quote.: ancient stories

For exiles trying to live faithfully within the host empire of post-Christendom, the Gospel stories are our most dangerous memories. They continue to fire our imaginations and remind us that it’s possible to thrive on foreign soil while serving Yahweh, but it’s the kind of thriving that often rejects popular wisdom. These stories are the standard by which we judge all other stories, all other descriptors of life today. If, after reading these dangerous biblical stories, you can’t imagine Jesus the Messiah as a televangelist, strutting around on stage in a flashy suit, playing it up for the cameras, then you are forced to reject this image and seek another mode of being Christ today. If you can’t picture Jesus driving a tank [onto stage for effect during a sermon] or pouring millions of dollars into new church building projects, then you are forced to allow the dangerous ancient stories to judge the insipid contemporary ones.

Exiles: Living Intentionally In A Post-Christian Culture | Michael Frost

high standard

This article reminded me of my last missional training. Dr. Gramm is being fired for getting divorced.

“Why are college administrators better able to judge my divorce than I am?” Dr. Gramm, who has been married for 34 years, asked in an interview. “If I had thought this was the wrong thing to do, I wouldn’t have done it.”

He questions why the judgment of college administrators matters more than the word of a valued, longtime employee. “God won’t fire anyone because of their marital status, politics, theology or sexual preference,” Dr. Gramm said.

“I’m accepting the policy as it applies to me because I knew it was in place and I don’t expect anyone to make any exceptions,” he said. “But in the long run I think the policy is not a good one, because in a sense it’s saying that Wheaton’s standards are higher than God’s. That’s an upside-down world.”

It is unclear whether Dr. Gramm’s reasons for divorce would have allowed him to stay because he refuses to discuss any details. His wife, Lynelle, declined to comment. From NYT | At College, a High Standard on Divorce

Now, I know these things are always messy, and evangelicals have been far too condemning towards divorcees in recent years, especially considering that our divorce rate is no different from the rest of the world’s. This isn’t about divorce. What I’m interested in is his rationale. Look at what he says. Why should anyone else be able to hold me accountable or speak into my life? I don’t have to answer to anyone for my decisions but myself. If you try to tell me what’s right, you’re interfering with the voice of God, which I hear and discern all by myself. I’m only doing what I think is right. Reminds me of a certain rich man.

I don’t know Dr. Gramm, nor do I have any idea of whether he’s getting plenty of advice and accountability from his church or elsewhere, but I do know that this article makes it sound as if he has no interest in the sort of life Cam and Bob talked about living, one of mutual interdependence and submission that the scriptures urge us towards.

missional training 4.: intentional community

The last Missional Training was a treat. Bob Roxburgh, a man with more years of ministry experience than I have years of anything, came out from Vancouver to talk with us for the day. In addition, Cam told some of his best stories yet, Caireen is processing the call of God and some sound missional thinking, and Garth and Dave are cuter than ever (Garth’s dieting and Dave’s exercising). It’s a good thing they don’t let the three of us up front to teach, because the most insightful thing we said all day was I’m sure glad we didn’t get that tattoo before our theology changed.

The Stories
The stories told were great, and do a better job of communicating authentic community and true accountability than the rest of the discussion, so we’ll start with those, and then you can fill in the rest of your thinking with the more conceptual thoughts from the day.

Debt
Cam’s mission group had a young couple in it that had been overspending for years, and while the group had tried confronting them about the issue, they just weren’t ready to change their ways yet, and so they continued their debt-ridden Vancouver yuppie lifestyle. After a couple years of this, they showed up at the mission group one night, the husband hung his head, and finally they asked for help. They were $23,000 in debt, and it had gotten so bad that even making payments the debt continued to increase because of the rate of interest. They were renting and had no savings, so there was no cash in any of their pockets. They had stopped answering their phones, which rang day and night with bill collectors, and felt that they had no resort but to file bankruptcy. And of course, now that they had finally hit rock bottom, they were incredibly open to help and good ideas.

Many churches would have done one of two things.

1. Felt uncomfortable, fidgeted, averted their eyes, offered to pray, and wished them luck.
2. Given them money, offered to pray, and wished them luck.

