A Reminder About the Reality Behind the Images

November 10, 2009 at 2:49 pm · Filed under Current Events, Discipleship

Ian sent me a link to a music video that a friend of his directed.  It’s not knew, and some of you may have seen it on VH1 awhile back.

I’m sharing it because it’s all about the reality behind the carefully wrought facade of the internet.  A facade that I and most every other male on the planet (and a good number of women too) buys into.  So watch closely, but listen even closer.  You will hear your own thoughts and justifications and struggles in the lyrics.  If you’re like me, you will need to repent and weep again at your complicity to another’s nightmare.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHO2nJIIdwM&NR=1

Hopefully, you’ll also move past your grief and take it to prayer.  A prayer that simultaneously finds peace in God’s grace and grace which motivates to justice. Justice for deliverance for everyone – the girls and women, the families, the pimps, the producers, the consumers, and the economic conditions which lead to this kind of slavery.  A justice which seeks to address the sins of our past, not just find forgiveness from them.

Let’s not just pray about deliverance for people from afar, but – if God wills and directs – it might be time to start walking around our 2 in order to share the good news and offer actual deliverance for those caught and abused by these and other sins.  Did you know that they recently busted groups in and around Pearl Lane using the apartments to run prostitution rings?  Is it time to walk into the shadow world to bring the light?  Let’s talk and pray and discover the Lord’s will and timing for this.

If you are caught in this particular sin, know that you are not alone in this community of believers.  Together there is a path to walk.

If you want to get involved in the solutions to the problems that you and I have participated in and propagated, then check out some of the local options:

I’m sure there are others, but these are  two I know about.  Innocence Atlanta is a group you can volunteer with and give to.  Tapestri is specialized for immigrant and refugee women in our immediate area, and could use donations for their important work in reaching and working with women who have been abused, trafficked, and enslaved.  They also offer training in how to identify victims of trafficking and abuse to help set them free.

Trafficking, prostitution, violence and the perpetual abuse and degradation of women and the needy have always been practiced in the world.  God’s call to deliver his gospel and freedom is ours to go out and share.  But as Dorothy Day and other icons of our faith have taught us, the goal is not success in solving the problems but in faithfulness to stand up and witness.  To go out and speak the truth of God’s way.  To pay whatever price that requires.

Don’t just be sad about your weaknesses and moral failings.  Don’t just be over-joyed at God’s on-going grace for his people, even when we fail.  Let us all ask the Lord how to get in the fight and be a witness for his love and power to those who need him the most.

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When Bible Meets World

October 15, 2009 at 2:34 pm · Filed under Discipleship ·Tagged , , ,

I’m re-reading one of my favorite books, Colossians Remix, Subverting the Empire by Walsh and Keesmaat. I say favorite, not in the sense of total agreement, but in the sense that it awakens things deep inside of me that cause interesting struggles.

I am all the time thinking about Jesus and the story of the church and my life and calling and our church’s life and calling. When I do I have parts that humble and inspire me. I also have parts that get me really mad and parts that depress me. Particularly, ways that now seem so obviously clear in scripture, but which I was never taught in the evangelical subculture I walked in. So I think about the people in the congregation, my own wife and children. I ask the Lord about what I am doing that is equivalent and how to be more faithful to Him and less hoodwinked.

One of the keys is what Walsh and Keesmaat call double immersion. That is, we have to simultaneously be deeply and adeptly engaged in both the biblical story and the world we live in. This allows the text to prophetically critique the culture and grounds and focuses the mission of the church in meaningful and relevant ways. What Walsh and Keesmaat do well (in my opinion) is imaginatively bring the two together so that the text, interacting with contemporary cultural factors, deals with them “head on.” There is nothing “new” here. Every preacher and church leader is taught that this is the goal of all preaching and mission. What I find amazing is how their application of these principles produces something that really jars and impacts my life and perspective. Check out their targum-like paraphrase of Colossians 2:8-3:4:

“Make sure that one takes your imaginations captive through a vacuous vision of life rooted in oppressive regimes of truth that parade itself as something more than a mere human tradition, as if it somehow had privileged access to final and universal truth about the world apart from Christ. You see, in Christ there is a radical presence of Diety, fully instantiated and situated in the particularities of history. And you have come to partake in that presence; that fullness is yours in Christ, who is the very source of every rule and authority that purports to have sovereignty over your lives.

“In him you have your legitimacy, your entrance into the covenantal community, because in relation to him your real problem – a deeply rooted sinfulness manifest in violence and self-protective exclusion – is addressed and healed. The symbol of legitimacy is not the size of your stock portfolio or the number of hits your website gets daily, but the ancient rite of baptism in which you die with Christ to all these pretentious symbols of self-aggrandizement and are raised with him through a trusting and believing faith in the power of God, who raised Jesus from the dead.

“Don’t forget that you were once dead too – dead in the dead-end way of life that characterizes our cannibalistic and predatory culture. But now you are dead to that way of life, and God has made you alive with Christ by dealing with the real problem through radical forgiveness. You see, when the idolatrous power structures that bolster this oppressive regime of truth nailed Jesus to the cross and poured out all their fury on him, all of your debts were nailed there too. All of the ways the empire of death held you captive and robbed you of your life – the exhausting and insatiable imperative to consume, the bewildering cacophony of voices calling out to us in the postmodern carnival, the disorientation and moral paralysis of radical pluralism, the loss of self in a multiphrenic culture, the masturbatory self-indulgence of linguistic and societal games, the struggle to not become roadkill on the information highway – all of this is nailed to the cross, and you are set free. Let’s not beat around the bush here. What is at stake in this conflict at the cross is indeed power struggle. And Jesus takes precisely the principalities and powers that placed him on the cross – the idols of militarism, nationalism, racism, technicism, economism – and on that very cross disarms, dethrones, conquers, and makes public example of them. In this power struggle, sacrificial love is victorious precisely by being poured out on a cross, a symbol of imperial violence and control.

