Category Archive: Faith

Comments and observation about my Christian faith

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December 25, 2008

Christmas Haiku

The Transcendent God
Incarnate as a Child
Joining God and Man

Omnipotent God
Come as a Servant to All
Leading to Freedom

Holy, Sinless God
Dies as a Man on a Cross
Bears our Sins Far Away

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 22, 2008

Sin: Seeds, Roots, Fruits

Last Friday’s post was my first attempt at a synthesis of two ideas I have been working through as to the nature of Sin. I need to work more on how best to explain it; but I think I have the basic idea right.

For a very long time, I viewed the seed from which Sin grows to be a lack of trust in God. There is good Biblical basis to claim that. First a short linguistic digression – the term “faith” as is it used in the Bible is probably more accurately translated “entrust”. In fact the Hebrew word often translated “faith” in the Old Testament is used to describe things as varied as how pillars support a roof (you entrust the weight of the roof to the pillars) and the act of handing over your child to the care of a nurse (you entrust the child to the nurse). It is an action word that describes not mental assent (belief) but action taken because of what you believe. Belief becomes Faith when you act in such a way that depends on what you believe being true. The book of James in the New Testament tried to make this point to those who spoke Greek when it says “Faith without works is dead”.

Sin then starts when you fail to entrust God with your life. The Bible says “Without Faith (Trust) it is impossible to please ” (Hebrews 11:6) and “Whatever is not of Faith (Trust) is sin” (Romans 14:23). I have always taken the latter passage to be a definition of Sin – unless you do something out of a trust in God, it is Sin.

The problem with that definition is that while it may be true, it is not actionable for most people. Very few people think in terms of trusting God or not (in fact very few think about God at all, even those that believe He exists).

Over the past few years I have been exposed to another way to look at Sin – that the root of Sin is our struggle to compete with each other. That all of the bad things we do are a result of our desire to “get ahead” relative to each other. What’s interesting is that I have seen both secular and religious people who have come to this conclusion. What’s more, it is a very actionable definition – you don’t have to understand much theology to see how your actions to assert own agenda have a negative effect on other people.

So I have been working through these two ideas in my mind to see if they can be reconciled, and have come to the conclusion that they can, although I may not yet have right way to explain it. The process goes something like this: We were meant to get our identity from God – He knows who we are and what He created us for. If however we do not trust God for our identity (whether because we do not believe He exists, or because we believe he is too distant to be relevant, or we outright distrust him), then we must seek out our identity someplace else, and the only other option is each other. Without God’s absolute statement of our identity, we can only be better or worse than each other. Thus we end up competing with each other, and we struggle to find ways to move ourselves “up” without pushing others “down.” The things we do to raise ourselves up at others expense are sins; but the root of those actions is the principle of Sin which is the struggle to establish our identity without God.

So a failure to trust God is the seed from which Sin grows; but the plant that grows from that seed (like an Oak from an Acorn) is our competition to establish our identities, and the fruit of that plant are the sins we inflict on each other.

Holiness then is accepting that we are who God says we are; and looking at everyone else, not as our competition but as equal fellow travelers in this life. More on this in a later post (after the holidays, perhaps).

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 19, 2008

So what is Sin?

I’ve said “Sin” is that thing which infected humanity and interfered with our ability to form the relationships with God and with each other that we were originally created to have. But what exactly is it? And how did it cause so much trouble? The following is my understanding as of today. I should note that I have been rethinking the concept of Sin over the last couple of years, and the description here may not be as polished as I’d like.

To understand Sin, you first need to understand the kind of relationships we were originally designed for. God’s plan was for a clear division of responsibilities within the new fellowship that included humanity (just as there were divisions of responsibilities between the three persons of the Trinity). There were things that were God’s responsibility and there were things that were humanity’s responsibility. Among God’s responsibilities was establishing the values of things – what was of value and what was not, what was worthwhile, what was worthless, what was "good" and what was "bad" (I’ll get back to this in a bit).

Humanity’s responsibility was to use the skills God gave us to do our part of a much greater work. You could think of it as constructing a giant mosaic or painting, where each of us was to be responsible for small sections. The picture would turn out beautiful and worthwhile because God would know each of us well enough to give us pieces to develop that we were perfectly suited for; and we would be full of joy doing it because our responsibilities would perfectly match our abilities and so we would both be challenged by the work and yet be able to succeed.

What’s more, since each of us had a small part of the whole, the picture would not be complete without all of our work. As I said, God was responsible for establishing the values of things and since each of us was necessary to complete God’s plan, each of us was determined by Him to be of equal value. What’s more, since God was solely responsible for determining the value of things, His declaration that we were all equally of value to Him meant that we were all equally of value to each other. We might all be different and do different things for God; but God said we were all of equal value, and therefore we were.

At least that was God’s intent for the fellowship of God and humanity.

If you read the story of The Fall in Genesis 3, you can see (to use my previous parable) the soul-virus the hacker used to infect and corrupt humanity. To set things up, God puts humanity into a place where all their needs would be met. But (as I said above) God says there was one thing they were not to take upon themselves – the right to judge the value of things. That right was reserved for God alone (in the story it is described as “The Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”). So the bitter hacker (described as a serpent) comes in and plants a simple but corrupting idea into the minds of the people – that if humanity would take on the right to judge the values of things (eat the fruit) they would then be like God! They wouldn’t need God to tell them that they are valued; they could determine their own value for themselves!

And with that idea a seed of doubt was planted in humanity. What if we weren’t actually all equal (as God said)? What if some of us were better, more valuable? What if God is cheating us by treating us all as equals? Why should we trust God to determine our value? Why not take on that right as our own and determine our own value?

And from there things went downhill quickly.

Humanity decided to determine its own value, and in doing so rejected God's standards of value. What standard then remained to base their value on? Only one possible standard existed – each other. So people began to look for their value by comparing themselves to each other. There was no absolute sense of value (as God had provided) – only value relative to each other. One could only be "better" than that person but "not as good" as another.
Chaos ensued.

Instead of simply doing what God said, each human started to try to influence what they did and what others did to position themselves better. Sometimes individuals competed against each other. Other times groups formed that cooperated with each other to better compete with other groups. Hierarchies formed and competed against each other hierarchies for dominance. Since every individual, every group, and every hierarchy was trying to create something in which their own contribution was most important, the picture God had wanted to create with us became fragmented with multiple images constantly overwriting each other.

Even God began to be viewed as a way to establish superior value. People began to think in terms of "I am more godly than that person" or "My denomination is better than those other denominations" or "My religion is better than that other religion". Sometimes the idea of value even got inverted in strange ways with people competing to show who is more "lowly" or who was a "worse sinner" before God straightened them out. I think God weeps over how we have used Him to subvert His plan for us.

Individual sins then are a reflection of things we do to establish our own value without God. Consider the Ten Commandments:

-We worship things other than God in hope that our association with them will raise our value.

-We dishonor God's name by using it to establish our value apart from His will

-We work ourselves to death to find value in our accomplishments

-We dishonor others (including our parents) to put ourselves above them

-We hate and kill those who threaten our value

-We seek pleasure in others to make ourselves feel more valuable

-We take things from others (legally or otherwise) to use them to establish our own value.

-We lie, gossip and slander each other to raise our own perceived value

-We desire things that belong to others because we think having them will increase our value.

Yet in all this, God is standing by simply saying "You are all of value because I have said it. Abandon your struggle and come back to do the work I have created you for".

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 17, 2008

What went wrong? (geek version)

Following on from my previous post, God (who by His Trinitarian nature embodies perfect relationship) created humanity capable of perfect relationship with God and with each other. God purpose was to join humanity into His fellowship that previously was only experienced by the Trinity.

Then something went wrong. Humanity's ability to engage in perfect relationships became broken, and in the process our relationships with God and with each other became flawed. This was a problem for God since He could no longer bring humanity into His fellowship without our making a mess of things.

So what exactly went wrong?

There is a theological explanation, which I will get to in later posts. However I note that Jesus often spoke in parables and allegories using things that were familiar to his audience. As a software engineer, I often find myself thinking in terms of computers as analogies. So consider the following a geek-parable of The Fall.

God created humanity with an operating system that was able to interface with God and others to accomplish great things as a unified community (to follow the computer analogy – like a distributed computing network where God was the control hub). But a vindictive hacker with a grudge against God didn’t want that to work, so the hacker created a virus that corrupted mankind’s operating system, breaking our ability to cooperate with God and each other. The “Sin” virus (as it became known) caused people to do things (which became known as "sins") which messed up their relationships with each other. What's more, the virus also corrupted their data files so that even if the virus was removed, they would still not operate properly.

A nice story (for the few who can appreciate it); but all it really does is give the problem a label. What exactly is “Sin” and how did it interfere with our ability to form perfect relationships?

That’s the next (more serious) post.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 15, 2008

A Relational God

I wrote previously about my understanding of God being “A Transcendent God” and “A Triune God”. The resulting picture is of God being completely “other” – unlike anything we have experience with. Even God himself acknowledges that the way He sees things is alien to us:

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways," declares the Lord. "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isa 55:8-10, NIV)

So what hope do we have of ever understanding Him?

There is hope, and it is hidden in one of the things that makes God so alien to us – the Trinity.

