what's your wood worth?

pastor actually beleives Matthew 25

2008-09-23T20:56:00.001-04:00

Minister fights Brookville zoning to let homeless live in his church, read all about it!

Donald Miller at the DNC

2008-08-26T20:51:00.004-04:00

Nice prayer Donald!! Specificly Christian yet respectiful and inclusive; prophetic yet non-partisan; justice-oriented, global in scope, Biblical, confessional, and challenging to all gathered. I think he could have prayed this at the RNC. Well done! It's worth reading over on his site.

Presbmeme II

2008-08-22T14:41:00.005-04:00

The Rules

In about 25 words each, answer the following five questions.
Tag five presbyterian bloggers and send them a note to let them know they were tagged.
Be sure to link to this original post.
Leave a comment or send a trackback to this post so others can find you.

1) What is your favorite faith-based hymn, song or chorus?

Come thou Fount - we sang it last week and in our worship gathering and i just so identify with the lines that follow for they are my day to day story - indebted to grace b/c my heart is oh so prone to wander...

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it..

check out Sufjan Stevens rendition on Youtube

2) What was the context, content and/or topic of the last sermon that truly touched, convicted, inspired, challenged, comforted and/or otherwise moved you?

I recently went to Mexico with a mission partner church or ours and on Thursday night we had a worship service in three different languages, English, Spanish and Nauat. A pastor of a nondenominational church (Cesar) and he was preaching from Chronicles 19. And i cannot tell you the full content of the sermon but there was a reference in the sermon to the amount of tie that Jesus spent in prayer as a Jewish man -up to 5 hours a day. Cesar said Jesus spent 5 hours in prayer and with one touch power went out from him. The average Christians spend i minute and prayer and 5 hours trying to bring healing to the world. As an activist is challenged me to spend more time in prayer.

3) If you could have all Presbyterians read just one of your previous posts, what would it be and why?

Missional Adaptive Leadership

4) What are three PC(USA) flavored blogs you read on a regular basis?

5) If the PC(USA) were a movie, what would it be and why?

Field of dreams - we still believe if we build it they will come

Tagged: Bob Anderson, Pink Sneakers, Nanette Sawyer, Rick Carter, John Creasy,

she

2008-08-19T14:30:00.005-04:00

I have gotten a few comments on Facebook for posting the free preview to Rob Bell's new nooma, she. I encourage you to watch it here - it is only up for another 24 hours. The comments I have received have been words of caution to me slipping away from Biblical orthodoxy. So here is a version of one response i wrote.

Despite others' thoughts and concerns I do not feel as though I have slipped outside of orthodoxy. I still believe in the authority of scripture and in the 2 foundational Creeds of our faith (the Apostles and Nicaean). My orthodoxy is perhaps a bit more generous and open than others but I am still a Bible believing orthodox follower of Jesus - the way the truth and the life.

As for the concern that Rob Bell is declaring God not to be Father, he does not say that God is not Father. Bell says, "God is not male or female rather Spirit" - quoting Jesus in John 4:24. god being Spirit is as orthodox as you get. this is an historic and orthodox theological statement. Also Rob's emphasis on God's motherly characteristics are take right from scripture, "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! (Isa.(49:15) And in fact he says that these references are metaphor and cannot be taken literally. So Rob is therefore NOT saying God is female. He is saying that God is beyond male and female - again, that God is Spirit.

If you someone who thinks God is male that is not orthodox!!!!! Yes the primary image given to us in scripture is Father and ought not be discarded for the sake of political correctness or personal discomfort with the metaphor. I call God Father regularly and believe it to be true. But I cannot deny the motherly images in scripture that enhance, deepen and further enlighten my understanding of who God is as understood through scripture. It is a mysterious both/and, an orthoparadoxy. I want to allow the dual images of God to stand in tension with one another and not disregard one or the other just b/c it seems "liberal" or on the other hand "conservative" or makes me uncomfortable. It drives me to worship, honor and serve God all the more.

Now a caution to all of us who tend to critique the theology of others with whom we disagree . It is one thing to disagree with someone's theology it is another thing to slander a person whom you do not know personally- which the Bible clearly says is a sin. Many people's assessment of Rob is uninformed and not at all accurate. Particularly the claim that he has disregarded the Bible and it's authority. I have sat under Rob's teaching virtually and personally and in my assessment Rob bases everything he does on the Bible. He may not interpret it the same way some would but he is searching the scripture nonetheless. We must be careful not to make broad sweeping assumptions about people and their theology. Many believe that Rob has a moral influence theory of the work and ministry of Christ yet his entire tour "the gods aren't angry" was a presentation in defense of justification through faith and not works. I saw it heard it with my own ears. Yes there was new stuff but still within orthodoxy! The God's aren't angry because Jesus has taken the punishment we deserve.

In our enthusiasm for the truth we must speak it in LOVE; be careful to not alienate and dis-unify the body of Christ which is the primary way that the world will know God (John 17). May we be filled with grace in our fervor to preserve the integrity of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

mexico prayers

2008-08-12T20:38:00.009-04:00

It is impossible to capture all that God did in and through our team while in Mexico City but I want to share with you a some thoughts i had after an amazingly exhausting day working in Zapote Ariba.

I felt like i was a part of the life of Jesus/story of the church in Acts. We gathered together to eat pray, worship, sit under the Word and fellowship and then like the 70 sent out by Jesus we we went out to proclaim: good news to the poor; freedom for the prisoners; recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, and the year of the Lord's favor." (Luke 4:18-19). As we gathered in the center of the village with teachers, doctors, pastors, nurses, children from Pittsburgh, Mexico City and Ahuatitla, speaking English, Spanish and Nauat. Some sorted medicine, preparing to see patients others dispersed into the village while I stayed behind to preach from Mark 2, in English, and then translated into Spanish and then into Nauat. After that our tri-lingual team offered pray for the sick and broken-hearted. We listened to stories of incredible physical and spiritual pain and oppression. We prayed together in the unity of the Spirit even though we never spoke in the same language. We saw God's power and authority in very tangible ways - people were healed, principalities and powers were battled, tears were shed, hearts were mended and the kingdom of God was advanced all through PRAYER in the Spirit. Not the normal way I do ministry. I saw and felt the power of God go out through me and the others in our prayer team. I saw hands used to bring healing to other people's bodies and spirits. I heard discernment and insight into the lives of people that could have only been given by God. By mid-day I was completely depleted, exhausted and amazed. I experientially understood why Jesus often withdrew to a quiet place and connect with his Father - replenishing power, strength and wisdom. There were people waiting in line to meet with the doctors and nurses and to be prayed for. My spirit was weak and in need of renewal. The work that God had prepared me to do I had never done before (praying for people for 4 hours straight) and after lunch we headed back for more miraculous work of God healing peoples bodies, minds and spirits through us, his wounded healers on their knees.

How am I translating this back into the USAmerican world that, to quote Nacho Libre, "has it's faith in science?" I believe that we need to learn about the power of prayer and the reality of the spiritual world. We modernistic USAmerican Christians tend to live in our minds, depend on rationality, human ingenuity, the scientific method, technological development, medicine, and what we can explain. I certainly believe that God is in the technological advances of science and medicine to heal can be used for his glory. I do not want to create a dualism of body and spirit, mind and emotion or prayer and science - God is in all and sovereign over all. But it seems to me that more faith in humanity's ability to progressively heal through technological advancement than in God himself. God is pushing me and prodding me to trust him more, to ask more boldly in prayer and believe that God can and will break in through his Spirit to bring healing to his world.

If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.
...the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.
And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the Lord's people.
Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make them well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

Lord help us to pray!

Brendan the navigator in Mexico

2008-07-31T10:16:00.004-04:00

On Saturday my daughter Kyra and i and 8 others from the Open door leave for Mexico to work along side one of our partner churches in Mexico City. We will be doing medical work and relational evangelism in a remote village called Ahuatitla where they have planted some house churches. The highs will be between 100-110 degrees!!!!!

My main man John Creasy sent out this prayer to our team of the Celtic wanderer, Saint Brendan the Navigator. Please pray it with us as we journey to and from and all around Mexico over the next week.

Shall I abandon, O King of Mysteries, the soft comforts of home? Shall I turn my back on my native land, and my face toward the sea?

Shall I put myself wholly at the mercy of God, without silver, without a horse, without fame and honor? Shall I throw myself wholly on the King of kings, without a sword and shield, without food and drink, without a bed to lie on?

Shall I say farewell to my beautiful land, placing myself under Christ's yoke? Shall I pour out my heart to him, confessing my manifold sins and begging forgiveness, tears streaming down my cheeks?

Shall I leave the prints of my knees on the sandy beach, a record of my final prayer in my native land? Shall I then suffer every kind of wound that the sea can inflict?

Shall I take my tiny coracle across the wide, sparkling ocean? O King of the Glorious Heaven, shall I go of my own choice upon the sea?

O Christ, will you help me on the wild waves?

i love my presbytery

2008-06-15T12:18:00.000-04:00

Pittsburgh Presbytery asked to fund ongoing development of new churches

Saturday, June 14, 2008

By Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Over the past year Pittsburgh Presbyery has made news for the churches it lost to another denomination. But at its most recent meeting there was unanimity and celebration when the 214 commissioners voted to ordain seminarian Jeff Eddings, who has already co-founded the fastest-growing church in the presbytery.

Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community on the South Side was founded in 2003 with $237,000 from the presbytery's New Church Development Fund. Now that fund is nearly out of money, and its overseers plan to ask the presbytery to build it back up. They hope one source will be money left by churches that are leaving the Presbyterian Church (USA) for a more conservative denomination.

"We believe that God is not finished with what he wants to do here," said Vera White, director of new church development for the presbytery.

When the presbytery voted in 2000 to put $1.55 million of reserve funds toward new congregations, "we had gone 40 years without starting a new church," Ms. White said.

During those same four decades, it had closed about 60 churches and lost more than half its members. The presbytery, which covers Allegheny County, currently has about 150 churches with 42,000 members.

"We had lost the skills, and also the culture, of church planting," she said.

But at the turn of the millennium, the presbytery not only voted to spend generously on outreach but to allow the task force in charge to experiment to see what worked. "They showed that they were really serious about this," she said.

Since then, the presbytery has started seven congregations.

Hot Metal, which recently moved into the former Taco Loco restaurant and bar, has grown to 100 members since 2003, but has an average attendance of 200. It is co-sponsored by the Western Pennsylvania Conference of the United Methodist Church, which gave $300,000 to help purchase the building.

"Church planting has to be the future of the church. Most young people who have been disenfranchised from the church aren't willing to walk into an established church," said the Rev. Eddings. Hot Metal is known for its rock music and tattoed faithful.

"We have to find the funding and more creative ways for denominations to work together, as they have for Hot Metal. Without support from both, we would not have been able to purchase this building."

Having attendance higher than membership is a sign of congregational health. Hot Metal shares that with two other new congregations. Mosaic Community Church, an 8-year-old multi-ethnic church on the North Side, has 47 members but an average attendance of 120. The Open Door, founded in 2005 at The Union Project in Highland Park, has 65 members and an average attendance of 86.

Fountain Park Church in Cranberry was another successful start-up, receiving $330,000 -- the largest grant to date -- in 2001. It has 125 members today. But that congregation was co-sponsored by Beaver-Butler Presbytery and has elected to charter only with Beaver-Butler, Ms. White said.

The newest congregation, the Pittsburgh Vietnamese Presbyterian Fellowship, received $12,000 last year, and draws 30 worshipers at Third Presbyterian Church, Shadyside.

Another congregation for new immigrants folded after two years in 2003, when its pastor returned to his native Brazil. And a start-up in Wilkinsburg left the Presbyterian Church (USA) to become independent when its pastor, a Baptist who had originally intended to become Presbyterian, changed his mind, Ms. White said.

Commissioners to Pittsburgh Presbytery will be asked to vote on the funding for new churches in the fall.

The task force is looking to five sources for continued support. They would like to receive $20,000 per year from the presbytery's operating budget. They are also asking for half the assets or proceeds of churches that close -- although that typically isn't much, she said.

A third request is for half the settlement money received from congregations that receive permission to leave the presbytery to affiliate with the more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church. So far two have done so, making "mission gifts" of $250,000 and $575,000 to the presbytery as part of the agreement to leave.

"That only makes sense. Something leaves, something new comes to replace it," Ms. White said.

