While I see that I have made some mistakes and putting the title ‘emerging’ or any title for that matter on what is going on has misdirected me, there is a movement of His people towards closer and more authentic fellowship with Him and with each other. I don’t have to leave this little town to know that.
Christ IS alive and moving in His people! My life is shaken and broken as a result.
Fellowship. 24/7 organic discipleship. Meal sharing. Authentic community. Story telling. Life sharing. Love-house-to-house. These are not idealistic thoughts. These are realistic. These are things I desire for my life. These are terms which represent a way of living in Him that is more real than what I have had. These are a part of a lifestyle which I feel called into when I am called in closer to Him. These require complete submission to Him and complete change on my part. They require more of me than I have ever had to give. These are things I desire from living as the Church. These require me to do what I do here in this blog in the flesh. Doing these things scares me. What if this? What if that?
If I were to continue chasing after the ‘emerging’ church I would still be searching when I was in the middle of authentic community. There is no ideal. There is the Church. We can either fake it and pretend that we are the ideal or we can be honest and live in the real. I choose the red pill.
Taking the red pill requires me to be honest about what I do not know. Requires me to start unlearning some old things and learning some new. It requires me to look at who I really am in Him and break the illusion of who I thought I was.
My name is Scotty Miller. Christ loves me. I have the honor of living this life. I am choosing to live it with Him and with you. I choose that I am.
I am committing my next five posts to be about the Church. Not the ‘church’. I will only post about actual relationships. Actual people. My kids. My wife. You. Him.
Sunday, February 01, 2004
Why I’m making the transition from going to ‘church’ to ‘being’ Church so difficult.
At the center is exalting God. Consciously putting Him first and Lord of My life.
God is “not a God of confusion but of peace.” (1 Cor. 14:33) If this be so then the struggle be of my own making. The sin in my life confusing and confounding me.
The term ‘emerging’ has been used too much as a noun when it was and is meant as an adjective. I have been pursuing the noun while desiring to emerge-verb. My intentions were right, but my attention was focused wrongly.
I am a consumer. My 25 years of only ATTENDING church fed that. So, when I read about what so and so is doing over here, and they are ’emerging’, I buy in to it. There is no question that God is doing something. Something is emerging from the ashes of modernism. The problem is that what group A is doing is ‘emerging‘. I buy that. What group B is doing is ’emerging’. I buy that. What person X is doing, and they are clearly a maturing disciple, is ’emerging’. I buy that.
Now, I’ve bought all this. (please don’t get stuck on the term I use) The problem is that A, B and X are all good. They are all right. None perfect, but they are better than the last thing I bought. They don’t fit together though. A is not B is not X. They are all part of the ALPHAbet though. The Kingdom. At least part of it.
As a consumer this sucks. I can’t actually buy it. I can’t take it home. I can’t land on it. I can’t build anything on it. It’s not a solid and tangible thing to pick up. I can’t sit in front of it and watch it.
I am not A or B or X. Not sure which I am. But what A, B and X do that my only attending church didn’t, even though I have not yet met A, B or X, is require action on my part.
To ’be’ an active-growing part of this organic ALPHAbet soup, the Kingdom, I have to begin to ’emerge’ myself.
I have separated myself from the local church group that I grew up with. I agree with Banks that “According to Paul’s understanding Christian life centers primarily around fellowship, expressed in word and deed, of the members with God and one another.” My attending a service and a Sunday school class/Bible study did not provoke or inspire me to change. To grow. I do not engage people! I am a hermit! My frustrations stem from my own sin and from lack of fellowship within the church of my experience. (fellowship I believe, when God centered, is the vehicle for discipleship and edification of one another. It is where the rubber meets the rode in our calling to love.)
Yes, I don’t learn best in a classroom setting. Yes, hour long sermons every Sunday suck. Yes, the coffee sucks. Yes, everyone at that particular church does not ‘get’ me. Yes, there really isn’t anyone close to my own age. Yes, they all seem content with what is there being all that church is. Yes, it does seem toxic to me. But, did I ever invite anyone out for coffee? Did I so quickly leave in my frustration that I did not allow the stirring, the Christ in me, to be a catalyst for something more? Yes, I want to be a part of something more. I want and need it. I need you across the kitchen table from me. I need us living life together not attending events together. We talk so much about being both/and. Am I, out of my own ideas of community making it either/or while I rant about it being both/and?