Not being most churches, they instead proceeded into a long dialogue about whether Jesus would be cool with them going bankrupt when they had gotten themselves into the mess via greed and a lack of self-control. Cam then asked them if they were willing to change, and the man answered that he was of course willing to change; how could things get worse?

The next day Cam took them to see their church finance guy (I think his name was Scott, but I didn’t write it down), and told them to bring along all their books, statements, etc. He then explained that from that point forward, all the money they made would go to Scott, and he would tell them what they could spend. After a day of phone calls to creditors, promising to pay and setting up payment plans, Scott talked them down to $18,000 in debt. He then looked over their books and figured out that there was no way they could afford the place they were renting, and they needed to move. Cam had a basement sweet that would probably go for $1,000, but he rented it to them for $400, the guy got a second job, and for a year they tightened the belt as far as it could go. Lots of Mac and cheese. People from the mission group would stop by with meals, take their kids to do stuff, etc. as their way of helping. At the end off a year they owed $3,000, and in 15 months they were in the black. Now that’s accountability! Rather than passive and condemning, it was an active commitment to help them through the process of repentance and restoration.

A motorcycle
An extreme story, but intimately tied to a way of life grounded in the sure truth that we are not very good at discerning the voice of God by ourselves, as much as we seem to think that a quiet room with a Bible should be all we need. That’s important, don’t get me wrong, but we need one another to keep from making some really silly mistakes. Bob told a story that illustrates this way of living in the ordinary stuff of life.

Bob’s been around for awhile, and somewhere around mid-life crisis time he went out and bought himself a motorcycle. He laid it down once, then twice, but the third time he put his leg in a cast. At this point he began to wonder whether he was getting to be a danger and needed to give up riding. So, he thought it over, prayed about it, talked to his wife, and asked his mission group what they thought. They cared enough about it to pray it over for a week, come back together to discuss it, and tell him that they were fine with him still riding: it just seemed like he’d had an honest accident. This man who’d been leading and pastoring for many years was very serious about his trust in them. If they had said “no,” he wouldn’t have a motorcycle today, because he knows they love him, and he trusts them to make decisions in his best interest.

Accountability
Combined, these stories create a picture of accountability the way it should be, tied to a life that is truly shared with other believers, that recognizes our need for others in order for us to hear the voice of God in personal and family decisions, and that trusts them to keep our best interests at heart, even as we keep their best interests as our priority. Out of this comes the authority to challenge one another and help each other through the process of repentance and restoration. Imagine coming to a group of people who are committed to you, and you to them, and combining all your wisdom in making very personal decisions like whether or not to homeschool your kids, how much to give to the poor and how much to spend on vacation, whether to quit or keep your job, etc. It might mean you don’t always get what you want, but it might also keep you from looking as silly as Rehoboam.

Other points of interest
We began with a meditation on Isaiah 6, and discussed King Uzziah’s uncanny likeness to the former King Ralph in the land of Alberta. Though he left Israel in an incredibly good political and financial standing, but the spiritual reality Isaiah revealed was very different. Most importantly we focused on the inward and outward nature of Isaiah’s experience with God. It had to do with coming into God’s presence and being purified, but also with being sent out to take part in what God was doing in Israel and the world. We thus deduced that the clearest evidence of a Spirit filled church is its effect on the world.

We paused before beginning our study of intentional community to point out that community is not an end in itself, but is the byproduct of a missional, purpose-oriented life.

We looked at the differences between biblical and cultural community, noting that most of what is trendy right now, whether it be St. Arbucks, Facebook, or a hockey club, is primarily motivated by individual self-satisfaction. This cultural narcissism fights against the formation of authentic community.

Different groups looked at Genesis 1 & 12, Ephesians 1 & 3, Hebrews 10:19-25, and John 13:34-35 & 17. We got Ephesians 1, in which we found God sweeping us up in the purpose He has always had for the whole world: to bring everything together in Christ at the right time. We talked about the final verse, where Jesus fills both the church and everything everywhere, and we talked about the symbiosis between God’s purpose for His church and for the world.

We all looked at I Peter together, where Peter says that in Christ we have a new genos, eqnos, and laos, meaning a new origin, a new family/people, and a new family business (structured on the common life of the ancient world). The word genos (pronounced Guinness) set Dave off on an Irish beer tangent, but we brought him back around, practicing that Christian accountability described earlier.

