Kathleen Norris on Childhood Epiphanies

From her book The Cloister Walk:

"If we teach children when they're young to reject their epiphanies, then it's no wonder that we end up with so many adults who are mathematically, poetically, and theologically illiterate."

As usual, Kathleen's on to something. Now, how do we reawaken our deadness to epiphanies?

Quick Look at Psalm 141:3-4

Ps 141:3-4  Set a guard over my mouth, O Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips. Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil, to take part in wicked deeds with men who are evildoers; let me not eat of their delicacies. 

This fits right in with James 3, depicting the tongue as the gateway to our attitude, and our attitude as the gateway to our actions and affections. This is why saying negative stuff is so dangerous. It’s not that it’s magic and something has now been inadvertently cursed. It’s what it does to our attitudes. Like pouring salt on your garden plants – it just kills.

Quick Look at Psalm 146:7-9

Ps 146:7-9  He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the alien and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. I love this statement of what it is that the Lord does. To wit:

1.    He takes up the cause of the oppressed

2.    He feeds hungry people

3.    He frees imprisoned people

4.    He gives sight to the blind

5.    He lifts up the weighted down

6.    He loves His own

7.    He watches over the different

8.    He takes care of those who need care

9.    He messes up the ways of the wicked

You know, I think I can really get into having a savior like this…

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.

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.

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.

Quick Look at 2 Corinthians 12:7-10

In 2 Cor 12:7-10 (TM), Paul discusses his infamous thorn in the flesh, and it proves to be a rich field of study, mainly because we have here the primary human author of the New Testament, and he’s not getting what he asks for in prayer. I’m sorry, but that’s notable.

The first thing you notice is that he sought the Lord three times for the thorn to be removed, so it’s clear that it was a big enough deal for him to ask, and then he didn’t just ask, he sought the Lord, pleading. What I get from this is three full-blown seasons of seeking God’s will on this, and he finally hears God’s answer, so he hung in there.

The second thing you get is that answer. “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” This is all your gonna get. This is a ticket for a free ride to quit whining, to get on with life, a dry-eyed, clear-path trail through the ruins of whatever-you-were-hoping-for, onward to what your life is actually going to be.

You are given grace, which is the free ticket part of the whole deal: it’s grace, stupid. Duh. It’s the guarantee that you can, indeed, make it through this. Sometimes we complain that a person doesn’t seem too concerned about whatever trouble they’ve found themselves in, but isn’t that the goal? That particular point could probably stand a lot of unpacking, and maybe I will do that at another time, there is a kind of indifference to results that indicates no direction, no drive, no ambition, but that’s often misconstrued for the actual working of grace, that allows you to despise (think Jesus despising (TM)the shame of the cross) all that as you keep your gaze fixed on the prize. We too often get derailed by minor points, or troubles that are beside-the-point. Grace is like peace in these situations; it lets you move on.

The third thing you get is how not-high-minded-or-spiritual this grace thing is. It’s a huge, cool thing. Do you see people born into money acting all apologetic or thinking they’re failures? Not as a general rule, you don’t. But they’re recipients of grace, also. So maybe we should take a cue from them whenever God decides to give us a free ride, and not hang our head about it.

Paul goes on to talk about bragging about his infirmities, “that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” Look at me, Paul says, this is POWER.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Blue Parakeet: Chapter 4

In chapter 4 of Scot McKnight's fine Blue Parakeet, it's all about story and the retelling of the story with fresh nuance at each and every turn. He calls these retellings "wiki-stories" in the manner that the Wikipedia is put together article by article - hey, in some cases word by word, by the bearers of remarkably different viewpoints united in a common cause; it's a distributed model for a post-Babel world. What else could serve such a disparate, dispersed people?

Scot uses Mt 4:1-11 (TM) to illustrate the idea of wiki-story. It's the story of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness, and Scot explains that this could serve as a "perfected" retelling of either Adam & Eve's temptation, or the wilderness travails of the children of Israel. Either one works; indeed, maybe that's the point - Jesus steps in to whatever story and, in walking through it again, redeems it and reconciles it to Himself. And just this small taste, this one example, starts to open up an entire universe of possibilities for us: maybe this is how the ministry of reconciliation actually works! And then we're able to make the traditional application of rebuking Satan and his temptations with scripture just like Jesus, only now, through this reading of the story as a wiki-story, we're suddenly much more solidly grounded, more thoroughly prepared for the vagaries of life.

