The unChurch

The Dangerous Story: Subversion and Submission

2012-01-24T06:26:00.001-06:00

Very short video, very strong idea. The gospel of Jesus is usually presented as a children's story, a fairy tale that just-so-happens to be true. Very much like the Santa Clause story, but with a scary twist. What do you think? How is the Jesus Gospel a "dangerous story"? How does the dangerous gospel fall on the ears of the world differently than the story-book gospel we often hear?

Protest Chaplains

2011-10-07T16:18:00.003-05:00

Here's an article that's definitely worth a look! Does "Occupy Wall Street" look like church?

...In the music, conversations, meetings and daily work that come with running a community, there is a profound sense of abundance. A delivery of dry blankets and towels is met with cheers. Trained medics volunteer their skills to treat injuries and illness. The food station is “loaves and fishes” in action: There is always more than enough to eat, and homeless folks eat side by side with lawyers and students off of donated plates. There is always meaningful work to be done. It’s not charity. It’s cooperation. It’s The Way, and it’s happening right now. The Occupation is the church your church wants to be.I'm intrigued at the idea of Protest Chaplains. So... what do you think?

I Was a Stranger...

2011-09-21T09:20:00.000-05:00

I had a couple of very odd experiences, back to back. I have been working far from home for several weeks, and so church is a little different we you're on the road. Experience #1, I dropped in at a church that kinda resembled my own church back home. I didn't expect them to bake me a cake, I just thought I would look at the place, because you can usually tell what's important by looking at the building. It's usually a long-shot to meet a minister on a weekday of course. So, I walked up to the big glass doors to the big lobby. Inside the glass were two handsome, wholesome men with laptops, intently conversing. They were three feet from me, but I was locked out. So I stood, and looked expectantly. They knew I was there. But they didn't dare look up at me. So, I stood. I refused to knock on the door because they were obviously and irrefutably aware of my presence. The fact that they would not so much as glance proved they knew the door was locked. Bible study, or some accountability thing. Maybe planning a project. So I stood there waiting for Jesus to return. The same evening I visited a Home Group meeting with a friend. Handsome, wholesome people, good brownies. Strange experience #2. In the two hours I was there, so help me, not one word was addressed to me unless it was an response to something I asked or said. Eerily, nobody looked at me either. The leader was a barrage of words, wonderful, smart, biblical words. God is a God of covenant. He loves. He reaches to us, as epitomized by Jesus. I sat at his left elbow and he never once turned his head toward me. But he addressed the last few minutes of the biblical torrent toward "anyone who may be present who feels like they just don't know God in the way these people do." Don't get me wrong, these were cool people, and I knew they would be my friends if we attended the same church for long. But as it was, this whole thing was just flat weird. As you may know, I am a veteran leader of such groups, and not exactly shy. And as you would guess, I kept ratcheting up the "gregarious level" to contrast with the odd indifference. Dude, I was a guest in someone's home. But if it had been an elevator the environment would not have been more impersonal.

There is an obvious common thread in these two encounters, that is that I was a stranger in a strange place. But I think there is a common thing on the part of those I encountered. What is it, and what can we learn from it?

To Hell and Back

2011-06-02T10:00:00.001-05:00

I've been thinking about hell and eternity lately.

Maybe not just about hell. Really, more about the CONCEPT of hell. The tradition of it. What we think about it, how it works, what it is. And mostly, what Jesus said about hell, and what the Bible says about hell.

Traditionally, I think most of us evangelicals have a similar concept of hell. It's the standard place people go when they die (unless they've been saved). It's pretty much eternal agony and flames. Punishment forever, apart from God. You don't want to be there. The concept is fairly cut-and-dry, even though a good many of "secular" people don't really like it. Right?

However, so many different things I've been reading, and people I've been talking to, have caused me to question how our view of hell managed to get to what we think about it today. So let's take a moment to go back to the Bible, and what Jesus said.

There are a couple of different words in most versions of the Bible that get translated into the word "hell." Let's take a look at what they are.

Sheol: This is a Hebrew word used often in the old testament. It means "grave" or "depths" or "the deep." The King James Version of the Bible translates this word (incorrectly, most would agree) as "hell" 31 times.

Gehenna: Jesus used the word "Gehenna" a number of times, and it is what is generally translated into "hell" in the gospels. Gehenna (or Ge-Hinnom, the Valley of Hinnom) was a real, physical place outside the southern part of Jerusalem. It was where old-time pagan religions had sacrificed their children by fire. It was used as the town dump, and was generally on fire. It was a lot of smelly, burning trash. Not the kind of place you'd want to go.

Hades: The word "Hades" is used a few times in the New Testament, and translated as "hell." It's a Greek word, derived from the the name "Pluto" (Hades), who the ancient Romans and Greeks believed was the god of the underworld, the realm of the dead. It was a pagan concept.

Besides those three terms, there is also one other interesting Biblical term that perhaps has wedged itself into our 21st-century minds in a different manner than was originally intended.

Aeon is a Greek word that is commonly translated into "eternity" in the Bible, and what we would consider "forever." But I've read that aeon also means "an age" or "the ages" or "period of time" or even "an intensity of experience." Jesus often used the phrase that could be translated as "this age" and "the coming age" or "the age to come." Does that mean "eternity, forever" the way we think of eternity? I don't know. Maybe.

Ancient Hebrew and Greek were complicated languages. Actually, it wasn't that they were necessarily more complex than our modern English -- The issue generally is that they were much simpler. Especially in Hebrew, there were many, many fewer words. Only a fraction of the number of words that we have today. So some words had multiple meanings. That's why we have issues where words like "ouranos" get translated as "heaven" or "the heavens" or "the sky." And "pneuma" gets translated as wind, spirit, or breath.

This little words study with these four words is just the tip of the iceberg. I don't have the depth of knowledge to write a term paper on the subject. I do know that it's important to question the ideas and "traditions" we have in our mind, because sometimes they can evolve over time into something they weren't meant to be. (I blame Dante. And years of bad movies involving a red, horned Devil holding a pitchfork beside flames and underground rock formations.)

For instance, one popular question that I've heard from multiple people: Does God torture and punish people eternally for finite sins?

I suppose it's in my best interests here to point out: I'm not saying I've decided that hell doesn't exist. I'm simply saying perhaps sometimes, it's a good idea to look at things from a fresh perspective. When looking at Biblical passages, it's good to know who the audience was, and what they were thinking at the time. That's tough to do.

Now: Discussion time. What do you think? Is the standard doctrine of "hell" untouchable in the church? Is any of this information even relevant? And most importantly: Was it a bad idea for me to open this can of worms?

After a Short Hiatus...

2011-05-27T08:15:00.002-05:00

Yes, I know, it's been awhile. Your trusty unChurch blog hasn't been providing very much content and discussion over the past few months.

But don't lose hope! Something should be coming soon. We'll try to get back into writing once a month or so. There's some half-finished drafts we can dust off and polish up, plus some new things on our minds. We may be slow, but we aren't gone completely.

The kingdom of God is at hand!

Why is it So Hard?

2011-01-16T07:51:00.000-06:00

First a bit of background, then a quick story, and then to the question, "Why is it so doggone hard for a church to follow Jesus??"

Background:

My wife and I (Kendra & Joe B) have gotten deeply inolved in sharing Jesus with internet sex-performers in Eastern Europe. Pretty simple really, it's like God just shows us a person, we make friends with them, and we call them to join Jesus in his kingdom movement. In the last year we have gathered, I dunno, maybe a dozen Saints in two cities and about a dozen more curious hangers-on. Twice (Sep '10 & Jan '11) we have traveled to meet these kids face to face and to confirm them in their faith.

The Story:

Part of our work is to conect these kingdom-kids with solid believers and/or churches in their local area. I contacted the leaders of two very good churches I try to partner with in a particular city. I informed them that, for that particular week, I would be traveling without Kendra, but that I would have the assistance of Isabela, a girl who met Jesus during our travels last September. From both churches I received the helpful warning that (a) I imperil my soul by keeping company with Isabela absent my wife, and that (b) it would be frowned on in their communities if we had no chaperon. Naturally, I thanked them and made this request: "Since I am an alien and I cannot bring a chaperon, can you supply a person to accompany us? After all, it's a great opportunity to introduce Isabela to a lady who can shepherd her soul, right?"

So, what was the response? If you guessed "total silence" you guessed right! Now, let me underscore, these are fine people whom I admire and respect. I do not mock them.

Let me summarize this in an unflattering way: They all have time to condemn the mere appearance of a possible, theoretical impropriety. But, among 200 people, they could not muster a single one to satisfy their own mandate, let alone to exploit this juicy ministry opportunity. In contrast, Isabela said "Even if they must imagine I am your 'toy', I will not let you wander around my city without a translator. I am responsible for you." In essence, the pastors demonstrated they cared neither for my peril, nor for our reputation--they did their duty merely by voicing their disapproval. In American we would say "Their asses were covered."

It was not complicated for Isabela and me...we simply resolved and agreed not to get sexual, and we did not. I didn't go in her apartment. Isa didn't go beyond the hotel lobby. No problems. Maybe it was not we who were in peril of temptation, but someone else after all?

The Question:
So help me out here...why is it so easy for churches, represented by their leaders, to gulp down camels while straining out gnats? What is the root of this deep moral confusion that infects us after we organize ourselves into church communities? In other words, why is it so difficult for churches to follow Jesus?
Joe B

"Choosing Celibacy"

2010-12-02T09:52:00.000-06:00

So what do you think of this?

Choosing Celibacy

...Wesley grew up in a Southern evangelical home and family; there are no “typical” issues for his same-sex attraction; as he went through puberty he — confusingly of course — began to realize he was attracted to men and not women; he went to Wheaton; he worked as an intern in an evangelical megachurch; he is now doing a PhD in New Testament studies in the UK. He’s gay and he’s Christian and he’s celibate.
He’s open and he’s struggling and he’s lonely and he’s accountable and he’s waiting. And his story made me empathetic with the story of those who struggle to be celibate.
His theology is simple: he’s been washed pure in the graces of God’s forgiveness and he’s waiting for the restoration of all things. In between forgiveness and restoration he struggles.

Are churches open to this kind of thing? Are WE open to it? Or would there be an innate "fear" about it? It seems like such a simple (and Biblical) concept at first, but the topic seems to evoke a lot of issues and passions in people. Are our churches able to have a true, open discussion on the concept of sex, celibacy, and homosexuality?

'Tis the Season for Politickin'

2010-10-28T16:09:00.004-05:00

Question: Can Christians be elected to high-level political office without sacrificing some of their "Christianness"?

Could someone actually be elected, and still maintain the character of Jesus?

SHOULD Christians even try to make it in big-time American politics?

I'll await your answers and your discussion, but I'm starting to think the answer is, at least for the first two questions, "No." Which leads me to ask the third question.

Following Jesus in the real world

2010-09-21T12:59:00.001-05:00

Apologies for the lengthy delay between posts here at unChurch, unInc. One unchurch writer has been in Romania, showing the kingdom of God to assorted friends.

Me? I have no excuse, other than the busy-ness of life, and a lack of writing inspiration.

Time to get back on the writing track. We'll start simple, by stealing something from someone else: My good friend Kevin recently posted a great link on Facebook that I thought was worth sharing.

Can We Follow Jesus Without Being Dramatically Countercultural?

This article caught my attention because the writer talks about college students who get fired up about Jesus in campus ministry (specifically, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, which is the group I was a part of in college), but then graduate and go on to adulthood "church stasis."

"...all these students who'd get fired up about Jesus in an InterVarsity group, but then, after graduating, would see their faith fizzle in some respects. They'd go to churches that, in short order, they'd complain about. They wouldn't overtly leave Jesus behind, by any means. Nor, in many cases, would they leave the church they complained so bitterly about. They'd just stay in this stasis for a long, long time--no longer excited about faith, no longer about anything particularly helpful for God's kingdom, just sort of frozen."Hmm. Are you talking to me?

The decision process used by many new graduates follows this general pattern:

Find a job, which determines a general location in which to live
Find an apartment near enough to the job
Find a solid church near to where you live
Get involved in one aspect of the church you begin to attend
Make new friends, if possible, in your new small group or ministry team.

The article/book talks about a radically different pattern that some Christians are taking when they graduate, and it's almost the reverse:

They chose ministry partners, with whom they shared kingdom values and a common vision for life.
They chose a ministry field and a church that supported and helped them advance ministry in their field.
They found an apartment in a convenient location that facilitated their ministry and relationships in their church.
They found jobs that supported them while involved in ministry and the life of their church."

I thought this would, in particular, appeal to people like Craig, who did a pretty close version of that.

So is this possible? If so, is it something that's only for the "young and unattached"? Why do so many of us follow the first pattern, and not the second?

"Members of One Another": To Know, and To Be Known, Part II

2010-08-05T12:00:00.001-05:00

Craig sent me this via email nearly a year ago, and I had intended to make it a blog post. I obviously forgot. But now I'm posting it, and it fits in perfectly with the current discussion!
_______________________

This quote from St. Basil of Caesarea (~330-379) gives a wonderful account of the value of life in a Christian community:

Regulae Fusius

St. Basil here is actually contrasting a monastic community life with a life of solitary monasticism, which was common in the fourth century, when he wrote this. But his main thesis is freshly relevant today, in our hyper-individualistic society (when you think of it, ‘hyper-individualistic society’ is really pretty oxymoronic, isn’t it?).

American Christians of the 21^st century strongly tend to conceive of the Christian life in individualistic terms – me and my relationship with Jesus – but Basil makes some very sharp points about the limitations of an individualistic Christian life, and the corresponding value of some kind of community life together with fellow-Christians.

-Submitted by Craig

To Know, and To Be Known

2010-07-27T12:55:00.002-05:00

Is Christianity more like golf, where you've got one guy trying to get the ball in the hole? Or is it something like basketball, where you've got a group trying to achieve something? Is Christianity really a team sport?

I've heard it said that many Protestants often represent the "individualism" aspect of Christianity. In other words, decades of evangelical churches have perhaps pushed a "me-and-God" mindset where it's all about your straight-line, vertical relationship to the Lord. This is often best illustrated by the communion time, where hundreds of church-goers will each bow their individual heads, each will go into "the zone" and each will think about his or her relationship to God. The only "communion" is between you and God.

Our lives have evolved this direction. We drive ourselves (who really carpools anymore?) to our jobs in our individual cubicles, so we can move our families to the suburbs, where we can have our own space. Space for our families, space for our stuff, space so we don't feel like we are living in a hut with five other families.

The global population has expanded tremendously in the past century, yet middle class America wants more and more space of their own. The average home size has more than DOUBLED since the 1950s. It was 2,330 square feet in 2004, yet even just thirty years ago it was 1,400 square feet. A few decades back, it was normal for a family to just have one bathroom, and for multiple children to share bedrooms. Now? I just finally moved into a home where my 8-year old and my 7-year old no longer have to share a bedroom, and it felt like a sigh of relief -- finally, breathing room!

Of course, back in Jesus' day, very few had that kind of privacy. Most homes and huts were tiny. Whole families shared a room. Domiciles were stacked against each other. Walls were shared. I read once that after a wedding ceremony, what we'd call the "best man" would wait just outside the "bedroom," waiting for the bride and groom to consummate the marriage, so he could announce it to the rest of the party and they could celebrate. Wouldn't THAT make you nervous?! Talk about performance anxiety.

When Jesus broke the bread and poured the wine around the table with his disciples, it was a group activity. They were sharing a meal. They were sharing their lives together. They knew each other intimately, because they lived more intimate lives. They shared both a campfire, and a love for the Lord.

Today, I have trouble even finding a reason to go talk to my neighbors. I don't need a cup of sugar or a saucepan from them. They sure don't need anything from me. A polite waive while we're mowing the grass is pretty much the extent of our "relationship."

A lot has changed in the last 2000 years. But that doesn't mean we aren't still "built for intimate relationships." Try to go a bit old-school in your friendships. Get nosy with some of your friends and acquaintances. Find out about their lives, and ask some probing and loving questions. See how you can help. Get cramped and intimate with some of your friends and family.

Loving each other means building each other up when the time is right, and holding each other accountable for our actions when it's needed. But you've got to make the effort and spend that time around the campfire, around that table in the upper room, if you are going to "have all things in common." Our living spaces may have changed, but what God wants from us as followers of Jesus has not.

So...what exactly IS a "gospel"?

