Category Archives: Community

Are you Practicing Ramadan?

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So my brother-in-law Ben is practicing Ramadan for the next few weeks in Bellingham where he works as a pastor of the Sterling Drive Church of Christ. Intrigued? Enraged? Impressed?
Read the article that ran in the Bellingham Herald newspaper, read peoples responses, and also take time to read Brian Mclaren’s blog about why he is doing it. Are you comfortable with this?

Article about Ben: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/102/story/1045056.html
Brian Mclaren’s blog: http://www.brianmclaren.net/archives/blog/ramadan-2009-part-1-whats-going.html

Let me tell you my quick thoughts about the whole thing. Ben’s not a Muslim. He’s not even trying to agitate things or “stir the pot”. I think he is doing what he can to learn to listen to the world around him, to learn to listen to the people around him that Jesus loves and died for. Ramadan is a season of prayer and fasting, both of which are traditional Christian practices. It’s not as if he’s joining in with sacrifices or or pilgrimage or some sort of practice that all Christians should not already be doing. I’m impressed by what he’s doing and I’m looking forward to hearing his observations about it. It’s not a stunt in anyway, rather it’s a willingness to go to places that Christians have often avoided, to listen to people that Christians have often been unwilling to listen to, and an openness to feast with people that have been rejected in normal Christian circles. Take some time to read through the gospels and tell me that Jesus did not feast with the “worst of sinners”, that he wasn’t willing to go to places that were considered off limits to “good God fearing folks” (do some research about Caesarea Philippi), and that Jesus didn’t listen to those who were considered rejects by the religious elite.

peace.

Seriously, Do We Really Need God?

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Being a follower of Christ is not rocket science. I spent much of my life thinking that it was. I spent many years placing guilt on myself if I could not “sufficiently” give “proof” for my beliefs. That is, I had to be able to both show from science and history that the Bible and Jesus were everything that they claim to be, and I also had to be able to prove from the Bible that the certain set of rules that I followed from Scripture were the “right” set of rules. This carried with it the constant fear of being wrong in your interpretation of the Bible, it cultivated a defensive atmosphere and also was very good at creating sides that we could all pick and defend.

I would contend that being a Christian is not rocket science. It’s not all that hard to figure out…living it out is something entirely different!

**page break**

Ok I’ve got to shift. I’ve written this whole post now (you just haven’t finished reading it) but another post, a more important post has emerged that I’ve got to get your input on. Here’s the question, do we really need Jesus to be a “Christian” (obviously the term christian itself is worthless without the christ part, but lets thats not the point)? Jesus simplified things by saying that the whole of Scripture could be summed up in two statements. Love God. Love people. But what I’m wondering right now is how essential is the “love God” part to what it looks like to be a follower of Christ.

Virtually all of the practices that define Christianity (if we’re being positive and not deconstructive) would be and should be practiced if you lived by the one simple rule to “love your neighbor” Here are some quick examples:

  • Alcohol: If you continually  lived out of your love for people you would not drink too much alcohol because you would never want to impair your decision making in such a way as to do something destructive and to hurt people. Also it could be argued that a strong love for people can only be healthy within the context of an appropriate love of self. And if you value yourself you would take care of your body.
  • Sex: You definitely wouldn’t be sleeping around or sleeping with anyone that was not firmly committed to being “yours” (I’d consider marriage to be this appropriate context) because how in the world could you ever justify sleeping with another mans not-yet-wife! Not to mention the fact that anyone who has had sex can attest to the life changing intimacy that takes place and the fact that if you love others you cannot take that piece of intimacy away from people that you are not forever committed to!
  • Compassion: This is the most obvious of all. If your only rule in life was to love others than you would be serving the poor, collecting clothes for children, feeding the hungry, caring for widows and single mothers, etc. How could you not if you loved people (oh the irony I see in this bullet point)
  • Church: you would most definitely be a part of a church. But it might not look like churches traditionally look like. If your only rule was to love people I imagine you would be compelled to get together with like-minded people to recharge and challenge each other to go back out and continue loving people in new and creative ways.

