More on Tolerance

In the previous post I mentioned learning to practice tolerance in several different contexts - within a congregation, within the church at large, within interpersonal relationships, within the larger community. Over the past few weeks I have been considering some of the implications of the practice of tolerance, and have been deliberately conscious of examples and non-examples of tolerance within these contexts. Over the next few posts I will point out some of the examples that I've noticed.

There is an old saying that he who stands for nothing will fall for anything. One of the issues raised in class discussion yesterday was the potential of being too tolerant; the specific question was "Where do you draw the line?" The seemingly obvious answer would be where God draws it, but that may not be as obvious as some seem to think. The Pharisees were pretty certain that they knew what not to tolerate, but Jesus was pretty clear that they didn't get it. He seemed to tolerate people while not tolerating behavior - "Where are your accusers? Does no one condemn you? Then neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more."

It appears fairly certain that certainty is not tolerable to God, but certainty has been at the root of most of the division (which also seems to not be tolerable to God) the church has known. I would define tolerance as the subjugation of personal opinion and personal preference to the promotion of unity.

Using this definition, one recent example of tolerance at Skillman was our "Together We Worship" service a couple of weeks ago. We had a service focused on kids, with songs, a dog, and even communion geared towards children. While much of what was planned would not fall within the preference of most of the adults present, it was one of the most enthusiastically supported and participated in assemblies in recent memory.

Sadly, within this same recent timeframe we received a memo from one of the other congregations in town asking us to participate, financially and by lending our name, in an ad denouncing a decision by another of our local congregations. Regardless of one's opinion on the decision or the issue involved in the decision, the lack of tolerance exemplified here cannot contribute to the unity that Jesus prayed for.

Tolerance

During the month of September we have been discussing Tolerance in the Covenant class, using Romans 14 and 15 as the primary text. We began the discussion somewhat abstractly, talking about the differences in the history and contextual backgrounds of the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians in Rome and how that impacted their views on eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols. We looked at the apparent contradiction in what Paul instructed the Romans and what he told the church in Galatia - in Romans he seems to come down on the 'side' of the Jews, and in Galatians he sides with the Gentiles - and suggested a couple of principles that seem to be consistent across both letters.
The first principle seems to be to accommodate the outsider. In Rome, the Gentile Christians were the established or dominant group; in Galatia, the opposite is true. In both instances he criticizes the establishment for trying to force the outsider to conform to its brand of Christianity.
The second principle seems to be to develop a tolerance for differences in interpretation, opinion, and practice. Tolerance is a mindset to apply within the congregation and to the church at large; to interpersonal relationships and to citizenship within the larger community.
I will have quite a bit more related to this concept over the next few days, but I thought that this comic from Sunday's paper captured the essance - you can click on it to see a more readable version...

The Middle Wife

I am working on a series of posts on Tolerance and Unity, but in the meantime Barbara sent this to me and I couldn't resist sharing it....

The "Middle Wife" by an Anonymous 2nd grade teacher

I've been teaching now for about fifteen years. I have two kids myself, but the best birth story I know is the one I saw in my own second-grade classroom a few years back.

When I was a kid, I loved show-and-tell. So I always have a few sessions with my students. It helps them get over shyness and usually, show-and-tell is pretty tame. Kids bring in pet turtles, model airplanes, pictures of fish they catch, stuff like that. And I never, ever place any boundaries or limitations on them. If they want to lug it in to school and talk about it, they're welcome.

Well, one day this little girl, Erica, a very bright, very outgoing kid, takes her turn and waddles up to the front of the class with a pillow stuffed under her sweater. She holds up a snapshot of an infant. "This is Luke, my baby brother, and I'm going to tell you about his birthday."

"First, Mom and Dad made him as a symbol of their love, and then Dad put a seed in my Mom's stomach, and Luke grew in there. He ate for nine months through an umbrella cord."

She's standing there with her hands on the pillow, and I'm trying not to laugh and wishing I had my camcorder with me. The kids are watching her in amazement.

"Then, about two Saturdays ago, my Mom starts saying and going, 'Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh!' Erica puts a hand behind her back and groans. "She walked around the house for, like an hour, 'Oh, oh, oh!' Now this kid is doing a hysterical duck walk and groaning.

"My Dad called the middle wife. She delivers babies, but she doesn't have a sign on the car like the Domino's man.

They got my Mom to lie down in bed like this." Then Erica lies down with her back against the wall. "And then, pop! My Mom had this bag of water she kept in there in case he got thirsty, and it just blew up and spilled all over the bed, like psshhheew!" This kid has her legs spread with her little hands miming water flowing away. It was too much!

"Then the middle wife starts saying 'push, push,' and 'breathe, breathe. They started counting, but never even got past ten. Then, all of a sudden, out comes my brother. He was covered in yucky stuff that they all said it was from Mom's play-center, so there must be a lot of toys inside there."

Then Erica stood up, took a big theatrical bow and returned to her seat. I'm sure I applauded the loudest. Ever since then, when it's show-and-tell day, I bring my camcorder, just in case another "Middle Wife" comes along.

Unity

The task is not, in essence, the securing of uniformity, or cooperation, or Church reunion, or any of the external forms, through which nevertheless the unity may be manifested. Within the wide bounds of the Christian Church there is abundant scope for the multiplicity of races, languages, and social conditions; room also for separate organizations with different traditions of faith and order, and much diversity of operation. But there is no room for strife or hostility, for pride or self-assertion, for exclusiveness or unkind judgments, nor for that kind of independence which leads men to ignore their fellowship with the great company of believers, the communion of saints. These things are contrary to the revealed will of God, and should be made at once to cease. As these disappear, the outward manifestation of unity will come in such ways as the Spirit of God shall guide. ... G. T. Manley, Christian Unity [1945]

Jerry

Last Sunday morning I was sitting in the Covenant class when one of our ladies tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I could help a gentleman who was in the lobby. I walked out to the lobby and saw a guy sitting on the couch. He appeared to be around 40 years old, and was not dressed like most people at Skillman on a Sunday morning...

I sat down next to him, told him my name, and asked how I could help him. He said his name was Jerry and that he had a job at a laundromat a couple of miles away. He had ridden to Skillman on his bicycle. He was supposed to get a better job driving a delivery van for the company that owned the laundromat, but his wallet had been stolen and he needed some money to get his drivers license replaced.

The easy thing to do would have been to give him some cash and send him 'gratefully' on his way, but it so happened that I was not carrying any cash that day. I asked him what time he had to be at work on Monday. He said he was supposed to be there at 10, so I told him that if he would meet me back here at 8 o'clock Monday morning I would take him to get his drivers license before he had to go to work.

He said he would try, but could I give him some money for food, so I took him to the grocery store and bought a couple of bags of groceries. We got back to the church building just as class was letting out. He loaded his grocery sacks onto his bicycle, thanked me, and rode off, and I went in to church. Afterwards, I arranged with one of the ministers to take him and get his license if he showed up Monday morning.

Monday morning, no Jerry. But around 8:30 Wednesday morning I got a call from the church office that he had called to see if I could pick him up at the laundromat and take him to get his license. I actually had some unscheduled time that morning, so I went and picked him up and took him to Dallas City Hall to get his license. I asked him what ID he had so that he could get his license, and he didn't have any. He had lost his birth certificate some time ago, and his social security card was in his stolen wallet along with his license. He said that a police officer had told him that it wouldn't be a problem, because he was in the computer...

It was a problem. I got a glimpse of the frustration faced by people without the resources to navigate the systems of government regulations - regulations that are in place for the common good, but often significant barriers for the poor among us.

There was a short line at the drivers license window, but a large group of people who had been through the short line and were waiting to be called. When we got to the window, the lady asked Jerry for some identification, and he told her that the officer said he wouldn't need any because he was in the compter. She handed him a sheet of paper with a list of acceptable forms of identification and asked if he had any of those. He told her his wallet and IDs had been stolen and asked what was he supposed to do. Her response was "Come back when you have one of these on the sheet".

One of the forms of ID on the sheet was a birth certificate, and there is also a birth certificate office at City Hall, so we went there next to inquire about getting a copy of his birth certificate. The lady there said it would be no problem to get a copy as long as he had a drivers license or some other valid form of identification. He told her that he didn't have any, and she said that if he had a parent or sibling with ID that they could get a copy. He told her that it would be to hard for his mother to get to City Hall, and she gave him a form that his mother could send in by mail. He said that his mother could not afford the $22 fee and I told him that I would pay for it.

Jerry was still a bit frustrated, but out of excuses at this point. We took the form, and I took him back to the laundromat. I handed him the $22 to pay for the copy of his birth certificate, and told him that as soon as he got it to call me, and we would go and get his drivers license. He hasn't called yet, but I'm hoping that he will....

