The Right Order

During the church growth years…. there was much about how to make churches healthy – we are indebted to the hard work they did for us.   From 1980’s, 90’s and early 2000’s, many leaders wrestled with how to mature the church and move people into engaging the world.  The result they found was that it became an inward focused church on “feeding me”, an attractional model that created a gospel and how Jesus, God and church “felt” to me… and reinforced a culture of multiple choice.  This was NOT the intent and their models worked to ground people and move them into mission.

The challenge was mission was something much later…some models literally using the baseball model where mission was introduced at the 3rd base to home plate leg of the journey – instead of a completely different model where it was inherent and natural for a saint to be involved in the Kingdom’s (Christ’s) main business….
There are a lot of great thinkers who have grown out of what our church growth fathers did.  The best thinking today starts with the outcome – God’s intent and His Kingdom.  From that Rubric, of God’s intent, we then aim and shape and form our mission, and then, and only then, from our mission do we form, shape, develop & grow and organise the church.

In other words, our eschatology forms and shapes our missiology, which forms and shapes and ecclesiology.

Therefore, what is our eschatology (the end result, time, event, goal).  It starts in Genesis 1 & 2, and why God created people, and the creation… He was wanting community with His creation and namely in personal relationship with us.

His entire eschatology is to redeem, and restore that holistic relationship, now veiled awaiting our complete redemption and the redemption of the entire creation (1 Corinthians).

Hence, our missiology is a waste unless it is aligned, submitted and coordinated with His plan for the world and creation.  Our mission is a farse if not part of that ultimate plan.  We’ll not achieve this in our own efforts, but we are called to be a part of what He’s doing in the world and He works through us – and that is woven in being His hands and feet in the most practical ways of loving, serving and blessing others – to manifest the values of the Kingdom (Isaiah 58, Isaiah 61, 2 Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12).

Then, and only then is there a purpose for the church.  Ever wonder why God even instituted the church?  If we read our eschatology, and then our missiology – which is threaded through God’s Word, then the versus on the church (read Jesus’ biographies, and the epistles and it’s clear our purpose is the missiology, by being ambassadors, leaving the fragrance of Christ, being light, being salt…  these behaviours, reflecting values of the Kingdom in the simplest ways become the jar that holds the message, Gospel, hope we have, are supposed to have anyway!  Then the message makes sense.  Then the “telling” of the Word makes sense and isn’t just God judging and condemning.  Then, following, surrendering and sacrificing our wills to Him makes sense.  For then, we also see and are aware of a) our lost state (Romans 1-4) and b) how great is His plan (eschatology) (Romans 5-8).

Now we have a life that makes sense, for God’s plan, intent, heart is the core and foundation for our efforts to reach the world, and our motivating central DNA of our behaviours as the church on mission.

In growing and being the church, we have a role, indispensable role – for Jesus only has physical hands, feet, eyes, mouth in us!  He never re-inhabited the 2nd Temple, but He did inhabit us in the Holy Spirit.  Wow!  What a plan!

15 February 2015 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus | Leave a comment

Why do we Christ followers wrestle with the Biblical concept of mercy?

“Isn’t it odd that Christendom — ​that huge body of humankind that claims spiritual descent from the Jewish carpenter of Nazareth — ​claims to pray to and adore a being who was a prisoner of Roman power, an inmate of the empire’s death row?
That the one it considers the personification of the Creator of the Universe was tortured, humiliated, beaten, and crucified on
a barren scrap of land on the imperial periphery, at Golgotha, the place of the skull? That the majority of its adherents strenuously support the state’s execution of thousands of imprisoned citizens? That the overwhelming majority of its
judges, prosecutors, and lawyers — ​those who condemn, prosecute, and sell out the condemned — ​claim to be
followers of the fettered, spat-upon, naked God?”
~Death-row inmate Mumia Abu-Jarnal

Why do we, the saints, the Christ followers, the Christ “like” ones struggle, wrestle, resist being like Christ in showing mercy to others, including each other?  To be honest, I’d rather offend a non-Christian… seriously.  What we often refer to as “lost” people usually have a greater capacity to show mercy, to forgive, to give to those less fortunate than we!  I find mercy, be it from causing an offense, or in giving to others in dire conditions more freely flowing from non-Christians.

When it comes to those who are poor, in dire straights, Christians start with the proverbial questions, “Do they deserve help?  Did they earn this misfortune?”  Yet, Jesus clearly dismantles and attacks repeatedly the notion that the better your circumstances and financial status, the more blessed and favored you are by God… One only need to read the “Rich Young Ruler” and any number of other parables (before going to any number of books in the Old Testament (Joseph in Genesis, Job’s situation) to dismantle that idea.  Yet, the saints hold this “justify any mercy I might share” attitude.  So, we literally say…  to receive mercy from me, you must “deserve it”…  which translates “be like me”… moral, church going, non-swearing and vote like me… and if you don’t then you don’t deserve mercy.  It doesn’t seem to matter if hard times fell on you, or you fell on hard times.  How do we justify this with Jesus looking us in the eye?  Did He tell the fellow man being crucified, “Today, you’ll be with me in paradise…because you deserve it?”  Or when Jesus encountered the emotionally hollow Samaritan woman, Nicodemus, the woman touching his robe, the leper, the Roman Centurion… need I unpack that more?

