My feet have walked this world and know its ways

My heart beats each day, but often strays

My hands meant to be raised in praise

But they often stay

Idle at my side

My eyes meant to be open wide

My life surrendered by it swells with pride

Sin still breathes when it should have died

My lips confess but I think I’ve lied

Still my soul longs to abide

In you

All I am and all I do

Baptized in fire and made new

Sin and pride killed and through

Washed in the crimson hue

I walk this world but its not the same

The world’s games of fame, and blame, and shame

Do not hold a flame

To my claim

That Christ is risen and reigns and king

Hell defeated, Death no sting

Come, let the world bring, anything

Still, I will sing and let the gospel ring

Our lives our His and can’t be shaken

Cause what’s in His hands can’t be taken

We are the church in the making

Darkness fading, light in-breaking

Satan, be ware, cause we are waking

And our hands will be raised in praise

Our faith a fiery blaze

Lips proclaiming your love and ways

Hearts fixed on you all our days

See my life and hear my cry

“Jesus is Lord” til the day I die

To this alone I testify

My first year in seminary, I had to interview for a few internships.  All of us first year students would talk with the internship director, who would try and place us with churches that matched our gifts and passions.  For this reason, I interviewed with a handful of churches looking to do local outreach.

While the interviews were designed for the leadership to get to know me, this was one of my first experiences getting to know church leadership.  It was one of my first experiences “behind the scenes”… getting to see how things run, the questions pastors ask, the goals they have, etc.

Again, all the churches I interviewed with were interested in doing more local outreach.  But over the course of our conversations, I discovered something that continues to bother and frustrate me.  These churches were driven to outreach out of selfish motives (not blatant, evil selfishness, but a real self-focus).

In these particular cases, the churches were dwindling.  The communities were filled with people with grey hair.   And the pastors were waking up to the fact that if they did not begin to reach out, the church would be in jeopardy of closing.  No doubt, many pastors and communities are waking up to that reality daily across the country.  But I remember leaving these interviews slightly confused and frustrated… they wanted to reach out to the community for  the wrong reasons.  Self preservation is not a good motive for loving our neighbor.  It allows “self” to remain our first love.  Which, makes loving others secondary.

It has been many years since that experience.  And I have learned that this is not just a problem for the small, dwindling congregation.  It may be more of an issue for many of the pastors serving in growing churches, many of them strong and stable.  What I mean by this, is church leadership often focuses on itself first.  Too many pastors, it seems, are driven by an image of success that highlights the “type of church” they want to lead.  While there is nothing evil in this, I believe it is subtly dangerous.  When “self” becomes the priority, things like outreach become secondary.  In other words, outreach becomes the means by which we become the type of church we want to be.  In this way, our outreach is not motivated by broken hearts but by becoming successful (success is a form of narcissism).

I think this is made most evident in our hearts and the language we use.  First, where is our heart?  If we are honest, many of our hearts are set on creating a certain type of church.  Again, there is nothing wrong with this… unless our hearts become more set on this than loving others.  Second, listen to the language we use.  I am amazed by the difference between pastors who talk about their city and pastors who talk about their church.  We tend to talk about the things that are on our hearts.  When the people of our city our continually on our hearts, we will talk about them and how we can show love and serve them.  When our church (and more so its style and programs, than people) are on our hearts, we will tend to talk about these things often.

These things are not mutually exclusive.  However, I believe we have gotten things quite confused and out of order.

Dancing Fools

What a strange world we’ve made
The racing and chasing for pots of gold
The lives we’ve created we now evade
With dreams of escaping or days of old

Stranger still that we do not alter
This beastly system that binds and tames
Rather we stress and strain trying not to falter
Or fall, as we play these silly games

How alluring the fools who laugh and dance
Oblivious to the scoffs and stares
Theirs a world of divine romance
Which looses chains and changes cares

I am reading Mark Buchanan’s book, The Rest of God.  I cannot recommend it highly enough. I wanted to write a few quick thoughts down about hurry.

1)  We live in a world of busyness and hurry.  Both these things kill our souls.

2) Our work, our vocation,  is meant to be fulfilling and meaningful.  The brokenness of the Fall has turned it to toil.  We can redeem the goodness of work- the work that God has called us to do.

