What Hills will You Die on?

I got this in an email:


The five "fundamentals" of our faith are:

The Inspiration and Authority of Scripture
The Deity of Christ
Subsitutionary Atonement
Christ's Literal Resurrection
Christ's Literal Second Coming

Do you agree or disagree?

What would you point to as the five 'fundamentals?'

For the record, I am still pondering this...

Mulan 2

I just happened to catch a little of the movie my kids were watching:

One of the princesses in the film (who is being sent to meet her husband for the first time) asks the main character, 'Fa Mulan, how do you chose between your duty and your heart?'

She did not want to marry for duty, but instead wanted to marry for love.

Mulan responds by telling her that she has discovered, 'My duty is to my heart.'

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Now, I don't plan on arranging marriages for my children, but (setting aside for the moment the cultural in-sensitivities of the film) it is precisely this message that is destroying so many lives...

If my duty is to my heart, then what is my course of action when I no longer want to provide for my children, remain faithful to my wife, pay my taxes, or answer my employers questions with integrity? Obviously, if my duty is to my heart, then my course of action is to simply do whatever I feel like doing, whenever I feel like it!

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The interesting thing is that the movie refuses to portray the actual effects of such a moral philosophy. There is no scene where the princess tries valiantly to remain dutiful to her fickle and inconsistent moods. Nor is there the discussion of a love that runs deeper than emotional desire into the realm of willful action.

So much for learning wisdom from cartoons!

Horse Manure Revisited

I received an email the other day from a friend; someone had told him of their leaving a church because they had felt used by the church. The church had asked them to work in one of their ministries without paying them, they had said. 'yes,' but then left feeling used...

This had prompted my friend to email me; we asked the question, 'Does the church exist for people, or do people exist for the church?'

Now on the face of it, this question is a great one to wrestle with; however, when we come to the truth that the church is people, then we have to realize that the question (as poignant as it is) fails to grasp the basic nature of church, and so is ultimately an invalid question...

The question as it stands is really, 'do people exist for people, or do people exist for people?' It's a non question because it is attempting to ask, 'does A exist for B, or vice versa?' But A and B are the same thing!

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The question needs to be turned inside out...

Does the Church (Christian people) exist for itself, or for something else?

The simple truth is that the Church (Christians) exist for non-Christians!

We often talk about the various functions and purposes of the Church, mission being one of them, yet the reality is the Church does not have a purpose.

Let me explain:

God's purpose is to redeem the entire world, His heart is to reveal His Son to all people, but what is His method? How does He plan to accomplish such a task? God's chosen method is to create a new thing, the community in mystical union with the Son, the Church!

So the Church does not have a mission, but rather, God's mission has a Church. To talk about the purpose of the Church is to confuse the issue, the Church is the method of achieving God's purposes...

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We must take a good look at our hearts and ask, "am I the gravitational center, around which everything else orbits?" (Questions about purpose, God and His desires, my own desires, etc.)

OR...

'Is God is the center of gravity, around which we find our own orbit?" (We find our purpose by first finding His, we find our desires by first understanding His.)

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So the people actually do exist for the people! But which people we are talking about is the real question! The people (church) exist for the people (world)!

Whenever we exist for ourselves, we are piling up horse manure into a massive lump of poop (hold your nose!), but whenever we exist for others, we are spreading manure over the field causing things to grow; the difference between excrement and fertilizer is whether you pile it, or spread it...

So here is what I want you to do:

Repeat after me:

"This is not about me, it is about them!

New Song from a Friend

Go on up to the mountain of mercy
To the crimson perpetual tide
Kneel down on the shore, be thirsty no more
Go under and be purified

Follow Christ to the holy mountain
Sinner sorry and wrecked by the fall
Cleanse your heart and your soul, in the fountain that flowed
For you and for me and for all

On the hillside, you will be delivered
At the foot of the cross justified
And your spirit restored, by the river that poured
From our blessed Savior's side

At the wonderful, tragic, mysterious tree
On that beautiful, scandalous night you and me
Were atoned by His blood and forever washed white
On that beautiful, scandalous night


Thanks Bernard

More Dandelions

Kevin Johnson Short from Karissa Evans on Vimeo.

Joy and Happiness

Happiness is about making sure that everything around us brings us pleasure, whereas joy is about a deep confidence in the love and goodness of God no matter what goes on around us, or inside us.

I know...