The Bible is flexible. It's vast. It's wide, covering a bazillion different things, and it's deep, restating some themes over and over with subtle variations, fitting itself through these countless iterations closer and closer to where we actually are, wherever we've actually washed up, painfully in need of rescue.

Powered by ScribeFire.

The Network of Conversations

Finnish sociologist Niklas Luhmann stated that “community is a network of conversations.” This is one of those quotes that immediately strikes you as being true, even when you don’t understand it. I have a pretty good idea about usage of the word “conversations” in emergent circles. In fact, I guess that it’s very closely related to my use of the word “negotiate,” or “sitting down at the table.”

Think of negotiating “in good faith.” How’s that defined? You have notions of transparency and fairness… in short, the Golden Rule, so that community becomes a network of Golden Rule participants. I was concerned that saying proper negotiating follows the Golden Rule is stating the obvious, especially when you could say that proper anything follows the Golden Rule. However, to put the emphasis on conversation heightens the attention to communication, the transparency side of negotiations, and using the word “negotiations” acknowledges that each party has its own set of interests; i.e. we don’t operate and relate in a bubble devoid of interest, and we are not all the same.

A pressure point in negotiations happens right here when parties realize that their interests do not map with those of other parties. You hear statements like, “I thought we were on the same page,” and the words carry a tone of betrayal and disappointment.

This isn’t right, though. Indeed, it betrays a certain naiveté to feel this shock. Of course the other party or parties have a different set of interests from my own. We should realize this.

What should inform this is another question: what is germane to this particular project? We are seeking to set scope. Are we on the same page? The only page that matters is the most local one that covers the project. Do our interests within the scope of the project map to a tolerable level of congruence? This is why Jesus says (TM) that if they're not against us they're for us.

Most misunderstandings where there wasn’t an out and out transmission error, in other words, where all words and intentions got transmitted and received correctly (transparency), fall under the category of scope error.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Going Up to Jerusalem

They were going up to Jerusalem with Jesus. What they were expecting was a blockbuster Michael Bays film: lots of explosions, collateral damage. Zap! Pow! What they got was an indie film with a confusing ending that wasn’t really an ending.

Powered by ScribeFire.

A Quick Look at Psalm 81:11-12

Let's take a quick look at Psalm 81:11-12. (TM)

• "...My people..." Even in the midst of our disobedience, even in the midst of punishing us, God considers us to be His people. We would do well to remember Hebrews 12:6 (TM), "For whom the Lord loves He chastens..."
• "...would not heed My voice..." The opposite would be the way to go. Heed, according to OneLook.com means "pay close attention to..."
• "...So I gave them over to their own stubborn heart..." A direct consequence of that stubbornness. God has the reputation of not staying where He's not wanted, and this passage would seem to support that.
• "...To walk in their own counsels." This is reminiscent of Isaiah 55:8 (TM), where the Lord says that neither our thoughts nor ways measure up to His. Choosing our own way is a bad move, and He will let us do just that if we insist.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Quick Look at Psalm 81:7

Let's take a quick look at Psalm 81:7 (TM).

• You called in trouble, and I delivered you... - Isn't this so typical of the Lord, the very type of thing that causes Him to be named Faithful and True?
• ...I answered you in the secret place of thunder... - I love this secret place of thunder... secret, and therefore mysterious... thunder, and therefore powerful. I think it really is just like thunder when the Lord drops something heavy on you. It rattles everything, even the foundations. And nobody else is even aware of it many times, so that it's secret at the same time.
• ...I tested you at the waters of Meribah... - This refers to the first time (TM) Moses was instructed to strike the rock, satisfying the thirst of the Israelites. It's funny how it says here that God tested the children of Israel, and in the Exodus passage it says that the people tempted God by asking "Is the Lord among us or not?"
• Kind of makes you think this could be a diagnostic: If I'm thinking that I'll just smart off at God about my situation, maybe I'm just being tested after all.
• Maybe it's the tell-tale sign that He's right there, though unseen, and He's involved. That's a nice thought.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Quick Look: Psalm 47

Let's take a quick look at Psalm 47 (TM).

You read verse 1 of this psalm and you're taken immediately down memory lane with the children's chorus, which is unfortunate in a way. The chorus leaves out so many good bits!