Bob dropped a great line somewhere in the middle, when he warned that we shouldn’t expect any new way of being the church to be that terribly different from those churches that have come before us. As long as they’re full of people they’ll tend towards entropy and will be tempted by the culture, and as long as they’re led by people, so will their leaders.

The primary way (not only or even best, but primary) of being the missional church is the formation of missional tribes. Cam talked about their mission groups, explaining that they base them on geography and not on affinity because they want their only affinity to be in Jesus. They used to expect their mission groups to multiply every 18 months, but they let go of that because they were afraid of an overemphasis on numbers and growth. The result has been a sever decline in effectiveness and an increase in apathy towards mission. He now thinks that groups are more effective with a clear purpose and expectation held out in from of them.

Books recommended

• Leslie Newbigin | The Open Secret
• Howard Snyder | The Community of the King
• Robert and Julia Banks | The Church Comes Home
• Gareth Icenogle | Biblical Foundations for Small Group Ministry

Simplicity by Richard Rohr

I have managed to down another Richard Rohr book, and Simplicity is another winner. He again builds upon many of the thoughts from “everything belongs” and challenges me over and over to get myself out of the way so that God can work through me. There are so many ways that we as Westerners have built up our own “kingdoms” so as to get in the way of what God is doing. What I really loved is how those “kingdoms” manifest themselves in not only our personal goals and ego, but also in the systems we have created. When we finally move ourselves out of the way we will see the corruption in our own lives and in the systems we work through every day.

As a church planter I give this book a 4/5, so consider it a must read, but you need to be in a good place…a quiet contemplative place to read it and really grasp what he is trying to say, because if you don’t you can let his powerful words slip by without causing any change in you. The main thing that this book did to me is open my eyes to see. I am not sure what i will see yet, but i know it will involve some action on my part. Those thoughts to come.

And yes to those who want those levels of maturity that Rohr has put together and presented in the Bahamas, I found them again and will post them sometime in May.

For All God’s Worth by NT Wright

I’m not sure if it’s being in Paris or whatever, but this book seemed to be written to me at the right time. Let me read you a quote that may or may not affect you, but really challenged me and my direction in life.

“…But the second level of calling, which may, and I pray will, come to some of you, is the calling to be all this for the church. It is the call, in other words, to full-time Christian ministry at whatever level, including that of ordination. Ordination isn’t the be-all and end -all of Christian ministry; but the church desperately needs ordained clergy, needs them now as much as ever, and I would be surprised if out of the readers of a book like this God were not calling someone, perhaps several, to give their life in imitation of Paul in imitation of Christ: to hold on to Christ with one hand and hold on to the church with the other, to share and feel the agony of the church’s follies and failings, and to know the power of Christ to restore and heal the church and set her feet back on the right path. That vocation not to be lightly dismissed. (pg. 100)”

Now this is a loaded quote, and depending on how or of you know me, there are many ways this quote could be interpreted. Therefore let me just say that I know that my life is involved in purposes of the church, and the way that looks is still part of my journey, but ever since I started the open house and now my new job I feel that calling more than ever. I am not convinced it has to look a certain way, but I know that it will be a huge part of my life. Now to say something about this book in particular, I would like to rate it a 4.5/5 for church planting purposes. It will renew your vision of God and the role of the church in the world, which I desperately need taught to me over and over again. NT does an amazing job of connecting the worship of God and the role of the people of God, revealing how God uses us to His ends. He remembers us and that turns into action for us and by us. He also brings unity into the mix, and addresses unity in light of justification by faith; justification is a thus a doctrine leading to unity in Christ as all of us are justified equally and therefore should participate in the life of Christ together. Wright says:

“…the doctrine which declares that all who believe in the Messiah Jesus belong at the same table, no matter what their ethnic, geographical, gender or class background.”

Lastly, in this short review of a powerful book, Wright paints a picture of the church (in the last chapter particularly building upon the whole book) that is the church I want to Pastor. It is a church focused on the Beatitudes, and his teaching of the beatitudes changes the face of the church. Wright says:

“The church is here to be the Voice to the world; the Voice that does not claim great things for itself, but simply urges the world to get ready for the God who comes in the power of judgment and love. We are to live, and we are to speak in such a way as to do for our generation, more or less, what John did for his: to demonstrate and announce that there is a different way of being human, the way of love, the way of God, and so to bring to the world the news (good news to the weary, bad news for the bullies) that the creator of the world is also the comforter of the world…”

This is a powerful statement and gets me excited for life…even as a Pastor.

quotes from Reggie McNeil

The church in North America is not like the Pharisees–we are the Pharisees, and Jesus does not like Pharisees.