I know that you live, and I long to see you
I know that you speak, yet I long to hear you
I know that you are love, yet I long to feel it

Why must faith include so much blindness
God I long to love you, must love exist in the absence of passion?
Grant me a heart that is astir with flame

I have heard your voice, yet now you are silent, have you gone forever
Do not leave me to my fate, I cannot survive on my own
You have destroyed my ability to walk the path of blissful ignorance
I cannot replace the veil of this world, shielding my view of my purpose,
Yet, must I pursue your course without guidance, without your presence?

Has my right hand failed me? Where, O Lord, have you gone?
I am nothing, yet I know my place, I am a son of the Most High
My Father, how can I walk as a Son with no sense of your Spirit?

-anonymous

Atonement

I got a phone call the other day while I was at work; my son Zane had said some nasty things to my wife. She told him he was getting soap in his mouth.

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My kids do this thing that is really frustrating, but also makes me very proud of them; they fight me when I have to punish the other ones. If Zoe is in trouble, Zane will tell me, 'You're mean!' and throw toys at me...

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So my wife is in the middle of preparing Zane for his punishment when Zoe jumps in.

"Mama, I don't want Zane to be sad, so would you put soap in my mouth instead?"

It is at this point that she called me...

What do you do in a situation like this? When your five year old re-enacts this most central act on behalf of her brother? Made me think through some things about what the Father was thinking and feeling, on how Jesus was motivated, on gratitude...

Yikes

As A.N. Wilson (the great biographer of C.S. Lewis) recently wrote of philosophical materialists in explanation of his re-conversion to Christianity, "they seem to me like people who have no ear for music, or who have never been in love. It is not that (as they believe) they have rumbled the tremendous fraud of religion--prophets do that in every generation. Rather, these unbelievers are simply missing out on something that is not difficult to grasp. Perhaps it is too obvious to understand; obvious, as lovers feel it was obvious that they should have come together, or obvious as the final resolution of a fugue."

Unity

"Unity is indeed a second-order doctrine which follows from truth. Peace is a virtue that all Christians should seek after, yet true and lasting peace stems from agreement on Christian doctrine."

Came across this on a blog, and it got me thinking...

Is it agreement on doctrine that provides for unity?

This is Not a Church

Horse Manure

I heard evangelist Louis Palau say, 'the church is like manure, pile it all up in one spot and it sure stinks, but spread it out over the earth and see what grows!'

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The early Church often made the mistake of thinking the gospel was for them. They were very wary of any contact with outsiders, (read for yourself the reaction of the early church to the idea of a mission to the Gentiles on the pages of the Book of Acts). The reality, however, is that the gospel is never for us, it is always for them! One of the major subplots in Luke's account of the early church is precisely the way God of Israel began to reveal Himself as the Lord of all people.

We too, can make the same mistake; thinking the gospel is about christians and Jesus. We retreat to ghettoized seclusion in christian music, suburban homes, Martha Stewart colors on our newly built suburban worship centers, preventing our children from worldly corruption (and so preventing them from engaging in God's mission), informed by all the latest church growth techniques in how to attract all of the christians from other churches to ours...

...hold your nose!

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All of us, however, recognize the real beauty of the church acting as fertilizer instead of excrement. Mother Teresa holding dying lepers, William Wilberforce spending his life and health advocating for the end of slavery, untold missionaries who died on the field; there are those who fight child prostitution, those who teach in poverty stricken urban schools, and those who serve in mental health facilities, all without applause.

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Manure for its own sake is just a pile of poop...

But when it is used to 'bless' the soil, all sorts of beautiful, fruitful, and nourishing, things are produced.

How could we begin to think this way about the Church?

Dandelions Revisited

What if we were to model our church structure on this image?

What if we saw the Holy Spirit, the breath of Jesus as the compelling wind, blowing the dandelion seeds of the church to the four winds?

The internal compelling of the Holy Spirit is 'GO!' The command of our Master and Savior is, 'GO!' The Father is the very One who sends us; 'GO!'

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The first disciples were told to go to the ends of the earth with the gospel. They were promised the Spirit, a Divine Wind that would take them to 'Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the Ends of the Earth!'

We read in Acts 13:1-3 the story of this Holy Breath on a dandelion in Antioch. Believers had gathered, God was present, people grew in God's grace, and now a heathy thriving dandelion-church had grown up, the head was white with seeds; Jesus plucked the dandelion and blew!