“If all of this is true, then don’t allow the front-men of these vanquished powers to tell you what to eat and drink. Don’t buy into the simulated grocery stores made to remind shoppers of an era in which shopping was more integral to community. Don’t be duped by advertising that tells you that various products are indispensible to constructing certain images and personas. This is all crap. They are still trying to captivate your imagination, to suck you into a globalistic regime of homogeneous consumption. Resist this McWorld nightmare with all the strength you have! Avoid the Disneyization of your consciousness! This stuff has no substance to it, no depth. It suffers from the unbearable lightness of being. But in Christ we find substance, something of weight and power.

“And don’t get sucked into consumerist ideology when it comes dressed up in the clothes of Christian faith. A “new manly piety” just might be more of the same old patriarchal power-grabbing, capitalist legitimating stuff that we have seen being pimped both a the mall and in the consumer-friendly church. And all the charismatic enthusiasm in the world, rolling the aisles with holy joy, amounts to little more than puffed-up humanism if it is devoid of a radical transformation of entire human lives. So much religious re-cultural imagination remains in captivity to an idolatrous worldview, and it has lost contact with the real source of life. It cannot sustain deep and radical growth that is subversive of the regimes of truth because it is not nourished from the source of all things – it does not growth with a growth that comes from God.

“If with Christ you died in your baptism to the principles of autonomous consumerism that still hold the world captive, then why do you live in a way that suggests that you are still in the iron grip of its ideological vision? Why do you submit yourself to it regulations to consume as if there were no tomorrow, to live as if community were an impediment to personal fulfillment, to live as if everything were disposable, including relationships, the unborn and the environment? Why do you allow the deceitful vision to still have a hold on you? Don’t you know that copulating with the idols of this culture is like climbing into bed with a corpse that is already decomposing?

“Let’s be clear about this: the postmodern vision of a laid-back pluralism where people hold only to their local narrative and abandon any attempt to make truth claims beyond their personal opinions or traditional communities may look like a way to end the violence, to respect otherness and stop marginalization and genocide, but it is in fact totally and irrevocably impotent to accomplish any of this. It has a mere appearance of wisdom; it has no depth of vision to discern between paths of wisdom and paths of folly. It looks like humility, and it will lay on the guilt pretty thick for the years of violence legitimated by various metanarratives (including the Christian one!), but it is not humble enough. It fails to see that the real issue of violence, exclusion, and marginalization goes much deeper – it lies in the violence, rebellion, and deceitfulness of the human heart. Self-imposed postmodern guilt trips can do nothing to heal the heart and can do nothing to stop the violence. Only the exhaustion of that violence on the cross can begin a real restoration.

“You see, my friends, the postmodern incredulity of all metanarratives is well founded. The modernist metanarrative, of civilizational progress manifest in an aggressive conquering of colonized peoples, so-called scientific objectivism, a technological will to power and a market capitalism that would commodify all of life, deplete creational resources and create an ecological nightmare, was a tall tale – a lying, self-justifying ideological narrative. Yet humans are inherently storytelling creatures. And any local narrative will necessarily and invariable function as a metanarrative in the lives of those who hold it as their story.

“So the issue isn’t whether to live out of a metanarrative or not, but which metanarrative, and whose grand story. Without a grounding and directing story, no praxis is possible. That is why the crisis of storyless postmodern people, animated by little more than media and market-produced images, is a crisis of moral and cultural paralysis.

“But that’s not the way it is with you, is it? You know which metanarrative brings life, don’t you? You now whose grand story has set you free, don’t you? Remember, in Christ you have died and were buried and have been raised to new life. His story is your story! Your identity and destiny are inextricably tied to the story of Jesus. And there is more to this story. The risen one is the ascended one, sitting at the right hand of God! If you have been raised with Christ, then, you must make your own the rest of the story. Allow your imagination, your vision, your hope to be set on and directed by the image of kingly and restorative rule.

“And this narrative of death, burial, resurrection, and ascension still isn’t the whole story. You see, Christ will return; his hidden rule in heaven will be revealed on earth – and just as his full glory will be revealed, so also will this be a revelation of your full glory as restored, renewed, and fruitful image-bearers of God. When that happens, this whole business of exchanging your true glory as God’s image-bearers for the kind of idolatry that continues to tempt and oppress you will come to a final and liberating end!

“Do you feel incomplete, not yet fully who you are called to be? Good! Because you are incomplete, and any presumptuous sentiments otherwise would land you right back into idolatry. But we do live in hope. The struggle between the restorative rule of God in Christ and false, empty , deceitful pretenders to sovereignty – this struggle we experience deep within our bodies, our communities, our culture – will reach a final resolution in the return of Christ. Yes, we are waiting, but what we are waiting for is already stored up for us in Christ’s heavenly rule and will be revealed in his coming. So live now, animated by that radically subversive hope.”

(Colossians Remix, pp.137-139)

Now there are some thing here I would love to talk with the authors about, especially definitions and meaning of “metanarrative.” I am (and so are the authors) much more favorable to postmodern sensibilities then you might get from his passage.  Yet I agree with the inconsistencies and failings stated here. 

What captures me about this paraphrase is how it illuminates the big, guiding issues of the modern landscape and accurately reveals and critiques them from the text. In the intersection of the text and culture the text is truly prophetic, guiding, and powerful for understanding how we live-out the life we are given. It is not as captive to the hyper-individualism and ahistorical tendencies of our culture. 

What does it do in me? It makes me think about how I think. Some of my uncontested assumptions and practices suddenly have to be examined and changed. I think about what I buy and why. I think about how I live and what motivates me. I think about my fears and decisions and have to reconsider their source, validity, and effect. I am forced in light of the critique to think about what “witness” means. All of these are grounded in Christ, his calling, his way, and our lives and purpose with him.