Right now we don’t have our own home to invite folks to. We live in a town where it is limited on where to go out and socialize. I am in an obvious growth process right now. In this town, in this setting, with these people…..my head finds it hard to change and be the new and emerging me here. I find it hard to do new things in the little town where I have for all my life not done them. I never understood why people had to go to some other far away place to start over. I do now.
God is “not a God of confusion but of peace.” (1 Cor. 14:33) If this be so then the struggle be of my own making. The sin in my life confusing and confounding me.
The term ‘emerging’ has been used too much as a noun when it was and is meant as an adjective. I have been pursuing the noun while desiring to emerge-verb. My intentions were right, but my attention was focused wrongly.
I am a consumer. My 25 years of only ATTENDING church fed that. So, when I read about what so and so is doing over here, and they are ’emerging’, I buy in to it. There is no question that God is doing something. Something is emerging from the ashes of modernism. The problem is that what group A is doing is ‘emerging‘. I buy that. What group B is doing is ’emerging’. I buy that. What person X is doing, and they are clearly a maturing disciple, is ’emerging’. I buy that.
Now, I’ve bought all this. (please don’t get stuck on the term I use) The problem is that A, B and X are all good. They are all right. None perfect, but they are better than the last thing I bought. They don’t fit together though. A is not B is not X. They are all part of the ALPHAbet though. The Kingdom. At least part of it.
As a consumer this sucks. I can’t actually buy it. I can’t take it home. I can’t land on it. I can’t build anything on it. It’s not a solid and tangible thing to pick up. I can’t sit in front of it and watch it.
I am not A or B or X. Not sure which I am. But what A, B and X do that my only attending church didn’t, even though I have not yet met A, B or X, is require action on my part.
To ’be’ an active-growing part of this organic ALPHAbet soup, the Kingdom, I have to begin to ’emerge’ myself.
I have separated myself from the local church group that I grew up with. I agree with Banks that “According to Paul’s understanding Christian life centers primarily around fellowship, expressed in word and deed, of the members with God and one another.” My attending a service and a Sunday school class/Bible study did not provoke or inspire me to change. To grow. I do not engage people! I am a hermit! My frustrations stem from my own sin and from lack of fellowship within the church of my experience. (fellowship I believe, when God centered, is the vehicle for discipleship and edification of one another. It is where the rubber meets the rode in our calling to love.)
Yes, I don’t learn best in a classroom setting. Yes, hour long sermons every Sunday suck. Yes, the coffee sucks. Yes, everyone at that particular church does not ‘get’ me. Yes, there really isn’t anyone close to my own age. Yes, they all seem content with what is there being all that church is. Yes, it does seem toxic to me. But, did I ever invite anyone out for coffee? Did I so quickly leave in my frustration that I did not allow the stirring, the Christ in me, to be a catalyst for something more? Yes, I want to be a part of something more. I want and need it. I need you across the kitchen table from me. I need us living life together not attending events together. We talk so much about being both/and. Am I, out of my own ideas of community making it either/or while I rant about it being both/and?
Right now we don’t have our own home to invite folks to. We live in a town where it is limited on where to go out and socialize. I am in an obvious growth process right now. In this town, in this setting, with these people…..my head finds it hard to change and be the new and emerging me here. I find it hard to do new things in the little town where I have for all my life not done them. I never understood why people had to go to some other far away place to start over. I do now.
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
pre-post-protestant discontent and searching
(is 'pre-post' anything redundant to say?)
Andrew's stirred things up with his post on mega churches again.
I don’t know much about them really. I don’t even come from suburbia. We live in rural USA. FBC is a congregation of around 100 or so on Sunday mornings.
Always a sermon/pep-talk. Always some old hymns. Always stand up-sit down-turn around-shake hands. !0 to 15 minutes of coffee or juice and drive-by ‘fellowship‘. Leadership pretty much like most places. Pastor doesn’t have all the control right now. They let that happen with the previous one though. He did everything. Him and his wife wanted the service planed like months in advance. The church learned from that I hope.
