how in the world did i miss this?

Thanks Bill Bean for this link.

This is from the January 17th Opinion page in the Indianapolis Star. The Star is Indiana's largest news paper.

Rod Smith
A new definition of church

If you know the name Todd Hunter, former president of Vineyard Church of USA, you might be interested in attending a conversation occurring "live" next Saturday in Indianapolis.

"Live," I say, because such vibrant faith conversations are occurring all the time, all around the world, primarily via the Internet (www.allelon.net, for example). Hunter will lead a discussion about the "emergent church," which seeks to empower people to live openly, to discover authentic community, to empower lives of greater relevance, lives capable of addressing the woes that plague the world rather than perpetuating the problems we all face.

If you've read any of Brian McLaren's or Parker Palmer's books, if you have respect for the work of the late Rabbi Edwin Freedman, or have been challenged by anything Richard Foster and Dallas Willard have written, I know you'll love the dialogue.

Conversations about the so-called "emergent church," about downward mobility, authentic community, loving the world by unusual means, are happening one-to-one, church-to-church and denomination-to-denomination. The emergent church seeks greater relevance to issues of race, poverty and division -- issues that are so often, and ironically, kept locked out of the front door of many faith communities. The "emergent church" represents people of every expression of faith, but it is most visibly expressed in the pursuit of smaller communities. It's a "new" theology, an "open" theology, where participants are trying to grasp what it means to love the world, value the world, address injustice, while embracing and discovering authentic community.

"So this is new?" you might ask. Isn't this what the church has been trying to do for 2000 years?

The conversation typically challenges "top-down" styles of leadership, the mega-church approach, where "the professionals" do everything. It's about smaller-groups, the house church movement and hearing God together. The "new" theology questions the effectiveness of the "Wal-Mart Church" concept ("get all your spiritual needs met under one roof"), where the voice of God comes to the people primarily through the voice of the pastor.

The authentic community cannot be simulated. It either is or it is not. The emergent church is the "church within the church," it is about sharing life and resources and ideas and allowing our lives to significantly impact each other toward greater impact in changing our world.

Pseudo-communities give themselves away. It's top-down leadership no matter what the leadership says it is. There are constant appeals for more group activities, more game nights and fun events so "we can get to know each other." There's constant pressure on the pastor to deliver, to hear and communicate with God, to please people, to keep the offerings flowing, to meet the budget, to placate and please unhappy people with their super-duper programs that will keep their children and youth from straying. Pseudo-communities are "me-first" places, generally seeking to keep the woes of the world out, or at least, not take them home!

Join the conversation from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. next Saturday at Tabernacle Presbyterian Church (32nd and Central Avenue on the near Northside) in their "upper room." No, it is not a Tabernacle or a Presbyterian event. The conversation will occur at Tabernacle because of their gracious hospitality.

Smith is executive director of Open Hand Inc. His column appears Saturdays.

I really wish I could have been at the event. I also think it a significant thing that what is going on has reached an Indiana newspaper. When I first noticed I wasn't alone it seemed that everyone who was thinking the way I am were all in big cities and big states. I am learning that it has spread much further.

What to do locally though? I believe Heather is needing and wanting to stay a bit more involved with folks RIGHT NOW and I believe I am going to have to walk beside her on this. We may be jumping in to the little group that gathers after service at FBC on Sundays again. I question whether it is the best place for me right now, but I do not question that we need to be in some kind of relationship with some folks locally. Maybe this will be something just for Heather to do for Heather. I have a lot of frustration with my 'old home'. I seem to need to separate while Heather needs to remain in a sense. I must put my frustration and hurt to work for me though. Like crap for fertilizer.

As I try and grow past the point of frustration and hurt and disappointment I can not allow myself to slip into a place of apathy. That would not be growing at all. Things are messed up! "...we have accepted one another's notions, copied one another's lives and made one another's experiences the model for our own. And for a generation the trend has been downward." I would rather be taking action which molds a humble-servant-saint of me than just being a part of talk and theory that produces a theologian.

What I want is change and growth and discipleship for His Church. His whole Church. This community. That community. This home. That home. Not just change for this little family. The thing is we must begin with this little family. I don't know what ACTIONS we will be taking next, but I trust that in God's great plan that while this little family does what it needs to be doing for them we will be a part of saturating the world and this nations homes with Him. I can't plan this. I can't construct the 'best' way to do this. But damn it we've got to do something.

it's time

Lot's of snow and more to come. Taking Mikah sledding this afternoon if the freezing rain holds off.