If you step back for a moment and consider what the Trinity means to God’s nature, there is one clear conclusion – God is fundamentally relational. Before God created anything, he embodied relationship: Father, Son, Spirit. Three minds in constant and harmonious relationship with each other within one being. Yes, God has power and knowledge and wisdom; but God IS relationship – it is fundamental to His nature, His identity.

I believe relationship is what has driven God’s actions from before creation. It is not possible to understand what God has done or what the Bible says about Him unless you look at it from the perspective of a being who’s most fundamental characteristic is relationship.

Consider the short version of God’s creation of humanity found in Genesis 1:

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, . . ." So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. (Gen 1:26a, 27 NIV)

A couple of things I want to note here: First, every English translation I have ever seen correctly translates the Hebrew here as “Let US make/create” – using the plural pronoun. God refers to Himself in the plural because He is both plural and singular – He is Trinity. However, almost as important as that is the fact that this is the only place in Genesis 1 where the plural is used – elsewhere God is only quoted as saying “Let the light/water/land/etc.” do something. So why is it important to emphasis God’s relational nature here? Because He is talking about creating another relational being – humanity. We are made in the “image” of God, male and female. Does that mean God is male and female? I don’t think so. I think the message is that humanity was designed by an inherently relational God to be inherently relational as well – that we would be drawn into relationship with each other and with God (more on this in a moment).

The longer Genesis 2 version of the story reinforces the point by a little “street theatre” God employs. First a single human was created, and God allowed that one human to interact with all of the other creatures that God has created; but the one human discovers that there are no other creatures that they can have a relationship with. Once the human understands that, once they see their own need for relationship, God splits the one human into two – a male and a female – so they can have a relationship with each other.

But their relationship is not just with each other; but with God as well. While the events described in Genesis 3:8 are horrific (humanity’s first interactions with God after Sin), there is a hint there as to what things were like before the fall. It talk about God “walking in the garden in the cool of the day” looking for Adam and Eve. You get the sense that this was a common occurrence - that God would show up regularly and interact with humanity. God had a relationship with them.

How could this be? How could a transcendent God have a relationship with simple humans? Because God created us with the purpose of having a relationship with Him. Perhaps not an equal relationship (and Theologians still debate whether there is equality between the persons of the Trinity); but a relationship nonetheless. We may not be able to understand God fully (at least for now); but we were made to understand Him enough to have a relationship with Him.

You could almost look at God having created a new Trinity – God, Adam and Eve; and just as God had a perfect relationship within Himself, He was looking to establish a new perfect relationship with mankind.

Unfortunately, things ended up a bit more complex than that – there was sin, betrayal, broken relationships and a whole lot of mess for many generations; but for now, I want to jump ahead to the descriptions of how this all will end. I’ll started by noting that the ultimate expression of relationship between humans is marriage; where, as the Bible says “the two become one flesh”. Think of that phrase in the context of the Trinity where you have three people who are one being, “of one substance” as the Nicene Creed says. The marriage union is supposed to give us some small, flawed insight into what God has always experienced in its perfected form – multiple persons in perfect unity.

Then in the Christian scriptures, it talks about the Church as a whole as “the Bride of Christ” and how, after this world is transformed into the next one, there will be “the marriage feast of The Lamb (Jesus)”. One way to look at this is that we (the church) are to be made “one flesh” with God. God’s purpose in creating humanity is to create new persons to join Him in his perfect relationship; and while our journey to that goal has not been a direct one, it remains God’s ultimate plan for us.

So, God is by nature the embodiment of Relationship.
God Created humanity with the purpose and ability to join Him in that Relationship.
Our present detour on that process will be a subject of later posts.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 10, 2008

Jesus and us losers

This post is in large part a reaction to reading Yaconelli’s “Messy Spirituality” – a short, must-read book which managed to get me crying on several occasions. But rather than do a book review, I thought I’d do my own short exploration of the same theme.

Christianity has in too many ways embraced the drive for excellence from the surrounding culture. Church has become a place where seemingly perfect people come into seemingly perfect buildings and hear seemingly perfect musical performances and seemingly perfect lectures on seemingly perfect doctrine. God is perfect and holy, and so we should all be perfect and holy when we come unto His presence. Those who aren’t perfect (or at least can’t fake it well enough) should wait outside until they get their act together.

I remember being admonished at one church to think about how I would dress and behave if I was ushered into the presence of President of the United States or the Queen of England, and that I should look at coming to church like that because I was coming into God’s presence. In theory it sounds rational.

The good news is that Christianity, at least Real Christianity, is messy. We should know that from looking as Jesus’ life. He was a devout Jew who hung out with Roman collaborators, prostitutes and notorious sinners. When it came to picking the “inner circle” of those who followed him he picked salty fishermen, terrorists, and shady businessmen – most of whom never really understood what Jesus was saying until after He died. What a bunch of losers – but that’s who Jesus liked to surround Himself with.

The people who “had their act together” never cared much for the Jesus, and Jesus only paid attention to them when they got in between God and the messed up people God loved.

It was the messed up people who understood their need, and in that understanding were interested what Jesus was saying about getting closer to God. Their trajectories then became towards God. Some had quite a distance to go; but that never seemed to bother Jesus as long as they were headed in the right direction. Those who “had their act together” were quite content to orbit God, going in circles – perhaps close circles - but never ever getting any closer to Him.

That is much of what is wrong with the church these days. It has become a place for people to pretend to be good, while it should be a place for messed up people to draw closer to God and to each other. That’s why I liked Yaconelli’s book – it is largely a collection of stories about losers who understood that what matters is showing God’s love to the world in whatever imperfect way they can manage. Like I said, I cried though parts of it.

I read another “messy” book recently, Rick McKinley’s “This Beautiful Mess”. In it he talked about how Christianity in its quest for “right doctrine” has dissected our faith, putting all of the pieces in nicely labeled jars of formaldehyde. The only problem is that dissected bodies are dead. Real living bodies are messy and move around too much to understand in that way. He argues in part that we need to learn to be a little less concerned about getting all our doctrines right and more about bringing people into relationship with God. The result is a rather “messy” form of Christianity; but it is one that is alive.

Let’s hear it for God’s losers!
Let’s get messy for Jesus!

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

December 03, 2008

A Triune God

I am a Trinitarian Christian – I believe in a triune God: Father, Son, and Spirit. I do however understand that the trinity is a difficult doctrine to wrap one’s head around. There’s just not a good way to describe a triune God that people can relate to.

Actually, that’s not quite true.

There is a perfectly good analogy; but it is one that most Christians would shy away from using.

There are folk stories in Europe of heroes encountering two-headed giants (or trolls, or ogres, depending on the variation on the story). The creature is a single being; but it has two (or more) heads, each of which has its own brain and personality. The stories usually involve the hero somehow tricking the heads of the giant to start arguing with each other (demonstrating that they are separate persons with separate personalities) and while the heads are occupied with each other, the hero is allowed to steal the giant’s treasure and slip away.

Not a very pleasant model to use for an analogy (the fact that in these stories the two headed giants are almost always depicted as being fairly stupid doesn’t help); but in abstract it fits the concept of the Trinity fairly well. God is a single being; but He has three distinct persons with distinctive personalities. Now given that God is transcendent (see my previous post), He doesn’t actually have three “heads” since he doesn’t have an actual “body” in the sense we think of it; but if you need a way to visualize the Trinity, thinking of God as a single being with three minds is a good place to start. The biggest difference is that unlike the giants in the stories, God’s three persons are always in perfect cooperation with each other. Theirs is a relationship of perfect intimacy and synchronicity. They may be three persons; but they work together as one.

So who are these three persons in the trinity? Well, describing a fellow human in a few words can never do them justice – we are all too complicated to be neatly summarized. Trying to do that for God is impossible; but here’s my feeble attempt.

One of the persons of the Godhead is a “big picture” person, concerned mostly with things like “How things should be” and “What needs to be done”. Another of the persons of the Godhead is more of “hands on” type who is focused on doing the things that need to be done. His joy is in implementing the plans the first person comes up with. Historically, we know the first person as “The Father” and the second as “The Son”. In the ancient cultures where life spans where short and businesses tended to be hereditary, this made a lot of sense since people were used to seeing the sons doing most of the work in a business while the father (who would be “old” by the standards of the day) would provide the big picture direction from the back of the shop.

The third person of the Trinity tends not to talk about themselves much and so is harder to describe. I tend to think of the third person as a teacher/mentor at heart – one who loves training other people and who has the patience and compassion necessary to keep working with someone until they get it right (but is not hesitant to tell them when they get it wrong). We know this third person as “The Holy Spirit” – a rather nebulous term, which perhaps is appropriate since He doesn’t disclose much of himself (just as many teachers show little of themselves in class).

Not pretty, and a flawed description I am sure; but as a short summary, it's how I think of God.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

December 01, 2008

A Transcendent God

There are a lot of terms used to described God – many of them being “omni-“ words: omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc. To that add words like merciful, just, loving, holy, generous, and the like.

One characteristic of God that doesn’t seem to get talked about a lot is His transcendence. God is not “in” the universe. If anything, the universe is “in” Him. Consider: God created the universe; therefore He had to exist before the universe; therefore His existence transcends that of the universe. Also since (according to relativity) time and space are intertwined and are a part of the fabric of the universe, God exists outside of space and time.

So while the ancients worshiped “gods” of mountains and oceans and human characteristics (love, war, etc.) – all small parts of the universe, the One True God is so much bigger than that.

And this is a good thing.