I’m sure there are plenty of relationships going on between folks of FBC. I would hope so since like 1/3 of them are all related. It’s very much, “things have been done this way. We will continue to do them this way.” When it is seen that their needs to be change. When it is seen that the congregation isn’t growing, numerically or spiritually, the order of the service is changed. We’ll add this new program. We’ll call them teams instead of committees. We’ll do a study out of this new workbook.
Singing the same drab songs year after year, setting in the same pews, facing the same ’show’, re-paving the same parking lot, doing the same thing only in a different order, without any growth spiritually has led me to here.
My wife is a young Christian. So am I really. I have two kids with another on the way. We don’t really get out much right now. My kids need to interact with other children. My wife expresses that she needs more than what she is getting right now spiritually. She’s not big on the service either. She enjoys and gets something out of the hour of class/‘conversation’ in that group that meets afterward. I guess I just wish I did too.
The thing is, it’s not just me. The folks that don’t even notice anything wrong. Don’t acknowledge it. So many of them are just attendees of an event. An event that doesn’t do anything more in affecting their lives than coming back to the same event next Sunday. Unchanged. Where change happens it is so minute, even in my own life, that it does not measure up to that which Christ’s Spirit has called us out to.
I struggle right now, not because I am battling on whether or not to go back to FBC. Not because I am angry at God or FBC or all our fathers before us that allowed this to happen. Tozer’s right. It’s no one persons fault. Neither is anyone free from blame. I am guilty of settling for someone else’s drab life as a ‘christian’ or lack there of. James’ words mean more and more to me as I grow. My faith without works is dead where it stands. My life in churchiosity is completely unaffected and therefore ineffective. If it is affected it is affected like it was by drugs. Slowly doing what is cool and feels good becomes routine....gives way to habit....then I’m hooked. My life becomes mere existence because I was sucked into the illusion that I was living to the fullest when I was only really feeding my habit.
I need to physically go face down in the dirt/snow to God and repent for my lack of life. For neglecting my relationship with Him. For mimicking someone else’s bad reflection of Him instead of walking with Him day by day and moment by moment and just being infected with Him.
I stir and I ache in my bones for more of Him. For real face to face relationships with people who ache in their bones. With people who don’t want to settle for a show. Who want to live it.
I want to get dirty! I want to do things that I am not comfortable doing because it is what I must do to love you. I want to learn to start conversations. I want to learn not to preach. I want to learn not to just talk about this and how to get up to do something where and when something needs done. People are hurting all around. I want to learn to be slow to anger. I want to learn to love my wife and kids better. I want to learn what you like on you pizza. I want to learn what makes you cry and what secret fears you have. I want you to learn mine. I want to be ‘post-protestant’. I want to be catholic (little ‘c‘). Both/And. I want my life and our relationship to be full of Christ so that it will infect the community. I want to learn to live and to enjoy living. I want to learn to shut up and listen to..........
Andrew's stirred things up with his post on mega churches again.
I don’t know much about them really. I don’t even come from suburbia. We live in rural USA. FBC is a congregation of around 100 or so on Sunday mornings.
Always a sermon/pep-talk. Always some old hymns. Always stand up-sit down-turn around-shake hands. !0 to 15 minutes of coffee or juice and drive-by ‘fellowship‘. Leadership pretty much like most places. Pastor doesn’t have all the control right now. They let that happen with the previous one though. He did everything. Him and his wife wanted the service planed like months in advance. The church learned from that I hope.
I’m sure there are plenty of relationships going on between folks of FBC. I would hope so since like 1/3 of them are all related. It’s very much, “things have been done this way. We will continue to do them this way.” When it is seen that their needs to be change. When it is seen that the congregation isn’t growing, numerically or spiritually, the order of the service is changed. We’ll add this new program. We’ll call them teams instead of committees. We’ll do a study out of this new workbook.
Singing the same drab songs year after year, setting in the same pews, facing the same ’show’, re-paving the same parking lot, doing the same thing only in a different order, without any growth spiritually has led me to here.
My wife is a young Christian. So am I really. I have two kids with another on the way. We don’t really get out much right now. My kids need to interact with other children. My wife expresses that she needs more than what she is getting right now spiritually. She’s not big on the service either. She enjoys and gets something out of the hour of class/‘conversation’ in that group that meets afterward. I guess I just wish I did too.