2010-07-14T20:47:00.000-05:00

When I was 20, I became intensely interested in Jesus. I began to read the bible, and immediately I ran into Jesus saying "Repent and believe the gospel! The kingdom of God is at hand." Just then it struck me...if the "gospel" did not exist before Jesus, then why was there even a word "gospel"? And how could any of the people standing by understand what Jesus meant by "gospel"? Obviously it is important...but is it some sort of secret code word?

So this is the question of the day: What is a "gospel", and most important, what is "The Gospel"? Okay, unChurch-heads! Have at it!!

Only in America!

2010-07-04T11:43:00.004-05:00

Happy USA Independence Day, all ye beloved! Watch this !!

And He Saith Unto Them... Don't Be a Jerk

2010-06-29T10:08:00.004-05:00

In churchdom, the Big Sins are the obvious ones. Adultery will get you fired from that preaching job. A drug problem will get you removed from the worship ministry. Wearing a itsy-bitsy bikini at the church picnic may earn you a serious "talking-to" from the leadership.

But what about being a jerk? Do we let that slide?

Granted, it's hard to quantify. And when it comes to how we act ONLINE, it's often a little bit more hidden from the world. Blogs and comment boards are ready-made for flame wars of epic proportions.

Jonathan Acuff (of "Stuff Christians Like") wrote an excellent article on "Why Christians are jerks online." It's worth reading, contemplating, and discussing.

It talks about what Jesus said was the greatest commandment. It talks about beer and Bono and the bitterness of so many Christian arguments online.

Loving your neighbor might be simple, but it’s not easy. Maybe my neighbor is a jerk too. Maybe they hate God. Maybe they are actively and violently opposed to everything I believe. And showing them grace feels impossible. So instead of dealing with that, we get online and police people. We find small things to focus on that will distract us.

Jesus came for the mess-ups like us. Jesus came for the failures. Jesus came for the jerks. (That’s not in the King James version of the Bible, I remixed it like Timbaland.) And the truth is, grace is the antidote to being a jerk online.

How about you? Have you been displaying the grace and love of Jesus in what you type to random strangers? Why do Christians often look so bad online?

Wild-Eyed Radicals?

2010-06-09T11:18:00.001-05:00

Are the unChurch folks a bunch of wild eyed radicals? What if they were? What would that look like? A few words from our buddy, Francis Chan...good words, but they leave me asking these very questions.

Naked Saints

2010-05-31T16:26:00.005-05:00

This song was sent to me by a "sex worker" who found salvation while on the job. She told me "This is my special song, the song God gave me." She did not even know, until I told her, that the lyrics are Jesus words, from Evangheliei Marcu, 8:36. I explained, and she was overjoyed, that her heart had recognized the voice of Jesus, even in a foreign language.

Some church-people believe sinners don't like Jesus...well, they either do not know the world, or they do not know Jesus. I'm glad this pop band is preaching Jesus' parable afresh, to people the church sometimes overlooks. The video is profound.

(The group is called "MorCheeba" which roughly translates as "The Cannabis Way." They have some very cool stuff.)

God's Chosen People?

2010-05-18T13:00:00.005-05:00

"...if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land." (2 Chronicles 7:14)

You no doubt have, for years, heard that we should be praying for this great country of ours. That we should be asking for God's blessing on America, because God wants to heal our land. We, as a country, have gone against God's law by taking prayer out of schools, and that we need to bring this country back to God.

And you've no doubt heard that verse up there at the top, thrown right into the middle of it all.

Can I just say that we're going about this all wrong? Is it okay for me to say that?

If we want to use a passage like 2 Chronicles 7 (or the whole book of Jeremiah, or Malachi 3, or whatever scripture we choose), I think it's worth our time to delve at least deep enough to see who was being spoken to, and what the words mean within the passage. In fact, let's get simple, and just look at the phrase "my people."

God was speaking to the Jews, the people of Israel, the people of his covenant. (Specifically in this case, he was speaking to King Solomon.) Most of us also agree that because of Jesus' life and death, his followers have been "grafted in," and we now fall under the category of "God's people." Christians. The ekklesia, the church.

However, I can find no scriptural basis -- literal, figurative, anything -- that could somehow bring "America" into the picture. "My people" is not referring to America. "Their land" is not referring to America. How can we use this scripture when talking about "taking America back for God"?

Extrapolating this scripture to the "us" of present-day could only make it refer to the CHURCH, not to America. Let's try it this way:

"...if my church, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their church."

God is more concerned about his own people than he is about earthly geographic empires and lines on a map. HIS kingdom is our kingdom. "Our land" is the kingdom we share with our brothers and sisters in Iran and China and France. We, the people of God, need to be humbling ourselves and seeking Him. Maybe we need to make sure the church is turned back to God?

Don't let your flags become fused together. Don't let your sword become intertwined with your cross. Remember whose kingdom you are a part of. A kingdom where we humble ourselves, and pray and seek God's face.

"When He Heard This, He Became Very Sad, Because He Was a Man of Great Wealth"

2010-05-06T10:00:00.003-05:00

Those that know me are probably aware that I think "Christian" often makes a poor adjective. We are to BE Christians, yes. But putting a Christian label on music or books or artwork or various other things is, let's just say, less than ideal.

However, as followers of Jesus, as CHRISTIANS, we are to exemplify love, service, and self-sacrifice. So in a capitalistic society, how well can "Christian" work as an adjective to go along with "Business"?

http://shaungroves.com/2010/05/christian-business-is-this-contradiction/

Go read the article. Then come back here and leave your thoughts. I'm not going to make some strong point here, I'm just going to see where the discussion goes...

In Essentials, Unity; in Non-essentials...

2010-04-24T18:08:00.003-05:00

Do we value all things that glorify God? Do we look at the "big picture" of what God's church truly is? Do we love and serve our brothers and sisters when we come together in times of corporate worship?

Or do we often use it as an opportunity to let trivial matters divide us?

Porn for Tots

2010-03-25T17:18:00.000-05:00

Whatever you may think about porn, one thing is undeniable: The genie is out of the bottle. Kids growing up today get their first and most powerful early impressions about sex from internet porn. What will this mean for them in real life? Is this the end of the world as we knew it? Or are people overreacting?

Please click here to read this excellent article by Joe Beam. (Not to be confused with Joe B.)

What are your thoughts?

Plain as the Nose on Your Face

2010-03-11T14:21:00.001-06:00

This is truly fascinating. And boy-oh-boy does it make a point. Pay close attention!!

Who's telling you what to see?

"Unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."

JB

Badges? We Don't Need no Stinking Badges!

2010-02-22T08:15:00.006-06:00

What is wrong with Christianity? Well for starters, it has relatively little to do with Jesus Christ. Oddly, Reformed Judaism seems closer to Jesus' teachings than much of what we call "Christianity."

What follows is my arcane religious argument that Jesus called men to reject Law and choose Life. It is written by a bible-head, for bible-heads. But if you are a spiritual seeker, a secular doubter, or a religious head-scratcher, hang in here. If you can be flexible with the strange vocabulary, you just might enjoy the discussion.

This is my thesis, and here I shall nail it to the door of the Wittenblog Cathedral:

I will write the things below because I know they are our common ground. Where we disagree is on our conclusions. Please read closely and with a bible open. The Law is not for sons of God, period. That’s my conclusion.

“Before this faith came, we were held prisoners by the Law, locked up until faith should be revealed. Therefore the Law was made a tutor unto Christ, so that by faith we become righteous. But now that faith is come, we are no longer under tutelage. You are sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.”

Yes, of course, "The Law" still exists, and it is holy. And it stands in the midst of this garden of human experience just like the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil stood beside the Tree of Life. From one we receive the free gift of Life from our Maker and Savior, but from the other we receive Death slow and certain. For we are commanded, “Thou shalt not eat from it, lest ye die.”

In exactly this way, the Law IS holy, but to live by it is sin. Thus it “produces death in me through what is good.” [Ro 7:13] To live by the Law, even partially, is to reject Grace. Notice that Adam did not curse the Tree of Life, nor chop it down, nor burn it up. All he did was eat from it. He just ate a little, and apparently he swallowed the seeds. One brush with the Law was all it took to bring utter condemnation to Adam and to all his descendants for all time. But, thanks to God, “the gift is not like the trespass, but through a single act of righteousness it brings life for all men.” [Ro 4]. St. Paul warned us explicitly not to let Grace and Law coexist in out lives. Rather he likens the Law to a mocking house slave: “Cast out the bondwoman and her son”! [Gal 4:30]

Let me anticipate the next objection. The conventional view of this matter says that this passage in Galatians is speaking of the “Jewish Law & Religion” in particular, and specifically circumcision as a qualification for salvation. Granted, Paul does address this as the topic of concern in Galatia. However, to limit his broad characterizations of Law in this way is just absolutely wrong.

In fact, Paul parallels the Law (taking circumcision, in this case) precisely with the paganism the Galatians (who were Gallic, not Jewish) had turned from when they heard the Gospel. “When you did not know God, you were slaves to things that are no gods. But now that you know God--rather, are known by God--how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wished to be enslaved to them all over again?” [Gal 4:8-9.] It is untenable to say that Paul limited his concept of “the Law” to Jewish ceremonial ordinance, or circumcision. We will do well to remember that this is the same St Paul who had his companion be circumcised before entering the Jewish temple.

We could make this entire “Galatians” argument from Romans 1-8, or from the Sermon on the Mount, or from Mark 2, or from 2 Corinthians 3, or from Colossians 2. There is no subject with so much ink devoted to it as this matter of ditching the law and walking in the Spirit, by faith. It is utterly false when we say that we are saved by Jesus, but live by the law; that we are saved by grace but live under law, or that we walk by the spirit within the boundaries of Law.

How can we blur these things together when the bible contrasts them so violently? Yet we blur the curse that binds us until it's indistinguishable from the grace that frees us, as though it were just two different ways of saying the same thing. It is not.

Finally there is a gross misconception that somehow the Law helps you live a life pleasing to God, and that to throw off its restraint is to succumb to evil. But the scripture clearly says that "the Law was given that sin might increase", and that it "produces all kinds of evil desires" within. Living by Law does not help you walk straight, it guarantees failure.

I am astonished at how Christians cling misty-eyed to Law, despite and against all the stark biblical admonitions. Yet in the mainstream, “being a Christian" demands men be devoted to the very curse from which Jesus died to redeem us [Gal 3:13].

We are not under the Law, we are under grace! We do not live by the Law, we live by the Spirit! We do not follow the Law, we are led by the Spirit.

The Power of What You Buy

2010-02-12T10:00:00.001-06:00

How do we promote justice and the love of Christ with our spending power? We say that we want to bring "heaven to earth" with the peace and equality that Jesus brings, but how can we even do that in our daily lives here in suburban U.S. of A?

Is it a matter of trying to live more simply? Is it a matter of taking a bit more time to think about what we are buying? My friend Alice lives in Boston, and she has been giving it some thought:

It must be noted: without

love

, a passion for justice can fashion a demagogue and a brute. 'Love takes no pleasure in other's sins, but delights in the truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure what comes.' 1 Corinthians 13:6.

Alice and her husband are still in the process of figuring out practical, everyday ways to live out Jesus' radical message. In the past couple of years, I've often felt that we are completely removed from the origins of the goods that we buy -- our food, our drink, our DVDs, everything. And I have a desire to instill in my children a knowledge and understanding of love and justice, and how it relates to the things that we buy (and how those items are created).

So what do you think, kindly blog-readers? A great idea? Too much work? Off the mark? Let us (and Alice) know your thoughts.

People of the Wind: Parable of the Kite

2010-02-04T21:19:00.003-06:00

Years ago as a minister, I used the "parable of the kite" to preach that boundaries and rules may seem to imprison you, but in fact they set you free. I likened this to a kite: without a string to restrain it, it cannot fly. What a great proposition: Prohibition = Freedom! My parable captured a certain undeniable truth, and it became a signature theme in my ministry. It makes great preaching because people who like sermons also happen to like rules, even the rules they like to break.

Too bad, my parable was basically wrong.

Like my convenient parable, most of the teachings of the devout church follow this basic assumption. The vast majority of teaching follows the pattern: If you live according to the rules, you'll be okay. But I have come to believe that this paradigm, and even my beautiful kite metaphor, is actually contrary to Christ. In fact, while it perfectly captures the essence of Law-Religion, it is the antithesis of the life of the spirit, which is the heart of the Christian message. It is not a false religion exactly, but it is positively not the faith of Jesus and the apostles.

No wonder St Paul calls this arrangement "the Law of sin and death." Not only so, he also says that the rules by which we strive to live actually make matters worse because our sinful nature, "taking opportunity by the commandment, produces [in us] all manner of evil desire. Apart from the law sin was dead." [Ro 7:8]. And he urges us "Now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code."

In other words, my parable of the kite is perfect...for those living under the law of sin and death. But for those freed by the blood of Jesus, it is a return to the Law. And agains St Paul is witheringly clear, "you who attempt to be justified by law; you have fallen from grace" [Gal 5:4]. But, thank God, "if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law." [Gal 5:18]

Empire Builders vs the Love of Christ

2010-01-13T20:05:00.005-06:00

Can you imagine giving the eulogy at a funeral and starting out by saying “before I tell you about God’s grace, let me make it clear that little Johnny deserved to die because he stole candy from a store”?

My old friend Izzy is always posting some great links to stuff he finds on the web. Today, he pointed out Donald Miller's response to some ridiculous things that Pat Robertson recently said. The short version is this: With the death toll into the tens of thousands after the earthquake in Haiti, Pat Robertson managed to say that Haiti was "cursed" after an old "pact with the devil."

Sadly, a number of people might be under the impression that talking heads like Pat Robertson represent the feelings of most Christians (or even the feelings of most conservatives). Most Christians, however, think the idea is absurd that their feelings might be represented by people like Pat Robertson.

One problem with our 24/7 media-and-Internet driven society is that to stand out as a "leader" (or megapastor or author or CNN talking head), you've got to occasionally say some ridiculous things just to get in the headlines. Everything has to be extreme in one direction. Like, for instance, blaming the devastation in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina on the debauchery that took place in that town.

From Miller's blog post:

"These people are often, themselves, controlling. They are wired to build empires, and in order to build empires you have to get people to do what you say, and if you have God standing behind you threatening hurt and pain, you can motivate people. I’ve heard pastors pray and call other men cowards, get angry from the pulpit, yell, belittle other Christian pastors who don’t agree with them, fire people who will not submit to them, surround themselves with yes men and so on. Sadly, they never point the finger at themselves."

But this isn't how God's empire operates. God's empire is about compassion, service, and loving your enemy. It's about feeding the hungry, healing the sick, and inviting the stranger into your home. It's about following the example of Jesus -- who was willing to lay down his life. (And who also only seemed to raise his voice at the religious leaders of his day.)

I can only imagine that it's hard to be a famed "church leader" in this day and age. This isn't about Pat Robertson. We've got thousands of Christian leaders, from the megapastors and authors down to the guys leading small Midwestern churches. If you have the kind of charisma and drive it takes to get lots of people to follow you, it's quite possible you also have the pride and controlling personality that seems to often go along with it.

This new empire, the Kingdom of God, isn't built on the backs of millionaire authors and pastors in three-piece suits. It's a power-under kingdom, a kingdom that thrives when we love each other as Jesus loved, and serve the people that have no one to look after them.

"For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in."

Merry Christmas from the unChurch Abbey

2009-12-19T08:22:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas from The unChurch Blog. May God's Kingdom come in you; as it is in heaven, so be it in your life and work! Now, go track sloppy footprints of grace and wonder all through 2010.

Credit for this fine photo goes to our friends at www.despair.com, maker and purveyor of parody gift items imprinted with things you would say under your breath. Thanks monk-in-absentia Darin of the Prarie for passing it along to us!

Chihuahua Worship

2009-12-06T17:18:00.012-06:00

Conservative Jesus, liberal Jesus. Whatever. You can hang the name "Jesus" on anything, but it ain’t necessarily so. You could name your Chihuahua “Jesus”, but that doesn’t make him el salvador del mundo, and I won’t be bowing down to your pooch. Or to your bad religion. Even if you hang a cross on the wall and tell me I must.

What’s Jesus got to say about it?

He says the world has plenty of bogus christs. "Men will tell you, 'There he is!' or 'Here he is!' Do not go running off after them. For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation. [Luke 17:23-25]

I can feel the eyebrows raising already: Come on, Joe B, that passage is about the “end of the world” or “the rapture”, what's it have to do with anything? Well, if you can set aside your "Left Behind" 3-D glasses for a moment, you may find the key in Jesus’ strange answer in verse 37: "Where, lord?", they asked. He replied, "Where there’s a cadaver, vultures gather."

