Category Archives: spirituality

Wowsers

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I read this today:

Tell those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which will soon be gone. But their trust should be in the living God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment. Tell them to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works and should give generously to those in need, always being ready to share with others whatever God has given them. By doing this they will be storing up their treasure as a good foundation for the future so that they may take hold of real life.
1st Timothy 6:17-19

In the words of Inspector Gadget…wowsers. So if we were to summarize this statement from the Bible we might say:

Don’t trust in your money because it could just up and disappear (nobody can relate with that these days right?!). Instead we should trust in the God who has given us all we need to find joy (though it must be said that our defenition of joy must be severly changed and transformed! The joy that Jesus offers has nothing to do with having lots of stuff and financial security). If you are one of those persons with money, why don’t you keep it in perspective and do good things with it. All money is, is a big wad of potential. For if your money is just temporary and your trust is in God instead of your money why wouldn’t you give it away to those in need? Why wouldn’t you fulfill some of your money’s potential for good? And you know what? If you’re able to do this you know what will happen? Not only will you be storing up treasure for yourself in heaven, but you’ll actually discover and experience life as it should be. Real life. Or as Jesus called it, eternal life.

One sentence summary: If you trust God instead of money, give money away, you’ll be able to experience eternal life right now…wowsers, that’s a bold statement.

Offering

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So i’m trying to process something here and was wondering if y’all (my loyal, fairly good sized, and yet completely invisible readership) had any insight.

When I’m a lead church planter i want to be supported by my church. There are many reasons both Biblical and practical for this, but for what I desire to do it seems like the most effective and best way to plant a new church. Obviously in the beginning there will be a need for outside financial support, but the goal would be to get paid by those to whom God has sent the church to.

So while that is true, I’ve also got this other idea germinating in my head. What if the church that is planted in downtown Vancouver carries some of the early churches tradition of using the money given to the church to distribute among the poor and needy. In the early church we see a tradition of people taking money to the apostles feet to be shared among those in need. Renovatus shares some of these values too, which is wonderful. But what if we took it to the next step and made a huge portion of the “first fruits” of the churches income go toward those who are in need. Could a church pay its bills? What sacrifices would need to be made? Is that incongruous to paying a lead ministers wages?

Let me see if I can paint a picture a bit more clearly. Using percentages, money offered to the church might be broken up like this:

  • 10% would go to Kairos church planting support– so that we will always be involved in planting new churches and reaching more people for Jesus.
  • 70% would be considered benevolence (please give me a better synonym!) and would go to those who are poor and in need, first within the faith community and then those outside the church.
  • 20% would be left for wages, facilities, printing, advertising, etc.

Some implications of this would be less print, less advertising, less cool and functional equipment (sound, computers, etc.), less potential for additional staff members, less money for the lead minister, restrictions for potential facilities, and lots of other things like that. I can tell you one thing, for better or worse it would not lend to being a “cool” church…but I don’t do cool very well anyway!

I’m not certain this is even feasible and I’m only just now thinking about what something like this would look like as a discipline rather than just an ideal or idea.

Any thoughts.

Jubilee

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I have not yet done the study I need to do concerning the Old Testament biblical concept of jubilee. But, if I’m getting this right, God told Israel that every7 years your land was supposed to rest. On that seventh year there was no planting, and the fields themselves enjoyed a season of sabbath. Additionally, every 49 years (on the 50th year) it was a a year of jubilee where the land was to rest, slaves were to be set free, and land was to be returned to its ancestral owner. In other words, everything started over.

While, as I understand it, we have no proof that Israel ever practiced this 50th year jubilee, it is nonetheless God’s idea. And a beautiful one at that!

One author while calling Christianity today to practice the spirit of jubilee says:

Those who have been trained to trust God for provision are the only people who will ever believe that Jubilee is a good idea. Otherwise, it looks like losing everything you have worked so hard to earn. But if we never earn anything-if everything is a gift-then it begins to make sense that God would want to redistribute gifts as a guard against injustice in a broken and sinful world.

That’s a powerful thought isn’t it? Don’t we so often fall into that trap of thinking that our stuff is actually ours? God had intended that for Israel everything would be leased. Nothing would be owned longer than 50 years unless it was given to your family by God. Well in reality, doesn’t everything that we own belong to God? So, in essence, everything we have is leased. It belongs to us only for a season (for this life) and will not stay with us forever. And yet we spend so much time worrying about what we have…oops, sorry, I’m starting to preach. That’s not what I intended. Let me share one more connected and quick thought.

I once commented to a wise older friend saying that I loved capitalism, but what it seemed to be lacking was a year of jubilee. Capitalism works really well until eventually the scales get so lopsided that it no longer becomes a free market system but instead becomes a free market to those who are privileged with opportunity. So what capitalism is lacking is a do-over. I commented that capitalism needs a point in time where we start things new, and create a clean slate. My friend smiled and said “that’s what a recession is.”

interesting.

Aint No Reason

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I love the lyrics to this Brett Dennen song “Aint No Reason”. He may be a pot smokin’ hippie, but he speaks a lot of truth in this song.

