sermon

Actually, it works rather nice, but I have to make my margins wider on my blog. Since I'm using the original blogger template, I'll have to ask my wife to do it for me.

But anyway, it works. Let me know what you think.

Technorati Tags: Test,articles online,odds and ends

15 Theses by Wolgang Simson (Conclusion)

2009-09-09T01:49:00.001+02:00

15. The Church comes home

Where is the easiest place, say, for a man to be spiritual? Maybe again, is it hiding behind a big pulpit, dressed up in holy robes, preaching holy words to a faceless crowd and then disappearing into an office? And what is the most difficult, and therefore most meaningful, place for a man to be spiritual? At home, in the presence of his wife and children, where everything he does and says is automatically put through a spiritual litmus test against reality, where hypocrisy can be effectively weeded out and authenticity can grow. Much of Christianity has fled the family, often as a place of its own spiritual defeat, and then has organized artificial performances in sacred buildings far from the atmosphere of real life. As God is in the business of recapturing the homes, the church turns back to its roots, back to where it came from. It literally comes home, completing the circle of Church history at the end of world history.

As Christians of all walks of life, from all denominations and backgrounds, feel a clear echo in their spirit to what God's Spirit is saying to the Church, and start to hear globally in order to act locally, they begin to function again as one body. They organize themselves into neighborhood house-churches and meet in regional or city-celebrations. You are invited to become part of this movement and make your own contribution. Maybe your home, too, will become a house that changes the world.

You are welcome and encouraged to redistribute this article.

Technorati Tags: home church

15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (part 8)

2009-09-07T16:06:00.001+02:00

13. From Denominations to city-wide celebrations

Jesus called a universal movement, and what came was a series of religious companies with global chains marketing their special brands of Christianity and competing with each other. Through this branding of Christianity most of Protestantism has, therefore, become politically insignificant and often more concerned with traditional specialties and religious infighting than with developing a collective testimony before the world. Jesus simply never asked people to organize themselves into denominations. In the early days of the Church, Christians had a dual identity: they were truly His church and vertically converted to God, and then organized themselves according to geography, that is, converting also horizontally to each other on earth. This means not only Christian neighbors organizing themselves into neighborhood- or house-churches, where they share their lives locally, but Christians coming together as a collective identity as much as they can for citywide or regional celebrations expressing the corporateness of the Church of the city or region. Authenticity in the neighborhoods connected with a regional or citywide corporate identity will make the Church not only politically significant and spiritually convincing, but will allow a return to the biblical model of the City-Church.

14. Developing a persecution-proof spirit

They crucified Jesus, the Boss of all the Christians. Today, his followers are often more into titles, medals and social respectability, or, worst of all, they remain silent and are not worth being noticed at all. "Blessed are you when you are persecuted", says Jesus. Biblical Christianity is a healthy threat to pagan godlessness and sinfulness, a world overcome by greed, materialism, jealousy and any amount of demonic standards of ethics, sex, money and power. Contemporary Christianity in many countries is simply too harmless and polite to be worth persecuting. But as Christians again live out New Testament standards of life and, for example, call sin as sin, conversion or persecution has been, is and will be the natural reaction of the world. Instead of nesting comfortably in temporary zones of religious liberty, Christians will have to prepare to be again discovered as the main culprits against global humanism, the modern slavery of having to have fun and the outright worship of Self, the wrong centre of the universe. That is why Christians will and must feel the "repressive tolerance" of a world which has lost any absolutes and therefore refuses to recognize and obey its creator God with his absolute standards. Coupled with the growing ideologisation, privatization and spiritualization of politics and economics, Christians will, sooner than most think, have their chance to stand happily accused in the company of Jesus. They need to prepare now for the future by developing a persecution-proof spirit and an even more persecution-proof structure.

Technorati Tags: house church

15 These by Wolfgang Simson (Part 7)

2009-09-07T04:54:00.001+02:00

11. Stop bringing people to church, and start bringing the church to the people

The church is changing back from being a Come-structure to being again a Go-structure. As one result, the Church needs to stop trying to bring people "into the church," and start bringing the Church to the people. The mission of the Church will never be accomplished just by adding to the existing structure; it will take nothing less than a mushrooming of the church through spontaneous multiplication of itself into areas of the population of the world, where Christ is not yet known.

12. Rediscovering the "Lord's Supper" to be a real supper with real food

Church tradition has managed to "celebrate the Lord's Supper" in a homeopathic and deeply religious form, characteristically with a few drops of wine, a tasteless cookie and a sad face. However, the "Lord's Supper" was actually more a substantial supper with a symbolic meaning, than a symbolic supper with a substantial meaning. God is restoring eating back into our meeting.

Technorati Tags: House Church

15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 6)

2009-09-04T16:27:00.001+02:00

9. Return from organized to organic forms of Christianity

The "Body of Christ" is a vivid description of an organic, not an organized, being. Church consists on its local level of a multitude of spiritual families, which are organically related to each other as a network, where the way the pieces are functioning together is an integral part of the message of the whole. What has become a maximum of organization with a minimum of organism, has to be changed into a minimum of organization to allow a maximum of organism. Too much organization has, like a straightjacket, often choked the organism for fear that something might go wrong. Fear is the opposite of faith, and not exactly a Christian virtue. Fear wants to control, faith can trust. Control, therefore, may be good, but trust is better. The Body of Christ is entrusted by God into the hands of steward-minded people with a supernatural charismatic gift to believe God that He is still in control, even if they are not. A development of trust-related regional and national networks, not a new arrangement of political ecumenism is necessary for organic forms of Christianity to reemerge.

10. From worshipping our worship to worshipping God

The image of much of contemporary Christianity can be summarized, a bit euphemistically, as holy people coming regularly to a holy place at a holy day at a holy hour to participate in a holy ritual lead by a holy man dressed in holy clothes against a holy fee. Since this regular performance-oriented enterprise called "worship service" requires a lot of organizational talent and administrative bureaucracy to keep going, formalized and institutionalized patterns developed quickly into rigid traditions. Statistically, a traditional 1-2 hour "worship service" is very resource-hungry but actually produces very little fruit in terms of discipling people, that is, in changed lives. Economically speaking, it might be a "high input and low output" structure. Traditionally, the desire to "worship in the right way" has led to much denominationalism, confessionalism and nominalism. This not only ignores that Christians are called to "worship in truth and in spirit," not in cathedrals holding songbooks, but also ignores that most of life is informal, and so is Christianity as "the Way of Life." Do we need to change from being powerful actors to start "acting powerfully?"

Technorati Tags: house church

Eating the carrot?

2009-09-04T16:08:00.001+02:00

This is one of my favorite Peanuts cartoons. I had a similar experience this week. I had about 12 boxes of books from the library of my previous existence. I finally said enough was enough and called a local book dealer to take them off my hands.

It was tough to see these old friends leave, but I hope they will all find a good home.

What’s the spiritual application? I have no clue, I am enjoying eating the carrot. I took the money over to Kohl’s and bought a bunch of clothes to take back to France.

Oh well.

Technorati Tags: Misc.

15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 5)

2009-09-04T00:46:00.001+02:00

7. The right pieces - fitted together in the wrong way

In doing a puzzle, we need to have the right original for the pieces, otherwise the final product, the whole picture, turns out wrong, and the individual pieces do not make much sense. This has happened to large parts of the Christian world: we have all the right pieces, but have fitted them together wrong, because of fear, tradition, religious jealousy and a power-and-control mentality. As water is found in three forms, ice, water and steam, the five ministries mentioned in Eph. 4:11-12, the Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Teachers and Evangelists are also found today, but not always in the right forms and in the right places: they are often frozen to ice in the rigid system of institutionalized Christianity; they sometimes exist as clear water; or they have vanished like steam into the thin air of free-flying ministries and "independent" churches, accountable to no-one. As it is best to water flowers with the fluid version of water, these five equipping ministries will have to be transformed back into new, and at the same time age-old, forms, so that the whole spiritual organism can flourish and the individual "ministers" can find their proper role and place in the whole. That is one more reason why we need to return back to the Maker's original and blueprint for the Church.

8. God does not leave the Church in the hands of bureaucratic clergy

No expression of a New Testament church is ever led by just one professional "holy man" doing the business of communicating with God and then feeding some relatively passive religious consumers Moses-style. Christianity has adopted this method from pagan religions, or at best from the Old Testament. The heavy professionalization of the church since Constantine has now been a pervasive influence long enough, dividing the people of God artificially into laity and clergy. According to the New Testament (1 Tim. 2:5), "there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." God simply does not bless religious professionals to force themselves in-between people and God forever. The veil is torn, and God is allowing people to access Himself directly through Jesus Christ, the only Way. To enable the priesthood of all believers, the present system will have to change completely. Bureaucracy is the most dubious of all administrative systems, because it basically asks only two questions: yes or no. There is no room for spontaneity and humanity, no room for real life. This may be OK for politics and companies, but not the Church. God seems to be in the business of delivering His Church from a Babylonian captivity of religious bureaucrats and controlling spirits into the public domain, the hands of ordinary people made extraordinary by God, who, like in the old days, may still smell of fish, perfume and revolution.

Technorati Tags: house church

15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 4)

2009-09-03T01:56:00.001+02:00

5. The church has to become small in order to grow big

Most churches of today are simply too big to provide real fellowship. They have too often become "fellowships without fellowship." The New Testament Church was a mass of small groups, typically between 10 and 15 people. It grew not upward into big congregations between 20 and 300 people filling a cathedral and making real, mutual communication improbable. Instead, it multiplied "sidewards", like organic cells, once these groups reached around 15-20 people. Then, if possible, it drew all the Christians together into citywide celebrations, as with Solomon's Temple court in Jerusalem. The traditional congregational church as we know it is, statistically speaking, neither big nor beautiful, but rather a sad compromise, an overgrown house-church and an under-grown celebration, often missing the dynamics of both.

6. No church is led by a Pastor alone

The local church is not led by a Pastor, but fathered by an Elder, a local person of wisdom and reality. The local house-churches are then networked into a movement by the combination of elders and members of the so-called five-fold ministries (Apostles, Prophets, Pastors, Evangelists and Teachers) circulating "from house to house," whereby there is a special foundational role to play for the apostolic and prophetic ministries (Eph. 2:20, and 4:11.12). A Pastor (shepherd) is a very necessary part of the whole team, but he cannot fulfill more than a part of the whole task of "equipping the saints for the ministry," and has to be complemented synergistically by the other four ministries in order to function properly.

Technorati Tags: House church

Old Testament holy war and the character of God: defining the terms

2009-09-03T01:50:00.001+02:00

A request came to me to provide an answer to the question of the Canaanite conquest, and how do we square that with the idea of a loving God (for background on this, go to Dan van Loon’s posts here and here). But having said that, I am now finishing the study I started earlier on this topic, so I will try to share a bit of my conclusions.

A. Is the war of conquest against the Canaanites Jihad? Genocide? Ethnic cleansing? We need to understand that what occurred in the books of Joshua and Judges was not Jihad. Let me explain.

According to the most Muslim traditionalists, the world is divided into two camps:

The House of Islamic Peace (Dar al-Salam), where Muslim governments rule and Muslim law prevails.
The House of War (Dar al-Harb), which refers to the rest of the inhabited world.

The presumption is that these two camps will compete and that fighting is inevitable. Therefore the duty of Jihad will continue, interrupted only by truces until all the world either adopts the Muslim faith or submits to Muslim rule. Those who fight in the Jihad qualify for rewards in both worlds — treasure in this one, paradise in the next. From the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad onward the word Jihad is used in a primarily military sense.

Commonly, Jihad requires Muslims to “struggle in the way of God” or “to struggle to improve one's self and/or society.” The four major categories of Jihad that are recognized are:

Jihad against one's self (Jihad al-Nafs),
Jihad of the tongue (Jihad al-lisan),
Jihad of the hand (Jihad al-yad),
Jihad of the sword (Jihad as-sayf).

Islam focuses on regulating the practice of Jihad. It is a call to all Muslims to engage in this struggle, ongoing and intentional. You will hear of fundamentalist Muslim groups who will declare a Jihad against a group or country (such as Al Qaeda against the US), but this is an extension of the central idea of Jihad.

Put simply, Jihad is a struggle that every devout Muslim is called upon to wage against the enemies of Allah. It is ongoing, and will not end until the conditions discussed above are realized. The best that the enemies of Islam can hope for are truces. The ultimate goal is submission of the world to Allah and the rule of Islam.

It is important to note that Jihad is mandated by Allah through the Qur’an, but it is declared by people (e.g., leaders), who also identify who the enemies are to be.

B. The focus in Scripture is on Yahweh war, or as it is incorrectly called, “holy war.” The term refers to war sanctioned by Yahweh (usually translated in our bibles with the phrase LORD, all capitals). But we need to note some important differences.

The conquest (and hence Yahweh war), was a single event, a unique event and limited event, lasting one generation, and was not meant to be a model of how future generations of Israelites should live and behave toward their contemporaries. It was an act of God, a call to take part in the Yahweh war. Yahweh war is not a feat of military prowess by the Israelites, or even their victory.

C. Genocide is a word sometimes used to describe the Conquest of Canaan. Genocide means the killing of an ethnic or culture group. In current usage, it is based on vicious self-interest, based on some view or myth of racial superiority, and is little more than ethnic cleansing.

The conquest of Canaan is never seen as ethnic cleansing, or as a mark of moral superiority. Nor is the action of Israel seen as a mark of oppression.

It seems, therefore, that we need to define our terminology. Jihad and genocide are not the same concepts as Yahweh war. To define the conquest of Canaan in these terms misses the point and clouds our understanding of the events. Our discussion can now move into the arenas of philosophy and theology.

When we do this, we find that there are no simple answers for this question. But a comment by N.T. Wright about the Conquest in his book Evil and the Justice of God (IVP, 2006) seems a good place to start:

“We look back from our historical vantage point – and post-Enlightenment thought has looked back from its supposed position of moral superiority – and we shake our heads over the whole sorry business of conquest and settlement. Ethnic cleansing, we call it; however much the Israelites had suffered in Egypt, we find it hard to believe that they were justified in doing what they did to the Canaanites, or that the God who was involved in this operation was the same God we know in Jesus Christ.

And yet ever since the garden, ever since God’s grief over Noah, ever since Babel and Abraham, the story has been about the messy way in which God has had to work to bring the world out of the mess. Somehow, in a way we are inclined to find offensive, God has to get his boots muddy and, it seems, to get his hands bloody, to put the world back to rights. If we declare, as many have done, that we would rather it not so, we face a counter-question: Which bit of dry, clean ground are we standing on that we should pronounce on the matter with such certainty? Dietrich Bonhoeffer declared that the primal sin of humanity consisted in putting the knowledge of good and evil before the knowledge of God. That is one of the further dark mysteries of Genesis 3: there must be some substantial continuity between what we mean by good and evil and what God means; otherwise we are in moral darkness indeed. But it serves as a warning to us not to pontificate with too much certainty about what God should and shouldn’t have done” (pp. 58-59).

Wright is saying that there must be a consistent understanding between what God understands as good and evil and our understanding of good and evil. If we judge the conquest of Canaan from our human, philosophical, ethical, moral standards in a way that is not based on God’s understanding of good and evil, we can very easily be presented with a moral and intellectual gap that may seem insurmountable.

In light of this, there are several questions we can address in the discussion in this issue:

We have already discussed how the issue of Jihad in the context of Islam relates to the books of Joshua and Judges, whether it is the same thing as Jihad. How can we understand the idea of “holy war” in Joshua, can we see it as morally justifiable, yet condemn Jihad in the Islamic context?
What of the philosophical-ethical issue of the conquest? Can we ponder it through our 21st century mindset, which leads us to interpret the conquest as ethnic cleansing or something similar?
How can our understanding of the conquest square with the historical, grammatical situation of event, i.e., how did the Joshua and the people of Israel understand about the conquest?
What are the theological issues attached to the question of the conquest? Can God’s command to destroy the Canaanites be seen as a viable command, something that had to be obeyed?

