Monthly Archives: March 2010

What’s so “good” about Friday

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Bob Hyatt reminded me this morning that:

Good Friday ruined the first disciples’ weekend. Maybe we should allow it to ruin ours, as well. For them it felt like the end of the world. Maybe we could pretend, even for a day, that’s it’s the end of ours, too—that while what Jesus went through on our behalf is something to be celebrated, it’s also something to be mourned, to be anguished about, to grieve.

Bob exhorts us to allow “the grief to seep deep down into your bones, into your bowels. Meditate on the wounds, the suffering, and the deep, deep love of Christ.

This Friday brings communion into a whole new perspective. As often as we “celebrate” the Lord’s Supper, do we really reflect on and remember Jesus’ suffering? Or has it become for us another ritual? In this act of remembrance are you ruined?

This Friday we will be closing Java Joe’s and although it was not an original idea of mine [see video below], I am going to set up a table on Lebanon’s town square and offer communion to passer by’s. Maybe, their weekend will be ruined, in a “good” way as well.

And as Bob concludes, “as the sun rises on Sunday, [maybe they] will finally know what Easter is all about.”

Be, become, behave

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image013 Be, become, behaveWe might define hospitality as the creating of space that allows people to be who they are in Jesus (come into the light of Christ), to become renewed (changed by the work of Christ) and then to do the works God has saved them for (recreated in Christ for good works).

How can we, as the church this kind of Gospel hospitality?

I believe that there are at least 3 practices that we should enter into: BE, BECOME, BEHAVE.

BE

Before the Fall, Adam and Eve were naked and unashamed. God had created a place and made space for them to be themselves without covering or facades. If we are in Christ we are clothed with His righteousness – we don’t need to cover up or hide. One of the ways we create space for people to experience and come to understand the Gospel is by allowing people to reveal their true self and see that they are loved regardless of the scars of sin. That is, we should strive to create environments where people can feel loved, not judged. Accepted, not rejected.

BECOME

The Gospel isn’t only about loving and forgiving sinners. It is also about restoring broken people who marred by sin into those who become imitators of Jesus Christ. Jesus created space for people not only to be, but also to become (think Matthew, Peter, Zacchaeus, the woman at the well, etc…). Gospel hospitality implies creating space for people to be known, to be real, to be loved, and ultimately find salvation in Jesus through the work and person of the Holy Spirit.

BEHAVE

The movement of the Gospel goes from who God is and what He has done on our behalf and moves forward into the works He created us to do (Ephesians 2:8-10). This is the result of following the example of Jesus’ hospitality. He got on the same level with his enemy – becoming human. He became our servant – to the point of death. He spent all that he had by becoming our sin and giving us his righteousness (2 Cor 5:21). Then He sent us His Spirit to empower us to do good works for his sake so others could be welcomed in to the family.

What else would you add?
Do you have any stories being, becoming, and behaving?
How do you practice hospitality in the rhythms of your life?

Wearing our Sunday Best

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Carlin How Easter Bonnet Parade 1968 Wearing our Sunday Best

. . . none of those pastors were preaching on that particular Sunday. Instead, it was a visiting Indian preacher, barefoot and wearing a knee-length tunic. . . Squirming in my church seat, I found myself uneasily wrestling with issues that were highlighted by his very presence. The affluence and homogeneity of my church. The fact that the visiting preacher seemed so highly educated, despite his peasant dress. The fact that he preached with confidence and even a hint of prophetic impatience . . . all while standing in front of my wealthy church in bare feet!

All of the “first glance” differences that were so obvious that morning – clothing, geography, language, wealth – were just the tip of the iceberg. . . I sensed a humble man of great power.

What an ironic twist: We American churchgoers often dress up to gain approval from others, and this man dressed down to deflect honor to God. I felt convicted that the Indian man seemed to have depth and abundance in lasting matters, while I feared that my abundance was mostly in material things. . . Even though I had been a follower of Christ all of my life, I knew I did not understand Christian life as deeply as he. I possessed so much, but he did too, and I knew I needed more of what he had.