That was a quickly assembled four examples, but I believe that you could nearly reassemble all the practices of the Christian faith under the one umbrella “love your neighbor”. So the question is, do you really need to love God? And if so, how in the world is that played out? And please tell me that going to heaven and thus avoiding hell is the only impact of bringing God in the mix!

Death

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Death has (and should) defined following Jesus from the very beginning. Christianity is called to be a mysterious comination of life and death.

It is through the death (and the fact that he rose back to life) of Jesus that people find life. Before his death within the context of the passover meal (which is a meal centered around the Isralite lives that were spared amidst the death of the Egyptians) that Jesus told his followers to remember him by continuing the tradition of the passover within a new context. This new context was that the bread now represented his body (which died on our behalf) and his blood (that was spilled on our behalf) both of which can only be understood surrounded by the context of his life that was constantly being poured out for those around him. Jesus offered people living water, called himself the bread of life, and used metaphors associated with living things (mustard plants, growing seeds, water, bread, sheep, trees, etc.) to communicate the nature of his mission and his church. At the same time speaking about the kingdom he said that “unless a seed falls and dies…”, and “you must deny yourself, take up your cross (death), and follow me…”, and again “whoever loses his life for my sake will find it…”

Death and life.

We see this in the early church where people were willing to live radically for Jesus. When disease would break out in a city in those days everyone but the sick would leave town. It was a quarentine of sorts. But the Christians stayed. The Christians were the ones known for staying behind and caring for the sick even if it meant risking death for themselves. We can read story after story where Christ followers were willing to die because of the phrase “Jesus is Lord” that they refused to renounce. They found life in those words. They found so much life that it was worth death.

What in the world have we made being a follower of Christ turn into? We argue about carpet colors, we spend billions of dollers each year in new church buidling construction (it was 2 billion a year in the 80’s), we spend our time trying to keep all the Christians happy (in other words we’re spending time prioritizing Christian needs over those outside our doors), we spend time arguing about worship instead of engaging in it, we fight over being more right instead of “fighting” over being more sacrificial…you can fill in your own experiences here.

If I know one thing for certain its that Jesus did not die so that we could be comfortable. Comfortability is probably an enemy to living in and living out Christ’s transformational kingdom. Comfortability is in opposition to dying to self.

If we are to truly experience the mystery of the church, that is, of experiencing both life and death, we’ve got to start with the question “is Jesus Lord of my life”. If Jesus is lord of your life that implies that…

  • You’re relinquishing control
  • You’re giving him access to every aspect of your life
  • You’re willing to join him in death
  • You’re able to join him in resurrection
  • You’re invited to live resurrection daily
  • Carpet colors do not matter
  • Fill in your own blank here

F$%& You!

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Ok, pardon the title, I just wanted to get your attention so I could share a bit about my perspective on four letter words (and others that may have more or fewer letters but still fall into the category).

I think I said my first cuss word on accident. I heard someone say bastard in a movie and I had never heard it before. I had no reason to think it was a no no word so I said it freely…until someone told me otherwise. I think I was like twenty four at the time.*

Cussing was never much a part of my vocabulary, nor was it heard in my house much at all growing up. As a matter of fact, as a child I was encouraged not to say crass words such as “butt” “crap” and “sucks”.

As an adult I wouldn’t call myself foul mouthed by any means. Generally I think that cuss words make you sound unintelligent. Specifically the F-bomb is a worthless word in my understanding because when a word can mean anything it really means nothing. Isn’t that the case with the f-bomb? It can be a noun, a pronoun, an adjective, an adverb, etc. You can put it in between any words in your sentence and it fits (even multiple times if you wish). So in my book, it’s a worthless word that ruins your vocabulary. But other so called naughty words are quite useful. Sometimes those words exactly express what you’re feeling, thinking, or experiencing. So in those cases why not drop a four letter word?

Some might argue from Scripture that we’re not supposed to let any unwholesome talk come out of our mouths…which is true. But my understanding of this Scripture (from the book of Ephesians) is that it’s written to a group experiencing conflict within their community. They’re trying to figure out how to do life together in this new context as followers of Christ. The continuation of this scripture is that we’re not to use unwholesome speech but instead should be building each other up and encouraging each other. So here’s the question I pose to you: is this verse challenging our vocabulary or our content? Is Paul (who wrote those words) telling us not to use bad words or telling us not to speak badly about others? I firmly believe that the Biblical challenge is not to avoid saying “ass” but to avoid taking away the dignity of others by saying negative things about them, by gossiping about them, by denigrating who they are, etc. It’s not just that it’s mean, but by speaking about people that way we’re attacking God as the creator of these people…and we have absolutely non right to do this! How dare we call ugly what God has deemed beautiful.