One interesting effect is that it digs deeper into my soul and reveals a deeper source (and way of escape) for my particular temptations and moral failings. Instead of being merely an isolated, individual struggle with common human problems, I see how they are grounded in larger, more insidious forces. My struggle is no longer private, but my private struggle is part of larger confrontation with giants and enemies of the cross. This increases my sense of urgency and expands my understanding of the magnitude of what is at stake. It’s not just about me and my integrity, but it is also about a larger “battle.” It humbles me. I have a more urgent need for the Lord and his presence and power. This drives me to grace and mercy and love.

It also magnifies the importance of church and relationship. It redefines for me what types of expressions of the faith are more urgent than others. It gives me a new vision for what an adequate witness before the world must be like.

Do the scriptures; which promise these kinds of radical re-structuring of our hearts, minds, and lives; actually do that in your life? I’m not asking smugly. I’m not asking because in the glow of the moment I feel like I have a better perspective or superior understanding. I’m asking as a brother and a friend who wants to truly live and be truly alive to the audacious, mundane, beautiful vision of Christ. I’m asking because I don’t want to play church and be nice, safe, and innocuous. I’m asking because I know that I’m too much of a hypocrite and a coward to be faithful to this type of life. Unless have to be surrounded by others who will give me courage when the inevitable time to cut-and-run hits me.

If you life in the scriptures isn’t this way, would you like to get together and figure out how they can be? I’d love to do that. I don’t have a plan or a curriculum or anything. But I think that the Word of God and the Spirit of God are eagerly waiting for us to ask him.

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Castrated Christianity?

September 25, 2009 at 2:17 pm · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , , ,

In Luke 10:8-9 Jesus gives his disciples instructions as they go out to represent him. He tells them, “Whenever you enter a town and [its people] welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there and say to them, ‘the kingdom of God is near to you.’” His first command is to receive hospitality, then offer to heal/serve, and then announce what it all means. Metzler, commenting on this passage writes, “The verbal witness is needed to explain and reinforce the living witness.” (From Saigon to Shalom, p.115)

This missionary formula for identification and incarnation is lost in a communication age where the gospel can become a sales pitch, a commodity, a lucky charm, or speculative philosophy. Soren Kierkegaard tried to get this idea across to the church in his generation. He gave them a metaphor of a class of male performers called castrati who are castrated to keep their voices higher than normal.

“A man is castrated in order to make him a singer who can take higher notes than any normal man can take: and so with these preachers: from a Christian point of view they are castrati, are deprived of their real manhood…but they can take notes higher and more fascinating than any true Christian.” (From the Journals of Soren Kierkegaard, excerpted from Dissident Discipleship, p.179)

It is artificial to cut off the proclamation and explanation of the high and glorious meaning and implications of the Christian life from what is actually lived out by the community of faith. It makes for beautiful art. But it costs so much to do so. It proclaims something that cannot be reproduced. And it is the Lord himself who commanded us to “Go, make disciples of all nations.”

This same order of priority (eat, heal, explain) is also important for the community of believers. This is because witness is not an individual act, but a communal one. We are not inviting people into a kingdom of principles and disembodied doctrine, but embodied relationships-of-the-kingdom that we live together. We show and offer what we know and live, not what we hope to be true in some future place, or was true in the distant past or among a few special cases like St. Francis or whoever. Anything less than real communion-in-community is an inadequate witness in this generation. People have to see the whole thing for there to be any real meaning to the gospel. It is living life together, going together, and inviting people into a lived-out life with God that people will see, hear, and taste the gospel.

So we eat, heal, and announce to one another. We eat, heal, and announce to those we are called to love. We are witnesses in that we share what we know, not just what we have been told or hope to be true. We must not be castrati.

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Clarifying Community

September 16, 2009 at 2:13 pm · Filed under Current Events, Discipleship ·Tagged , , , ,

In Life Together Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes, “Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it has sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and, if we are fortunate, with ourselves. By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world.” (Life Together, 26-27)

Getting more particular about this dream world Parker Palmer wrote about the modern myths of community in A Place Called Community. Here they are in a summary by Augsburger:

Myth 1 – “Community is a creature comfort, a consumer item; it is one more luxury that can be bought in retreats or seminars, purchased with small town property, obtained by paying membership dues at a country club or fitness spa, or even by joining a church.
Community is not a commodity; it emerges from common struggle for integrity, shared commitment to justice, joint covenants to work for wholeness and mutual respect. It is created when we step forward to serve, to right wrongs, to heal hurts. (italics in original)

Myth 2 – “Community is a utopia of easy access to others, of unconditional social acceptance that happens when we find the right people; a panacea for our fears and anxieties if we can afford to live in a gated community, enjoy a vacation in a timeshare that offers a paradise of fun, or join a club that promises fellowship and the agreement and acceptance of those with similar values and lifestyle.
Community is a collision of egos, a furnace for welding steel-hard opinions, a crucible for melting the hard ores of self-interest into common goals. It offers the pain of not getting our own way, the promise of finding a third way together.

Myth 3 – “Community is the fulfillment of our individual goals, an extension of our egos, an expansion of our hopes of finding people just like ourselves, a confirmation of our cherished but partial view of reality.
In true community we do not choose our companions, we receive them as gift; we cannot sort, select, and assemble our kind of people, they come to us by grace. Likeness eliminates challenge; uniformity reduces growth; sameness frustrates creativity.

Myth 4 – Community is achieved by the pursuit or the creation of an extended family of loving people who provide the nurturance and support our family of origin failed to supply.
Community is not a supra-familial network that fulfills our dreams of familial perfection of solidarity or supportive parental permissiveness; it is a network of fallible individuals and flawed families seeking together to learn how to work through the various issues they carry with them.

What is vitally important for our community to remember right now is, “Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.” (Life Together, 27)

What I loved most about Sunday night was people sharing honestly and letting our tensions and confusions be spoken out loud. In some cases we strained relationships by disagreement. This is good. Actually, it’s beyond good it is a true sign of real community shinning forth. Park Palmer wrote, “We might define community as that place where the person you least want to live with always lives.”