SOURCE: Fritz Kling, The Meeting of the Waters.

Got your shopping done yet?

Its almost Easter Sunday!

You need to go out and get those easter dresses and suits for the kiddos. And while your out, mom and dad might as well get some new diggs as well.

You don’t want to look like a slouch.

sunday best 243x300 Wearing our Sunday Best

And when they had crucified him, they divided his garments among them by casting lots.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

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During my lifetime, our culture has undergone some of the most significant changes in hundreds of years. Our world is not just undergoing change; it is undergoing change on multiple levels.

Although it may not seem so, we are all deeply affected by these changes. The way people view life has been significantly altered and these changes have dramatic consequences for us in our quest to share the gospel with our yet-to-believe friends.

Listed below are many of the changes that have occurred in our culture.

HYPER-CONSUMERISM

Consumerism is no longer about buying and selling products. Consumerism now affects almost every facet of western society. We now approach religion, citizenship, love, and human relationships in the way that we would approach buying a product. This is so extreme that we have become products ourselves. What we have determines ‘who’ we are.

TECHNOLOGY

Internet, better medicines, and international travel; technology is deeply changing the way we live our lives.

AD CULTURE

People today live in the ‘buzz’. Citizens of the 21st century change relationships, careers, and places of residence at an amazing rate based on the latest trends.

DEATH OF TRUTH

Our culture has become relativist. It believes that it is impossible to have absolute truth. Truth is what you, the individual, believe it to be. The central codes that are used to define our moral choices are no longer relevant to many. People are making their own choices in regard to identity, sexuality, ethics, etc. People are able to hold several conflicting beliefs at once.

MULTICULTURALISM

Our society has become a collection of societies. In an increasingly large number of western cultures, cities, and suburbs have become melting pots of religions, races, nationalities, special interest groups, socio-economic groups, and sub-cultures.

HYPER-INDIVIDUALISM

Our culture holds in a high place the right of the individual. The individual is at the center of our culture. People make the majority of their choices in life based on their own wishes. Experts note that younger generations are becoming even more self-focused. Self is definitely King.

EXPERIENCE

Our culture, especially youth culture, processes everything through the lens of experience. We are shifting from finding truth through cold, hard scientific examination to finding truth through experience.

THE GLOBAL VILLAGE

In our media-saturated age, it is hard to hide away from what is happening around the world. The world has become a confusing place filled with competing ideals, poverty, extreme wealth, terrorism, war, and mixing of cultures. In many ways our neighborhoods have become micro worlds in themselves. In the past, missionaries had to go to find other cultures; now other cultures are coming to us.

SUSPICION OF INSTITUTIONS

People have become highly suspicious of the large institutions that used to be the center of society. People are questioning banks, ‘big’ business, governments, schools, and universities, the legal system, and organized religion. The church, in the eyes of many, has a highly questionable track record.

PLEASURE DRIVEN

Our society places the pursuit for pleasure as one of its highest values. The idea of delaying gratification, incorporating personal discipline and sacrifice for spiritual growth and purpose, is alien to most.

IMAGE DRIVEN

“Thirst is nothing, image is everything,” said an advertisement of a few years ago. Whereas cultures in the past focused on values such as character, chivalry, kindness, and compassion, our culture is obsessed with image and surface. Thus, many people, instead of looking for inner, more spiritual answers, attempt to change their lives through a makeover of themselves or the things that they own.

ACHIEVEMENT DRIVEN

In a capitalist society, which values material things over the spiritual, humans are told that the main way to find meaning is through ‘achievement.’ Education, career, sport, personal fitness, children, finances, and even hobbies have all been dislodged from their original purposes and now have become battle grounds of personal loss, triumph, and achievement.