A fourth source of proposed funding would come through the Pittsburgh Presbyterian Foundation, allowing individuals who are interested in local outreach to contribute money to start new churches.

The plan also calls for at least four existing congregations to support each new one with both finances and volunteers. This not only helps the new congregation but "it benefits the existing church by creating an energy and an evangelistic spirit that can bring a lot of hope and excitement to that church," Ms. White said.

the good news of beer

2008-06-03T11:42:00.002-04:00

i think the new Heineken commercial is a great picture of what it could look like to joyfully share the good news of the kingdom with others. it is a kingdom vision of joy, peace, laughter, and people from different ethnic backgrounds and social classes coming together all for the sake of the "good" and of course beer. maybe the church can takes its cues from Heineken (although their beer is sub-par). lets share the good!!!

apostolic presbyterians????

2008-05-23T15:41:00.003-04:00

Thanks to Alan Hirsh who's blog pointed me to this quote which i think summarizes well some the the role i feel called to take on and the open door embodies in the PCUSA.

"The apostolic role within established churches and denominations requires the reinterpreting the denomination’s foundational values in the light of the demands of its mission today. The ultimate goal of these apostolic leaders is to call the denomination away from maintenance, back to mission. The apostolic denominational leader needs to be a visionary, who can outlast significant opposition from within the denominational structures and can build alliances with those who desire change. Furthermore, the strategy of the apostolic leader could involve, casting vision and winning approval for a shift from maintenance to mission. In addition the leader has to encourage signs of life within the existing structures and raise up a new generation of leaders and churches from the old. The apostolic denominational leader needs to ensure the new generation is not “frozen out” by those who resist change. Finally, such a leader must restructure the denominations institutions so that they serve mission purposes.” - Steve Addison

eucharistic people

2008-05-16T10:05:00.005-04:00

I got an email from my friend Carlos Delgado, who just moved back to California two weeks ago. He is a wise sage and a deep, reflective writer who even at a distance regularly encourages me in my journey as a follower of Jesus.

Our community, the Open Door, is regularly wrestling with what it means to be an authentic community living among the urban poor. How does pursuing the true religion the God accepts not become a paternalistic handout that perpetuates white middle class privilege? How do we, like Jesus move into the neighborhood and journey with the marginalized?

Carlos in reflecting on Henri Nouwen’s journal Gracias: A Latin American Journal, from the six-month mission he took down to Bolivia and Peru gave us some encouraging words that speak to this incarnational mission with our neighbors. In Carlos' words: "May it remind us all that gratitude and celebration and sharing meals fit together naturally, even though only in Christ do they make the most sense."

Henri Nouwen, (from Gracias: A Latin American Journal, pp. 146–147)

Gratitude is one of the most visible characteristics of the poor I have come to know. I am always surrounded by words of thanks: “thanks for your visit, your blessing, your sermon, your prayer, your gifts, your presence with us.” Even the smallest and most necessary goods are a reason for gratitude. This all-pervading gratitude is the basis for celebration. Not only are the poor grateful for life, but they also celebrate life constantly. A visit, a reunion, a simple meeting are always like little celebrations. Every time a new gift is recognized, there are songs or toasts, words of congratulation, or something to eat and drink. And every gift is shared. “Have a drink, take some fruit, eat our bread” is the response to every visit I make, and this is what I see people do for each other. All of life is a gift, a gift to be celebrated, a gift to be shared.

Thus the poor are a eucharistic people, people who know to say thanks to God, to life, to each other. They may not come to Mass, they may not participate in many church celebrations. But in their hearts they are deeply religious, because for them all of life is a long fiesta with God.

A few of us reading Mark Gornick's book, To Live in Peace in which he similarly states, “Building communities of grace in the inner city entails creating spiritual and social spaces of freedom and acceptance where relationships of honesty, support and encouragement are sustained in the grace of God.... A central task of the church in the inner city is to learn how to build communities of reconciliation that express the newness of the kingdom in social, economic, political and gender relationships.”

May the Lord continue to shower us with his grace to become such a people!!!!!

one car, dependence and slowing down

2008-05-15T12:07:00.001-04:00

About 2 months ago our 1993 Saturn wagon died, in fact it died on Easter Saturday and there was no resurrection on Easter Sunday (maybe upon the return of Jesus). So for the past two months Katrina and I have made a conscious choice to go to one car. I have seen God's hand and grace in this and have been learning lots of things in moving to one car with a 6 person family.

First of all it has caused me to slow down. In order for me to get to meetings I need to give myself more time to get there either, by foot, bike or bus. In those journey times I have time to enjoy the day, listen to God, see others in my neighborhood, listen to music or a podcast and just BE. One day while walking a whole five blocks to work I was able to stop and have three conversation with people from my neighborhood that if driving I would not have seen or connected with.

Secondly i have been forced to be dependent. Today i had an appointment that felt a bit out of my biking range and it was raining so i called Chris Brown to ask to borrow his car. I am also borrowing friends car all next week while they are in Germany. It has never been easy for me to ask for help and assistance but i am seeing the glory of God in this. Recently i preached on the Holy Spirit's role in the the ministry and life of Christ. I made the statement that Jesus was fully dependent on the Holy Spirit to accomplish his work and mission. I then asked, "what if what it means to be fully human and Christ-like is to be one who is fully dependent on the Holy Spirit. I thank God for the opportunity to live into that reality.

Thirdly, i am catching a minuscule glimpse of what many of my lower income neighbors deal with every day. Every day, I see single moms, with four kids in two waiting in the rain at a bus top to go get groceries. Only having one car doe not compare but it has given me a glimpse of identification with the poor.

Finally we are saving money on gas and car insurance; I am getting regular exercise and we are contributing less to the pollution of the creation and therefore bringing liberation and freedom to the bondage and decay of the creation.

Here is a prayer about walking the sidewalk i wrote last year that captures a bit of all this.

Thank you for the sidewalk
That leads me today
Slow my hustle to a shuffle
That you might,
Lift my head;
Open my eyes;
Soften my heart;
Guide my steps;
Open my mouth;
Extend my hand;
To meet and greet you

Mango IPA

2008-05-05T11:43:00.002-04:00

I am brewing my 3rd beer today. I have done an IPA dry-hopped with Simocoe hops and a Ginger Saison. TO day i am doing a mock-up of the Dogfishead 60 Minute IPA with a mango addition.

Here is the recipe:
6oz. American Crystal Malt
7lbs. light Dry Malt Extract
.5 ozs. warrior hops
.5 ozs. simcoe hops
.5 Amarillo hops
gradually throughout the boil - continuous hopping

.5 Amarillo hops at the end of the boil
3 lbs of frozen mango
White Labs East Coast Ale yeast WLP008 -doing a starter with that.

Dry hop with 1 oz. Amarillo and .5 oz. Simcoe

Starting gravity was 1.064
Final Gravity Target is 1.017
Target IBU is 60

Smelled yummy as it went to the fermnetor!

43,200 minutes...

2008-04-23T21:00:00.004-04:00

...720 hours,
30 days
1 month...

that is how long it has been since i have posted on my blog.......................

a season and a time
for everything
for now
i have been....

awaiting an arrival
bending and breaking
corralling concerns
discerning direction
erasing my earnings
framing my fears
gazing at glory
hallowing my heart
ingesting infinity
joining the jester
kept by the keeper
learning to listen
marveling in moments
noticing the normal
ordering my oxygen
purposefully posturing
quieting the questions
resting from running
simmering in silence
trusting in time
undoing the urgent
vanquishing my voice
waiting for words
x-amining x-tras
yielding to yawns
zany with zzzzzzzzzz......

some thoughts on resurection

2008-03-23T14:13:00.002-04:00

Once again this Easter I wrestled with what to say on Easter.

What does the fact that Jesus rose from the dead mean?
Is it the quintessential proof that Jesus was indeed God? YES!
Is it that God shows his ultimate power in defeating death, evil and sin in the world? YES!

But what meaning, importance and reality does that historic and once in a life time occurrence of a dead man coming to life have to do with you and me in and our lives in the world today?

How do I experience and live in the resurrection?

Then John Creasy said to me in our Midrash conversation at the Quiet Storm on Tuesday: “you have to be around death to experience resurrection.”

That is what I preached on this morning. Here are some other thoughts on experiencing the resurrection:

The Resurrection narratives are not a picture of survival after death; they record how a totally new mode of being has arisen in the Universe... A new mode of being has arisen. That is the Story. What are we going to make of it? - CS Lewis

“I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:10-11)

The Early Disciples had little ritual but a mighty realization. They went out not remembering Christ, but experiencing him. He was not a mere fair and beautiful story to remember with gratitude – he was a living redemptive, actual presence then and there. They went out with the joyous and grateful cry. “Christ lives in me!” - E. Stanley Jones

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength 20 he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that can be invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. (Ephesians 1:18-21)

The crowning evidence that Jesus was alive was not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship. Not a rolled away stone, but a carried away church. - Clarence Jordan

...if the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you (Romans 8:11)

Is this [resurrection] mere figure of speech, wishful thinking, a piece of pious rhetoric? No, this truth is the most real fact about our life; it is our life. The Jesus who walked the roads of Judea and Galilee is the One who stands beside us. - Brennan Manning

Christ has Risen Indeed!!!

free money

2008-03-05T14:55:00.002-05:00

God bless my spoken word comrade Peter Nevland, down in Austin

happy valentines day

2008-02-14T11:47:00.002-05:00

"be the pose"

2008-02-10T14:28:00.000-05:00

“Stop trying to do the pose, be the pose.” These words were spoken to my wife by her yoga instructor and they have been ringing in my head and my heart all week. They are very eastern, yogic and Hebraic words. Oh how I strive and struggle to do they things I know I am supposed to do or I sense God calling me to do. Over the past few months God has continued to place before me the vision for our church to become more committed and involved in racial reconciliation, economic redistribution, justice, and mercy for the poor, and multiculturalism. I have been striving and struggling to figure out how to do that; how to embody this vision; how to become all that God longs for us to be; how strategize, plan and implement these visions. This has stressed me out; at times I have doubted my call and my ability to accomplish these things. I have been smothered by and defeated by the pervasive principalities and powers of racism, class-ism and economic injustice that enslave us. I am powerless to change these things. Then throughout the week I have heard the words echoing in my head again, “Stop trying to do the pose, be the pose.” Stop trying to do church, be the church. Stop trying to do racial reconciliation, be racial reconciliation. Stop trying to do justice, be justice. Stop trying to do multicultural ministry, be it. I am not sure what that fully means but it at least means this: I must come to a place of need and dependency and realize that I am powerless to change and just be God's dependent son. I need God to do this work, I can only BE. Be available. Be willing. Be open. Be present. Otherwise I am paralyzed by the seemingly unattainable vision of the future. I want to be able to embrace what Common sings, “The present is a gift and I just wanna BE.” In being I am learning to wait............... on the Lord.

Is. 30:1; 15-22
Woe to the obstinate children," declares the LORD, "to those who carry out plans that are not mine, forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit, heaping sin upon sin;

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says:
"In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength,
but you would have none of it.

You said, 'No, we will flee on horses.'
Therefore you will flee!
You said, 'We will ride off on swift horses.'
Therefore your pursuers will be swift!

A thousand will flee
at the threat of one;
at the threat of five
you will all flee away,
till you are left
like a flagstaff on a mountaintop,
like a banner on a hill."

Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show you compassion.
For the LORD is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!

People of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it."

open door story/vision as loyal radicals

2008-02-03T13:51:00.000-05:00

The story and vision of the open door as a community of loyal radicals is posted in a podcast interview with me and Karen Sloan (author of Flirting with Monasticism) on the inaugural podcast of the presbymergent, check it out. Thanks to Karen, Adam, Brian and all the other Prebymergent folks who continue to put forth a vision for the loyal radicals in the PCUSA!!!!

my ordination, my dad

2008-02-01T15:29:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday i was ordained as a minster of word and sacrament in the PCUSA and my dad, Rodger Woodworth gave me my charge and I share it with you:

Thousands of pastors are leaving the ministry each year and 80% of pastor’s wives wish their husbands were doing something else. Discouragement and despair come with the call. Even John the Baptist experienced this. Read Luke 7:18-23

From prison John sends a message to Jesus – are you the one or should we be looking for someone else. While this is surprising from the one who said of Jesus behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and I am not even worthy to carry his sandals – there will come a time (if not already) when from the prison of disappointment and despair you will cry out and ask Jesus are you the one or should I look elsewhere.