Naturally, the fellas asked Jesus to get specific: “Where, Lord??” But there is a broader principle in play, one that stretches from Genesis to Revelation, and it cuts right through your life. It's not a matter of "when" or "where".

In verses 26 thru 30 Jesus describes people on the eve of judgment. And they are being normal. Just…being…normal. Then suddenly, but not without warning, God is sorting them out by fire or water or by sword. Jesus warns in verse 30, “It will be just like this in the day the Son of Man is revealed. Nobody should go back inside to save his stuff, or come back home to get anything. Remember Lot’s wife! Whoever tries to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will save it.”

This fundamental principle of Jesus is not when or where, it's always and everywhere: Where people live the way of flesh, they are just vulture food! And, looking back to Luke 17, we see that such people are prone to invent (or just infer) a bogus Christ. One who justifies them, and who condemns their opponents.

And here too is the seed of the inevitable, carnal tendency to choose up sides, put on matching shirts, and fight it out. We try to be like God, so God is like us. Therefore God is on our side. Therefore your side must be defeated. It is nothing more or less than the collective iteration of not loving your neighbor. It is ambition. It is politics. It is war. It is the evil that Jesus abhors and God avenges. And it is normal.

It also happens to be why I have quit "Church, Inc" forever. I'd rather walk by the spirit on the fringes than bow my knees to a so-called-christ who’s just the mascot of some group’s shared opinions. A christ who affirms us as we slouch, in Jesus' name, down the mortal path of Man: accumulating assets; forging alliances; competing for adherents; inventing rules; enforcing norms; quelling dissenters; excluding nonconformists. In other words, being normal. Being plain old ordinary men of juicy flesh. Whitewashed outside, but full of respectable, normal, 10%-more-righteous-than-your-neighbor bones. The kind of normal that God's vultures eat for lunch on the side of the road. "There is a way that seems right to men, but it ends in death."

Lost souls assure themselves that God is on their side. They cram into churches and jostle to the fore, seeking validation from God, and authority over men. But the people of the spirit move with God, free and powerful as the wind. They participate in God's new creation, expressing faith in Love. Their hearts are siezed with the beautiful revolution of the Kingdom of God.

“If you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you shall live.” [Romans 5:4]

Not for the Healthy, but the Sick

2009-12-03T14:58:00.004-06:00

"If you choose Jesus, may it not be simply because of a fear of hell or hope for mansions in heaven.

Don't get me wrong, I still believe in the afterlife, but too often all the church has done is promise the world that there is life after death and use it as a ticket to ignore the hells around us. I am convinced that the Christian Gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die but about bringing God's Kingdom down. It was Jesus who taught us to pray that God's will be done 'on earth as it is in heaven.' On earth."

I have no idea how Shane Claiborne is getting articles in Esquire magazine, but I do think this letter says a lot that I want to say... in a much better way than I could say it. This is what the unchurch is all about.

Sorry for yet another blog link-to-an-article. It is worth reading, though. Go read it. It is especially interesting coming on the heels of a news story I just read about Bible translations, in which some "argue that contemporary scholars have inserted liberal views and ahistorical passages [such as Jesus saying 'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.'] into the Bible, turning Jesus into little more than a well-meaning social worker with a store of watered-down platitudes."

Read. And discuss. Do these two stories have anything to do with each other? And was Jesus just about telling us what to believe, or was he about showing us how to live?

Maybe We're Not Christians Anyway

2009-11-22T16:55:00.003-06:00

You know him as the mega-church-pastor who sinned with a gay prostitute and tried drugs. But he's the same Ted Haggard who wrote this article below, three years before he got so famously busted. See what you think...

MAYBE WE'RE NOT CHRISTIANS?

Maybe we’re not Christians. Maybe we’re just the most popular religion of the day, using the power of persuasion, the force of our numbers, and the strength of our money to advance our ideology. Maybe we just believe whatever makes sense to us by default, and we don’t truly—as individuals and as communities of Christians—seek to be genuine disciples and to do God’s work of caring for the fatherless and the widow of our day. The Scriptures say that we are known as followers of Jesus by our love for one another. But, undisputably, we are not (see John 13:35). The Scriptures say that we are not to boast about what we have or what we have done, but we do (see Jer. 9:23-24). The Scriptures say that in the last days people will be lovers of themselves and lovers of money. And we are (see 2 Tim. 3:5, NKJV).

Could we be Pharisees? Our own books, television programs and prophecies should make us wonder. I believe that we all know and love the Word, but we live in earthly vessels with a fallen nature. We feel and see the hopes of the Spirit within, but we also end up doing the very things we do not want to do. When we preach, write, lobby, raise money, build, broadcast, threaten, sue and spin, we present conflicting images that don’t stand up very well against the tests of time and scrutiny. We are confusing the world, other Christians, and our selves. This isn’t something that can be changed with a list of practical exercises. This is something that has to be dealt with deep within us by exposing ourselves to the wisdom of the Scriptures, to one another, and to God.

We have to get this right. Even though the global church is stronger than we’ve ever been, we in the American church are showing its signs of impotence. We are on a global stage now, so our words, actions, investments and thoughts have greater impact. We have the opportunity to do unprecedented good, but also the dangerous ability to do unparalleled damage. Let’s make the right choice. If you are like me, you are conflicted. I don’t like this article. Granted, there is a part of me that does, but most of me doesn't.

Most of me likes the comforts of the church I serve. I like the way I travel; I like being a VIP guest; I like being a headline speaker. I like the way I’m treated by both the public and the body of Christ. I enjoy the political platform we Christians are given.

But at the same time, there is a dark cloud in the back of my mind wondering if God isn’t stirring another Martin Luther to nail his theses to our church doors. I would rather have us return to our foundations of integrity by the prompting of the Holy Spirit and the illumination of the Scriptures, rather than have us defending our lifestyles, edifices and power to future generations as they read history books recounting about our demise, a demise brought about by our own hypocrisy. We need to ensure that we are not the whitewashed tombs and snakes of our day (see Matt. 23:27, 33).

We need to be sure.

Cut and pasted the umpteenth time, and I have NO idea who owns the rights to this article written by Ted Haggard. Good article, Ted.
Joe B

Seven Shifts

2009-11-19T09:57:00.000-06:00

The unChurch is about living the faith in the power of God's spirit. It is not about debating "How to Do Church Correctly".

But occasionally we see an article that combines the two. The "Seven Shifts" below are swiped from a fine article by Eric Swanson on the "Ten Shifts Churches Must Make" to be effective. That's right, I axed the three that pick at the "technology of Church", leaving only Seven Shifts.

These 7 grabbed me because they go to the heart of what it is to follow Jesus.

To Succeed in the Missio Dei, Churches (People) Must Shift From...

1. From Building Walls to Building Bridges
“nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket,
but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all... (Mt 5:15)

2. From Measuring Attendance to Measuring Impact
“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast...mixed
into a large amount of flour until it’s worked
all through the dough” (Matthew 13:33)

3. From "Attracting Saints to Services" to "Sending Servants"
“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served,
but to serve and to give…” (Mark 10:45)

4. From Competitive Duplication to Partnering
“'Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers hands?' And he said, "The one who showed mercy toward him." Then Jesus said to him, "Go and do the same." (Luke 10:36, 37)

5. From "Social Fellowship" to "Functional Fellowship"
"From Jesus, his whole body, fit and held together by
what every connection supplies, according to the proper
working of each individual part, causes body to
grow and build itself up by love." (Ephesians 4:16)

6. From Condemning the City to Blessing the City
“Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which
I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord
for it, because if it prospers, you too will
prosper” (Jeremiah 29:7)

7. From Ministering in a Congregation to Ministering in a community.
“As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city,
he wept over it…” (Luke 19:41)

Which of these shifts make you think how you and your crew can
better bring the life of God crashing into Planet Earth?

Go do it.
JoeB

Yeshua's Shabbat

2009-10-30T08:09:00.009-05:00

Among Christians, there's occasionally some debate around how we are to "do" the Sabbath. Is it Saturday? Is it Sunday? Is it imperative that we rest on that day? That we worship at a church building? Do those Old Testament laws apply to us?

Oh the dilemma. What's a 21st century Jesus follower to do?

Numerous New Testament scriptures point out how Christians are now "grafted in" with God's chosen people. Peter and Paul also seem to point out that it isn't imperative that Gentile Christians follow every law within the Torah, and that one day isn't any different from another. Jesus, of course, was occasionally chastised by leaders for things like healing on the Sabbath, or picking a piece or two of grain to eat on the Sabbath.

However, we also believe that Jesus came to FULFILL the teachings and covenant of the Old Testament, not to do away with them. There is a lot to learn and to understand from the Old Testament laws and from Jewish culture of the first century.

Keren Hannah Pryor, as a part of her "Appointments With God" series for the Center of Judaic-Christian Studies, has written a very insightful piece on The Sabbath Day. Insightful, and long. Too long to copy in here, in fact, and too long for me to expect many of our delightful unChurch blog readers to actually click on that link and take in the entire thing.

But I do encourage you to try. Go ahead, give it a shot.

For those of you that cheated and didn't go read the entire thing (eh, I had a tough time reading the whole thing myself), I'll here is a slightly abridged version, where I cut out about 70% of the stuff in the middle:

shin-bet-tav

Shabbat

yom ha’shishi

kadosh

Shabbat

evangelion

Shabbat

Shalom of Shabbat

Sar Shalom

Yeshua ha'Mashiach

My "Sabbath" often involves getting up much earlier than what I'd like, spending 5+ hours in a church building, going out to eat with friends and family, watching football, taking a nap, and then going back to church for a couple more hours. All of this, of course, begs the question -- Am I really "delighting" in the Lord's Sabbath?

For the Price of a Cup of Coffee...

2009-10-19T21:36:00.004-05:00

There are basically two kinds of people in this world:

(1.) The ones who think this magazine ad is hilarious, and

(2.) the kind who are offended by those who think it's hilarious.

Okay, there is another kind:

(3.) The ones who find it ridiculous, but are crushed by the tragedy of it.

There are a million things I could say about it. Can you guess any of them?

Camels and Needles and Good News

2009-10-13T14:02:00.006-05:00

Jesus told us we'd always have the poor with us. But we sure do try to avoid them, don't we? We aim to move to suburbia so we can be isolated from them, so we don't have to intermingle. Then we get upset or annoyed on the rare occasion someone tries to ask us for some spare change.

I had the opportunity to do a lot of walking around downtown Chicago last weekend. In addition to the miles and miles of walking, I also used public transportation the whole time. The huge breadth of people, the diversity of faces and colors and tax-brackets... It's a jarring reminder of the sheer number of PEOPLE God has placed on this planet. All of them deserving love and compassion, all of them under God's dominion. Each of them loved by Jesus enough to die on the cross.

"He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

'The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.' Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, 'Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.'" (Luke 4:16-20)

Really, if you want to see the diversity of people and colors and tax-brackets in a smaller city, you can just head over to Wal-Mart. It's the great equalizer. I suppose some might avoid Wal-Mart because of the very fact that it's filled with the people we try to avoid in suburbia.

"Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." (Luke 6:20)

I've heard some say that Sunday mornings are the most segregated day of the week, because of the lack of diversity within our local churches. I'd say the same holds true for the rich and the poor. There's just not much income diversity in most churches. In fact, it seems like the rich tend to huddle together in churches. That's not entirely the fault of the churches, I suppose (although I'll definitely give them some of the blame). Local churches serve local areas, and our society continues to draw broader geographical lines between the gated community and the trailer court.

"Go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then, come follow me... I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:16-26)

For some reason, though, we've turned the gospel around into something "for the wealthy." The rich go to church, and they try to help the poor heathens through various ministries. Sermons occasionally touch on money, but it's generally about tithing -- I've seldom seen anyone mention the Matthew 19 passage without adding, "but that doesn't mean you have to do that!" I've heard countless preachers say that it's "okay to have nice things" and that it's okay to have lots of money... You just can't LOVE IT too much.

"The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor." (Luke 7:22)

What, exactly, is the "good news" then? What are we preaching to the poor? To buck up and get a job? That maybe they can join our church, provided they don't have too many tattoos, and provided they take a shower and put on some clean church clothes? That if they become a Christian, maybe God will reward them with wealth?

"The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want." (Mark 14:7)

I saw a wide variety of people over the weekend. I had a friendly conversation about Notre Dame football with a homeless man in a wheelchair. My daughter asked for some money to give to a woman who "looked like she needed some."

But these aren't the type of people I see around me at church, or in suburbia. Jesus talked about releasing the oppressed, the forgiveness of debts, and good news for the poor. He surrounded himself with these people. Have we done the opposite? If it's so hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, why are our churches filled with rich people?

Have the camels all gotten smaller, or have the needles gotten bigger?

Literary Friday

2009-10-02T07:52:00.004-05:00

What is beauty? Why does one thing attract us while another repulses? What is it we feel when beauty's mysterious power strikes our senses? Our buddy Marty dragged me into the deep waters of this mystery when he posed me this question: "Why is it that beauty and neatness and order surround good people, but where those things are scarce you usually find an abundance of bad people?"

I was intrigued, so I invited Marty to summon the gentle monks of unChurch Abbey for a Boston Barstool Council where, with the help of our enlightened Theology Waitress, we plumbed the depths of the question: "How God is revealed in creation (Romans 1:19-20), and how does man either participate in God's creative work, or trash it by exploitation and neglect?"

Sometimes pop culture produces something not only sublime in beauty, but profound in meaning.

A tip of the hat to K.T. Tunstall's "Suddenly I See" that tackles the question of beauty head on, while injecting 10cc's of beauty, uncut, straight into your arm. Go ahead, indulge yourself with this tight-woven satin of sound, lyrics, and pictures: Video with Lyrics (scroll down to the YouTube player).

The song, of course is about her own experience of beauty upon encountering the "beautiful girl", which I'd say is the universal norm of God's highest created beauty. She describes its impact: "I see this is what I want to be", and "I see why this means so much to me." It is not envy, and it is not lust that beauty evokes. It doesn't matter whether the beauty is the iconic beatiful girl in the photo, or whether it is the running back's cleated ballet, or the glistening of a spider's web. What is this power?

The beauty of creation inspires us with hope that we embody our Creator's power. And it reminds of that certain extent to which we already do. Mostly, it leaves us with the question, will we tend to our own little endowment of beauty or will we waste and exploit it?

Theologians and other God-thinkers have returned their gaze to the issue of "beauty" after centuries of neglect. Maybe the best discussions on the subject are "A Meaningful World" by Wiker & Witt (on the scientific side of the coin) and "Simply Christian" by N.T. Wright (on the relational side.)

But a picture is worth a thousand words, so my thanks to my friend Ray who sent me the photo at the top of the article. Wherever it's from, it makes the point, and surrounds us in that "silver pool of light."
[Joe B]

Mid-Life Meditation

2009-09-23T16:55:00.009-05:00

How high will I climb in life? I'm already there, peering down. How many children will have my smile? My chin? My eyes? They're born, they've walked, they've driven away. My obituary is finished, and I'm not even dead. My life is more behind, and less ahead.

"Mid-life Crisis" is a cliche of modern life, and I've had a taste myself. The mere fact that most is "behind" colors what comes next. The things we pursued fade like the last days of summer. Careers plateau, kids fly the nest, and hairlines recede.

We've watched in silent horror as sane adults leased face lifts and boobs, sports cars and mistresses. We watched in shocked disbelief as friends upended the bounties of their lives into a bonfire of vanities. We are repulsed, even as we feel the bite.

Midlife crisis is the crisis of being human. Only, at moments, our humanity breaks the surface of this hypoxic, monotonous sea. Across we reach into the hostile heaven, snatching a gulp of breath from its fatal, forbidden expanse. What is a whale to think, which way is up? To succumb to the safe, slow descent, or aspire the absurd beaching of sun-drenched death? Another beached behemoth, live at six and ten.

I once awoke, a boy of twelve, and peered from my window. A streetlight shone, buzzing to the mute applause of the empty street. Its halo called me out to walk the wilderness of solitude. A world seen by none but me; a world of wonder 'neath my feet; a world of bats, preying on the streetlight's swarm.

Eventually every soul awakes to its scarcity of life. One awakes to life's elusive quest; one awakes to an ill-fitted toupee; one awakes never more. So let us love in the light, for love is from God. Hope does not disappoint, for God has poured out his love into our hearts by the holy spirit he has given.