Science tells us that this universe is going to end, or at least be obliterated. They don’t know whether it will end in fire or ice (the Bible seems to indicate fire); but it will end. If our hope is in anything within this universe, then that hope is in vain. But our hope is in fact in someone who transcends this universe.

Still, transcendence is a difficult thing to wrap one’s head around. I have a way of looking at it that is helpful for me, although I don’t know for how many others this would be useful.

I am a software engineer, and have spent a lot of time developing computer simulations of various kinds (for the non-geeks out there, think of things that range from games like “SimCity” – a traffic and real estate simulation, to the complex simulations that meteorologists use to predict the weather). Some simulation I have developed for my employers, many I have developed for myself at home. In fact there was a long period of time where I didn’t feel I really understood a subject unless I could write a simulation of it on my computer that gave realistic results.

So when I studied macroeconomics, I might develop a macroeconomic simulator that showed the behavior of production, prices, trade, etc. I would set up an initial scenario and let the simulation run and see if the behaviors I saw in the simulation were the kinds of things you would see in real life. If they were, then the simulation was successful and it was clear I understood the subject. If not, I would keep working at it.

The simulations I tended to write had a lot of common characteristics. First, they all had some about of randomness in them – there were always minor factors in any simulation that might have an effect on the outcome but would take too much effort to simulate in details. Adding a few “rolls of the dice” in the right places is often the way to represent these factors. Second, I always had a way to save and play back a given run (repeating the same random choices in the process, so the results were the same). This was critical to getting the simulation right since it allowed me, whenever something happened that I didn’t expect, to go back and look in detail as to why it happened. Sometimes I convinced myself that it was in fact a “realistic” result. Other times it was a bug in my simulation. Still other times the behavior pointed to some way in which I didn’t understand the subject well enough (which was the whole point of doing the simulations). Finally, I always had a special interface for manipulating the data in the simulation directly. So I might do a run, and then go back and half way through change some details to see how the change I made affected the outcome.

So where I am going with this?

I tend to think of God’s relationship to our universe to be very similar to my relationship to one of the runs of one of my simulations. God is outside (and much greater than) our universe, just as I was outside (and greater than) one of my simulation runs. That transcendence includes the ability to see and understand the whole of history from His vantage point, just as I could run my simulation backwards and forwards and see each step in detail and understand what (and why) everything happens. While some digital entity (if such existed) within one of my simulations would only understand the passage of time as steps in my simulation, I could understand the whole thing because of my transcendent point of view. What’s more, God created the universe with the ability to intervene, just as I created by simulations with the ability to directly manipulate the data. On the other hand, just as I ended up using a bit of randomness in my simulations (behaviors that were not completely determined by the program), I believe (although some Christians would disagree) that God gave mankind free will so our behavior is not fully determined by God in advance.

The one thing God did that I never had the skill, time or computer power to accomplish was that God put Himself into the universe in the person of Jesus. I might be able to name a “person” in one of my simulations “Steve”; but they would never actually “be” me – I have no skill to write a simulation of myself or the time to create a virtual reality interface that would allow me to walk around inside of one of my simulations. Yet God was able to put himself fully into our universe and experience it from our point of view.

Why He would do that I will get to in a later post.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

November 12, 2008

Thinking

There's a bunch of ideas for blog posts that have been rolling around in my mind, unfortunately none of them have come to fruition for me to post today. A bunch of them are likely to end up as a long series that will run several months (not unlike the church series I did last year), occasionally interrupted by interesting life events.

While it may change form by the time I start posting it, the basic theme of the series is: "the first ten lessons I would teach if I were starting a new church". Essentially what are the core concepts I would want everyone to be on the same page on if I was starting something new.

Now I have a fairly clear idea of several of the later lessons and could write them now; but the first few are proving to be more challenging that I had expected. Part of the issue is that I am less certain these days of how to explain exactly what Jesus did on The Cross than I once was.

For almost all my Christian walk, I have been part of churches that taught "substitutionary atonement" – essentially that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins when he died on the cross; and I can explain the whole of the Bible based on that theological perspective. In fact, I wasn't even aware that there were other non-heretical points of view.

However, this past year I have come to appreciate that people like C. S. Lewis and the whole of the Eastern/Orthodox church have a different way to explain Jesus' work on The Cross (referred to by some as "Christus Victor" theology). The effect is the same; but the emphasis is different, sometimes in subtle but perhaps important ways.

I am therefore loath to write up a description of the meaning of The Cross (which strikes me to be something I would want to establish early) until I either resolve this or have some way to explain things that provides a bridge between "substitutionary atonement" and "Christus Victor" (which is what I'd really like to do).

Anyway, since I had no post today, I thought I'd at least explain why I have no post today, and thus create a post.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink

October 29, 2008

Looking at their faces

Living in the suburbs, it is often far too easy to ignore those that are different from yourself.

You can travel from your safe, middle-class home to your safe, middle-class job to a safe, middle-class shopping mall or restaurant (or safe middle-class church on Sundays) and finally back to your safe, middle-class home; all the while zipping on the expressway or freeway past those neighborhoods where other kinds of people live.

That's not to say you don't know that there are people who are different from yourself, or that you don't care about those among them who are in need. Perhaps you donate used clothes to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, or donate to charitable organizations that serve those in need. Yet in the suburbs it is very easy to take on an out-of-sight, out-of-mind perspective and to get comfortable only interacting with people similar to yourself.

Living in the city, that is much harder. Riding the subway or public bus, you come face to face with a broad range of humanity – all ethnic groups, assorted subcultures, almost all socioeconomic strata ("the rich" being excluded since even in the city they find ways to zip past everyone else). People different from you are no longer "out of sight" and therefore are much harder to keep "out of mind" (not that many people don't try).

But even in the city where you are constantly exposed to people who are different, it is easy to begin to objectify and collectivize them. There are "the poor", "the punks" the "ethnic minorities" (pick one) as if those categories define who they are. It is easy to fall into the subtle trap of thinking about the individuals who are like you are the groups who are not.

As I have been riding public transportation these past weeks, I have been taking the time to look at the faces of the other people, and I keep seeing people who really are "like me". Some may belong to different ethic groups or subcultures. Some may belong to different economic strata. Some may be drunk or on drugs. Yet looking at their faces I keep seeing people with hopes and fears are not so different from mine – people who at some level want the same things out of their lives as I do.

I keep thinking about the observation that as different as humans and chimpanzees look, 95% of their DNA is the same. I think an equivalent statement can be made about the hearts and minds people of different cultures and backgrounds – for as different as we might act and appear, deep down we are all far more the same than we are different.

I had several reasons I wanted to move to the city – access to culture, exercise (I am already losing girth), etc. I also had a sense that God had several reasons for wanting me up here (my experience is that God rarely does things for just one reason, although we may be limited to only understanding a limited number of those reasons).

I am starting to see that one of those reasons is to get me to be more comfortable interacting with people who are different from me. Put me in a room with other college educated professionals, and I do fine; but I'm never sure what to say when faced with people's whose backgrounds are very different. My sense is that this is one of the things God wants to work on in me while we live in SF, and that my rides on the subway are the beginning of those lessons.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

October 22, 2008

What is a Pastor?

I was involved in a discussion about church leadership in another blog, and there was a point I wanted to expand on here.

In most of the (protestant) churches I have been a part of over the years, the person in charge of the church was referred to as the “pastor”. In the larger churches, there main leader was known as the “Senior Pastor” and there were one or more “Associate Pastors”. Sometimes the additional “Pastors” were assigned very specific areas of responsibility, so you’d have the “Youth Pastor” and the “Men’s Pastor” and so on. Sometimes the Senior Pastor didn’t have complete control – there was a committee of laymen who had oversight over at least the finances and who had the ability to hire and fire pastors. The committee was known by names like “Board of Deacons” and the like.

All of this fairly transparently mimicked the corporate world. Pastors today are primarily managers, or better yet Presidents and Vice Presidents of the local church. So you have the President (Senior Pastor) and various Associate Vice Presidents (Associate Pastors) and the Vice President of the Youth Department (Youth Pastor). Then in some churches they all were held accountable to the Board of Directors (Board of Deacons). How corporate can you get?

Now I’m going to set aside the whole Board of Deacons question for now (that’s yet another post someday), and simply ask – is this corporate model of Pastor as Manager/President a Biblical one? The short answer is that while Pastors are mentioned a number of times in the Bible, I see nothing to indicate that their job was to manage or direct the people in the church. There isn’t even evidence of people being appointed as pastors. There are three titles used for people being appointed in the Bible: elder, overseer, and sent-one (apostle). Some have argued that “overseer” is the same office as “pastor” yet Paul uses both words in his writings and consistently uses them in very different ways.

So if the Pastor was not the appointed manager of the church, what is he? Unfortunately the Bible provides few clues. The first clue is the name itself – the word is actually a synonym for Shepherd. So whatever Pastors were meant to do, the role of a shepherd was intended to be an inspiration for it. What did Shepherds do? They ensured that the sheep were safe, well fed, healthy, and that they did not wander off (which would likely result in their being neither safe nor well fed and eventually unhealthy). The other clue is Ephesians 4:11 which couples Pastor together with Teacher in a way that indicates that the roles are related.

On that foundation, I will add my own personal observations.