Understand John’s pain – pointed thousands to Jesus – given his life to that mission – willing to decrease so Jesus could increase so why the disappointment? He hears from his disciples – Jesus was giving sight to the blind, healing the sick, raising the dead and preaching to the poor (note – right next to giving life to the dead is giving the living a way to live). What bothered John was what Jesus was not doing. He was not fulfilling Johns’ expectations.

Disappointment comes when Jesus doesn’t fill our theological expectations – when he doesn’t act in a way we think God should act (or the way seminary taught us).

John had announced Jesus would come with a baptism of the Holy Spirit and fire – expectations form the O.T. prophets. Pour out the Holy Spirit on God’s servants and fire on God’s enemies. Jesus would baptize the righteous with the Holy Spirit and the wicked with fire – baptize the good guys and burn up the bad guys and it would happen all at once. The separation of the wheat and chaff and the chaff would be burned up. But instead Jesus was hanging out with the chaff – the wicked - the bad guys. This didn’t fit John’s turn or burn theology.

BJ, there will come a time when Jesus acts in a way that just doesn’t fit into your theological framework and it will cause you to doubt such promises that his word never returns void or that the already of God’s Kingdom never seems to change into the promised not yet of His kingdom and you will ask with John are you really the one Jesus. This is normal – it comes with the call because you are called to spend most of your time helping people see the not yet of God’s Kingdom – to paint a picture of a preferable future – to give assurance that what is hoped for is going to happen – to provide evidence of things that cannot yet be seen – preaching that the Kingdom of Heaven is near.

But John’s disappointment was not just theological it was also personal – disappointment also comes when Jesus doesn’t fill our personal expectations. John was lying in a cold prison cell because King Herod didn’t take kindly to being called an adulterer. And Herod is upstairs getting drunk and still having his affair and Jesus is having dinner with prostitutes and tax collectors. So John has got to be asking Jesus if you‘re King why am I sitting in prison.

The personal questions of faith are never more prevalent then in the pastorate. You and our family have already faced a big one – if you are Lord why did Matt (my brother-in-law) die? Why does someone’s spouse leave, why does a parishioner abuse drugs, why is there not enough money to support the ministry. Below the surface of most theological controversies lies a deep personal disappointment. We know God’s in charge but our personal experience differs. Jesus’ response on the surface wasn’t anything that John didn’t already know but Jesus ties together words and phrases from the prophet Isaiah to say “John I am fulfilling the role of the Messiah, I am just not doing it in the way or time you expected. God has stretched out the already and the not yet of His coming Kingdom.

The journey you will lead people on is like climbing a mountain. You stand at the base and see the peak you’re climbing to and it looks simple. But soon you realize that climbing is a series of ups and downs, peaks and valleys, while often losing sight of the peak. It is a journey of joys and sorrows, of hope and disappointment accompanied by the Holy Spirit and the terrible tares - weeds in your field, people and circumstances that will reject you and hurt you, sin against you and let you down. Tares that you are called to tolerate and not root out because in our attempts to remove the bad we may harm the good. And as Bob Lupton says, “you don’t need to be concerned about how it appears to others that there are tares in your field; the Lord of the harvest can handle his own public relations. You don’t need herbicides that make the fruit appear bigger and the troubles benign.” BJ never let anyone question the validity of your ministry based on the tares in your field. Nor should you begin to ask Jesus if he is really the one when it appears there are more tares then wheat.

Jesus’ response to such a question is simple – he says I know you may be disappointed but I am asking you to trust me. You see even if Jesus had struck Herod with fire, freed John from prison and pulled up the other tares in John’s life, he would never have been truly free apart from a deep trusting relationship with Jesus.

Jesus said, “Blessed are those who are not offended by me – or stumbling over me”. We may be tempted to stumble over people and circumstances, pain and disappointment but we’re really stumbling over Jesus, offended by Jesus because he’s moving too slowly or because he hasn’t removed the tares in our life and the real temptations to look for something else – a better method, a new program, another seminar or a field with less tares – or even worse, tempted to join the thousands of pastors each year who give upon their call. My son – stay the course – have a burning patience – that quality of faith which keeps you living in the already and not yet – that will give meaning and strength to your ministry. Disappointments and even failures will come but you have a vision of the splendid city – you have hope – and just like the prophet Jeremiah, “before you were born God set you apart and appointed you to be his spokesman to the world.”

Lastly in order to stay the course and to continue knowing Jesus is the promised One:

• Build your identity on Christ and not on His church
• Pursue faithfulness and not success
• Always walk in repentance and faith

And know that you have both a heavenly Father and an earthly father that loves you unconditionally.

hybrids and cross-polinations

2008-01-22T18:17:00.001-05:00

I have not read Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren yet but I feel as though our church, the Open Door and my theology is a generously orthodox. This happens in many strands of our life but most often visible in our worship gatherings. This past Sunday I preached a sermon that was rooted in Reformed covenant theology, we had prayer stations that involved interceding for justice in Kenya, lighting prayer candles, meditating on the significance of the civil rights movement as a "church", we sang an 2 old gospel hymns, had an altar call where 3 people renewed our baptismal vows and anointed with oil and served made to order coffee drinks. I think this is a generous orthodoxy. This "third way" community called the Open Door has an important role to play in the PCUSA presbytery . Call it emergent, postmodern, eclectic, contradictory or schizophrenic the realty is that I/we often find ourselves partnering with churches and people who are very different from one another. I think this is part of our calling to bring seemingly divergent folks together around the common mission of the Gospel and making every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. We are partners with two PCUSA churches in our neighborhood. One is a classic liberal community and the other classically conservative. I am both comfortable and uncomfortable in certain regards with both communities. I find myself in a unique place in a unique time where I tend to embrace this generous orthodoxy which includes all sorts of hybridizations of seemingly contradictory thoughts and practices. I told someone the other day that we practice contemplative activism, denominational/monasticism, reformed/ecumenicalism, conservative/liberalism, liberal/conservatism, ancient/future worship, evangelical/justice, and other such third way cross-pollinations. I see my role as a faithful subversive or a loyal radical within our presbytery/denomination and am still figuring out what that looks like, but am sooo... thankful to have friends who are charting out this new territory with me.

MLK the prophet

2008-01-18T17:37:00.001-05:00

The prophet Martin Luther King Jr. wrote this in April 1963 and it is still true today.

From A Letter from the Birmingham Jail,
In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great-grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being "disturbers of the peace" and "outside agitators"' But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were "a colony of heaven," called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God intoxicated to be "astronomically intimidated." By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch-defender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Does God Show Up?

2008-01-15T08:48:00.000-05:00

"God just seemed to show up." I have heard this phrase numerous times this past week and have used it myself in the past. It is most often used to describe the unexpected awareness we have of the presence of God in corporate worship. In the midst of prayer, singing, a message, a prayer station or what have you, you as a person or a community as a whole become acutely aware of the presence and immanence of God. As worship choreographers you then begin to wonder if there was anything you did to facilitate God showing up. This awareness can be joyful and ecstatic causing us to celebrate or overwhelming and dreadful bringing us to our knees. But does God show up? Can God be absent and then arrive? Isn't God always present even when we do not have any particular response to a corporate gathering of worship? Does God show up or is it rather that we for whatever reason are willing and able to hear and respond?

Let me ask it another way. Are the thin places that the Celts talk about, God breaking in to time and space or are they when and where WE become of the ever-present presence of God that is constantly among us and permeates every nook and cranny of the world he made?

Howard Thurman in talking about the role of spiritual exercises in the life of the follower of Jesus says, they "build an immunity against the confusion and distractions of environment... they do not guarantee that the Spirit will be encountered but they do prepare the way of response to his movement.” Communal and personal practices help prepare us to be expectant to see and hear God. I don't think God shows up. I think God is always present and longing to communicate to us through the Holy Spirit, the word, culture, nature, or another person. Whether in the corporate gathering of worship; or in the cubicle at work; or in the encounter of a panhandler on the street; or the brilliant orange sunset sky - God is present, active and speaking.

The question is are we looking, expecting and even searching for divine encounters in our normal everyday life.

“Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.” (Romans 12:1-2, the Message)

What is the church?

2008-01-02T21:51:00.000-05:00

An exert from Michael Frost’s book Exiles,
Tom Sine has said, “We will need to aggressively work for the ‘re-monking’ of the church to enable followers of Jesus Christ to intentionally set the focus and rhythm of their lives out of biblical calling instead of cultural coercion.” Similarly, Stuart Murray suggests that, as a church we need to reimagine ourselves as, “monastic missionary orders, communities of encouragement, support and training from which we emerge to live as Christians in the workplace and to which we return for reflection and renewal.” (p.150).

Jan_Feb Relevant Magazine interview with Rob Bell:
"Church is when you are sitting around in your living room with people who would give their lives for one another... Church is the people whom you are journeying with, and I think we are already seeing what that looks like. It has nothing to do with the building you meet in, it has nothing to do with the name, it has nothing to do with how great your website is - its about new humanity. It's about people connecting with each other at the deepest, deepest levels of our being."

Your thoughts?

Happy New Year from the Woodworths

2007-12-31T16:21:00.001-05:00

yogi missiologilist

2007-12-26T09:50:00.001-05:00

I love my wife for many reasons and most recently (the past year or so) because she teaches me what it means to do and be be a good missiologist. She is a yoga instructor and has been working hard and wrestling to integrate her her faith in Christ into her work and the world of yoga which is predominantly New Age in the West and Hindu and Buddhist and the East.

This past Sunday she taught our community on the surrender of Mary and offered 2 prayer stations that related yoga postures and surrender to God. She is wise sensitive and brilliant at what she does and I am thankful for her witness to me and others in her passion in following in the way of Jesus.

Check it out or better yet try it out.

Here are some suggested poses that may help us get our bodies into a posture of surrender.

Corpse pose: lying on your back, focus on your breathing for 2 minutes: breathing in and out, becoming aware of the breath expanding your ribs and belly. With each exhale, surrender to gravity, feeling the heaviness grow in your muscles as gravity pulls you to the earth. Ponder these questions as you rest, imagining yourself in the palms of God; surrounded by His glory, love and grace all at the same time. Ask Him to help you trust Him; to stay in His palms and rest in His love.

Child’s pose: Getting on all four’s (knees and hands), sink your hips back toward your heels as if curling into a ball. Bring your hands along side your legs. Rest your forehead to a block or to the mat. Take 2 minutes to focus on your breath. Allow deep breaths to fill your whole torso – front and back ribs. Breath into your lower back, imagining your breath surrounding your kidneys and sides of your body. Ponder what it means to be a child of God. Mary was just a child…given such big responsibility in carrying God’s Son. What is He saying to you? Is He telling you to participate in the coming of His Kingdom in some way? Does this seem overwhelming?...challenging?...scary? Are you willing to surrender into His palms, trusting Him to accomplish His will through you?

Iraqi Bloggers

2007-12-19T21:15:00.001-05:00

I stumbled upon an article on the BBC about Iraqi bloggers and read some of the stories on Mohammad's blog and watched his videos that brought me to tears. We need to hear these stories!!!!!! There are numerous other bloggers listed in the BBC article (Sunshine a 15-yr. old girl or Riverbed an Iraqi refugee living in Syria) pick one and listen to the voices of war.

Come again soon my Prince of Peace!!!!

Presbymergent grant and Flip the Script

2007-12-10T18:24:00.000-05:00

Thanks be to God the Open Door received a grant from the PCUSA to help us in the pursuit of loving and serving our neighbors and becoming a more multicultural community. To read a bit more, check out Presbymergent. There will be a group pulling together in early 2008 to begin implementing our plans.