• v2 This verse states what is perhaps obvious, but just how obvious is it that
  • 1) the Lord is the Most High, and
  • He is awesome?
  Even in our gatherings at church, do we act as though He is awesome? Not really.
• v3 I think this states Israel's expectation right up until the time of Christ, and was indeed the plainly stated role they imagined for their Messiah.
• v4 This puts things perhaps a bit more ambiguously, foreshadowing the Suffering Servant role that the Messiah would actually fill. It's a good place for us to be, being willing and able to readily admit that God will choose our inheritance.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Jonestown, 30 years later

Here's a link from boingboing about Jonestown and related stuff. I was in college when this happened. I think it's important, and something everyone should be informed about. We mustn't blindly follow anyone, and there were clues aplenty that Jim Jones was up to no good.

More about this later. Do any of you remember any of this stuff?

Powered by ScribeFire.

Yancey at CT on Diagnostics for Congregations

Philip Yancey (Wikipedia article) has an interesting article on Christianity Today called "Denominational Diagnostics." I wouldn't have called it that, because it doesn't seem to have too much to do with denominations. He talks about being able to sense the "aliveness" of the congregation within a very short amount of time, based on 1) talk going on in the foyer, 2) presence of laughter, and 3) what activities and issues were highlighted on the bulletin board.

Read the entire article. What Yancey says he found at the heart of his quick impressions were three things.

1. Diversity - I think he was getting at the idea that diversity showed tolerance of personal differences and the absence of any one group dominating everything. I bet everyone's been in a congregation where actions and attitudes were highly restricted so as not to upset the "alpha" group. When that's not happening, it's a good sign.
2. Unity - We could easily get into centered vs. bound sets here, a fun topic to be sure. Unity could simply be strongarm tactics - "be like I tell you to be or you're not welcome here." But that would go against the diversity point above. Unity shouldn't be based on blind conformity, but on a cherished common ground, hopefully in the case of churches - Christ.
3. Mission - Is the church obviously trying to make disciples, and are they doing so in some positive, uplifting way that includes large doses of love?
   

Powered by ScribeFire.

Fitch on Psalm 37

David Fitch put up a good post yesterday. He's at it again, outlining right-thinking for churches and their leaders.

Here, he's talking about when times get tough. Belt-tightening, all that kind of stuff. The pressure is on to keep cash flow going. You've got to pay the bills, or as he puts it here, you've got to get pragmatic. And this is in the context of a missional church, where you're already straining credulity, you're already pushing the envelope. Let's face it, you are not doing things just like the successful church down the block.

He says there are three things about missional churches that ought to help.

• They tend to keep building expenses minimal
• They tend to utilize multiple bi-vocational pastors that can weather difficult economic times
• They tend to live more communally, achieving economies of scale

Then he quotes Psalm 37:1-6 (TM), recommending it for - get this - spiritual formation! This is potent stuff, radical even, a true humility right in the normal practice of a front-line pastor.

I really like David Fitch.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Alan Hirsch on Planting the Gospel

Alan Hirsch has a fine post based on a quote by Dr. D.T. Niles of Sri Lanka. Hirsch suggests that we replace the term church planting with gospel planting. Here is Dr. Niles' quote:

The Gospel is like a seed, and you have to sow it. When you sow the seed of the Gospel in Israel, a plant that can be called Jewish Christianity grows. When you sow it in Rome, a plant of Roman Christianity grows. You sow the Gospel in Great Britain and you get British Christianity. The seed of the Gospel is later brought to America, and a plant grows of American Christianity. Now, when missionaries come to our lands they brought not only the seed of the Gospel, but their own plant of Christianity, flower pot included! So, what we have to do is to break the flowerpot, take out the seed of the Gospel, sow it in our own cultural soil, and let our own version of Christianity grow.

I think this is quite powerful, and I would suggest that cultural soil is fractal in that this principle of soil applies not just to the largish entity thought of as a culture, but it applies equally as well to each successively smaller sub-culture, right down to the individual level.

I particularly like how Dr. Niles talked about breaking the flowerpot. A lot of rejection we see in evangelism is not an out and out rejection of Jesus, it's a rejection of our flowerpot, the container in which we bring the gospel. A lot of situations where people do not go forward with Jesus are simply flowerpot problems.

Like it or not, we add a lot to the gospel when we share it. We do this without realizing it; it's unintentional, but real nonetheless. I think Hirschy is encouraging us to plant the gospel as cleanly as possible, enabling the hearer to really accept it, embed it into their lives.

Powered by ScribeFire.