Coors Field vs Fenway

This morning as I was driving to work, one of the morning crew on the Ticket (sports radio station in Dallas) was describing his visit to Fenway park the previous week. I couldn't help but compare his experience at Fenway with our own experience at Coors Field in Denver last week. I've been to games at 1/2 dozen major league stadiums, and Fenway is on my list of places to visit, but so far, the closest I have been to one of the great ball parks was a snowy early March tour of Wrigley Field.

As the radio host was describing his experience at Fenway, it lived up to and even surpassed expectations. I can't really say the same about Coors Field...

The stadium is in a reviving area of downtown Denver, and it looks good in its setting. We spent our first night in Colorado in downtown Denver, and were within a free shuttle and a few blocks' walk of the stadium. Denver, while a mile above sea level, sits on the plains at the edge of the Rockies; it was 96 degrees the afternoon that we got there, but the Cubs were in town and we decided to go to the game.

Games in Colorado start at 6 pm, and having never been to the stadium before, I requested seats that were not directly in the sun. I was assured by the guy behind the window that our seats would get only indirect sun. We ended up sitting about 2/3 of the way down the right field line, facing directly into the sun, and just sat there sweating and downing bottles of water. The seats are angled slightly towards home plate, but if you sit back in your seat your line of sight reaches a point just beyond the pitchers mound. So we sat sweating and leaning forward craning our necks in an effort to see the whole field. The crowd was lethargic, the game presentation was bland, and there seemed to be more Cubs fans than Rockies fans. Overall, easily the least enjoyable major league game that I have been to, although we were treated to a very fine sunset as the sun finally sank behind the mountains in the background.

Rocky Mountain High

Just back from a restful week in Colorado. I had planned to go to Colorado since my Jr High days when I heard John Denver singing Rocky Mountain High every morning on the school bus. (AM radio stations in the 70's in Wheeling, WVa were somewhat predictable in their play lists) - I just never imagined that I would be nearly 50 before I actually got there. I had been to Colorado Springs and the Air Force Academy several summers ago when I was coaching Lauren's off-season basketball team, but I spent most of my time with basketball and chaperoning a dozen girls...


Barbara, Taylor, and I spent last week in Estes Park, at the edge of the Rocky Mountain National Park. We white-water rafted, drove some scenic routes, did some hiking - it does not take long to become breathless at that altitude - and Taylor and I rented ATVs one afternoon. We spent one day at the Planet Bluegrass Folks Festival in Lyons. While the high temperature in Dallas topped 105, we enjoyed highs in the low 80's and lows in the 50's. We also rested to the sound of the Fall River just below our deck, and caught up on some reading.

Ironically, coincidentally, or perhaps providentially, one of the books I was reading was Daryl Tippens' Pilgrim Heart. Two of the chapters are entitled Resting: The Day Sabbath Becomes Joy and Resting: More Blessings of the Sabbath. He speaks of the rhythm of creation, the rhythm of nature, and how they reflect the nature of the creator. He talks of rest, sabbath, as being an integral part of that rhythm, and focuses on God's resting on the 7th day, of David's solitude as a shepherd, and of Jesus routinely withdrawing from and then re-engaging the crowds.

Being made in the image of God, it is within our nature to need and to benefit from regular rest. Unfortunately that's counter to the busyness in our lives. While it is not pragmatic at this point in my life to spend much time in Colorado on a regular basis, it is imperative that I 'rest' regularly.

Examen

During the month of August we are meeting on Wednesday nights for a meal and a time of prayer. This evening we practiced an abreviated form of a practice called Examen. Generally attributed to Ignatius sometime in the early 16th century, Examen is a daily exercise that has been a regular practice of Jesuits ever since. The Examen is a methodical prayer designed to help you recognize and receive God’s presence and action in the routine of daily life.

In churches of Christ we have a long history of rejecting practices that originate from within other denominations, and particularly from within Catholicism. I'm becoming convinced that we have sometimes cut off our nose to spite our face. It does not necessarily imply agreement with theology to adapt practices that can be helpful in spiritual formation in either a corporate or an individual sense. The more I learn, the more I discover that I don't know...

American Catholic Update describes these five simple steps to the Examen:

Recall that you are in the presence of God.
We are always in the presence of God, but in prayer we place ourselves in God’s presence in an especially attentive way.

Look at your day with gratitude.
As you move in gratitude through the details of your day, remember that every single event has been God’s gift. As you take stock of what has been given you this day, take special care to notice what you received and what you gave. As you complete the review of your gifts and the particular gifts of this day, pause briefly to thank God for all these.

Ask help from the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit will help you understand the mystery of your human heart, and at this point you ask to learn more about your actions and motivations. This is not a “beat up on yourself” session, where you will grind at the core of your being in sadness over things you have done wrong. Rather, it is a gentle look with the Lord at how you have responded to God’s gifts.

Review your day.
Here you review your entire day, watching it like a little movie that replays in your mind. Be sure to notice the details, the context of what happened and how you acted. As you look through the day, notice especially your interior motives and feelings. Examine just how conscious you have been of God’s presence and actions in your life.

Reconcile and resolve
In the first and second steps, we ask the Spirit of God to guide us as we look at our day with gratitude. In the third and fourth steps we ask the Spirit of God to guide us as we review our actions. The final step, our heart-to-heart talk with Jesus, is the fruit of that repetition.

Tom Landry and Faith

Taylor and I are going to the Cowboys' first preseason game this week. I have not been to a Cowboys game since Jerry Jones bought the team, and Taylor has never been. Since he will be spending their last season at Texas Stadium in Heidelberg, this may be the last opportunity he has to attend a game at the stadium with the hole in the roof.

While I grew up far from Texas, I have been a Cowboys fan for as long as I can remember. I think it goes back to the very first time I became aware of a football game on television, and the Cowboys were playing the Redskins. In my young mind, the cowboys represented the "good guys", and I have followed them ever since.

I have long since abandoned the notion that the Cowboys are the "good guys", but there have been some truly good Cowboys, and the best was Tom Landry. He set an example for millions by living according to his faith. This is what he had to say about faith...

I realize that a lot of people think the idea of a "personal relationship" with God sounds disturbingly exclusive, some-how presumptive, and more than a little pious. I thought the same thing before I read what the Bible said and decided to become a Christian. According to the Bible, this idea of having a personal relationship with God isn’t at all presumptive. It was God’s idea. And it’s not at all exclusive. It’s available to anyone who accepts God’s offer. It’s that belief, that faith, more than anything else that enabled me to last 29 years on the sidelines of the Dallas Cowboys. It’s that faith that has allowed me to keep my perspective and not feel devastated or bitter about being fired. And it’s that faith that gives me hope for whatever the future holds for me . . . Landry: An Autobiography

Some Quotes on Prayer

Meanwhile, little people like you and me, if our prayers are sometimes granted, beyond all hope and probability, had better not draw hasty conclusions to our own advantage. If we were stronger, we might be less tenderly treated. If we were braver, we might be sent, with far less help, to defend far more desperate posts in the great battle. ... C. S. Lewis

Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us. It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God's voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him. ... William Barclay

Our ordinary views of prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer as a means for getting something for ourselves; the Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself....Is the Son of God praying in me, or am I dictating to Him?....Prayer is not simply getting things from God, that is a most initial form of prayer; prayer is getting into perfect communion with God. If the Son of God is formed in us by regeneration, He will press forward in front of our common sense and change our attitude to the things about which we pray. ... Oswald Chambers

Old Words to Think About

Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by these who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion....

The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. - Augustine

Some Gems in Blogland

I've been away from the blog for a few days and this evening as I was catching up on some of the blogs I regularly read, there were several that were powerful...

Larry James has a terrific story about being a neighbor...

Craig Jones is an old friend dating back to my freshman year at Harding. His wife Jan has cancer, and he sent this article by Tony Snow to David Underwood. It provides a tremendous perspective on life, death, and disease...

Brian Mashburn's most recent post contains a link to this thought-provoking article describing the current condition of the churches of Christ by Joe Beam...

Many of you are aware of the wreck a couple of months ago that took the life of Conner Brown and severely injured his sister Bailey Brown, two of the children of Tod and Lee Ann Brown. I knew that Tod was a minister on the staff of a church in Midland, but did not realize until some time later that Lee Ann was the daughter of John and Rosalyn Bailey and the sister of Steven Bailey - a family that I have been acquainted with since my first year in the classroom. The Browns' journal is heart-wrenching and encouraging - an honest account of their struggle and faithfulness as they attempt to pick up the pieces of their family.

Free Movie...