Not much to say today, but I want to post another quote. This one from A. W. Tozer. It's found in chapter 5 of The Pursuit of God.

For this great sickness that is upon us no one person is responsible, and no Christian is wholly free from blame. We have all contributed, directly or indirectly, to this sad state of affairs. We have been too blind to see, or too timid to speak out, or too self-satisfied to desire anything better than the poor average diet with which others appear satisfied. To put it differently, we have accepted one another’s notions, copied one another’s lives and made one another’s experiences the model for our own. And for a generation the trend has been downward. Now we have reached a low place of sand and burnt wire grass and, worst of all, we have made the Word of Truth conform to our experience and accepted this low plane as the very pasture of the blessed.

It will require a determined heart and more than a little courage to wrench ourselves loose from the grip of our times and return to Biblical ways. But it can be done. Every now and then in the past Christians have had to do it. History has recorded several large- scale returns led by such men as St. Francis, Martin Luther and George Fox. Unfortunately there seems to be no Luther or Fox on the horizon at present. Whether or not another such return maybe expected before the coming of Christ is a question upon which Christians are not fully agreed, but that is not of too great importance to us now.

I believe the time is now to return. Not only to return but to move foreward.

God is found in the garbage that is _______(enter your name)

I read this in the bathtub today. Made me cry. It is from SoulSalsa by Sweet.

“.......God has this habit of choosing the little, abused, maligned things to do his greatest work. Like planet Earth. Nothing special, this planet called Earth. The more we know about where Earth fits in the Milky Way galaxy, the less special it seems. It’s a planet that goes around an ordinary star in an ordinary galaxy in an ordinary super cluster. Yet in this ordinary place God found an ordinary town, and some ordinary parents, to smuggle into the cosmos the very being of God.

That is the message of the Gospel. In the least likely of times and places, God does God’s greatest work. Wholeness is not the absence of disease but the creative combination of affliction and health, independence and dependency.

A boat-full of suffering and pain can be either a casket or a cradle.

The links between creativity and pain, creativity and suffering are symbolized in the story of Kopi Luwak coffee, the emost expensive, exquisite, exotic, flavorful coffee in the world. The story of what make Kopi worth $300 per pound is the gospel in a coffee bean.

The Luwak is a rare kind of civet cat native to Java and Sumatra. In Africa th ecivet cat (or more precisely it’s sex glands) is the source of musk, the chief ingredient in men’s perfume. In Indonesia the civet cat is the source of the world’s best coffee beans. A lot rides on the health of these fox-size creatures.

The Luwak has a very picky appetite. You might call it the Juan Valdez of the animal kingdom. It eats only the choicest, most perfectly matured coffee cherries, which it partially digests. The coffee beans then travel through the animal’s intestinal tract and are evacuated.

The hard bean is then collected, roasted, and brewed. Stay in an East Java plantation, and this is the coffee they might serve you for breakfast. For the rest of the world, there are only about five thousand pounds of it available per year to people outside Bahasa, Indonesia - at $300 per pound. The most expensive coffee in the world carries the name “Dung Coffee.”

Nature is filled with “dung coffees.” What is honey? What do truffles grow in?

The message of the gospel is this: God can take the worst and turn it into the best. In the most wasted places, God does the greatest work. God can turn and Sheol into a Shiloh.

Where was Jesus born? What goes in a stable? What were baby Jesus’ first smells on earth?

Where was Jesus crucified? What were Jesus’ last smells on earth?

The classic image of Ash Wednesday is burned garbage. Ashes are more than recycled palm fronds. They are a powerful reminder of that defoliated tree planted in the midst of Jerusalem’s garbage dump, a place called Galgotha, a symbol of cruelty and ugliness and death that at the same time became the “fount of every blessing.”

We coo about the dove, the symbol of the Holy Spirit. Artists paint doves sitting on the head of the Virgin Mary. But what is a dove? A dove is a pigeon, a trash bird. Pigeons become “doves” only on paper and out of the pens of poets.

The gospel of grace is a waste aesthetic: there are treasure chests buried in trash cans. Grace moves us from buried trash to buried treasure.”

identity and 'feeling like a homeless outsider'

I’m grateful for Andrew’s post “cant keep people happy”.

It brings me to want to blog about where I’m at right now. Really I don’t know where I’m at though.

We have found ourselves stepping away from the ‘structure‘. Where the ‘structure’ or the church kinda defined for me, as one who grew up going to this same local church, what I was and did as a Christian. I seemed to have lost that identity.