There have been a few occasions in my walk with The Lord when I have been a part of a group of Christians that did not have structure imposed on it from outside; but rather was allowed to create its own structure organically, naturally. When this was allowed to happen I have noticed that there were always a few individuals in the group who were very focused on how everyone else was doing. If someone didn’t show up for a few weeks, they would be the first ones to become concerned, and would likely be the people to start phoning and making sure the missing people were OK. Those same people tended to be the ones to invest a lot of time with new people, nurturing them, answering their questions, making sure they were comfortable within the group. Those same people would also be among the first to come to someone’s defense when there was a problem and would be the first to speak up when “troublemakers” would disrupt the meetings. Their focus was on the well-being of all of the individual members of the group, and their energies were directed toward keeping people included, safe, and growing in their faith.

I claim those people were the shepherds, the pastors of those groups. They did not manage people. They did not lead. In fact I would go so far as to say the people who I have thought of as being “pastors” were poor candidates to be leaders. Their energies were focused on the (spiritual) health and wellbeing of the individuals in the group – making sure they were in condition to contribute to the group and that they did not get lost or stray away. But as a result, they were focused on trees and not the forest. They tended to lack a sense of the “big picture” of where the group was moving as a whole and so would fail to lead it anywhere.

In military language, they were the medics – keeping the troops healthy and ready to fight while someone else decided where to go and who to fight. I can’t think of an equivalent role in the corporate world (perhaps Humans Resources, although few corporate Humans Resources departments really invest much more that lip service in those kinds of activities). And therein lay the problem – by modeling the pastoral role on the corporate manager as opposed to the Biblical model of shepherd, we have effectively eliminated from the church people who do what pastors are supposed to be doing. The “pastors” are too busy managing the church, and too often there is no one actually guarding, nourishing, and encouraging individual people in the community. No wonder so many people leave!

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

October 15, 2008

Open Source Christianity

A short explanation of geekdom followed by what I hope is a relevant observation.

Most companies that produce software carefully guard the source code for their applications from prying eyes. This however has a downside that relatively few people get to look for bugs in the code. The engineer who writes the software obvious tries to write bug-free code, and often the company requires a “code review” where a handful of the engineer’s peers formally review the code looking for problems. Occasionally someone within the company might spot a problem when they are looking at the code for other reasons. The bottom line is that very few eyes ever have a change to look at the code, and the result is often very buggy software getting released to customers.

In the last couple of decades an alternative approach has started to gain ground – the “Open Source” movement. The idea is that the engineers publish their source code on the web for everyone to see (or at least anyone who wants to look), and provides some means for people to suggest improvements to the code. The result is that for the larger Open Source projects, hundreds of engineers are looking at each line of code trying to improve it.

Of course with hundreds of people trying to make changes, the threat of chaos is always present, not to mention that every idea someone has to improve a piece of code is equally valuable. So most Open Source projects have a small number of “Gatekeepers” who decide which changes make it into the product and which are set aside.

More recently, the Open Source approach is being used for things other than software. Wikipedia, for instance, is an encyclopedia whose “source” is open for anyone to edit. Of course some people make changes as jokes or deliberate misrepresentation, but there is a cadre of people who monitor Wikipedia for such changes and remove them.

So where am I going with all this?

I’ve been chatting with some “emergent/emerging church” people lately and I realized part of what they are looking for is a more “Open Source” model of Christianity. Too many institutional churches have a small group of “professionals” (pastors, priests, etc.) who maintain control over all aspects of the faith. What the emergent/emerging folks are looking for is an open model where every believer has a say in what the church is.

What’s more, I believe there is a core of truth in what they are looking for. I have written many times here that I believe that it was God’s intent that every Christian be responsible for “doing the work of the ministry” and that those who “lead” are really there to serve everyone else and enable them to be successful in their ministries. Even in the context of meetings of the church, I believe God meant for everyone to have a chance to share what they feel God placed on their hearts as opposed to the usual model where most of the people watch a few professional Christians perform on a stage.

I even think that part of God’s reason for this is much the same reason behind Open Source Software – more people individually listening to God make it less likely that there will be errors. Individuals fail, and when that individual is the Pastor of your typical institutional church, many people can be led astray. However if everyone is encouraged to listen to God and share, then people can raise questions when they see something that seems wrong.

Or Not.

The problem I see with many (but not all) segments of the emergent/emerging church movements is that in their desire to hear all voices, they tend to create a Christianity of Consensus, which is not always God’s Christianity. It is the Christianity that the majority of people want it to be, with all of the sharp edges rounded off and hard surfaces padded. What I have learned from my walk with Jesus is that real Christianity has some real challenges that are uncomfortable – things I certainly would prefer were not true about my faith. There are things God asks His followers to do that are hard, that demand we change, that put us at odds with the surrounding culture. If we allow the majority to define our faith, too many people would prefer to have a version of Christianity that is much easier than God intended. As a result, it will lose its identity, its benefits, and its impact.

What the emergent/emerging church movement lacks is some mechanism equivalent to the Gatekeepers used by Open Source software, or the diligent editors of Wikipedia. People who are trusted to say “I know you’d all like Christianity to be like that; but here’s what it says in the Bible. . .” Unfortunately that kind of role is exactly the kind of authority they are trying to avoid; and they are not entirely wrong in fearing it. I don't have all of the answers on this. I'm not sure how to avoid a Christianity of Consensus without swinging too far the other direction; but some balanced answer is needed.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

October 10, 2008

Online Bible Study

A while back I mentioned the idea of doing a blog that was an online interactive bible study – allowing people to post their thoughts on passages of scriptures. Well Barry, a friend of mine in Wales, has decided to make a go of this, and I will be both posting and commenting on it.

For those who are interested, take a look at http://openbibleblog.blogspot.com/

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Whither Church

One of the still-open issues with regard to our move to San Francisco is what will Anne and I be doing to be a part of a community to fellow believers in the city. This is slightly complicated by the fact that we have an outstanding commitment to support our old church at least until the end of the sabbatical in February (including continuing to serve on the leadership team). Our compromise on this is to go to our old church every 2-3 weeks (about a 45 minute drive on Sundays) and investigate other options in the city in between.

Before we signed the lease at the new place we did identify at least one church we thought we would be comfortable at in the city; but that is a long way from having peace that God wants us to get involved there (and in fact our "comfort" is not always what He is interested in). I've since been back to that church a couple of times and continue to like what I see; but have yet to sense anything in my spirit that would indicate we are supposed to go there.

Last week we tried out yet another church, and very quickly both of us got a strong sense that it was not the place for us. Not that there was anything obviously "wrong" with the place (although the message was a bit more political than we like – I'd be interested in visiting again after the election). In some respects it was actually quite nice; but both of us sensed that it wasn't what God had planned for us.

The other question is if God wants us to be involved in an institutional church at all. I have written a lot in this blog about how I believe in the Simple Church movement; but until now God has kept me involved in fairly traditional churches. This move might be when God has us switch to something more house-church-like. Then the question becomes, do we find an existing network of house churches to be a part of, or do we start one on our own.

So far, I am comfortable that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing in the transition; but I have no clear sense yet of what God has planned for us beyond that.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 22, 2008

Being Post Charismatic

I read McAlpine's "Post Charismatic?" this week – specific comments on the book will be covered in Monday's post; but there's a larger point that I think he missed.

As background, modern church historians tend to talk about three broad movements in the Christian Church last century: Pentecostalism, the Charismatic Renewal, and the "Third Wave" churches (of which the Vineyard Movement that I have been involved in is a part). A common focus to all of these movements has been the belief that God is still very much active in the word today – providing signs, wonders, miracles, etc. – and more important that God has a definite plan for His church that we are expected to follow. As a result there has been a great deal of focus in the churches associated with these movements on knowing "what God is doing now" and getting involved in whatever that is. This in turn leads to a willingness to change and move quickly as God's actions are discerned – avoiding being left behind as God moves on to do the next thing in His plan.

This is in contrast to the behavior of most of the old, mainstream denominations that are much slower to adopt (or adapt to) change. Officially they too believe that God is still active today; but they tend to behave as if Jesus set up His church 2000 years ago and our job is to just keep doing the same things. Those who are involved in Pentecostal/Charismatic/Third-Wave churches tend to dismiss the older denominations as being mired in traditions of men and unable to keep up with God's plans.

There is however a flips side of this.

In their quest to keep up with what "God is doing now", Pentecostal/Charismatic/Third-Wave churches have tended to become faddish – always looking for the latest teaching and jumping on whatever bandwagon seems to be "hot" at the moment. Likewise, they tend to gravitate quickly to spectacular events – healing crusades and the like. After all, if miracles are taking place, that must be what "God is doing now". These churches are always looking for the next spectacular revival to demonstrate God's presence. Because of this, the old mainstream denominations tend to view these upstart churches as flighty and unstable, and there is a degree of truth in it.

The problem is that these newer churches are so earnest in their desire to keep up with God that they often set aside discernment and wisdom. While they would object to my saying so (and keep in mind I am currently a part of one of these churches, although one of the more conservative ones), their actions indicate that they would rather follow falsehood than be found having failed to follow God. As a result they are easily led astray.

What is needed is a more balanced approach. I believe the key is to recognize that God is actually a good leader. That may sound doctrinally obvious; but many Christians and Churches do not act like He is. Any leader who moves faster that his followers can keep up, who does not actually make an effort to bring his followers along with him, who makes it hard to discern what direction he is leading people is not a good leader; but too many Christians act as if that is exactly what God does.