This Sunday night, The Skillman Church of Christ will host a free screening of the movie Sophie Scholl. The movie will be shown in the church’s sanctuary at 3014 Skillman from 5-7PM and following the showing of the movie the audience will be invited to participate in a discussion about the film that will end at 8 PM. We will serve refreshments during the discussion time.

The movie set in 1943 tells the true story of Sophie Scholl, who along with her brother, is a member of the White Rose, a non-violent anti-Nazi group. At great personal risk, she, her brother and their friends distribute literature challenging Hitler and the Nazi government. Eventually, the government arrests her and her brother and tries them for crimes against the state.

The film raises many important questions such as, what do we value the most in life? Can we stand on our convictions when everything and everyone else opposes them? When is civil disobedience appropriate?

If you have any questions call the church office at 214.823.2179

It's WHO You Know...

We were in Austin this weekend and visited the University Avenue church this morning. They are beginning a series on getting to know Jesus better. Mark Love (not The Mark Love of PMC) is one of their ministers and spoke this morning. He was describing a number of situations in his life where he had benefited - tickets to sporting events, cutting through red tape, etc - because he knew someone, and used that old phrase "it's not what you know, it's who you know".

The typical context for that phrase is often politics or business, or a combination of the two. It is sometimes used as sour grapes, but is often used in a fatalistic acknowledgement of reality. And in that context there may not be anywhere that it is more true than Austin, unless it's Washington...

But when it comes to our relationship with and standing before God, there is no truer statement - It really is WHO we know. And I think that the series at the University Avenue church is right on track. I believe we have settled way too often for the what we know - knowledge about the Father, about the Son, about the Spirit - and have been unable or unwilling to recognize that knowledge about is not the same as knowing God, knowing Jesus, knowing the Spirit. Brian Mashburn put it this way in a recent post, and I think he is right on target...

The great change in my life was the focus on depth, not breadth. I'm not interested in learning more stuff about the Bible as much as I am interesting in understanding and assimilating and becoming the stuff that I have already learned. I'm not as interested in more people being "in my church" as much as I am interested in the people "in my church" taking their next step into Christlikeness. I'm not as interested doing more stuff in my Christian service as I am in doing less stuff more deeply. I believe that the focus on depth can lead to breadth, if God deems it, but that the focus on breadth steals depth.

More on Missional Benevolence

In timely regard to the conversation and comments to this week's earlier post, the current issue of Leadership Journal includes Missions That Heal, an article by Joel Wickre that speaks directly to the concept of doing good with the best of intentions. Here are the first few paragraphs...

In my own attempt to deal with poverty in a Christlike way, the most profound lesson I've learned is also the most obvious: Poor people are people. Those who live and die in want of basic needs are just as smart, beautiful, creative, motivated, holy, and wise as you and I. They are also just as dumb, ugly, dull, lazy, sinful, and foolish as you and I. Living in Nicaragua, Mexico, and more recently Kenya alongside people in poverty, I've seen how our inability to identify with people across the wealth divide can subvert our good intentions in missions, hurting the people we're trying to love.

Examining our blindness to the humanity and volition of poor people would reveal a deeper issue underlying poverty: broken fellowship. We show our alienation from God by toxic relationships with each other, inequality, and poverty on a local and global scale. Fellowship among believers is at the heart of God's vision of redemption, alongside his desire for us to have individual relationships with him.

Maintaining healthy relationships across the wealth divide, however, is not easy. Lack of awareness of the enormous power differential between the "servants" and the "served" has led countless well-meaning mission groups to disempower poor communities. People who are treated as helpless come to hold a lesser view of themselves. People who believe they are "blessed to be a blessing" and in no need themselves come to a lesser view of the people they serve. These victim and savior complexes create a co-dependency that perpetuates the problems of poverty and far outweighs any temporary relief such missions provide.

Reasons For Hope

A couple of significant signs of hope for Skillman's future...

Sunday morning James and some of the youth gave a brief report on their recent trip to New Orleans. That our kids and sponsors have been willing the last 2 summers to spend a week in the 9th Ward serving in dirty, humid, almost unfathomable conditions is in itself a good thing. But the sign of hope is in what James said at the conclusion of the report - "As we did in New Orleans, let us do in Dallas"....

The Friends (Young Adults) class has been exploring what it means to be missional in the community, and some have begun a practice of meeting an hour early each Sunday morning to pray for Skillman's efforts in this area. Below is a copy of the email reminder sent out today...

Hey guys,Just a reminder - to those of you interested in lifting up Skillman in prayer as we seek God for direction for our church and community, we will be meeting at 8:00 am before church every Sunday in the Prayer Room. (The Prayer Room is a room in the back and to the right of the auditorium if you are standing on stage looking at pews.)Hope to see you all there!
Bethany

"Prayer and meditation have an important part to play in opening up new ways and new horizons. If your prayer is the expression of a deep and grace-inspired desire for newness of life—and not the mere blind attachment to what has always been familiar and "safe"—God will act in us and through us to renew the Church by preparing, in prayer, what we cannot yet imagine or understand. In this way our prayer and faith today will be oriented toward the future which we ourselves may never see fully realized on earth."- Thomas Merton

Missional Benevolence?

Underlying many of our conversations at Skillman about becoming missional is a consistently voiced thought that the purpose of our participation in the Partnership for Missional Church is to attract more people and increase our numbers. I've not been articulate enough to bring about an understanding that becoming missional is about fulfilling the mission that Jesus gave us, that attracting new members may be a by-product but is not the goal. Transformed lives is the goal...

A recent conversation about reviving our Benevolence Program illustrates. A comment was made that we need to revive our food pantry because we have people who want to have a food pantry and who enjoy working in it. We need to provide that opportunity for them so we can retain them. Also, if people see that we have a benevolence program, they will find that attractive and want to be a part of it.

We may need to revive the food pantry, or we may not. If we do, it should be in partnership with our community to address a need in our community - not to provide a program to make our members happy or to be attractive to the neighborhood. The missional mindset has not yet become the norm...

The Jesus Story

From the first century to the twenty-first century, stories have been a God-ordained medium for communicating truth. We would have been wiser to see the whole of Scripture as narrative carrying a single story of divine love, intervention, and redemptive work than as a law book. We would have grasped the gospel more naturally and communicated it more effectively.

More and more, I am reading and writing and telling The Jesus Story without syllogisms. Without argument. Without nuanced theology. Without mental gymnastics. It is dawning on me that a clear, compelling account of the heart, life, and words of Jesus creates a singular passion. People ache to get into the picture with him. - Rubel Shelley

Screwtape Redux

In C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, a high-ranking official in the beaurocracy of Hell named Screwtape gives his nephew Wormwood detailed advice on various methods of undermining the faith of Christians, interspersed with observations on human nature and Christian doctrine. Patrick Mead has written a contemporary letter from Screwtape and posted it on his blog. Here is a sampling of it...

Full churches can mean that we are winning! If those churches are full of people there for the health, wealth, family benefits, friendship, minister, programs, worship… we win. Those kind of believers want the crown without the cross, not realizing that that isn’t the way it works.
There IS a church member who is dangerous to us. That is the one who is there because of their love for Jesus.

You can read the entire letter here.

Quote for the Day

We need to forget the imaginary Christ who has been ours too long and to rediscover the real Christ, the Christ of the prophets and the martyrs and the confessors, the Christ who is not only the lover of souls but also master, a monarch with demands to make in industry, in finance, in education, in the arts, in marriage, in the home; the Christ who is teacher of a social ideology which has eternal validity; the Christ who cries aloud with convincing force, "He who would save his life will lose it; only he who is willing to lose his life, can find it."... Bernard Iddings Bell

The Priority of God

We have adopted a new committee structure at Skillman - from my perspective it is an effort to move administrative tasks off the Elders' agenda to allow us to focus on more important things a la Acts 6. It will likely take some time and some adjustment, but there is hope...

One of the committees I am assigned to is the Worship Committee. As I run across articles and other resources to share with the committee, I will post some excerpts here. The following is the final paragraph from a 1998 article in Worship Leader...

The great need of the church today is neither to cling to the old or to create the new forms and formats. Our greatest need today is to recover the priority of God in our worship and in the whole of life. The wineskin issues are totally secondary to the more pressing need for the new wine of the Spirit. The crisis in worship today is not a crisis of form but of spirituality. When worship renewal comes, the congregation pursues God Himself as its ultimate objective. God Himself is treasured above any experience, any feeling or any result of worship. Love to God will be the dominant affection expressed through the various forms of worship. Fresh commitment to God is the common response of the entire worshiping community. Worship becomes an end in itself rather than the means to some other end. Worship will be experienced as a relationship with God being dynamically acted out rather than merely being a function of the church. - Bruce H. Leafblad, Worship 101: Recovering the Priority of God

Barbara Brown Taylor on Leaving Church...