Secondly, thanks to everyone who helped with Flip the Script last night. It was an amazing time of worship, artistic expression, eating and having our heads and hearts challenged through the documentary Invisible Children. Special kudos to Stephani, Jessica, Shelby, Lisa, Kelly, Nathan and Val.

prayer as a fulcrom

2007-12-08T13:09:00.000-05:00

I wrote this during my two days of solitude/retreat last week. It is not one of my best but here it is. It was inspired by a phrase in Eugene Peterson's book Where Your Treasure Is: Psalms That Summon You from Self to Community

Prayer

The stone hefty and huge
immovable, inflexible, impenetrable
for centuries and generations
just there
people and nations
children, parents, and grandparents
all
seeking and striving to
move it, destroy it,
for it is...
obtrusive and intrusive
an impediment
to progress and production
committees formed
strategies laid
technologies invented
days, weeks, months, and years
have past
sweat, blood and tears
flowed like rivers
still...
immovable, inflexible, impenetrable
obtrusive and intrusive

one day a young boy comes upon this stone
he stands still
watching...
listening...
discerning...
awareness deepening...
simultaneously...
a group of men are laboring
muscles bulging,
perspiration profusely pouring
and the b o a r d is b e n d i n g
the men stretching and groaning
lifting and laboring
arguing and fighting
striving to catapult this stone
out of their way

amidst all the sweating, striving and strife
the boy sees...
a simple small stone
insignificant in comparison
to the obtuse obtrusion
he... quietly and unassumingly
sticks the simple, small, stone under the board
fashioning a fulcrum
silently slips

amidst pushing shoving, shouting
one man falls on the board –
the stone is lifted
SILENCE!!!!
suddenly the stone is removed
burdens are bursting
celebrations commence
progress promoted
enemies erased
all by a simple, small, silent
point of leverage

Howard Thurman - praxis prayer

2007-12-01T10:20:00.000-05:00

I am reading Howard Thurman's Meditations of the Heart for an Advent devotional. I read Jesus of the Disinherited in seminary and was really impacted by the book. Thurman (1899-1981) was the co-founder of the first inter-racially pastored, intercultural church in the US. He was a mentor and significant influence on the life and ministry of MLK Jr; and in my opinion he is dreadfully under-read by most Christians; for he is an amazingly insightful theologian, mystic and social critique who was way ahead of his time. I am continually struck by how similar African American/Black theology is to the theology emerging from emergent folks. Why is it then that more African Americans are not engaged in the emerging church conversation? For some great insight into this questions check Anthony Smith's blog, and his chapter, Practicing Pentecost in Emergent Manifesto of Hope. Anyway my main reason for writing is to share with you a section of Howard Thurman on prayer that is typical of African American theology. It is a model of what I will call, praxis prayer which is holistic, active and rooted in a Hebraic understanding of knowing - that if you know, you act and if you do not act then maybe you do not really know; knowledge cannot be separated from action. Thurman, reflectively outlines the natural movement of ones prayer to God which he says ends in the...

"...sharing of one's desires and hopes for others, and one's sense of need which the whole human family shares - the need for peace, for health, for justice and for decency...one must share with God in the whole task of redeeming human life. It is never quite sufficient to place all the needs of mankind before God and leave them there. The efficacy of prayer is often measured by the degree to which the individual is willing to become involved in actually working in the world to meet these needs. A man may share his prayer concern fore peace in the world and yet in his own little world, be unwilling to change his private attitude of antagonism or prejudice toward his fellows."

May we be willing to participate in the activity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in the world - which may be the answer to our own prayers and the prayers of others!!!!

Young Mary

2007-11-30T10:25:00.002-05:00

During Advent we are focusing on Mary's Magnificent. There are 4 women from our community who are reflecting on this passage each week. I am thankful for capable and equipped women to preach, a mini-sabbath from preaching and the personal opportunity to reflect on the faithfulness of Mary who in birthing our Lord, "knew not all she contained." Renee who is kicking off this Advent series this week shared this poem with me from A Cry Like a Bell, by Madeleine L'Engle

"Young Mary"
I know not all of that which I contain.
I'm small; I'm young; I fear the pain.
All is surprise: I am to be a mother.
That Holy Thing within me and no other
is Heaven's King whose lovely Love will reign.
My pain, his gaining my eternal gain
my fragile body holds Creation's Light;
its smallness shelters God's unbounded might.
The angel came and gave, did not explain.
I know not all of that which I contain.

May we too be God-bearers this season even if we like Mary know not all we contain.

The gods aren’t angry

2007-11-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

Saturday night I heard Rob Bell speak in Pittsburgh. It was ok, I like Rob a lot, I think he is a dynamic communicator and handles his success with great humility. His presentation has left many thoughts and questions have been ruminating in my mind since then. Rob painted a picture of the God of Israel being a God who reverses and operates outside of the system of sacrificial appeasement and control like the Sumerian and most other ancient religious systems. Yahweh demonstrates his reversal of this by providing a sacrificial substitute for Abraham’s son Isaac and he provides a peace meal within the elaborate sacrificial system of Leviticus. This all culminates in Jesus’ rebuking the sacrificial system and claiming himself to be the temple and ultimate sacrifice so that all humanity will not have to live any longer under the stress, anxiety and fear of not knowing whether or not they have appeased the gods and God. Jesus was killed by the sacrificial system itself. He did not resist or fight back he willingly submitted to the corrupt sacrificial system of the Jews and the Romans and died. The once and for all sacrificial system ending sacrifice of Jesus gives humanity and all creation freedom from this perpetual ambiguity and fear of not knowing if we are at peace with the God. This is a grossly over-simplified summary of Rob’s brilliant presentation, but...

...there are questions that are maybe intentionally unanswered are about the nature of God’s involvement in the death of Jesus, that seems to me to be a part of the same kind of sacrificial appeasement system. At one point Rob asked a question that went something like this: what kind of god do you serve that needs to be appeased by the shedding of blood? Didn’t Jesus need to die in order to appease God’s anger? Aren’t those the reformed doctrines of propitiation and atonement? Did Jesus have to die on the cross in order for the reversal of the system of sacrificial appeasement and control to be overturned once and for all? And in reversing that system isn’t God implicitly involved in participating in that system and therefore complicit in the sacrifice of his own son? Let me state it explicitly. Did God need the blood of his own son to be shed (like the Jewish and other sacrificial systems)? If so how does that differentiate God from the whole system of sacrificial appeasement and control?

I certainly believe that in and through the death of Jesus and even more so his resurrection we are free from sin and its power but I must confess that the I have been thinking about the necessity of what has been called penal substitution, where the punishment for sin must involve the shedding of blood. As Rob explained, in the Hebrew Scriptures, this was the ritual sacrifice of animals; in the NT it involves the sacrifice of Jesus. God in this atonement theory seems unwilling or incapable of forgiving sin in any other way then through the shedding of blood.

I realize that these are large, very large and potentially threatening questions to what some would call the reformed and evengelical faith but I just thought I would pose them since they seemed unanswered by Rob and were ringing in my head throughout this week. I am interested in your thoughts.

Steps 38-44

2007-11-27T08:28:00.000-05:00

When one enters the ordination process in the PCUSA (at least in Pittsburgh Presbytery) you are given the 47 step process to ordination. By next Thursday (unless I am deemed a heretic of sorts) I will have walked through steps 38-44. Tomorrow night (step 38) I read my statement of faith to the Committee on Preparation for Ministry and they ask me some questions about it and if they think I am Reformed enough then I have to answer the Constitutional Questions for Ordination:

Do you trust in Jesus Christ your Savior, acknowledge him Lord of all and Head of the Church, and through him believe in one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?
Do you accept the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be, by the Holy Spirit, the unique and authoritative witness to Jesus Christ in the Church universal, and God’s Word to you?
Do you sincerely receive and adopt the essential tenets of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions of our church as authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do, and will you be instructed and led by those confessions as you lead the people of God?
Will you fulfill you office in obedience to Jesus Christ, under the authority of Scripture, and be continually guided by our confessions?
Will you be governed by our church's polity, and will you abide by its discipline?
Will you be a friend among your colleagues in ministry, working with them, subject to the ordering of God’s Word and Spirit?
Will you in your own life seek to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, love your neighbors, and work for the reconciliation of the world?
Do you promise to further the peace, unity, and purity of the church?
Will you seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence, imagination, and love?

I struggle deeply with Quetion number 3. I have many problems with many of the Reformed Confessions but I can asnwer in the affirmative becaseu of one line in the Confession of 1967 which states, “No one type of confession is exclusively valid, no one statement is irreformable. Obedience to Jesus Christ alone identifies the one universal church and supplies the continuity of its tradition. This obedience is the ground of the church’s duty and freedom to reform itself in the life and doctrine as new occasions in God’s providence may demand.” (9.03) To me this communicates that all creeds need be to continually evaluated and communities of people must ultimately obey their conscience as it is submitted to Christ. This is part of why I am a part of the Reformed tradition and in particular Presbymergent because on paper we believe that the church ought to be constantly reforming according to the Word of God and the Spirit.

Anyway... I will then repeat the reading of my statement of faith before the entire Presbytery next Thursday afternoon and then they think I am Reformed enough then I have to answer the Constitutional Questions for Ordination in an official manner and then finally my ordination to minister of Word and sacrament is scheduled to happen Sunday, January 27th. Sighhhh...

Hoppy THANKS giving!

2007-11-19T17:48:00.000-05:00

I just splurged and got a case of the Weyerbacher Double Simcoe IPA for the week of Thanksgiving. I have not stopped giving thanks because it is one of the most delicious beers I have every had.

From the website: "Double Simcoe IPA, 9.0% abv, is our incredible reward for Hopheads seeking over the top flavor in a Double IPA, without the harshness. Brewed exclusively with Simcoe hops, developed and trademarked by Select Botanicals Group, LLC, in the year 2000. This hybrid hops was created to allow maximum aromatic oils, along with low harshness levels, so that brewers can really load up a lot of 'em in a beer and not have any harshness. The piney, citrusy notes are all here, and in a very clean (non-harsh) way, as well as having an aroma with impact."

It is the certain proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy - Ben Franklin.

Hoppy THANKS giving!

the TRC and ubuntu

2007-11-07T09:25:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I had the privilege of hearing a lecture by Dr. Piet Meiring on Reconciliation: South Africa and the World. Dr. Meiring was asked by Nelson Mandela to serve on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), and has had a long-term commitment to racial reconciliation and to care for the poor. He has been an advisor helping in similar processes in Indonesia, Israel, Palestine, Ireland, Fiji, Rwanda, India and Sri Lanka.

He told many stories of the TRC, stories of grief, pain loss, shame and reconciliation. It seems that the US has historically lost the opportunity to engage in its own TRC since most of the historical players have since died. 40 acres and mule never happened. This in my opinion has left us with many unresolved issues. There has been no truth telling and therefore no reconciliation has happened or is even possible. I do not know the history of my people and the history I do know is not the whole truth, it is a tainted history told in order to cover up the truth and the atrocities committed and the wounds that were made. One phrase Dr. Meiring presented yesterday that are still ringing out of the South African context into ours are as follows. You cannot close the book on Apartheid unless we wrestle with the truth of the book. In our context we have supposedly closed the book on slavery and racism and work hard to keep it closed and never open it again. We think that this is moving on: forgiving and forgetting, but not addressing the truth and the necessary healing memories for the oppressed and the oppressors. After hearing of the healing process of telling the true stories of how some had been sinned against and other have sinned it seems to me that we have inherited a history of untold stories, and not just untold stories but an intentional attempt to not tell the stories, to ignore the stories and live not in the light but in the darkness. What kind of effect does this have on the psyche of our collective souls, the hearts and minds of the oppressors and the oppressed in our country? We live in the dark and deny the truth and thus cannot be set free.

This was further exemplified as last night I watched the movie, In My Country, which is the story of an American reporter (Samuel Jackson) and an Afrikaner reporter (Juliete Binoche) covering the TRC in South Africa. This is a must see film!!! The film portrays the deep anger, bitterness and unresolved issues that Americans have in regards to race. How we are unwilling to let go of our anger and rage and how we have no concept of ubuntu. Ubuntu is a Bantu word and the concept which defines the individual in terms of their relationships with others and community; it is a quality and character that a person has. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, “ A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed. Ubuntu is solidarity; it is commonality; it is unity; it understands the inherent and integral relationship that you have with the family of God. It is saying that there is no true understanding of myself apart from the person next to me – we are connected, we are fellow citizens, we are family. In th film and in the reality of the US we have not concept of how the history of slavery and racism has wounded hurt and oppressed all of us, not just African Americans but anything that hurts another human being in turn hurts us. Ubuntu is allowing S. African blacks to forgive white Afrikaners and allows white Afrikaners to offer amends and restorative justice for their wrongs because they know that they are all connected to one another and bitterness, unforgiveness will eventually effect them.