3) Hurry is a sign that we think we are in control of our lives, our work, of our ministries.  (I believe that we make decisions, and reap what we sow).

4) Hurry sees time as a posession- a posession that we never have enough of.  Time is a gift.  God has given us an abundance of time.

5) Stress, and busyness, drivenness are signs that indicate we think we are responsible for the results, for getting things done, for fruit.

6) Sabbath, rest, prayer, remind us that hurry kills our souls.  Time is to be shared, given, and received as gift.  We are not in control- God is.  We are not responsible for the results, but to faithfulness.  Fruit is the work of God’s Spirit, not our strivings, running, and drivenness.  And God’s Spirit works most when we are still, quiet, and open.

Qotes from Mark:

“I cannot think of a single advantage I’ve ever gained from being in a hurry.”

“Our measure of whether or not your rested enough… is to ask yourself this: how much do I care about [practically] the things I care about [theoretically]?”

Okay, there is much more richness here, but jotting down a few thoughts have been good.  I think we need to re-imagine how to practice Sabbath again.

What do you all think about the pracice of Sabbath?  Do you practice it?  Why or why not? Do you hunger for it?  What keeps us from such a core part of God’s way?

The Church

Breaking down walls and moving mountains

Barren wastelands springing up fountains

Rebelling against the ways of this world

Dreams and hope for the broken and curled

The bondage of apathy broken

God’s word of hope spoken

The church of Jesus Christ awoken

The lives we lead forsaken

Our neighbors’ burdens taken

A new future in the making

Slavery to the system destroyed

Poverty’s forgotten employed

Love filling the void

The Kingdom at hand and near

God wiping away the tear

Peace freeing us from fear

God’s Spirit breathed and poured out

Faith conquering our doubt

Standing on rooftops to shout

Let me make this appeal

God is here and He is real

Mountains will crumble and walls will fall

If we have ears to hear the call

To loose our lives and give our all

So open your eyes and keep them peeled

Fall at the cross and stay there kneeled

And God will show you the world healed

Let me make this appeal

The time is now and this is real

Pray and seek and hunger and search

Then rise and move, and be the church

I found this post by Bill Kinnon very funny and profound.  I think you will enjoy it and hopefully take a moment or two to think about it.

My mom always told me that all humor has a hint of truth to it.

Here is a cool post by Ed Stetzer about what we can learn from Atheists.

This is an absolutely hilarious sarcastic piece on the emergent church… when it becomes fad-ish/superficial.

Enjoy

I am becoming more and more convinced of the small.

We live in a world where small typically is associated with weak, unsuccessful, and undesirable.  America desires big, success, more, and power.

But God’s Kingdom is like a mustard seed, small and powerful.  Here is why I like small:

Small allows for deeper community.

Small reminds us that so much of what we have is unnecessary.

Small reminds us that we are to magnify God, not ourselves.

Small is more flexible, which means it can follow the promptings of God’s spirit easier.

Small is reproducible

Small is rebellious in a world of big… and I think God digs that sort of thing

Small things, small people, small faith, small resources are the sort of stuff God has used time and again to do big things.  It seems to me, as I read scripture, God has a preference for the small and weak (Gideon, 12 reject disciples, loaves and fish, a shepard boy who become king, power being made perfect in weakness, a mustard seek kingdom, a stable, etc)

if a lot of little people, in a lot of little places, do a lot of little things… we can change the world

Here is a good link on Christmas and this advent season.

It makes me simply wonder where would Jesus show up if he were to incarnate the world again.  Who would he hang out with?  And what cultural norms would he teach about/against?

Good thoughts.

So there has been some talk/debate lately about the pros and cons of missional churches versus mega-churches.  Mainly, the debate has centered on the argument that missional churches don’t produce conversions.  Here is my take:

The critique of missional churches is mainly that people are not being “converted”.  By converted, they simply mean putting their faith in Jesus Christ.  In other words, missional churches talk about incarnating culture, hanging out with non-Christians, and building relationships, but it all adds up to… well, very little.  Simply, people are not coming to faith.