The discussion above is not an attempt to assuage the reality of the discussion, or pretend to offer a defense or apology for the conquest. It is merely an attempt to define our terms.

For my part, although the conquest doesn’t completely set with my view of the world, I do understand that we have to look at the event from the world perspective of ancient Canaan, and deal with the issue from that perspective, and not force our 21st century world view upon the event.

From there, I understand the event of the conquest in terms of God’s dealing with the Israelite people. This event wasn’t something out of context and out of character with God’s overall plan. As Wright says above, this is one of those times that God saw the need to get his boots dirty and his hands bloody in order to put the world to rights.

More to come.

Technorati Tags: Old Testament,Conquest

15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 3)

2009-09-02T02:23:00.001+02:00

3. The Third Reformation.

In rediscovering the gospel of salvation by faith and grace alone, Luther started to reform the Church through a reformation of theology. In the 18th century through movements like the Moravians there was a recovery of a new intimacy with God, which led to a reformation of spirituality, the Second Reformation. Now God is touching the wineskins themselves, initiating a Third Reformation, a reformation of structure.

4. From Church-Houses to house-churches

Since New Testament times, there is no such thing as "a house of God". At the cost of his life, Stephen reminded unequivocally: God does not live in temples made by human hands. The Church is the people of God. The Church, therefore, was and is at home where people are at home: in ordinary houses. There, the people of God:

Share their lives in the power of the Holy Spirit,
Have "meatings," that is, they eat when they meet,
They often do not even hesitate to sell private property and share material and spiritual blessings,
Teach each other in real-life situations how to obey God's word, dialogue, not professor-style,
Pray and prophesy with each other, baptize, `lose their face' and their ego by confessing their sins,
Regaining a new corporate identity by experiencing love, acceptance and forgiveness.

Technorati Tags: House church

A philosophy of education and experience?

2009-09-02T02:11:00.001+02:00

John Dewey proposed a philosophy of education that focused on traditional education (education from without) and progressive education (experience, education from within). Traditional education focuses mainly on content, but it can become a “banking concept” for the transfer of knowledge.

Progressive education (education from within, or experience) is the other school of thought. Basically, it is grows out of our life experiences; but without sufficient or proper content, it will do little to offer growth or development. For Dewey, there needed to be a proper tension between education and experience.

As an educator in the church, I think we need the tension between what we are taught and what we experience in our spiritual formation. Teaching that is little more than throwing words out to the learner and hope that somehow they will appropriate them and figure out what we need to know and put into practice is not much use, either to the learner or to the body of Christ .

Our preaching and teaching needs to educate us (think of it, if you will, as providing the raw materials), it should also provide guided, practical experiences that will help us to understand and assimilate what we have learned and how to apply it to life in order to promote growth and development in our spiritual formation.

Next time: What are we to teach?

Technorati Tags: educaton,spiritual formation,leadership development

15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 2)

2009-09-01T00:15:00.001+02:00

2. Time to change the system

In aligning itself to the religious patterns of the day, the historic Orthodox Church after Constantine in the 4th century AD adopted a religious system which was in essence Old Testament, complete with priests, altar, a Christian temple (cathedral), frankincense and a Jewish, synagogue-style worship pattern. The Roman Catholic Church went on to canonize the system. Luther did reform the content of the gospel, but left the outer forms of "church" remarkably untouched; the Free-Churches freed the system from the State, the Baptists then baptized it, the Quakers dry-cleaned it, the Salvation Army put it into a uniform, the Pentecostals anointed it and the Charismatics renewed it, but until today nobody has really changed the superstructure. It is about time to do just that.

Technorati Tags: house church

15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 1)

2009-09-01T00:06:00.001+02:00

House Church Central has an article by Wolfgang Simson with 15 theses on the church. At some point later I want to do a series of posts on each of his points. What are your thoughts?

1. Church is a Way of Life, not a series of religious meetings

Before they where called Christians, followers of Christ have been called "The Way". One of the reasons was, that they have literally found "the way to live." The nature of Church is not reflected in a constant series of religious meetings lead by professional clergy in holy rooms specially reserved to experience Jesus, but in the prophetic way followers of Christ live their everyday life in spiritually extended families as a vivid answer to the questions society faces, at the place where it counts most: in their homes.

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More on Missional

2009-08-04T20:38:00.001+02:00

I recently came across this quote by Ed Stetzer. I think it is telling for the body of Christ today.

Missions historian Stephen Neil expresses the concern that when churches focus on societal transformation, and particularly when they call it missions, then “everything” is mission. Neil explained, “when everything is mission, nothing is mission.” Those words were prophetic: he spoke those words to a movement that progressively moved away from church planting and evangelistic missions to a near total focus on social justice.

Moreover, are there historical patterns that further confirm Neil’s concerns? When we look at the history of missions, it is frequent (dare I say common?) that those churches which focus on societal change lose their focus on evangelism and church planting. The most healthy churches engage in evangelism (individual transformation), church planting (collective transformation), and societal impact (cultural transformation). And one tends to lead to the others. The best societal impact occurs when it is a reflection of individual and collective, gospel transformation.

When I am told that their church is missional, or they are “being sent,” what I see and hear don’t always align.

Besides losing our focus on evangelism and transformation, our mission ventures run the danger of becoming a project.

Food for thought.

A Few Takes on “Being Missional”

2009-08-04T17:37:00.001+02:00

I’ve been doing some research on what it means to be a missional church. Here are a few quotes I’ve come across while researching the topic that I think are worth considering.

“Churches throughout the Western world find themselves increasingly marginalized from society as they endeavor to relate the good news to people whose assumptions and attitudes have been shaped by modernity and postmodernity. Our post-Christian, neopagan, pluralistic North American context presents cross-cultural missionary challenges every bit as daunting as those we would face on any other continent.

Unfortunately most pastors and church leaders have had no missiological training. Consequently they resort to marketing strategies in place of missionary insights in their attempts to reach out to a population that is becoming increasingly distanced from the church.”

– Eddie Gibbs in Church Next: Quantum Changes in How We Do Ministry

“Since that time, the market machine has spun out many conflicting definitions of missional church. In general, these definitions share a sense that the church is not primarily about us, but about God's mission. But consensus breaks down over what God's mission is and what it means to participate in it.

For others, the missional impulse has been translated into a consumer-oriented mentality—again, an approach that the authors of Missional Church explicitly reject. Some pastors I know are being pressured with missional language to focus their preaching on felt needs. Thus, preaching on "How to Be a Better Spouse" or "How to Be Financially Successful" is considered missional, while preaching straight through a book of the Bible, a common Reformational practice, is seen as an old habit of Christendom. When our needs set the agenda, how can we learn to embody the gospel that is not just our story, but first and foremost God's? The seeker-sensitive mentality reflects a profoundly different ecclesiology from that of Missional Church, which claims that God's people need to rediscover the centrality of God's action in shaping our witness to the world.”

-J. Todd Billings “What Makes a Church Missional?”

Knowing God

2009-08-04T15:42:00.001+02:00

Great quote from my reading Barth's Church Dogmatics this morning:

"We took as our starting point what God Himself said and still says concerning God, and concerning the knowledge and reality of God, by way of the self-testimony which is accessible and comprehensible because it has been given human form in Holy Scripture, the document which is the very essence and basis of the church (CD II.2,p3)

I especially like this observation: Our starting point concerning the doctrine of God is neither an axiom of reason nor a datum of experience. The measure that the doctrine of God draws on these sources betrays the fact that its subject is not really God but a hypostatized reflection of man.

This all goes to say that it is by God that God is known.

This struck me when I read this in Don Miller’s Blog:

Our artists walk away and make secular music and write secular books because they want to say something beautiful and meaningful and so have to walk away from the self-help gospel they grew up hearing about in church.

When we start believing the true story, we will start telling it, and when we start telling it, we’ll help make sense of the world. Story is a sense-making device. And the gospel of Jesus makes sense.

Powerful stuff.

The point of this interpolation is this: We approach our knowledge of God as something we can learn is we study or try hard enough, thus the principles or self-help program approach to knowing God.

What would happen if we took our understanding of God seriously?

Technorati Tags: Barth,Kingdom,Spiritual Formation

A thought from C. S. Lewis

2009-04-10T14:36:00.001+02:00

I came across this C. S. Lewis quote from The Great Divorce.

Time is the very lens through which ye see –small and clear, as men see through the wrong end of a telescope –something that would otherwise be too big for ye to see at all (p 140f).

This quote gave me pause for thought. When you consider that MacDonald explains that Lewis’ voyage from Hell to Heaven wasn’t just locomotion, but also increasing in size, works to help me realize that my view of heaven and ‘--by implication, of God, are bound by where I stand in the universe.

This has also come true this week through the SSD conference led by Larry Crabb. I know I do have a skewed view of God and who he is. I can hide on this side of my spiritual telescope and pretend I have it all together.

The telescope is actually meant to be more of a microscope, to help hem see my shrunken heart and land of perpetual pre-dawn that the characters of Lewis’ book lived in before they took the bus to heaven.

Technorati Tags: Spiritual Formation,Kingdom

Missional Activity (according to Larry Crabb)

2009-04-09T21:56:00.001+02:00

I want to share a few thoughts that Larry Crabb presented at the School of Spiritual Direction this past week.

It deals with the idea of what it means to be missional. Yes, of course, I’ve been a fan of the emerging church and what it means to be missional, but there always seems to be something missing.

I think Scot McKnight’s comment about postmodernism and its relationship to the emerging church in the April 2009 issue of the UK Magazine Christianity,

We found that it tasted good, even if at times we found ourselves spitting out hard chunks of nonsense.

I can concur with that sentiment. However, Larry Crabb gave a short overview of what he thinks it means to be missional, which I would like to reproduce here.

Disclaimer: Any cloudiness or murkiness engendered by this article is my fault and not Larry Crabb’s.

Larry suggested that often we approach the missional activity like this:

Idea:

This is based on our Passion, message, vision, and Strategy.

What do we do? We dialogue, organize, and initiate. And we end up with:

Package the message
Get a plan
Create a team
Pray

The result? We make it happen!

This is linear, systems thinking at its best.

Larry Crabb suggests another path: Reflect, repent, and release.

Again we start with an Idea:

1. We begin by reflecting as asking the questions: What is my ruling passion? What is God’s passion? What other passions do we see?

2. We look at Relationships. The questions we ask may include:

What is my lifestyle?
Am I weary or tired?
Can I say “no”?
Am I appreciative of others?
What kind of feedback am I getting?
What is my history?
Do I have self awareness of this idea?

3. This leads to Repentance.

Where’s the fire?
Is there a spirit of rest?
Do I have the courage to say no?
Is it attractive to others (especially to those closest to me)?

4. This leads to a Release to Ministry. This leads to:

Prayer
Discerning a commitment
What has God provided
The message is developed
There is a deliberate strategy

This is definitely not systems thinking. It is also not how we usually do ministry. Think about it, and work through it, and give me any feedback you may have.

Technorati Tags: Kingdom,organizatonal leadership,emerging,missional

Alpha Talk on Healing

2009-02-01T20:54:00.010+01:00

I've decided to post my talk that I did for the Alpha course on the topic of healing. I think I've arrived at what I think is a good theology of healing.

There is a lot of interest in health and being well and well being. I recently googled the phrase healing, and these are some of the results that I found:

Faith Healing
Spiritual Healing
Holistic Healing
Nordic Healing
Energy Healing
Healing Crystals
Theta Healing
Pranic Healing
Color Therapy for Healing
Reiki Healing

There was at one time a bit of an embarrassment to talk about healing in the church. It was a family secret that we kept hidden from view and did not talk about openly. My theological training made the assumption that even if the gifts survived the apostolic age, they were of no use or value to the church today.

But the conversation has changed. It has changed from a topic that caused embarrassment or anxiety to the reality that healing does exist, and what is its source?

This is no surprise, as health is the power to be a human, as exercised the vital functions of the soul and the body. Health and life is not an eternal possession, it is temporal, and therefore a limited possession. It is entrusted to us, but it does not belong to us. It is a gift from God.

Perhaps nothing has challenges us more than physical illness. We can make a space shuttle land on a dime after circling the heavens, but we have no cure for the common cold; the strongest athlete can be struck down by an invisible microbe.

The doctor can set the bone, cut out the tissue, and administer a drug, but it is only life itself that can join cells back together again and restore our health.

But the realm of the spirit is at once powerful, largely unknown and beyond our control, and perhaps we find it threatening.

But to believe in healing prayer:

1. We must first believe that the spiritual world is real,

2. We must believe that powers in the spiritual world affect things in the physical world.

In order to gain an understanding of what healing is, we will look at the subject healing as it is found in the Old Testament, in the ministry of Jesus and in the rest of the New Testament. We will also look at Church history as well, and then at what is happening today.

I. Healing in the Bible

1) Old Testament

The Divine Magna Carta - Ex. 15:26 He said, 'If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you.'

Our Part - Psalm 30
¹I will exalt you, Lord, for you lifted me out of the depths and did not let my enemies gloat over me. ²Lord my God, I called to you for help, and you healed me.
³You, Lord, brought me up from the realm of the dead; you spared me from going down to the pit.

Our Response - Psalm 107: 15 Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for the human race, ¹⁶for he breaks down gates of bronze and cuts through bars of iron. ¹⁷Some became fools through their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities. ¹⁸They loathed all food and drew near the gates of death. ¹⁹Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. ²⁰He sent out his word and healed them; he rescued them from the grave.
²¹Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for the human race.

2) The Ministry of Jesus

As we look at the ministry of Jesus in the New Testament, we find that 25% of gospels stories focus on healing the sick, driving out demons, and raising the dead.

A. Jesus chooses the twelve (cf Matt. 10:1ff, where he commissions them)

1. Matt. 4:23 –

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and illness among the people. 24 News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them.

2. Nine miracles, mostly healing Matt 8:1-9:34

Jesus heals a man with leprosy 8:1

The faith of the centurion 8:5

Jesus heals many 8:14

Jesus calms the storm 8:23

Jesus restores two demon-possessed men 8:28

Jesus forgives and heals a paralyzed man 9:1

Jesus raises a dead girl and heals a sick woman 9:18

Jesus heals the blind and the mute 9:27

3. Jesus goes throughout Galilee Matt 9:35-38

35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and illness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.'

What does that look like?

4. Sends out disciples to heal, preach Matt 10:1-8

1 Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil1 spirits and to heal every disease and illness...
5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: 'Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6 Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. 7 As you go, proclaim this message: "The kingdom of heaven has come near." 8 Heal those who are ill, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.

5. Cf Luke 10:1-20, sends out 72 disciples in pairs

1 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.
9 Heal those there who are ill and tell them, "The kingdom of God has come near to you."
19 I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. 20 However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.'

B. Rest of New Testament

1. There are about ten stories in Acts of people who are healed, raised from the dead, or being freed from demonic oppression.

2. Book of Acts – First event after Pentecost is Peter and John healing the man in the temple.

3. 1 Cor. 12-14 Spiritual gifts are listed and discussed, which show that they were not the domain only of the apostles, and didn't end with them.

II. Healing in Church History

First of all, it is clear that Jesus considered that his major mission, in addition to teaching, was to heal and cast out evil spirits. This is how he spent his time, and he even risked his life to heal on the Sabbath.