There ain’t no reason things are this way.
Its how they always been and they intend to stay.
I can’t explain why we live this way, we do it everyday. 
Preachers on the podium speakin’ of saints in seance,
Prophets on the sidewalk beggin’ for change,
Old ladies laughing from the fire escape, cursing my name.
I got a basket full of lemons and they all taste the same,
A window and a pigeon with a broken wing,
You can spend your whole life workin’ for something
Just to have it taken away.
People walk around pushing back their debts,
Wearing pay checks like necklaces and bracelets,
Talking ‘bout nothing, not thinking ‘bout death,
Every little heartbeat, every little breath.
People walk a tight rope on a razors edge
Carrying their hurt and hatred and weapons.
It could be a bomb or a bullet or a pen
Or a thought or a word or a sentence.

There Ain’t no reason things are this way.
It’s how they always been and they intend to stay
I don’t know why I say the things I say, but I say them anyway.
But love will come set me free
Love will come set me free,I do believe 
Love will come set me free, I know it will
Love will come set me free, yes.

Prison walls still standing tall,
Some things never change at all.
Keep on buildin’ prisons, gonna fill them all,
Keep on buildin’ bombs, gonna drop them all.
Working your fingers bear to the bone,
Breaking your back, make you sell your soul.
Like a lung that’s filled with coal, suffocatin’ slow.
The wind blows wild and I may move,
The politicians lie and I am not fooled.
You don’t need no reason or a three piece suit to argue the truth.
The air on my skin and the world under my toes,
Slavery stitched into the fabric of my clothes,
Chaos and commotion wherever I go, love I try to follow.

Love will come set me free
Love will come set me free, I do believe
Love will come set me free, I know it will
Love will come set me free, yes.

There ain’t no reason things are this way
It’s how they always been and they intend to stay
I can’t explain why we live this way, we do it everyday

Rejecting Church

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I know quite a few people who love Jesus but hate the church. It’s a fairly common theme ’round here to be a Christian but to not “go” to any church. And I think that those people often have a valid point.

The way that we do church today is not what God intended.

The church is screwed up and has completely missed the point.

The church is filled with hypocrites and people who simply want to project a certain image but in reality make no effort to live and act like Jesus.

Why do we have to meet on Sundays? Why do we have to sing? Why do we have to sit and listen to one orator telling us what God says? Why does any of it have to be some big official corporate gathering?

Wouldn’t Jesus be more pleased if we stopped cloistering ourselves on Sunday mornings telling him how awesome he is and instead use that time and effort to show people with our actions how awesome he is?

I don’t need the church to practice my faith. My faith is between God and I.

While these are not direct quotes, they are summary statements from different conversations I’ve had with friends about the church. I don’t want to spend time trying to refute all of those statements, and in reality I think that some of those might be right on and accurate. We could spend some time in the Scripture reading about how the church was God’s idea not mans, about what some of the basic ideas God desired to be true of the church, and what the early church looked like (both good and bad), but I don’t think that would really answer the question that’s being asked and I’m not sure it’s my friends lack of Bible study that I’m questioning. Rather, I am growing quite dissatisfied with the alternative to the church that most of these people present. By rejecting the church “as it is”, my expectation would be to find an example of the church “as it should be”. Instead it seems like I find many people who have become somewhat stagnant in their faith or at the very least apathetic in their efforts to practice it. They don’t like what they see in church but they don’t seem to have found a healthy (spiritually enriching) replacement for it. Maybe they’ve found some outlets to serve people, but it has become quite unconnected with the message of Jesus.

I’m going to just stop right here because I don’t want to get too critical. That’s not my point.

My point is this: if you’re dissatisfied with the church as it is why don’t we work together to search the Scriptures, to look to Jesus, to listen to his Spirit and re imagine church as it should be. Why don’t we begin re imagining an alternative to the two extremes that we are tempted to polarize to of rejecting the church or trying to change the church. I would suggest that church planting is the answer. In church planting we are able to dream new dreams and receive new visions for a different kind of church without having to reject church as we currently experience it and without wasting away within a church system that may not be created for you. The challenge is that it must start with personal transformation before anything else. God is not fully honored when we dream new dreams out of anger and frustration, but what if that anger and frustration was transformed by the Spirit of God into purpose, intentionality, creativity, and adventure.

What if we partner with the church of today to create a new church expression for tomorrow. Maybe that church expression could borrow from some of those critical quotes previously mentioned. But instead of being critiques of the church as it is, it could be transformed into a vision for the church that could be. Here’s my positive spin of the above statements:

I see value things in the Bible that the previous generation did not. What would it look like to be a part of a church that carried some of those values?

The church is screwed up and has completely missed the point…thank you Jesus for grace! I would like to start a new church that invites people into a messy community of imperfection.

The church is filled with hypocrites and people who simply want to project a certain image but in reality make no effort to live and act like Jesus…you’re damn right we’re hypocrites and I’m proud to be honest about my hypocrisy as I invite others to find forgiveness for their screwups.

What would church look like if we did things differently? Can Bible study happen without a preacher? Then how? Can mobilization to change the world happen without a central gathering? Then how? What does church look like with new purposeful practices replacing some of the old?

How do we reinterpret the idea of worship to include more of life?

“I don’t need the church to practice my faith. My faith is between God and I.” I’m sorry, I’ve got no positive spin on this one. I consider this a straight up fallacy that destroys people…but that’s just my opinion.