Need a person be at the very bottom, destitute before they earn mercy?  Can a person, in need, but not yet at the bottom, find mercy among those who are to emulate Christ?

More so, need a person be worthy and promise to use it “our way” to receive mercy?  I’m not opting for throwing away what we give, or to enable unhealthy lifestyles, but are we called to administer an inquisition, or to be faithful and let the Spirit worry about those things.  Can we give in mercy, freely, and not needing to be arrogant and not emulate Christ?

More so, what is our motive for not giving?  Is our need to even, though unlike Christ, discern worthiness, really masking our own greed and need to control and keep our own money for “ours”?  Why can we not let go?  I challenge that we have world view issues.  Yes, we have worldviews (frame works in seeing and living in life) that are not Kingdom values, but our world’s values, lost values, built on self and enlightenment – self advancement.  To be like Christ, we are to emulate Christ and remember that while we were “yet sinners” Christ died for us, not when we deserved it, or were worthy of it (Romans 8.1f & Galatians 1-2).

One of the greatest known parables is Jesus’ story to respond to a challenge of “who is my neighbor”… and He tells the story of the good Samaritan, where the Samaritan, not the “holy” Jewish person, showed the mercy to the Jewish guy who was mugged.  The Samaritan gave himself, his money, his time to an “enemy”…. who did not earn it, or justify himself, and to a Samaritan was not “worthy” of his sacrificial help.

May we become people who a) life sacrificially with our purse; b) live sacrificially with our heart attitude to give in every way; c) be like Christ and be known for such, as they were in the 1st century.

Dare to be challenged by a couple of people far more eloquent than me?  Check these out!  I strongly recommend both:

16 November 2014 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus | Leave a comment

Losing My Religion – article form Sojournes Magazine

Take a moment to read this fascinating article.  Don’t get lost…  The author starts with the spiritual decline in the West, especially the US.  He then delves into a recent (sine 1979) political US national political history.  Don’t forget – he’s on about the new atheist fundamentalism.  He’s talking about the social dynamic that Christians find sad and a failure of our mandate.  BUT also not miss the the points he makes about who was involved in this demise of the church – esteemed figures who has skirted such reproach, though this past year several exposures must rewrite our esteem and historical understanding; the church today as a now political tool of the GOP and why, how the planks that attracted the Christians now being gone and a new gospel of capitalism and empire, nor miss his quotes of Church historical figures who condemn the embracing of the capitalism, which equates to Darwin economics, and do not miss  how we abandoned Jimmy Carter who looked far more like Jesus than Reagan, “one of our own” so-to-speak being fooled by the political establishment.

BUT do have a read… then ask yourself who do we listen to the partisan political rhetoric and start watching their behavior and measure them against those little red letters.

_________________________________________________

Published on Sojourners (http://sojo.net)

Losing My Religion

by Randall Balmer | June 2014

How U.S. evangelicals rejected one of their own—and helped spawn the “New Atheism.”

RECENT POLLS SUGGEST that America’s vaunted religiosity is slipping, including the percentage of people willing to identify themselves as evangelicals. At the same time, the percentage of avowed secularists has risen. A movement calling itself the “New Atheism”—those adamantly opposed to religion—has attracted a considerable following.

The oracles of this movement—including Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and the late Christopher Hitchens—deny any possibility of the supernatural, assert that religious belief is irrational, and posit that religion has caused untold evil and suffering throughout history. Because of their dogmatism and their refusal to countenance views other than their own, I refer to these people as “secular fundamentalists.”

Hard data may be elusive, but the latest generation of American young people is much less religious than the last, and the growing secularism they represent could be a byproduct of the polarizing effect of the Religious Right. With evangelical fundamentalism being the dominant and most public form of U.S. Christianity over the last generation, young seekers would rather turn away from all religion than adapt to the harsh expression of faith that excludes so many of their peers and often stands against their aspirations for fairness and equality.

Religious fundamentalism has tainted the reputation of Christianity. For many, unbelief has become more palatable than belief, if believing requires an embrace of the distortions that have so characterized U.S. Christianity over the last several decades.

What prompted the emergence of this New Atheism or secular fundamentalism? What historical forces contributed to its rise? The roots of this phenomenon go back more than three decades—to the political mobilization of a different species of fundamentalism that became the movement commonly known as the Religious Right.

AS THE 1980 presidential campaign reached its climax, an interested citizen, a preacher, picked up the telephone. Although the race was still fluid, his preferred candidate was trailing in the polls, and yet inserting himself explicitly into the race was dicey. His ability to sway voters, especially evangelical voters, was undisputed, but that influence derived precisely from his ability to appear above the fray. Over the course of a long and distinguished career, he had perfected the art of the discreet political gesture—a strategic handshake, a brief touch on the shoulder, a whispered aside in front of the cameras—to telegraph his preferences.

But this election was especially fraught. One candidate, the incumbent running for re-election, was known as a family man who shared the preacher’s evangelical theological convictions. The other major candidate, divorced and remarried, had spent much of his career in Hollywood, a province not known to evangelicals as an outpost of piety. A third-party candidate was a member of the Evangelical Free Church, a denomination with deep roots in Scandinavian pietism.