We are all sent, each one of us is on mission, sent by God, to a specific place or people. The Church should be modeled on this reality. We need to leverage all of our resources to equip people for their specific mission field. We should be sending constantly; each family, each group, each church, each region, is a dandelion that God wants to blow on, scattering seeds to other families, other regions, sprouting up new groups and new churches, till the whole earth is filled with dandelions.

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So how do we incorporate this reality? How could we structure our churches less like institutions and more like dandelions?

Where is God wanting to scatter your group to?

Where are you sent to?

Perhaps you are being sent to another country, or merely across town? Perhaps you are called to leave everything behind and go, or perhaps you are simply to realize that where you currently live is not where you currently live but rather where you have been sent!

Dandelions

You've all seen it, and you've all done it; picked up one of those ubiquitous little weeds, that every owner of a patch of grass longs to eradicate, and you have done your part to help spread the seeds to the four corners of the earth, perpetuating dandelions for generations to come!

I see this image as a wonderful image of church!

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John records for us a powerful moment in the life of the first disciples. It is one of those unforgettable moments, where something surreal happens, it seems almost weird at the time, but you never forget it and it takes root in your mind...




Jesus breathes on His disciples.




What do you think that might have been like? To have Jesus breathe on you?

And then he says, "Receive the Holy Spirit, as my Father has sent me, now I am sending you!"

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Jesus is the one holding in his hand, with wide-eyed excitement, a dandelion of twelve disciples; and it is His breathe that scatters those seeds to the winds...

Apples Revisited

Barnabas was the first one to see something in Saul; he took a risk and vouched for him. He brought Saul along so that he could see the things that God was doing in Antioch. Barnabas' was an apostle and a church planter, but his true impact was in discipling another man who would become the most prolific apostle. For decades it would have been easy to judge the merit of Barnabas' ministry on the work he had done with his own energy; that mistake is corrected by the view of Barnabas' impact on the entire history of faith, through his impact on Saul...

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It would be easy to mistake the apple as being more important than the tree... we focus on the shiny fruit, the tasty treat!

However, the life of the tree, the reproductive process of tree>apple>orchard>apples>, is more important than the fruit.

Discipleship in the Church is the point of the Church! It is the very commission Christ left us, 'go, make disciples!'

Paul himself models this for us as he invites Timothy and John Mark to follow him as he follows Jesus.

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The Church is to be modeled after a healthy apple orchard, with living trees, producing fruit, and that fruit containing seeds that bring forth new trees, and even new orchards...

The local church should be a healthy tree producing 'fruity' people who bear within themselves the seeds of new churches, new works, new small groups, beach heads in foreign soil, new christians...

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The point of Church is not to attach shiny fruit to a dead tree, but rather to care for a living tree that will produce others. This shift in focus to discipleship means we will no longer be concerned with 'perfection' or 'excellence' for its own sake, but rather look to give people opportunities to fail and learn!

Apples

What is the fruit of an apple tree?



Did you say, 'an apple?'



Think harder!



(Maybe this will help, what is the fruit of an apple!?)



The fruit of an apple tree is ultimately... an apple orchard.


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A wonderful life to consider is that of the apostle Barnabas, specifically his relationship to a young man named Saul:

Here is a list of verses in the New Testament that share his story...

Take some time and read through them, asking questions about Barnabas and his relationship to Saul

Apples, Dandelions, and Horse Manure

All of us have a grid for understanding things. Generally speaking that grid is something we inherited from others, and we generally don't think too much about it. It is like the air around us, we don't really think about it unless something is wrong with it, and even then, we might not notice. It takes a fairly perceptive fish to realize he is wet, (after all, to a fish there is nothing that isn't wet, so the distinction between wet and dry isn't even a real possibility).

When it comes to church, my grid growing up was something along the lines of 'ceremony/ritual' mixed in with a little 'school/self help.'

I would imagine that this is typical for most of us?

I would like to suggest three other metaphors, however, that might be a better grid for understanding church. 'Better', here means closer to the picture that scripture paints of church, and closer to God's heart for His church...

These are the metaphors we explored this past Sunday as possible helps to accurate understanding:

Apples, Dandelions, and Horse Manure

The Receding Tide

The previous quote is a wonderful and humorous image...

(It's a quote I stole from Dave Ramsey)

I think it also captures a reality for us: whenever trouble of any sort hits us, it tells us a lot more about ourselves than we often care to admit. For example, when confronted with an opportunity to be dishonest or undisciplined, our choices reveal the character we have. We can easily say, "I normally don't act this way, but a situation came up where I knew I wouldn't get caught, and so I gave in to temptation." The reality, however, is that we are the type of people who give in to temptation in that situation.