Joe B

Breeding Like Rabbits

2009-09-18T06:16:00.007-05:00

Rabbits breed "like rabbits.” They reach maturity in just 4 months, and their gestation period is a mere thirty days. And rabbits are extremely--well, let's just say they're always "in the mood". Elephants, however, take years to reach maturity and have a long gestation period. It takes 2 years and tons of food to reproduce even a single elephant.

Something small and simple multiplies easily, but something large and complex is hard to reproduce.

A megachurch is like an elephant. It dominates the landscape and it's highly visible, even a little scary. A major investment of both money and energy is required to produce another megachurch, and the odds of success are very remote.

But an unChurch is like a rabbit. Rabbits live underground and you cannot easily find them, but they are everywhere. They are nonthreatening...even cute and cuddly. And they're always in the mood to multiply. They are very easy to duplicate, because anybody can gather a few people together in a living room or coffee shop.

A “plague” of rabbit churches could easily transform a nation, very quickly. It's happened before; there's no better example than China in the Communist era, 1950-2000. We're talking over 100,000,000 tasty little bunnies in just 2 elephant generations!

Elephants are cool. But I like rabbits. I identify.

Adapted without permission from Rabbit & Elephant by Tony and Felicity Dale. Download chapter 1 here.

Joe B

Lowering the Bar for Church; Raising the Bar for Discipleship

2009-09-17T08:31:00.009-05:00

Ah, the power of a good slogan! The title is a slogan coined by our hero, Neil Cole, icon of the Organic Church movement. We seldom swipe an article whole, nor seldom devote an article to "how church is done." Today we do both. The following article was published on Neil's blog, Cole Slaw. It's long by unChurch standards, but excellent.

Here it is...enjoy!

We need to upgrade the operating system for the church. A good upgrade does a few things. It makes the operation simpler and more intuitive. It also is more powerful in accomplishing all its important tasks. Finally, a good upgrade opens up the software to whole new markets that would never have tried to use the product in the past.

There have been two major upgrades in Church formation since Acts that have changed the entire system. The first occurred dramatically during the rule of the Emperor Constantine. The church shifted from an underground, grassroots, organic movement to a more institutionalized organization. I believe that the second is occurring now.

Church 1.0

The first century church was church 1.0 in its various minor differences. The Jerusalem church would have been the original church 1.0. Antioch would be church 1.1. The Galatian churches started in the first journey of Paul and Barnabas would represent church 1.2. Corinth would represent a change to 1.3 as Paul added some patches to the way he approached church. The Ephesian church would be church 1.4. And so the changes went on through two centuries of church life kept simple and organic by the oppression and persecution of ten different Roman emperors. Heresies emerged and were purged. There was the establishment of regional bishops and the institutionalization of some of the forms of Christianity during this period, but over all the church remained a grassroots, marginalized movement under the heat of intense persecution.

Everything changed in 313 AD when Constantine declared that the empire would not only tolerate Christianity but restore to the church all lost property. He was the first “Christian” emperor and Christianity went instantly from the margins to the mainstream and everything changed. Christianity became the state religion and the church did not change much from that point on. This was the shift to Church 2.0 and all its eventual variants.

Church 2.0

Over the centuries, after Constantine, the Western church has evolved in many ways, but none have been a significant systemic change. There was the establishment of both the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church and for hundreds of years there were very little changes. The Reformation split the Western church into the Roman Church and the volatile protestant church—or church 2.1. But as an institution, in spite of the differences, the institutional system remained mostly unchanged. The Anabaptists were set lose by the reformation (and persecuted by it) but it was just a change from church 2.1 to 2.2. Whether the church adapts to reach coal miners in the 18th century England or postmodern pilgrims in the 21st century, most of the changes have been patches and plug-ins to the Church 2.0 system. Whether you are talking about high church or low, Pentecostal or Reformed the church has remained in the 2.0 range of upgrades. From Baptist to Brethren, from Mennonite to Methodist, the changes in the system are relatively untouched over the centuries. Music or no music? Pipe organ or electric guitar? Tall ceilings with stained-glass widows or meeting in a box building without windows, the actual system of church has gone relatively unchanged.

You have the priests or pastors, the Sunday service with singing and a sermon, the weekly offering, the pulpit with pews and the church building. These have been constants since the forth century. Even if you move the whole show into a house instead of a church building, if the system hasn’t changed you have only shrunk the church, not transformed it. Changing the style of music does not upgrade the system. Turning down the lights and turning up the volume is a simple patch to the same old system. Choirs and hymns or praise bands and fog machines, kneeling or standing the system is changed very little. Sermonizing with topical messages or expositional ones is not changing the system just making minor adjustments. Sunday Schools or small groups as secondary learning environments are not a systemic change at all, just a variation on the same old operational system.

While most of the advances to Church 2.0 over the centuries have been plug-ins and patches to the same old system, there have been anomalies along the way. Usually, these anomalies are the result of rampant persecution that drives the church back to the old default system. One could say that these are examples of going back to the Church 1.0 system, because their 2.0 system crashed in the face of extreme heat. The radical Anabaptist churches are like that. The Chinese house church phenomenon is also a departure from the expression of the Church 2.0 system. But these experiments are really not the norm and have not, to date, influenced the church as a whole in any permanent fashion, except perhaps to say that they are part of the learning that has led to this new operating system—Church 3.0

Church 3.0

I believe that the second major shift is occurring now in our lifetime. Many people want to go back to the beginning again. As much as I am enamored of what I learned about the church of the first century we simply cannot go back; we can only go forward. Granted, if we did go back it would be a vast improvement on where we have been more recently. But I have to ask, could we do even better than Church 1.0? Some may find that even such a question is heretical. It is only a question, but it bears consideration.

Can it be that we can actually improve upon the first century church? A careful study of Acts reveals that even in the first decades of the church there was profound improvement as people learned from experience, so why not more so today, building upon the foundation of two thousand years of mistakes? I believe it is possible. I think we can see the awesome impact and rapid spread that the first century saw, but we also can benefit from two thousand years of learning as well and utilize the technological advances we have available today.

Imagine if the apostle Paul could buy an airline ticket and be across the world in twelve hours instead of twelve years. Imagine what he would do with the internet and the ability to see events unfold globally and instantaneously. Our ability to understand culture and translate languages today is built upon two thousand years of mistakes and the successes they produce. Perhaps more than any other benefit we have is that we can look in hindsight at how easily the church was overcome by institutionalization—where the church is no longer people in relationship to one another, but an organized system—and move forward armed with that knowledge. The early church flew blindly into a trap of a religious hierarchical system that kept her in the dark ages for hundreds of years. History can train us for the future if we listen to it. No, church 3.0 is not a shift downward in church life or quality. It is an upgrade in every sense of the word, perhaps even above the early church. Why would we suspect that God would be content with us going backwards? Why wouldn’t he want us to grow and develop in better ways?

The best upgrades do a few things. First they allow for greater power in what you want to accomplish, and church 3.0 is a huge boost in raw spiritual power. Every part of the body of Christ can function at a much higher level. A second thing you may look for in an upgrade is to move to a simpler and more intuitive ways of using the system. This upgrade to the church 3.0 is certainly that in so many ways. It is built upon simplicity and potency bound together in a way that increases speed and power in the influence that the church can and should have. Thirdly, upgrades take advantage of the latest discoveries in technology and help you interact better with all the other electronics you may use. Church 3.0 is far and away better at being fluid and mixing with multiple expressions of church structure and overcoming the world’s obstacles. Fourthly, an upgrade should have greater capacity to accommodate much more information, functionality and storage. Finally, some cool new features in an upgrade should significantly improve the system’s performance and make it much more fun to use. Church 3.0 is so enjoyable it is quite common for those who have made the switch to comment that they could never go back to the old system.

Do not be deceived into thinking that this is just another patch to the same old system; it is a radical change from the core of what church is. Church 3.0 has rebuilt the function of the church in every sense from the smallest to the largest capacity.

Stolen and posted by Joe B

unLearn your unTruth

2009-09-11T12:48:00.005-05:00

"If you study the teachings of Christ, you’ll realize that learning wasn’t his primary goal. His primary goal was unlearning. He was reverse engineering religious minds. And those can be the toughest minds to change. That is why two phrases are repeated over and over again in the Sermon on the Mount. “You have heard that it was said…”, “But I tell you…” Get this straight: Half of learning is learning, and the other half of learning is unlearning. Unfortunately, unlearning is twice as hard as learning. It’s like missing your exit on the freeway. You have to drive to the next exit and then double back. Every mile traveled in the wrong direction is a two-mile mistake. Unlearning is twice as hard, and it often takes twice as long." It is harder to get old thoughts out of your mind than it is to get new thoughts into your mind." (From In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, by Mark Batterson)

Personally I am continually astounded at how easily many educated Christians embrace things directly contrary to Jesus, simply because others have said them before. And then they weave elaborate theories to justify it all. Oh yeah, and then condemn the nonconformists who refuse to go along. It really doesn't seem that complicated. But then I forget all the years I spent complicating things for others. God forgive me.
JoeB

Three to a Bed

2009-08-29T12:40:00.032-05:00

Pretty sexy stuff, ain't it? It may be the family of God, but hey, there's a lot of Jerry Springer stuff in the family album. Take Abraham, for instance, a top-shelf bronze-age bad-ass. A nomadic warlord, mightier than kings. And by Christian standards, he's a walking scandal.

The Father of the Faith for Jews, Muslims, and Christians is maried to his own sister, Sarah. Plus he's pimping her out whenever opportunity knocks. Not to mention, he's also hittin' it with the pretty young Egyptian maid, courtesy of...Sarah! I kid you not, Thanksgiving dinner at Abraham's tent was hot as the Fourth of July. Are you surprised to learn that the girls did not get along after a while?

And so it goes. The downstairs maid becomes the upstairs maid becomes the nurse maid. Meanwhile Sarah's discovering that her Cinderella has become the belle of the ball. That cute little teenager has that cute little baby on that cute little hip, and "By golly he looks like Papa." What's not to like? But if you're Sarah, you're seeeeething! Hagar has gone from baking the bread, to shaking the sheets, to rocking the cradle, to rocking the boat. How could she resist?

"A little smirk, a toss of the hair, a little tension in the air..."

Sarah couldn't sleep in the bed she'd made, but regret ≠ repentance. Regret doesn't make you righteous, it makes you worse. Her mistake, in the shapely form of Hagar, seemed to taunt her, and she grew increasingly abusive. Finally Sarah complained to Abraham who found himself caught in the terrible middle, between Ishmael the heir, and Sarah the jealous wife.

You really need to read the story in Genesis 16 & 21, but I'll try to sum it up: After a visit from an angel and a night of hot lovin', Senior-Citizen-Sarah conceived the child Isaac, according to God's promise. Ishmael mocked Isaac, just as his mother had mocked Sarah, so Sarah demanded Abraham throw them out on the street. Abraham agreed, but only after God promised him He would bless the single momma and her little boy. By God's hand, both sons prospered, and they fathered nations of eternal enemies.

So what's the point of this tale of la ménage à trois? Well, it has nothing whatever to do with sex, but everything to do with religion! With never a hint about sexual morality, St. Paul unwinds the allegory in Galatians 4. Let me boil it down all the way: Sarah/Isaac & Hagar/Ishmael represent the conflict between the life in the Spirit versus the slow death under the Law. Abraham fixed his "little problem". But you? You're still sleeping three to a bed!

Isn't it ironic? I mean, how you're pondering how Abraham could be such a sinner with all that nasty-nasty...and all the while you're under the covers with your back to the holy spirit, spooning with the law of sin and death.

You've been called to live by the spirit of God, the way of eternal life. But you are still clinging to a checklist of rules and social expectations, which is the death warrant of mortal flesh. If you live by the rule-book, you're just slow-rotting flesh; but if you're led by the spirit you're a child of God.

I do not care whether your rule book is stringent or loose, religious or secular, written or unwritten. And I do not care whether you keep it well, or keep it poorly. Those who live by a rule-book are not led by the spirit of God; they are not sons of God. They are sons of earth, and to the earth they shall return.

"You may eat from every tree in the garden, but you may not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

God's first command still stands today. And that goes for you.

I suggest you put your robe on and read the whole story. Believe me, the Bible's version of this tale is better than mine.
Genesis 16-21 & St. Paul's two cents worth, Galatians 4 & 5.

Photo courtesy of Beta Male, voted the sexiest band in Indianapolis. Talented and decadent and creative. That's them in their daytime habitat, writing music!

Right Relationships of Brotherly Love

2009-08-24T13:23:00.003-05:00

People fight. People argue. It's inevitable. Some people just don't get along, and some people just plain don't like each other. When it happens in the "family," what do we do about it?

It seems this issue gets overlooked in many church circles. We *know* what the "bad" sins are. Drugs. Felony offenses. And the sexual ones that involve naked body parts, obviously. But Christians seem to be notoriously bad communicators. We often gossip like it's our national pastime. And then if someone stabs us in the back, we hold stuff inside. Because we know that, at church, it's our job to smile and shake hands and look like everything is A-OK, lest we rock the Boat Of Christian Community.

Besides, if someone hurts us, there are plenty of other Christians out there. We can just mark that person off the list. Keep our kids away from his kids, honey, that's the bad seed.

The unChurch, though, desires to see something different. "Throwing our lives in together" means the good and the bad. It means transparency, vulnerability, and overcoming the isolation of suburban sprawl. Sharing the yucky stuff isn't too bad when it's our boss or our distant cousin that wrongs us. The rubber really meets the road, though, when it's another Christian brother or sister.

My good friend Craig says it something like this:

Being the kind of creatures that we are, it is inevitable that we will 'rub each other wrong', maybe even pretty often, depending on the specific personalities involved. What is NOT inevitable is that any given pair of Christians will be committed enough to each other, and to loving each other even when it's hard, to do the 'relationship work' to preserve the 'brotherliness' of their relationship. It really has a lot of aspects in common with marriage; except that, in our culture, it's not a given anymore that people will do the hard work to preserve and strengthen their marriages, much less for something as 'abstract' as brotherhood in Christ.

I've read that it was fairly scandalous -- or at least quite weird -- that first-century Christians called each other brother and sister. It wasn't just a quaint thing to say. It was a new family, a new way of living. Living and loving together.

Learning to confront and communicate with each other in love is not an easy task. Most people don't LIKE confrontation. But without any confrontation, you just have... avoidance. It's way too easy in our current society to avoid each other. I imagine it was probably much harder to avoid ANYONE 2000 years ago. You didn't have people retreating behind the garage doors of the suburbs. Today, we have to proactively make an effort to love and keep those relationships healthy.

I don't want to go all "Dr. Phil" here, but it is mostly a matter of communication. Learning to confront in love. Learning to argue in love. Learning to live and love different personality types.

I think it's really a lost art, being able to confront each other and argue in love. You've got to have some trust in each other as a family to hash things out like that. It seems like the disciples were always arguing with each other, but Jesus and love were the common threads that held them together.

Right relationships of brotherly love. That's what the "community" aspect of the unChurch is all about.

The River Runs Backwards: The Gospel According to Joe

2009-08-14T10:53:00.005-05:00

Everybody knows how the river flows. A thousand tiny streams converge into one mighty river, right? That's the way of the world, especially in the affairs of men. A thousand little peons wear t-shirts for one big mega musician, or a rock-star politician or a pin-up preacher.

But that's not God's way; God's river runs backward.

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of [the city], and on either side of the river, there grew the tree of life, which bare twelve sorts of fruits, yielded every month. And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.
[Revelation 22]

You may have recognized that the Tree of Life mentioned here in Revelation appeared first in Genesis, in the Garden of Eden. But did you also recognize the river? The river that watered Eden branched out and became the four great rivers of the Earth. Notice that here the river of Life does not aggregate and flow to God's throne, it flows from a single, wonderful point, and it winds or branches whereeveer it will. This God-river turns up in Ezekiel 47 in vivid detail, and we see the water coming from under the altar, and "swarms of living live wherever the river flows." Then, instead of blending in the saltwater of the sea, the sea turns fresh when they meet. Earth redeemed, a gallon at a time.

So what's that got to do with you? St. John captures Jesus at his quotable best in John 7:38:

If any man thirst, let him come to me, and drink. He that believes on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." This he spoke of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive. [Jn 7:38]

Dude, do you see it? If we drink from the river, we're The Immortals. Mere mortals are like Adam, "living souls" who will die; But we, like Jesus, become "lifegiving spirits." Eternal springs of life.