Receiver in hand, the preacher considered his options one last time and punched the numbers. At the other end of the line was Paul Laxalt, U.S. senator from Nevada and national chair of Ronald Reagan’s campaign for president. A memorandum in the Reagan Library tells the remainder of the story. “Billy Graham called,” the senator wrote. “Wants to help short of public endorsement.” Then Laxalt added: “His presence, in my view, would be exceedingly helpful in some of our key states.”

THE STORY behind the evangelical abandonment of Jimmy Carter in the 1980 presidential election is one of the most riveting—and puzzling—in recent political history. It is a story of intrigue and betrayal, and it reshaped both the U.S. political landscape as well as popular perceptions of evangelicalism to the present.

Carter’s improbable rise to the presidency in 1976 was fueled by voter discontent with Washington and particularly with the web of corruption surrounding Richard Nixon. The one-term governor of Georgia traded on his outsider status as well as his born-again Christianity. He also benefited from a resurgence of progressive evangelicalism in the 1970s, the movement that takes seriously Jesus’ words to care for “the least of these.”

In earlier decades of U.S. history, progressive evangelicalism animated various movements of social reform, including the abolition of slavery, public education, prison reform, and advocacy for women’s rights, including the right to vote. Many evangelicals were involved in peace movements, and some evangelicals even doubted the morality of capitalism because it necessarily elevated avarice over altruism and therefore ran counter to the teachings of Jesus. Charles Grandison Finney, the most famous and influential evangelical of the 19th century, argued that capitalism “recognizes only the love of self” and said that “the rules by which business is done in the world, are directly opposite to the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the spirit he exhibited.” The man of business, in contrast with the gospel, lives by the maxim: “Look out for number one.”

In November 1973, a group of 55 evangelicals, including Ronald Sider, Carl F.H. Henry, Tom Skinner, and Jim Wallis, met at the Chicago YMCA and adopted the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern. Echoing the themes of progressive evangelicalism from decades past, the declaration decried income inequality and militarism as well as the persistence of racism and hunger in the midst of an affluent society. At the behest of Nancy Hardesty, the declaration also included a forthright embrace of women’s rights and gender equality.

Just over a year later, Carter announced his candidacy for president, drawing on many of those same themes as well as his frequently repeated promise to never knowingly lie to the American people. He pledged his commitment to racial reconciliation and health-care reform and to pursue human rights, a reduction of nuclear weapons, and a less imperial foreign policy.

Carter’s campaign confounded the pundits, who thought that the voters’ infatuation with the one-term governor of Georgia would evaporate once the field of candidates took shape. They were mistaken. Carter’s outsider status coupled with his evident probity provided a tonic to an electorate weary of Nixon’s endless prevarications. On his way to the White House, Carter effectively rid his party—and the nation—of its most pugnacious segregationist, George C. Wallace of Alabama, by beating Wallace in the Florida Democratic primary.

Carter’s tenure as president was, by any measure, a stormy one, beset by persistent energy crises, stubbornly high inflation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Iranian Revolution. Still, Carter was remarkably successful in pursuing his agenda. His first official act as president was to pardon Vietnam-era draft resisters, thereby helping to bring that sorry chapter in American life to a close. He renegotiated the Panama Canal treaties, and, in so doing, signaled an attenuation of U.S. colonialism. He advanced peace in the Middle East far beyond anything accomplished by his predecessors (or his successors). He recalibrated foreign policy away from a reflexive Cold War dualism and toward an emphasis on human rights. On domestic matters, Carter sought to limit the incidence of abortion, and he is regarded by many as the nation’s greatest environmental president.

SO WHY WOULD evangelicals, who helped propel Carter to the presidency in 1976, turn against him four years later? Why would they reject one of their own, a born-again evangelical Christian, in favor of a former actor who, as governor of California, had signed into law the most liberal abortion bill in the nation?

It makes no sense, until you consider that evangelicalism itself was deeply divided in the 1970s. Carter’s understanding of the faith, shaped by progressive evangelicalism, pushed him toward the left of the political spectrum, whereas many white, northern evangelicals, following the lead of Billy Graham, gravitated toward the Republican Party. Nixon’s damage to the Republican brand had briefly altered that calculus in the mid-1970s, and Carter harvested a far greater percentage of evangelical votes than any of his Democratic predecessors.

Conservatives, however, were eager to regain their footing after the disastrous Nixon presidency, and several savvy political operatives conspired to do so. Paul Weyrich, who became a primary architect of the Religious Right, had long recognized the political potential of evangelical voters. If he could organize them into a political movement, he reasoned, he could reshape the political landscape.

Weyrich had tried various issues over the years to lure conservative evangelicals into the political arena—abortion, pornography, school prayer, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment—but nothing worked. By the mid-1970s, however, he finally found the issue that would energize them: the attempt by the Internal Revenue Service to deny tax exemption to institutions that engaged in racial discrimination.

Following the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954, many churches, especially in the South, had formed “segregation academies” to avoid the mandate of integration. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade racial discrimination in public accommodations, but these schools persisted in their racial policies. A lower court ruling in 1971, however, held that any institution that engaged in racial discrimination was not—by definition—a charitable institution; therefore, it had no claims on tax-exempt status.