Another example is the current US economic reality: so many people were "caught" by the crisis. "If only the economy wouldn't have tanked, I could still afford this mortgage." The reality is, it was an unwise decision in the first place, and people just got caught!

Nobody looks naked when the tide is up...

Character is who you are when nobody is watching. Character is wearing your swimming trunks, even though nobody can tell if you are or aren't...

When...

"when the tide goes out, you can tell who was skinny dipping..."

Let's Play

Ray Hollenbach framed part of the conversation by essentially asking 'where exactly is the playing field?'

I'd like to continue in that vein:

Just who is 'everybody?'

This is largely a strength of the Vineyard. When we say everybody, we really do mean it. We make a real effort to train and include laity in ministry; women and men, even children, people of all backgrounds and social classes.

The only real 're-thinking' I see necessary at this point is in the inherent tension between 'excellence in ministry' and allowing the visibly broken to play. I have seen new Christians, non-Christians, those with drug problems, and even those presently under the influence of drugs, all ministering in Vineyard churches in some capacity. However, there is a real attempt to prevent these types of people from engaging in 'real' ministry. We will let them hold the door (if they're pretty enough), or let them print fliers, or play the drums (if they're capable enough), but there are real boundaries we place upon just what they are allowed to do.

For the record, I am not advocating placing drunk agnostics in the pulpit, I would certainly agree that there are standards for Christian ministry. The question that must be grappled with is this:

Is the bar we set for Christian ministry about 'excellence' or is it about 'health?' Do we prevent some from certain places in ministry and Church life because they are unseemly, or because they would hurt themselves or others?

I contend that Scripture has no value for 'excellence in ministry' that is ultimately a cover for excluding those people who might make things slower, uglier, or technically flawed. Our decisions to include someone in ministry should be based on whether the individual is healthy enough to step into a particular role, not whether they are skilled enough.

This decision has tremendous communicative properties...

Just what do we mean by 'play?'

It is here that we must give significant energy to re-thinking current practices.

We largely conceive of ministry in terms of practices and care/direction given to Church members or performed on their behalf. Ministry is preaching and teaching, ministry is playing musical instruments, administrating the needs of the church, leading Bible-studies, praying for people, even maintaining church buildings and running technical equipment, etc.

The results of such a definition is manifold, the most problematic are the two following: 1) Christians who are deeply engaged in ministry yet have little or no involvement in mission, 2) Christians who view 'real ministry' as being done by the professionals while viewing their jobs as distractions from Kingdom work.

We must rethink this conception.

Play must fundamentally mean mission! Leaders should be player/coaches who equip others for ministry to the world.

As a pastor I am naturally focused on the local faith community of which I am a member/leader. This must not be allowed to divert my own focus from the wider community that is the object and context for the Church's mission. This must not be allowed to 'leak down' onto the church, causing the stale atmosphere of spiritual inbreeding that is a result of a church that ministers to itself.

Play must include the entire scope of human activity. Almost all occupations can be Christian vocations.

As a pastor I am resourced to take future church leaders through an equipping process. I can teach someone how to lead church activities. I am competent to teach people how to live a life of spiritual disciplines. But when it comes to the single largest fact of most peoples daily lives, I am left with one of two options for discipleship. 1) Quit your job so you can do 'real ministry.' 2) Pray for and witness to your co-workers while maintaining personal integrity at your workplace. What is largely missing is any sense of training people to view their occupations as their vocations.

Scoring Goals

It is here that the Church has the largest problem, and hence, the largest need for re-imagination. Our system rewards and reinforces a view of ministry that is largely out of sync with our stated philosophy of ministry. We say everybody gets to play, but the rules of the game, and the way in which we 'score goals' (ie incentives and definitions of success) are set up to prevent everybody from playing. Of course this is unintentional, but still true!

A 'winning' church (to continue the metaphor) is defined by characteristics that have nothing to do with 'everybody getting to play.' Because of this we simultaneously recognize a need to have everyone play, while attempting to keep the star players in the game as long as possible; in our system you can't score goals with mediocre performance. Because of this, we give some attention to the idea of workplace ministry, but it somehow never really makes it into the playbook; you can't score goals by practicing law, or building bridges, only by proclaiming the gospel or praying for people. In short, our definition of success prevents us from implementing this value more fully.

Our most essential task is to create a system of in which 'everybody gets to play' is itself one of the markers for success, is itself defined as one of the ways in which we 'score points.'