Saturday, January 30, 2010

Quick Look: Ephesians 4:11-24

  • (11)...this gives the structure (generally speaking) of the whole church
  • (12)...what's it for? for equipping and edifying
  • (13)...UNTIL we're unified and Christ-like
  • (14)...the time is over for being a child
    1. what's being a child? being tossed to and fro and carried about (away) by:
      1. doctrine
      2. trickery
  • (15)...let's try a couple of things:
    1. speaking the truth in love - this might be as simple as being honest with ourselves
    2. grow up into Christ-likeness
  • (16)...that brings about health in the body of Christ
  • (17)...no longer walk in the futility of your mind (the way things seem to you)
  • (18)...here's what happens to those people (walking in the futility of their mind):
    1. their understanding is darkened
    2. they are isolated from life in God
      1. why? because isolated from God, they're left with inadequate resources
  • (19)...past feeling = past hearing from God at this point and therefore have given themselves into all kinds of bad practice
  • (20)...but that's not how you learned/experienced Christ
    1. i say "experienced" because learned = what you have come to know, and to know is to experience...
  • (21)...if you're actually in the club, you'll know to:
  • (22)...put off (take off, like a jacket) the old man
    1. what's the deal with the old man? he's subject to the law of entropy... he grows corrupt
      1. corrupt could equal disfigured - computer programs that get screwed up and no longer function correctly are said to be corrupted
      2. how does he grow corrupt? the deceitful lusts... that means following these misinformed notions that people are subject to
  • (23)...and reboot your brain
  • (24)...and put on (like a jacket) the new man, which is to imitate Christ...

Interesting Post: Coker on Haiti

Jason Coker of Pastoralia is fast becoming one of my go-to guys. I'm always fascinated by what he has to say. Today's post on Haiti is no exception.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Fitch Is the Bomb

David Fitch wrote this article about a year ago. I'm highly impressed, as is my usual reaction to most Fitch-items. Today I want to concentrate on one paragraph in particular, putting the term missional into high resolution. Here it is:

When we plant today, we survey the land for the poor and the desperate, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually as well. We seek to plant seeds of ministry, kernels of forgiveness, new plantings of the gospel among “the poor (of all kinds)” and then by the Spirit water and nurture them into the life of God in Christ. We gather on Sunday, but not for evangelistic reasons. We gather to be formed into a missonal people and then sent out into the neighborhoods to minister grace, peace, love and the gospel of forgiveness and salvation.

I love that idea of "survey the land" and the object of that survey, the poor and desperate of every stripe. This desire to help, and the accompanying recognition of ourselves as being in that number... I find that very encouraging.

He winds up the paragraph talking about the why behind our Sunday gatherings: to be formed as a people that can knit the "redeemedness" of our lives with the lives of others. Sweet.

More on this later.

Will Jesus (Introduction)

Karen Zacharias' introduction makes reference to the heavily Oprah-plugged The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, and that becomes the perfect launching pad for her discussion of American prosperity doctrine in general. Pretty quickly, she gets into some pithy observations.

  • "It's a perfect theology for people with means."
    • Yah, nothing says "You're right!" like success. It's a gimme from the peanut gallery most of the time. We say, "Well, he must be doing something right..."
  • "However, it's a terrible theology for the poor and downtrodden."
    • Yah, once again, we reaffirm this like it was true: "...it's just my luck..." "I must not be living right..."
  • "...whatever blessings we enjoy may be more the result of good geography than good theology."
    • I really, really like Karen's willingness to let the fur fly. This is hard for a lot of Americans to come to grips with. We've been so schooled to believe that our wealth is a direct result of 1) the Christian principles of the founding fathers, or 2) our ongoing support of Israel, or 3) our exceptionally large number of televangelists (more about that in Chapter 1). Anyway, since we believe we got the good stuff because we were good, we tend to think that we can keep it - yah - protect our stuff by continuing to be good (our version of good). It boils down to this: we operate under an illusion of control. I think this book is going to punch that notion right in the solar plexus. In fact, the next Karen quote does that very thing.
  • "...we are not masters of our own universe."
    • Told ya. We'll finish up the introduction next time.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

New Book! Karen Spears Zacharias' Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide?

New Zondervan book by Burnside Writers Collective regular Karen Zacharias. It's called Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide? ('Cause I Need More Room for My Plasma TV) and I can hardly wait.

I read the foreword by Steve Brown and in it he says 1) "I have no idea why Karen asked me to write a foreword to this book," and 2) "...while reading this book ... [I] winced. Wincing is good if God is in the wincing."

In a second foreword, fellow-Burnside-colleague Susan Isaacs says, "No, you're not alone in your nagging suspicion that God's kind of wonderful is something more weighty and difficult than mastering a prayer or a key to success; and that it's more often found among the least of these."

Yup, Karen's book is something of a riff on prosperity doctrine. And, if the part I've read so far is any indication, it's really funny as well.

Next post, I'll deal with Karen's Introduction, which, unlike many books, proved an excellent starting place.

Interesting Post: Austin Mustard Seed

I was reading the other day, and came across some strange ideas, the blog of John Chandler, pastor of Austin Mustard Seed. Okay, that's a lot of links.

So here's the link I found so interesting. The congregation was contemplating silence and the post lists the quotes they were considering, and one in particular hit me, from Dallas Willard:

"So if we really intend to submit our bodies as living sacrifices to God, our first step well might be to start getting enough sleep. Sleep is a good first use of solitude and silence. It is also a good indicator of how thoroughly we trust in God."

Wow. Right. Between. The. Eyes.