As the Internal Revenue Service began enforcing that ruling in the mid-1970s, and especially as it turned its attentions to the notoriously fundamentalist—and segregationist—Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., Weyrich finally found the issue that would energize conservative evangelical and fundamentalist leaders. When, after years of warnings, the IRS rescinded the tax exemption of Bob Jones University in 1976, these preachers howled in protest. Jerry Falwell, who had opened his own segregated academy in Lynchburg, Va., in 1967, famously complained that it was easier to open a massage parlor in most states than it was to open a “Christian” school.

Weyrich and other leaders of the nascent Religious Right, however, were careful to frame their protests as a defense of religious freedom—which meant, in this case, the freedom to discriminate. Ignoring the fact that exemption from taxation is actually a form of public subsidy, they railed against what they called governmental intervention into religious matters.

Weyrich’s larger challenge in forging the Religious Right was directing this righteous anger against Carter, a task that required an audacious sleight of hand. The IRS action against Bob Jones University took effect on Jan. 19, 1976, which happened to be the same day that Carter won the Iowa precinct caucuses, his first major step toward the Democratic nomination and the presidency. Gerald Ford was president then—Carter was inaugurated a year and a day later—but as leaders of the Religious Right ramped up their activism in advance of the 1980 presidential election, they succeeded in pinning the IRS action on Carter.

Midway through his term as president, Carter’s approval was sagging, which made him susceptible to the attacks and distortions of his political adversaries, including politically conservative preachers. Carter was vilified for the “giveaway” of the Panama Canal and for high interest rates and a stagnant economy. In 1977, Anita Bryant, a former Miss Oklahoma and runner-up Miss America, headed a movement called Save Our Children that rescinded civil rights protections for gays and lesbians in Dade County, Fla; Carter, while acknowledging his uneasiness about homosexuality, insisted that all citizens were entitled to equal protection under the law. Together with his wife, Rosalynn, the president also pushed for ratification of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution.

From the other end of the political spectrum, Carter faced criticism for reinstituting draft registration and upgrading U.S. military systems. He was slow to address human rights abuses among some nations long considered allies, including South Korea and El Salvador.

Although many progressive evangelicals shared these concerns, Carter’s greater political threat emanated from the right. By 1979, a year before Carter faced the voters, leaders of the Religious Right found the issue that would galvanize grassroots evangelical voters: abortion. Although evangelicals regarded abortion as a “Catholic issue” through most of the 1970s, and some evangelical leaders had applauded the Roe vs. Wade ruling in 1973, a film series called Whatever Happened to the Human Race?, featuring Francis A. Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop, helped persuade rank-and-file evangelicals that abortion must be outlawed. Despite Carter’s longstanding opposition to abortion and his efforts as governor and as president to limit its incidence, Carter was deemed insufficiently “pro-life.”

JIMMY CARTER’S DEFEAT in 1980 marked a turning point in the history of evangelicalism in America. Although Carter’s policies were consistent with the principles of progressive evangelicalism, the leaders of the Religious Right peddled a different vision, one characterized less by community, human rights, and care for those less fortunate than by free-market capitalism and a muscular foreign policy.

The rise of the Religious Right and the demise of progressive evangelicalism also transformed U.S. politics, contributing to the election of Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and countless hard-right conservatives on the state and local levels. Today, more than 30 years later, many Americans view evangelicalism and conservative politics as inseparable. Evangelicalism is seen by many as synonymous with intolerance.

Every action tends to trigger a reaction, and I see an unmistakable connection between these two developments—the rise of the Religious Right and the emergence of the New Atheism. Ironically, they’re both examples of fundamentalism in practice, one growing out of the other.

Both species of fundamentalism revel in a dualistic view of the world. For conservative fundamentalists, it’s a slavish biblical literalism that refuses to countenance any ambiguity on social issues or to acknowledge that the laws of a pluralistic society cannot be derived directly from the Hebrew Bible. The dualism of secular fundamentalists resists any common ground between faith and reason and forecloses even the possibility of transcendence.

Both the political fundamentalists of the Religious Right and the secular fundamentalists of the New Atheism are guilty of excess. Their dualistic perspective on the world blinds them to shades of gray.

Whatever his shortcomings as president, Jimmy Carter discerned shades of gray. He rejected the dualism of the Cold War in favor of a foreign policy that repudiated colonialism and emphasized human rights. Even though he was personally uncomfortable with homosexuality (as were most Americans at the time), Carter recognized that gays and lesbians were entitled to full rights as citizens. He understood the importance of military restraint as well as the connection between profligate energy use and the despoiling of God’s creation.

His political adversaries, however, saw the world in black and white, stripped of nuance. The activism of religious fundamentalists in the turning-point election of 1980 may have altered the political landscape, but the emergence of the Religious Right also set the stage for the backlash of the New Atheism.

Fundamentalism, after all, begets fundamentalism.

Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest, is chair of the Religion Department at Dartmouth College and the author, most recently, of Redeemer: The Life of Jimmy Carter (May 2014).

30 June 2014 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus | Leave a comment

Sow the wind – reap the whirlwind

We watch yet another candle light vigil – tear stained eulogies by young adults with no wisdom missing people who are “watching us” while denying there is even a god, and certainly not the Living God.  Suddenly in tragedy we cannot accept a reality without god, so somehow the laws of nature have those lost senselessly watching over us.  They miss their friends’ dancing, or jokes, but have nothing else they can recall.