One of the writers that Dwight occasionally quotes from is Barbara Brown Taylor . The following is from her latest book Leaving Church: A Memoir of Faith...

"Gradually I remembered what I had known all along, which is that church is not a stopping place but a starting place for discerning God's presence in this world. By offering people a place where they engage the steady practice of listening to divine words and celebrating divine sacraments, church can help people gain a feel for how God shows up--not only in Holy Bibles and Holy Communion but also in near neighbors, mysterious strangers, sliced bread, and grocery store wine. That way, when they leave church, they no more leave God than God leaves them."

God Bless America

The World We Live In

If there was a village of 100 people representing the earth's more than 6 billion people, in the existing human ratios as they are in the world today, it would look something like the following:

61 would be from Asia

13 would be from Africa

12 would be from Europe

9 would be from Latin America & the Caribbean

5 would be from North America

52 would be female
48 would be male

70 would be non-white
30 would be white

31 would be Christian
21 would be Muslim
14 would be Hindu
6 would be Buddhist
12 would believe in other religions
16 would not be religious or identify themselvesas being aligned with a particular faith

82 would be able to read and write

18 would not

1 would have a college education

1 would own a computer

6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.

80 would live in substandard housing
70 would be unable to read
50 would suffer from malnutrition

1 would be near death; 1 would be near birth

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I woke up this morning with more health than illness...I am more blessed than the million who will not survive this week.

I have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation...I am more blessed than 500 million people in the world.

I can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death...I am more blessed than three billion people in the world.

I have food in the refrigerator, clothes on my back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep...I am richer than 75% of this world.

I have been given much; much is expected of me.

Authentic Worship

I thought this excerpt on worship from Leadership Journal was worth passing on...

Authenticity and integrity in worship means expressing both lament and praise. Each element completes the other. Without lament, praise is little more than shallow sentimentality and a denial of life's struggles and sin. Without praise, lament is a denial of hope and grace, both of which are central to our life of faith and to God's promises.

To value one over the other is like suggesting that breathing in is more important than breathing out.

This is not only an issue of authenticity and integrity. It cuts to the heart of hospitality and pastoral sensitivity. For those coming to a worship service immersed in pain, celebratory praise takes on a mocking tone that excludes them. They are unable to join honestly in these choruses.

By incorporating expressions of sorrow, pain, and grief into our worship, as the psalms do, the hurting are ushered into God's presence with honesty. At the same time, the rest of the congregation is reminded of the suffering community gathered in their midst. They are invited to weep with those who are weeping. By honoring their pain, we acknowledge those who are suffering and affirm them in their grief.

Yet worship is not complete without turning to praise. When pain has been acknowledged, those who suffer are invited beyond their pain to consider God's faithfulness in the midst of suffering and even to rejoice with those who are rejoicing.

I Got Mine - There's Not Enough For You...

An article in the Morning News this week described the plight of two recent college graduates who are unable to legally work in the U.S. because their parents brought them across the border as infants without going through the legal immigration process. The families have been hard-working, productive members of their respective communities for twenty years. This is the only home these two girls have ever known. They have excelled in the classroom and been model student/citizens all the way from kindergarten through graduation from college. Both have teaching degrees in subject areas that are in high demand, but neither are eligible to be hired by any public school system.

Since the article ran, there have been numerous letters to the editor, almost all with a similar theme - let them go back to their own country and teach. There is a profound scarcity mentality reflected in most comments; that there is not enough America to share, and that as more immigrants come there less there is for us. The prevailing sentiment seems to be 'we got here first, we get to make the rules.'

I don't begin to claim to be able to understand, much less propose a solution for all of the issues involved with immigration and protecting our borders, but most of what I read in these letters has very little to do with those real issues and very much to do with not wanting to provide a fair opportunity to those who are different. I don't see anything that resembles these words, found at the base of the Statue of Liberty:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Learning to Partner

One of the adaptive challenges we are recognizing in the PMC project is getting to know and serve our community. This excerpt from a Leadership Journal article offers some insight into some of the learnings of a small historic church in Virginia...

As people outside our church realized we were really interested in the community, they opened up to us, and viewed us in a different light. An elementary school teacher has visited our church several times. She is involved in the music program and told me recently, "You know, attending your church isn't as bad as I thought it would be."

We laughed at her comment, but both of us understood what she meant: folks were seeing our church with new eyes. We were building bridges.

Fourth, we learned that when you partner with others, you give up some control. You collaborate. We collaborated with teachers, local politicians, business leaders, and artists as equal partners.

A media representative said to me one day, "It's good to see a church involved with real life." An African-American pastor expressed it this way: "Before," she said, "there were us things and them things. This is the first time we have worked together on our thing."

Finally, we had to drop our hidden agendas. We weren't doing good in our community only to get people to join our church. True, our worship attendance is up about 20 percent. New members have joined, and we have first-time visitors almost every Sunday. Not all are a result of our partnerships, but some come because they have seen what we are doing.

Wright and Newton

"The early Christians, like their Jewish contemporaries, saw heaven and earth as the overlapping and interlocking spheres of God’s good creation, with the point being that heaven is the control room from which earth is run. To say that Jesus is now in heaven is to say three things. First, that he is present with his people everywhere, no longer confined to one space-time location within earth, but certainly not absent. Second, that he is now the managing director of this strange show called ‘earth’, though like many incoming chief executives he has quite a lot to do to sort it out and turn it around. Third, that he will one day bring heaven and earth together as one, becoming therefore personally present to us once more within God’s new creation. The Bible doesn’t say much about our going to heaven. It says a lot about heaven, and particularly heaven’s chief inhabitant, coming back to earth." -- N.T. Wright

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I am not what I ought to be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what I hope to be. But still, I am not what I used to be. And by the grace of God, I am what I am. ... John Newton

Barclay on the Gospels...

The Gospels are not primarily historical documents. They are not intended to be regarded as biographies of Jesus. They are in fact the preaching material of the early church . . . They are attempts to show the mind and heart and the character of Jesus, and they make this attempt, not simply as a matter of interest, and not simply as a contribution to history, but so that those who read may see the mind of God in Jesus. The Gospels are not simply descriptions of Jesus -- they are invitations to believe in him as the Son of God.
WILLIAM BARCLAY: Introducing the Bible

Random Thoughts and Quotes

The loving service which God sends His people into the world to render includes both evangelism and social action, for each is in itself an authentic expression of love, and neither needs the other to justify it. ... John R. W. Stott
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There are three types of drivers out there - the idiots, the maniacs, and me. The ones who drive slowly along, "deliberately" hindering me on my important journey - those are the idiots; The ones who speed by me, disregarding my superb judgement about what is safe and my proper respect to 10 miles per hour above the speed limit - those are the maniacs; and then there is me. Unfortunately, I often view fellow travelers on the road of life the same way...

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50% of all teachers leave the profession within the first three years. - Opening screen from the terrific movie Chalk, a mockumentary following 3 teachers and a first-year assistant principal through the course of a school year. I will be recommending that this be required viewing for all of our alternative certification candidates...

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We have forgotten the gracious hand which has preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving Grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us. ... Abraham Lincoln

Missional: Possible

The winter edition of Leadership Journal had a series of articles under the heading Going Missional. One of those, Missional Possible: Steps to Transform from a Consumer Church into a Missional Church, was distributed to the elders from each congregation at last week's PMC cluster meeting to take home, read, and discuss as a group. We haven't met to discuss it yet, but I look forward to the conversation.

This 2-page article gives one of the clearest definitions of missional that I have read. I'll let it speak for itself...

Missio Dei stems from the Triune God: the Father sends the Son, the Father and the Son send the Spirit, and the Father and Son and the Spirit send the church into the world...

A missional church lives out the church's three-dimensional calling: to be upwardly focused on God in worship that is passionate; to be inwardly focused on community among believers that is demonstrated in relationships of love and compassion; and to be outwardly focused on a world that does not yet know God...

Two main distractions often block a congregation's missional expression. The first is Self-Preservation...the church began to exist for the sake of the church...the point is not whether we can build churches that last, but whether churches can touch the world with God's love...

The other primary distraction is Church Growth. When the emphasis is on bringing the world to the church, the church's mission of going to the world can get lost...

Attracting people to the church is not necessarily wrong. In fact, it's important not to view missional as the opposite of attractional...the problem arises when attracting people becomes the mission...

Becoming missional means redirecting resources toward the world. This means that church leaders take a hard look at how money, time, and energy are allocated. Is it for the sole benefit of those in the church, or invested in God's mission to the world?

The Wisdom of Crowds

This month's book for Central Dallas Ministries' Urban Engagement Book Club was James Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds. I haven't quite finished it yet, but he makes a compelling argument that collectively, we are smarter than any of us individually. Like much of what I read these days, I see implications for a missional church.