It’s my opinion that modern day believers in the information age live in a world of ideas and concepts and symbols. This is both positive and negative. One of the negatives is that we are not always prepared for the hard knocks of reality when they impact our thought-world. This is especially true when we are talking about “community.” Our utopian, self-serving, individualized focus on our self-actualization works against the most basic ideas of biblical community. When we come into natural, unavoidable conflict our first “fight or flight” instincts are to either pound others into our view and/or move away to find our ideal somewhere else. When we do we blame the faults of others, never ourselves. And we have a country of church-shoppers.

But true community, as Palmer writes, is more akin to a contact sport. It is something that crushes us to free us. Community is something like marriage on a massive scale. It comes with all kinds of dreams and fantasies about romance, sex, good conversation, and shared hobbies. But this never lasts. What lasts is sheer commitment, learning how to fight fair, and the constant humiliation of asking for forgiveness, being forgiven, and seeking to put the other above yourself. Anything less than stubborn, tenacious, teeth-grinding determination to not let go doesn’t work.

This is why the “calling question” is so central right now. It frames and grounds the question of community in the right place. Any other question pushes us into making decisions based on a self-serving modern myth. If the vision of the church is biblical, if our callings can be nurtured and expressed in that vision, then we can know that we have to work together through all the hard and difficult times of being immature, sinful people seeking to love as Jesus loves. If there is a disconnect at the level of vision and calling, then people need to find a group of believers who they can share the “big picture” of vision and mission with. It is the big picture context that unites our little pictures and in which the slow grind of fitting lives together takes place.

But once these things are shown to us by the Lord, then we have to be “all in.” Sharing life with one another is no longer optional. Doing the hard work of tearing down walls, confronting hurts and insults, etc is essential. Community is not a place about “me.” It’s a place about “us in Christ.” This is because our God is about making a loving Kingdom that accurately reveals Him. A Trinitarian Godhead is, by definition, an intricate, loving unity – a complex oneness. This is what his Kingdom-In-Christ is about, and what we have to commit to. To do so we have to confront our myths and walk in the reality and truth of what is required of us; however painful, uncomfortable, and insulting ”other people” may be.

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Clarifying Community Development at OTC

September 15, 2009 at 3:05 pm · Filed under Current Events, Discipleship ·Tagged , , ,

James William McClendon tells a very convicting story in his Systematic Theology text, the first volume which is about ethics. It is the story of a conversation between Clarence Jordan, the founder of Koinonia Community in Americus, GA (where Jake Warren lived and worked) and his brother, Robert Jordan, who would become a state senator and eventually sat on the state’s Supreme Court. However, before all of his fame and success his brother Clarence asked him to be the community’s legal representative.

The community needed legal help because after they were excommunicated by the Southern Baptist Convention for “persisting in holding services where both white and colored attend together” there came a time of huge persecution: vandalism, cross-burnings, beatings, bombings, boycotts, and sniper shootings. They needed help and Clarence asked his brother to be that help.

“Clarence, I can’t do that. You know my political aspirations. Why, if I represented you, I might lose my job, my house, everything I’ve got.”
“We might lose everything too, Bob.”
“It’s different for you.”
“Why is it different? I remember; it seems to me, that you and I jointed the church the same Sunday as boys. I expect when we came forward the preacher asked me about the same question he did you. He asked me, ‘Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?’ And I said, ‘Yes.’ What did you say?
“I follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point.”
“Could that point by any chance be – the cross?”
“That’s right. I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross. I’m not getting myself crucified.”
“Then I don’t believe you’re a disciple. You’re an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his. I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them you’re an admirer not a disciple.”
“Well now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn’t have a church, would we?”
“The question,” Clarence said, “is do you have a church?”

(excerpted from Dissident Discipleship by Augsburger)

I find this conversation very convicting and enlightening to my soul. It is a question (Do you have a church?) that I ask myself all the time, and one that I hope will explain my position on the place and importance of community development in the vision of the church.

It was clear on Sunday night that we have tensions and concerns about the place and importance of community development. Some are more focused on its essential essence to the church, others not so much. Here is how I think about it.

The gospel is holistic in that it makes claims and demands on a person’s (and the Church’s) whole life. It is not only individual (a personal gospel) but it effects all of life (has social impacts) and requires believers to take the whole teachings that Jesus taught out into the world to reveal his glory to the “world” (especially to the people and places he plants his church). In this understanding the category “community development” is not an optional choice within the life of the church but the very situation and circumstances in which that life is lived out and defined.

The danger of defining it as an optional part is that it lets people think they don’t have to “do it.” It opens the door to the false idea that they can select something else from the disciple’s menu more to their liking.

On the other hand, there is a danger that disciples can fool themselves into thinking that the social dimensions of the gospel are what matter most. This false dichotomy cuts the work off from the full life of the church that Jesus taught. Instead of relationships, sharing and living the gospel together, baptism, faith, discipleship, etc. we get programs and tasks.

The category of activities we call “community development” is not the gospel. However, you cannot have a biblical version of “the gospel” without the focus, activities, fear & faith that “community development” draws the church into. This is especially true of the full-orbed “asset-based community development” taught by the CCDA and to which we adhere.

I fully agree with Bill Field’s summary on Sunday night about the calling, purpose, and function of the church as being greater than the category “community development.” However, I also see it as more than just a description of activity, but is a lens and focal point to keep the church from a selfish, self-absorbed, me-directed, false gospel. While not a biblical word “community development” is a biblical concept and central to a life of faith as described everywhere in scripture.

I think that discipleship or “equipping” is a more biblical word and description. However, in our individualized, me-first thinking the Bible’s idea of equipping is totally mutilated without the focus that community development gives to the church’s purpose and mission. At the same time, there are so many places to express his life and love within a church on mission (international missions, teaching children, helping with finances, developing leaders, etc).

Does this make sense?