What is worse though is that in a society without God – the Living God – we have a secular empty, shallow people who have no hope, no compass, no anchor, or purpose, nothing greater than themselves.  Thus their stomach is their god.  They live to simply temporarily gratify their insatiable passions, lusts (undeniable desires that are ever famished) for more, not able to gratify, not able to appease, so they live without thinking, enslaved to the latest cultural wave as if that hair cut, new fashion is a reason to get up in the morning.  They are enslaved to empty senseless wisdom from dumb sages, who tell them what is “cool” (acceptable) and has meaning.

There are those who cannot gratify their lusts and with time enrage and come to such senseless selfishness to hurt others because they cannot get their way.  Hurt people hurt people…

This is the end of western society… it was for Rome and we are not exempt either.

So, just why do you get out of bed in the morning?

I exhort that we seek to center and simplify…

1.  Center – make God our compass, our anchor, our purpose, our motivation, our rule, our standard.  That living FOR Him, UNDER Him, WITH Him, FOLLOWING Him our reason to get up!

2.  Simplify – Stop being blindly unconsciously led by such a stupid empty foolish society…  Simplify!  Simplify in our aspirations; dump materialism; dump social status; dump being entertained to death; dump status; dump consumption; dump the fast lane; dump social and economic ladder climbing; dump the dump empty social markers of success in life; dump cool; dump fashion; dump chic standards that make us superior to others; dump indi “in” cult cool; dump the latest; dump out rebellious culture; dump our celebrity worship; dump our reputations; dump our rights…  center and make relating, knowing and communing with God our center.

peace, joy, grace,

+ mike

26 May 2014 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus | Leave a comment

Separation of church and state… where did that get us?

There has been much argument in our pluralistic secular world and nation-state about a separation of state & church.  I understand it in a civic’s class idea…  it also prevents strange cults from taking over state/nation government and promoting itself – like so many parts of the world.  Yet, while we’ve been taught in our civics that Christian is American, that a separation is a good thing; and in our own human state where we do judge and treat others less than well (slavery, racism, classism, anti-immigrant behavior, despising those with failings, gay, etc…  We, for those of us who claim, as saints of the Living God, have failed to act as He would have us act… and yet, simultaneously, He has not called us to be a secular pluralistic people – but His people.  Respect and honor and treat with grace those with whom we sincerely disagree, but not to shy and hide that we are His people.  At times, our silence and privatization is preferable to our disreputable behavior towards others, but if we emulate Him, act as He would, were filled with Grace – for that IS how He woos hearts, not by calling them out and humiliating them, nor waging an ugly pooh throwing political campaign, then our humble loving posture would win souls.

With all of this said, who ever said, other than misguided souls, for certainly not God, that in a democracy, we, the saints, the church – be it the institution or individuals, have no public role in society, it’s rules, laws or behaviors?  For this is exactly what led to atrocities in the past.  It was the church that offered communion to the concentration camp officers and guards in Europe in the 1930’s & 1940’s; the churches that offer today and yesterday communion to the KKK and other racists; the church that approved of apartheid; that approves today of the apartheid and mishandling of the Palestinian issue; the hatred revisited upon ethnic minorities and minority tribes across Africa, Asia and East Europe; the church that communes with those stirring up civil war in the Ukraine.

No – on the contrary – HOW DARE the church remain silent and out of the political debate on social issues… for the soul is not disconnected from the brain, the body, the heart, but the very life source of all three and the person is all four together…  We must be the conscience, yet from a posture of humility, love, serving and caring, even when they “other side” wins; when they do not agree or like or assail our position.  We instead of hating the other should serve, should care, should gently reason.  Do not argue – but help them see God’s perspective, the value of life, good, it going well with us, of virtue and being a virtuous people – calling us to our ideal, our aspirations.  BUT do not let us be silent and private and parked on the personal side of life, but centered in who we follow, for He lived and died and rose to show us life with purpose, with grace, with gentleness, with sacrifice, for others focused, not ourselves.

There is so much occurring today that calls for our voice – not our warring, but our voice, our heart, our serving.  We will not win social wars with political campaigns, but by a carpet bombing of selfless, humble love and grace.  This, this will change society, and impact the world, but we cannot remain silent.

6 May 2014 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus | 1 Comment

Absurdity of Olympics in present headlines

It is absolutely absurd!  This was my reaction as I scanned the headlines today.  We’re celebrating the Winter Olympics in Sochi Russia, another developing location not up to the task, that will be a wasteland afterwards…like every other developing nation’s post Olympic experience, but that is for another day, save that the depths of corruption in building this global future dump far exceeds every other developing nation’s graft and abuse.

But today, as I scan the headlines, I see the “smiling faces” of the facade in Sochi, then note everything from Ukraine violence, Venezuela – same, North Korea’s nightmare exposed…worse than Hitler, yet the world no more cares than it did in the 1930’s about Hitler – a ‘don’t bother me with the drudgery, I’m busy going to lunch, and make my latte w/ soy,please’, let us not forget Russia is propping up Iran – giving them encouragement to flaunt the UN’s mandate, China knows about North Korea and ignores it, and then of course there is the genocide in Syria… and no one cares.

Just what do we do with this?  When do we stop – crush these gross evil acts and perpetrators and then celebrate when we really have something to celebrate?  Our celebration until then is as absurd at the partying in the capital in the story and movie, Hunger Games.   It’s modern day Rome, late monarchy of France, Hitler in 1944.