Jesus said, “those who live by the truth come into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” To walk in the light is to live in the open, honestly, authentically, plainly and transparently. Light and walking in it is about truthfulness with your self, with others and with God. Light is about being exposed and freed from hiding. Darkness is about sneaking around, hiding, shame, fear, and covering up who we really are. May we learn from our South African brothers and sisters to come out of the darkness and into the light of truth.

thin place in East Liberty

2007-11-04T11:31:00.000-05:00

Last night we went out to dinner with some good friends and on our way to the Abay, an Ethiopian restaurant, we stumbled upon what the Celts call a thin place where you are acutely aware of paradise or heaven having come to earth. The holiness of the moment causes you to stop, pause and praise God for his nearness. The experience is often revealed in the glory of God in creation (Psalm 19:1-6. Mindie Burgoyne says, "In simple terms a ‘thin place’ is a place where the veil between this world and the Other world is thin, the Other world is more near." Here is an attempt to capture my encounter with God in that thin place last night right Baum Blvd. in East Liberty.

the impotence of proffreading

2007-10-31T15:09:00.000-04:00

This is hilarious, especially science I live and dye by spiel check:

soularize

2007-10-30T10:22:00.000-04:00

Well John and I have returned from the Bahamas and we had an amazing time enjoying the beauty of God's creation in the Bahamas as well as stimulating, encouraging and challenging conversation with other followers of Jesus. Let me just hit some of the highlights for you and then I may reflect on some other things this week at a deeper level. I am trying out my .mac account and have posted some of my pictures here for you to see. they are mostly landscape shots.

snorkeling with NT Wright on the uninhabited Rose Island
engaging in conversation about life, faith and culture with some Harley Davidson store owners ton Rose Island over a white wine/lemonade mixed drink
meeting Brennan Manning and listening to him tell his story of recovery and learning to become the beloved
learning the importance of loving people instead of trying to convince people
reading my poem C.I.T.Y for the conference
considering and being overwhelmed by the reality of heaven not as a time and space location but as a realm of life where God rules and reigns and in addition to that the church is the non-spatial location of heaven on earth - the reclamation of paradise
meeting, talking with, dreaming and sharing struggles with Lee Rabe, the lead pastor of Threads in Kalamazoo, MI
watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series
bragging to others from around the world the amazing and great things God is doing in and through the church in the city of Pittsburgh, especially our community, the open door. it was great to feel proud, honored and overall stoked about who we are becoming.
learning about and being inspired the host church New Providence Community Church, who started a community garden where the kids spend 1/3 of there Sunday School year in this garden learning in and from God's creation.
considering my role as a poet who Richard Rohr said, "have the ability for you to fill in the gaps and we like the poets need to teach and help people to SEE."
hanging out with John Creasy, dreaming with him about the open door, our unique context and gifts, writing a book, organizing a conference in Pittsburgh and praying together.
engaging in a serendipitous conversation with AJ, a local Bahamian graffiti artist who had a show in the church building, he gave me one of his pieces about consumerism, see some of his work on my .mac site.

Also check out Jordon Cooper's blog posts from the past 5 days to see more details. Carnegie melon just voted Jordan one of the 100 most influential bloggers.

soularize

2007-10-23T15:01:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow morning I will rise early, butt early, and head to the airport with my co-worker THE REV. John Creasy and hop on Delta flight 1219 to Atlanta and then skip down to the Bahamas. John and I will be hanging out there for 4- 5 days at a gathering called soularize. Yes a conference in the Bahamas!!! While we are there we will participate in lots of conversations and hear from the likes of NT Wright, Brennan Manning, Richard Rohr and Rita Brock. It will be restful and relaxing as well as stimulating. The entire first day of the conference is on an uninhabited island. A day where we can begin to decompress and unplug from the hectic pace of life. No cell phones. No internet access. Just taking on the God-created beauty of a private deserted island in the middle of the Bahamas. Imagine spending your first conference day not worrying about which seminar to go to, but simply connecting with friends new and old as you spend the day floating in the water, exploring parts of the island, or sitting together under a palm tree. While on the island, we will gather together in the inexpressible beauty of an open-air meeting hut to begin our few days together.

I will try and post some of our adventures!

the voices of the others

2007-10-14T09:40:00.000-04:00

Over the past three weeks God has been sending his hound of heaven to speak, pursue and convict me of the importance of diversity, plurality, unity, racial reconciliation and multiculturalism in the church. It started as I began preaching through the book of Ephesians and revisited the reality of the Gospel being communal, social and reconciliatory as it torn down the dividing wall of hostility between Jew and Greek and that Jesus is our peace and creating one new humanity; I then read Anthony Smith's article Practicing Pentecost in Emergent Manifesto of Hope; that some week I want to a seminar on the multicultural church by Rev. Jin Kim who pastors the Church of all Nations; and just his weekend Dr. John Franke talked about how if the PCUSA is going to allow for emergence it will need to continue to reform by listening and learning from the voices of the "other", the minority and realize that there is no culturally free theology and we are in need of hearing from and learning from those who tend to have minority voices; finally at the same Presbymergent conference by my good friend Derrick Weston, I was challenged to reconsider the necessity of reconciliation, relocation and redistribution of the CCDA's vision birthed by John Perkins.

OK I get it Lord! I feel as though God is reminding me a vision that he planted in my heart many years ago. And yet at the same time it is new and fresh. God is renewing in me a passion for justice, peace, a visible multicultural church and the passion to pursue it. I have shed many tears these past weeks. Tears for forsaking the call of the Gospel. Tears for the broken relationships, alienation and injustice among people of different cultures in the church. Tears for the forthcoming struggle of what it will mean to shift, change, let go and surrender to the Holy spirit who is calling the Open Door to more explicitly and actively engage the whole gospel of human reconciliation, justice, peace and the celebrating the marginal voices of the 'others" in our midst. May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ empower me to lead and surround me with others who share the vision of every tribe tongue and nation gathered before the throne of the Lamb. May I have the courage to use my white privilege to be a prophetic voice, casting a picture of the shalom of God in our church and city.

I am going to do my best to begin to reflect on some of these thoughts over the next week or two so stay tuned.

listening to...

2007-10-08T15:41:00.000-04:00

presbymergent preaching

2007-10-08T15:19:00.000-04:00

This weekend I will be participating in a Presbymergent conversation at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary and leading a seminar on Presbymergent preaching. I am looking forward to hanging out with and talking with some old local Emergent Pittsburgh folk and making some new friends from the national conversation among Presbymergent folk. check out Adam Walker Cleveland's and Karen Sloan's blogs.

For my seminar I am resurrecting a homelitic paper i wrote last year where I tried to synthesize some Reformed perspectives on the Word of God and more postmodern epistemological practices of communal, innovative and dialogical forms of preaching. Here is the description.

Is the preaching of the Word of God, as the Second Helvetic Confession states simply and by default the Word of God or is it more dynamic than that? Drawing upon the work of Reformed and emerging theologians and practioners we will engage in a conversation about how we can experience and practice the preaching of the Word that is an artistic, dynamic and Spirit guided contextual engagement of gospel and culture; rooted in the story of scripture with varying forms seeking to prophetically imagine an alternative story that will transform local communities of faith.

I hope you can join us!

Missional Adaptive Leadership

2007-09-19T12:47:00.000-04:00

I stayed up late last night re-reading a chapter out of Alan Hirsch's book the Forgotten Ways and today had 2 appointments canceled and ended up listening to a podcast by Alan Roxburgh. I was aware of God's Spirit teaching me about my role as a leader, in and through these two people.

Alan Hirsch was saying that leadership, particulalrly apostolic leadership, is taking on the role of midwife. Leaders help birth the dreams and visions of the spirit of God that is already present in the people of God. We as leaders do not create it rather we nurture the environment for it to be birthed and call it forth. Jesus was this way in his use of questions, stories, parables which always helped others dicover the turth for themselves as they pondered and searched the meaning of his midwifery teaching. Secondly Alan used the image of a farmer. "A good farmer creates conditions for the growth of healthy crops by tiling the soil, replenishing it with nutrients, removing weeds, scattering seeds and watering the field" (pg. 166).

Alan Roxburgh said, "If the Spirit of God is among the people of God... the role of leadership is not to come up with answers, proposals and programs... nor to command and control... rather leadership is about creating the table, cultivating the environments and calling into being the spaces where the people of God can begin to dream, imagine and expereiment together... which is a way of life."

I am learning that these thoughts are true especially if emerging missional church communities are to be sustainable. The Spirit of God is indeed among the people of God and sometimes leaders need to get out of the way to allow Him to birth amazing and miraculous dreams. After our worship gathering this week I had 2 people come up to me and say they had thoughts and visions of something God may be calling them to do in and thorugh our community. One was related to adopting children and the other was about dance. Lord may the soil be right for those seeds to grow!! Secondly we are trying to create space in worship for the community to design prayer opportunties and art, read poery, tell stories and ministries to be birthed. I think this is happening. The problem is I cannot control it or manage it or systematize it. Thanks be to God for that!! Why is there always a desire to control, manage and possess what is out of control, unamanagble and not mine to posess? I hope and pray that as a leader I will continue to create spaces and environments for new life and growth to be birthed and get out the way of the work the Spirit of God is doing among His people.

Abba

2007-07-03T12:41:00.000-04:00

Meditation for Day 3 from the Northumbria Community morning Prayer

The Cry to God as 'Father'
in the New Testament
is not a calm acknowledgement
of a universal truth about
God's abstract fatherhood.
It is the Child's cry
out of a nightmare.

It is the cry of outrage,
fear, shrinking away,
when faced with the horror
of the 'world'
- yet not simply or exclusively
protest, but trust as well.

'Abba Father'
all things are possible
to Thee ...
Rowan Williams

cannondale 500

2007-06-25T22:35:00.000-04:00

For my graduation gift the Open Door got me money for a new bike which I picked up last week. Thanks be to God for a community who beleives in the holistic health of people. Although my butt is killing me!

Coming out of Hiding

2007-06-14T10:48:00.000-04:00

I am re-reading Abba's Child by Brennan Manning with some guys from the Open Door. This book changed my life 8 years ago and after the first chapter it is once agian rearranging mental and heart furniture in my life. Thanks be to God for a transparent, wise and borken man like Maning. Thanks be to God for the guys I am gathering with to read and their transparency this past week in coming out of hiding. Here is some quotes that kicked my ass this week.

“God is relentlessly tender and compassionate towards us just as we are – not in spite of our sins and faults (that would not be acceptance), but with them. Though God does not condone or sanction evil. He does not withhold his love because there is evil in us. God calls us to come out of hiding and come openly to him. God weeps over us when shame and self-hatred immobilize us. Thomas Merton said, 'the reason we never enter into the deepest reality of our relationship with God is that we so seldom acknowledge our utter nothingness before him.' God not only forgives and forgets our shameful deeds but even turns their darkness into light. All things work together for those who love God, 'even,' Augustine of Hippo added 'our sins.' Christians who remain in hiding continue to live a lie. We deny the reality of our sin... If we conceal our wounds out of fear and shame, our inner darkness can nither be illuminated nor become light for others.” Abba’s Child pg 19, 20, 22, 29, 29

May God grant us courage and grace to receive his love and come out of hiding!

daily faithfulness

2007-06-04T10:16:00.000-04:00

I am a bachelor this week as my family is in Martha’s Vineyard with some friends. On my shabat today I read two things that really tied together.

I am reading Receiving the Day, Christian Practices of Receiving the Gift of Time, by Dorothy C. Bass. In the chapter I read today she was talking about receiving each day, just today as a gift from the Lord. Not being controlled by the failures of yesterday or the worries of tomorrow – ala Jesus in Matthew 6. And as a way of putting that on and practicing that developing rhythms and practices in your life that remind you of this day being a gift. She discussed Martin Luther who crossed himself as he woke each day to remind him of his baptism and that the sins of yesterday are forgiven in Christ and the worries of the future are not his concern but Gods. She then discussed Bohoeffer’s community formed around daily worship, prayer and work during the rise of Nazi Germany.

What struck me was Bonnoeffer’s question. “”Who can really be faithful in great things, if they have not learned ot be faithful in the things of daily life?” Then Bass comments, “Later, the great things required of him in the resistance movement would result in his martyrdom.” I want to be great. I want to se and live and lead the renewal of the church in our time. I so desire that. So much so that, that is what I pursue and not daily faithfulness so that when I am faced with greater more weighty decisions I am prepared, rooted, grounded, centered and oriented in Christ who is the Way.