So what does this mean to the individual at OTC? It means that the Lord has graciously given us a way to obedience. It is an obedience that doesn’t take us to the cross, but onto the cross. None of us volunteers for the cross – this is why Jesus is essential. Yet, even when we say “yes” to focusing our lives and following Jesus (using the category of community development as a touch-stone); we still fail, get fearful, confront sin, find victory, etc. In other words, we mature. And maturing is not an option for a disciple, it is the definition of discipleship.

At the same time, no one at OTC will “volunteer you” for community development.  I will never compell anyone to an obedience that is only an act of love when it is freely given to God in response to him.  While no one will be volunteerd, I will not stop talking about it or holding up the importance of taking Christ’s love into the world. 

In a culture of privilege, privatized faith; dueling demands and huge competition for our time, attention, and energy; we desperately need community development as guide and helper to stay on the narrow path Jesus calls us to. It will offend and terrify us. That is part of the point. It will also bring freedom, joy, faith, and glory to God because he is the only one than can truly bring it about.

It is in this context that all that the Bible calls us to has significance – marriage, parenting, loving, growing, preaching, repenting, confession, baptizing, communion, prayer, worship, Sunday service, calling, Bible study, right doctrine, confronting false teaching, sharing the gospel, being a church of the nations, freedom from sin, church discipline, forgiveness, hospitality, generosity, risk taking…

In the context of going into the world as Jesus commanded to do the things that he commanded we grow into following the Jesus of scripture vs. the Jesus of America. Let me end with a quote by Augsberger:

“One can be familiar with the Jesus story, be an admirer of Jesus as a uniquely self-aware yet selfless person, know a great deal about the historical Jesus, be taught helpful perspectives on who Jesus is from the practice of a religious faith, and love Jesus in an experience of personal piety, yet fail to enter the encounter of discipleship in which one recognizes Jesus not as the popular; the mythical, the devotional, or the civilly religionist, but as the one who said “come and die.” Only when one encounters Jesus as Jesus will one feel the rush of surprise. “You’re not Jesus Christ. You’re JESUS THE CHRIST!”

(Dissident Discipleship, p.24-25)

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Reflection Confession

August 27, 2009 at 4:35 pm · Filed under Musings ·Tagged , ,

As we head into one of those “definitive” times for us as a congregation I have this urge to share some things about my heart. I think in part because as you enter the unknown one of the things we hold on to besides faith in the Lord and conviction about what he wants in our lives is the people around us and the leaders he gives us.

So this confession is meant to offer up how I see myself, and who I think I am not. It is offered up to you, but it is more an exercise in soul reflection for me personally.

As a man I look upon the world we are in and I am overwhelmed: economics, militarism, politics, the environment, schooling, culture, race, gender, philosophies, you name it. I reel when I try to get my mind and faith around them. The size, complexity, and number of issues to deal with in our world simply crush me. I look down at the pieces of me that are left and I pick up and hold on to the few fragments that have meaning for me.

First and foremost is the kernel of my faith – Jesus Christ. The grace I first grasped 28 years ago and the person I know from scripture. I’m not sure about all the implications of this revelation, and at times like this I find myself giving up “big ideas” and instead find myself following bread crumbs on a murky, twisting path. I find myself with fewer answers to the big issues and more faith in trying to imitate love for people and be more faithful to obey God in what little I do know.

Chief among these are an overwhelming and growing love for my wife and children. Making my home a place of faith and laughter and growing together to live like Jesus offers and requires. A place of honest struggles, doubts, hopes, and fears that make us real people as we really walk through life together in love with the Savior. 

I think about church and vision and core practices (and other constructs used to describe faith and priority) and it comes down more and more to just wanting to love and be loved by those around me. It’s not anti-doctrine, anti-theology, or any such impossibility. It is just that those categories fade to background, and what comes forward is that I want to love in community and be part of a community that loves. I want to be part of an expression of the love and life of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Not “holy huddle” love, but Jesus-type out in the world, walking about, incarnational, missional, generous, hospitable, forgiving, risk taking love.

I don’t want to be evangelical (though I am), I don’t want to be Reformed (though I am), I don’t want to be a community development person (though I am), I don’t want to be a pastor (though I am). I want to be a humble follower and lover of my Savior whose who life and being are shaped by His love and sharing that love, especially with those who are forgotten or despised by the world around me. And I want to be part of God’s will to help shape others discover and grwo into their own, unique Jesus-shape.

I know that we have to plan and scheme and plot and try and pray and fail and succeed; but none of those are the point. I am not here because I’m a great schemer-planner. I don’t have a menu or blueprint to go by. I know they exist for some forms of church. But I haven’t found a recipe for the one I long for.

So I guess that’s it. I’m sure there will be lots of talk about vision, values, finances, location and the like. They are important discussions and I look forward to them. I just don’t want anyone to be fooled by them or by me. I’m just a man who desperately, DESPERATELY wants everyone (including himself) to know who we are in Christ and to live out His-our love among one another and the world around us.

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Failure can bring victory

July 23, 2009 at 5:51 pm · Filed under Discipleship ·Tagged , , ,

When I was about 22 years old I was sitting with my girlfriend across a table from someone who was a real spiritual hero for me. We where there because we thought that my girlfriend was pregnant. I remember being so scared and uncertain.

I had been a Christian for a little over three years at the time. I was a leader in the church’s college and home group ministry. I had taught evangelism explosion, and did work in downtown Houston trying to get teenaged prostitutes off of the street. Great externals – no character. Anyway, the point is that I didn’t know what was going to happen to my life in any sense. I felt caught, and didn’t know what to do. But there was no hiding something like this. With a gallows mentality it was time to “take my lumps” and “pay the piper.”

What happened next was so breathtakingly shocking that I had no category for it. It would haunt me, convict me, challenge me, and eventually redefine my whole understanding and approach to ministry. The brother basically said, “I’m so excited for you! This is a glorious day, and I hope you feel thrilled at the amazing things you are going to see God do in your life.”