    He passed his healing power on to the Twelve, the disciples, then on to the entire church. The book of Acts shows that the early church did the same things that Jesus did. Peter healed the sick and even raised a woman from the dead, while Paul also healed and raised the dead.
    In the first four or five centuries after Christ, it was expected that healing might take place. But by the fifth century we begin to that Christians no longer learned to pray for healing. Instead, the sick were encouraged to visit shrines and pray for the intercession of the saints.

Examples from the Church Fathers

1. Irenaeus (130-200 AD), Against Heresies 2.32.4 Wherefore, also, those who are in truth His disciples, receiving grace from Him, do in His name perform [miracles], so as to promote the welfare of other men, according to the gift which each one has received from Him. For some do certainly and truly drive out devils, so that those who have thus been cleansed from evil spirits frequently both believe [in Christ], and join themselves to the Church. Others have foreknowledge of things to come: they see visions, and utter prophetic expressions. Others still, heal the sick by laying their hands upon them, and they are made whole. Yea, moreover, as I have said, the dead even have been raised up, and remained among us for many years. And what shall I more say? It is not possible to name the number of the gifts which the Church, [scattered] throughout the whole world, has received from God, in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and which she exerts day by day for the benefit of the Gentiles

2. Tertullian, c. 212 "There are still preserved among Christians traces of that Holy Spirit that appeared in the form of a dove. They expel evil spirits, perform many cures, and foresee certain events."

3. Origen, c. 248
"Not a few cures are brought about in the name of Jesus, and certain other manifestations of no small significance have taken place."

4. Augustine (354-430 AD), City of God, book 22:8

a) "The miracle which was wrought at Milan when I was there, and by which a blind man was restored to sight, could come to the knowledge of many; for not only is the city a large one, but also the emperor was there at the time, and the occurrence was witnessed by an immense concourse of people.

b) "In the same city of Carthage lived Innocentia, a very devout woman of the highest rank in the state. She had cancer in one of her breasts, a disease which, as physicians say, is incurable. She took herself to God alone by prayer, and she was immediately healed.

    The physician who had advised her, when he had examined her after this, and found that she who was afflicted with that disease was now perfectly cured, eagerly asked her what remedy she had used. But when she told him what had happened, he is said to have replied, I thought you would make some great discovery known to me. She --upset at his indifference, quickly replied, "What great thing was it for Christ to heal a cancer, who raised one who had been four days dead?"

4. Reformers
– An essential task for the Protestant reformers was to cleanse Christianity of everything that in their opinion had served to corrupt the true faith. This meant ridding it of such practices such as the adoration of saints, veneration of relics and pilgrimages to holy sites, many of which were closely associated with healing. The Protestant church tried to discourage belief in sacred and miraculous healing as a dangerous superstition, but holy sites and relics did not disappear overnight.

John Calvin - Calvin claimed that supernatural healing ceased with the death of the last apostle (Cessationism) and that Catholics making pilgrimages to healing shrines was vile "papist superstition" and should be abolished. Calvin's doctrine of cessation of miraculous healing is principally based on two propositions. First, they have fulfilled their function of certifying the gospel when it was new, and second, what really matters is the healing of the soul from sin.
Martin Luther - Luther's emphasis was on faith as trusting Jesus for spiritual healing.
"This life is not godliness, but growth in godliness; not health, but healing; not being, but becoming; not rest, but exercise. We are not now what we shall be, but we are on the way; the process is not yet finished, but it has begun; this is not the goal, but it is road; at present all does not gleam and glitter, but everything is being purified."

5. John
Wesley (1703-1791) – Wesley believed that the first 300 years of church history showed that various gifts had survived the time of the apostles. He said one reason these gifts did not extend as normal past the first 300 years was because of "general corruption of faith and morals" among Christians. The faith of many grew cold as dry, formal people took over and belittled the gifts. Wesley is quick to point out these were not "fools or scoundrels" who were involved with the gifts.

Commenting on the charge that no early church father directly claimed to speak in tongues or healed he says:

Perhaps this is true of those whose writings are in existence . . . But what are these in comparison to those which are lost? And how many saints of the first 300 years of the church left no written account at all?

III. Healing today

God's desire is for people to be well; he provides for such wellness not only through creation and human vocation, but also through the renewing power of God's Spirit through the gospel of Christ.

Examples of healing today: Indonesia in the 1960's; my own experience.

How does Healing happen?

1. Acts 3:16, Peter says, "By faith in the name of Jesus, this man whom you see and know was made strong. It is Jesus' name and the faith that comes through him that has given this complete healing to him."

This healing will not be a "Let me do it TO YOU!" affair

It involves intentionality – "Look..." (Man reacted as beggar looking for alms, Peter wanted to heal)
It involves relationship – "Look at us." (It wasn't just Peter, but Peter and John who did the healing, i.e., community)
The Means: Trust in the object of our FAITH.

I remember a film about the evolution of flight, featuring a number of contraptions that people invented while trying to fly. One was a bicycle with a set of bird-like wings attached. Pedaling the bike caused the tires to roll while a series of gears, chains and levers moved the wings in a flapping motion.

The rider was shown heading full speed toward the edge of a cliff with his wings flapping. His momentum carried him off the edge and allowed him to "fly" about three feet through the air before he headed down to crash in a heap.

It can be said that this man believed his machine would fly. His willingness to ride it off a cliff proves his faith, and while we cannot doubt the sincerity of his faith, we must question the object of his faith. No amount of faith in that flying machine would make it fly. It was simply the wrong object of faith for flying, or more importantly, it could not be trusted to deliver on the man's faith.

2. Prerequisites

Eph 2:6 - And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,
7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no-one can boast.
10 For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Romans 8:22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have?
25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.
27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God's people in accordance with the will of God.
28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

1) Simplicity

Faith is not a weapon by which we demand things from God or put him in subjection to us. Faith is an act of self-denial. Faith is a renunciation of one's ability to do anything and a confession that God can do everything. Faith derives its power not from the spiritual energy of the person who believes, but from the supernatural efficacy of the person who is believed: God! It is not faith's act but its object that accounts for the miraculous. Healing is not a right; it's a favor from God and even a constant miracle, for which we are to thank the One who gives us health now and full wholeness in a time yet to come.

(We can't be like the prodigal son, who demands his inheritance from his father and then goes off to do what he wants with his life.)

Faith and Prayer are not meant to be a replacement for hygiene, exercise and a healthy lifestyle, medicine, or the struggle for better living conditions for all. They are meant to complement, supplement, and partner with them.

2) Love

3) Words of Knowledge

It is important as we approach prayer for healing that we take time to listen to what the Holy Spirit is saying to us, to discern what his will is for the person for whom we are praying.

4) Prayer

a. Where does it hurt? Ask the person what is wrong and what they would like us to pray for. N.B. the question of Jesus in John 5:6 –"Do you want to be healed?"3

b. Why does the person have this condition? Sometimes there is a root cause to the problem.

c. How do I pray? Pray to God to heal in the name of Jesus, ask the Holy Spirit to come upon the person; sometimes anointing with oil, laying on of hands.

c. How do you feel? Sometimes we are healed immediately; sometimes we feel nothing, in which case we continue to pray (example of Jesus and the blind man in Mark 8:22-25)

d. What next?

God loves us whether we are healed or not. We are free to come back for prayer whenever we want.
No burden for lack of faith on the recipient, or that we somehow can lose our healing.
Important to continue to pray and root our lives in the community of the church, where long term healing often occurs.
We must continue our obedience to the call and commission of Jesus Christ found in Matt 28//, and to proclaim the kingdom of God

Healing is more than a cure. Take the example of Marva Dawn. She is an older looking lady who often wears a worn dress. Physically handicapped, she wears a leg brace and often needs help to walk, and is blind in one eye. Her medications for her infirmities take a toll on her physically, but she doesn't wallow in physical or emotional pain.

She has four Master's degrees and an earned PhD in Ethics, she has taught at both Notre Dame (give American pronunciation as well) and Regent's college in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

N.B. – The Error of believing that you can lose your healing.

for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Rom 11:29
God is not a human being, that he should lie, or a mortal, that he should change his mind. Has he promised, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Num 23:19

St-Marc's children's presentation - 14 Dec. 2008

2008-12-20T16:39:00.005+01:00

Here is the video of the presentation from 14 December. Sorry about the sound quality.

This was a lot of fun, and turned out to be a community efforts in some ways. A lot of people helped in the production of this event.

Thanks to everyone!

A Post-Modern Tribute to Thanksgiving

2008-11-26T21:37:00.001+01:00

My Friend Mark has blessed us with another of his poems. This is too good to ignore, so please read on.

Tribute, Post-Modern Style

A happy, happy Turkey Day-
"Thanksgiving" it is called;
though god and thanks have been removed,
at this my cat's appalled.

Whom does one thank when god's not there?
to whom do praises ring?
in land of "post" to Christ and truth
one can praise anything!

So on this day I praise my socks,
some squirrels, a piece of pie;
I praise our car with mileage fair-
and not to wonder "why?"

I praise our house, our lawn so green
with Creeping Charlie weeds;
I worship cash that's mostly green,
though recently unseen.

I bow down low before some donuts
I did eat last week,
and honor due to spinach pizza:
melting cheese did creep.

But last of all I praise my bookshelves
full of stuff to read,
since death means zilch in chaos filled,
my cat to them I deed.

And if some folks- when I am gone-
do talk about my life,
for goodness sake don't speak of truth,
of meaning, or of strife.

For it means naught- the whole darn thing-
from birth until depart,
we just exist- that's all there is-
like cows that chew and fart.

Don't be dismayed as to the void
you move and soon will see;
good tires, good socks, good soles on shoes:
post-modern Trinity.

I write this to a faithless world-
"enlightened," it is said;
so pluck that turkey,
bake that pie,
eat much, then go to bed.

Post-Meaninglessness, Arch-Faithless, Pre-Nihilist, A-Spiritualist, Supra-Truthless, Intra-Vacuumist Pietist

Ten Questions and a Modest Proposal by Dr. Mark T. Mitchell

2008-11-10T17:34:00.006+01:00

Ten Questions and a Modest Proposal by Dr. Mark T. Mitchell

I recently came across this article on Center for a Just Society. In the days leading up to the passage of the emergency bailout package, politicians from both parties warned everyone that what was at stake was our American way of life, and without massive intervention the country and perhaps the world was heading toward an "economic apocalypse."

The author states,

I must admit that I am skeptical when powerful folks ask for more power. I'm even more skeptical when they do so using fear as a motivation.

What follows in the article is a series of questions about the ethical issues related to the current financial crisis. Some of the questions are more pertinent than others, but I think that we need to carefully think about them. For example, here is the first question:

1. Is it a fundamental problem when a corporation becomes so big that its failure threatens to bring down the national economy? Could it be that scale matters? Can institutions become so large that their potential harm outweighs their actual (or occasional) good? If yes, then are there measures that could help ensure that economic power is decentralized and therefore less dangerous?

An example of this is, according to a CNN report, if the Big Three carmakers were to cut U.S. operations by 50%, 2.5 million jobs could be lost in 2009.

I think the premise of this question is valid, and even necessary to ask. Many people believe that the standard of living is a reward for living in the U.S., or at the least a quid pro quo relationship.

2. The bailout was ostensibly necessary to protect our "American way of life." That such a reason was offered without justification indicates that our way of life is an axiom that must be assumed but never questioned. But is it too much to consider, if only for a moment, that perhaps our way of life is precisely the problem? Of course, a way of life is a complex thing, but insofar as the "American way of life" consists in living beyond our means, it is unsustainable. To the extent that consumer credit is at an all-time high and personal savings is at an all-time low, the "American way of life" is irresponsible.

My answer as to whether or not this is part of the cause of the financial crisis we are currently experiencing is an unequivocal YES.

The next two questions are questions we do need to answer:

3. Public debt mirrors private debt. Both publicly and privately, we have become a nation that demands immediate gratification. Is such a national disposition healthy? Psychologists tell us that adults are capable of delaying their gratification. If so, then publicly and privately we are, according to this measurement, behaving like a nation of children.
10. In Greek drama hubris plays a key role. This is the fatal pride that brings down even the greatest of men. Is hubris at the heart of this crisis? Hubris is the failure to acknowledge limits. It is the failure to live within the bounds proper to human beings. Ultimately, it is a failure of virtue. When we delay payments rather than our gratification, we reveal our ill-formed character. When our demands for more things are limited only by our insatiable imaginations, vice is running the show. When our leaders tell us that they can solve any crisis if only we grant them more power, hubris has taken center stage.

From my seat in the upper bleachers, it seems that many other people are beginning to be aware of these questions as well, which may help to explain why Obama won and not McCain. McCain campaigned as if there were no problems, while Obama said we need change. If we ask Ronald Reagan's question, are you better off than you were four years ago, then we know what the answer will be.

As I have said before, it is not that the question of abortion and the like are not important, it is that there are other questions out there that people see as important, and also need to be answered.

A person's stance on an issue may not qualify them to run or public office, but it does seem to be able to disqualify them.

Take a look at the article and the questions.

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Barack and the Bible

2008-11-10T09:04:00.002+01:00

How did we miss this?

Then Deborah said to Barak, “Get ready! This is the day the Lord will give you victory… for the Lord is marching ahead of you.” So Barak led his warriors down the slopes… into battle.
Judges 4:14

Baptist Bookworm

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How to Live as a Christian, Post-Election

2008-11-04T10:43:00.010+01:00

A Christian Response to the 2008 Presidential Election
I have to admit to a bit of sadness over the response of Christians to the election of Barack Obama. I consider myself an independent, and more often than not during my political experience I have voted against a candidate rather than for. That too makes me sad.

I have a couple of observations that I want to comment on.
1. Election Rhetoric.
It struck me that much of what republicans and democrats are saying about this election is much the same as what came out of the mouths of republicans and democrats in 2000 and 2004. Only this time, the remarks have switched parties. For example, republican friends say that a large majority of the country do not agree with the views of the new president (The democrats said this in 2000 and 2004), while on the other hand, democratic friends are saying that the election returns give Obama a mandate for change; again, something that the republicans said in 2000 and 2004.

2. Many of my Christian friends prayed fervently for this election.
Obama won. Did God not answer their prayers?

Or, did God answer their prayers?

God is known to work out his will despite his people. If God did answer these prayers, what does that do to our theology? Still more, what does this say about our support for Barack Obama? I don't want to be put into the situation of second guessing God. My guess is that there is a lot of change in the air, and we have to decide for whom the church will be a handmaid. What if Obama is the gate through which we need to walk in order to bring change to this country and stave off judgment?

3. Election Issues.
There are a lot more issues in this presidential election that are as important as abortion and homosexuality, but evangelicals are shy to address. For example, approximately 30,000 people die of starvation, waterborne diseases and AIDS each day, deaths which are viewed as preventable, yet I am only now beginning to see organizations such as Feed My Starving Children gain visibility. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we better be certain that we don't react to what God is doing when Rhoda comes to tell us that Peter is at the door (Acts 12:12-17).

4. I am astonished at the amount of negativity coming from the mouths of Christians!

Come on people, we are people of hope. The elections are important, but let's focus, okay?

Having said all this, the point of this post is this: We need to stop moaning and beefing about who won the presidency, and pray just as hard for the success of this man in God's will as we did for the whom we thought God wanted as president during this election campaign.

Here are two parts of a post by by Mark Roberts that speaks to the issue of how to pray for the election and the new president (here and here). I like what he says in his first point:

We Should Act Upon the Call of Jesus to Peacemaking in the Way We Relate to Our Fellow Citizens.

There are other blogs that have shown up today (see this one by Randy Alcorn), which encourages me to believe that we will ultimately do the right thing, as soon as we stop focusing on why it was wrong to trust in Obama/McCain and not Jesus.

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And Then There Is This...