Earlier that morning I was going through the daily prayer of the Irish Jesuits at www.sacredspace.ie and it had a reading from the Book of Tobit 2:3-8 which I have never read. It is an apocryphal book. Here are the comments about the book of Tobit:

“The story of Tobit is that of a just man living under an unjust civil law, and facing death for following his conscience: he risks his life by burying a fellow Jew. Am I ever placed in such a dilemma? Is my conscience up to the challenge if it comes?”

Hmmmm… May I (and we) be faithful today so that my heart, conscience, will, mind and spirit will be ready for the greater things!

story

2007-05-23T15:11:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking about story latley and how story captures nuances, details and the ethos of life like nothing else. In particualr I have been thining about how story can help us measure. I dove into anew book by Joe Meyer called Organic Community and in the 4th chapter of the book he talks about moving from bottom line measurements of statistics and numbers to that of story. He is not advocating the elimination of statistical analisys but in order to gain a fuller picture of the activit of a community or organization story adds depth, and dimension to asessing the life of a community. He says stories are the measure of the journey and community and they naturally emerge from life. "Stores share and shape, inform and instruct, motivate and memorialize." I want to capture and tell more stories of the work of God among us!

On Sunday night we had five people tell their stories of how they discipline themseleves to remain in the vine (the theme of worship that night). It was great because people narrated differnt practices that have been purposeful and meaningful to staying connected with Jesus. It was descriptive of their journies with Christ but as people listen I am sure they were thinking about their own story. the power of story

Last night I was then having a beer with my firend Carl who is moving soon to Atlanta and as we were discussing story and he asked, " where and how can we record and tell the stories of the journey Open Door or our lives?" I then began to think about that. We have some journals that are always out at our worship gathering that have some sense of the journey that people go through and we tell stories often in worship. But that is not enough. We need spaces and places for people to tell their stories. For it is in the telling of story that the tradition of a people can be kept alive (Richard Jenson).

Recently we have been continuing to wrestle with how to stay committed to intergenrational worship and honor family in what we do together. My same friend Carl sent me a story about his expreince with his kids in worship. Here is what he said:

"One of the thing that has so endeared us to the Open Door is the intergenerational aspect. This has a profound effect on both parents and children. Evy is excited to go to church. And to be completely honest, there are some Sundays when its Evy who inspires us to put our work away and come to church. I think this is wonderful. Church has truly become a familial experience rather than something the kids feel “we drag them to”."

Great story ehy?

It is finished

2007-05-23T15:05:00.000-04:00

I am done with seminary. I have handed in all my papers (no finals). I went to my last class. I had my graduation party with 200 plus people and I officially walk on Thursday night. It is still surreal but I feel the margin in my life that is enabling me to relax, think, pray and reflect on my life, work and family. That is glorious. I actually took a Sabbath Monday, which was the first time in at least 2 years. And now I have time to blog once again. Sorry for my absence on the blogsphere although I am sure you found other blogs to read. But it is my hope to begin writing and reflecting on my blog once again. Peace out!

Kenilworth Castle

2007-03-02T04:27:00.000-05:00

I always hope to post more than I do, but oh well. Here are some pics from Kenilworth Castle. You can learn a ton more about it if you click here.

Brimingham day 1

2007-02-24T18:04:00.000-05:00

After Arriving in Birmingham yesterday we hung out with a group of folks from B1 (Nick and Lauren's church community) and had some great conversation about church, mission, relevant worship, the importance of relationality in the emerging church structure, belonging as a sense of being valued, networking, authenticity in leadership among many other thoughtful and insightful stuff.

That Aston Villa/Arsenal game was canceled so we hit up Birmingham and doing some pub crawling, seeing the canals, and the city center of Birmingham. It was a great afternoon and evening.

Here are a few pics from the day. I thought the first pic was amazing since there is this ancient Anglican church amidst modern architecture, shopping mall and bustling people. It is really an amazing physical image of the dislocation of the church in the Western world.

England at last

2007-02-21T08:31:00.000-05:00

Well Katrina and I fly across the pond tomorrow for my first trip to the UK. We will be doing some study and research, visiting with friends and getting some R & R. Oh and a life long dream of mine I will get to see an English premiere league football game!!! I will be doing some study of emerging churches in the UK and discussing with them the following questions:

Why was/is the “emerging church/fresh expressions” movement missiologically essential in England? What was missiologically deficient or lacking in the Christendom model of church in the UK? How is the emerging church addressing those deficiencies?
It seems that the “emerging church/fresh expressions” movement is centered on worship renewal; do you see that to be true? If that is accurate what is the relationship between the mission of the church and worship of the church? How do see worship fueling the mission of the church and vice versa?

So you can journey a bit with us here are some of the people and communities we will be visiting over the next 12 days.

We fly into London and then take bus up to Birmingham and stay with our dear friends Nick and Lauren Burdette.
We will visit with their community B1 in a variety of settings
See Arsenal play Aston Villa
We will visit another church outside of Birmingham called Sanctuary
We will hook up with an organization called Faith to Faith which is a national Christian organization which supports Christians and Christian mission in the context of our multi faith society
Next is an amazing missional thinker Martin Robinson who works for Together in Mission, which works to equip churches to plant other churches and helps churches reorient around mission.
After some sight seeing with Nick and Lauren we head to London to visit with Gareth Powell from Moot
We will worship at All Souls Church and Moot on Sunday the 4th
And finally visit with Steve Collins from Small Ritual and Jonny Baker from Grace

It should be a blast!

Newbigin!!!

2007-02-04T15:06:00.000-05:00

Leslie Newbigin in 1982 prophetically spoke of what is still true in the church today -a kind of assumed split between evangelism and social action. He states that “the dichotomy that opens up in our perceptions at this point is part of the deep going dualism that we inherit from the pagan (Greek) roots of our culture and which the biblical witness has never been able to eradicate.”

"...The church that invites men and women to take refuge in the name of Jesus without this challenge to the dominion of evil, [structural justice] then it becomes a countersign, and the more successful it is in increasing its membership, the more it becomes a sign against the sovereignty of God. An ‘evangelism’ that seeks to evade this challenge and this conflict, which‑for example‑welcomes a brutal tyranny because it allows free entry for missionaries rather than a more humane regime that puts difficulties in their way, becomes a sign against the gospel of the kingdom. We have, surely, the authority of the Lord himself for saying that church growth that does not bear fruit is only providing fuel for hell (Jn. 15:1‑6)." OUCH!

As a pastor I find it terribly difficult to mend this fundamental rift of the gospel. I think we do hold a fundamental dualism that is Gnostic and Greek in it's roots not biblical. I am sure we can think of lots of churches where this is true. BUT... The goal of this post is not to pull out the spec in another's eye but to take notice of the log in our own. Where is my church community fundamentally truncating and reducing the gospel in this manners? Lord help me to see!

I say when you're good

2007-02-04T14:52:00.000-05:00

the structure of church

2007-01-19T15:33:00.000-05:00

Let me just say that my missiology class has been kicking my butt. Here are some notes from Thursday.

How does placing mission in the very being of God shape the way we do mission?

The problem was and is “that the very forms of congregational life were a major hindrance to the Church's evangelism.” “There are evidently structures which make it difficult or even impossible for the Word to reach the congregation, for the congregation to reach others and for others to reach the congregation. The congregation preaches not only with its proclamation but also with its structures and these can have and effect which is practically hostile to mission.” Dr. Werner Krusche

“The Church‑centred missiology of the 1950s [and today] had[s] inevitably raised the question of the forms of the Church's life. To be convinced on biblical and theological grounds that the Church not only has a missionary task but is itself the form of God's mission (‘As the Father sent me so send I you’) was to be driven to acknowledge that congregations as we know them are not structured for mission. They reflect the assumptions of the Christendom era that the whole of society is already baptized and therefore within the Church. They invite people to come out of the world into the Church: they do not themselves go into the world as those who are sent by God.”

Ecclesiocentrism, in other words, presupposed that the form of the churches were correct. Rediscovering the missionary nature of the church demanded a corresponding stimulation of missionary structures. “What changes in the external structure and self-understanding of the local congregation are needed for it to be able to witness credibly to the message of the kingdom of God in a secular world of rapid social change?” These questions were being asked in the 1950's and we are largely still int he same place 50 years later and the question is still out there.

What say you?

blessed are the peacemakers

2007-01-11T15:49:00.000-05:00

President George W. Bush announced that he's sending more than 20,000 additional troops to Iraq, and said the U.S. erred by not deploying more forces when sectarian violence began spiraling out of control last year.

"This is a dangerously wrong-headed strategy that will drive America deeper into an unwinnable swamp at a great cost. We cannot escape the reality that there will be no military solution in Iraq." - Republican Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, reacting to President Bush's speech recommending an additional 20,000 troops be sent to Iraq. (Source: Bloomberg)

God will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.

Every warrior's boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Come Prince of Peace!!

new year prayer

2007-01-07T09:53:00.000-05:00

i was sent this great prayer by my friend marlena. we are praying it as a communal benediction over the next few weeks in our worship gathering. try it on for size.

Father God,
enable us,
by your grace and empowerment,
to become . . .
expanders of life,
scatterers of laughter,
singers of songs,
makers of peace,
spreaders of good news,
healers of wounds,
tellers of truth,
practitioners of mercy,
sharers of joy,
weavers of community,
walkers in humility,
fulfillers of your dreams for us
spun in Jesus, our brother and Lord. Amen.

(from My Heart in My Mouth: Prayers for our Lives by Ted Loder)

Beer is Better Than Religion

2007-01-05T13:05:00.000-05:00

10 Reasons Why Beer is Better Than Religion

10. No one will kill you for not drinking Beer.
9. Beer doesn't tell you how to have sex.
8. Beer has never caused a major war.
7. They don't force Beer on minors who can't think for themselves.
6. When you have a Beer, you don't knock on people's doors trying to give it away.
5. Nobody's ever been burned at the stake, hanged, or tortured over his brand of Beer.
4. You don't have to wait 2000+ years for a second Beer.
3. There are laws saying Beer labels can't lie to you.
2. You can prove you have a Beer.
1. If you've devoted your life to Beer, there are groups to help you stop.

advent after Christmas

2006-12-28T16:17:00.000-05:00

I am almost finished with Kester Brewin's book, The Complex Christ, Signs of emergence in the urban church. It just came out in the US under the title, Signs of Emergence. Kester is from the UK and writing in and from the UK experience but reflecting upon trends he sees as crucial for churches emerging in a post-Christendom and postmodern culture. (Not Emergent churches that have been typecast but churches that are emerging out of this unique cultural shit and time.) He uses James Fowlers stages of development to talk about how the church needs to develop or evolve past its enlightenment, rationalism of naive simplicity (Stage 3), characterized by Fowler as "loyalists with deep convictions, yet critically unexamined". Many Christians and churches never move beyond this stage of development. He is calling the church to move into Stage 4 where we realize that faith and truth is more complex than previously understood. This stage often leads to "dark night of the soul" kind of experiences where doubt and uncertainty reign. Many churches since they themselves have not moved through this stage, often cannot handle others within their community who are going through it. Brewin sees the church as a whole moving into Stage 4, due to the cultural shift from modern to postmodern and the shift from a centralized Christendom church status to a mariginalized post-Christendom status. Our place in the world is not what it has been and were are experiencing dislocation. The hope is obviously that one 9and the church) moves through Stage 4 to Stage 5. This according to Brewin and Fowler this is a place of deep simplicity, a place where one realizes the richness, ambiguity and multidimensionality of truth and faith. This conjunctive stage (5) allows one to hold opposites together in a single frame, it is what some call a dialectical tension. Though we cannot force people or churches to move from one phase to another we must create space for that movement and allow for diverse developmental stages within our churches. If we allow for this it will necessarily change the organization of our churches which Brewin sees to be essential for our missional context of postmodernism and post-Christendom.