No abuse. No condemnation. I mean, if he had told me how much I smeared the name of Christ and the church I would have agreed with him (because I had). If he had written me off and stormed out of the place I would have thought that righteous and right. But kindness and hope? I was dazed and stunned.

What I was eventually going to learn was something that he already knew – Christ’s victory is so utterly complete that even sin leads to God’s glory if we walk through it the right way. He knew grace and the power of grace to complete destroy the work of the enemy.

At this time in the life of the community there are a LOT of people dealing with sin coming to light. The sheer volume of moral failures is amazing! While it is tempting to see all of this as the work of the enemy (and it is sin), what I see is the work of the Spirit bringing God’s people to freedom and (real) holiness. Not the freedom of a spotless reputation (which is a lie), but the freedom of finding your confidence and hope in the Cross of Christ and his proclamation of who his children are.

It reinforces the most fundamental fact of our understanding of the Lord: He saved us not because of any goodness in us, but just because he did. He was under no compulsion or obligation to do so. But he did. And in doing so he also promises to watch over us, mature us, and get us to glory. Not in spite of sin, but right through the middle of it.

What is tragic for so many is that they think the victory is in not getting caught. The real and amazing victory is when we bring it to light and start learning the right way to live, how to deal with wounds and scares, being honest about who we really are and experiencing acceptance and understanding . I know this isn’t the case in every church, but I know it is here.

I’m saying all of this because if you are one of the many whom God is bringing into the light I want to encourage you. The Lord is doing amazing things for you. Not easy things. Not things that will comfort your ego or let you keep going in a status quo lie; but true life, true freedom, a true and honest invitation to walk before him and everyone else in integrity and peace. I want to tell you, “I’m so excited for you! This is a glorious day, and I hope you feel thrilled at the amazing things you are going to see God do in your life.”

Now, before the it-can’t-be-that-easy police chime in, let me tell the rest of the story. The walk to wholeness for me took over a decade. My girlfriend wasn’t pregnant, but I had a lot of explaining to do. We started to explore the disconnect between my faith and my life and my obvious failure. Things got better for a little while, but I bolted. Mainly because of my pride, but also because the depth of my wounds and deceptions was stunning. I kept trying to overcome my behavior, when the problem was that I really didn’t believe the truth of who God says I am in him. I kept trying to look good.

The other issue, for me, was theological. I was in a denomination that basically said once you were saved that you were cleaned up and had start earning your keep with good behavior and perfection. It wasn’t until I “discovered” Reformed theology years later that I had the understanding and insight to actually “win” (win doesn’t mean stop struggling, just struggling in the right way and living in integrity). 

My immaturity and theology kept me isolated and alone virtually guaranteeing that sin would win every time. God’s way is light, confession, and truth. The truth of who we are in our struggles, and the truth of who Christ is, what Christ did, and what the Lord continues to do in his faithfulness.

The Lord was faithful. He didn’t leave me or forsake me. He walked through the deepest pits of hell that I jumped into. He not only picked me up and cleaned me up, but he gave me things I thought I had forever and completely lost – worthiness to serve him in ministry. What I never got until much, much later was that the only reason I was finally fit for ministry was because of the brokenness, not despite it.

So if you are tired in your fight with sin, come into the light. There is a good and better way. It is neither quick nor easy nor comfortable; but it is glorious and guaranteed.

I know I should stop here, but I can’t help letting you in on a secret. You know what happens on the other side of all this stinky, slimy season of dealing with sin (not that it ever stops it just shifts in intensity)? If we walk through it correctly we will have a whole bunch of men and women who “get” grace at such a deep level that instead of reacting to sin, we will actually charge the gates of hell to reclaim those locked away. Not in the abstract, but by the word of our testimony. We won’t be dealing in secrets, but in truth. We will stand up and invite people into the light by telling our own stories and struggles. We will be secure in who He is and what He promises to the point that our struggles will become rallying calls. We will be so stinking mad at sin and so secure in His victory that we will fight it out loud, in public, and without pretense.  In this he will be glorified. “I’m so excited for us! This is a glorious day, and I hope we feel thrilled at the amazing things we are going to see God do in our lives.”

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Caught in Courage – a counterintuitive understanding

July 7, 2009 at 4:20 pm · Filed under Discipleship ·Tagged , , , , ,

I witnessed the most amazing act of courage this week. A friend and I were praying and the Lord wanted to bring some freedom to him. As we were talking some very direct questions were asked that revealed some deep and somewhat unexpected sin patterns in his life (a sin pattern is when we regularly fail in things that God says are wrong and harmful). The act of courage was his complete honesty and truthfulness at answering questions that I know he would rather not deal with (and definitely wasn’t planning on dealing with).

It made me reflect on those moments in my own life. Some of which I answered honestly and some in which I deflected and prevaricated instead of being truthful and honest. I realize how much I had robbed others of being an instrument of grace and freedom in my life (as well as contributed to my own lingering immaturity). The Lord had opened a door to freedom, but I wouldn’t walk through because of pride and shame. Have you ever had one of those moments? If you haven’t you will. It’s how the Lord works in completing the task of our transformation that he began when he brought us to life in Christ. When it happens to you I hope you will be more like my friend and not like me.

As we were praying after the disclosure of his sin I had a clear picture of a road that was going to be built through the wasteland of what he had done to himself and his soul through this sin. It was a road through devastation, not around it or by avoiding it. God makes a straight road by dealing with our junk head on. In doing so he makes it an avenue of grace and freedom for us and for others who we will minister to who struggle with the same sin pattern. God is so amazing! I’m excited for my friend as we start this journey of taking the gospel of God’s love deeper into his soul and into the wounds that have him seeking help and wholeness in things other than God.