I went through this period of sounding really rebellious against the church over the past year. That is how I defined who and where I was for a period. I was hurt, angry, disappointed and passionate about change in His Church.

I suppose I am still all of those things, but they do not define me any more. I want you to be a witness to Christ when you encounter me. Not a rebellious, angry and hurt disciple.

I do not question whether or not my family is on the right trajectory. I do not question that we were lead to step out.

Personally though, my identity is gone. When I, as a Christian, stepped out I was no longer defined by structure or program. Now that I have grown past resentment and what could have been viewed as rebellion I have lost my self.

I desire to be identified by Christ. By love.

The past year has been really lonely here. This may be a massive movement of God’s people right now, but we seem to be physically alone here. We have had many of you be with us on this journey though. We’ve made it from noticing and acknowledging problems within the church to stepping out and through rebellion and to here because all of you were right there with us. Where ‘here’ was defined by structure and program and event before it is now defined by searching.

In the past five years or so I’ve gone from being a drunken-sedated-pink floydian-philosopher of mundane thought to being a father. Then I returned to trying to follow Christ when I realized I did not know how to love this child as I wanted. Then I became a sober father of two. Then husband. We’ve been all the way to Dallas tracking God.(I’ve never traveled much so that is a very long way for me) Again, we’ve stepped out of the box. Now, we are expecting our third child and I am taking a theology course! A theology course!?

Most of you haven’t known me for long and haven’t even met me in person, but....I’ve found it easy to look at Heather and see that she is not the same girl I knew 6 years ago. Ya’ know what? I’m not the same boy I was six years ago! Imagine that!? I have been and I am being transformed. I have been forgiven much! I am much loved!

I think I want to ask all of you a question. Or at least let you know the question that I am asking now.

What now? What does my family need to be doing? We are called to not forsake the gathering of ourselves together.

I don’t know....

I am not a leader. My little family needs mentors. I don’ want to go ’church shopping’, but my family needs tangible fellowship. We don’t have much of a social life. There wasn’t much for fellowship or relationships at our local church, so that isn’t something we’ve lost from stepping out. We plan to make pilgrimages to be with many of you. We plan to be a part of regional gatherings with the folks at Vineyard Central. We are hoping to move to Indy to be in relationship with Riley and Bill and those who are IndyChurch, but we don’t know what to do now. We need something daily-weekly-monthly. We need to take on some spiritual practices. We need to be discipled!

I AM NOT TRYING TO BE IDENTIFIED BY A NEW STRUCTURE OR PROGRAM OR EVENT!

I guess I’m just asking you to pray that God would bless us with some relationships locally. Please pray that God would show us and we would see what we need to be doing right here-right now. That he would show us what we should not be doing.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a Bible study? Suggestions for something Heather and I can do together daily or at least regularly?

Spiritually, as a disciple, although I’m almost 26 and grew up in the church, I feel like a teenager that has been trying to be a grown up too fast. I am my own person, but I am still a young disciple and have much to learn. Pray that I would be patient and content with my place on the journey and yet still press on, out and in.

(Weird! As soon as I finished writing this I heard one of the children on PB&J Otter say, “Mom, is it ok while I’m growing up and all that I can still be a kid?” :>)

ps - I still want to be in Texas ;>(

still here

Started work last week. It's going well.

Also began Old Testament 101 from SemiNEXT. Looking forward to getting more into this. I think it will help me better understand the New Testament. Thanks to Shannon for encouraging me to do this and for helping me to get the recourses I needed.

Mostly just enjoying my family and getting in to the routine of working again. Sorry I haven't been very much involved with ya'll. You really notice how much your own input has to do with you being a part of a community when you stop contributing. I'll get more in to this when I find my grove.

Eric Keck, I'm sorry we didn't have a chance to meet at Mayhem. George, thanks for the encouragement and the link. I'm adding you both to the blog list.

cafe hookah

New Cafe Hookah offers ethnic alternative on west side

'Cultural infusion' or "devious manipulation of people's social desires"?

Either way, notice the selling point besides tobacco.

confessions not convictions

I like what Leonard Sweet says in Soul Salsa on page 107:

“I try to have confessions, not convictions.”