The ignoring of the climate challenges we face, no matter one falls on cause, are of equal concern.  How did we become so narcissistic?

What would it take to wake us up?  We have so many people who are concerned and working to help these situations, but the VAST majority of our society ignores it, just too busy with real world demands.  I get it – but what is really important and when do we care enough to say enough slaughter, torture, abuse, insanity?

In the words of a Texas youth pastor in the 1990’s, just WWJD?

18 February 2014 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus | Leave a comment

Adjusting Expectations

Funny how Western, especially US perspectives on Scripture, are colored by success, innovation, self made success, blessing and God making it all make sense, IS going to bless us and all will be well, end well, etc.  We color the rest of the west due to the empire that is all things empire:  economic, military, foreign policy (the adore mentioned combined), social, pop media, culture, trends, clothes, music, blah, blah, blah, blah…  Ever hear “When the US sneezes, the world catches a cold”?  Think 2008 economic US made crash… then see the impact globally compared to the US…  It is the same in Christendom, or the remnants thereof.  We drive western views of Christianity.

American Christianity is built on upward mobility, at least for white, upwardly mobile Christians – the ones who sustain the Christian commerce, books, speakers, music, preachers broadcast as never before…  we quote them and the Scripture they use in the posture, perspective and understanding they have…  Piper Says…;  Dricol says…;”  MacArthur says….;  Olsteen says….;  you get it.

This marriage of culture and faith has given us “upwardly mobile” theology.  This surmounts to God is a) going to bless us; b) going to make us important; c) everything we do will be significant and unusual; and d) our endeavors will be fulfilling and is ordained.  Now, don’t get your theological horns up.  Yes, God can and does do “big things”, but good, well meaning Baby Boomer theologians, pastors, and thinkers have given us a “it’s all about me” theology.

I was hugely impacted by a guy named Bill Clinton – no, not the former US President, but author and professor at Fuller Theological Seminary.  Bill’s mantra was that God calls leaders, shapes them, and if they will be surrendered, will direct them to make their “ultimate” contribution… a spiritual destiny… significant, lasting, noteworthy, and people to emulate.  Sure – this can be true and there are many to acclaim, some published, some not.  I think of dozens as I type this.  I also think of many not known, but are significant in their contribution in many lives and in those who go on to impact many others.

Yet…

Yet…

This is not all.  It is not the end.  AND it is not the norm.  I have found this born out in many other GOOD peoples’ lives, much, much better than me – better Christians in word, deed, heart, emotion, spiritual formation, attitudes, treatment of enemies, etc.  You see, in our “American” faith – thank you Zondervan, and the many publishing companies that focus first on a) will it sell – over and above  – what is God saying”…  we don’t tarry long in the passages that don’t reinforce these uniquely American optimisms.  We don’t dwell on the holocaust and the millions murdered, including saints, most noted being Deitrich Bonhoffer, nor his words to such evil and lives senselessly lost.  We don’t think about the Tutsi’s and Hutu’s in Africa long, the slaughter in the Sudan, or across Africa;  we don’t think long about the martyrs in the Middle East, South Asia or China; nor Central/South America.  We don’t tarry long on our racism and hate yet present in America.  We don’t tarry long on our actions of empire – military and economic bullying nor the sin of lording over those more vulnerable.  We skip those passages and fail to connect individuals to our society or nation states.  We don’t like to think about people suffering and failing and not reaching anything worth of note because life was hard and hurt them, and broke them and then kicked them again.

We also don’t think about people wanting to follow Christ, but never getting to a place to be centered and fulfilled in what they do each day – never freed up to pursue their heart’s desire, for if God gave a person a passion – certainly it will be fulfilled… or they in their desire to hear God missed what He was saying or it would be so.

No, my experience is one where it only partially works out.  There have been times when I felt centered, felt fulfilled, but – yet – most of the time – that’s not reality.  It’s a false truth found only in the American theology and not present when you see the entire counsel of God’s Word in perspective.  There were as many who unjustly suffered, more than half, contrasted to the few who were “blessed” and “favored” and for whom it worked out.  Even Job, given more, more children even, no one stops and thinks of the unquenchable stabbing ache of the loss of his children – whom he would have dug out of the rubble and buried himself… crushed, dead, lifeless.  We don’t even like to think that the cute little baby with sweet music we sing about at Christmas, came but for one reason… “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” …by being mistreated, humiliated, tortured and then murdered in a cruel “do not defy Rome or this is your fate” form of execution.  We forget the martyrs over the centuries in every corner of the globe…most never written about, forgotten, nothing “significant”…

No, my life has it’s trail of scars, its lost friendships where former brothers and sisters now despise and disparage me; where situations fell apart that I KNEW God was leading towards bigger, greater, impact FOR HIM; where it’s been unfair, costs us tens of thousands of dollars; been humiliated and misjudged and people thinking ill of me, my intent, my desire…  I’m not crying in my sorrows.  Do not mistake what or why I am sharing this.

I share it because my experience is more common with more people than the blessed few who God has smiled upon; blessed with privilege, favor and success.  More people experience never reaching that place where they “do” something they “long to do every day”.  Most people pay the bills, struggle to stay above water, struggle to raise kids in a hard cruel world and to be faithful.  Those blessed at times do go through seasons like Joseph did, but some have privilege they under appreciate and do not realize most do not have such opportunity.