Why the optimism? “Where sin increased, grace super-abounded.” (Rom 5:20) My friend, by having the courage to not hide, jumped off a cliff. It feels like you are jumping to a crashing, horrible, painful death. But I know from my own life that it is flying to a new land of joy and peace in God’s grace. This is the super-abundance of grace that far outreaches and out-classes sin and rebellion.

So we are plotting a road out of these well-traveled swamps into the highlands of grace. We have tools given to us over the years by the Lord, and I am truly excited to see Him work in my friend’s life. If you are part of our community and struggle with besetting patterns of sin I want you to know that there is freedom in Christ. It isn’t necessarily easy or convenient, but it is amazing and abiding. The Lord will bring it about. I just hope that this story will help you to be courageous when the light begins to shine, and that you won’t scurry to the darkness and stay condemned, shamed, and guilty.

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About Faith

June 11, 2009 at 3:20 pm · Filed under Discipleship ·Tagged , , , ,

I’ve been thinking out conversation on Sunday morning about faith.  There were so many good questions, and I was sorry I didn’t have a lot of snap to answer Sally’s question and affirm Jonathan’s comments.  The basic gist was “is faith a gift or something we pursue and grow in?”  The answer was “yes.”  It is both.  But because this is so important to not getting side tracked in our walk of following Jesus, let me be a little more systematic about it. 

When we look at what scripture teaches we find that there are definite steps in the journey of faith.  These steps are referred to by theologians as an “order of salvation.”   While this “order” has definite parts (and we will talk about them) what matters from the start is to realize that while there are parts the process is one, unified whole.  While there are parts, they often occur in such rapid succession that we can’t always identify them in our own stories of coming to (and living in) faith.  So this is not a “cook book”, but a description of what we see in our bibles. 

Before getting into the details, it is vitally important that we also remember that this “order” takes place within the context of the reality in which scripture defines the human condition.  In scripture humanity took the glory and obedience due to God and turned it upon themselves (Gen 3).  This twisting corrupted what was created and brought sin and evil into the world (Rom 1:18-32, 3:9-18).  The result was spiritual death (Rom 6:23, Eph 2:1-3, 5). So the starting point for talking about God’s work is not “value neutral.”  It starts with human inability (Rom 7:18, 1 Co 2:14) and spiritual death (John 3:5).    

Because of this, the majority of the work in moving from death to life is up to God. 

Here is the basic “order of salvation”: 

Election (Romans 8:28-39, 9:15-16, Eph 1:13-14, 2 Thess 2;13-14, 2 Tim 1:9-10)

Regeneration/Effectual Call (John 3:3, Acts 2:14-36, Rom 8:30, Gal 1:15, 2 Thess 2:13-14)

Conversion (Acts 2:37-41)

 Justification (Deut 25:1, Acts 13:38-39, Gal 3:11, Phil 3:9-10, Rom 3:21-26, 4:25, 8:33; 2 Cor 5:21)

Adoption (John 1:12, Rom 8:14, Gal 3:23, Gal 4.4-5, 1 John 3:1)

Sanctification (1 Thess 5:23, Phil 2:13, Heb 13:20, Heb 12:2)

 Perseverance (John 10:27-29, Rom 11:29, Phil 1:6, 2 Thess 3:3, 2 Tim 1:12, 2 Tim 4:18)

Death (1 Co 15:26, Heb 9:27)

Glorification (1 Co 13:12, 2 Co 3:18, Phil 3:21)

There are points in which the human will must be part of the process, mainly in conversion and sanctification.  But it must be stressed that even in these places the work is not equal according to the scriptures, it is more 98% God, 2% humanity (1 Thess 5:23, Phil 2:13, Heb 13:20, Heb 12:2). 

With this big picture in mind we can now talk about faith.  At its most basic faith is believing God and ordering all of your life and hope based on that belief.   I shared a quote on Sunday from Leon Morris who said, “Faith, for John, is an activity that takes men right out of themselves and makes them one with Christ.”  The premier example for Paul is Abraham (Gal 3:6-9).  God tells him something that will be true, but about which there is no present reality.  God is faithful and brings it to pass.

In the same we, we are brought to life (regeneration) by God’s grace (election) in order that we might respond to the story of God (1 Co 2:14).  In this faith is a gift from God that we receive (passive). (Eph 3:16-19)  But faith is also active in that we must act on our belief.  (Rom 8:13) The “active” aspects of faith are to stop doing destructive things (called “mortification” by theologians) and to practice good thinking and habits (called “quickening” by theologians).  We can get examples of this in Rom 7:22, 2 Co 4:16, and Eph 3:16.

So all this is to say that faith is a gift from God and something that is part of us.  It is something we receive and respond to and are responsible to (Gal 2:20).  It is both active and passive and involves what we do and don’t do.  But what is most significant about faith is that it is always focused on God and his character, ability, and attributes to bring about what he promises.  It is not a human “work” that causes him to respond to us.  It is a human response to what he reveals about himself. 

We could definitely go on, but I think this is a good stopping point to take questions.

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A self-indulgent autobiographical thank you after 8 years of seminary

June 4, 2009 at 2:54 pm · Filed under Musings ·Tagged , ,

There I was, sitting on the toilet, when I received a vision that totally changed my life. I know what you’re thinking: It’s the set up for a punch line. But it’s not. It is embarrassingly true. It’s also somewhat emblematic of my walk with the Lord. More humor than dignity. It’s more about the amazing and startling than the polite and poised. Anyway…

It was December 17th. Heather and I had been to Bosnia just before this to talk with the teams there and start our transition and move to Mostar to work with David. But when we got there the Holy Spirit gave us no peace. It has happened to us before. I was offered a full-ride for a Ph.D. at the University of Kansas, but the Lord said no. In fact, coming to Atlanta in 1996 was a walk of faith, as neither Heather nor I wanted to come. But we knew it was what the Lord wanted. It would be years before we started to “get it”, and even longer before obedience brought the peace and joy you expected when you say “yes” to God. Anyway…

It was fine that we didn’t have peace. The problem is that we didn’t have a plan after this. There were leadership issues at the church and a new senior pastor was going to be brought in. I knew that I would be resigning to let him bring in his own group. I had left my job at the Centers for Disease Control to go into ministry. Now it looked like I didn’t have that, but having been in tough spots before we weren’t panicking. We were just clueless.