He begins with a historical illustration from a 19th century county fair in England. 800 people entered a contest to guess what the weight of an ox would be when it was butchered. While some of the contestants were familiar with livestock, most were essentially ignorant. When all of the guesses were averaged together, the collective guess was that the ox would weight 1197 lbs. It's actual weight was 1198 lbs. None of the individual guesses were close.

He gives examples from a variety of fields, including the stock market, the gaming industry, google, and politics, and concludes that, given the proper conditions, the collective wisdom can generally be counted on to be better than that of individuals. Those conditions include diversity, independence, and decentralization.

The first year of the Partnership for Missional Church process is spent in learning to listen. Another way of saying that is that we have been learning to practice collective discernment. This book seems to underscore the value in the process, if the group has enough diversity and independence.

A couple of specific passages caught my attention. The first, in an illustration on the ignorance of voters (the context is that despite individual ignorance, democracy works exveptionally well)...

Polls show that Americans think that the United States spends 24% of its annual budget on foreign aid. The reality is that it spends less than 1%. (p. 266)

The second passage that caught my attention explains a little bit why diversity is critical...

If you think about intelligence as a kind of toolbox of skills, the list of skills that are the "best" is relatively small, so that people who have them tend to be alike. This is normally a good thing, but it means that as a whole the group knows less than it otherwise might. Adding a few people who know less, but have different skills, actually improves the performance of the group. (p. 30)

Missional Theology of the Blues Brothers

In the movie The Blues Brothers, Elwood proclaimed throughout the movie in his exaggerated Chicago accent, "We're on a mission from God." Jake and Elwood were on a mission to raise enough money to save the orphanage where they had grown up. Through all their escapades, as they reunited the members of their band, as they evaded police, klansmen, and women scorned, as they performed on stage, they continually came back to "We're on a mission from God."

One might not exactly agree with their methodology, and one might even question whether their sense of mission was of God (although I seem to recall James saying something about caring for widows and orphans), but one would have a hard time denying that they remained motivated by their mission.

There is a lesson there for us as we seek to become missional. If we become convinced and convicted that we are on a mission from God, we might take a few risks and we might step outside our comfort zones. That may be what a missional church is - one who says, "We're on a mission from God."

Missional Reflections

Random, possibly related thoughts on PMC and evangelism....

In 1900, 80 percent of the world's Christians lived in Europe and North America. Today, more than 60 percent of the world's Christians live outside those lands. Patrick Mead recently used a hyphothetical illustration of a Yugoslavian goatherd who came across a Bible and read it with no prior exposure to religion of any kind, and asked whether some of the issues that have historically divided us would even occur to the goatherd. As more and more people from other parts of the world, particular the southern hemisphere - Africa, India, Asia - are exposed to the Bible the illustration becomes less hypothetical and more reflective of reality. If we are willing to listen, hearing a fresh perspective can be a healthy thing....

One of the findings from the interview process of the Discovery phase was that among all the churches in our cluster fewer than 5% of the interviewees used God as the subject in a sentance with an active verb. Pat Kiefert described this as functional athieism. While I'm not convinced that description actually applies to 95% of the members of our congregations, I'm also not convinced that it doesn't apply to a sizeable number. To be a Christian means far more than merely to believe in God—as if the Christian faith were reducible to a system of beliefs—it means to be united with Jesus in and through the Holy Spirit, and to live a life that reflects his image....

Speaking of belief, Larry James recounted in a recent post an occasion while he was running with a friend and they encountered a homeless man and stopped to talk with him...

As we finished our run, Dan said, "I've noticed that you never 'hammer' people with the Jesus speech. You don't lead with 'Do you believe in Jesus?'"Reflecting on his comment as we continued our run, it hit me, in spite of my oxygen deprivation, that the most important question is not, "Does John believe in Jesus?" The real question is, "Does Larry believe in Jesus?"

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Last weekend one of the ministers at a congregation in Midland was returning from a wedding in the Dallas area with his family. His 16 year old son was driving and fell asleep; their suburban rolled, their 13 year old son was killed and their 18 year old daughter was seriously injured. In addition to praying for this family, and especially for their 16 year old, read this post by Brian Mashburn.

Hip Hop and LeBron

Barbara and I usually attempt to see the movies each year that receive Oscar nominations for Best Picture along with at least some of the ones with actors/actresses who are nominated. One of those that we did not get around to this past year was Blood Diamond. A few days ago Taylor rented it, and he and I watched it one night. There were a few themes that ran through the movie - the self-centered mercenary who in the end sacrificed himself for a friend; the father desperate to reunite and save his family; the oppressive violence wielded by the parties in power; the desperation of African refugees trying to escape unthinkable violence and violation.

But the thing that caught my attention more than anything was the Hip-Hop music that was constantly present among among the young men and boys who were taken from there families, and forced to either become soldiers or die a torturous death. Through the course of the movie they transformed into the same violent bullies that they had been abducted by, and a constant in almost all of their scenes was loud Hip-Hop music.

I have fairly eclectic tastes in the music that I enjoy listening to, but have to admit that from a personal enjoyment perspective, Hip-Hop is just not real high on my list. And I have a real problem with the violence and degradation towards women and others that exists in some of the gangsta lyrics. But, I also have an admiration for the art form, and even more so after reading this article in National Geographic that Larry James referenced in a recent post.

My initial assumption while watching the movie was that the Hip-Hop had been imported from America, but realize after reading the article that the music may have been locally produced. It is a style that is pervasive around the world, and is a language of a culture or cultures that I might understand better if I didn't automatically tune it out.

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As I write this I am witnessing one of the most incredible individual performances in NBA playoff history. LeBron James received quite a bit of criticism for not making a spectacular play at the end of both games 1 and 2 of the series between Cleveland and Detroit. Detroit won both of those games by 2 points, and in both games, LeBron had a final opportunity to score but did not. Tonight he has just taken the ball forcefully and definitively to the hole for dunks twice within the last 40 seconds of the game and has gotten his team to overtime. He has scored all of his teams points through the first overtime period and is carrying them through the second as well....

He just took the ball to the hole again for a layup with 2 seconds left to win game five for the Cavaliers. Nearly fifty points for the night, including the last 25 points consecutively for his team, as he willed them to a win. I don't believe that even his will and talent will be enough to overcome San Antonio in the finals, but tonight was a performance that will not be soon forgotten.

Gasoline - A Little Perspective

Like most people with email accounts, I occasionally get forwarded emails from friends, relatives, and/or complete strangers. Depending on the source I may or may not read them, but I never forward them on. I am making a semi-exception by posting this one because 1) it came from my parents, and 2) I just spent $75 filling up my tank. $3 per gallon gas has me seriously considering getting rid of my 11 year old, trouble-free, very comfortable, and long ago paid for Tahoe and replacing it with something more fuel efficient. One side of me says that I can buy an awful lot of gas for the cost of payments on a new vehicle...

At any rate, all of these examples do NOT imply that gasoline is cheap...

Compared with Gasoline......
Lipton Ice Tea 16 oz $1.19.....$9.52 per gallon
Diet Snapple 16 oz $1.29.....$10.32 per gallon
Gatorade 20 oz $1.59 .... $10.17 per gallon
Ocean Spray 16 oz $1.25 .... $10.00 per gallon
Brake Fluid 12 oz $3.15 .... $33.60 per gallon
Scope 1.5 oz $0.99 .... $84.48 per gallon
Vick's Nyquil 6 oz $8.35 .... $178.13 per gallon
Pepto Bismol 4 oz $3.85 .... $123.20 per gallon
Whiteout 7 oz $1.39 .... $2542 per gallon

And this is the REAL KICKER...Evian water 9 oz $1.49....$21.19 per gallon!
$21.19 for WATER And the buyers don't even know the source. (Evian spelled backwards is Naive.)

Memorial Day

Proverbs...and Joe Paterno

Reading through Proverbs in Eugene Peterson's The Message, I was struck by the way he worded some that I've read numerous times before...

Start with God - the first step in learning is bowing down to God; only fools thumb their noses at such wisdom and learning. 1:7

So - join the company of good men and women, keep your feet on the tried and true paths. It's the men who walk straight who will settle this land, the women with integrity who will last here. The corrupt will lose their lives, the dishonest will be gone for good. 2:20-22

Never walk away from someone who deserves help; your hand is God's hand for that person. Don't tell your neighbor, "Maybe some other time," or "Try me tomorrow," when the money's right there in your pocket. Don't figure out ways of taking advantage of your neighbor when he's sitting there trusting and unsuspecting. 3:27-29

Keep vigilant watch over your heart, that's where life starts. Don't talk out of both sides of your mouth; avoid careless banter, white lies, and gossip. 4:23-24

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I have long been an admirer of Joe Paterno and the Penn State football program. It seems entirely appropriate to me, in a post on proverbs, to include a link to this article about Paterno. There is a good side to college athletics...