Yeah. This river runs backwards.

[Joe B]

166 Hours: A Glimpse Inside unChurch Abbey

2009-08-11T11:26:00.010-05:00

The gentle Monks of unChurch Abbey would like to invite you into our world. We like to say "Church can have 2 hours a week, the unChurch is about the other 166." That includes work-time, family-time, bed-time, and party-time.

Let me introduce unMonk Eric and unMonkie P.J. They do not write or speak, instead they sing rock and roll, and they rock babies to sleep in the name of God Almighty. Years ago they bought a house at the intersection of the suburbs and a trailer park. At times they've felt it was a big mistake to buy in this location, since sometimes "people problems" can spill over from the trailer park into their own fenced, green back yard. Until one day that asked "What if...?"

What if God put us here on purpose?

School starts this week. So P.J. says, "It sure is expensive buying school supplies for the kids. Heck, how do poor people DO it?" So she calls some friends and says "Let's party." They asked their more fortunate friends to help out their less fortunate neighbors. They set up lawn chairs, set out food, lit the grill, and sent invitations to the neighbors. Gardeners and nurses and VP's and cooks and programmers and teenagers. Then they set put the donated school supplies out, like "See? We got this extra stuff. Can you use it?"

As in heaven, so on the earth. That's what unChurch is all about. Eric & P.J. are gonna kill me for making a big deal about this, but it was too good an example to waste. The bible says "provoke each other to do good."

So, what if God put you where you're at? On purpose?

[Joe B]

Touchdown Jesus Leads Us To The Promised Land?

2009-07-27T10:29:00.004-05:00

If I follow Jesus, will I get a promotion at my job? If I trust in God, will my company make more money? Will I be successful in what I do here on Earth, if I am obedient to God's calling?

The other day, I was reading a Sports Illustrated article on Tim Tebow. Tebow is the Heisman Trophy-winning Quarterback of the Florida Gators. He is one of college football's best and most recognizable athletes. He's famous. He's also a Christian, a guy who is outspoken about what he believes. He goes to prisons and talks about Jesus. His father is a missionary in the Dominican Republic.

I'm a huge fan of world-class athletes that also are willing to talk about Jesus. Kurt Warner does it. Reggie White. A.C. Green. Orel Hershiser. There's an abundance of professional athletes who have talked at length -- and even written books -- about their faith.

I'm also a fan of players and teams that reach out to the community, and to each other. Many teams have a chaplain, and many clubhouses have Bible studies and church services that are well-attended. People like Tebow take the time to work in third-world countries or to meet with guys on death row. That's awesome.

So I read the SI cover story with great interest. The story focused on Tebow's Christianity. Two thirds of the way into the article, I read about how before last year's BCS title game, Tebow called 15 players into his hotel room and read a passage from Matthew to them. The words of Jesus: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."

How can you not love this guy?

Then Tebow told his teammates that they would beat Oklahoma "not because we're the better team or because we've worked harder," although he believed those things were true. "We're going to win because we're going to handle it the right way, we're going to be humble with it, with God leading us."

That sentence made me stop and think. What? Is that really how God operates? "We're going to win, with God leading us"?

I'm used to seeing players point to the heavens or even kneel for a moment in prayer after scoring a touchdown. Practically every player you see in a post-game interview thanks God for the win. Kurt Warner, at one point, said that "The Lord has something special in mind for this team."

In fact, most of our churches preach a similar mantra. Obey God, and he will bless you. The Prayer of Jabez idea seemed to blow up into an entire institution. Enlarge your territory! Increase your impact! After all, the more football games we win, or the more companies we own, the more people we can help and win for Christ, right? Why WOULDN'T God want us to have all of that success?

Hmm. I think about Stephen. Peter. John. Pretty much all of the apostles. Ignatius. Justin. Origen. Jim Elliot. Millions more people crucified, stoned, burned at the stake, boiled in oil, ripped apart, or eaten by lions. Man, weren't THOSE guys missing out on "Christ's blessings!"

I wonder if Paul's tentmaking business really took off, and he ended up owning a whole string of tentmaking franchises. He probably just never mentioned it.

All of this makes me think of one of my favorite passages in the Bible, three kids on death row, speaking to the king, in Daniel 3: "If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up."

Did he say "even if he does not"? What's that supposed to mean?

One could easily find scriptures saying that God will bless us if we follow him. But what exactly does that "blessing" entail?

If we follow Jesus -- a homeless guy who was jailed and then killed by the time he was 33 -- should we expect a life of successful earthly endeavors?

The Only Way?

2009-07-15T10:20:00.002-05:00

Is Jesus "the only way?" Well, as the humble swordsman Indigo Montoyo famously said in "The Princess Bride": "You keep saying that...I do not think it means what you think it means."

Below is a brief article from the blog of pastor Brett Nicholson of The Edge @ Bethel Temple, Evansville IN. I cannot kick off this discussion any better, so let him begin for us:

"Core to our calling as a church is to “make the case for the faith” to our generation. This is inspired by a study of the book of Acts and how Paul went about the task of missions. In that spirit, July is dedicated to equipping us to answer the question: “Is Christianity fact or fairy tale?”

We’ll begin with the question I think is the toughest.

“What makes us think Jesus is the only way?” Without question, of all the claims we make as believers, this one gets under people’s skin the most. Or, to put another way, “So if I don’t believe what you believe, I’m going to hell?” Ever heard that one in a conversation with an unbeliever? In the age of tolerance, it’s a pretty hard sell to say ours is the way and others are just out of luck. How do we answer?

There’s no question the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus is the only way. But, I guess my goal is to fully appreciate and embrace the beauty of it rather than succumb to the temptation of grudgingly accepting it (in the back of my mind thinking God is too narrow). Better yet, I need to be able to articulate a solid answer when the question is posed. Therefore; my goal is to take a deep, hard look at Jesus’ claims to being the one and only way to eternal life."

Yankee-Doodle Diety

2009-07-10T14:56:00.008-05:00

Not sure you're into following Jesus? What's the matter, don't you know the future of America depends on it? I mean go ahead, be a Christian...do it for the old Red, White, and Blue, and for our boys in Baghdad.

Recently I got a well-meaning chain e-mail that sounded like this:

“Our nation has been on a slippery slope for a long time. If you look around you will find corruption, greed, moral decay, and a steady move away from the things that made us great. The principles upon which this nation was founded are no longer our backbone. However, we can reverse this trend.

“2 Chronicles 7:14 In God's word HE states, "If MY people who are called by MY Name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land".

I am convinced that we must pray for our nation and its leaders and ask for forgiveness. So I ask you to join me in this plea to our Lord. If you feel led to do so, would you please send this to people in your address book; ask them to pray EVERYDAY. (25 to the only the 5th power is 9,765,625 people.) IMAGINE if each person reaches TEN others...or all TWENTY FIVE!

If you do and they comply, we will lift up millions and millions of prayers a day to our Creator. He will hear us and in faith will answer.”

A counterpoint:

First of all, let us not mistake who God was speaking to in 2 Chronicles. He was speaking to his chosen people -- the Jewish nation in Palestine, 450 BC. Is that the same as Christians in the USA, 2009? I am not saying this does not pertain to us at all, I am merely asking HOW does this pertain to “us”, the 9.77 million people envisioned in the would-be chain letter above?

The “we” in 2 Chronicles is not “America”, neither does it refer directly to any odd conglomeration of souls who pray. Does that mean it doesn't apply to us? No, that's not what I mean. It just means that we need to look at what words like "us" and "land" mean in that context. So who are God's people today?

Well, I suppose that would be Christians. This passage is interested in His gathered people, His followers, His church. The “us” referenced is all the Jesus-lovers in Iran and Israel, Mexico city and Vatican City, Angola and America. Not political entities, but the “one holy ethnos” he’s gathered from every tribe and tongue.

So if CHRISTIANS, who are called by God's name, will humble themselves and pray and seek God's face and turn from THEIR wicked ways, God will hear and forgive THEIR sin, and bless THEIR land. However, the popular myth of this e-mail suggests that “we good guys” should be praying against “those nasty OTHER guys”. Those greedy people, those corrupt people, and their moral decay. Those for whom we vote and cheer; those whose CD’s and DVD’s we collect. Them…the ones that have pushed America down such a "slippery slope."

This seems to run completely contrary to the verse we're referencing. God says that WE must humble OURselves. Us! Our churches. Our Christians. WE must turn from our wicked ways, not bow in smug false repentance for the sins of others.

Then he will heal our land, right? And America will "turn around", and be restored to her greatness, to her manifest destiny? But He's not talking about America. God has no more interest in America’s success as a nation, nor for the souls of its citizens, than he has in Congo or Cambodia or Costa Rica. If you do not understand this, you do not understand God and his kingdom.
Scott
Joe B

Radical Forgiveness, Scandalous Grace

2009-06-30T16:43:00.004-05:00

Often, when we think of the forgiveness that we are supposed to have as Christians, we think of how we are to react to the guy that cuts us off on the freeway, or the coworker that says something negative behind our back. Are those good examples of the kind of radical forgiveness that Jesus lived and espoused? Or should we be looking for something more... severe?

This news story caught my eye a few months back. Years ago, Raymond Guay abducted and killed a 12-year old boy. Recently, he was paroled from prison. By order of the judge, he had to remain in New Hampshire to serve his three-year parole.

It will come as no shock to most of us that the tiny, peaceful, rural community of Chichester didn't want him living there.

But that didn't stop a local pastor -- David Pinckney -- from taking him in, to live with his family.

The town didn't like that one bit. Hundreds of people gathered in a town meeting to ask Guay to go live somewhere else.

But now many locals feel like prisoners in their own homes. Smith said he will not allow his 11-year-old daughter to feed her pony, Wilma, alone anymore. Ingram, who lives near Pinckney, has blocked her back deck with the family's gas grill, a barrier to make sure the children do not go wandering.

"To be perfectly honest, I wouldn't want Mr. Guay to be living in my town," said the county sheriff. "I'm a parent, too."

"We were warned," said Pinckney, who has four children, ages 13 to 18, living at home and a fifth, age 19, away at school. "It was said this could disrupt life. People wouldn't like it. He's not liked. But at the end of the day, this is what Jesus did. He defended the defenseless. He was a friend of sinners."

In case you missed that, yes, Pinckney has four children living at home. The youngest is close to the same age as the boy that, 25 years ago, was shot in the head and found a month later, dead in the woods, wearing nothing but his socks, underwear, and eyeglasses.

Yikes.

In the conversations we had about this story, the common theme seemed to be something like, "Sure, that's cool that he did that. But geez, I've got young kids. I don't think I'd trust a guy like that around MY kids."

The story of the killing is, indeed, tragic. The final paragraph of the news story is a quote from the mother of the boy that was killed by Mr. Guay.

"The worst part is the winters, when the wind is howling outside and you're curled up in bed, nice and cozy," she said. "That's when I think about my poor little son out there in the freezing cold in his underpants. Can you imagine?"

No, I can't imagine. I hesitate to even think about it. Is this really the kind of man Jesus wants us to love and forgive?

Would YOU take him into your home?

A New Sect, or an unSect?

2009-06-19T11:50:00.013-05:00

Is the unChurch a SECT?? Our last article spoke of how men remake God to suit their taste, then hold everyone else to that standard. But how is the unChurch any different? Isn't The unChurch just one more calf-worshipping sect among many? Friar Joe B goes way out on a limb to answer that.

I have to speak only for myself on this, but I will point out that our faithful critics do not criticize us for being specific or narrow, rather for being too inclusive and fuzzy. Our critics ask "what Jesus are you following", as though it were a difficult question. But honestly I think that anyone who reads the gospels has a marvelous view of who Jesus is. It is only by applying layer upon layer of interpretive frameworks that the picture gets obscured.

That is why we are clearly not a sect, we are clearly an "unSect"!

I believe Jesus is utterly accessible and knowable to us who believe, whether we be learned or ignorant. The spirit of God himself dwells in our hearts and minds through faith. It is this faith and love that entwines us securely in his being. It is not knowing correct facts and adhering to abstract "beliefs" that secures our place in his communion, nor is it strict adherence to certain manners, nor is it the approval of any particular religious authority.

I believe that that all the complexity and esoterica of religion: faith, truth, ethics, and spirituality...are all summed up in Jesus himself, that real guy in sandals who stood up among us and proclaimed "God's Kingdom is Here!" He is knowable. I know him. And I absolutely love him, because he positively rocks.

Jesus once criticized the scholarly authorities of his day saying "Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering." (Lk 11:52)

Contrast this "Way of the Experts" with the wonderful way of Jesus described by St. Peter. This is long, but read it long and slow--it's God's word:

"Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. Therefore, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins. Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never fall, and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

Generations of ambitious men have clamored over their claims to be St. Peter’s Rightful Successor, but it is sometimes hard to oserve how the religion hammered out by the Calf-Sculpting Department of the Religious-Industrial Complex is even remotely related to the wonderful, powerful Word of Jesus that brings light and life to Man.

St. Pete continues: “And we hold a more-sure prophetic word,* and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet's own interpretation. For prophecy never had its origin in the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.”

Why is the Word of Prophecy "more sure" for us? Because, the same spirit who lived in the prophets lives in us, through faith in Jesus Christ who calls us.

Too spiritual? Too scary? Who knows. But I ain't skeered.

* I think this is a more literal and accurate translation of the Greek text of 2 Peter 1:19. Permission, The Joe B Version (JBV) New Testament, 2009.
JB

Of Golden Calves

2009-06-15T10:18:00.002-05:00

Sure, I know. You are right. Everything you think you know about God is exactly, precisely right. What you think you know = what you actually know, 100% of the time. In his 1952 book, Your God is Too Small, J.B. Phillips raised eyebrows as he confronted the tendency to attribute human-like limitations to our eternal, almighty God (for instance the arrogant notion that you have God all figured out, and you can anticipate his every move.)

Let me add my voice. Many Christians, even biblically literate and seminary trained, are prone to over-emphasizing certain attributes of God, to the diminution of others. The result is always a scaled-down, wee little god. One more to our liking. Maybe one that bears a passing resmblance to...you.

Calvinists tend to favor the facets of God that are disciplinarian, righteous, vengeful, selectively merciful, deterministic, and sometimes generous. Charismatics emphasize the intimate, fatherly, forgiving, merciful, friendly, joyful, and always generous. And shall we speak of conservatives and liberals?

Bottom line: Excluding or diminishing facets of our Father that are supernaturally revealed in Scripture is a flaw that cultivates error, lack of love, division and carnal living. The Lord our God is One. Let us pray to the One True God to open the eyes of our understanding so we may know Him better. In all his brilliance, glory and life-changing power.

NOTE: This article was written by Chris Bradford (Exec Pastor of Discipleship, Fellowship Bible Church, McKinney TX) and published on his modest-but-profound blog. It was stolen from his wee little blog, and had a stinging intro added, in an act of villainy not equalled since the burning of the fabled library of Alexandria. Comment on his blog page to voice your outrage!!!

Transgenders and Jesus

2009-06-05T15:04:00.007-05:00

Here's the "ethics dilemma" that Dr. Russell Moore of Southern Seminary presented to his ethics class for pastors:

Joan is a fifty year-old woman who has been visiting your church for a little over a year. She sits on the third row from the back, and usually exits during the closing hymn, often with tears in her eyes. Joan approaches you after the service on Sunday to tell you that she wants to follow Jesus as her Lord.

You ask Joan a series of diagnostic questions about her faith, and it is clear she understands the gospel. She still seems distressed though. When you ask if she’s repented of her sin, she starts to cry and grit her teeth.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know how…I don’t know where to start…Can I meet with you privately?”

You, Joan, and a godly Titus 2-type women’s ministry leader in your church meet in your office right away, and Joan tells you her story.

She wasn’t born Joan. She was born John. From early on in John’s life, though, he felt as though he was “a woman trapped in a man’s body.” Joan says, “I don’t mean to repeat that old shopworn cliché, but it really is what I felt like.”

Joan tells you that when she was twenty she began the process of “transitioning” from life as a man to life as a woman. She underwent extensive hormone therapy, followed by extensive plastic surgery—including so-called “gender reassignment surgery.” She has lived for the past thirty years—physically and socially—as a woman.

“I want to do whatever it takes to follow Jesus,” Joan tells you. “I want to repent…I just, I don’t know how to do it.”