2008-10-31T21:34:00.012+01:00

There are times that I am embarrassed to be a follower of Christ. It is NOT that I am embarrassed of my LORD, but because of some of the people with whom I am on the journey. And that's too bad, it saddens me. Before anyone picks up cudgels to bludgeon me, please read through to the end of the article to see what I have to say.

From the "As if we don't shoot ourselves in the foot enough" department comes this: a group of Christians gathering to pray for the economy in a public spectacle. Notice the focus-point for their time of prayer --a giant golden bull on Wall Street.

The response is not surprising. One blog was a bit sympathetic (and to the point), but most were less sympathetic and understanding.

Paul wrote to the church in Corinth and told them that "...not many of you were wise by human standards," but I don't think that this is the kind of thing that he had in mind, any more than acting stupid for gospel insures that God will descend deus ex machina to answer our prayers.

I believe in the prayer, but I guess I don't get the point of this time of prayer. Yes, I know that they weren't worshiping this gilded statue, but the metaphor of the wall street icon shows the irony of this situation. What are they asking God to do? Restore our culture so we can continue to consume and spend mindlessly? The problem with the Israelites of the original story was that their stomachs were their god. What does this gathering tell people? Somehow it seems to point to all the evil and greed that got us into this mess to begin with (see this article).

I endorse praying for the economy, especially since the people on the lower rungs of society get hit the hardest. I loved the comment to an article that I found on a blog that said that "as Christians we should be giving MORE in a recession rather than less." It is a matter of compassion and a realization that our source for wealth and giving is not linked to the vagaries of markets and such. Yet in financial turn-arounds like now we turn inward and clutch our wealth tightly to our chests to prevent it from slipping out of our grasp.

What is our agenda for praying for the economy? That I don't become poor? Or, that God will have room to work out his perfect will for our country?

I found this article that I think has a couple of valid points. An important question is:

Is it right to pray for the economy?

I think it is appropriate to pray for the economy. After all, God said to Jeremiah,

"Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare" (Jeremiah 29:7).

When the economy is strong, people are able to work and support their families, believers have greater opportunities for generosity, and many benefit from this common grace.

This fits in well with Paul's idea of living in peace with everyone and other sentiments in Romans 13, among other things.

We can pray for integrity and wisdom for government officials who are faced with the incredibly complex task of regulating investment securities and banks in a way that is transparent and serves all of the varied stakeholders. We can pray that those who are willing to work will be able to find gainful employment. We can pray that greed would be restrained at all levels, from the leaders on Wall Street to individual families tempted to live beyond their means. We can pray for ourselves that we will participate in the national economy that keeps in mind the time is short and the present form of this world is passing away (1 Corinthians 7:29-31).

In addition, Matthew shares a bit of wisdom from Jesus in his gospel about the best way to pray?

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him (Matt 6:5-8).

I think this says that public spectacles may not necessarily be the best way to pray about an issue.

And then, what to pray about?

25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life. Or single cubit to his height
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own (Matt. 6:25-34).

It seems that praying for the economy isn't about praying for our daily bread. It is about praying for Righteousness AND Justice. Righteousness is about our relationship with God; Justice is about our society's relationship with God.

And, this point:

"I guess as a Christian I can't help but think of the bigger picture beyond just my own nation. And sometimes I wonder if God orchestrates these things to show us things. Like if Ireland and America and other well to do countries don't change their ways with regards to consumption and waste would we not end up in a situation where the poor are suffering as a result, or that they will never have the opportunity to live like we do?"

Finally, a nice video by Max Lucado that's worth a look.

Time for a New National Anthem?

2008-10-31T20:32:00.001+01:00

In light of recent events, maybe we need a new national anthem. I nominate this one.

A Hedge or a Sword?

2008-10-25T16:37:00.004+02:00

Hedgerows are a part of the history of humankind. They have been around since the Bronze Age, although many of the older hedgerows found today in Europe were first planted during Roman times.

They made life a living hell for soldiers of the Allied armies trying to break out of the Normandy beachhead in WW2. The hedgerows that they encountered, called bocage by the French, consisted of small, irregularly shaped fields, measuring only about 200 by 400 meters, enclosed by ancient, overgrown hedges that grow from earthen mounds flanked by drainage ditches.

These hedgerows surrounding the fields were four to ten feet thick, grew up to 15 feet high, limiting visibility to one field at a time, and were impenetrably dense — even for tanks. They formed a thousand square miles of tough patchwork terrain, connected by a network of dirt roads sunken far below field level.

The idea of a hedge is found in the writings of the Rabbis. They surrounded the law with a hedge, a body of interpretations, expansions, and applications of the Law that they came to regard as of divine origin. Look at this example from the Mishnah:

Moses received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua; Joshua to the elders; the elders to the prophets; and the prophets handed it down to the men of the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be deliberate in judgment, raise up many disciples, and make a fence around the Torah (Pirke Aboth, 1:1).

Incidentally, the word translated fence is a mishnaic hebrew word (סיג) for wall, fence, or a thick hedge.

Since you could inadvertently break the Law, we find the principle of “putting a hedge around the Law,” not to protect it, but to provide a margin of safety. Whatever one thought right to do, the oral Torah provided a margin of error. Any commandment was an opportunity to show one’s obedience. For Jesus this kind of scrupulous observance would only lead to a neglect of the major points of the Law. It is inevitable that there was an over-concentration on the manageable, the visual and perceptible things of the law—to the neglect of the weightier matters:

‘Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practised the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel (Matt. 23:23-24).

Speaking to the city of Jerusalem through the Prophet Isaiah, God likens the city of Jerusalem to the planting of a vineyard:

Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,… (Isaiah 5:1-2)

The problem? quite simply:

...but it yielded wild grapes (Isaiah 5:2b)

The wild grapes, according the metaphor, are the sins and unrighteous acts of the people:

For the vineyard of the Lord of hosts
is the house of Israel,
and the people of Judah
are his pleasant planting;
he expected justice,
but saw bloodshed;
righteousness,
but heard a cry! (Isaiah 5:7)

Because they refused to turn away from the sins and crimes, God made a promise:

And now I will tell you
what I will do to my vineyard.
I will remove its hedge,
and it shall be devoured;
I will break down its wall,
and it shall be trampled down. (Isaiah5:5)

Hedges are meant for protection, either on a literal or metaphorical level. But I notice that a sense of complacency often occurs among those living inside a building, vineyard, or city protected by a hedge. God uses the hedge as a metaphor for his protection, by breaking down the hedge he allows the enemy to pour in to execute judgment.

What struck me is that I, like many people, often pray for a hedge of protection for myself and others. I’m not so sure that is the best use of that metaphor. I would agree that there are times when we need protection, but that is a passive approach to living the Christian life. I think Paul has a better approach:

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armour of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. 14 Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled round your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, 15 and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.
16 In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord’s people (Ephesians 6:10-18).

Sort of reminds me of Nehemiah’s instructions to carry a sword in on hand and trowel in the other (Nehemiah 4:16-18).

So, the question is, do live behind a hedge, or do we follow Christ, in full panoply, ready for the day?

After Bailout, AIG Executives Head to Resort

2008-10-08T09:51:00.007+02:00

This was in the Washington Post

Nate

After Bailout, AIG Executives Head to Resort

UPDATED: 11:31 a.m.
Less than a week after the federal government offered an $85 billion bailout to insurance giant AIG, the company held a week-long retreat for its executives at the luxury St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, Calif., running up a tab of $440,000, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) said today at the the opening of a House committee hearing about the near-failure of the insurance giant.
Showing a photograph of the resort, Waxman said the executives spent $200,000 for rooms, $150,000 for meals and $23,000 for the spa.
"Less than a week after the taxpayers rescued AIG, company executives could be found wining and dining at one of the most exclusive resorts in the nation," Waxman said. "We will ask whether any of this makes sense. "

While AIG was at the bar begging and drooling for money, this is one of the things that AIG did to battle the crisis:

Those documents show that as the company's risky investments began to implode, the company altered its generous executive pay plan to pay out regardless of such losses.

This is like having overdraft protection on your checking account without worrying about having to repay it if you do overdraw.

Nice.

What is also interesting are some of the comments posted by readers of the article in question. Basically most of what is said is that Congress should do something about it, pass laws, go after them, all that. I agree, Congress should do something about it.

But the question remains, why are we pouring money into symptoms instead of addressing the problem? The problem is a philosophy that says that "every course of action should have the potential to make money from it." It's okay to make money, but this philosophy shifts moral and ethical boundaries.

For example. some will say we should address the issue of global warming, but one of the primary consideration is how to make a profit from it? A friend of mine decided that he could make a lot of money by going green, marketing products and services. He set up a blog, went into business, but it didn't happen. What did happen is that all the reading and investigating that he did to understand this issue caused him to undergo a radical transformation, and he is now solidly green. He still wants to make money from the issue, but his philosophy drives his world view and his ethics and his mission, and he is a better person for it.

Another problem with yelling to congress to fix the problem is that we abdicate our own responsibility in the issue. Congress, like those in leadership at AIG, Bear Stearns and all the other companies have one issue that drives them --Power. Because of this, they manipulate people to achieve and retain that power, market fear and assess blame when things don't go well. The result is that we have our options severely limited and dictated to us, which as we have seen are not real options at all.

And if the "leadership" doesn't deliver or produce, what do we do? We throw them out and put another bunch of leaders in place, who turn out in the long run to be no different then the bunch we threw out earlier.

The focus is then on the problems that need to be solved. We want solutions and answers, people who can articulate the problems, but who will in the long run dominate the conversations.

They will be people who are defined by their self-interests, and power will eventually be lumped into the hands of a selected few who have too much vested interest in the outcome of the problem.

We buy into the illusion that after we find the guilty part and assess blame, we can then legislate or change policy or somehow mandate morality. It hasn't happened yet, why believe that it eventually will?

So things have to change. Acting morally is not the same as being moral. Individuals feel they have no power or voice in these issues. People will gather under the auspices of someone (usually with some vested interest in the issue), ostensibly giving them a voice, but are offered options that only fit into interests and goals of the person or persons in charge.

How to do this is another conversation for another post. I would suggest reading Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Lehman Bros head took home $300m

2008-10-07T09:55:00.005+02:00

BBC NEWS | Lehman Bros head took home $300m
(Posted using ShareThis)

This is the subhead of an article on the BBC News website.

"The head of failed US investment bank Lehman Brothers has told Congress that he took home about $300m in pay and bonuses over the past eight years."

There are other little gems in this article, such as:

"Mr Waxman also criticised Mr Fuld for requesting multi-million dollar bonuses for departing executives just days before last month's collapse."

"In other words," he added, "even as Mr Fuld was pleading with [Treasury] Secretary [Henry] Paulson for a federal rescue, Lehman continued to squander millions on executive compensation."

"To restore our economy to health, two steps are necessary," he said. "First, we must identify what went wrong. Then we must enact real reform of our financial markets."

I can think of a couple of things that might have caused "what went wrong".

And just to show where the American candidates stand on the issue, here is their response:

US Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has attacked John McCain's links to a 1980s financial scandal.
He also accused his Republican rival of being more focused on running a smear campaign than on fixing the US economy.
It comes after Mr McCain's running mate Sarah Palin accused Mr Obama over the weekend of associating with terrorists.

Along the same vein, check out this chart in the NYTimes. (HT to Nate)

I could wax eloquent on this, but why waste the bandwidth? I think one of America's greatest philosophers said it best:

An interesting video

2008-09-14T21:56:00.001+02:00

Found this video on a website called Connaitre Dieu. It is a great metaphor for the love of God.

I'm Moving...

2008-08-16T22:36:00.001+02:00

No, I'm not leaving France, but I am moving my blog to my own domain. You can find it here, but there are only a couple of things there right now which you can probably find here as well. I will probably take a couple of months to switch, but I will keep posting here until I get the whole thing set up.

More on "Missions? Missional?"

2008-08-08T05:31:00.003+02:00

In a previous post I shared a discussion I had with someone about the idea of missions in the church.

I want to take another look at one of these points:
4. The French, the .... (fill in the blank) had their chance.
The premise is that France, Europe, etc., has had a chance to hear the gospel but rejected it, so now we want to go where they will be open to the gospel.

My question is, where would that be? Europe has rejected the gospel, yes, but it is responding to it, though slowly. As my wife has also pointed out, when exactly did the French reject the gospel? In the eighth century? 17th century? During the French Revolution? Recently? Did everyone do it? Just a few? Did someone pass a law to that effect?

How about China, they've rejected the gospel, shall we cross them off our list? China is closed, but it was a major missions field until the communist takeover in 1949. The new government then expelled all Christian missionaries from their borders. Yet Christianity is growing rapidly.

Perhaps Eastern Europe? It was closed to missionaries and the gospel for many years during the communist hegemony, but now it is once again open.

Or maybe the Middle East and North Africa? Everyone knows that people of Islamic background faith are resistant to the gospel, so perhaps we should not invest time and people to share the gospel with them?

If we shake the dust off our feet, and seek a place to go where people will be open to the gospel, I think that pretty much limits us to Antarctica.

And what of the United States? Is the gospel received in this country? I think it is obvious that the church is losing ground in the United States. Yet we are willing to plant new churches. According to the premise stated above, this seems counter-intuitive.

I find these facts interesting:

“Fifty-nine percent of U.S. congregations have fewer than one hundred regular participants, counting both adults and children; 71 percent have fewer than one hundred regularly participating adults”
"10 percent of U.S. congregations—the largest ones—contain half of the nation’s churchgoers."

So, if we are consistent in following our original premise, why start a church plant when this country is rejecting the gospel? Aren't there enough churches now that we have to start a new one?

I think this points to the fact that the church in the US has a less than adequate understanding of what it means to be missional, or to be in missions. And when the church is at odds to the world and can only expect enmity, what makes us think we can find anywhere that the gospel will be welcomed?

Technorati Tags: emerging,kingdom,missional,leadership

Is this any way to do ministry?

2008-07-30T17:01:00.001+02:00

As I sat having coffee with a friend, we focused on the idea of mission that seems to be prevalent in the church at large, and discussing what a healthy church in mission would really look like.

It is somewhat arcane, but the image of a church in mission that came to mind was a stool. A proper stool, as a high school industrial arts teacher once said, needs at least three legs if it is to be of any use. Otherwise, it will topple over. I think that the stool would look something like this picture to the right.

As a metaphor, church mission is much the same. There are three legs, Outreach, Service, and Spiritual Formation. And of course, there needs to be a balance between the three legs for it to function effectively.

What happens when the stool has only two legs, or one of the three legs is not the right length, too short or too long?

This happens when outreach is a program, not balanced by service and spiritual formation, or when service takes the place of spiritual formation.

Unfortunately, I have seen all the above. Churches are great at getting people interested in visiting the church, but they can't get them interested in spiritual formation. Or they use service opportunities as a substitute for spiritual formation.

A church I visited had several excellent opportunities for community involvement in place, booths in the lobby to get people signed up and involved. But I saw no opportunities for spiritual formation. It seemed that the service opportunities were being used to bring people into the church and then getting them involved, assuming that it will cause spiritual growth.

Without belaboring the point, the REVEAL study has put the notion of involvement as an indicator of spiritual maturity in perspective:

We found that those who were the most active in the church did not necessarily report higher levels of spiritual attitudes (“love for God and others”) and spiritual behaviors (evangelism, tithing, etc.) than those who were less active (chart 2).

Part of the problem, or maybe even the root of it, is that churches do not understand what it means to be involved in missions, or, for that matter, what it is to be missional.

I have been wrestling with the issue of being missional and what it means to be emergent. I don't think they are synonymous.

It is easy to critique a church and its mission, another to give help and suggestions on how to make changes.