Yes, people make mistakes.  If you haven’t yet – you will.  If you say you’ve not really hurt others – you’re almost guaranteed to be self delusional or lying.  Yes, people do have cause-effect in their lives.  Why?  They are human in a fallen world.  Our theology damns them to what they earned, what they deserve.

Here is what I am learning:

1.  We are called to follow Jesus – the humiliated, human, vulnerable, downwardly mobile Christ;  not the Steven Covey version of ever more successful, organized, analyzed Christ.  We are called to the one who identified with the poor, the broken, the sinners (who made mistakes) – not the ones who tell us all our mistakes, tisking at us, talking in their condescending voices and without knowing it say “thank you Lord, I am not like that man over there, a sinner”.

2.  The upwardly mobile Christ is a self anesthetizing false god who legitimizes upward mobility, justifying self consumed privilege and success on one’s own merit – not the Christ who calls us naked to be exposed, vulnerable, seen for who we are and cry “Lord, have mercy on a sinner like me.”

3.  There is not secret mystical discovery of “what you were created for” in the vein of discovering your “secret craving” and when you find it – the right job is offered, thousands are saved, and ROI is in the black…  It’s follow this humble Christ… we are told to emulate Him.

4.  Seeking Him – without ANY of the promises of success – Him alone is only found a) in the liturgy of the church (worship of God’s people together – following and worshiping Him); discipline of the Word where we allow it to penetrate us, strip us, shape us, speak to us; form us; heal us; refine us and;  c) discipline of the heart – real time with Him, not just intercession, but listening, waiting, pouring ourselves out, significant time… coming to know Him more and more and seeing our dependence upon Him, allowing His virtues, values, heart to invade and transform us to His image.

5.  Suffering, lack of fulfilled contentment is normal – contentment in really knowing Him is our only real contentment and that happens with time and time alone.  There is no peace in this world – that is Biblical.  Peace in Him in this unpeaceful world is our only expectation.

6.  He is still God when it hurts.  He is still God when we’re alone, mistreated, maligned, abandoned.  He is still God when we’re furious with Him.

7.  I am not there yet, so still longing for peace, for blessing, for healing of wounds that I do not think will ever, ever, ever heal again.   I follow the Christ… the humiliated Christ.  Him I know.  The suburban upwardly mobile Christ does not stir the heart, but it does stir the earthly temptations for power, fame and success.

8.  Do not quickly dare pray, as I did and have over the years that “I would know the Christ, and the power of His resurrection, and the sufferings even life through His death.”  Be very careful, for He takes that seriously and it is not an easy path.

9.  Yes, at times, I still wish I were simpler, still had a hopeful, simple faith that could easily claim the claims of Scripture I chose to claim, and to ignore the other parts.

May His peace be poured over you.+  mike

28 January 2014 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus | Leave a comment

The debate on minimum wage

WARNING:  I started calm, but got a case of the pissed off as I went along.

There is a lot of argument happening regarding minimum wage…  those who benefit from low costs are the ones arguing and also, coincidentally, not the ones attempting to live on minimum wage.  I’m not lining up to pay more for services or products, etc.  But there are some things to be considered…

• We don’t want generational poverty where they lazily live the easy life on the doll (government subsistence).
• So they get jobs working minimum wage doing things we MUST have done to function… name the working low pay job of choice and imagine no workers…
• When they complain, we tell them to get another job… Uhm hmm, Duh.  If they could get a better job paying more, do you no think they would?  “uh, no, thanks.  I’ll put mustard on your burger for my present pay, rather than work in a store where I can get 50% more pay for BETTER HOURS.”  I don’t think so.
• They can’t pay their bills working minimum wage, so they are asking for an increase in the minimum allowed pay.  Do the math – when you work a minimum wage job, which by the way = 2 minimum wage jobs because no one can get more than 20-25 hours a week working those jobs because heaven forbid they have health insurance.  So, let’s say 45 hours @ $7.25 is $326.25, which is about $1305/ month… BEFORE taxes, Social Security, etc.  So, they bring home about $978/month.  Okay, so let’s play it out – IF you are NOT a single parent and you both work…  both minimum wage… that’s less than $2000/month.  It’s IMPOSSIBLE to live on $2000/month today.  Do the math again:  rent, utilities, auto, insurances (medical, home, car, life, disability – like they could afford such things anyway under any circumstance), food, gas, clothes, household, now factor in the cost of schools!  NO WAY for the basics.  SO – if they work minimum wage, they WILL be on the doll!  They will be on food stamps, welfare, and a variety of other children aimed benefits.  BUT want to take that away.  SO, how then do they live?
• So, we pay the undisputed, absolute least % of our income for food of ANY people, ANY where, ANY time in ALL of ALL history…  BUT we’re bitching because they might want to get paid better.  Really?  So, we’re saying, “You live in what is reality, slavery, so I can get my food cheap, so I can go to Costco and get the new 72″ TV and go on vacation to the Caribbean, not just the coast, or somewhere closer from suburb anywhere.  I don’t care and worse, I don’t want you to make me think about this, or even know this.  I just want what I want.”
• Now, factor in cost of living around the nation – there are actual tables for this – take a look!  Living in cities – where the jobs are – is more expensive than east nowhere – where there is about 100% resistance to this change.  Coastal cities cost even more… it just is and we’re not going to change that…  So we tell them to move – to what job?  Do you know what it costs to move?  Move yourself?  Do you know the wages lost to move yourself when you work minimum wage?
• Now factor in that giving people a better living wage – I don’t claim to know what a living wage is, but there are experts who can tell you what that is in what location in the country – it will not cost nearly as much as you think… at all.   You’ve been told nightmare scare tactics – but those are told to you by the people who would actually feel the expense… Like the Coch bothers, or the Walton Family (the most wealthy people in the nation) WHO, by the way, would never have to change on iota of their lives if they did have to pay a livable wage – they just would not be able to hoard quite as much as they do now.  Walmart, the largest food supplier in the nation, is owned by 6 people who own 40% of the nations weatlh… 6 people.  We won’t even get into the Coch brothers, contemporary robber barons worshiped for their ability to fleece the nation and make billions for not earning it, just knowing the system… and that’s a virtue today.  Imagine.
• Your cost?  Maybe a quarter per burger.  That’ll change your middle class overweight life?  Don’t think so.
• NOW, let’s consider if it is doable.  Uhm… let’s first see a corporation or two… note they are in the Pacific Northwest, a high cost of living region.  NOTE that this region is more “socially minded” (we used to call it socialism until that word was vilanized).  Starbucks… start @ $8/hour and do 20 or more hours a week AND they give you health insurance and retirement investment opportunities and matches.  Or Costco – ever see their wages?  Now, let’s consider nations…  New Zealand and Australia… not doing shabby a bit economically, even with being isolated a long way from most of us – yet they pay their people a decent wage and have a great social safety net to leave no one behind.
• Okay, just one more…  those poor people who work those jobs you would never do – always subservient to us, those we need but never see as people – just servants, modern slavery – caught in a life they can’t escape – they have to live in the lowest income neighborhoods, so their kids face crime risks, bad influences and they are at work and can’t be there to properly shape their lives as they would like, AND they have to send their kids to the worst schools, because we don’t fund schools equally….  Look at your white affluent suburb and then at the urban schools.  Not a chance – they are destined, imprisoned in a system that is perpetuated.