POST-CHRISTIAN

An increasing majority of people now see Christianity as a redundant non-option. Christians are viewed as out of touch and eccentric as best and intolerant bigots at worst. As a popular bumper sticker reads, “Jesus save me from your followers.”

What other significant changes that you have seen in your lifetime?

How do you feel about these changes? Why do you feel the way you do?

Talk among yourselves . . .

A simple project:

Write down all the times that the Church or Christianity is mentioned in the media this week. It is in a positive or negative light?

If you were not a follower of Christ and you had no Christian friends, how would you intersect with the message of Jesus? Write down your thoughts.

Go to a secular bookstore and have a thorough look in the spirituality section for books about Jesus. What sorts of books about Christianity are there? What is the percentage of Christian books compared to books about other spiritualities?

[source]

Health Care Reform

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3617368178 3da2232103 Health Care ReformDo we really expect government to do anything? Me? No! Just because a bill does and does not contain certain language in regards to what our tax dollars pay for, does it really matter? I am confident that my tax dollars go to support many, many, many things I do not agree with. For instance, I don’t know . . . WAR or the death penalty – or do those lives not matter also?

You see laws and governments do not change hearts. Only God through the Gospel of Jesus can do that.

If I did not believe that, then I would of went into politics rather than church planting.

When people are faced with life and death decisions, those of us who have been captured by the Gospel, there is no decision to be made. There is only one option – life - and that includes life from the womb to the tomb.

So my question is, does it really matter what the government does or does not do? Again,

only the Gospel can change hearts.

So the senate had their contest to see who could throw a rock further and passed a bill, but as I woke up this morning I do not feel any different, my life is not going to significantly change, and I still do not have health insurance . . . do I? Honestly, I do not know.

It just does not matter because we do not have a “lasting city” (Heb 13:14). Followers of Jesus will always be “strangers and exiles on earth” (Heb 11:13). Thus our longing for a better country, a heavenly one, where God has prepared a city for us (Heb 11:16) is the locus of our activity, not politics.

Southern Culture on the Skids

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If Southern culture is merely taken at face value by the church, then we will spend our time manipulating aspects of culture until they are redeemable rather than pointing out what is truly redemptive. In other words, we need to constantly evaluate and reevaluate how we are engaging the people within culture.

Primarily, our action is to engage people and use the culture rather than to engage the culture and use the people.

Christ lived in the culture. He did not isolate himself from sinners, regardless of how the religious leaders felt about it. He ate with a tax collector, touched a leper, forgave an adulterous woman, and spoke to a woman at a well. At the same time, Jesus did not allow the surrounding culture to change him. He used everyday objects to teach spiritual lessons, but on more than one occasion, he told sinners to “sin no more.” He was gracious and just—a combination that we should strive to achieve rather than settling for one swing of the pendulum or the other.

Kingdom of God and Preaching the Gospel

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Luke Lindisfarne 225x300 Kingdom of God and Preaching the GospelRight now on Sundays, we are walking through Luke’s Gospel. We will eventually pick up Acts and while traveling with Paul on his missionary journeys, we will pick up the letters he wrote to the churches that started as a result.

Studying for this weeks message on Luke 9:1-17, I noticed a link that shouldn’t be missed.

In verse 2, Jesus sends the disciples and they are to “proclaim the kingdom of God.”

In verse 6, the disciples depart after receiving instructions from Jesus and look tells us they were “preaching the gospel.”

Did the disciples misunderstand Jesus?

He said, “proclaim the kingdom of God” not “preach the gospel.”

Earnest Goodman wrote yesterday about selling the mission short and the dualistic view we have of mission.

In this paradigm, many associate “proclaiming the kingdom of God” with feeding the hungry, clothing the poor, and caring for the widow and orphan – a sort of “preaching the Gospel without words.” All things we are commanded to do, but that “sells short” the task that Jesus had laid out for his disciples.