The Pharisees clumped together and built a parallel culture–refuge theology is Pharisaical. When dealing with Pharisaism, we are dealing with a religion that has nothing to do with Jesus. They have a heart for religion, but not a heart for God.

People who live by a missionary set of values cannot abide those with a “club member” set of values.

The missional church is the most radical resorting of Christians since the reformation. Those who are missional have more in common with those in other tribes than with those in their own tribe who don’t get it.

Kingdom growth is profoundly anti- what we have typically been doing.

These are quotes from Reggie McNeil that I ran across here. What do you think? Agree? Disagree?

All The Ideas Living In My Head by Don Everts

This little book came at a good time for me. Basically Don talks about how we think and uses the picture of your head being a busy household and the different people are ideas that interact with each other. What I love about this picture is that it celebrates having many ideas about different subjects all together, but it also makes the interaction real. You see when people interact in a house, sometimes their wrong or right, or junior or senior and need to leave or stay or get the better room. I am not sure if you are following but it makes thinking more real for me and it also celebrates diverse thinking, without losing the critical nature of thinking that is important.

I teach a lot of different ideas at the open house, and some are received well and others are shot down, but I have never been upset with presenting the ideas because if I don’t then I won’t learn and others won’t challenge or ask themselves whether the idea should be considered.

Right now we are going through Genesis and its been a blast. New ideas, ruffling feathers, but some great thinking is coming out. Cool stuff. Thanks Don. I give you a 4/5 for church planting stimulation.

missional training 3.: incarnational living

I thought the IIB crew might be into these notes from our last missional training event here in Calgary, especially the three points of incarnational living.

We began, as we are wont, with a meditation, reading through Luke 15 in groups and teaching one another each parable. Collectively they carry a message that is one of my favorite statements made by the life of Jesus: that God seeks us out, chases us down, and anxiously awaits our return to Him. I learned some new stuff too. The reason that the father ran out to meet the son was to get to him before the village discovered him, because they would have banned him and left him outside of the father’s reach. Putting a robe, sandals, and ring on him were a way of restoring him to his place in the family, but throwing him a party was the way to restore him to the community. That’s why they slaughtered a calf: it was big enough to feed the entire village. Now imagine the Pharisees’ reaction when they realized that Jesus was talking about God’s desire for all these sinners He kept eating with. Nobody likes being the pouty older son.

Cam began the learning time by drawing the five values of missional church on a whiteboard in a circle, and pointed out that even though we’re focusing on one of the five for this training, because this is about a renewed theological vision, you can’t separate these out or drop one of them and remain a missional church. These are parts of a singular theological vision of what the church is to be and do.

The three essentials of incarnational living are 1) prayer, 2) story telling, and 3) hospitality.

A missional church prays a lot, about everything. We pray for each other, for the community, for the people we want to talk to about Jesus, for the people we do talk to, for the people who listen and don’t through things, for provision, for boldness, and generally for anything else you can think of that has to do with God’s purpose in the world. We’ve a lot to be talking with God about.

A missional church tells stories. We tell our stories to each other, we collect stories from the people we meet, and most of all, we tell Jesus’ stories. The story of the cross and of our salvation, but other stories too, stories of our failures, stories of our dreams, stories of Jesus, the things He said, the things He did, and the stories He told. We discussed the articles Believers or Disciples, and What is the Gospel? . It was said that one reason we don’t tell more stories is because of the story we’ve been taught to tell. The gospel includes people, the personal, creation, and the world, and the more of all these stories we have to tell, the more we will be telling stories.

Pop quiz. What’s the opposite of the law? It’s not grace. Nope, it’s lawlessness. Grace is the power of God working in us to fulfill the purpose of the law. Sounds a bit like all those prophecies we’ve been reading.