But that is for another post.

Technorati Tags: culture,kingdom,organizational leadership,spiritual formaton,missional

Technorati Score

2008-07-28T06:03:00.001+02:00

According to Technorati, my rank is 2,639,653. I think that is somewhere down in sludge that the sump pump misses.

However, I did get a mention in Scot McKnight's Jesus Creed blog! (down a little where it starts with "A good blogger in France...).

That has to be worth something, right?

Technorati Tags: culture,odds and ends,sightings

Great Prayers

2008-07-27T15:41:00.001+02:00

Found this on another blog. I love this. Not only a great prayer, it's great theology.

Praying with Walter Brueggemann.

We are your people and mostly we don't mind,
except that you do not fit any of our categories.

We keep pushing
               and pulling
               and twisting
               and turning,
trying to make you fit the God we would rather have,
               and every time we distort you that way
                    we end up with an idol more congenial to us.

In our more honest moments of grief and pain
     we are very glad that you are who you are,
     and that you are toward us in all your freedom
     what you have been toward us.

So be your faithful self
and by your very engagement in the suffering of the world,
transform the world even as you are being change

We pray in the name of Jesus,
who is the sign of your suffering love. Amen.

Technorati Tags: kingdom,spiritual formation,theology

Missions? Missional? (revised 14 July)

2008-07-01T06:12:00.012+02:00

I recently had a discussion with a friend about missions in the church. Granted, he was talking about a specific church, but his comments reflect a common thought process and approach to missions in the emerging church.

My friend told me that there were several parameters for the missions focus of the church, such as:

1. The mission field had to be accessible.
For my friend, that means that anyone who wants to go to a specific field can access it without a long flight or paying a lot of money for a ticket. Wouldn't that eliminate most of Europe, the Middle East, and much of Asia? Is accessibility to the field a major specification for missions?

When the Holy Spirit said to separate out Paul and Barnabas for a mission, was it based on accessibility of the mission field to Paul and others? Did the HS only send them to places where they found it easy to go? Mission history abounds in stories of people such as Hudson Taylor, Adoniram Judson, David Brainerd and others who gave up family, friends, and secure lives to go to proclaim the gospel, at great personal cost to them. Judson, for example, spent months traveling to Burma, a country closed to the west, only to be thrown into prison by a government that was suspicious to him and reasons for being in Burma.

As for Paul, there were times when he wanted to go somewhere, and the HS did not allow him to go at first (Acts 16:6-10), in addition, the times Paul suffered for the sake of the gospel (2 Corinthians 11:23-33) would seem to have an impact on the accessibility of the field.

For whom is the mission field to be accessible? Everyone in the church? A few chosen individuals?

I don't believe that accessibility be a primary specification for mission.

2. Biggest bang for the buck?
I will be the first to say that we are to use good stewardship, but does that dictate the shape of missions, and where we are to go?

Again, cost was not the dictating factor for Paul and Barnabas. The Holy Spirit sends and provides the means to do so. It is not that we should obsess over the money, but how we follow the leading of the Spirit. I don't think we do this by setting up parameters and hurdles to force the Spirit to do and work as we want, based on budget considerations.

3. Is it Mission Field or Missionary?
When the Holy Spirit was preparing for the outward expansion of the church, he spoke through the prophets in Antioch saying, "Separate Paul and Barnabas for the work to which I have called them (Acts 13)."

As for Jesus, he told his followers, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21). When we look at the the various forms of the great commission, the focus for mission is obedience, The specific area mentioned is the world, not one geographical location.

The Spirit did not ask the church in Antioch to separate out a mission field, but a missionary. Is our emphasis on a field backwards? Or do we send people out to the field whom God has called? I think so.

4. The French, the .... (fill in the blank) had their chance.
The idea is that a specific area has been evangelized and had the gospel, but they rejected it, so we will go someplace where they will accept the gospel. I have had this said to me about France, and Europe in general. Yet is the place where the stirrings of the Spirit are evident.

First, who gives anyone the right to pass judgment by saying they had their chance, now it's too late? I was under the impression that God does not want anyone to be lost, but to have the fullness of life, and have it abundantly?

And where will you go? Somewhere (like Nigeria, for example...??) where they will receive the gospel? Nigeria is over 55% Christian (by their profession), but it is also a very materialistic church that is submerged in the culture and compromised by it, not unlike the United States.

There are other places to go, China is a large potential area for the gospel, but there are issues of accessibility for these areas. China, Burma, Vietnam, and other areas are closed to missionaries.

5. Go Make Disciples

I have been told that the mission of the church needs to start where the church is located (i.e., Jerusalem), and then move to Judea and Samaria (outside your community), and finally into Europe, Asia, Africa, or where ever.

The problem is that the various passages tagged as part of the Great Commission are often seen as a linear process, i.e., start where you are, then go out from there. Unfortunately, the result of this is that this is taken to mean that we need to plant ourselves and be fruitful and successful at one level before we progress to the next. So, we need to fully evangelize, preach, teach, feed, clothe, etc. in one place before we move to the next.

I doubt we can build a case for this either theologically or linguistically. The Greek text behind Acts 1:8 does not support a progressive or "step by step" plan for evangelism. There are several good ways of understanding the conjunction καὶ (usually translated as "and"), but the best way to understand the use of καὶ in this passage is as a coordinating conjunction with an ascensive function, a point of focus, as Wallace comments (Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, p 761). The focus of the passage is the whole world, as Matthew 28:19 points out.

Theologically, Matthew 28 states that we are to make disciples of all nations. The command is holistic, not fragmented into parts or agendas. That is modern management practice.

Another story that illustrates this very nicely is the persecution in Acts 8. The church was busy hunkering down in Jerusalem when a persecution breaks out and pushes them out of Jerusalem into Judea and Samaria, and by implication, Antioch in Syria. It was the intent of the Holy Spirit that they move out into the world. Left to their own devices, the church would probably only be reaching Greece today.

I am also impressed by the fact that Jesus chose to go throughout all the villages and towns of Galilee, not picking out one town and set up a ministry there. Paul was sent out by the Spirit, first to Asia Minor, then to Greece and finally to Rome. Did he evangelize all the areas in between, therefore he needed to move on to the next mission field?

So, I don't think we can build a case that we have to set down a base in one place, overwhelm it with the gospel, then move on to the next area.

So, being sent, being missional, or whatever we choose to call it, is not what we often make of it.

Final Notes:

Please don't think that I am against serving the poor, oppressed, marginalized, or social justice. Anyone who knows me will testify to my vision of the rule of the Kingdom in our lives. I believe in righteousness and justice. Righteousness in the individual axis of our relationship with God, and justice is the community or social aspect of our relationship with God.

I don't know quite how to verbalize the disconnect I mentioned above, but I think the issue of the focus of missions/missional breaks down into call and vocation (what we do?), which focuses on making disciples of all nations, and life in the kingdom (what we are?).

The intersection of these two trajectories are summarized in this petition from the Lord's prayer, which says:

10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. (Matt. 6:10)

I think that drives our desire to reach out to the poor and marginalized is because we want to do something significant, to make a difference. My response to this can be best illustrated by something I heard Jim Plueddemann once say, which goes something like this:

We can do something SIGNIFICANT! for God, or
we can do something significant for GOD!

Significance comes in obedience to God, as we seek to serve him. But the answer to how is yes.
Finally, to run missions through a grid like this pretty much pre-defines what the will of God would look like. It take the worry of faith as well, because you see by sight...

Technorati Tags: missions,missional,culture,great commission,Spirit

Japanese Potty Training

2008-06-29T05:08:00.005+02:00

My wife found this on line. It is a video for potty training children. It is in Japanese, with English subtitles.
I think it is hilarious.
I swear, this is for real, I am NOT making it up.

Technorati Tags: odds and ends,various

Pew Forum Report

2008-06-24T05:11:00.003+02:00

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has recently released a report, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey. The report is worth a read for the info that it supplies about the American religious landscape. A lot of it is surprising, and as the report states,

...The Landscape Survey confirms the close link between Americans' religious affiliation, beliefs and practices, on the one hand, and their social and political attitudes, on the other. Indeed, the survey demonstrates that the social and political fault lines in American society run through, as well as alongside, religious traditions.

One section is worth pulling out for consideration:

Most Americans agree with the statement that many religions – not just their own – can lead to eternal life. Among those who are affiliated with a religious tradition, seven-in-ten say many religions can lead to eternal life. This view is shared by a majority of adherents in nearly all religious traditions, including more than half of members of evangelical Protestant churches (57%). Only among Mormons (57%) and Jehovah’s Witnesses (80%) do majorities say that their own religion is the one true faith leading to eternal life.

Most Americans also have a non-dogmatic approach when it comes to interpreting the tenets of their own religion. For instance, more than two-thirds of adults affiliated with a religious tradition agree that there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their faith, a pattern that occurs in nearly all traditions. The exceptions are Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, 54% and 77% of whom, respectively, say there is only one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion.

I can imagine evangelicals and Christians of all stripes bending over this report, concerned about the direction and focus of religion in American (which is basically dropping dogma for spirituality).

There will undoubtedly be many initiatives to stave off and reverse this trend of faith in this country. Lack of faith on one side, and apathy and weak theology on the other is destroying our country, culture, ...(fill in the blank).

The problem is, of course that we see it as our battle, our problem, and probably our fault because Christianity is losing ground. If we can be more faithful, preach and witness more, proclaim the word, people will hear and turn and be saved.

Unfortunately, the problem is that all of this is simply getting in the way of the the work of the Spirit. I see more and more that Christianity in the US is more "Jesus lite."

The battle is not ours, it belongs to the Lord. We do not fight against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12).

What we have is managerialism imposed on the church, enthralled by systems thinking and programs that do not rest on faith, but reason and intentionality.

Image source:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/images/200708/20070828BizReligion_dm_500.jpg

Technorati Tags: Pew Report,Spiritual Formation

The Myth of Belonging

2008-06-22T15:48:00.003+02:00

I'm a fan of REVEAL, the initiative started by Willow Creek. I think their findings concerning the reality of spiritual growth in the church are significant, and point to an issue that I have been ~~harping~~ preaching about for years.

The sources of the problem are largely the result of the descent of managerialism on the church. However, that is an issue for another post.

One of the five "key findings" of REVEAL is that there is not necessarily a correlation between commitment and church attendance, or community. This is what REVEAL reports:

We found that those who were the most active in the church did not necessarily report higher levels of spiritual attitudes (“love for God and others”) and spiritual behaviors (evangelism, tithing, etc.) than those who were less active.
This led us to discovering a Spiritual Continuum centered on a relationship with Jesus Christ, which was much more predictive of spiritual growth (Chart 3).

What I find interesting is that I missed the conversation going on in other quarters. I have a book I purchased a few years ago, long before REVEAL hit the stands, written by Joseph R. Myers, The Search to Belong.

In a chapter entitled "the myths of belonging (p9)," Myer writes:

More commitment = more belonging. People often believe that there is a significant relationship between commitment and community. That is, however, a romantic view. When we search to belong, we aren't really looking for commitment. We simply want to connect (p12).

I'm not saying that Willow Creek borrowed the idea, quite the contrary. When an organization as large as Willow Creek picks up on an issue that has been surfacing throughout the church,to say we are sensing a moving of the Spirit is a bit of an understatement.

This sentiment is also found in Rick Richardson's writings, such as Evangelism Outside the Box, as well as in the the halls of the emerging church.

So, what's next? That is the question that faces my colleagues and I in France. I'll get back to you.

Technorati Tags: Organizational Leadership,culture,emerging,church

“People just don’t touch eternity when they are around us...”

2008-06-10T22:09:00.004+02:00

Interesting post found on Dr. Jim West's blog that I think is worth noting.
The Truth About the SBC (10 06 2008)

According to former President Jimmy Draper, who said Monday “We have reached a place that our spiritual forefathers feared.” “We need to admit that the problem with America today is not the government or the politicians,” Draper said. “It is not Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or John McCain. It’s not the senators or representatives.

The problem is not the educational system or the economy. It’s not the liberals or the abortionists. The problem lies with us.” “We conservatives claim to have the truth and we think we are rich in spiritual position and power, but yet we are cold, complacent, impotent and unattractive, and irrelevant to the world,” Draper said. “I hate to say it, but we are not plateaued. We’re not even just declining. We’re in a free fall.” “You know why we don’t win the lost?” Draper asked. “Because we don’t like them. They are different from us. We don’t care for them. We have no real love for them.” “People just don’t touch eternity when they are around us,” Draper said. “We’re too self-absorbed.”

I wish there was something I could say to prove him wrong, but unfortunately, it is all too true. We have a faith that is compromised at best, apathetic at the least.

But the point of this is "How do we make a difference?"

My take is a flavor taken from the title of one of Schleiermacher's books: On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers

We try very hard to present a religion that is culturally acceptable to people who do not accept Christianity as a viable alternative to life. As a result, we have what we paid for, a mutation that has nothing to offer, it is safe, and completely unthreatening.

Long way from the scandal of the Cross that Luther discovered...

Snakeskin Boots

2008-06-03T17:01:00.003+02:00

My friend Marcus is his own brand of Renaissance Man. One of his many talents is his turn of a phrase to compose some very interesting poetry. His work ranges from some that are very good to some that are akin to Vogon poetry.

But on a more serious note, Brother Marcus sent us his latest work, which I think is worth a look. Here it is:

De-cursed, Rehearsed, Well-Versed : Snakeskin Boots

I've had some thoughts about this snake
who came and stole our birthday cake;
he spoke the truth, Eve did assume,
he came in light and left in doom.

He seemed so lovely, wholesome, pure,
but was a fake, that is for sure;
by God's command he bit the dust,
to crawl, not walk: this is a must.

Inherited by all who come:
a conscience broke and mostly numb;
a spirit dimmed with shadowed sight,
the truth forlorn midst shadowed night.

God cursed that snake, it was to be,
still cursed through all eternity;
a lake of fire: it waits ahead,
for snake of sin amidst the dead.

But Christ became a curse for me
by hanging there upon that tree;
I stare, I gaze with wonder filled,
this spirit soars, my heart is thrilled.

For cursed no more: that is my state,
redeemed and sealed: this is my fate;

the lamb was slain, the snake was stomped,
we praise the King's deliverance prompt.

O join with those whose snake is gone,
in praise of heart, yea praise in song;
for boots of snakeskin we will wear,
upon those streets with golden glare.

MWA; June 2, 2008

Picture Credit: http://hitchhikermovie.free.fr/images/vogon3b.jpg

Technorati Tags: Culture,kingdom,odds and ends

Psalm 107

2008-06-03T16:08:00.005+02:00

In the process of doing my preparatory study for a sermon on Psalm 107, I discovered a structure that runs throughout the entire Psalm. It looks like this:

Psalm 107
Situation	Cry to God	God’s Response	Summons to Give Thanks for Hesed	Result
I. Deliverance 4 Some wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to a city to dwell in; 5 hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted within them.	6 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.	7 He led them by a straight way till they reached a city to dwell in.	8 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man!	9 For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.
II. Freeing the Prisoner 10 Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and in irons, 11 for they had rebelled against the words of God, and spurned the counsel of the Most High. 12 So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor; they fell down, with none to help.	13 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.	14 He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death, and burst their bonds apart.	15 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man!	16 For he shatters the doors of bronze and cuts in two the bars of iron.
III. Healing and Forgiveness 17 Some were fools through their sinful ways, and because of their iniquities suffered affliction; 18 they loathed any kind of food, and they drew near to the gates of death.	19 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.	20 He sent out his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction.	21 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man!	22 And let them offer sacrifices of thanksgiving, and tell of his deeds in songs of joy!