The thing is, it’s not just me. The folks that don’t even notice anything wrong. Don’t acknowledge it. So many of them are just attendees of an event. An event that doesn’t do anything more in affecting their lives than coming back to the same event next Sunday. Unchanged. Where change happens it is so minute, even in my own life, that it does not measure up to that which Christ’s Spirit has called us out to.
I struggle right now, not because I am battling on whether or not to go back to FBC. Not because I am angry at God or FBC or all our fathers before us that allowed this to happen. Tozer’s right. It’s no one persons fault. Neither is anyone free from blame. I am guilty of settling for someone else’s drab life as a ‘christian’ or lack there of. James’ words mean more and more to me as I grow. My faith without works is dead where it stands. My life in churchiosity is completely unaffected and therefore ineffective. If it is affected it is affected like it was by drugs. Slowly doing what is cool and feels good becomes routine....gives way to habit....then I’m hooked. My life becomes mere existence because I was sucked into the illusion that I was living to the fullest when I was only really feeding my habit.
I need to physically go face down in the dirt/snow to God and repent for my lack of life. For neglecting my relationship with Him. For mimicking someone else’s bad reflection of Him instead of walking with Him day by day and moment by moment and just being infected with Him.
I stir and I ache in my bones for more of Him. For real face to face relationships with people who ache in their bones. With people who don’t want to settle for a show. Who want to live it.
I want to get dirty! I want to do things that I am not comfortable doing because it is what I must do to love you. I want to learn to start conversations. I want to learn not to preach. I want to learn not to just talk about this and how to get up to do something where and when something needs done. People are hurting all around. I want to learn to be slow to anger. I want to learn to love my wife and kids better. I want to learn what you like on you pizza. I want to learn what makes you cry and what secret fears you have. I want you to learn mine. I want to be ‘post-protestant’. I want to be catholic (little ‘c‘). Both/And. I want my life and our relationship to be full of Christ so that it will infect the community. I want to learn to live and to enjoy living. I want to learn to shut up and listen to..........
everything's going white
I’m typing this off-line at home. I’ll put it up whenever I get back over to my in-law’s.
Setting here in the kitchen in my sock-hat, these huge pants that look like they’re made of shag carpet and my fuzzy baby-blue cardigan sweater. I’m sure I’m a sight to be seen.
It’s cold and arctic like outside. I was supposed to be in Lafayette by 5:30am to connect with folks from work and then head off to Indy to do inventory at a Lowes. Because of the snow and ice I got up about 2:30am and headed out by 4. Didn’t make it too far. Nothing is plowed here at 4am. Not even the high-way. There was no road! Only snow and sleet. It was snowing so hard I couldn’t see from one block to the next most of the time. I came back home while I could still tell how to do that.
I had talked to Phyllis from work last night and she new I might not be able to make it so all is cool! Sucks not getting to work only a couple of weeks into it though. Feel like a slacker. Get to spend an extra day with Heather and the kiddlings though. It’s all good.
Setting here in the kitchen in my sock-hat, these huge pants that look like they’re made of shag carpet and my fuzzy baby-blue cardigan sweater. I’m sure I’m a sight to be seen.
It’s cold and arctic like outside. I was supposed to be in Lafayette by 5:30am to connect with folks from work and then head off to Indy to do inventory at a Lowes. Because of the snow and ice I got up about 2:30am and headed out by 4. Didn’t make it too far. Nothing is plowed here at 4am. Not even the high-way. There was no road! Only snow and sleet. It was snowing so hard I couldn’t see from one block to the next most of the time. I came back home while I could still tell how to do that.
I had talked to Phyllis from work last night and she new I might not be able to make it so all is cool! Sucks not getting to work only a couple of weeks into it though. Feel like a slacker. Get to spend an extra day with Heather and the kiddlings though. It’s all good.
Monday, January 26, 2004
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.
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.
This is from the January 17th Opinion page in the Indianapolis Star. The Star is Indiana's largest news paper.
Rod SmithI 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.
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.
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.
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.I believe the time is now to return. Not only to return but to move foreward.
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.
Saturday, January 24, 2004
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.”
Thursday, January 22, 2004
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 ;>(
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 ;>(
Sunday, January 18, 2004
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
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.
'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.”
“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.
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.
I found that in an email I sent someone a while back. It rings true today as much as it did then.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)