I do believe that God is active today and has a plan for what He wants His church doing, and there is some sense of there being a center to what God is trying to accomplish in our society today. However, I also believe that God knows our limitations and how quickly we are able to change. With perfect foreknowledge He developed His plan in a form that we can keep up with, as long as we are willing to follow. What's more, I believe that God is a great teacher and has the skill to make clear what He wants done if we are willing to listen. There is no need to strain ourselves and to be fearful that we will miss God's direction.

So, if we are open to listening to God and are willing to do what He says, we do not need to go looking for what God is doing – He will tell us what He needs us to do at just the right time. We don't need to travel to some other city because God seems to be working there. God is working everywhere, even in our own cities. We just need to open to what he wants us as individuals to do. We don't need to look for the hot new teaching – the uncovering of some new principle of the gospel. We just need to be in fellowship with God and do what He says.

The attitude expressed above is largely what McAlpine calls being "Post Charismatic". I don't care about the name; but the idea is certainly correct.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

August 08, 2008

Demonstrating the Love of God

Once again, my working definition of the mission of the church is

“To enable everyone to make an informed decision as to whether they want to be a part of The Kingdom of God, or The Kingdom of the World”

So just how do we as Christians inform people so they can make a decision? Simply telling them is insufficient, since the nature of the Kingdom of God is so different from the Kingdom of the World that they may not be able to picture it. No, the only way we can truly enable anyone to make an informed decision is to demonstrate the Kingdom of God to them.

I believe there are two aspects of this – demonstrating how God's Love is the foundational principle of His Kingdom and demonstrating the reality and involvement of God by providing means by which His power is evident. Essentially we need to enable people to see that God loves them and is willing to act on their behalf. Simply believing that God loves them, but that He is some distant entity that has no involvement in this world leaves them alone, struggling to do the best they can without help. Likewise believing that God is involved in this world but does not love them leaves them with just one more struggle to add to all of the burdens that The Kingdom of The World places on them. Neither partial picture is complete or compelling as a reason to join God's Kingdom.

So first, in order to demonstrate the Kingdom of God, we must demonstrate God’s love. God’s kingdom is built on the principle of everyone looking out for everyone else (not just “me and mine”), manifesting God’s love through how we care for each other. For people to understand this we must live it out in our lives – showing love and compassion for everyone. This isn’t a matter of something we go and do; but rather how we must live our lives as we serve as God’s ambassadors in this world.

This past week I read “Conspiracy of Kindness” by Sjogren, which is essentially a presentation of this idea as a church program. I have no problems with the theory Sjogren presents; but I am concerned that people reading his books (or participating in the ministries that they inspire) will have a tendency to turn this into is yet another church activity – go to church Sunday morning, hand out coffee Monday evening, mow lawns for strangers next Saturday. He makes it sound like something you can do one Saturday a month and be done with it, while I view this as something that should color every encounter we have in our lives. I'm sure Sjogren agrees, but I fear that this may not be the effect of his teaching.

I think it is the responsibility of every Christian to be out in the world interacting with people, some of whom will be in need, and showing God’s love to them. My challenge in this is getting out and interacting with people. I have become quite a hermit in my late-middle age, and beyond work and church, and really don’t interact with people much. I think part of what God is working in me is to start doing things where I meet more people, because the more people I interact with the more opportunities I will have to show God’s love. I don’t need to travel to a foreign country or have a plan that on the every other Saturday I go look for people in need; but I think I am being called to get out there and get involved in activities where I meet more people. My wife, Anne, is a knitter and interacts with a lot of people at knitting meetings, stores, and the like. I need thinks like that in my life.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

August 06, 2008

My own words

I’ve been struggling writing the next essay in my “The Mission of the Church” series. I intend it to be an explanation of the differences between The Kingdom of This World and the Kingdom of God. The problem isn’t actually producing an essay – I can generate pages of text on the subject with ease. The problem is that whenever I step back and look at what I have written I realize that I am just repeating things that I have heard or read from other people. I’m not explaining the ideas; I am repeating how other people have explained the ideas.

Now this might not seem like a problem – it would not be unusual for a blogger to simply repeat explanations heard elsewhere – but I have some deep-seated issue with doing that. Sure, I might quote a phrase that I think is particularly well turned; but it is psychologically important to me that my explanations of things be my own. I get very unsettled when I am put into a position of using someone else’s verbiage to explain something.

Having realized the source of my blockage, I started to look into myself to figure out where that little personality quirk came from, and quickly found the answer.

When I was 13, my mother took me to Bill Gothard’s “Institute for Basic Youth Conflicts” (now call the “Institute in Basic Life Principles”) – a week-long seminar on the practical application of Christian principles to real-world situations. That week had a far more profound influence on who I am than any other single week of my life. I’ve even returned to the seminar twice (one of the perquisites of having graduated from the seminar is that you are allowed to attend again for free as many times as you want.)

Not that I agreed with everything Gothard taught. Even at the age of 13, having only been a Christian for 3 years, there were points he made that I didn’t quite buy. Now, with many more years of growing in Christ, the list of issues I have with the specifics of Gothard’s teaching has grown substantially. However, underneath the specific applications which he presents in the seminar, there is a foundational layer of attitudes about things like authority, responsibility, respect, honor, and the like which remain true and very central to my identity.

Which leads me to some of what Gothard said on the last day of the seminar the first time I attended (I noticed this was not repeated when I returned to the seminar as an alumnus years later). There was no book we were given as part of the course – just a binder with pages to takes notes on. Gothard explained that what he was teaching was based on a “life notebook” he kept – his notes on all the things he had learned about life and Christianity; edited and re-edited as his understandings of things changed and grew. He told the crowd that he did not publish it in book form (which, by the way, he does now) because it was just his understanding of things, and that it was important that everyone develop their own understanding. He said that we would be tempted to immediately go tell other people about what we learned; but that we should resist doing that. He said we should all take the time to apply what we learned to our own lives, and only after we had seen these principles at work for ourselves, should we go and find our own way to express them to others – not repeating information second hand; but communicating our own first-hand experience.

Like I said – that week had more influence on who I am than any other week of my life. Even now, the idea that I should not teach something unless I have processed it through my own life first and found my own way to express it drives how I blog.

Of course, what this means is that someplace deep down I know that I really haven’t put my intellectual understanding of what it means to spread the Good News of the Kingdom of God into practice, and therefore have no way of my own to express what it means. That is perhaps the point God has been trying to get through to me. I need to go out and start doing what I know before I start to tell other people about it.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

August 01, 2008

Organic Church

I wrote a somewhat long comment on someone else’s blog, and realized that with a little bit of effort it would make a good post for here, so excuse this little digression from my mission/missionality posts.

There is a sub discipline within Biology called Evolutionary Development (Evo-Devo), which looks at how a complex organism forms starting with a single cell. In other words – how does a muscle cell in a finger know it is a muscle cell in a finger and not an insulin producing cell in the pancreas? Not many Christians tend to explore this field because it was originally motivated as a mean to support the Theory of Evolution – one challenge to evolution was the appearance of radical changes to species in short periods of time. Many people though that such changes would require large numbers of mutations which could not be explained by gradual evolution, so scientists started to take a closer look at just how genes produced bodies, to better understand just how many mutations would be needed.

Now people like to talk about how DNA is a blueprint that describes how to build a body – that someplace in the DNA there’s a description the whole body and how it all fits together; but it doesn't quite work like that – there is no "master plan" that describes the big picture. How it actually works is actually quite chaotic and fundamentally relational – things become body parts because of the relationships they find themselves in with other cells. In many cases cells send out chemical signals that are picked up by other cells, and what each cell becomes depends on a mix of signals they happen to be receiveing.

A cell becomes a muscle cell because it find itself just the right distance away from certain other cells that end up causing the bone to form. It doesn't know if it is in a finger or elsewhere – it just knows “I’m going to be next to a bone, so I should be a muscle”. Other relational factors (distances and orientation from other kinds of cells) control how long the bone becomes, which controls the shape of the muscles. Blood vessels form because cells put out chemicals that say "I need more nutrients". When cells in existing blood vessels detect those chemicals, they split in ways to create new branches heading in the direction of increased concentrations of those chemicals (I'm simplifying a bit here). Nerve cells randomly spread from the brain throughout the body. When they find something to attach to (a muscle cell, for instance), they do. Nerves that never find anything to attach to (which turns out to be a quite common) die off, leaving only "useful" connections.

The point is that creatures (including human bodies) take their shape because of very local, relational decision, not any top-down control. Nothing says "I need a nerve connection between here and here", but yet that connection naturally forms because each part of the body does its part in relationship to the other cells near it.

When I hear people talk about "organic" churches, this is what I think about – churches built based on individual relationships – each person doing what they are able to do given the relationships they have formed with other people in the church. There is no top-down command for how it is structured; the structure comes about based on the people and their relationships with each other. Given that we are all following our DNA (the Bible), certain patterns tend to appear; but no two churches that are allowed for form organically will ever look alike. Sometimes it is chaotic, and may even appear to be wasteful; but those redundancies are there for a reason – to ensure connections are made.