IV. Salvation from the Storm

23 Some went down to the sea in ships,
doing business on the great waters;
24 they saw the deeds of the Lord,
his wondrous works in the deep.
25 For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
which lifted up the waves of the sea.
26 They mounted up to heaven; they went down to the depths;
their courage melted away in their evil plight;
27 they reeled and staggered like drunken men
and were at their wits' end.

28 Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.

29 He made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.
30 Then they were glad that the waters were quiet,
and he brought them to their desired haven.

31 Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love,
for his wondrous works to the children of man!

32 Let them extol him in the congregation of the people,
and praise him in the assembly of the elders.

I find the structure interesting. What I plan to do is explore the structure at two levels. The first level is the original setting. Most commentaries see this as post-exilic, which it could be, but that could also reflect the presuppositions of the commentator. It seems, at first blush, that it is a reflection of God's interaction with his people, from the Exodus to the Exile.
The second level I would explore is the significance of this structure. Is it meant to be a reminder and a call for people to thank God with praise and thanks giving?
A reminder for people to call out to God for help, and then to acknowledge his help?
Or is it just a formula, similar to the cycles in Judges, to recount God faithfulness, based on his covenant love?
Anyone have any ideas?
I'll let you know what I come up with.

Technorati Tags: Psalms,worship,spiritual formation

Now Print Your Posts

2008-05-30T17:45:00.006+02:00

Here's something new to make a blog more interesting.

The weblog called Blogger Buster has posted instructions on how to print out individual posts. I've been looking for something like this, and this is a step in the right direction.

It only works on individual posts, but it does a nice job of printing the post in question.

Not that there are that many people interested in doing this, but I like having it around anyway.

Also, it only works with blogger, I don't know if I can find something similar to this for my Wordpress blog or not.

China Earthquake, 2008

2008-05-19T16:48:00.002+02:00

I have been looking at some of the most incredible scenes of the earthquake that recently struck China. I find the destruction incredulous, hard to believe, and the loss of life is mind numbing.

My friend Jeff is in Chengdu with a team of people, one of the areas hardest hit my the quake. His wife said in an email:

"Jeff called this morning from Chengdu. His team had gone back into the city for the night. He said he was most worried last night, as they were sleeping in a 7- story building in Chengdu. He said he feels better outside under the sky!! He sounded exhausted and said he was beat. They were going back up to the quake zone this morning, Monday morning. His team is registered with the Red Cross and he said they are mostly treating minor injuries and giving tetanus shots. The majorly injured people have made it to refugee camps where medical help is available there. Jeff said all the buildings are gone up there. It is reduced to rubble everywhere!!"

Keep these workers in mind in your prayers and meditations.

For all the hurt and pain and anguish, certain scenes stirred me to my soul as I watched. One clip shows the spontaneous outbreak of joy and happiness as rescue workers pull a survivor from the wreckage (go to link).

If you haven't seen the pictures and such, both the BBC and the New York Times has some great stuff on their web sites.

The BBC has clips, and the New York Times has photo galleries.

Technorati Tags: culture,current events,kingdom

50 Possible Reasons Why You’re Not Emergent

2008-05-12T21:31:00.001+02:00

Great Post.

Of course, this is humor, but it is still good stuff.

On another note, my thinking on emerging church is in flux. I can see a lot of reasons why it isn't a good alternative to the usual modernist, mainstream vanilla flavor church we have today, but unfortunately it is often the best alternative that we have.

But once in a while there is some good thinking that is going, so I am not ready to jump ship.

For another, more serious take on the idea of missional, take a look here,

And for the big guns, I think this list from the Dream Awakener blog has the names of theologians to draw on for a dialectical conversation to help shape our Ecclesiology.

Finally, here is an interesting diagram, part of a missional synchroblog. There are other posts from other bloggers on the topic of being missional, scroll down.

Technorati Tags: culture,emerging,kingdom,missional

What's Going On?

2008-05-07T11:41:00.001+02:00

Blogger Wars

Some of you (few) who read this blog probably have not noticed that I actually have two blogs with the same material, one on Blogger and the other on WordPress. The question is, of course, why have two blogs with the same material when you can hardly keep up with one?

Quite simply, I want to see which of the two blog sites I prefer. I will eventually keep one site, but this is an anecdotal type of an experiment to see if I have a preference, and why.

I have seen person after person rant and rave about the flexibility and usability of WordPress blogs, but I have also avoided the temptation to rush over and join the ranks, as it were.

Hence the experiment.

So, any thoughts yet? Well, yes, kind of. I can't speak to the so-called flexibility of WordPress, mainly because I use the free one on the website. The server edition seems to be more flexible with a lot more bells and whistles.

Which means right now I find my Blogger blog a bit more flexible, with additional features that can be added to the blog, which you may have noticed.

The main reason is that you can add Java scripts to Blogger, and not to WordPress. For WordPress, most of this is because of security issues to which Java can be vulnerable.

Since I use Windows Live Writer to write my posts and to upload them to my blog (can anything good come out of Galilee?), the issue of who has a better apparatus for composing a post is somewhat moot. But, I feel that WordPress is a bit more rigorous and unforgiving when it comes to writing and editing a post. I've spent way more time on the learning curve trying to find ways to edit and change my blog with WordPress than I have with Blogger.

I think it is easier to upload photos and such to Blogger, but with Live Writer, as I mentioned earlier, it is somewhat immaterial.

So, for now I can't come up with any salient reason to prefer one (blogger) over another (WordPress), so I'll keep the course I'm following now.

Amazon Books

Something else that I've been thinking about lately is the practice of linking a book to Amazon in a post. I've come to the decision that, although I use Amazon from time to time to purchase books, I will not longer send them business through a link in a post. I really don't benefit from it in any tangible way, and I don't mean money issues.

There seems to be an implicit approval that accompanies a link to Amazon that I realize that I may not be ready to give. There are a few business practices that I don't really think are all the beneficial for the customer, but not necessarily immoral or unethical. If anyone is really interested in what I am talking about, I'll address it in a future post.

So, for now I will try to link up to an appropriate page on Google books. It can be frustrating trying to track down a page for a book on Google books. Often a page will not be displayed, mainly because it will keep you from reading the entire book on line.

But for now, I am going to try to link books this way. If you want to buy it from Amazon, that's your business. But there are other places to buy a book.

Images

Something else I've been thinking about is the use of images. For a while I've "borrowed" images from online sites and used them as a frontispiece for my post as an introduction.

I realize that this isn't the most ethical thing to do, so even if I download an image for this purpose, I've decided that I will give an image credit on any images I use on my blog(s) from now on. I've decided that linking to the image isn't always the best way to go, because these images have a way of disappearing into cyberspace.

So, this is what is going on. Really boring stuff, but some things I've wanted to get off my chest, so to speak.

Image credit: original image at http://www.museum.upenn.edu/new/olympics/images/wrestlers.jpg

Seeking Justice - Take Two

2008-05-04T18:01:00.001+02:00

I've had some trajectories that I've been working on cross paths since the previous post. A reading of a chapter 15 in Scot McKnight's book The Jesus Creed, entitled A Society for Justice (p143ff), provided some insight and dissonance.

The first trajectory is that we aren't looking just for justice, we should be looking for Kingdom Justice. I began to realize this when I started reading what McKnight had to say in this chapter, which parallels and tracks many of the conclusions I arrived at.

He starts by saying that

Justice is a faded entry on a dog-eared page of our society's lexicon (p145).

This means that most justice is self-centered and self-serving. We cry out at some injustice that happens to us, or something that stirs our self-interest, and we want to reap our share of rewards as recompense for it. Justice is about recompense, getting our pound of flesh, and so on.

A quote from The Jesus Creed is apropos here:

"I think we grab the whole business of justice by the wrong end of the stick," he says. "Currently we ask who did it and how we can punish them. But it makes more sense to ask who was hurt and how we can restore them...." (p149)

Kingdom justice is interested in restoration of the other and society to a relationship with God, not to satisfy some overweening sense justice that I might have.

The second trajectory is that most of the references to justice in scripture is restorative. Justice for the sake of punishing the wrong-doer is minimal, if it exists as all. Let me explain the difference.

Retributive Justice

Retributive Justice is a matter of giving people their just desserts.

In cases of wrongdoing, someone has lost certain benefits, while someone who does not deserve those benefits has gained them.
Punishment will set this imbalance straight.

What Is Retributive Justice?

Retributive justice maintains that proportionate punishment is a morally acceptable response to crime, regardless of whether the punishment causes any tangible benefits. Central to retributive justice are the notions of merit and dessert. People who work hard deserve the fruits of their labor, while those who break the rules deserve to be punished. People deserve to be treated in the same way that they voluntarily choose to treat others.

Immanuel Kant discussed the idea. People enjoy the benefits of a rule of law. According to the principle of fair play, the loyal citizen must do his part in this system of reciprocal restraint. An individual who seeks the benefits of living under the rule of law without being willing to make the necessary sacrifices of self-restraint has helped himself to unfair advantages, and the state needs to prevent this to preserve the rule of law.

In some cases someone who merits certain benefits has lost them, while someone who does not deserve those benefits has gained them. Punishment "removes the undeserved benefit by imposing a penalty that in some sense "balances the harm inflicted by the offense." It is imposed as a debt that the wrongdoer owes his fellow citizens.

Retributive justice is in this way backward-looking. Punishment is warranted as a response to a past event of injustice or wrongdoing. It acts to reinforce rules that have been broken and balance the scales of justice.

This concept of justice seeks to regain an equality that the injustice overturned. Some think that it is most simply summed up in the principle of revenge ‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth’.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. Matthew 5:38-39 (ESV)

But for some, there is a short slide from retribution to revenge. Vengeance is a matter of retaliation, of getting even with those who have hurt us. Like retribution, revenge is a response to wrongs committed against innocent victims and reflects the proportionality of the scales of justice. But revenge focuses on the personal hurt involved and typically involves anger, hatred, bitterness, and resentment.

Deuteronomy 19:17-21 is the passage that Jesus refers to in his teaching above. The problem is that this is often seen as the standard to guide justice, when the best understanding is that this is the minimal level of justice that God desires.

This is similar to the discussion about building codes in the United States. When someone says that a project is up to code, what they are actually saying is that the project meets the minimum level of safety standards. So, this passage serves to limit retaliation, and is not necessarily meant to deal with the standard by which society is to aspire to justice.

On the other hand, I believe that most of scripture is about restorative justice.

Restorative Justice

Restorative justice is concerned with healing victims' wounds, restoring offenders to law-abiding lives, and repairing harm done to interpersonal relationships and the community.
It seeks to involve all stakeholders and provide opportunities for those most affected by the crime to be directly involved and to respond to the harm caused.

In a restorative justice process, victims take an active role in what takes place, as well as defining the responsibilities and obligations of offenders. Offenders also participate in this exchange, to understand the harm they have caused to victims, making efforts to set things right, to make amends for their violations, by committing to certain obligations, that may come in the form of reparations, restitution, or community work, and to take active responsibility for it.

This means while fulfilling these obligations may be painful, the goal is not revenge, but restoration of healthy relationships between individuals, and in the communities that have been most affected by the crime.

An example of this is the reconciliation process in South Africa.

For Kingdom justice, the essence of this consists in God’s love for humankind, such that he came to humanity in the person of Jesus (i.e., the incarnation). Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, God demonstrated his merciful and suffering love in response to our wrongdoing, thus making forgiveness and restoration fundamental to how we should respond to human wrongdoing. The background to this understanding of Jesus is in the Hebrew concept of shalom (understood sometimes as the word for salvation, justice, and peace"), and in the ethical and messianic insights of the Hebrew prophets.

McKnight gives two examples of inaugural addresses that focus on Jesus' concept of justice. The first is Luke 4,

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
and recovering of sight to the blind,
to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”

Luke 4:18-19 (ESV)

and the second is Matthew 5.

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

4 “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

5 “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Matthew 5:3-5 (ESV)

In Luke 4, Jesus gives his inaugural address, which has a focus on restorative justice, i.e., Jesus sees his mission as restoring the poor, the prisoner, the blind and the oppressed to community with God and others.

Matthew 5 continues along the same theme where he shows that God's intent is to restore everyone to a relationship with him and with others.

The poor	Theirs is the Kingdom
The hungry	They will be satisfied
Those who weep	They will laugh
Those who are hated, excluded, are insulted, rejected because of Christ	Great is their reward in heaven

As McKnight says, "Jesus is concerned with restoring humans so that things are just plain right. (p147)."

At the end of his earthly life, Jesus shows that justice is not retributive, but restorative. Judgment is part of the process of restoring people to God's kingdom so that they can enjoy a relationship with him and others. But the judgment process is not what we expect:

35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

Matthew 25:35-40 (ESV)

The basis of judgment is not whether or not we prayed the right prayer or believed the right thing (see the discussion in McLaren, Generous Orthodoxy, p45-49), but how the followers of Christ have lived out the mission and commands of Christ in their lives.

Next time, what is the goal of justice?

Image credit: http://www.2mediate.org/News/tbamediation.jpg

Technorati Tags: justice,culture,bible,missional

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Logos Bible Software

2008-05-02T18:58:00.001+02:00

Well, I came up with my 3.2 nanoseconds of fame. Logos Bible Software mentioned my blog on their their blog (here). Of course, I was mentioned because they asked people who have Logos Bible Software listed on their blogroll or website to email them and let them know.

I use the Logos software on a regular basis for sermon and lesson preparation, and the software gives me a lot flexibility without my desk crashing from the weight of all those open books. There is also the reality that I can take this software on my computer when I go to meetings and other venues, and not have to haul several bibles and what-not with me. But one of the best reasons why I use it is that when we moved to France from Chicago, IL, I didn't have to pay to have several hundred pounds of books shipped as well.

The software is really quite easy to use, and for language and foundational studies for a sermon, such as vocabulary,structure, grammar, history of the pericope in question, and so forth (i.e., what did the text meant to those who first heard it), it is very useful.

If there is a weakness, it is the lack of what some commentaries refer to as the "bridging context."

Let me try to explain. We have the original or historical context of the text, i.e., the original hearers and participants in that context. Then there is my context, where I am here and now. The question in hermeneutics and interpretation is how do I make the leap from the context of first century Palestine or 9th century Judah to where I live today?

One approach is to place bridges between the different contexts, i.e., obtain information that is similar to my situation, and from there, as I determine how God worked in their context, I can see how he might work in mine.

Basically it is a concept borrowed from Computer Management Systems. For a computer network, these bridges enable applications to obtain context and information from different computers and such, and make use of it.

To me, this is the one area where Logos is not as strong. Probably because Logos focuses on historical and grammatical aids, while a sermon ultimately draws on the philosophy and theological matrix of our existential existence, and tries to make sense of our situation in light of the bridges we have to the the original context. Sometimes we are trying find light in a narrative from people for whom the truth was unintelligible (compare the situation of Isaiah or Jeremiah).

For someone like me, who stands more in the emergent and postmodern stream of Christianity, application sections in many of the commentaries are often of little value, especially some of the stuff that is 50 or 100 years old.

Be that as it may, the software is still very useful, though it does represent a sizeable investment. Most of the modules you can purchase cost as much as the actual print and paper book. But there are advantages to an electronic version of the book, of course. Just be prepared to take a hit when you start looking for modules/books to purchase.

Is Logos the best? Here is a blog that did a study of different bible study software, and tried to give the strengths and weaknesses of each program. Logos actually came out #5 in the list, but I think that is simply based on his criteria. I think the categories are good, but they will obviously weigh in differently for each person.

For example, interface as high on my list, as well as searching. But Logos rates high in interface (4 out of 5), but mediocre in searching (3 out of 5). I would agree ostensible with that, because the Logos search is tough to get a handle on.

It's worth looking into it.