Singing: The Way to Heaven's Door

One of the books in my stack to get to is Darryl Tippens' book on spiritual formation, Pilgrim Heart. The 12th chapter addresses singing, and was distributed in booklet form at the Pepperdine lectureship. Here are a couple of excerpts to ponder...

Christian hymns invite us to delight in God's presence, not merely think about him. Music awakens us to God's matchless power, beauty, and transcendence – his sheer otherness. Music can simultaneously make us feel God's grandeur and our smallness compared to him. This is why, whenever a worshiper approaches God – as seen in Isaiah 6:1-5 or throughout the Book of Revelation – the worshiper invariably resorts to symbolic language, image, and song to describe the uncanny experience. These are the "tools" of the worshiper to suggest the unsearchable, ineffable nature of God. "O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!" (Romans 11:33). p147

It is possible that the quest for the ideal hymn perfectly performed could obscure the goal of meeting God in worship. George Ives was a church musician and the father of the great American composer Charles Ives. The father taught his son to respect the power of vernacular music. Concerning a stone-mason who sang irritatingly off key, the father instructed Charles: Watch him closely and reverently, look into his face and hear the music of the ages. Don't pay too much attention to the sounds–for if you do, you may miss the music. You won't get a wild, heroic ride to heaven on pretty little sounds.

In the so-called "worship wars" too many people, trapped in futile debates about the "pretty little sounds," have sadly missed "the wild, heroic ride to heaven." If we would be but more patient and flexible, recognizing that our singing is our gift to God (and therefore not primarily about our tastes or what we like), then it would matter less whether the song selection matches our personal preferences. Christian music is first and foremost a simultaneous offering of our voices to God, a receiving of God's word to us, and a statement of our faith proffered to the world. If we must err in one direction, a missional attitude is prudent. In the spirit of Luther we should advocate music that wins the hearts of the young and the untaught. p154

60 Minutes Segment on Homeless Patients

I'm passing this post along to you at Larry James' request...

Plan now to tune in to 60 MINUTES tomorrow evening on CBS televison. A segment of the program is entitled "Dumped on Skid Row."

Here is an advance publicity piece that we received from CBS television describing the segment:

Are some Los Angeles hospitals simply throwing homeless patients out on the street after discharging them, literally dumping them on Skid Row --even if they come from other places in Los Angeles and are in no condition to fend for themselves?

While there have been allegations of hospital dumping for years, people only started paying attention recently, after several shelters installed special cameras on the street to try to capture the practice.

Anderson Cooper’s investigation will air this Sunday, May 20, on 60 MINUTES (7PM ET/PT on CBS).

For more details you can check out the CBS News website at:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1998/07/08/60minutes/main13502.shtml.

If you have any further questions, please contact Robin Sanders at sandersr@cbsnews.com.

I continue to be amazed at just how expendible the poor have become in this country.

I hope you'll watch the report.


Please pass this post on to your friends, family and associates.

More Missional Vision...

The remainder of Edward Fudge's comment on missional vision...

In an "attractional" church, success is usually measured by the number of people in attendance, the size of the offering and (using those calculators) the growth of the institution itself. In a "missional" church, success will not be measured by counting heads or dollars but by faithfulness to God's mission, deepening faith and the development of Christ-like disciples. Obviously these intangible indicators are much harder to assess than those borrowed from the business world. That does not bother missional people, however, because their focus is not on the institutional church to begin with. It is rather on the kingdom and mission of God.

Missional people understand that the church is called to be an expression of God's kingdom during the interim between Christ's first coming and his final appearing. God has planted the church in the world as a model community, an advance demonstration of the redeemed society of the new heavens and earth to come. But they understand that even at its best the church is always a flawed and incomplete expression of God's kingdom. They confess that sometimes the church scarcely resembles God's kingdom at all. To the extent that the church does express God's kingdom now, its presence in this world is a sign of God's kingdom that has come and is yet to come. And to the extent the church aligns itself with the mission of God, it is also an agent of God's kingdom to which that mission is surely leading.

This vision of a missional church is old truth in new clothes. It is the vision of discipleship we hear in all the parables and teachings of Jesus. It is the sort of Christianity we discover throughout the Book of Acts, the kind of church the Epistles all call us to become. Consider, for example, the following missional goals which in reality are New Testament values: * Using God's mission as the standard for determining priorities and allocating resources (Matt. 6:33; 2 Cor. 8:1-5; 9:8-15). * Measuring success by sacrifice and self-giving (Mark 12:41-44). * Placing kingdom concerns ahead of any particular congregation or denomination (Acts 13:1-3). * Expecting believers to meet high standards (Rom. 12:1-2; Col. 1:28). * Participatory worship meetings open to the fresh leading of the Spirit (1 Cor. 14:26). * Learning truth to obey it and not merely to know it (Eph. 4:20-24; 1 Tim. 1:5-7). * Every believer a missionary on God's mission (Phil. 2:13; Eph. 2:10). * Being honest, authentic and real (1 Thes. 2:3-10; Eph. 4:25). * Changing the world in keeping with principles of God's kingdom (Titus 2:11-14; 3:8). The list could go on and on.

Those who wish to be missional people, God's fellow-workers on behalf of his kingdom, must cultivate a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as living members of his spiritual body the church. We must become a people of prayer, a people fed by the Word, a people totally dependent on God and not on ourselves, a people guided and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Such a prescription holds little attraction to a fleshly-oriented, self-centered or worldly-minded church. On the other hand, nothing less than this prescription will enable us effectively to become God's fellow-workers through whom his mission is carried out in this world.
__________________
Copyright 2007 by Edward Fudge. Permission hereby granted to reprint this gracEmail in its entirety without change, with credit given and not for financial profit.

Division

This from Patrick Mead's Tentpegs - you can read the entire post here...


...Pretend with me for a moment. Pretend that you are a goat herder in Yugoslavia (that’s right. You are so far off the beaten track that you don’t even know there isn’t a Yugoslavia anymore). A Bible falls out of the sky right in front of you, in your language. Let’s stretch this a bit and assume you are literate, so you sit and read the thing — perhaps several times. While these questions are primarily directed at my own religious tribe, I think we could come up with some interesting questions for a variety of religions.

1. Would you come up with the idea that the Lord’s Supper was commanded once a week, day, month or year? Would you assume the elements are holy and shouldn’t be touched except by a priest? Would you assume that it was all right to fight the other goat herders about this?

2. Would you assume that instrumental music was wrong? Would you assume that God only liked certain kinds of music? Would you think God cared whether the words were memorized, chanted, read from a book, or projected on a screen, downloaded to an iPod…..?

3. Would you assume that you needed to build a building and start Women’s Day programs, Senior Suppers, Youth Pizza Night…?

4. When you told others about what you’d read, would you insist that they dress up first? And sit in rows facing you while remaining silent?

This list could go on and on and the answer would always be the same: no. Then why are all of these — and hundreds more — issues that cause people to leave churches, call for debates, proclaim this person or that congregation out of fellowship, and enforce that division by fiat, shunning, papers, and seminars?...

A Missional Vision

The following is the second of a multipart gracemail from Edward Fudge.

THE 'MISSIONAL' VISION:Old Truths in New Clothes (2)

If the church is to have a future in the countries that once composed "Christendom," missional church advocates tell us, we who constitute the church must undergo what the Apostle Paul calls a "renewal of the mind." That means that we must re-imagine the ideal which God calls the church to become. We must rethink the church's character and reformulate its purpose and goals. This call to think in a new way does not suggest that we think other than biblically about what it means to be the church. It means that we return to a biblical way of thinking, a way of thinking that changed considerably after Constantine and Theodosius changed the church from a radical and persecuted counter-culture to the official institutional religious establishment of the Roman Empire.

The very word "missional" is crucial to this new understanding in several respects. It reminds us that Christian "mission" is not something for special people who go overseas to foreign lands. It is the work of every Christian wherever each one already lives. It says that the church is not intended to be a comfortable religious "club" for which we occasionally recruit new members. It is rather a group of people who are themselves called and assigned a mission by God. The adjective "missional" sometimes stands in to "attractional" -- a word that describes the kind of church with which we already are most familiar.

The "attractional" church expects to fulfil its mission by attracting outsiders to special events at the church building. The "missional" church will emphasize meeting people where they normally live and work and play. Meeting people this way is not merely social. It is purposeful, a way for us to join in God's own mission. This is how we form genuine human relationships that bridge the worlds of faith and unbelief. This is "incarnational" Christianity, meaning that it requires us to get involved as real people with real people -- and not just people like us -- even when that is hard, tough and dirty.