Now, don’t you dare trot out the one great kid who escaped all that… Yes they exist, but that is not the norm.  MOST people don’t get the fate breaks that lift them out.  They are stuck in it – and at the end of the day, we need people who do those jobs no one will.  Imagine no garbage pick up… no fast lunches and those companies stock tanking, ruining your investment portfolio… you want them to succeed.

Now come to grips, that we are now profitizing prisons, because we know we’ve got a steady stream of people from this world filling the beds and there is money to be made…  Shame on us.

AND the 3d world – we’ve run out of countries to outsource products, then move to the next cheaper place (leaving a wake of destruction in the path behind us when we abandon a people no longer wishing to live as slaves working 80 hours a week for pennies to make us cheap tee shirts.  We’ve run out – they all want to live better in a globalized society and they see what we have and want some of it too…  NOW WHAT!?  Don’t think the 20% of us can live off the 80% much longer.  Things will change in our life times, in spite of the uber rich who wag the dog already, even having us wage wars as nation states for their benefit.

There is a host of those red letter passages that violate the affluent sensibilities and our society is working hard to recast the religious leadership to validate and not address social issues, to agree and endorse our affluence at the cost of others.   We can feel comfortable and ignore those who are in real need, who eat horrible because they can’t afford Whole Foods.  We can get indignant when jackasses like me say it plainly.  BUT take a moment and read Matthew 27….  Note that the condemnation is ONLY for how they treated – we treat – the least of these.  You’re not changing this reality and when He does return… there is no appeal system, no human rationalized ethics and legal system.  There is one system and He is King.

I don’t like lazy people – but I dislike insensitive arrogance even less.  It’s time we – saints – live differently and defend the weak and those who have no voice in a system that is not fare – but allows money to buy influence and control and power…  If you only bow down to me, all you see can be yours.  I read that someplace.

SO YES, I actually do support a higher minimum wage.  I support paying people enough to live on… cause you’re going to pay them one way or another – subsidies or earned.  A person who earns it naturally has more self respect.  A livable wage means people who can afford life and not be tempted to simply live on the doll.  A livable wage doesn’t impact us much at all – we are far better off than we think we are – and it is right.  It is also doable.  Others are doing it and we should too and we should stop being the lemmings for the elite top .000005% who used the rest of us.  We should stop becoming more libertarian and more socially responsible and pull together.  Stop and think about it – any team sport, from tug-o-war to a team sport – is people pulling together.  An Army pulls together… we should to as a society.

Does this make me liberal, or Biblical?  Does Biblical make me liberal?  I don’t think in your paradigm, but in your paradigm, you may think so.  If it does, okay…  then I am liberal.  So?  Am I socialist?  Socialist in that I think we actually can all go together and the Darwin economic ethic we’re living by is wrong and horrible and unsustainable and those on top like it until they trip and find themselves in the crush with the rest of us.  Then what?  Okay, maybe I am… but when I read the red letters… I can sleep at night and know I try to live consistent with that, though our system has me stuck functioning in it when it is morally wrong…that I hate.

Some related facts…that just get in the way of blindness and comfortable ignorance:

11 December 2013 | Categories: Missional - living following in the way of Jesus | Leave a comment