“I am surgically now a woman. I’ve taken hormones that give me the appearance and physical makeup of a woman,” she says. “Even if I were to put on a suit and tie right now, I’d just look like a woman with a suit and tie. Not to mention the fact that, well, I am physically…a woman.”

“To complicate matters further,” Joan says through tears, “I adopted my daughter, Clarissa, when she was eight months old and she’s ten years old now. She doesn’t know about my past life as…as a man. She just knows me as her Mom.”

“I know the sex change surgery was wrong. I know that my life is twisted. I’m willing to do whatever Jesus would have me to do to make it right,” she says. “But what would Jesus have me to do?”

Joan asks you, “Am I too messed up to repent and be saved? If not, what does it mean for me to repent and live my life as a follower of Jesus? What is right for me to do?”

You see, the scenario about “Joan” isn’t really all that hypothetical. Chances are in your town right now, there are people in that situation. Why don’t they show up in our churches? Is it because they doubt if our gospel is really addressed to them? Or is it because we doubt it?

Not another word from me. What do you think? What's the dilemma? What's the solution?
JoeB

For Dr. Moore's article and conclusions, CLICK HERE. If you have no opinions about the dilemma, you definitely will about his conclusions!

Washing Feet Until We Take Over the World

2009-05-28T23:18:00.005-05:00

What is the "kingdom of God"? What is our place here on Earth, here in America? How are we to interact with powers and authority systems? Should we be trying to win some abstract "culture war"?

"As we allow Christ's character to be formed in us -- as we think and act like Jesus -- others come under the loving influence of the kingdom and eventually their own hearts are won over to the King of Kings. The reign of God is thus established in their hearts, and the kingdom of God expands...

This, in a nutshell, is the primary thing God is up to in our world. He's not primarily about getting people to pray a magical "sinner's prayer" or to confess certain magical truths as a means of escaping hell. He's not about gathering together a group who happen to believe all the right things. Rather, he's about gathering together a group of people who embody the kingdom -- who individually and corporately manifest the reality of the reign of God on the earth. And he's about growing this new kingdom through his body to take over the world. This vision of what God is about lies at the heart of Jesus' ministry, and it couldn't contrast with the kingdom of the world more sharply."

I'm in the midst of reading The Myth of a Christian Nation (a provocative title if there ever was one). But the book's subtitle is "How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church." The author's main point is that the kingdom of God is about following the life of Jesus Christ. Trying to align ourselves too closely with any earthly government or political powers (voting the right way to take America "back for God," for instance) is not at all what the kingdom of God is about.

Jesus taught a "power-under" kingdom, where greatness is measured by sacrifice, service, love, and death. All perfectly embodied in the cross.

What this also means is that there is danger in associating the Christian faith too closely with political viewpoints, whether conservative or liberal. Jesus was about hearts and not about legislation. To some degree, many evangelicals fuse the kingdom of God with their preferred version of the kingdom of the world.

I'm not sure that Jesus is interested in "taking America back for God." The kingdom of God isn't about winning a culture war, or keeping the right words in America's Pledge of Allegiance, or outlawing gay marriage. The kingdom of God, incarnated and modeled in the person of Jesus Christ, advances by exercising power under others. Self-sacrificial, Calvary-like love.

It's a tough road to travel. Who's up for it?

deChurch?

2009-05-16T17:12:00.009-05:00

Among our readers you will find all sorts. Insiders, outsiders, rebels and commmited church-heads. Some have left Church-As-We-Know-It, while some have stayed behind to work to salvage it, and some believe that everything their church does is right, no matter what. Whether they are for "church" or against "church", they are completely defined by it. The gentle monks of unChurch Abbey do not have a dog in that fight. We just tilt our hearts toward God, follow onward, and leave the church-heads to fuss over the rest. Still we found this article to be very interesting, written by guest scribe Brant Hansen, a syndicated Christian radio morning show personality who left "church-as-we've-made-it" some years ago. These are his observations.

FAQ #24: Shouldn't We Just Stay Where We Are, and Work for Change, Rather than Abandoning the Church?
by Brant Hansen, Syndicated Radio Host, from his blog, "Letters from Kamp Krusty"

Frequent Answer #24: For you? I have no idea.

And, by the way, sport, that's a weird way to pose the question.

I get this all the time, though. Since chronicling our own move out of the typical American 501-c-3 church structure, a lot of people have posed the question this way. It's a way of saying, a) yes, your fundamental critique may be right, but b) you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Or, perhaps, it's another way of saying, a) yes, your critique may be right, but b) I don't know any like-minded people around here, and I can't just go sailing off by myself.

Or, perhaps, it's another way of saying, a) yes, your critique may be right, but b) I went to Bible College, okay? What the heck else am I supposed to do for a living?

Or, perhaps, it's another way of saying, a) yes, your critique may be right, but b) I've already staked out my position on this, so now I'm committed to defending it.

Of course, there are those (many) who say, a) your critique is totally jacked, this system is the one God gave us, by golly, and b) you're an idiot, and c) shut up, and d) seriously, you're an idiot. This is a popular option, but these people usually aren't asking FAQ #24.

So, what should you do? Stick it out? Try to change things from the inside? Occasionally ask a question here and there, rock a boat here and there, slowly press for change?

Like I say, I don't know. I can't speak to your particular situation. I wish I could; this blog entry would be a lot more interesting. But one-size-fits-all thinking is, in part, what got us into this expensive mess.

Alan Hirsch and Michael Frost wrote a brilliant new book, ReJesus. (You should buy it and read it. I can make that categorical statement.) They say the church needs a serious "reboot", to re-align the software (all our church trappings) with the hardware (Jesus). Jesus' values, Jesus' priorities, Jesus' teachings.

By advocating for that, they're advocating for radical change, and I'll bet you know it, too. So here's one way you might look at it: Will that radical change happen without people like me making a radical change?

-------------

None of this, of course, applies if you object to the very idea of leaving church-as-we've-made-it. If you see "preaching", Biblically, as a sermon delivered each week to roughly the same audience by the same guy in the same building, and you regard this to be a sacrament, you'd never ask the question at all. (I heard a very popular preacher the other day say, on the radio, "When someone causes you to doubt or question, you get away from them, and get into the House of the Lord. I know I need to do that, because I need a talented man of the pulpit to help me understand, and...")

You may be a person, like this Talented Man of the Pulpit, who really needs, who must have, a Talented Man of the Pulpit. In which case, you've likely stopped reading this blog. You may think his sprawling campus is the House of the Lord, too, in which case, you've likely stopped reading this blog.

Here's another consideration: The original question reveals something horribly wrong. By abandoning a particular institutional conception of church, you are not abandoning the church. It's an insidious idea that begs the very question.

Now, for you, it might ultimately mean that you WILL wind up leaving the church -- the people called out by God for his purposes -- but that's a different issue. Simply put: You may not be able to deal with the freedom. Freedom is wonderful, and just like most wonderful things, like, say, sex and the strong force in an atom's nucleus, it's also dangerous.

You may need someone to tell you exactly how much to give, and exactly to whom. You may need someone to draw up a chart of the Eight Things a Disciple Must Be Doing. You may need the busy-ness that comes from meetings, and meetings that plan meetings. You may not know how to live without it. (I've heard it before: "Well, then -- what do you do?) You may not ever be able to break from something your parents did. You may need to be able to easily explain you're a "real Christian" by saying, "Here's where I go to church."

There's other stuff you may need. You may need to feel more occupied on Sunday mornings. You may need help being told what to study. You may need to avoid the disapproval of those who will judge you for what you're doing. You may need the significance that comes from your social standing in that particular group.

You may, if you're a musician or speaker, need a crowd.

If these are things you need, deep down, leaving a particular 501c3 organization may, in fact, ultimately result in leaving the real church.

Oddly, while we can worry about that, I'm more worried about the people currently well-plugged-in to American Church Life who have no role -- who've been trained to have no role -- in the church of Jesus. They left the church, and are busy members in good standing.

Anyway, I can't answer the question for you. If I were a career pastor, or lived in a small town, or -- any number of possibilities -- I, frankly, doubt we'd have made the move we made. I don't know that we could have done it.

It's been a wonderful thing, opting out, and a blessed thing. But I can't say, for everyone, everywhere, it's the thing.

Commune in the 'Burbs: Part II

2009-05-10T18:25:00.000-05:00

More on Craig's "covenant community" -- Part II. See part I here.

There were 80 or so of us who committed ourselves to our first covenant in June of ’74 (I was all of 18 years old at the time). By the following fall, there were a few less than 70 of us left, as the demands of community life began to become clearer. At first, the big deal was just that, having made a covenant with each other, our lives weren’t our own, to do with as we pleased; at least, not like they’d been previously. It’s hard, you know – somewhat akin to how marriage is hard – to give others a say in your life, when you’ve never done that, and it’s not exactly how things go in the larger culture. And besides that, loving other people is hard – especially people with whom you live really closely. One of my favorite quotes from my favorite book not-the-Bible (The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis) says, “. . . to be able to live at peace with hard, obstinate and undisciplined people [ie, people like me]. . . is a great grace.”

In the first years of our new ‘community’ life, it was just an amazing time – everything we touched seemed to prosper. By the early 80s, we had something in the neighborhood of 500 adult members. Not that I’m playing a ‘numbers game’ at all, but things just worked; evangelism was easy. The community life was pretty attractive, especially to college students, and everything we touched seemed to turn to gold. We liked to say that we were ‘the greatest thing God is doing on the face of the earth’. What’s that proverb about ‘pride goeth before a fall’? But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Now, you’d no doubt not be surprised if I told you that the guys who were leading a group like that had some pretty strong egos. At least, a couple of them did. And their ego clashes eventually led to a rupture in the community. And then, the guy who, after all that, was the main head leader-guy, was found to have, uh, certain deficiencies of character. And between those two things, the life of our community was rocked pretty hard. By our 10th anniversary in ’84, we had around 180 members. And from that, we’ve had to rebuild our community life, incorporating the ‘lessons learned’ from our troubles.

One thing we learned – when our community was comprised almost completely of young singles (in ’74, we had five married couples in the community, who had two children between them), there was a certain ‘gung-ho’ intensity that didn’t translate well, once we started marrying each other, and the community transitioned to something more ‘family-based’. The whole ‘intensity’ thing also sometimes happened at the cost of individual members’ taking responsibility for their own lives. ‘Radical self-denial’ could easily morph into a kind of authoritarianism. And so, part of our challenge in rebuilding the life of our community was to foster the same kind of radical discipleship, while respecting the integrity of the would-be disciples, and not crossing over into authoritarianism.

Another thing worth mentioning at this point relates to something that Dietrich Bonhoeffer said in his book, Life Together (which is a great book on the dynamics of Christian community life), to the effect that ‘he who loves his vision of community more than he loves the community, destroys the community’. That is, if we love our vision of community more than we love our actual brothers and sisters, the community will die. Sort of the Christian version of the old bit from the French Revolution about making omelets and breaking eggs. And that is also consistent with our experience of community life.

In the early years of our community, community life was largely ‘household-based’. Groups of singles would share a house together, and have daily patterns of prayer and sharing. Or families would have singles live with them, to live the community life in a family setting. I personally lived in both of those – in a household of 18 single men (sort of analogous in my life to my dad’s military experience), and later, with a family, along with two other single men, and three single women (I’m guessing that might provoke a question or two).

These days, we don’t have so many of the ‘old-style’ households, but we do make an effort at ‘clustering’ – families will buy houses near each other, so that physical proximity can foster close relationships. Right now, my wife and I live in a neighborhood where we’re within a block of about ten community families, and within 4-5 blocks of 6-8 more families. Living close to each other just makes a ‘life together’ a whole lot easier, and more natural.

Commune in the 'Burbs, Part I

2009-05-01T16:34:00.014-05:00

FAQ #1: Is the unChurch a commune?? Well, no. But the gentle monks of unChurch Abbey have long pondered the idea of buying some plot of land right in the middle of suburban America, and moving a bunch of families into a condo-like place to share life and resources. You know: lawn mowers, laser printers, baby-sitters and bass guitars. The essentials. Being together, praying together, and having "everything in common." Not a cloister, but more like a community center for the neighborhood. "Missio de San Larry de la Burbia". It's got a nice ring, no?

The article that follows is Part 1 of a series begining this week in unChurch Magazine. One of our visitors, Craig, is a long time member of The Work of Christ, a Christian covenant community in Michigan (NOT a "commune"!) His experience is inspiring and instructive. Enjoy the article and then leave your comments about the merits and drawbacks of this type of Christian community. What follows is Craig's story:

hundred

To be continued!

*It should be noted that Craig was originally the person to recommend to me the Building Christian Communities book that I wrote about last year. The book was a bit of a "manifesto" for building these types of communities back in the day.

Dissecting Debbie

2009-04-24T17:00:00.006-05:00

Seeking to know God by arguing about the Bible is sort of like getting intimate with your wife by dissecting her. It may be enlightening, but in the end all you've accomplished is to reduce her to meaningless meat. Refrigerate after opening. A felony in all 50 states, mind you.

My wife's grandpa once told me "If you think you can improve it, take it apart. But if you want it to work, leave it be." J.C. Stanley knew machines. J.C. Stanley knew God.

Systematic theology excels at analysis. That is, taking the bible and God apart. It then reassembles the parts in an orderly way (a vast improvement on that crazy, chopped up, puree-of-Bible, right?) It is a grand learning exercise, and great fun for us who relish it. But we must cling to this truth with white knuckles: the final product is not the Word of God, it is an abstraction of the Word, a simplification, an interpretation. At its best, it diminishes the Word; at its worst it distorts the Word. The product is not a living man; not even a dead body. Even at its richest and best, it is a chalk outline on the asphalt that oddly resembles the men who drew it. "The body without the spirit is dead."

Jesus said "The wind (pneuma), where it wills, it goes. It's sound you hear, but you cannot see whence it comes or whither it goes. So is each who is begotten from the Spirit (pneuma)." (Jn 3:8) If your faith cannot endure mystery, I suggest you study engineering, not God.

Those who slice specimens of God and peer at him under their microscopes wind up with nothing better to do than argue "which is greater, faith or works?" (Geez, did not St. James clearly enough warn against separating the two?)

In Love, faith and works unite, and from their union springs blessed life. In Love, heaven and earth unite, as God breathes his spirit into the man of clay. In Love, man and woman unite, and life begets life. In Love, Word becomes flesh and they are one; "whoever believes will in Him have eternal life." Jesus, son of Man, son of God.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. These sum up the Law and the Prophets.
JB

Jesus for Dummies?

2009-04-22T18:36:00.004-05:00

Man, these guys are smart. The blog-o-sphere abounds with bulging theological biceps, and torrents of erudite scribblings about Christian faith. Some are professors, and some are ordinary guys like me. Their intellect is sometimes dizzying. And since I fancy myself the world’s smartest man, I enjoy reading and sometimes even daring to question their conclusions.

But one particularly smart and admirable internet sage really left me scratching my head with this, which I excerpted below, from his blog Parchment and Pen. He says:

“God cares more about what you believe than what you do. Belief, truth, doctrine, theology, and, yes, being correct, is more important than all the good works one can ever do. It is God’s first desire that we believe correctly...Think of the incarnation, hypostatic union, the Trinity, the eternality of God. These are the context in which right worship, the most important deed of all, can take place.”

His blog fans loved this: “It’s about time someone stood up for Truth”, and so on. I did not love it. Does that make me weird?

Does the ability to make subtle theological discourse, or the capacity to evaluate and embrace something like “hypostatic union” mean a man is more able to know and worship and obey God? If that were true, it seems inescapable that God takes more pleasure in the more “accurate” worship of smart people than the “fuzzy” worship of the unintelligent. As your children might phrase it, "God loves smarties better than dummies."

So here is a couple of questions:

How conceptually correct must a man be before his worship counts to God? Is a theology professor better able to warm the heart of God than his dyslexic janitor?

If you and I hold a different belief about God (say predestination versus free will), does that mean one of us is worshipping a different God, a false God?

What would Jesus say?

(By the way, I rearranged Patton’s words from the article and comments for brevity and clarity. Go read the article and all 67 comments for yourself. It really is a pretty good thread for theologs.)
JB

Torah and Temple

2009-04-02T20:40:00.002-05:00

Could the beauty and splendor of a fancy church ever actually distract people from hearing God and his Spirit? There's a question for you.