Poverty Simulation

During the week before our winter break we at Region 10 have very little direct interaction with our school districts. During that week each year the 150+ professional staff in the Division of Instruction participate together in 2 days of professional development. This year one of those days was spent in a poverty simulation exercise.

Nearly 1 of every 4 kids enrolled in Texas schools lives in poverty; that percentage is even higher in urban areas. The poverty simulation was designed to build better understanding of the issuses faced by the families of these students, and of the systemic forces that combine to place formidable obstacles in their paths to success in school.

Several staff members were assigned roles in the various institutions within the community: a hospital - the primary employer, a bank, a check cashing store, a grocery store, a pawn shop, a convenience store, a school, a social services agency, a landlord, etc. As they entered the room, everyone else was given a card with the name, age, and gender of the character they would play and assigned to a table along with the rest of the members of his or her 'family'. At the table was an envelope with all the details about the family and its situation, along with various resources that the family had accumulated.

The objective for each 'family' in the simulation was to survive for a month - the simulation consisted of four 25-minute 'weeks', with a 5-minute 'weekend'. During the course of the 'month' the family faced the issues that the poor deal with on a regular basis - low-wage jobs/unemployment; inflated costs for food, accessing cash, and transportation; lack of health care; child care; shelter; plus those unexpected things that seem to occur on a regular basis.

I will talk about my experience in the simulation in another post, but for now I will mention a couple of observations from the simulation.

The first is that it costs more to live when you are poor. When your only viable food options are convenience stores and fast foods, the purchasing cost is higher and the health cost is higher. When you don't have enough money to meet the minimum requirements for a bank account, you either pay higher fees to the bank or you are forced to use check-cashing stores or payday loan services where the fees are usurious. When you can't afford reliable transportation your job options are limited to those locations served by public transportation. When you work in a low-paying job the chances are great that you don't have health insurance provided; in turn, it cost more to access the health care system for routine or emergency care because you bear the entire cost rather than a co-pay. The list goes on...see this chart in Business Week for more examples.

The second is that when you are poor it requires a tremendous amount of energy and resilience just to survive, let alone try to improve your station. The obstables are great and the resources few. And just when you think you are beginning to make a little progress, some unforeseen expense comes along to put you further in the hole. There are few, if any safety nets, and sometimes there is no amount of hard work and determination that is enough to maintain your situation, let alone improve it.

A third observation is that poverty is a self-perpetuating cycle. Let me give one small example from my own simulation. Keep in mind that I am well-educated and well-intentioned, and am well aware of the role that fathers have instilling values and expectations in their children. In the simulation I was the father of 3 children - the oldest was a school aged daughter who wanted me to help with homework and excitedly wanted to show me what she had done in school. I was so concerned with trying to keep a roof over our heads that I did not have the time to interact with her - I did not ignore her as part of my role assignment, it was the natural condition in which I found myself. Think about the implications of how that plays out over and over in the real world of poverty...

As Far as the East is From the West

The LORD is merciful and gracious; he is slow to get angry and full of unfailing love.
He will not constantly accuse us, nor remain angry forever.
He has not punished us for all our sins, nor does he deal with us as we deserve.
For his unfailing love toward those who fear him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.
He has removed our rebellious acts as far away from us as the east is from the west. Psalm 103:8-13

God has this bountiful feast prepared; the table is set, the food is wonderful, and he longs for us to sit at his table and savor the banquet. But there is a problem. The gulf that divides us is so deep and so wide that we might as well be on opposite ends of the earth. The chasm that is created by our sin is impossible for us to navigate. But God, in his unfailing love, has removed our sin through the cross. Now it is our sin that is as far from us as the east is from the west, and we are free to sit at God's table and share in his banquet.

Good News for South Dallas

I was delighted to read in yesterday's Morning News that Baylor Health Care System is planning to build a Diabetes Prevention and Treatment Center in the Frazier Courts neighborhood in South Dallas. As I read the article two familiar names jumped out at me. Dr. Jim Walton has been an active partner with Central Dallas Ministries in providing health services to the poor, and Don Williams is one of my heroes, a man I greatly admire.

There are a number of reasons why this is good news for that community - one reason is simply that it brings a positive and needed resource to a much neglected area. A second is the pervasiveness of Diabetes and Diabete-related issues among the poor. The lack of grocery stores in the neighborhood, the lack of health care, the general lack or resources all are contributing factors to a Diabetes rate in South Dallas that is nearly 3 times the national average.

I've copied part of the article below...

"We're trying to not [only] treat symptoms, and a lot of times diabetes – the disease of diabetes – really could just represent a symptom of something more," said Dr. James W. Walton, vice president and chief health equity officer at Baylor.
The goal, Dr. Walton said, is for the center to function as a base for health workers dispatched into the community to provide screening and lifestyle education.

"A lot of the work happens away from the center, it happens away from the community, at the school," Dr. Walton said. "We have this vision of block captains, people that work from other locations in the community in order to achieve the objectives. "

But programming based at the center would also focus on factors traditionally outside the realm of most health care systems. For example, governmental entities, nonprofits, religious groups and other community organizations would be brought in to collaborate and combat unemployment, poverty, lack of education and the absence of grocery stores, housing and economic development.

"The problems are so entrenched in the South Dallas-Fair Park area that it's got to be something very comprehensive," said Marcus Martin, director of the J. McDonald Williams Institute, a key collaborator with Baylor on the project. The Institute is the research arm of the nonprofit Foundation for Community Empowerment.

In 2004, the hospital discharge rate per 100,000 residents due to long-term complications from the disease was 320 in South Dallas, according to statistics compiled by Parkland Memorial Hospital. The rate was about 110 per 100,000 residents countywide and 120 statewide.

Testimonies

One of the sessions I attended at Pepperdine was co-taught by Josh Graves and Sara Barton from Rochester College. Sara was talking about getting people to give testimonials as a part of her responsibility for planning chapel programs, and commented that until recently she had never felt like she had a testimony worth sharing. She had grown up in a Christian home, gone to a Christian college, experienced her share of life's ups and downs, but had not experienced any of the particularly dramatic moments that made for a "good" testimony (a perspective that I could fully relate to). She said that she had come to realize that she DID have a testimony, that she had a story to tell of what God had done for her...

Last night in the Rotunda class Dwight opened things up by reading the passage in Luke where Jesus cast out a legion of demons from a man into a herd of pigs. Afterwards the man asked Jesus if he could follow him, and Jesus' response was "No, go back to your family and tell them all the wonderful things God has done for you." (Luke 8:39) After he finished reading two Skillman members gave testimonies of what God has done for them. Nothing dramatic, but stories of their faith and journeys to this point in their lives...

Whether we recognize it or not, our lives are a testimony - whether good or bad. But verbal testimonies of what God has done can strengthen the body, and can strengthen the persons giving them. And they don't have to be dramatic to be effective.

Homeless in Dallas

One of the "ups" during the month I was away from my blog was the annual Urban Ministries Prayer Breakfast at the Anatole near downtown. Central Dallas Ministries has been sponsoring this for a number of years, and it is always a treat to get together with several hundred others who share a concern for the plight of the poor in this city. There is typically a noteworthy speaker and a concert of prayer.

This year's breakfast featured a moving testimony by Wyshina Harris, a resident of one of the poorest apartment complexes in the city (you can read it here) and a forum of 7 of the mayoral candidates who were each given a few minutes to address specific issues affecting the poor. I was also delighted that Tino Trejo was on the dais to give the invocation.

One of the features at this year's breakfast was this video that Central Dallas Ministries produced for the event. It tells part of the life story of five people who have struggled with homelessness in Dallas for many years.

Defending the Fort

Phil Ware had a great Heartlight article yesterday - here is an excerpt from it...

So much of our approach to faith depends on our perception of what the goal of our faith is.

Are we on a journey or are we defending the fort? It can't be both. You can't defend the fort when you are caravanning to a new and better home (Hebrews 11:13-16; 13:14)!

If we are daily being conformed to be more like Jesus (2 Corinthians 3:18), then how can we be overly critical of those who find themselves at different points in their own journey?

My own church family is made up of newborns and people over 100 years old. Our journeys are different. The language of hearts is different. The music imprinted in our DNA is different. The primary modes of communication are different. The way we comprehend truth is different. (See www.m6trix.com for some examples of why this is true.) But, our destination and our Father and our Lord are the same. So rather than being so critical of others who are not where we are, why not pray for their journey to our common destination? Rather than trying to defend the fortresses we left behind to pursue our higher and heavenly goal, why not encourage other caravaners along the way to press on toward that goal?