It’s too bad most Christians stay away from this kind of science (because it's connection with evolution) – I believe there is a lot were are meant to learn Christ’s Body, The Church here.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

July 30, 2008

The Mission of the Church (Part 3)

In my previous post, I stated that my working definition of the mission to The Church was:

“To enable everyone to make an informed decision as to whether they want to be a part of The Kingdom of God, or The Kingdom of the World”

Now many people, including many Christians, would find the language of “Kingdom” and “Citizenship” quite odd and might even question my theology. While I am open to improving this definition over time, I am quite comfortable with those aspects of the statement. If you read what we have recorded of what Jesus actually said, He talked more about “The Kingdom of God” than any other topic. Many of his parables began with the phrase “The Kingdom of God is like. . .” Jesus was very concerned that people understood what the Kingdom of God was – it was central to His mission.

Likewise, Paul had a lot to say about the citizenship of Christians: “But our citizenship is in heaven” (Phil 3:20), “you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household” (Eph 2:19) “I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world” (1 Peter 2:11), “We are therefore Christ's ambassadors” (2 Cor 5:20)

This language particularly appeals to me for two reasons.

The first is that it is easier to describe the full truth of Christianity in this context. People generally understand that being a citizen of some nation involves both rights and responsibilities. As a citizen of the United State, I enjoy a large number of rights; but those rights come with certain responsibilities – to pay taxes, to serve jury duty, and at some points in our history to serve in the military. Likewise citizenship in God’s kingdom comes with many rights (including direct access to the creator of the universe Himself); but it also comes with responsibilities – to serve God while living in this foreign land. By rephrasing the mission of the church away from “getting people saved” to “making citizens of them”, we are less at risk to soft-sell the transaction.

The second reason I like this language is that it inherently gives Christians a correct perspective on our lives here on Earth. In one of my sermons I have used the analogy that we are Christians are on a business trip for God to this world. Now business trips are something I understand well, having done a fair about of travel for my employers over the years. I’ve been to London, Paris, Jerusalem, Sydney, and all across the United States on business. When I travel for my employer, my work comes first. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy myself – I can usually find some free time on each trip to see the sights, do some shopping, try out the local cuisine, etc. Yet I always do those things in the time I have available after I get my business done. There is also a limited degree to which I get settled in to the hotel room. I might unpack my suitcase, hanging up my clothes or putting them into the drawers; but I don’t buy new furniture or start to redecorate.

That’s the attitude Christians should have with respect to their lives in this world – it is only a business trip. It’s OK if you enjoy yourself, do some shopping, try out the local cuisine – as long as you tend to your mission here first. It’s also OK if you get settled in enough in your temporary housing here to be comfortable during your stay; but realize that you are going to have to leave it all behind at some point, so there’s a limit to how much you should invest in things here.

So that’s why I like talking about Christianity as a matter of what Kingdom do you want to be citizens of.

Posted by Steven at 05:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

July 25, 2008

The Mission of the Church (Part 2)

In my previous post I asked the question “what is the mission of The Church?” And I analyzed the most commonly given answer to that question – the “Great Commission” – to show that it is not as obvious of an answer as some might think.

So what do I think the mission of the church is? Here’s my definition, although I will say up front that this is a synthesis of my understanding of many scriptures, and so I can’t point to any specific verses that phrases it this way. With that disclaimer, I believe the mission of the church is:

“To enable everyone in the world to make an informed decision as to whether they want to be a part of The Kingdom of God, or The Kingdom of the World”

In order to do that, we need to make clear to people:
- That there are two kingdoms
- The nature of The Kingdom of The World (sin, bondage, etc.)
- The nature of The Kingdom of God (love, power, etc.)
- The good news that people have a choice as to which one they are citizens of
- That a time will come when it will be too late to switch citizenship

The "good news" (gospel) of the Kingdom of God is that because of what Jesus accomplished in his death and resurrection, people who are in The Kingdom of The World have the option to change their citizenship into The Kingdom of God. The Church then is the official embassy of The Kingdom of God operating within The Kingdom of The World with the mission to offer citizenship to everyone. We will not somehow transform the world into God's Kingdom, but we will translate as many people as want to into citizens of The Kingdom of God (adding them to our ambassadorial ranks in the process).

In my previous post I noted that if you go back to the original Greek, the "great commission" talks about people being "heralds" of this good news. Consider again the definitions of herald I provided:

-"A person who carries or proclaims important news; a messenger." All Christians carry an important news message from God that citizenship in His Kingdom is open to all who would apply, and we are all charged to share that message with anyone who will hear it.

-"One that gives a sign or indication of something to come; a harbinger." All Christians are harbingers of the end of this age; giving notice that God's offer of citizenship is open for a limited time (although we have no idea how long that time is, having already lasted nearly 2000 years).

-"(formerly) a royal or official messenger, esp. one representing a monarch in an ambassadorial capacity during wartime" God's Kingdom is in conflict with The Kingdom of The World and all Christians are official, royal, representatives of God Himself.

Unfortunately, (if I may borrow a phrasing from the movie The Matrix), no one can be told what The Kingdom of God is - they have to see it for themselves. People are so used to "how the world works" that they feed any description of God's Kingdom though that filter and end up with a distorted picture. The only way we Christians, as ambassadors of God, can successfully inform people as to what The Kingdom of God is like (and therefore why they might want to change citizenship) is by demonstrating it to them.

The church then, as part of its mission, is responsible for demonstrating what The Kingdom of God is like in how we operate and interact with others. We are to demonstrate what it means to really live in a culture based on love, equality, and the power of God. A culture where everyone cares for each other's needs. A culture where no one is above (or below) another. A culture where God intervenes to address specific needs that are beyond human resolution.

And here is where the church has failed Jesus horribly. In far too many cases we have allowed the World's Kingdom to infect the church – instead of demonstrating a difference, we demonstrate that we are no different from the world and that there is no reason to switch citizenship. In too many cases the church demonstrates hatred and bigotry, wagging out fingers when we should be showing compassion to those in bondage. In too many cases the church demonstrates some people are better, higher, or more important than others instead of valuing all people (including ourselves) equally. In too many cases the church demonstrates that the only solutions to problems are human ones (psychology, politics, etc.) rather than looking to God for action.

But none of that changes what our mission is – to serve as ambassadors of God, demonstrating the advantages of His Kingdom, and offering people the opportunity to become a part of it.

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July 23, 2008

The Mission of the Church (Part 1)

The Mission of the Church (Part 1)

Before one can talk about what it means for an individual Christian to be “missional”, you need to be clear on what it means for the church as a whole to be missional, which means you need to be clear on exactly what the mission of the church is. Now for many Christians, this is obvious – they simply point at Mark 16:15:

And He (Jesus) said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”

This verse is what is known among church people as the “great commission” and based on it they believe the mission of the church is to travel around the world speaking to crowds about on how Jesus died for their sins (or at least enabling others to do so).

I don't think the meaning of that verse is as obvious as people think, nor am I sure it was meant to serve as a mission statement for The Church.

First, as can be seen in verse 14 just before this, Jesus is talking to the eleven remaining disciples (with Judas out of the picture after the betrayal). So is Jesus really giving this command to all Christians? To the church as a whole? Or is He just telling the eleven what He expects of them as individuals? Certainly even in the first century that the vast majority of Christians did not “go” anywhere – only a few were called to travel as part of their service to God. So is “going” central to the mission of the church? Or is it only certain individuals in the church that are called to “go”? And if we assuming the command to "go" in this verse is of more limited scope, then what about the rest of it?

Second, there is that word “preach.” Now ask most Christians what it means to “preach” and they are likely to describe someone standing in front of a group giving a speech of some kind. The problem is that the Greek language has a couple perfectly good words that describe that kind of oratory and those are not the words used here. The word used in this verse in the Greek is “kerruso” which means to serve as a herald. So what is a herald? Here are a few definitions I found:

-A person who carries or proclaims important news; a messenger
-One that gives a sign or indication of something to come; a harbinger
-(formerly) a royal or official messenger, esp. one representing a monarch in an ambassadorial capacity during wartime

While those definitions do not exclude the use of speeches, one can certainly serve as a herald without grand oratory. Furthermore, I can point to numerous other verses in the Bible that agree that all Christians are to act like God’s ambassadors in this world, delivering God’s message and giving notice that this present age is coming to an end, so those definitions of a herald do very much sound like what the church is supposed to be doing.

Finally, there is that word “gospel” (“good news” in the Greek). This has unfortunately become a very religious term whose definition has become culturally established; but we need to be asking ourselves if our cultural definition of “the gospel” is what Jesus meant by the word. Many Christians would say that the essence of the gospel is that Jesus died for our sins (which He certainly did); but is that the “good news” we are to herald? An interesting thing to note is that half the time that Jesus is recorded as using the term “gospel” he qualifies it as “the gospel of the kingdom” or “the gospel of the kingdom of God.” So where is the “kingdom” in the message that Jesus died for our sins? Or is the gospel something larger of which only a piece is what Jesus did on the cross?

Now I don’t actually have a problem with the great commission; but I do think we need to take a very close look at the verse before we take it as an “obvious” statement of what the mission of the church is supposed to be.

I’ll continue in my next post with my own working definition of the mission of The Church.

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July 18, 2008

Under conviction

So God has been working to make me aware of what a poor Christian I have been. Yes, I am doctrinally orthodox; and yes, I haven’t committed what most folks would consider big sins. So from the point of view of most churches in America I have been a great Christian. Unfortunately they tend to grade on a curve.

What God has been talking to me about is how many people in the world are hurting, hurting badly – people who need to see in a tangible ways that God loves them and has not abandoned them. In that context God has been showing me how little I am doing to show God’s love to the world. Sure, I donate money to a lot of good causes (both Christian and secular); but money can’t communicate love – only people can, and only in person. Sure, I teach and encourage fellow Christians; but God’s way is always to teach by example, and I can’t honestly tell people they should model themselves on my life.