And since we here at the unchurch are all about ~~stealing content~~ information sharing, here is a great piece from Keren Hannah Pryor:

Moses's brother, Aaron, was appointed by God as the High Priest (Kohen Gadol). Aaron and his sons are to be instituted and anointed to serve as kohanim (priests) before God in the Mishkan, the Holy Tabernacle of His Presence. Moses is irrefutably the esteemed leader of the people as well as God’s prophet and teacher of Torah – God’s instruction and guidance. Now, in the office of High Priest, Aaron is awarded the place of intermediary between God and His people in the procedures of worship and service to God in the Mishkan.

Torah and Temple
Some Jewish commentaries suggest that Aaron’s appointment caused Moses concern. Not a concern stemming from sibling rivalry and jealousy, but a fear that the ministries of Torah (teaching and studying God’s Word) and the Temple (worship and service to God) would be separated. If they were split apart the people might lose sight of the importance of their essential unity and connection. The beauty and splendor of the priestly garments, the glowing interior of the Holy Place, also the exterior beauty of the Beit HaMikdash (the Temple, literally the Holy House), and the dramatic activities of sacrifice and prayer – all these might distract the people from hearing the voice of God. In other words, the glory of the Temple might obscure the truth of the Torah.

History records that by the Second Temple period, when the Temple was a focal point of Yeshua’s life and teaching, this is exactly what had happened. The chief priests, who comprised the leadership, were corrupted by the power of their position and their collusion with Rome. The external was what mattered, and their hearts were far from God. Then the Torah Incarnate walked into their midst. The light of the eternal Word broke into their religious darkness. To some it brought repentance and life but to others, when the status quo of their self-appointed kingdom was suddenly threatened, it brought confusion and rage.

In the life, death and resurrection of Yeshua we see all the separated, dissonant parts of the Torah and Temple drawn together in a glorious, harmonious whole. Mercy and majesty, humility and glory, service and truth merge together in Him. The Messiah, foreseen by Abraham, Moses, King David, and the prophets, perfectly unites the physical and spiritual worlds, the human and the Divine.

A humble prophet like Moses, Yeshua speaks and lives the Torah of God, but He also is the exalted High Priest who bears His own blood of sacrifice to the Mercy Seat of God’s Presence in the Holy of Holies. In so doing He gains Atonement for sin once and for all. This same High Priest is now seated at the place of power at the right hand of God constantly interceding on our behalf (Hebrews 7:25-26; 8:1).

The Gospel Blimp

2009-03-16T08:14:00.009-05:00

“The Medium is the Message”, huh? While Marshall McLuhan’s 1968 book title may have sounded like a bunch of Sixties freak-speak, the Jesus and the Apostles understood this idea from the beginning. When God spoke the Gospel to Man, what was His medium of choice? "The Word became flesh and dwelt a while among us." The medium and the message were one and the same, Jesus living in the flesh!

Never content to leave well enough alone, Christendom has continually added enhancements to God's Medium of “Word Incarnate”, with the inevitable effect of trivializing the Gospel of God. The Imperial Gospel had its day, and the Industrial Gospel had its way. Now the Consumer Gospel is upon us.

Behold, The Gospel Blimp. Way back in 1960, Joseph Bayly (president of stodgy, corny David C. Cook, publisher of Sunday School quarterlies) published The Gospel Blimp, a prophetic and hilarious satirical parable on the subject. It was made into very a popular Christian film in 1967. For all the good it did. Check out the trailer here.

The story begins with a group of people trying to determine how to reach their next door neighbors for Christ. One evening while sitting out on the patio, they notice that the "Naughty Neighbors" pause from their card playing and beer drinking long enough to look up as an airplane passes low overhead. This gives our budding evangelists a great idea: Why not employ a 'gospel blimp' to fly over the town proclaiming the Word of God for all to see? This is gonna be big. REALLY big!!

The remainder of the parable chronicles this 'ministry' effort. The undertaking consumes enormous amounts of time and resources, and requires a mighty public relations effort. And none of it includes sharing the Gospel with the "Naughty Neighbors" who were the inspiration for the idea.

Bayly's parable drives home the point that the emphasis on infrastructure, facilities and public relations effectively neutralizes the gospel itself. The amazing thing is that Bayly wrote this in 1960! I can just hear him saying "I told you so."

"Let the Word of god dwell richly in YOU." Let the Word become flesh in your life, and humble yourself to dwell among your neighbors.

(Thank you Larry Farlow of Reformation Ramblings for paragraphs 4 & 5, which I mainly swiped from your fine blog!)
JB

Watch you do WHAT??

2009-03-10T09:48:00.008-05:00

Bizarre Messages! "Watch Me Live My Life" proclaims the imbossed rubber wristband. Now, what is the guy beside you on the bus going to think you mean by that?

I found this little item advertised on the margin of my Facebook page. It looks like a bit of Christianese lost in translation. I know what it's supposed to say...but what does it actually say to people?

I know what I think...what do YOU think?

Christianity versus Jesus

2009-03-04T15:48:00.015-06:00

Could it be that Jesus just isn't good enough for the Christian world as a whole? Thank you Brant Hansen of Palm Beach FL for not prosecuting the Monks of unChurch Abbey for stealing this article off your website. And shortening it. And altering it. I knew he'd understand...here is what he wrote, more or less:

Dan Kimball wrote a great book called "They Like Jesus, But Not the Church". Or I suspect it’s a great book, but I haven’t read it. I don't think I need to, I get it: People outside the church think Christians are judgmental, simplistic, etc. etc. But Jesus? He's challenging and revolutionary; fascinating and insightful; mind-blowing and mysterious.

After working in both mainstream and Christian radio, I think I'm ready to write my own book based on many encounters: "They Like Church, But Not Jesus". Based on my observation, Jesus is simply not the most influential guy around church. He ticks Christians off.

I've been corrected many times by Christians – after I quoted Jesus verbatim! On the air it goes like this:

"You know, listeners, all the commandments can be summed up with ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.’ Jesus said that, and..."

Ring-ring! Ring-ring! "Hello, welcome to the Morning Show. You’re on the air!"

"You forgot something: You have to Evangelize."

Okayyy...so, Jesus stands corrected.

Ring-ring! Ring-ring! “Hello, welcome to the Morning Show. You’re on the air!"

“Brant, it doesn’t matter how much we love and coddle sinners if we fail to stand against the tide of cultural decay in America.”

Well. Strike two for old Jesus.

Ring-ring! Ring-ring! “Hello, welcome to the Morning Show. You’re on the air!"

"Well, it's not quite that simple. You see, because that was the Law, and now we’re under grace..."

Rats. Three strikes and Jesus is outta there.

You see, we actually talk about Jesus quite a bit on the show. In fact – and I've been around a bit, including doing mornings at the single most-listened-to contemporary Christian music station in the country – I've never heard a show that talks more about Jesus himself. I think we're doing something kind of experimental. If you're in Christian radio, and you’re reading this, and you're doing the same thing – that's cool. I just don't get out enough.

So, more Jesus...but less Christian. How can that be? I'll connect the dots for you: The things Jesus said, the way of life he gave us, his themes and priorites -- they're simply don't seem very...Christian.

If we were to sprinkle in some more "hey-I'm-on-your-team-here" insider terms, or talk about how America is under attack by (you name it) or just stick to quoting Paul, even -- problem solved. Now that's Christian! But all that Jesus talk? Mmm – not so much.

I know you think I may be exaggerating, but I'm not. Not in the least. Today, I read the part where Jesus told us that when we're praying, we shouldn't babble on "like the pagans do". I got three very Christian emails of protest, citing scripture to rebut Jesus. No big deal, but – just so you know – it happens all the time. Real conversations, with learned Christians, and real objections to stuff Jesus said. People do love the Bible, but this Jesus guy just rubs them raw.

Jesus makes for great radio, but not great “Christian Radio”. But I want to convey how remarkable Jesus is. How smart he is. How he understands our nature. How infuriating he can be to those in power. I want to subvert a culture that turns the church into an incredibly expensive and remarkably harmless spectator sport. I want people to understand the revolutionary love of Jesus.

It’s an interesting paradox of my job: If I focus a lot on Jesus, I upset a lot of Christians.

This article is shamelessly swiped from Brant Hansen, nationally syndicated morning show host. Visit his blog site, Letters From Kamp Krusty, where it appears under the title “Can Jesus and Christian Radio Coexist?” There you can read it in original form, the way it was before I cut it down by half and made it sound as if I wrote it. But don’t tell him I stole it and altered it!
JB

The Kingdom of God, in the Words of Early Christians

2009-02-20T08:52:00.002-06:00

"The Kingdom of God" is one of the major themes of The unChurch -- what it is, and what it means for us to be living in it today, rather than just waiting for an afterlife. What does it mean to be living under the dominion of a new kingdom?

In many places, Christianity has somehow become so intertwined with good ol' patriotism and the "empire of America" that sometimes we forget that we are to be under a new empire. We are to serve a new king in a new way. We are to be a people that stand out -- a people of love, a people of forgiveness. To show just how DIFFERENT that is from how we often perceive it, take a look at some of these quotes from early Christians:

You who are God's servants are living in a foreign country, for your own city-state is far away from this city-state. Knowing which is yours, why do you acquire fields, costly furnishings, buildings, and frail dwellings here? Anyone who acquires things for himself in this city cannot expect to find the way home to his own City. Do you not realize that all these things here do not belong to you, that they are under a power alien to your nature? ... Instead of fields, buy for yourselves people in distress in accordance with your means.

Christians "form a rabble of profane conspiracy... They despise temples as if they were tombs... They despise titles of honor and the purple robe of high government office, though hardly able themselves to cover their nakedness. Just like a rank growth of weeds, the abominable haunts where this impious confederacy meet are multiplying all over the world. Root and branch, it should at all cost be exterminated and accursed. They love one another before being acquainted. They practice a cult of lust, calling one another brother and sister indiscriminately; under the cover of these hallowed names, fornication becomes incest."

The professions and trades of those who are going to be accepted into the community must be examined. The nature and type of each must be established ... brothel, sculptors of idols, charioteer, athlete, gladiator ... give it up or be rejected. A military constable must be forbidden to kill, neither may he swear; if he is not willing to follow these instructions, he must be rejected. A proconsul or magistrate who wears the purple and governs by the sword shall give it up or be rejected. Anyone taking or already baptized who wants to become a soldier shall be sent away, for he has despised God.

We ourselves were well conversant with war, murder and everything evil, but all of us throughout the whole wide earth have traded in our weapons of war. We have exchanged our swords for plowshares, our spears for farm tools ... now we cultivate the fear of God, justice, kindness, faith, and the expectation of the future given us through the crucified one ... the more we are persecuted and martyred, the more do others in ever increasing numbers become believers.

We are charged with being irreligious people and, what is more, irreligious in respect to the emperors since we refuse to pay religious homage to their imperial majesties and to their genius and refuse to swear by them. High treason is a crime of offense against the Roman religion. It is a crime of open irreligion, a raising of the hand to injure the deity ... Christians are considered to be enemies of the State ... we do not celebrate the festivals of the Caesars. Guards and informers bring up accusations against the Christians ... blasphemers and traitors ... we are charged with sacrilege and high treason ... we give testimony to the truth.

I recognize no empire of this present age.

Each of the Roman Caesars were often referred to as a "Son of God." We don't think about it very often when reading the gospel accounts, but that's why it was such a "buck-the-system" type of statement to call Jesus the Son of God. That title was reserved for the Caesar, and it sure should never be used on a homeless guy from Nazareth.

Christianity was (and is) VERY political, and at the same time, it's not about running for office and grabbing power. It's about serving a new kingdom, it's about changing allegiances. Paying homage to a new kind of king -- one who sets the example of washing your nasty, muddy feet with a towel.

Today, we often like our Jesus with a good dose of Americanism, and we often sprinkle our patriotism with a dash of God-fearing. Do we confuse the two? And do we remember that following Jesus is a whole life change, an entire "change of allegiances"?

What's it mean to live in this strange "kingdom of God"? Were those early Christians taking it too far?

Of Garlic & Roses...

2009-02-15T08:15:00.010-06:00

Wanna score some big lover-points, fellas? Cook valentines dinner at home instead of fighting the sweaty, beady-eyed, romantic restaurant crowd. That's right, light a couple of candles, and group them between a "together photo" and those red roses you bought her. Center them smack in the middle of the table. There! You just reminded her that yes, she did get roses, UNlike those friends of hers who probably got a mop or a cook-book or red thigh-highs. Wise as serpents, gentle as doves, right fellas? (Thanks, Jesus! Wink, wink.)

Actually I did learn something valuable this weekend. As I played chef, I chopped peppers. I sliced onions. I diced garlic. I marinated steaks. I measured and timed and portioned and positioned--it's all in the presentation, you know. I did all sorts of things to all sorts of food, and it was quite a feast. When it was all over I had wine on my shirt, my nails were stained with marinade, I smelled of grill-smoke, and my hands had a scent of garlic that just wouldn't wash off. I was the master of the food, but I was stained by its colors, seared by its flames, and tinged by its smells. Most of all, I was filled with its substance...and I have the stretch-marks to prove it.

It reminds me of God's Word. We are told to "competently handle the word of truth" (2 Tim 2:15). But, expertly as I handled that food, what matters most is not what I did to the food, but what the food did to me. This is the primary business of reading God's word: Renewing, recreating, and transforming the soul. And just as God's Word transforms one's soul, it transforms our community. St Paul addresses this verse to us as a community, in second person plural:

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord." [Col 3:16]

Transformation is the primary business of the Word. The business of regulating the Word, sorting it in neat stacks, and combining its ingredients into a diet of "The Sixteen Fundamental Recipes"...this is the business of men. It is not an evil business, mind you. God himself commissioned the man Adam to name all works His hands had made. To name them is the nature of man; but to create is the nature of God. Now he has called us, according to his own promise, to "genhsqe qeiav koinwnoi fusewv"-- to "become partners in the divine nature." (2 Pet 1:4)

God grows the green, spreading trees, and men cut them down and saw them up. We build garages for our cars, and closets for our clothes. Let us not saw up his holy Word to build a trophy case for our pride. Rather, let us let his Word dwell richly in us, so that we may be built together to form that holy temple where God lives by his spirit.

"Come thy kingdom, be done thy will! As in heaven, so upon earth!"
JB

Having Ears, Do You Not Hear?

2009-02-11T08:44:00.005-06:00

This ancient practice takes us beyond merely studying the Bible, and into the wonderful world of listening to it.

A friend recently sent me a link to this interview with Eugene Peterson. It has some excellent points for discussion. Go take a look, then come back here.

Done? Okay.

The article talks about the "poetry of scripture," and how the "Bible is not a textbook. Nor is it a manual to be studied, mastered, and mechanically applied."

Make sure you get through the whole interview (it's fairly short), because my first impression of it was less-than-stellar. Because when I think of "poetry," I think of something that looks and sounds nice, but has very little real-world application.

And that's not what I believe about the Bible. But it's also not what he means when he says "poetry."

Peterson talks about this Lectio Divina ("spiritual reading"). "Engaging in the Bible reflectively." Slowing down, reading, listening, and allowing the mind to descend into the heart. Immersion. It's nothing terribly complicated. In a group setting, it's taking a passage, different people reading and listening to it, hearing the poetry of the language, the sounds, and the message, and discussing and sharing thoughts on it. My first thought was poetry of the language? It wasn't written in ENGLISH.

But again, that's a misunderstanding of what he's talking about here. Part of what he's saying is that the Bible was written in street language, common language. Most of it was oral and spoken to illiterate people -- they were the first ones to receive it. "When we make everything academic, we lose something." (Emphasis mine.)

And at the end of the interview, we get this:

As a pastor, I'm not a theology policeman. Of course there are going to be misunderstandings—that goes with language. How many times in a marriage do a husband and wife misunderstand each other? And those misunderstandings don't occur because they used incorrect grammar.

But if we are part of a community where the Scriptures are honored, I don't think we have to worry too much. The Spirit works through community. Somebody will have a stupid, screwy idea. That's okay. The point of having creeds and confessions and traditions is to keep us in touch with the obvious errors. Because we have those resources, I don't think we have to be anxious about it.

Hmm. Interesting point of view. Alright, you fine group of commenters. What say ye?

Pastoring, the Organic Way

2009-02-04T22:43:00.005-06:00

Does it look uppity to quote myself, if in my original quote, I was quoting someone else?

I'd like to draw your attention to this fine post from last year, which I am allowed to call a "fine post" because, though I wrote it, it consisted almost entirely of quotes from a 40 year old book.