And here is the beauty that drew me into this book. The first chapter is about a hopeful waiting - Advent. It is incredibly rich. He calls the church to wait. I love this because it as an activist doer it challenges me to my core!! Listen:

"We will be required to wait. To be acted upon gently and gracefully and peacefully. Shaped, not crushed; guided not dragged... The task is urgent but if our response is to be anything more than another flash in the pan or botched attempt to become culturally aware then we must avoid haste... Genuine change cannot be about haste, or about playing for time. It must involve the depth of us, and must have something of us in it... In other words, for our own health, we need change to occur not at revolutionary speeds demanded by power-wielding dictators or company board rooms, but at the evolutionary speeds of the empowered human body... If we are to transform the whole [church] and truly alter the very nature of things for good, then the mode of change can not be revolution, but evolution. A gradual development over a long period of time... The perception of the new step will come to those brave enough to stop dancing the old... We fear that if we stopped for a week, a month, a service, a moment we might appear forgotten, or lose our momentum... We must be brave enough to stop if we are to see change... In other words our structures must serve us not us serve our structures... We must bear fruit, Christ tells us. But outside our genetically modified globalized supermarkets, fruit trees only bear fruit once a year and then their branches are stripped of leaves in the cold winter of advent... The Church is destined to live in a perpetual advent as we wait for Christ's return... No matter how impatient we get as a society, with processing speeds rising and our whole cultural velocity increasing ever faster, we cannot speed up pregnancy... We must have the courage to stop. To prepare the ground for the new and wait."

What a breathe of fresh air!!!!!

What is hard about the waiting of this advent?
What are you seeing and hearing in this period of waiting?

a dollar a day

2006-12-19T13:29:00.000-05:00

Postmodern Celts???

2006-12-15T17:20:00.000-05:00

In my class on Celtic Christianity Dr. Purves listed some characteristics of Celtic Christianity that he is discovering i his reading. I was struck how the mindset and worldview of the Celts lined up with many postmodern Christians. I have heard it said before that the premodern (the Celts) era is very similar to the postmodern era. Could these not also be characteristics of an incarnated church in a postmodern and post-Christendom, 21st century culture?

Embodiedness, for the Celts life was whole; there was no split between body and spirit
They had a strong sense of the immanence the nearness of God especially on earth
The believed in and depended on the Power of God and the supernatural
They were Penitential
Incarnational
They had a Sacramental world view
They were Ascetics – they like it tough and with self denial
Strongly affective, relational and communal
Trinitarian
Non-dualists
Liminality – the distance between heaven and earth is very thin
Missional
They were Perepatic people or wonderers, journeyers; yet for whom home was important
They were non-hierarchical and communitarian
They were oral people, story tellers

Man I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

the Celts

2006-12-08T11:35:00.000-05:00

From Celtic Christianity by Timothy Joyce:

"To follow the spiritual world view of the Celtic Christians is to embrace a way of life that is a real commitment to the belief that the Trinitarian God is alive in this world, that Christ remains incarnate in his church, that each Christian is called to active discipleship in building up the kingdom of God. Celtic Christianity opens up to us a viewpoint that cannot separate Sunday and the rest of the week, this world and the next, the spiritual and the secular, the individual and the community. It would have great difficulty understanding the privatization of religion that is now characteristic of Western culture and American life in in particular. To wish to learn from Celtic Christianity is to wish to sense the passionate presence fo God in all of life. It is to find God in the ordinary events of life, love, eating, working, playing...

In addition to logic and reason, poetry, song, art and beauty were the tools of knowledge... To follow the Celtic spiritual way we modern Christians will have to do a lot of 'soulwork' to develop our unused imagination, our neglected senses, to complement our rational minds.

The church of today is more similar to the church of the fifth century than to many other eras... Today culture largely ignores the real Christian tradition. In fact, at times, it is hostile and antagonistic to Christian claims. Western civilization is decaying as once the Roman empire did. A new type of Dark Age gathers around us. that was the scenario for the blossoming of the Celtic Church. Might it not be the way again today?"

Do you think Joyce is on to something?

Jesus

2006-12-04T10:13:00.000-05:00

It has been over a month sine I posted last and I think this is the longest I have gone without posting. So if there are any regular readers out there I am going to try and get back in the swing of things. I have an idea to post on some of the stuff I am reading for my new classes. I am taking a class on Christology, Missiology and Celtic Christianity at Pittsburgh Theological seminary. So I thought I would post some quotes from the books I am reading, thoughts on lectures and interesting conversations. I hope you will enjoy the posts.

In Christology we are reading a collection of essays from a text called Who Do You Say That I am? edited by Mark Allan Powell and David R. Bauer . The first few chapters are on Jesus' understanding of his own Christology. How did Jesus understand himself? There was some good stuff in the first chapter by Ben Witherington III. The whole of the chapter was on how all of Jesus' understanding of himself was based upon relationships. His relationship to God the Father as Son of God and Son of Man similarly as the Messiah, the anointed one, as one who had been anointed by God and the Lord in relationship to his subjects. These titles and understandings were redefinitions of the social relational and religious status quo and therefore stood in stark contrast to the cultural norms of Judaism. Here is quote from the end of the chapter.

"Jesus did not come on the scene of first-century Judaism to conform to anyone's preconceived expectations about prophets, sages or messiahs, much less to our expectations at the end of the twentieth century. He came to make known something about God and something about humankind and something about their interrelationship in the crucible of a volatile environment, in which proclamations about the intervening saving reign of God were dangerous and could get one crucified because of what such messages implied about ones own relationship of power to both God and God's people."

Why has relating to Jesus lost it's risk? Why as followers of Jesus are we no long suspect of upsetting the social and relational apple cart? Why is the intervening saving reign of God no longer dangerous? Does the Gospel have nothing to do with the redistribution of power? Have we domesticated Jesus and the inbreaking of his his kingdom? Your thoughts?

Why I am Presbyterian/Reformed

2006-10-30T11:38:00.000-05:00

Recently I had to write a statement of what it means to be Presbyterian. So here is what I said.

To me, to be Presbyterian means to be connected with the Reformed tradition which holds a high view of the authority of scripture, the sovereignty of God over all of life, a belief in the priesthood of all believers, justification by faith in Christ alone, practices a representative form of church government and its theology is continually reforming. I agree with both the historical development of these beliefs and practices as well as their Biblical soundness.

The Heart of Presbyterianism and the Reformed tradition is its perspective on the theology of the church, that is, ecclesia reformata semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei - the church reformed, always being reformed, according to the word of God. The spirit that birthed the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition (though largely lost now) is that he church must always be being reformed by the Word and the Holy Spirit. This belief allows local churches to evolve and emerge in a variety of changing cultural contexts. This is so important in the life of the local church because every local congregation must answer the question, what is God calling us to do in our missional context?” This may require the shape and form of the church to change and morph into something new and different. It may even require a shift in theology in order to incarnate the Gospel in that unique missional context. The idea that the church is always reforming is essential in every age but I think it to be particularly important as we shift form a modern to postmodern culture.

Finally Presbyterianism holds to a representative form of church polity, which I believe to be the most Biblical model of church government. It guards against a pure democracy where the pastor is at the mercy of any tangential disagreement in the congregation as well as the abuse of authoritarianism in a hierarchical model of church government. It places appropriative power and authority in the congregation through its elected elders and the pastor gives leadership and oversight to them while still being only one voice among the other elders.

What do you think?

A relational understanding of truth

2006-10-22T14:13:00.000-04:00

My boy Jacob Wobbrock is this weeks Emergent pocast on Relational truth.

Check it out!

MOBY: Everything is complicated

2006-10-06T11:04:00.000-04:00

Check out this great little interview with MOBY about the complicated nature of faith in Jesus. It is on Soujourners site, click here.

the rhythm of learning

2006-10-04T12:00:00.000-04:00

Rythm and practice #2

Learn: We seek to practice learning by devoting at least 1 focused time of learning, from Christ, through scripture each week.

Jesus says, take my yoke upon you and learn form me for I am gentle and humble at heart and you will find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:29). Learning from Jesus can take a variety of forms but scripture is the primary text we seek to learn through (though not limited to that). God’s Word is living and active (Heb. 4:12); useful for shaping and molding us and therefore we desire to sit under it and allow it to teach us. Consider the following passages to contemplate the dynamic power of God’s word: (Deut 11:18-21; Psalm 119; Luke 6:47-48; Col 3:16; Heb 4:12).

How do you learn best?

Listening

2006-09-26T10:12:00.000-04:00

As a community, the Open Door is seeking to develop simple weekly missional practices, rhythms or postures that we think help orient and center us to live in the way of Jesus. We are creating space in our worship gatherings to experiment with them and dialogue about them. So I thought that each week I would post a sound byte of what we have come up with thus far and encourage further dialogue about each rhythm and practice.

Listening: We seek to practice listening by setting aside at least 1 focused time of listening to God's "still, small voice." each week.

In doing this, we will follow Jesus' example of seeking time alone with God: "After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray" (Matthew 14:23). And we will trust God's promise to meet us when we come to Him: "You will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart" (Jeremiah 29:12-13). The methods can vary: take a walk, journal, pray, meditate; listen to music, or any other way you find to be still with God.

How do we attune our ears to the voice of God? How do we develop a rhythm of listening? Do we expect God to speak and do we expect to hear him? How do you best hear the voice of God? In a frantic, busy, results oriented culture how do we slow down enough to hear? Why is listening an essential to being a missional community?

I would love to hear your thoughts!

Calling, vocation and ordination

2006-09-16T09:25:00.000-04:00

This past week I have finally finished answering some questions that will (hopefully) enable me to move from one who is inquiring about ordination in the PCUSA to one who is a candidate in the PCUSA. So I thought I would share some of my journey with you over the next few posts. I would love to hear your feedback.

I was asked to write a statement of my understanding of Christian vocation and calling in the reformed tradition and how it relates to my own sense of call. Here it is...

In Stanly Grenz's book "Theology for the Community of God" he states, “As Daniel Migliore noted, ordination is properly understood missiologically rather than ontologically.’ Ordination does not facilitate an ontological change in the clergy, elevating them above other Christians. Instead, the act commissions a person into leadership for the sake of the mission of the entire people of God." The reformed sense of calling is that all are called to ministry. Since all of creation is Gods and Christ is Lord over all and the Spirit gives gifts to everyone in the church then each person ought to have a sense of call to exercise dominion and stewardship as a co-heir with Christ, in the world. There is no one inch of creation that God does not claim as his one and therefore each follower of Christ is called to exercise sovereignty over that sphere of life, be it, politics, medicine, education, family or the church. The particular call to ordained ministry in the church of Jesus Christ is to equip and empower the priesthood of ALL believers to exercise their authority and rule in God’s good creation. I am called to the pastoral work of equipping others for the work of ministry in the church and in the world. One of my greatest joys in life is seeing people begin to understand the connection that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has in their vocations and callings. I am an encourager and take great pride in pointing out the strengths, gifts and passions of others so that they might use them in service to the King and the kingdom. Secondly my sense of call to professional ministry has been affirmed in my teaching and preaching gifts. I love to unpack and relate the story of scripture to the life of our community. It is an aspect of my call where I clearly experience God’s pleasure. I feel like Jeremiah who stated, “His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot (20:9). My call is confirmed by the continual desire to teach and equip others to be faithful followers of Jesus in word and deed.

I am excited to begin to practice this perspective in our community, The Open Door, as we begin to regulaly bless, pray for and comission people in their respective callings. Tomorrow night we will be comission our teachers to exercise their gifts in the sphere of education, from pre-school to master level TA's.

the Great Giveaway

2006-09-01T16:27:00.000-04:00

I read this in David Fitch's book The Great Giveaway and it is still inspiring me. It paints a captivating picture of the church as an living, missional, transformative community. I wrote in poetic stanzas so you can read it slowly and drink it in:

It can only be that God begins in a small way,
at one single place in the world.
There must be a place,
visible
tangible.
Where salvation of the world
can begin
that is,
where the world becomes what it is supposed to be
according to God’s plan.
Beginning at that place
the new thing can spread abroad
but not through persuasion
not through indoctrination,
not through violence.
Everyone must have the opportunity to
come and see.
All must have the chance to behold
and test this new thing.
Then,
if they want to,
they can allow themselves
to be drawn up in the history
of salvation
that God is creating.
Only in that way
can their freedom be preserved.
What drives them to the new thing
cannot be force,
not even moral pressure,
but only fascination of a world that is changed.

- taken from Does God Need the Church? by Gerhard Lohfink

my first podcast

2006-09-01T15:43:00.000-04:00

So today I did my first podcast with my friend Brian Wallace to talk about the conversation I am going to lead with Marlena Cochran at The Heart of The Missional Church Conference on October 5-7. Check it out, http://www.emergentpittsburgh.org/Podcast.