The buzzword for this in the church today is "being missional"; although there isn't a lot of clarity at to what that means (another blog I follow recently collected 50 very different definitions of what it means for The Church to be "missional"). The sense is that both individual Christians and the church as a whole and need to get more other-focused in how they operate – not in terms of preaching; but in terms of service and love. There are some clear examples of Christian communities that are doing this very successfully; but they are all doing it in very different ways, so defining the term has proven to be a challenge.

Of course my immediate focus is to understand what God wants of me personally. I suspect that around this bend in the road I will be spending more time working with people in need, although how, when, and with whom isn’t clear. I also suspect I will have a better understanding of what God expects from His church in this regard; and I will then be able to teach on this and honestly say “and this is how God led me to live this lesson out”.

As I come to understand things better I will blog on them; but from past experience, it may be a while before I have a clear picture on this.

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July 11, 2008

The Myth of a Christian Nation

The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church

by Gregory A. Boyd

I seem to have reached a rich strata in my to-be-read bookshelf. There have been an unusual number of books in the last couple of month that have been added to my "keeper" list (and in some cases prompted me to buy a second copy to lend out) – Books like: "Blue Like Jazz", "The Rest of the Gospel", "Looking for God Knows What", and now "The Myth of a Christian Nation"

I have long been a believer in the separation of church and politics. I have blogged before about my concern about how some segments of the church in America are trying to use the United States government as a means to achieve religious goals. I believe these attempts are at best a waste of resources and at worst harmful to The Church. Last August I saw a piece on CNN about a pastor (Gregory Boyd) who had a significant part of his congregation leave when he expressed the same views from the pulpit. Needless to say I was interested, and bought Boyd's book on the subject.

"The Myth of a Christian Nation" is a well written and argued presentation of the scriptural, theological, and historical reasons why The Church as an institution should stay completely separate from politics, whether "liberal" or "conservative". Boyd makes the case that "kingdoms of the world" and "the kingdom of God" are fundamentally different things and that trying to connect them will always and inevitably do harm to God's cause. He argues that while God supports the existence human governments to keep the peace, protect their citizens, and punish wrong-doers (and acknowledges that some human governments do that better than others), the means by which all human government do their job is by exercising "power over" people – using force or the threat of force (the metaphorical "sword") to compel submission.

Boyd then argues that the Kingdom of God which Christianity is meant to promote is based on a very different mechanism – the application of what he calls exercising "power under" people, expressed through sacrificial love as represented by the cross. It is therefore never possible to succeed in achieving success for God's Kingdom by using human governments because the means of "power over" via the sword can never accomplish that which can only be done by "power under" via the cross. Boyd further argues that whenever we attempt to so this we corrupt God's church, making it no longer a holy thing.

Fundamentally, God is not interested in seeing better governments; he is interested in seeing people be transformed by a relationship with Him regardless of what government exists. The best possible human government that we could create still does nothing to change the human heart. Given that, Boyd says that while Christians should certainly vote as individuals in whatever way they feel will yield a "better government", The Church as an institution should not invest any of it energies in trying to promote laws (conservative or liberal) that they feel are "Christian" since doing so represents a fundamental contradiction of The Church's charter. I agree completely with this stance.

What is more, putting aside the political issues discussed in the book, I like the vision of Christianity Boyd presents. The Church is meant to be the Body of Christ – Jesus' incarnation in the world today. Therefore as a group we are to act like Jesus did – helping those in need, caring for the unloved and outcasts, befriending people regardless of their sins, sacrificing ourselves to help others. He gives a few examples in the book of how real people have responded to issues like gay marriage, abortion, etc. in ways that reflect the Kingdom of God and not an attempt to use a Kingdom of Man to make a country more "godly". The book is well worth reading for its presentation of the faith even if you are uninterested in the church/state issues which are its focus.

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July 09, 2008

Should church be easy?

The biggest trend in Christian churches in America over the last 20 years has been the desire to create “seeker friendly” church services to attract the “unchurched.” The idea is to create an environment that is comfortable and entertaining so that people who normally wouldn’t go to church would be willing to attend and thus be exposed to the gospel.

The technique has worked – to a point. There are churches in America that have over 20,000 people attending services every weekend. The question is: how many of those people ever move beyond showing up to be entertained? Studies have shown that very few of those people become anything other than passive member of the audience, and many simply stop coming if the church starts to expect more of them. It seems to me that these “seeker friendly” meetings tend to serve as inoculations against Christianity – giving people a small, weakened version of the faith; just enough to make them feel good about themselves and thus make them resistant to the “real thing”.

It doesn’t take being a “Seeker friendly” church to see the effect. I’ve been a part of churches that had Sunday morning services, Sunday evening praise service, Wednesday night prayer meeting, and home groups. We’d see the biggest crowd on Sunday Morning, about half that number on Sunday evening, half again on Wednesday, and perhaps 10% of the Sunday morning crowd going to a home group. This is considered normal, and I have even read books that advocate this as a good thing since it “supports people with a wide variety of commitment levels.”

I have however started to wonder recently if “supporting people with a wide variety of commitment levels” is really part of the mission statement for The Church. Becoming a Christian is a matter of making Jesus your Lord; and is there really a place for people who only want to make Jesus slightly their Lord?

To be clear, I am not talking about Christian maturity here. After nearly 40 years I am still learning new ways I need to submit myself to God – I am still learning what it means for Jesus to be my Lord. The question is a matter of commitment to do whatever God leads them to do at whatever stage of growth and transformation they are at. As an example, a Christian should be spending regular time in prayer and studying their Bible. A new Christian may not yet understand how to pray well or understand everything they read in the Bible, while a mature Christian may accomplish much more in their prayer and studies; but both should be equally committed to doing it. Yet most churches I have been a part of understand and accept that most of the people who show up at Sunday services never study their Bible outside of official church meetings and never pray unless someone in their family is in desperate need.

Nor am I saying that church should not be welcoming to people who are not (yet?) willing to make that kind of commitment. People should be allowed to come, watch, and participate if they want to without anything more being expected of them. My point is that what people should see when they come and watch and participate should make it clear that if they want to become a Christian that it is going to take a real commitment on their part – not to the church; but to Jesus. I think the church needs to do a better job of communicating that becoming a Christian is costly (with benefits that far outweigh those costs); while at the same time welcoming people in our midst who are not yet ready to pay that price. Yet too often we downplay the costs to keep people coming, hoping that eventually they will be willing to make a greater commitment. The problem is that in most churches the people who only show up on Sunday never see examples of what it means to be a committed Christian other than in the person of the "professionals" (pastors, staff, etc) that are paid for their "commitment".

I don’t know what the answer is. The solution for much of the first few centuries of church history was that people had to spend months if not years proving their commitment to Jesus before the church would baptize them and thus formally accept them as part of the church; and this started at a time when people could have their property taken away from them for being a Christian – talk about a costly faith! Yet despite those high barriers, the church grew exponentially though those times. I suspect there is some middle way on this, some way to show "seekers" all of what it means to be a Christian without them feeling they have to make that commitment to stay involved. Certainly promoting Christianity using the soft-sell had just given us a bunch of soft "Christians" with no sense of what it means to make Jesus their Lord.

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July 04, 2008

How I Study the Bible, Part 3 - context

How I Study the Bible, Part 3 - Audience

I’m finally getting back to this series. In the first post, I explored the issues of translation. In the second, I explored the need to understand the culture in which the events of the Bible took place. There may be one more post after this; but I am having trouble writing it clearly.

So, if you understand what the words mean and the culture they were written in, can you then say you understand what the original readers of the text would have understood upon reading it? Close, but not quite. To fully understand what they would have heard you have to put yourself into their shoes (or sandals, as the case may be). Who was the author? What was the relationship between the author and the original readers? What were the circumstances under which it was written? I believe that God guided the writing and preservation of the Bible so it would provide value both to the original audience and to us; but the original meaning to the original audience should always guide our present interpretation.

As examples, in Matthew 21:2 Jesus said to his disciples on what would become known as Palm Sunday “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me.” Yet I have yet to attend a Palm Sunday service at which the congregation brought a donkey colt to the meeting. Why not? Obviously that passage is taken as specific instruction for a specific time, not a general commandment to everyone. On the other hand in Luke 22:19, talking about Jesus it says “And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me." Almost all Christian traditions continue to practice the ritual breaking of break to remember Jesus’ sacrifice. So why do we believe one of these was a specific command and the other a general one? It is important to ask these kinds of questions as you study the Bible.

This kind of question gets even trickier when you look at Paul’s letters. With the two letters to the Corinthian church, how much of what Paul wrote was specific instructions to a troubled congregation that was having specific problems and how much is advice he would have given to otherwise healthy congregations? Or Paul’s letters to Timothy – what parts are specific instructions to Timothy in the context of his ministry in Ephesus, and how much can be taken as general instruction to all Christians at all times?

Note, I am not saying any parts of the Bible that involve specific instructions can or should be ignored; but they way you apply it to the present day may be different. All scripture is based on fundamental principles which are unchanging. It is important to understand and apply those principles to situations today and not blindly apply the specific advice that was given to someone else may have been in very different circumstances. So studying the Bible is often an exercise in understanding not only what someone said but why they said it, and then applying “the why” and not “the what” to our lives today.