“I am more interested in relational prepositions than in doctrinal propositions. Relational prepositions are words that draw into/within/among/between/amidst a divine connection. Doctrinal propositions separate people into categories and camps and positions. It’s the difference between faith as a set of ideas about Christ to be believed or a relationship with Christ that is lived.”

trying to get unstickified

I want to unlearn much of what I have learned growing up. Some of the mental pictures I have of what Church is are just wrong. They are hard to shake though.

I need to remember that we are not called to build churches. Jesus said in Matthew 16:13, “I will BUILD MY CHURCH, and even the gates of hell shall be able to prevail against it.”

I am aware that each fellowship of believers will not be a ‘one-stop-shop’ for all needs. There is no reason it needs to be.

We have been called to ‘make disciples of all nations’. Trying to build one-stop-shops’ or structuring things in such a manner that we are not engaging the culture and the community in our daily lives as the Church means we have become a ghetto and/or an institution and not living expressions of God‘s love for the World. Whatever it is that keeps me and keeps us from engaging the community must go. Any way of doing this that keeps us from engaging each other in an intimate fashion as to truly deal with each other’s crap and truly love one another is short of what it is called to do.

My life in Christ should always be viewed as foreign mission.

Being a Christian should be defined by whom I serve and the lifestyle that is that service.

My life as mission. Our lives as mission. The Church as the mission. No project. No construct. Nothing but our lives, in and through Him, engaging our communities.

If a ‘worship service’ has become the focal point of our lives as the Church and where so much of our time and energy are thrown while the world and people are dying around us and if we are buying, consuming and throwing away as much crap as the rest of the nation we need to look at the life of the one we worship and see if that really models what He has laid before us to do. I think we need to speak to The One who is in our midst about what worship is.

One thing that I am completely swinging on is discipleship. My need for it. My family's need for it. It’s what happens when we are edifying each other. I believe that if this is happening in a fashion that is authentic it will involve engaging the culture and community around us. I believe that when this is being done Church happens. Christ is there. I believe that to question whether Church planting is needed in the West is silly. Church planting and growth will happen.

Being part of the Church, I repent for doing things out of fear instead of out of faith. I repent for trying to do them out of my own understanding. I pray he leads me to turn and look at where He is working and how He is working in the lives of those around me. I pray, out of faith, I join Him.

stuckness

“I have a lot to learn as a disciple of Christ. I live in a small town and I have just recently started to search for my place in the Kingdom. My families' place. We want to serve so bad. I've grown up sitting in my pew and now that I want to get out and serve I feel stuck.”

I found that in an email I sent someone a while back. It rings true today as much as it did then.

makes me proud....

.....to be in the same Kingdom. This is a pic of my cousin Asa with one of the beautiful little children from the orphanage he is helping at in Bogata, Columbia. Check out some more picks here.

Truly a guy with the heart of Jesus for these little ones.

a gift

Since I didn't walk away from it with written notes, but only experience and some mental notes, go check out Jeremiah Smith's notes taken during Mayhem. Incredible! (thanks to Alan for the link)

Favorite quotes from Brian:

"I'd like to start a new movement called Fundamentalism. There are only two fundamentals. Love God and Love your neighbor." ----and---- "Success is trying to learn how to love people."

not alone indeed

It was so incredibly good to meet so many people this weekend. People I’ve been speaking to online for a while. People I didn’t know from a whole in the ground and people that I have only just heard about. It was amazing to me how many people showed up. Amazing! Their expectations went from like 180 people to 260 or something like that in just the last few dayz. Very cool that it was pointed out that almost everyone heard about it through word of mouth and word of blog. Very reassuring to me. Also reassuring that so many people from all over the country and Canada expressed that it was the ‘you are not alone’ theme that drew them there. That says so much. It also says a lot for the variety of backgrounds folks were coming from and all differences were set aside to put the Kingdom first.

It may seem mayhematic (don’t think that’s really a word, but I like it) from our point of view, but I think it is obvious that the Kingdom is at work. If nothing else, I walked away from this experience being reassured in the hope that lies in that.

I pray God works in the midst of the relationships that were begun and enriched this weekend.

from Mayhem to mayhem

Made it home safe from Cinci. I actually stopped off in Indy to check out a the hockey game with Heather and her mom and brother before finally arriving. Hockey fans enjoy the fights more than the game I think. Game was cool though. I think we’ll do that again.

I don’t know how to put too much into words about Mayhem. Brian said something like, and this isn’t an exact quote, “you are not a failure that is all alone. You are here with a whole bunch of failures.” I think that about says it.