Some Good Advice

2008-05-02T13:30:00.003+02:00

Okay, I admit this is not one of my strengths, which probably why I find it an interesting clip. It's worth a look at any case.

How to Plan Your Day

Missionary Conquest

2008-04-27T09:07:00.006+02:00

Just about the time you think it's safe to tell someone you are a follower of Christ. I found this game on a website advertising board games, card games, puzzles, and other useful paraphernalia.

The blurb by the company says:

Missionary Conquest

Don't miss this exciting game of laughter and strategy! Travel around the world as a missionary and learn to finance your trips with wise investments. Good decisions and risks are major factors in this wonderful game. No Bible knowledge is required to play, win or to enjoy this game.

I especially like where it says, "learn to finance your trips with wise investments." Of course, "no bible knowledge is required to play, win, or enjoy this game." Just like real life.

On another, more serious note, David Bosch wrote in Transforming Mission,

If the "missionary text" of Greek Patristic period was John 3:16, and that of medieval Catholicism Luke 14:23, then one may perhaps claim that Romans 1:16f is the "missionary text" of the Protestant theological paradigm in all its many forms.

My question is, what is the "missionary text " of the emerging/Postmodern era? I'm not sure what I'd say, but John 10:10 isn't too bad:

"I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full."

Let me know what you think.

Seeking for Justice

2008-04-27T08:23:00.001+02:00

This was the title and theme of a sermon I preached recently. The two texts were Micah 3 and Matthew 25:31-46. I like the results enough to post the highlights on here for discussion.

As I did my homework for the sermon, I discovered that there are three basic forms of the concept of justice.

1. Distributive Justice Concerned with the fair allocation of resources among members of a community.

• What should be distributed?

• Who should receive the things distributed?

• How should these things be distributed?

The principle says that every person should have the same level of material goods and services. It is most commonly justified on the grounds that people are owed equal respect and that equality in material goods and services is the best way to give effect to this ideal.

Because societies have a limited amount of wealth and resources, a question arises as to how those benefits ought to be distributed.

2. Retributive Justice Retributive Justice is a matter of giving people their just desserts.

In cases of wrongdoing, someone has lost certain benefits, while someone who does not deserve those benefits has gained them.
Punishment will set this imbalance straight.

Central to retributive justice are the notions of merit and dessert. This means that people who work hard deserve the fruits of their labor, while those who break the rules deserve to be punished. People deserve to be treated in the same way that they voluntarily choose to treat others.

3. Restorative Justice

•Restorative justice is concerned with healing victims' wounds, restoring offenders to law-abiding lives, and repairing harm done to interpersonal relationships and the community.

It seeks to involve all stakeholders and provide opportunities for those most affected by the crime to be directly involved and to respond to the harm caused.
A restorative justice process aims to empower victims to participate effectively in dialogue with offenders.

Victims take an active role in what takes place, as well as defining the responsibilities and obligations of offenders. Offenders also participate in this exchange, to understand the harm they have caused to victims, and to take active responsibility for it.

While fulfilling these obligations may be painful, the goal is not revenge, but restoration of healthy relationships between individuals, and in communities that have been most affected by the crime.

What is interesting is the correlation to the biblical accounts of Justice. It doesn't take much work to fit the biblical narratives into one or more of these categories.

I found ~~three~~ four goals of justice as I worked through the materials:

Restoring the equilibrium of community (whether it is local or international)
Restoring the victim(s) from whatever level of injustice or oppression that they suffer to a proper relationship with God and others;
Restoring the oppressor/victimizer to a proper relationship with God and others, especially their victims;
Restoring the community and creation to its proper role and relationship with God.

I will elaborate on each of these forms of justice in several posts.

By the way, the image at the top is from a painting by the Chinese Christian artist He Qi, called Elijah and the Ravens. His gallery is here. Take a look

Trinity Sunday

2008-04-27T01:05:00.003+02:00

I am putting a sermon together for Trinity Sunday. I plan to use the theme of missio Dei, that we part of God's mission, not that God is part of ours. He has been in the business of missions a lot longer than we have. I would like to do this by getting people to refocus on what it means when we say "We are being sent."

I also want to get people to understand the role of each person of the trinity in the process of missio Dei. All this in 20 minutes?

Anyway, I've redesigned Brian McLaren's diagram in Generous Orthodoxy, from the chapter entitled, Why I am Missional (p107).

I'm posting it here because I'd like some feedback on it. I'm not trying to rip off Mr. McLaren, but I do like his take on the subject of evangelism. We do tend to get a bit self-centered and often look at salvation as simply getting our ticket to heaven validated and now we are waiting for the bus.

But the way, the person in the "me" category is a world famous missional consultant in France. I reworked his picture to protect the innocent who might pass by this blog.

I also came across this Missionary Triad, but I haven't had the time to work through it all, but I'll throw it into the mix anyway.

More Swarm (Chaos?) Theory

2008-04-24T11:08:00.002+02:00

I came across this video on a website that I think reflects the idea of swarm theory that I've written about before, here and here. It may help to look at the articles first, but here is the clip from You Tube.

Of course, if this all too theological or smells like biology, this may be more to your tastes:

I think both clips prove my point...

Great Web Site for Biblical Texts

2008-04-23T17:26:00.003+02:00

I recently came across a great web site for biblical texts. It is the website of the Deutsche Biblegesellshcaft, the German bible society. When you register at their site, you can get access to the BHS, NA27, Rahlf's LXX, the Vulgate as well as the Gute Nachtricht and Luther Bibel. All for free.

It installs on the Google search window on Firefox, as well as other browsers. This means you put in a verse or word and click on the appropriate resource in the window, and it pops up in the browser. Very Neat.

The caveats are, of course, you either need to know some German to register, or be fluent in Babel Fish. There are a few mouse-over tips that show up in English for the various parts of the form to help you know that they are looking for your address, country, and so forth.

Actually, I know enough German to work through it all, but in the end I ran a couple of emails through Babel Fish just to confirm my translation, and it was pretty close.

Although I have Logos/Libronix with all the language modules, this has proven handy a couple of times when I needed to check out something and didn't want to boot up the Logos program.

So, check it out.

Nothing New Under the Sun?

2008-04-23T12:51:00.011+02:00

Interesting news article that I found on Yahoo. It seems that the director of the movie Basic Instinct is writing a book.

"Basic Instinct" director Paul Verhoeven will publish a revisionist biography of Jesus in September, following more than 20 years of research.
The Dutch filmmaker, who has had a lifelong ambition to make a film about Jesus based on scientific research, claims that Jesus' father was probably a Roman soldier who raped Mary during the Jewish uprising in Galilee. He also claims that Christ was not betrayed by Judas Iscariot.

Verhoeven decided to write the book to raise interest in his film project. Verhoeven, who turns 70 in July, has been a regular attendee of U.S. scholar Robert W. Funk's Jesus seminars, which question miracles and statements attributed to Jesus.

There are a couple of interesting points here.

First, the qualifications of this person to do this kind of work is...?

He is a film maker. Oh yes, that gives him a lot of credibility. What I like especially is that he decided to write the book to raise interest in his film project.
He is a follower of Robert Funk and the Jesus Seminar.

Please forgive my cynicism, I have seen people with excellent investigative skills whose work is overlooked because they lacked the necessary pedigree, but this is a bit much. This kind of expertise is a Monty Python exercise in logic.

But the part I find interesting is the premise of his book, that is, Jesus was the bastard child of Mary, who was raped by a Roman soldier by the name of Panthera.

According to the discussion, for example, in Mary in the New Testament, By Raymond E. Brown and Paul J. Achtemeier (p262), there may some concurrence with or familiarity with biblical traditions, but these polemics contain little history.

Verhoeven's claim that the Roman soldier named Panthera is probably based on a corruption of the Greek word for virgin (parqenoß), an accusation found in Celsius, and quoted in Origen:

"But let us now return to where the Jew is introduced, speaking of the mother of Jesus, and saying that “when she was pregnant she was turned out of doors by the carpenter to whom she had been betrothed, as having been guilty of adultery, and that she bore a child to a certain soldier named Panthera;”

But, the book will probably receive it's 30 seconds of fame for its bold and daring premise, and will put Verhoeven along that other great biblical scholar, James Cameron.

Creating Customer Evangelists: Another Take

2008-01-13T19:48:00.001+01:00

Here is another take on my previous post. This take on creating customer evangelists is from a marketing web site that can be found here. I think the examples and explanations are better than the web site of the authors.

According to McConnell and Huba, who co-authored the book "Creating Customer Evangelists," the number one indicator of growth is whether a customer would recommend a brand to a friend or colleague. They demonstrate that the best sources of information for customers interested in new products and services is word of mouth.

Customers who make recommendations for such things to their circle of friends and colleagues are considered evangelists -- customers with a true loyalty to a brand.

The authors define loyalty as the willingness of someone -- a customer, an employee, a friend -- to make an investment or personal sacrifice in order to strengthen a relationship.

An evangelist will often take responsibility for the brand's continued success. They will support you, defend you, help you improve your products and services, recruit new customers for you, and spread the word.

So, how does one gain evangelists? The authors list six steps:

1. Customer plus-delta. The point here is to continually gather feedback. One way the authors suggest to do this is by creating a customer advisory board. One business, for example, created such a board, asking select customers to find areas where improvement was needed. Their comments and suggestions resulted in a 30 percent increase in revenue for the company.

McConnell and Huba suggest you make it a voluntary system, but provide the board members with access to leaders and principles, and keep them in the know with what's happening at the company.

2. Napsterize your knowledge -- Make it a point to share knowledge freely -- even if you think it's secret or proprietary. "The value of an idea increases in value as it reaches more people," said McConnell.

Another way to share knowledge is through a blog.

3. Build the buzz. Evangelism is a long-term strategy -- buzz is the fodder that keeps the evangelists talking. To stimulate buzz, the authors suggest disclosing information to those widely connected, go beyond the obvious, make your "behind the scenes' visible and be a little outrageous.

Of course this requires identifying your network and the hubs that supply the most connections.

4. Create community. Don't think of customers as transactions. Think of them as a community of like-minded people. Then, address the community, not the transaction.

Tactics can include creating calendars of events in which your community would be interested.

5. Make bite-size chunks. Do you have a service that is complex? Devise specialized, smaller offerings to get customers to bite. For example, consultants can create workbooks or seminars to provide a piece of what they have to offer.

6. Create a cause. Think about what your organization stands for. How are you trying to change the world?

Every organization can have a cause in which it's passionate.

Among the benefits of a well-defined cause:

It embodies a vision
It makes people better
It generates big effects
It catalyzes selfless actions
It polarizes effects.

Of course, we are talking about the church, and not a business, but if you read between the lines, I see a few places where these suggestions can help the church accomplish its mission to reach people. Actually, much of this is stuff that the church should have been doing all along.

Let us look at a few examples. One of the purposes of the church is to create community. It is more than Sunday morning, and more than pot lucks.

Or, create a cause. What does the church stand for as the body of Christ. Are we not called to change the world, called to carry the crucified and resurrected Christ to a dying world?

The idea of gathering feedback and sharing knowledge is an area that is tough to work around in the church. If the church sees itself in the country club mentality, then it will offer people a professional wait-staff to take care of their needs. This also means that often the workings and information of the church remains a mystery meat. Most information is not privileged, but we guard it like a government secret.

Creating Customer Evangelists

2008-01-12T23:26:00.001+01:00

I am not necessarily a proponent of bending and manipulating business methods to the mission of the Church, but I found some of this very interesting.

I came across this website on Creating Customer Evangelists. The premise is that the best way to grow a business is to create evangelists out of customers who will spread the word about your product and recruit new customers. I've been reading Rodney Stark's Cities of God and The Rise of Christianity. Stark makes the point that (see especially the The Rise of Christianity), the role of friends is important in the process of conversion to a religious group. We are wired by God to seek community, and interpersonal attachments are an important factor in bringing people into contact with the church. As they develop stronger attachments to the members of a group, the more likely they are to join the group.

The authors of the web site start with an obvious fact: we are evangelists. We tell others about a movie they should see, which computer to purchase, what restaurant to visit, which books to read, and so on. Our recommendations are sincere, and often passionate.

Perhaps we do not realize that we are evangelists, but look at our sphere of influence. It is made up of friends, family, colleagues and other communities in which we participate.

So, most of this is not a big stretch, it seems to reflect the reality of how we are wired.

Here are the basic ideas of Customer Evangelists.

Customer plus-delta: Continuously gather customer feedback.
Napsterize knowledge: Make it a point to share knowledge freely.
Build the buzz: Expertly build word-of-mouth networks.
Create community: Encourage communities of customers to meet and share.
Make bite-size chunks: Devise specialized, smaller offerings to get customers to bite.
Create a cause: Focus on making the world, or your industry, better.

1. Customer Plus-Delta - Listen to our Customers

The lesson is that we need to listen to our customers, and this is a key component to creating customer evangelists. Many of the organizations that the authors profiled receive hundreds or over 1,000 emails a day from customers, filled with suggestions, complaints, and praise.

2. Napsterize Your Knowledge

A 19-year-old programmer and college dropout wrote a program in 1999 to help his roommate find and share MP3 music files, it allowed Web surfers to open their hard drives to other people and do the same. He named his program Napster, a nickname given to him years earlier. In 18 months the world of computing and knowledge sharing changed.

The concept is to share your knowledge, to communicate with your customers, which will help you to develop them as evangelists.

3. Build the Buzz

In the customer evangelism model, buzz is the pathway that helps shepherd new customers into your company's front-row pews.

Each wave of buzz provides your evangelists with another reason to extol you. Buzz helps people discover your business faster than traditional marketing programs. It helps you to develop relationships because prospects already have some knowledge of your product.

In some cases, buzz sells the product by itself.

4. Create Community

Encourage your customer evangelists to meet one another and build relationships. the approach to community that it should be an experience -- a happy and memorable one, not a frightening and forgettable one.

5. Bite-Size Chunks

How do you eat a cow? One bite at a time. It's how companies recruit new customer evangelists, too. Instead of selling customers on the whole kit of products, entice them first with a steak dinner. If they love the steak, they'll be back for the rump roast and later, the whole side of beef.

Break your product and service portfolio into bite-size chunks. They are small, easily consumed pieces of what makes your company valuable.

6. Create a Cause

Apple Computer borrowed religion-based evangelism and took it to work.

Apple Computer's secular evangelism launched a new computer that suffered from insufficient software, a lack of storage capacity, a small screen and a price point higher than its competition.

Yet the Mac could compete with lower-priced, richer-featured models made by IBM because Apple was selling a dream, not a computer. Apple sold the Macintosh dream, which was to improve everyone's productivity and creativity. It created an evangelism department and hired marketers to evangelize, evangelize, evangelize.

This is just an overview. I want to address these concepts in forthcoming posts, but I think some of the concepts are obvious.

At the least, it makes one think about "how do we do church."

Kierkegaard Carnival

2008-01-05T19:53:00.001+01:00

Take a stroll over to The Cynic Librarian and take a look at the Kierkegaard Carnival III. Whether you are a fan of Soren or not, there is some interesting reading on this site.

For those who don't know, a carnival is a web article that contains links to articles found in other blogs covering a specific topic.

This site at the Cynic Librarian covers blogs that focus on Kierkegaard, while the Fourth Stone Hearth specializes in anthropology (see the latest here), as well as the Biblical Studies Carnival (most recently here), all of which are a movable feast.

And if that isn't enough, here is the Philosophers Carnival and the History Carnival (see here).

These carnivals show us some serious work being done in these fields that are not pedantic, fundamentalist, or pushing some agenda. I find some interesting info on these sites.

Is God more successful if there are other gods?