A missional church practices hospitality. This is more than just offering people a lemonade when they show up; it’s about valuing others enough to make space for them in your life. It’s hard to offer hospitality to your community when you’re too busy to ever actually be in it. We spent a long time on Jeremiah 29:4-7, which was God’s word to the exiles on how to live amongst people who don’t follow the same God. We did some great meditating on what it means to settle in, plant crops, and make a home in a culture where people purchase “starter homes.” You’ll find this reflected in the NT and in Romans 12:14-13:7 and Luke 10, our final meditation of the day.

Cam told the story of one of their people who showed up to meet with him and the elders not knowing what to do. The neighbors he’d been working so hard to build friendships with and love had invited him to play on the neighborhood football team, but they played on Sunday mornings. This is where it would have been really nice to have Caireen in the room. Fortunately, Cam and the rest of his crew knew what to do: they blessed him and sent him out to be Jesus amongst them, and prayed for him in the service all 10 weeks he was gone.

This was a great day, and I’ve not done it justice because so much of it was story telling, and all I’ve given you is a synopsis of the big ideas. I only hope that they are enough for you to find and tell your own stories.

Books worth stealing
Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes | Kenneth E. Bailey

The Connecting Church | Randy Frazee

quote.: worship

The forces of the culture industries act as technologies of desire, forming and shaping us into desires that then must be satiated by the market. Global economic forces order the cities into the production of desire and ways to satiate it. Even experimental psychology reveals the complexity of human emotions that form in relation to appraisals of reality. Different emotions are formed deep within alternative interpretations of reality. Postmodern writers question whether psychological notions of well-being are not really the disguised constructions of the marketplace or society for effective adaptation to consumer life. According to all of these thinkers, the ways in which the self and its emotions are constructed socially are out of power interests residing in a given culture. In short, any illusion that we can trust our experience as innately given has been undermined by postmodernity. Our experiences and emotions are being formed by the cultures and histories we find ourselves in.

This demise of modernity sounds the alarm for contemporary worship leaders because they can no longer count on self-expression alone to produce a truthful experience of God in worship. We can no longer safely assume that truthful emotions and experiences will automatically be awakened when we sing “praise and worship” songs long enough for an emotional catharsis in Christian worship. Many worshipers after all come into worship having been shaped by a post-Christian culture. Perhaps in the past, congregants came to worship with a repertoire of emotions and experiences already formed in the church or Christian cultural influences. In the past, worship leaders could awaken or even revive emotions that were already formed in the congregation. But today, many worshipers enter the sanctuary with emotions and experiences formed in another world. In the post-Christian cultures, we can no longer assume that our people’s emotions and experiences have been formed out of a righteous past or culture that recognizes Jesus is Lord.

The Great Giveaway | David Fitch

I really do like this quote. It’s a good reminder that not everyone having a strong emotional response to worship is being formed by it into a follower of Jesus. When we come into worship with preconceptions that aren’t changed, indulging them in a worship experience doesn’t make them better. Worship was always supposed to be transformational and immersive more than merely experiential. When the Hebrew people came to worship God, it always cost them something, and they never left the same as they had come.

My frustration with this quote (and with the whole chapter on worship it’s part of) is that it doesn’t even try to address Imago Dei: what it means that we are all, to some extent, bearers of the image of God. Yes, we come into worship pre-formed by many things other than Jesus, but if it’s in Him that we live and move and have our being (as Paul said), then isn’t there something in all of us to awaken?

on the vine

If you’re sitting around right now wondering what in the world to watch online while you procrastinate something important, why not choose one of these edifying options rather than wasting your time on silly youtube monkeys?

Eddie
The MTN crew I kick about with have posted all four sessions from the recent Day with Eddie Gibbs, in Vancouver. Edmund is a prof at Fuller Theological Seminary, and he has lots of great stuff to say with his delightful British accent. He may be best known in pop Christianity for his book on Emerging Churches.

MTN.: A Day with Eddie Gibbs

Shapevine
Shapevine’s latest schedule for free live webcasts just hit the mailing list. I might hang with Len this afternoon, just because I like him. The site has been upgraded to a slick new look, and they’ll be adding resources for interactive learning soon. I’m holding out to see whether this really will become a hub for interactive learning, or whether it’s just an online “conference in a can.” So far the chat and blog stuff they’ve added is all available to me in better formats elsewhere, so I’m not that interested in doing more than sucking resources from them. Mayhap the fault is with me?