On the other side, we have those who say that our “commission would be fulfilled if we were to preach the gospel once within earshot of every person on the globe.”

Earnest adds,

Preaching the gospel is certainly central to the mission. Romans 10 asks, “…how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?” But the mission is more than just preaching the good news.

If you know anything about Luke, he elevates God’s concern for the poor. However, Luke also understands that proclaiming the kingdom of God and preaching the gospel are inextricably linked.

Just as Luke has recorded in the four proceeding miracles that show Jesus’ sovereignty over nature, demons, disease and death (see Luke 8:22-56) so do the deeds of healing performed by the disciples make evident the rule of God but their deeds are not void of preaching the gospel.

The point is -one the Mr. Goodman makes so well – deeds alone are not enough. Preaching the gospel alone is not enough. Mission – Jesus sending his disciples to make disciples- is more than either proclaiming the kingdom of God or preaching the gospel. Mission is proclaiming the kingdom of God and preaching the gospel.

Cultural Distance

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Cultural Distance

m0-m1 Those with some concept of Christianity, speak the same language, have similar interests.
m1-m2 A person who has little or no concept of or interest in Christianity and are suspicious of the Church.
m2-m3 People who have no idea about Christianity or are actively antagonistic toward Christianity as they understand it.
m3-m4 Those who are highly resistant to the Gospel. This group may include ethic and religious groupings like Muslims and Jews.

[source]

In the cultural context of the South, the vast majority of people range between m1 and m3. The South is not Babylon where the culture knows little about Christianity. Rather, the South is like Samaria where they know plenty about Christianity, but have a definite grudge against it and/or have been taught a false gospel (e.g., moralism, prosperity, etc).

The problem is not that the church is strange. The problem is that the church is familiar. In this situation, when the church takes an attractional posture toward culture, its mission is rendered virtually ineffective.

When a church’s posture is purely attractional it “operates from the assumption that to bring people to Jesus we need to first bring them to church” and “develops programs, meetings, services, or other ‘products’ in order to attract unbelievers.”

This is the current mission stance of the church in the South which does not reach very far beyond itself at all. This leads to the missiological question of, “Who is going to reach the seventy-five percenters?”

piechart1 Cultural Distance

Who is this?

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In Luke 8:22-25, Jesus and the disciples take a boat tip across the Sea of Galilee. Jesus finds a spot to get some rest and as he does a storm emerges. Waves are sweeping over the edge and threaten to capsize them. Sensing the danger, the disciples cry out to Jesus:

We are perishing!

There is some irony in their question – professional fishermen turn to Jesus for rescue on the sea.

Jesus turns and rebukes the wind, and immediately there is calm. Then he asks the disciples a crucial question:

Where is your faith?

The disciples reacted with fear and amazement.

Who is this? He commands even wind and water.

Luke purposefully wants the question of the identity of Jesus and his uniqueness kept before his reader. The disciples are beginning to appreciate who Jesus is.

Jesus’ question about the disciples’ faith is designed to help us to reflect on God’s care for us. In times of desperation we do not need to panic; rather, we need to understand that God does care. He is watching over us. He is not asleep at the wheel.

We need to be made constantly aware that Jesus has authority that extends into the cosmos. The sovereignty of Jesus makes him far more than a good teacher or even a prophet. He is God and confessing him as Lord means that we give him control of everything – even circumstances that seem beyond control.

The point of connection we have with the disciples is not the precise situation that they find themselves in – a storm on the sea – but in the feelings of helplessness they have about where Jesus has led them. Events in our lives sometimes leave us feeling at risk as if God has left us to fend for ourselves.

This passage is a call for a deep, trusting faith. There is no telling how many times these fishermen had been on the sea during a storm. Yet it is clear that they are powerless to deal with such forces.

Jesus’ call for faith is a call to reassure that God is aware of whatever storms we are going through and is watching over us.

Who is this?

That question is one we must all answer.