Really, I want to talk about the notion of spiritual discipline. Not the kind of "spiritual discipline" you'd find by most definitions, but rather, the accountability that comes via the development of organic Christian communities.

How many Christian acquaintances do you know that have had marital problems and gotten divorced without anyone even knowing about it before it happens? Affairs? Major problems at work or being unable to pay bills?

Suburban sprawl has made it possible to move into a nice area, have a big house with a 2-car garage, go to work, come home, pull in the garage, and never even really know the neighbors. But people back in the first century didn’t have that privilege. They had small houses that were stacked right up against each other, and they all knew each other’s business. They didn’t have the kind of secrets we have today. Shoot, when they got married, the wedding party even stood outside the hut while the couple consummated the marriage! That’s a LOT more open than what we’re used to. I'm pretty open, but I don't even think I'd be comfortable with THAT.

People that make a commitment to "throw their lives in together" are making a commitment that's about more than just keeping anyone from having any material need, as in Acts 2 and 4. It's about real accountability, real discipleship, and real pastoring. It's mentoring and being mentored. It's praying, learning, and teaching together, all while living life together. It's about being a light on a hill. Both loving people where they're at, and at the same time being hagiazo -- sanctified, set apart.

People have different gifts, and some people are natural shepherds. I know a few guys (and girls) that are smart, Godly, and have a tremendous heart for people. One is a paid "minister," and a couple are not. Some are "official" elders, some I'd consider "unofficial" elders. Whether or not someone draws a paycheck is not the dividing line between whether someone can pastor people or not.

The goal here is to allow people to grow into these roles. It's about submitting to one another and being honest, transparent, and vulnerable. And yes, even chastising when the need arises.

Functional vs Organic. Functional has its place. But it's not what drives a movement.

Evangelical Implosion

2009-02-01T08:45:00.021-06:00

The End of Church? Internet Monk Says Evangelicalism Implodes Within 10 Years!

At least how the headline reads. Personally, I have observed that it is easier to kill Freddie Kruger than to kill off a church. But the following article by Internet Monk, Michael Spencer, is a long, dire, and well-grounded prediction in Part 1 of a looming crisis in “church-as-we-know-it”. He gives a grim prognosis for all the major streams of modern Christianity, except for his own of course. Part 2 details the post-apocalyptic realignment of the scraps and holdovers.

At the institutional level, his analysis is chillingly plausible, if a tad slanted. But on the “kingdom level” it is unseeing.

Among the movements whose days are numbered, iMonk counts what gets called “the grassroots movement as represented by Shame Claiborn.” (Note that the “grassroots movement” came up in the comments section, not in the article itself.) iMonk dismissed it as something of an appendage on some other doomed movement or another. The gentle Monks of unChurch Abbey, nestled high in the Indiana Alps, respectfully disagree.

The grassroots “movement” did not begin with Shane Claiborn, it just got a new face with cool dreds. The grassroots dynamic exists in most every church and tradition, and even outside them. They are the odd person or people who do not spend their hours crafting or criticizing church agendas. Or lecturing, or chomping pipe stems. Or climbing trellises of leafy ambition. Or blog-crawling.

They are living, where “faith acts out in love”. They are living--living like they believe their every word and action has power to renew the withered souls, and God’s creation with them. They bake the extra casserole. They babysit the crusty-nosed kid. They bring the ladder over and show the anxious yuppie how to use it without killing himself. They pause with him, and smile, and uncloak the Eternal. They break the bread and pour the wine. They pray and believe and confess, “On earth as it is in heaven!”

They know that the Kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power. And all the institutions and all the theologians of Protestantism and Catholicism have ridden pompously on their backs from the beginning. Sure, the institutions will crumble; they are but wood and straw. But I am not worried. How many times have men read the Last Rites over a lifeless body of Christ? Haven't we learned?

Our gospel just loves crumbling empires! Because the spirit that breathes eternal life into mortal flesh does not crack or crumble. And we ain’t skeerd.
Joe B

iMonk's Evangelical Implosion, Part 1 & Part 2

The Kingdom of God is Within You

2009-01-27T19:50:00.003-06:00

Opium fiend, 100 years dead. You died in our street; yet lived this beauty in thee? Francis Thompson wrote the poem that follows as he wasted away with a needle in his arm. "Be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited." (Rom 12:16)

The Kingdom of God is at Hand
by Francis Thompson, 1859-1907

O world invisible, we view thee,
O world intangible, we touch thee,
O world unknowable, we know thee,
Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!
Does the fish soar to find the ocean,
The eagle plunge to find the air--
That we ask of the stars in motion
If they have rumor of thee there?
Not where the wheeling systems darken,
And our benumbed conceiving soars!--
The drift of pinions, would we hearken,
Beats at our own clay-shuttered doors.
The angels keep their ancient places--
Turn but a stone and start a wing!
'Tis ye, 'tis your estrangèd faces,
That miss the many-splendored thing.
But (when so sad thou canst not sadder)
Cry--and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched betwixt Heaven and Charing Cross.
Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry--clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

"For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat...Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way."
Romans 14

Strip Church, by XXX

2009-01-25T22:18:00.005-06:00

"Delightfully tacky, yet unrefined", as they say.

I remember when I was young, a Hooter's began to build a restaurant right at the doorstep of a prominent local church. In the ensuing uproar, spokesmen for the church said it was indecent, and it was an outrage to have such an establishment within eyeshot. Remember, this is a restaurant with a "breast motif". Waitresses wear orange shorts and t-shirts in there, no joke. And you know, it's called...HOOTers. Gasp.

Now here is a 360. After years of attending the AVN porn fans convention and ministry to porn addicts, the XXXChurch guys have taken their show to the strip. That is, they're planting a church there. Strip Church. Takin' it to the streets, or slouching toward Gomorrah?

Okay, we pulled your string -- let's hear you talk.
JB

Creation, Take Two

2009-01-23T08:38:00.009-06:00

Genesis 1 begins with an account of creation, one that begins to define what it means to be the people of God. Then, it doubles back to look at God’s creation of Man from a different angle, focusing on the experience of the first individual man, Adam.

In Genesis 1 the creation of human beings emphasizes their innate community. Man “as male and female” reflect the image of God. Genesis 2 God recognizes the “not-goodness” of the man’s solitude. We are to be members of “a People”, not isolated individuals who commune only for necessity or convenience.

“People-ness” is inherent to our created nature. In many cultures one almost wouldn’t have to say this. Billions of human beings understand what it means to be part of "a people", so they instinctively understand what it means when God calls them out to join in the “People of God.”

But American Christians naturally read Christian faith through the lens of individualism. We emphasize personal salvation, personal spirituality, and personal devotion. We can even disparage the life of the Body of Christ as unnecessary because what really matters is that we each have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

But although like Jesus we approach the cross alone, we rise together in newness of life. “One body, one Faith, of God and Father of all.” We are joined in the presence of God at one Table, and we drink eternal life from one Cup. If we read the bible and heed the Spirit, we know that living personally in fellowship with God through Jesus IS a corporate thing. We are one Body in him.

What a difference it would make if Jesus-Followers and our churches really grasped this! We’d understand that we’re not to live out our faith in the poverty of isolation, but in the richness of fellowship.

It wasn’t good for the man to be alone in the garden, nor is it for you.

The unChurch is in open rebellion against the zeitgeist of suburban isolation. Loving is the foundation of knowing God, because God is love. So we "throw our lives in together". For real. We share meals and prayers, hopes and fears, wins and losses. And we throw open our collective life for all to see and share.

Across barriers of time, space, privacy fencing, and parochialism…the glow of faith spills from the open doors of unChurch Abbey.
JB

This post was shamelessly snatched from my hero, Mark D. Roberts. I hacked it down and botox'ed it, but he is the man. Go read the whole series here!

By Mark D. Roberts | Friday, February 1, 2008
Part 3 of series: Being the People of God

unChurch...or antiChurch?

2009-01-18T23:11:00.008-06:00

In recent days, we at The unChurch have taken a few rotten tomatoes from the gallery. So just what would provoke these good townsfolk to anger, especially against the gentle "monks of the unChurch abbey?"

The name, for starters. For certain beloved brothers deeply imbedded in the "Religious-Industrial Complex", the mere name "the unChurch", is like a bee in their bonnets. (Or perhaps in their turbans?)

But The unChurch is not anti-church, and neither is our name. Like, 7up the Uncola...is that anti-soda? Come on boys and girls, it's all soda and it arrives on the same truck. If we were anti-church, I think we would have called ourselves something creative. Like, The antiChurch! It's not like we were too shy to say so.

Let me break it down. "The Church", in the biblical sense, is (1) the holy temple God assembles (2) out of individual believers, (3) each filled and led by the holy spirit, (4) each reporting directly to Jesus, (5) all joined & fit together in him by bonds of love, (6) functioning according to how each member does it's part, and (7) displaying God's rule of love to the whole world. Did I miss anything?

In that sense, "The Church" is Christ's body, the incarnation of God on his earth. Amen dat. History backs me up: when men band together to form "a church", this is not how it goes down. Jesus winds up more like a mascot than a coach. The Holy Spirit's violent wind and tongues of fire get pressed between the pages of plans and programs, agendas and ambitions. And we're not about dat.

Thus, we are not a church. We're an "unChurch".

Go ahead and do the church thing. I go to "a church" myself, and it's cool. But if you'd mistake "a church" for "the church", you'd best listen again to what God says: "The Most High does not live in houses made by men. 'Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me? says the Lord. Or where will my resting place be? Has not my hand made all these things?" (Acts 7:48-49. Note that the guy who said it immediately got stoned by the religious-industrial complex. Why does this make me smile?)
JB

Sola Hotties: The Answer Key

2009-01-16T14:27:00.019-06:00

Okay, class, here is the answer. A picture is worth a 1000 words, but I'll give it to you in only 363 and you can keep the change:

First the girls. Teetering, as one commenter said, between childhood and maturity. Totally ambiguous. A blank slate, except for the watermark of the image of God. Trembling at the brink of decision. One is blonde, strong, and commanding; the other is dark, weak, and tentative. Innocent or provocative? Harmless or dangerous? They are raw humanity at it’s brooding best--bursting with hope, brimming with curiosity and passion. Clutching each other in a dance, but preoccupied with some other possibility or peril at hand. Eden revisited! (Except without the whiskery Adam dude who really was not as photogenic as our two little Eve's, was he?)

Well, we cannot leave Eve in peril, can we now? But I can’t quite leave her untouched either…

Which brings us to the letters.

Jilly B nailed it: We kidnap ‘scrap-tures’ out of context and cobble them together to make our own statement. We end up with something like a ransom note. You cannot recognize the author. Bingo. The authorship of God is obscured by dead-letter religion. And, the Imago Dei, as displayed in the beautiful humanity of these kids, is obscured and scarred.

Did you notice what happened once I had papered over their eyes and ears? We immediately thought they were fallen. Prostitutes, sirens, daffs. Before being PhotoShopped by the serpent, these girls were just dancing a tango in fancy clothes! But taken out of context, tailored in fig-leaves, and cast in over-contrasted B&W, now everyone is calling them whores! They are dehumanized in the sight of others, and they are blind themselves. They are deaf and mute, just like their idols. To quote Jillian again: “Just like [much] of the church has thoroughly ignored the big picture of the Bible, thus erasing God's fingerprints from his masterpiece.”

“The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life. Yet there are some of you who do not believe." (Jesus, John 6:63)

“He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (St. Paul, 2 Cor 3:6)
JB

Sola Scriptura...right?

2009-01-11T23:10:00.001-06:00

"Sola Scriptura!" That is, "Only Scripture!", in Latin. It's the bedrock principle of being a protestant. The Bible is inspired by God, and its authority is above anything men may say. Hooray! It's all so simple!

Except that...it's not. What exactly does the Bible say, after all? It kinda depends on who you ask, doesn't it? Not that God is confused; the words themselves are pretty clear. But people can get kinda hard headed. And just as sure as you can fashion a pile of bricks into either a church or a brothel, men have fashioned the holy scriptures into all sorts of odd doctrinal structures.

That's when the fun begins. Because people "explain" the Bible, and "simplify it" into a list of things you must believe. Or else. Then "faith" becomes a matter of agreeing with the "10 Truths" or what-not. Sola Scriptura, my eye.

Sola Scriptura, plus 100 years of church traditions.
Sola Scriptura, plus 1000 volumes of systematic theology.
Sola Scriptura, minus all the pages that don't support your position.
Sola Scriptura, minus the Holy Spirit, and plus a hundred coats of paint.

It's time for a New Year's resolution, Loved Ones. So how about this one?

Read the Bible, even if you never have before. Read it in spite of the barbed wire that men with big hair and pinstripe robes have wrapped it in. Read it without feeling like you need to have understood it the first time through. Read it listening for God's voice as God's Spirit blows right through you. Read it without picking it apart. Read it without cramming it into an interpretive frame you bought at Bible Store, Inc. Read it without searching for rebuttals to those pesky Baptists or Lutherans or Democrats or whatever. Read it like you never heard any of it before, without supposing you know everything in it already.

Let's resolve in 2009 to shut up and let the "guy in sandals" do the talking!

"The anointing that you received from God abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie — just as it has taught you, abide in him.
[1 John 2:27]

Not sure that makes sense to you? Try this: That odd word "anointing"? In Greek it says "smear". And it refers to the ceremony in which a priest is consecrated for his office. Dude, that is you God is talking to. And NObody can teach you--not in a lifetime--what God can smear on you in just a moment.
Joe B

The birds have nests and foxes have multimedia...

2008-12-29T11:00:00.006-06:00

A teacher of the law came to Jesus and said, "Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." Another disciple said to him, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." But Jesus told him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead."
Matthew 8:19-22

Is following Jesus easy and fun, or is it difficult and dangerous?

Modern churches spend most of our time and money on enhancing our worship experience. We pay people to preach and sing to us, and we strive to do everything so well that people will want to come back week after week. We serve up the Word with a smile, and hope that our customers "would like an apple pie with that."

It seems that our approach to making disciples is somewhat different than Jesus' approach. Are we actually continuing the work Jesus was doing? Or somewhere along the way did we just come up with a better idea?

Move over, Jesus. We've got it covered.
Joe B

Deconstruct THIS!

2008-12-19T15:20:00.009-06:00

God once wrote scripture in stone, with his very own finger. But only once. In fact, the Word written that way wound up in a beatiful box that got lost amid the rubble of time.

Nor did God choose to drop the Word, intact and leather-bound, from heaven. Even Jesus Christ, God in flesh, didn't bother to write down even so much as one shred of the bible we now read, revere, and sometimes thump.

It tells us something about God that he would rather write his perfect law on the hearts of imperfect men. And Man's endless quest to "decode" it, to deconstruct it, to confine it to letters in ink or stone...well that tells us something too.

“The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.”

JB

Where Heaven and Earth Overlap

2008-12-15T13:54:00.007-06:00

Recently a lady confided to my wife that she's behind on her rent and needs help. "But", she said, "I really have no idea how to ask my church for help. I've never even heard this kind of thing mentioned before at church."

What...?? That struck me hard. Because when she wanted to volunteer for the choir there was no mystery...it was obvious. And when she volunteered for the nursery, there was no doubt where to go; heck, they came looking for her! But when her life hit the fan...well, then she had no clue. As it turns out, there is no banner in the foyer advertising for people who need help paying rent. Go figure.

People need help sometimes. Sometimes they need a LOT of help. A thirty second Yahoo search tells me that, statistically, her church should expect to have about 38 adults and 28 children living at poverty level at any given moment. That's not so many. Beds, food, clothes, safety, a few bucks...a fresh start. Material need is inconvenient, but it's sure not complicated.

Take Jesus, for instance. Jesus was faced with a food shortage: thousands of people had followed him far out into the countryside without bringing any food to eat. The disciples pressed him about it, but he replies in his usual, annoying way: "Okay then, YOU feed them." I imagine they're pretty stumped at first. But then some kid, one too stupid to understand the math, offers to share his lunch...with everybody! So he passes his lunchbox around, and around and around and around until somehow, miraculously, everyone has eaten their fill. And the disciples went on their way, each with his own lunchbox filled with leftovers.

In the family of Jesus, all it takes is for somebody to have a little, and soon everyone will have enough. Welcome to the kingdom of God! Here, where Heaven and Earth overlap, there is plenty for everybody. All that's necessary is that our faith is stronger than our mathematics.

Where are you living?

And hey, what are you going to do with all those leftovers?