Some concepts that were brought up that stick in my mind are being ‘post-protestant’. That is - Not being a protest against that which we view as being faults with other church groups. I interpreted that, for me, to be about focus on who I am and who we ARE and what we are about and for and not what we are against or what we think is better about how we do things, but instead focusing on our doing coming out of our being. I think it comes down to being a matter of the heart. The fact that I do things different and say things different and the way we do things looks different some are going to view what is being done as a protest. But that doesn’t matter what they think really. It’s a matter of my motives and where my heart lies. I think that has been an issue for me. I’ve worded some things in protest:ant fashion, but in my heart it’s just me asking questions and seeing where some change needs to be made. Me searching for what I am to do.

I have those around me who feel that it is all about protesting though. When I seem to get that so much I have begun to question myself. I know some would look at separating to plant a new church that is doing things differently as the same thing that has been going on for years in the Church. I disagree. First, I don’t look at it as separating. I didn’t think there were separate teams to leave and join. I thought we were all one. Second, I think we need to wake up! All of us. I think those in my church experience have never looked at ‘church’ as being the mission. Our lives as being the mission. We do the thing where we send money or some well-gifted person over seas to ‘do mission’, but to me that’s almost like watching James Bond to be a spy. I guess that’s not the best way of explaining that. Brian talked about going to Epcot Center to experience Norway. It looks cool. You think it feels like being in Norway, but you don’t get the frigidly cold temps and the 16 hours of darkness. You don’t get all the crap that comes along with actually living in Norway. I believe that’s the way I’ve done, or not done, Church my whole life. I’ve grown up in this Epcot version of community. We talk about being one and doing this project or service because it is ‘for the group’. Whatever. I’m sure a few of the ‘leaders’ have to deal with the crap in other peoples lives there, but the rest of us just don’t. We have this few minutes where there are prayer requests and we hear about what is hurting one of our brothers or sisters, but we don’t live life with them to know what really bothers them. We see them on Sunday in their best dressed and pretty smile and say hi and maybe even set and talk for 10 minutes during ‘fellowship’ time around the coffee urn. We never get to experience their crap. You never really get to smell mine. Ya’ know? We have Sunday school and/or bible study one night a week for maybe an hour, but it is generally all ‘directed’ conversation, so you don’t get to know anyone real well in that context. Where are we being discipled here? Are we really doing what we are supposed to be doing in this context? I don’t know. I’m not trying to be protest:ant here. Just thinking in text.

So what are the Miller’s going to do?

Brian also mentioned ‘self evangelism’. He spoke of a friend who when Brian asked if he saw himself as an evangelist the guy replied that he was indeed an evangelist. He had been trying to reach himself for Christ for some time he said. That kinda opened up a lot of thought for me. We talk about God blessing us and also us being a blessing. Our blessing to other’s coming out of the overflow of His blessing on us.

I am going to speak for me here. People scare me. When I started high school I used to hide in the bathroom or the library to avoid having to choose which table to set at during lunch. I was afraid of being rejected by what ever click happened to view that table as theirs. I went to lunch twice during my whole freshman and sophomore years. No joke! Staying in my recent church context is too safe for me. It is sterile to the point of being toxic to me. Does that make sense? It completely works against my being discipled. If I am not discipled and if I do not try and reach myself for Christ I WILL NOT be a blessing. The other thing is that I do not know how to be a blessing on my own. Nothing that is solely Scotty will be a blessing. I know that I need His Church. I need you and Him and You in Him and Him in You and me to grow. To be filled. To be filled to the point of overflowing. To be a blessing.

What are the Miller’s going to do? Daddy is going to stop focusing on problems with the church. He’s going to focus on what he and his family is as the Church. I am going to love my family better. Every day damn it. And I will not stop. Man my focus has been off for a while!!!! And (I was going to say ‘also‘, but loving myself and my family properly is not separate from this), so I just say And this includes pray for you. Praying for existing relationships and those that God will put in front of us. We need them. We do feel alone. Right now we feel alone while we are alone, but I think that is a lot better than being alone in the middle of a group that is supposed to be family. At least that makes sense.

Concepts that will not leave my head that were discussed are:

monastic-missional-catholic (small ‘c’, but including the larger ‘C‘)-community

We are not called to build churches

-called to love one another and God
-called to make disciples of ALL
-called to not forsake the gathering of ourselves together in Him

Wanting the map set out before me before I head out on the journey I want to know what that looks like. LOL :^) This weekend reassured me that what God is calling this little ragamuffin family into is much more than theory. It is messy. It is mayhem!

But off we go....