As an example, in 1 Tim 5:23, Paul writes to Timothy: “Stop drinking only water, and use a little wine because of your stomach and your frequent illnesses.” So first, from a translation and cultural context point of view (my previous posts in this series), it is clear that they really are talking about fermented wine here and not “grape juice” as some Christians would like. However, Paul is specifically talking about drinking diluted wine – essentially suggesting that Timothy add some wine to the water he was drinking. Why? The practice of drinking diluted wine was fairly common as a means to purify the water - what we would understand now as using the alcohol to kill the germs and parasites. So the real story here is that Timothy was drinking too much of the local water straight and was having intestinal problems because of it, so Paul was suggesting he mix in some wine with it to stay healthy.

So how do we apply this today? Should we all be drinking wine for our health? Perhaps – some studies have found other beneficial effects of wine. However, I think the deeper understanding that can be gained here is that those who are in ministry need to watch their health. I have seen many pastors, missionaries, etc. who have been so focused on their service to God that they neglected taking care of their bodies as they should. Paul was telling Timothy to take the time and effort to eat and drink right so he would stay healthy, which is good advice for all Christians.

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July 02, 2008

The problem of ordination

No, I am not talking about the process of making someone a member of the clergy (although there may be applications to that as well). I am instead going back to the original meaning of the word – putting things in order. The word “ordination” comes from the same root as the mathematical term “ordinal”, meaning something’s place within a list, and it where we get words like “subordinate” (someone placed below someone else in a hierarchy).

A while back I read “The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition into the Forces of History”, a secular-humanist book looking at why bad things happen around the world. It is essentially a non-religious study on the question of evil. It was a very interesting book and I made several attempts to write a full blog post on it; but it never quite came together. A key part of the author’s thesis was the concept of a “pecking order”.

The idea of a “pecking order” comes from studies done of chickens where it was noticed that every group of chickens ate in a very specific order – there was always one chicken who was the top chicken, then one below them, and so on until you got to the bottom chicken. If you introduced a new chicken into the group they would all fight with each other until it was determined where the new chicken fit into the sequence and then when everyone knew where they belonged things would calm down again until someone saw a new opportunity to change their position.

Speaking in secular terms, the idea of the pecking order can be seen as an accelerant to evolution – by giving reproductive advantage to those who rate higher based on some criteria, you more quickly select for that criterion in the subsequent generations. Faster evolution is itself an advantage, so social creatures would likely evolve such behaviors naturally.

Howard Bloom, who wrote “The Lucifer Principle”, pointed out that chickens are not the only creatures who exhibit this behavior, and that (he claimed) many of the evils of society and history can be blamed on humanity’s drive to put everyone in order and to move themselves as close to the top of the list as they could.

I return to this now because Donald Miller (whose Christian books I have praised recently) also used the analogy of the pecking order to describe the problems of the world, although he attributes it to a different source. In “Looking for God Knows What” he describes how God created humanity to be in relationship with God and to derive our validation from Him. When we became separated from God by Sin, we ended up having to look for our validation elsewhere – in each other; and by doing so we began to position ourselves with respect to each other.

We all needed to know we were valuable, and the only way to get that sense of personal worth was to know we were better than other people. So we began to put each other into an order with some people on top and some at the bottom, and we all began to strive to position ourselves as close to the top as we could get. This is essentially Miller’s picture of the fallen world after Sin – people climbing over each other to reach the top. We have become more civilized in how we do it; but the sense of the pecking order remains central to human interactions.

So two very different authors with different approaches, both came to the same conclusion as to the root of mankind’s problems.

Miller, however, takes it a step farther and provides a solution. Real Christianity (and there are many fakes) reestablishes our relationship with God and thus puts us back into a position where we can get our validation from God as it we were meant to get it. And having received that validation, we can abandon looking at ourselves and others in terms of who is higher and lower on “the list”.

Miller points out that many of Jesus’ actions can be explained by the fact that he did not participate in the pecking order. While most people hesitate associating with those who are lower on the list out of fear that people will lower their estimation of them; Jesus was content to associate with “prostitutes and sinners” because He did not look at the world through the lens of a pecking order. It was not (as some might suppose) that He knew, as God, he was at the top of the list; but that He did not care about the list to begin with.

The challenge then to us as Christians is to allow God to work in our lives to get rid of our pecking-order thinking. I have to admit that thinking about this for the last week I have realized how much I still look for validation from other people and how much I care about being viewed as higher in the social order. There’s still a lot of work God needs to do in me on this.

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June 30, 2008

Of Points and Lines

I remember when I was a kid and did connect-a-dot drawings. For anyone unfamiliar with them, you are presented with an incomplete picture that contains a bunch of dots that are sequentially numbered from 1 up to the number of dots. If you connect all of the dots in order, you complete the drawing and see it what is. I admit that since these are often done for very young children, what the drawing would be was often evident without any of the connections; but I have seen a few over the years where the user's contribution was in fact necessary to understand the drawing.

One of the paradoxes of these later diagrams is that you need to draw the lines to see what the picture is; but you don't know how best to draw the lines without knowing what you are drawing. If you simply connect the dots with perfectly straight lines, you end up with a rather angular diagram that looks like a cubist painting and not something real. If you know what the picture is in advance you can connect the dots with smooth, curved lines and end up with something that looks nice.

Why all this musing on a child's art form? Because I think there are lessons there for Christianity.

Many churches present Christianity as a set of formulas. Believe this, do this, don't do that. The things they teach are absolutely true – there are things we are expected to believe, to do, to avoid. But those things are not Christianity. They are like the dots in a connect-a-dot drawing. The original drawing that contains only the dots and numbers is not a picture of a fish, or a tree, or whatever. Only when you make the connections does it become that. In the same way, these Christian formulas are not Christianity. Only when you add the connections – the organic, dynamic relationships with God and each other - does it become that.

This is not to minimize the important of correct doctrines to Christianity. Just as the lines on a connect-a-dot picture must go through the numbered dots (in the correct order, even). In the same way, a real Christian experience will include certain correct doctrines. My point is that those doctrines by themselves are not Christianity – there is much more to being a Christian that a list of things to do and believe; and just like a connect-a-dot picture, we each need to add our individual contributions to complete the picture.

Some people have approached this by doing the equivalent of drawing straight lines between the dots. They are so afraid of getting it wrong that they rigidly constrain their faith to what they are absolutely certain of based on correct doctrine. Unfortunately, their decision to not take chances itself ruins the drawing. To live a life of faith is to take risks, knowing that sometimes you will fail. Real Christianity means looking at the dots (the doctrines) and understanding what the “big picture” is and then using your life to draw a smooth, organic series of connections that creates a beautiful drawing.

As I said above the “connections” we make as Christians to complete the picture are the relationships we have with God and with each other. I firmly believe that “Christianity is made manifest in relationships”. People should be able to look at how Christians interact with each other and with people outside the faith and see the image of God reflected in our connections. They will not see God in what we believe or what formulas we follow; but in our interactions with each other.

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June 27, 2008

What’s happening with me spiritually

So the Tuesday Bible study which I had been leading went on hiatus a month ago as part of the church’s sabbatical. This is significant for me because that study was both my primary ministry, and it was also my primary community for talking about what’s happing in my life spiritually. Lacking those two elements in my life has forced me into even more prayer about what I should be doing until the church comes out of sabbatical.

Four weeks ago, Anne and I stayed home from church (well, from our temporary host church). I used to that time to pray and read my Bible and found the experience quite refreshing. We are doing the same thing again last Sunday, and may continue to do it on a once a month basis for the rest of the year. Two specific things came have come out of that time of being focused alone with God.

First, I sensed that God wanted me to keep studying the Bible as if I was preparing to teach a study. So I have started to do my own study in 1st Timothy. I have no sense that I will ever teach the material I am preparing (when we restart the study we are likely to do Colossians); but I do believe God wanted me to continue to prepare as if I was. Timothy is an interesting choice (it is what God led me to) because it is a book I am unlikely to have chosen for a group study. It is a personal letter from one preacher to another, and as such there is a lot in there that is specific to people who serve the church in certain ways. Not that there isn’t value in the book for all Christians; but its main focus is on advice to those in church leadership. Certainly a good book for me to be reading.

Second, I sensed God wanted me to pay more attention to what I do on Sundays. Not in a religious or legalistic sense of “keeping the Sabbath”; but I believe that He wants me to be more aware of how I spend my time in general and is starting with my Sundays. So I have been especially prayerful on Sundays, allowing God to guide me away from some activities and towards others. What I have ended up doing is not necessarily more “spiritual” (so far God hasn’t objected to my watching TV shows I have recorded for myself), nor do I think the things God has steered me away from are somehow “bad” (some of the things I felt God wanted me to stay away from in the first weeks He has not had a problem with in later ones). The point is not for me to develop lists of things I can and cannot do on Sundays; but rather focus more on following God’s lead on a continuous basis in how I invest my time.

Finally, I have decided that in the absence of my regular community to talk about what God is doing in my life I will start to share more of that in this blog (hence this post). I believe it is a critical part of being the church to talk about both the hills and valleys of our walk along The Way, and will be doing more of that on the web for those fellow travelers who are reading this blog.

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June 25, 2008

Wordle me

I've always loved word-clouds (tag-clouds, whatever) – the diagrams that some web sites use that display the common tags/words us