2007-12-27T20:06:00.001+01:00

It may be that the very thing that we attempt so hard to achieve may be the one thing that causes religion (Christianity) to go stale.

Evangelicals in the United States believe that society is losing its moral moorings, that the family is under attack, and that the traditional consensus on (read American) religious values is being lost or at the least sublimated by competing forces (e.g., pluralism, secularism) in culture. The spiritual environment in Europe is often painted as the next step for the United States in the journey away from faith in God and the loss of religious values in society.

Most of this picture is now being called into question by practitioners of sociology of religion. The traditional view is, sociologists of religion say, that the relationship between religion and American society resulted in a postwar America as settled in a period of industrialism. The widespread assumption was that the social order was underpinned by religious values, which not only preserved the status quo, but promoted the well-being of all.

This view of religion and America was derived from the normative functionalism of Talcott Parsons, who stressed above everything the integrative role of religion. His view was that religion was a functional prerequisite central to the models of social systems and social action that Parson's elaborated. American society was shaped by the focus on what people believed in the various churches, and that religion's role was in the integration of society and in promoting or discouraging social change.

However, sociologists such as Rodney Stark, Roger Finke and others are discovering a different picture.

“The natural state of a religious economy is pluralism,” Stark said. “Typically, pluralism has been repressed in favor of religious monopolies.”

For example, Stark contends in his book Cities of God that contrary to popular belief, Christianity flourished in cities in the Roman Empire that had a sizable plurality of religions. The rural setting proved to be resistant to the new religion long after the urban areas of the empire had become predominantly Christian.

Stark maintains that the same is true of the United States. The colonial era was a time of low religious fervor. This did not change until the colonies became more tolerant of religious traditions. Eventually the U.S. Constitution opened up the religious marketplace, making it easier for new religious groups to flourish. This religious freedom impacted the rising fortunes of such groups as Baptists, Methodists, and Catholics, but also saw the rise of such religions as Mormonism and Jehovah's witnesses. It was also the time when evangelism and the missions movement grew in importance.

The reason for this, says Stark and others, is that the religious mind is rational, and religion is the behavior of rational, well-informed actors who choose to 'consume' various commodities. Thus the choice of religious affiliation is made in a rational way, with the potential member weighing costs and benefits of each possible choice before choosing the one that maximizes rewards, although not necessarily that it minimizes costs. This model is referred to as an religious economies view (see Stark's The Rise of Christianity, p193-195).

A religious economy consists of all the religious activity going on in any society, and consists of a market of current and potential customers, a set of religious firms seeking to serve that market, as well as a line of products to serve those customers.

An open religious economy is a religious pluralism that forces each religious body to appeal successfully to some segment of the religious market, or to slide into oblivion. When various religious bodies specialize, it becomes easier for religious "consumers" to find the best product for them.

In other words, it seems that God likes competition. He has never necessarily been the guarantor of the status quo; after all he is especially concerned about the welfare of the widow, orphan, and alien in the land.

A another point that Stark and others make is about the modern view of secularization. The traditional view is that modernity was caused a decline in religious behavior and belief, caused by an increased emphasis on science and rationality that leads people away from supernatural explanations. Proponents of this view point to the low rates of religious adherence in northern Europe as evidence of the process of secularization.

However, Stark and other proponents of the religious economies perspective disagree. They believe that the religious condition of northern Europe is largely a supply-side problem rather than a lack of demand. That is, lack of religious participation in much of Europe reflects highly regulated [religious] economies dominated by state supported churches, and that these are inefficient firms who do nothing to create demand.

To put it another way, the choice is either a state supported church that offers little to the people, or, a general lack of belief and apathy toward religion.

What does this mean to us? Basically, people here in Europe have no real alternatives or choices. Christianity gained ascendancy in the Roman world because it could offer answers and alternatives to the questions of life that people faced day to day. Zeus, Thor, and Isis couldn't help, but Yahweh could. It is almost a remake of the conflict between Ba'al and Yahweh on Mt. Carmel (1 Kings 18). God seems to like competition.

It would seem, then, that our task is not to make Christianity the ascendant religion or the guarantor of the status quo. Instead, we should proclaim to others that Christ offers some real alternatives to the life they live now, to the questions that they face, and the hope that they need.

Following Christ as a Journey

2007-12-18T22:09:00.001+01:00

I came across this video by Bill Lizor, who works with young adult ministries out of the general board of discipleship of the United Methodist Church, entitled Prodigal Son vs Joseph & Jacob Paradigms. The focus of the clip is how do we view our journey of faith as we follow Christ. The clip is 15 minutes long, but worth a view...

This is not the first time I've encountered this theme. The best picture of this metaphor of biblical discipleship is explicated very nicely in James W. McClendon, Jr.'s Ethics, volume 1 of his Systematic Theology. (See a nice narrative about McClendon here).

McClendon's goal is to find the "momentum that carries Scripture's story forward." He captures this in three motifs: The Way, Watch-care, and Witness.

The Way focuses on the idea that the earliest motif found in Scripture is the idea of a band of travelers, e.g., "My father was a homeless Aramaean who went down to Egypt..." (Deut. 26:5). This carries through Scripture with the idea that the people of God are refugees and wanderers, looking for their home.

The journey continues in the New Testament. The incarnation of Jesus in the gospels understands Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life. Seen in this light, God's command becomes highway directions for life, and the journey of Jesus to the cross is one that every disciple must follow.

McClendon ties in the remaining two motifs of Watchcare and Witness by saying that:

Watch-care is the awareness of fellow travelers on this way who need our watchful care over their own journey,...

and...

The divine gift of Witness is to those who are not (yet) on the Way.

That is why the clip above resonates with me.

We've too often seen the journey of faith from the aspect of the Prodigal Son, with the focus on the younger son as someone outside (the other) the church, marginalized, without God. What McClendon posits, and Lizor points out, our story (or journey) is marked continually by the presence of God in our midst. The stories of Jacob and Joseph show this very clearly; the story of the Prodigal Son does not.

I think we need to rethink our approach to the Christian life. For example, how would this approach affect our evangelism? Our approach to spiritual formation?

Unity or Swarm? (Musings on a thought in process)

2007-11-24T12:30:00.001+01:00

I recently wrote a post dealing with the idea of Swarm Theory (see here), and how it pertains to the body of Christ.

The idea of Swarm Theory is that the sum total of the individuals is greater than that of the whole. Individuals all have a function, but it is understood in the context of the need of the whole colony.

It also appears that the interaction of the individuals in making a decision is key to the well-being of the colony.

I made the suggestion that maybe we need to think of the body of Christ less in terms of modern management theory, managing a bunch of people meeting together in one place, and more as a colony. With all the emphasis that the writers of the New Testament put on the collective that is the body of Christ, the current mindset about leadership in the church seems a little thick-headed. Most of it is centered on the individual, and not on the group (or swarm).

What got me thinking about this topic again was this blog, Daily Reflections, by Al Fritsch, S.J. It is written from an ecumenical perspective, and is fairly typical of the ecumenical mindset, especially as it pertains to the goals and purposes of Christianity. It is not that it is wrong or liberal, it's just that I don't think they get it.

The reason I say that is, I attend an Ecumenical church here in France. We have people from the UK, US, Nigeria, Kenya, Canada, China, Germany, and France (and elsewhere). The common thread is that we all seek to follow and worship Christ. I don't know if there is any other common thing or sense of unity that would bind us together as a group as we are now.

This is what Fritsch has to say:

A sense of unity is needed everywhere in the world, from the unity of family, to that of citizens working together, to our country and to our world. Division is part of the breaking away that began in the departure from the Garden of Eden. On the other hand, God is One, yet there is diversity in unity. We are being challenged to recreate that unity in our broken world while respecting our individual uniqueness. It is all the more reason to have a mission of ecumenism where conflicting and divided factions can overcome their differences and, while diverse, can be united. This is a far greater challenge than that of hoping to be monolithic, or only allowing one person to speak for and be the "family" or the "country." We do not want the autocrats or the domineering type, only those with a singleness in purpose and yet distinctness in person. Is this not the need of a healthy democracy, a cooperative team, and of a functional family all wrapped into one?

I can appreciate Fritsch's sentiments, but what is he saying in his post?

The concept of unity is prevalent in Fritsch's post, but he doesn't say much about how we achieve that unity. Rather, is the unity of the body of Christ what we are to focus on? This theme assumes that we can achieve an organic unity, and if people turn their minds to the task of unity, we will soon have a bunch of people that are moving toward a common goal through related and relevant tasks. I am not convinced.

The point with Swarm Theory is that the focus is not on the goal (e.g., unity), but on the process of how that goal is achieved. We are not called so much to achieve unity, but to have unity. The focus is on the process and not on the goal.

In fact, I don't think unity is the right word. Which is why I like the word swarm. A swarm can have a life of it's own, but at the same time it is made up of individuals, acting on their own volition, in concert with the community.

What does this process look like in the life of the church? The process is, then, that as the life and ministry of Christ is spread out through the community of Christ's people through and by the sought-out presence of the Spirit, we become a group of people who act responsibly, which then brings wholeness and Shalom to the group (swarm). The focus isn’t on me, it is on the body of Christ. The life and ministry of Christ, as evidenced by the working of the Spirit through the gifts and fruit of the Spirit, works itself out through the lives of the individuals in the body of Christ (colony).

We become more conformed to the image of Christ, and as we are transformed, we seek to act in concert with the community to seek the goal of the body of Christ. The goal is eschatological, but lived out here and now.

What I've Learned (at least from Tom Peters...)

2007-11-19T22:35:00.001+01:00

This is what I’ve learned from Tom Peters, or at least from his web site.

Know Who You Are.

Know Why You Are Here.

Know How You Are Unique.

Know How You Can Make a Difference.

Know Who Cares.

Know Whether Or Not You Care.

Not a bad place to begin. Of course, as Ben Witherington says, remember that you are unique --just like everyone else.

Systems and structure

2007-11-17T15:23:00.001+01:00

My friend from Scotland and I have had an ongoing conversation about how to do church. The one thing that we've tried to do is to hear what God is saying about the mission and purpose of the church that we attend. This has been an ongoing conversation, and now we are widening the conversation to a few others to help us know if we are hearing right. I think we are.

But, our greatest frustration is getting others to focus on what the church should be about. We find that the more we focus on the mission and purpose statements of the church, the more resistance to change we encounter.

Last night we had a particularly "spirited" conversation about the topic, and I sensed that as we parted company, we were both a little frustrated and feeling down about our seeming lack of progress.

The conversation continued this morning, and one thought came out of all this. We have been focusing on changing the system, and not the people. The passage that came to mind was Eph. 6:12:

12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

What this tells me is that we are trying to change the system, and not the people in the system. In other words, we are fighting a losing battle. As long the system is our focus, we are lost in a quagmire that will only drain us and spit us out like a seed from a piece of fruit.

The result is that we have to change our focus to not simply addressing the problem by writing a vision/mission/purpose statement for the system, we need to make our main focus the need to disciple, mentor, do spiritual formation, make disciples, etc., in order for change to happen. This will happen because we need to make the role of the Holy Spirit in each person's life of paramount importance.

So, structure is good, it is necessary, but that isn't what we are called to do. We are called to introduce people --not the system, to Christ, so that we all may experience abundant life.

What this makes me wonder is, how many times in the past I've looked directly into the sun and not seen it?

Structure and Design

2007-11-09T11:50:00.001+01:00

Bob Robinson over at Vanguard Church has posted an interesting article on structure and design, part of his continuing exploration of Appreciative Inquiry. My response is that the process of AI often leads one back to issues of structure and design of the church.

It isn't always WHAT we are doing, but WHY we are doing it.

About the same time I also received the monthly newsletter from Gary Collins, which contained an article about decision paralysis. His focus as a coach is on working with people who have difficulty making decisions. Collins says that this issue is often one of the reasons why churches falter in their mission and ministry.

A lot of churches are good at giving you a lot of generic ministry. For example, sermons seem to be based on some nebulous, distant purpose or idea, but do not seem to have much to do with why the church is in town. There may be a lot of activity, but the attention span of the members of the church seems short lived, and the church has to reinvent itself in the Fall or Spring, and come up with another set of new programs

I find what Collins has to say interesting:

At times every coach works with people who have difficulty making decisions. This decision making process is hardest when a client, organization or business must choose between options that are equally attractive. ...as people face a variety of options they can become overloaded and tyrannized by “decision paralysis.”

We think we know what we need to do, but faced with the problem and possible alternatives, we slow to a crawl and either cannot make a decision or we develop a generic, one size fits all, type of ministry. It fails to have structure or design.

For Collins, if a church wants to have structure and design, then, one way to "...make tough decisions easier is to be guided by a clear, concise, easy-to-remember mission statement."

The mission statement helps us to make decisions about who to reach out to, what to teach, where to focus our energies, and what path is best for the church ministry.

As Collins says, "The best mission statements don’t just hang in a frame on the wall. They can be useful guides for making decisions and reducing decision paralysis."

Or to put it another way, how do you encourage people in a church to be all God wants them if you don't know what you want them to be? That's where a mission statement comes in to play.

The point of all this then is to say, AI can lead you to discover the various processes and strengths of a church, but if you don't know where you are going, one place is as good as another.

Sans Contexte

Why a Victory Dance?

Jacques Ellul on Social Justice

Five thought traps—the foundations for hunger, poverty and environmental catastrophes

Worship – A Dialogue on the Purposes of the Church Part 3

Worship – A Dialogue on the Purposes of the Church: Who do we Worship?

Worship: Celebrate God’s Presence. A Dialogue on the Purposes of the Church

Practice Resurrection

Intertextuality

Gregory Nazianzus on the Holy Spirit

This is just a test...

15 Theses by Wolgang Simson (Conclusion)

15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (part 8)

15 These by Wolfgang Simson (Part 7)

15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 6)

Eating the carrot?

15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 5)

15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 4)

Old Testament holy war and the character of God: defining the terms

15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 3)

A philosophy of education and experience?

15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 2)

15 Theses by Wolfgang Simson (Part 1)

More on Missional

A Few Takes on “Being Missional”

Knowing God

A thought from C. S. Lewis

Missional Activity (according to Larry Crabb)

Alpha Talk on Healing

St-Marc's children's presentation - 14 Dec. 2008

A Post-Modern Tribute to Thanksgiving

Ten Questions and a Modest Proposal by Dr. Mark T. Mitchell

Barack and the Bible

How to Live as a Christian, Post-Election

And Then There Is This...

Time for a New National Anthem?

A Hedge or a Sword?

After Bailout, AIG Executives Head to Resort

After Bailout, AIG Executives Head to Resort

BBC NEWS | Americas | Lehman Bros head took home $300m

An interesting video

I'm Moving...

More on "Missions? Missional?"

Is this any way to do ministry?

Technorati Score

Great Prayers

Missions? Missional? (revised 14 July)

Japanese Potty Training

Pew Forum Report

The Myth of Belonging

“People just don’t touch eternity when they are around us...”

Snakeskin Boots

Psalm 107

Now Print Your Posts

China Earthquake, 2008

50 Possible Reasons Why You’re Not Emergent

What's Going On?

Seeking Justice - Take Two

“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ 39 But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. Matthew 5:38-39 (ESV)

Logos Bible Software

Some Good Advice

Missionary Conquest

Seeking for Justice

Trinity Sunday

More Swarm (Chaos?) Theory

Great Web Site for Biblical Texts

Nothing New Under the Sun?

Creating Customer Evangelists: Another Take

Creating Customer Evangelists

Kierkegaard Carnival

Is God more successful if there are other gods?

Following Christ as a Journey

Unity or Swarm? (Musings on a thought in process)

What I've Learned (at least from Tom Peters...)

Systems and structure

Structure and Design