The critique of mega-churches is that their growth also is not really “converstion”.  Christianity, as a whole, is not growing in America.  Rather, the growth of mega-churches is really just a “shift”.  Christians from “other churches” (mainly, traditional churches) are now attending the mega-church.  In addition, people that are coming to faith, are typically not “unreached” people, but rather people who grew up in church, left, and are now coming back to the faith.  Their conversion is dependent upon their being raised knowing about the Christian faith.  Also, the critique of mega-churches is that their definition of “conversion” is incomplete. The critique being giving one’s life to Jesus Christ also ought to include a dying to the ways of the world, i.e. the consumerisitic, individualistic, materialistic, ways of Western culture.

Missional churches argue that “conversion” of a post-Christian culture is much trickier than their critics suggest.  Here are some of my thoughts, based completely on personalexperience:

1) Missional engaemement is difficult.  I bartended for 3 years of my life and now coach wrestling at a local high school.  Occasionally I meet a person who is a Christian, was raised in church, or attend a church.  It is amazing how much easier it is to talk about matters of faith with these people!  Even if they now hate the church, there is a common language and experience that allows for conversation.

However, having conversations about faith with people that have no religious background is very difficult.  There is very little common ground.  Rarely there is a person that is interested in the subject matter and willing to talk.  Mostly, people are embarassed about how little they know, are turned off by the subject matter, or are simply apathetic.

2)  Attractional Churches attract Christians (in my experience, the middle-upper class).  I have worked at a few “attractional” churches.  All of them have have great people trying to do great things for God.  All of them have done missions and ministry.  But honestly, none of them were very successful at reaching the broken and those who did not know God.  Sure, I know stories of a few people giving their lives to Christ (and all of them are awesome), but most of these stories are people who were raised in church, left, and then came back to the faith.  Honestly, I love those stories.  They remind me of Jesus leaving the 99 to find the 1.

However, most of the “growth” of these churches came from Christians who became discontent with “their” church, and “liked” our church more.  Maybe it was a bad church experience, a personal conflict, different taste in music, the quality of teaching… whatever, the growth was not lost people coming to faith.  My experience is mega-church growth is Christians being attracted to a “better” church.

3)  Missional/Emergent Types are Scared of Conversion (and so are mega-churches). My experience is that both missional and mega-church advocates are scared of conversion.  Let me explain.

Missional/emergent types (they are different, by the way) are scared of conversion, generally.  This is because of 2 reasons, I think.  First, Christian history and conversion has left a bad taste in their mouth.  Genocide of Native Americans, street corner evangelists with bullhorns and tracks, etc. makes conversion a sore subject.  Second, the practice of incarnation is not balanced with the call to take up the cross.  In other words, missional thinkers over-emphasize the incarnation, and forget to ask people to loose their life in order to find it in Christ.

However, attractional church types are scared of conversion too.  They are not scared of asking people to put their faith in Jesus.  However, they are scared to ask people to follow the “way” of Jesus.  In other words, attractional church types, in my experience, seperate faith in Jesus from the way of Jesus.  This makes it altogether possible to believe in Jesus, but trust and follow the ways of the world… accumulating and trusting in wealth, allegiance to country (i.e. violence), maintaining an individualistic and consumeristic lifestyle, etc.  To bring these rather direct teaching of Jesus to the forefront of Christian spirituality makes many very uneasy.   They, too, are scared of conversion.

In the end, ministry and missions are being done.  However, no matter what side of the conversation you fall on, neither side is being extremely effective in converting people to the way of Christ.  Despite the allusion of “success” that is portrayed by the mega-church, and despite the buzz of missional/emergent conversation… the way of Christ remains narrow.  Fewer and fewer, in America, are finding it.

In what ways to we over and under contextualize the gospel?

In other words, if I went down to Mexico and began talking to people about the kingdom of God, or the love and forgiveness found in Jesus, but the whole time was speaking English… that would be a ridiculous example of under contextualization.

Or, ifIwas trying to help military men follow the ways of Jesus and begin a relationship with God, but supported the ideas of violence and hating your enemies, that would be an example of over contextualzation.

Or, in what ways are do you think we need to oppose the cultrue we live in, and in what ways do you think we can “go along” with the culture we live in???