Then, one day (Dec 17) I went to the bathroom in the church office. It wasn’t a particularly important or urgent trip. Just a mosey down the hall to take care of business. That’s when the vision just took over. The room disappeared in my mind’s eye and I was standing at the edge of a vast river. There were a vast number of “Pea Pod” boats on the river transporting people down the river, some in the faster current others in slower water; but all making progress down the river. As I was watching something hit me in the shin and I looked down to see that one of the boats had drifted to shore. I looked up to see this wizened old man with very few teeth smile at me. He called me to the back of the boat and handed me the huge steering pole worn smooth with the sweet and strain of countless generations. It was pretty cool.

When I went to hand it back, the old man was gone. I looked around and called out, but he was gone. I paddled around the shallows getting the feel for the precarious balance of the narrow boat. When I stepped out and looked across the river the meaning of it all came crashing in on me.

The river was time. The boats filled with people were the church. The steersmen were pastors who were given a boat to steer a certain portion of the river. When it was time they hand off their boat to the next pilot of God’s choosing who gets the next stretch of time.

As I “came to” (it’s not that I ever forgot I was in a bathroom) I knew that the Lord was calling me to the pastorate and that I needed to go to seminary. The next day I applied to the Atlanta Seminary for Ministry and Theology, which eventually folded. Reformed Theological Seminary took the ASMT students and applied our credits to a degree.

I graduate this Sunday, June 6, 2009. My first class was January, 2001. Eight years.

But not an empty eight. The year I started seminary was the year that Caedmon was born. I learned Hebrew in the waiting room of the Georgia Cancer Specialist as Heather had ITP (not enough platelets) with the pregnancy. Fisher came one surgery and sixteen months later in my last semester of Greek. Greek was also learned in waiting rooms, but it seemed like more of those were in the hospital. Heather had a LOT of transfusions with Fisher. One of the worst nights of my life was a Saturday after spending most of that Friday sitting with Heather as she got another transfusion. That Saturday night she started to get a nosebleed (very bad). She went into the kitchen and coughed, and blood when everywhere. I felt everything inside me go numb. We called a neighbor, Rae, to stay with Caedmon and headed off to the hospital again. We got home about 5 am. I took Caedmon to church to let Heather sleep. I still remember how tired I was that day. That semester was the worse grade I made in seminary. But I have a wife and two amazing sons, and would pay any price for these.

Two under two in seminary also coincided with being asked to be the senior pastor at the church later in 2003. In spring of 2004 I got antsy and ambitious and tried to take multiple courses. It was a big mistake for my family. It was also the most difficult class I took in seminary, Gospels with Dr. Mawhinney.

We moved the church in 2005, and I took the year off from school. I can be an idiot, but fortunately I have a wife and elders who are smarter than me.

The kidney stone years of 2006-2007 involved four debilitating episodes, two lithotripsies, and one cystoscopy sprinkled into Systematic Theology III, Apologetics, a magnificent class on grace, and a class on ethics that was a personal water-shed for me.

Spring 2008 was one of my favorite classes, Isaiah to Malachi with Dr. Yeo as we sold our house and moved into temporary housing until we could find a house in the neighborhood the Lord has called us into. I could sit in classes with Dr. Futato and Dr. Yeo and never get bored or disinterested. Anyway…

Here we are.

I loved seminary. I love learning. I love being stretched and challenged. I love how big God is. How amazing his revelation, how stunning his grace. I love tackling big questions like Just War, pacifism, and privilege (thanks Dr. Davis). My ministry would be infinitely more anemic without the richness of seminary. I will miss it, and I will always use the tools it gave me. It was one of many grace-gifts of the Lord. And it all started on a toilet a life-time ago. God is so amazing.

I never imagined this journey. If I had I would have run screaming from the room with my pants around my ankles. But he did leave me some dignity. I can’t wait to see what’s around the bend of this next stretch of the river. It certainly gives going to the bathroom a bit of an adrenalin jolt. Anyway…

Thank you Heather, Caedmon, and Fisher – you are more precious to me than life, truly. Thank you Isaacsons, Lees, Mootys, Pradarellis, and Sommers. Thank you elders over the past 8 years who believe that the church must equip the called not just call the equipped: Hassan Ari, Dan Burton, Ray Dillon, Jim Eaton, Bill Fields, Tim Habeck, Dale Huff, Aaron Masih, Jerry McHan, Greg Pratt, Frank Rigdon, and Jim Siwy. Thank you Jim and Jolyn for a thousand gifts of friendship over the years. Thank you John Rowell for being the Lord’s instrument to open this door. Thank you Heather Thomas and Mary Hinkle for doing so much to keep this boat balanced these past years. Thank you Open Table Community/Northside Community Church for all your love and support over these very significant years.

Thank you RTS & ASMT:  Jonathan Stuckert, Dr. John Sowell, Dr. Dominic Aquila, Dr. Steve Brown, Dr. Robert Burns, Dr. Allen Curry, Dr. Bill Davis, Dr. Paul Fowler, Dr. Mark Futato, Dr. Sam Larson, Dr. Frank Ferrell, Dr. Sinclair Ferguson, Dr. J.V. Fesko, Joel Harlow, Justin Holcomb (before he was Dr. Holcomb),  Dr. Al Mawhinney, Dr. Daniel Steere, Dr. Neil Skjoldal, and Dr. John Yeo.

Above all else, thank you Lord, blessed Trinity, Almighty God. I am so amazed that you brought me to life, gave me a vision for that life that is nothing I could have ever imagined, and been so faithful to bring it to pass even in my immaturity and sin. Your love is both fierce and astonishing. I am humbled.

Amen

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