So when Jones tells Jessica that she needs to “cut your damn dreads off” we chose not to yell at him, put him in time out, etc. We simply communicated to him that damn was not the best kind of word to use. But when Jones tells us or another child to shut up or calls someone an idiot (thanks Disney movies) he gets in big trouble because he’s trying to take away the dignity of another person.

You can disagree with me and I’m cool with that. But I personally feel like we spent so much effort in the church teaching our children to not say cuss words while gossip in the church was rampant. We taught our children to guard their vocabulary instead of guarding their content. We challenged them to focus on words instead of focusing on people.

peace.

* This may or may not be an exageration.

Reflections on a Few Years of Church Planting Cont.

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James posted this response to Tuesday’s blog
Do you want to say more about the transition from just doing a really good job of doing church to living missionally with the unchurched? That is a journey I need to take.
Here’s the best I can do for a response right now, though I know that there are many of you out there who could answer with much more wisdom, experience, and practical insight.
The transition from being good church people to being whatever you want to call us now took a strong willingness to slow down our life, take a step out from normalacy, and a willingness to change our posture.
Slowing down is important because it’s near impossible to see God within our family if we’re too busy let alone see him at work in my neighbor. Stepping out of whatever I consider to be normal for myself is important because we won’t meet people who need Jesus by hanging out in our same circles (this is more true for paid ministerial staff and life long churchy folks). And our posture is crucially important because it, more than most else, shows people how we’re different. My experience at my local coffee shop is a perfect one. I was there for a month before I ever got to know a soul (aside from one barista who was a Christian). I would go in, order my coffee, and go to the secluded part of the shop where I was nearly in a room by myself, and then I’d plant my face in a book or computer for three hours. Eventually I realized that I needed to step out. So I started sitting in the front area where I was constantly getting distracted by people coming in and out. Then I started changing my posture. I faced the door, I looked up showed that I was paying attention when I was eavsdropping into someone elses conversation. Then, finally, I started interupting and making myself a part of the dialogue. After doing those few things I found it near impossible to get any “work” done because I knew too many people, there was too much going on, and I’d spend a whole morning talking to strangers. It also challenged me as someone who loves to accomplish things. I had to decide to give up some things, to not acomplish some things, and to not be nearly as productive.
So here’s a whole pile of unsorted thoughts…The reality is that the only people that work according to our scheduled work times are the “good churchy folks”. Everyone else doesn’t give a damn about the fact that you’re supposed to go to church on Sundays, be a part of a small group on Wednesdays, etc. It took a willingness to sacrifice more of our time than we desired because opportunities to spend time with people who need Jesus did not happen planned out or at easy moments. Inevitably it was when we were rushing and trying to get our house clean for our home community that a valuable conversation happened with a neighbor. And it’s not that four years ago I wouldn’t have been willing to have a conversation with my neighbor (shoot I would have been ecstatic to be able to talk to my neighbors!) rather four years ago I wouldn’t have stopped cleaning the house to go get the mail when I saw my neighbor chilin’ outside. Four years ago I wouldn’t have stepped out in order to meet that person.
I don’t know if any of this has helped or clarified. If I had to narrow it down to the single greatest challenge to all of this as a minister it would be the idea of redefining success. Programs look better, they fill newsletters better, they often create more buzz and excitement but for the most part they are not the type of success that we’re called to achieve (that last line doesn’t sit with me well ’cause it feels like it’s describing peoples spiritual journey as a measure of my success…which it is not! I hope y’all understand what I’m getting at with that line.) You end up feeling like you might be wasting your time a lot ’cause your not being productive. But my guess is that in the beginning it will feel like more of a choice that by the end will become second nature.
Anyone else have wisdom greater than my own that they’d like to share?
What an exciting gift it is to be able to journey with Jesus in all of this.
peace.