How can we be overly critical of those who find themselves at different points in the journey?

Does this mean we give up on core values or God's revealed truth? No! But it does mean we take seriously Jesus' call to look for fruit rather than judging motives. It does mean that we value those who sojourn with us even if they are taking different routes through the wilderness. It does mean that we welcome folks into our caravan who are at different points in the journey (Romans 14:1; Romans 15:7). It does mean that we focus on Jesus (Hebrews 12:1-3) and the upward call of God rather than the flawed human embodiments of our Savior we call churches.

Home Again

Taylor and I pulled out of Malibu at 1:00 Saturday afternoon and pulled up in front of the house last night a little before 9. Other than driving through a downpour between Sweetwater and Abilene, amid reports breaking in on the radio of a tornado sighting and tennis-ball sized hail moving through communities that I had never heard of and that were not on the map. Turns out that we were moving parallel with a serious storm about 12 miles to our south - a little dicey feeling for a while, but did not really impact our trip.

Driving across Arizona we listened to Taylor's ipod - Jack Johnson, Dave Matthews, Coldplay, Dispatch, Mason Jennings, the Black Crows, Augustana, and even a little Acapella. I'm not that familiar with contemporary musicians, but if what I heard on this trip was a good sample he has pretty good taste. I'm glad for the opportunity to make the trip with my son.

Pepperdine Day 3

Just got out of the third day of a 3-day series of afternoon lectures with Wade Hodges, and wanted to get some of this down while it is still fresh. The series has been based in Luke and focused on the people that Jesus ate with. Jesus was criticized by the religious leaders of his day because he ate with sinners and tax collectors. 2 particular thoughts from today.

The first is to imagine the expression on God's face when he looks at you - is it one of joy? anger? disgust? longing? pleasure? disappointment? pride? sorrow? Wade suggested that our perception of how God looks at us drives how we look at others.

I can see times in my life when each of those emotions were likely to have been on God's face when he looked at me, but I think maybe the predominant expression is one of impatient expectation, mixed with loving disappointment that says "When are you going to get serious about loving my people?" and "Why do you spend so much time and energy consuming the candy of this world when I have so much more to offer?"

The second thought from today was his analysis that the greatest crisis facing the church today has nothing to do with budgets, declining attendance, or worship issues, (In the 2+ years that I've been an elder I would estimate that at least 90% of the discussions I've been involved with have either been about one or more of these directly, or were influenced by how whatever was being discussed would impact one or more of these) but that the greatest crisis facing the church today is our inability to balance a call to repentence with the unconditional love and acceptance that Jesus showed to those he encountered.

This thought tied so well with the message that Harold Shank brought Wednesday evening about 2 kinds of churches - one where you can't get in if you are broken, and one where you have to be broken to get in. Wade put it like this - if you repent and clean up your act, we will accept you (the pharisees' view of who would be allowed at the table) vs we will accept you as you are, and anticipate that repentence will occur at some point (Jesus' view of who would be allowed at the table). Acceptance does not equal endorsement of sin, but neither does it depend on its elimination as a prior condition.

Plenty of meat to chew on there.

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Monte Cox hit a "home" run with this morning's keynote about living in exile and being at home. And David Fleer bats cleanup tonight.

More From Malibu

It has been a good 2 days and I anticipate that tomorrow will be, also. Among the highlights have been seeing Taylor in this environment - he is comfortable here and maturing well.... The speakers have ranged from very good to outstanding - especially the keynoters - Glenn Pemberton, John York, Harold Shank, Yukikazu Obata, and Dan Rodriquez have all delivered powerful and challenging messages from Jeremiah; tomorrow's promise to continue that trend - my classmate Monte Cox always does a good job and David Fleer is one of the best I have heard.... It has been good meeting and hearing from some of the bloggers I read - I've been in sessions led by Wade Hodges and by Josh Graves, and have gotten to meet David Underwood; and it is always a treat to see/hear Mike Cope.... It was good seeing some old friends and meeting a few new ones at the Harding reception tonight.... It also doesn't hurt that this is one of the most beautiful places in the world, and the clear sunny days and cool evenings with the full moon shining on the pacific only enhance that beauty.... There is one question that has me bumfuzzled - What happened to the Mavericks?

Greetings From Malibu

It is lunch break on the first full day of the Pepperdine Lectureship. This is my first time to actually attend any lectureships. I sang here with a combined group from Skillman and Preston Road several years ago, but didn't really get to any of the other sessions. I worked during Harding's lectureship when I was a student and occasionally got to a few of those sessions. This time I am here just to soak in whatever I can, and so far it has been good. The theme is Hear the Word of the Lord from Jeremiah, and the 2 keynotes so far have been outstanding. I'll try to give a little more detail later....

The main reason that I made the decision to attend this year is that Taylor has just finished a good freshman year here; he will be at Heidleburg next year at Pepperdine's campus there, and he has to pack up and drive home with all his stuff. So, I decided to come to lectureship and then drive back across country with him at the end of the week. He is driving one of the shuttles around campus during lecturship - no small task if you have ever seen the inclines on the campus roads...

I have been awol from the blog for a while - haven't had much energy to write, and haven't even been turning on my computer most evenings so I haven't kept up with the other blogs I like to read. It has been a month of ups and downs, and busy. Within a week's time both Larry James and Rubel Shelley spoke at Skillman - definitely a couple of the ups. There was the shooting at Virginia Tech - definitely a down, especially for parents with kids living in a dormitory. Lots more going on, some of which I may get around to writing about, but I am feeling energized by being here in Malibu. Pepperdine is a great place.

Sunday!

But very early on Sunday morning the women came to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. They found that the stone covering the entrance had been rolled aside. So they went in, but they couldn't find the body of the Lord Jesus. They were puzzled, trying to think what could have happened to it. Suddenly, two men appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes. The women were terrified and bowed low before them. Then the men asked, "Why are you looking in a tomb for someone who is alive? He isn't here! He has risen from the dead! Don't you remember what he told you back in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again the third day?"

Easter Song

Saturday

Scripture describes in vivid detail the the pain and suffering that culminated in Jesus' death on Friday. Scripture elaborates on the excitement and wonder of his followers when they discover on Sunday that he is alive. But we can only imagine what Saturday was like - possibly the longest, most hopeless day man has ever known - because scripture is silent about that Saturday.

It would seem that the disciples did not understand on Saturday that the work of salvation had been accomplished on Friday, and they had not yet realized the hope that would come from the resurrection on Sunday. That Saturday was, in a way, a foreshadow of the time in which we live. I have heard it described as 'the already but the not yet' - the period of time between Jesus' saving accomplishment on the cross and his glorious return. And much of the world today lives in Saturday - without the knowledge or understanding of what the cross meant and without the hope that the resurrection brings.

Because we live with the knowledge of our reconciliation to God - the already - and because we live with the hope of eternal life - the not yet - we live in greatful obedience. Not to become reconciled, but because we already are. That obedience was defined by Jesus as loving God with all our heart, and loving our neighbor as our self.

Friday

By this time it was noon, and darkness fell across the whole land until three o'clock. The light from the sun was gone. And suddenly, the thick veil hanging in the Temple was torn apart. Then Jesus shouted, "Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands!" And with those words he breathed his last.

When the captain of the Roman soldiers handling the executions saw what had happened, he praised God and said, "Surely this man was innocent." And when the crowd that came to see the crucifixion saw all that had happened, they went home in deep sorrow. But Jesus' friends, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance watching.

Now there was a good and righteous man named Joseph. He was a member of the Jewish high council, but he had not agreed with the decision and actions of the other religious leaders. He was from the town of Arimathea in Judea, and he had been waiting for the Kingdom of God to come. He went to Pilate and asked for Jesus' body. Then he took the body down from the cross and wrapped it in a long linen cloth and laid it in a new tomb that had been carved out of rock. This was done late on Friday afternoon, the day of preparation for the Sabbath.

It's Friday...But Sunday's Coming

One of the most powerful videos I have seen is this one produced by Rob Thomas at Igniter Media. I know it's not literally Friday today, but the despair of a 'Friday' can attack at any time. Whatever the reason for a 'Friday', it can be overcome because Sunday indeed is coming.

Another Look...And a Blessing for Travelers

I think I like this look better...

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Three of our neighbors joined us this evening to pray for and offer a blessing to a fourth neighbor who, along with his teenage son, will be leaving for Uganda later this month for a 2-week mission trip. I ended the time with this blessing...

The love and affection of heaven be to you,
To guard and to cherish you.
May God shield you on every step,
May He aid you on every path,
And may He hold you safe on every slope,
On every hill and on every plain;
On earth and on sea until you are home again.

And for your family,
May he keep them safe, keep them whole,
and keep them from harm's way,
until you are home again.