In the way of Jesus

2006-08-21T09:09:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking a lot about living in the way of Jesus lately. What does it mean to live IN THE WAY of Jesus? The church seems to be polarized by either having right belief (orthodoxy) or doing the right thing (orthopraxis). The conservative side of the church is the champion of guarding correct doctrine. The liberal side of the church is all about pursuing a life or justice as the epitome of faith. Are these polarizations necessary? To some extent aren’t these false dichotomies? Isn’t it a both and? Orthodoxy and orthopraxis are both spoken of in scripture and faithfulness to Jesus requires both. Just read the book of James and the book of Galatians. It is every where in the Bible, Jesus is full of grace and truth; he is fully divine and human; we are called to a life of faith and works; the kingdom of God is here but not yet. These are Biblical dialectical tensions. Tony Jones in a recent Emergent podcast cites Karl Barth who said that when Jesus died on the cross God simultaneously screamed a cosmic no at the death of his son and a cosmic yes at the defeat of evil. Tim Keel in the same podcast said it is what Dwight Friesen calls “orthoparadoxical”. Living in the way of Jesus places us in a life of tension where we are no longer control. In contrast, orthodoxy seeks to control faith by defining right doctrine and belief and orthopraxis also seeks to control by determining what right action is. But an orthoparadoxical view of living in the way of Jesus transcends this false dichotomy and calls us to live in the dialectical tension of both and.

What would it look like if the church pursued living in the right way instead of just doing the right thing or having the right beliefs? I have just finished reading How (not) to Speak of God, by Peter Rollins and he says that living in the right way is about believing in a loving, sacrificial and Christ like manner. Instead of arriving at the correct doctrine or doing the right thing we move forward in a way, or a manner of living, or an approach to Jesus others and the world that guides both belief and action. Living in the way of Jesus transcends these perceived binary opposites of faith and theology or belief and action? This is living into the tension of a way that involves right thinking and right living. But it happens on or in the way of following after Jesus.

Rollins says living in the way of Jesus “is an approach which emphasizes the priority of love; not as something which stands opposed to knowledge of God, or simply more important than knowledge of God, but more radically still, as knowledge of God. To love God is to know God precisely because God is love.” Not imply right thinking or action but living in the reight way. This sounds very similar to how Jesus summarized the law and the prophets. Love God and love neighbor. The way of Jesus? Hmmm…

I am still very much in process with these thoughts but feel like I am on the right way. I would cherish your feedback to sharpen and shape it with me.

Me and Matisyahu

2006-07-27T16:59:00.000-04:00

I can now chat with Matisyahu in Hebrew. Today after 2 months and a 3.5 hour final I finished Biblical Hebrew. Thanks be to God! I celebrated with Bob Ruffel, a pint of a great red IPA and an ostrich burger at the Sharp Edge. Thanks to everyone who has encouraged me, prayed for me and coped with my grumpiness over the past two months. A special thanks to Katrina who carried our family, our home and ME through this time! One more year to go. 3 Electives, Hebrew Exegesis, Christology, Missiology and Homeletics. Mark your calendars for a late May '07 Graduation Bash!

Alexander the mystic wonderer

2006-07-24T20:48:00.000-04:00

My son Alex asks the greatest thought provoking questions about God and life from his perspective. Last night as he was going to bed he asked, and I quote, "how can Jesus see every one in the whole wide world with only two eyes?" Yes my son that is a great question.

And kudos to Katrina for the cool effect on this picture of Alex staring into the campfire.

My good freind Jake!

2006-07-17T14:10:00.000-04:00

My good friend Jake moved to Seatle today and I thought I would share with you many of the things I love about this guy. So here is poem I wrote for and about Jake for his 30th birthday this past year! I and (we) will miss you and Alison very much!

How can I recollect and reflect
or put into a dialect
a man… who ferociously follows his Father
a man… who sacrificially serves the Son
a man… who selflessly submits to the Spirit
with unbridled passion
and complete and utter abandon?

Jake, a confidante, comrade, companion
a journeyman, and fellow traveler
walking ahead, behind and beside
a shrewd sage, vociferously calling,
to us and them
to travel
“further up and further in”
no matter where you stand
urging you
upward and onward
to the love of the Lover
to the tenacity of the Truth
to the whisper of the Wind
to the glory of the Other One
and ALL the others
always becoming invisible
so the One who is unseen
can be seen
which is not he or me
but Him

Jake, one who limps
insistently sparring with I AM
plumbing the depths
of the living breathing text
beholding that sword
that has cut his heart and bone
wielding the weapon that has wounded him
knowing the hurt holds healing,
he unleashes its gentle fury
soothing and singeing us
wooing and bending us
carefully crafting communication
like a surgeon with a scalpel in hand
Like a scalpel in the hand of the Surgeon
He speaks
And then…
HE speaks

Jake, a man after God’s own heart
constantly considering and contemplating
the cosmos and its Creator
questions, queries, and quandaries
pealing back the surfaces
plumbing the depths of wonder and logic
yet these are not mere abstractions
studied in labs with microscopes
they are…
never mere constructions and conceptions
they are…
always communal relational connections
to the Lord of the Starfields
and how the stars fall to earth
shining light and glory in our dearth
clarifying confusion
illuminating illusions
restoring
hope

Jake, no sheltered pious monk
Isolated in ivory towers
He repels them
dispels them and even rebels
against them.
Imbibing beverages brewed and distilled
with the flavors of the ages.
A coinsure of scotch, vodka and vino
And oh the Belgium beer…
the Leffe Brown going down
and down and down
and
“oh yes I’ll have another”
oh so smooth…
Cigars, books and blogs,
justice, politics, rhetoric
protestant and Catholic
mountain biking and hiking…….

he also strokes the keys for those
who can’t
dreaming dreams of different strokes
for those folks
Rolling balls of techno-imagination
All for the release of redemption

It is with
Thanks, gratitude and admiration
Privilege, honor and delight,
that clutter my minds sight
As I recollect and collect
The memories of…
Jake, my brother
Jake, you are… and have been…
and will continue to be…
a reflector of his Image
a son of our Father
an ambassador of the King
and lover of the Love.

Sea spray

2006-06-27T18:26:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Maggi Dawn whose blog I stole this quote from.

The author C. S. Lewis once wrote that there is all the difference in the world between reading a map of the coastline and feeling the spray of the ocean upon your face. People come to church, he said, not to be taught to read maps [about God], but to feel the spray.

Thanks to my community the Open Door who helps me feel the sea spray upon my face every day.

C.I.T.Y.

2006-06-22T16:30:00.000-04:00

It was a tough week in the CITY so this is a little something I wrote:

The C.I.T.Y
Makes me cry
And wonder why?
Urban dwellers
shuffle the poor like papers
we are...
still separated by the shade of face
every one knowing their place
we race
setting a pace with…
no grace.

We are all…
Stuck and F***ed
Needing to see the need
The need needing to be seen
The needy needing to be seen
and
acknowledged by those who go to college
and choose to use
the system to
unintentionally bruise
those who inevitably loose.

Straining like camels
hitting our humps
squeeee…zing through the gate
like a gnat
who is too FAT
You see...
distance is the key
close but not too
“Roll ‘em up!”
‘Keep clean!”
“Lock the doors”
“Beware!”
“Is it safe?”

Deafened by distance, division, and disgust
Incarcerated by ignorance, indifference and individuality
Chained by choice, chocking our spirit
binding and winding and grinding
us and them up into self…
absorption
a paralytic contortion
of mind and spirit
with no relation, connection
simply isolation,
starvation
we are emaciated partners
needing nurtured nutrients
one from the other
but
busyness blurs
and blinds our beings

be still my soul!

smash and shatter the shackles
galvanize gentries without gentrification
bolster beauty without bureaucracy
garner generosity without greed
judge justly without jealousy
render restoration without relocation

may we be free to see
may we see you in thee
may we be you to thee
may they be thee to me

Sweet 80's rock

2006-06-14T21:30:00.000-04:00

Right now I am jamming out to the 1981 breakout release of The Police, Ghost in the Machine. When I first bought it was an album (that's right vinyl baby). It is kicking my ass! (or maybe I am just enjoying avoiding studying for Hebrew). Either way, in 1983 my first concert was seeing the Police on their Synchronicity tour. 60,000 fans on a hot summer August day for a 13 year old kid is amazing event to remember. The Fixx and The Flock of Seagulls opened up for them. The Police rock it out 80's style. You can get the CD used on Amazon for $0.97. That is a steal.

above-the-line solutions

2006-06-12T22:41:00.000-04:00

Brain McLaren has done it again. In his most recent post he is calling the Church to live "above-the-line" instead of mapping out a position at either end of us/them or either/or conflicts, or even choosing some moderate point in between poles. Instead he pushes for a humble recognition that we are all journeying together with faith that continues to seek understanding. It is helpful to no one to define ones self or ones community by where they are on some spectrum (theological, political or otherwise). Nor is it constructive to define ones self or ones community by what we are opposed to or against. Brian says these positions "tend to polarize people into binary positions" on a continuum of sorts. So what if we sought above-the-line solutions attempting to affirm honor the good on both extremes while seeking to avoid at least some of the problems bifircation creates. In reality some of what Brain has suggested is just good contextualization. In some communities and cultures a certian ethic, theology, action, ritual, structure, politic etc... will be emphasized and others deemphasized.

Anyway... I just wanted to get you to read it... so check it out if you are at all intrigued.

You can find it here.

1 down 1 to go

2006-06-05T19:04:00.000-04:00

8 days ago I emailed in my Greek exegesis paper on Galatians 6:10-20 (which was an enjoyable, insightful and I think a well written). That marked the end of Greek for seminary, thanks be to God. I then spent 4 full days and nights with my amazing and now bronzed wife in Miami. We slept, beached, read, ate, people watched (lots of topless sunbathers and thonged men and women) and did what "15 year-weds" do. Last night in worship my good friend Byron Pryor gave an amazing message on Mark 4 and through it God really inspired me to be more reckless in the sowing of the Word of God in the fields he has me in. Oh the joy of being able to entrust the word to reliable people who are qualified to teach others. And then to have the privelage to sit under and be transformed by that teaching. My community has given me a great gift. I have a sabbatical from being the primary communicator at our worship gatherings for the months of June and July. For... tomorrow (June 6, 2006) I start Hebrew. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9am - 12pm in June and July. Two semesters of work in two months - some call it suicide Hebrew. Pray for perseverance and joy in the next few months. Shalom!

sex, adultery, pornography, 12 steps, chastity and community

2006-05-23T09:24:00.000-04:00

In the NY Times, May 19, 2006 Lauren F. Winner published an article entitled Saving Grace that was sent to me by my friend Jen and I thought you all should read it!

The recent Harvard study that found teenagers' virginity pledges to be ineffective should come as a surprise to no one. Several studies had already come to that conclusion. If we are truly to help our teenagers adopt the countercultural sexual ethic of abstinence until marriage, Christians concerned about the rampant premarital sex in our communities need to rethink, rather than simply defend, young people's abstinence pledges.

It is awfully easy for Christians to blame our community's sexual sins on the mores of post-sexual revolution America — to criticize Abercrombie & Fitch catalogs, to natter on about how "Grey's Anatomy" portrays sexual behavior that doesn't square with Christianity. But perhaps it's more important that we reconsider how we talk about sex in the church. For although the church devotes an immense amount of energy to teaching about sexuality — just go to the Christian inspiration section of your nearest Barnes & Noble and compare the number of books about chastity to books that challenge, say, consumerism — many Christians still "struggle with" (in that euphemistic evangelical phrase) premarital sex, adultery and pornography.

So why is the church's approach to teaching chastity falling short? Consider the popular "True Love Waits" virginity pledge: "Believing that true love waits, I make a commitment to God, myself, my family, my friends, my future mate and my future children to a lifetime of purity including sexual abstinence from this day until the day I enter a biblical marriage relationship."

This pledge and others like it are well meaning but deeply flawed. For starters, there's something disturbing about the assumption that teenagers are passively waiting for their future mates and children, when the New Testament is quite clear that some Christians are called to lifelong celibacy. (Paul, for example, did not have a mate or children, and Dan Brown's fantasies notwithstanding, Jesus's only bride was the church.) Chastity is not merely about passive waiting; it is about actively conforming our bodies to the arc of the Gospel and receiving the Holy Spirit right now.

Pledgers promise to control intense bodily desires simply by exercising their wills. But Christian ethics recognizes that the broken, twisted will can do nothing without rehabilitation by God's grace. Perhaps the centrality of grace is recognized best not in a pledge but in a prayer that names chastity as a gift and beseeches God for the grace to receive it. The pledges are also cast in highly individualistic terms: I promise that I won't do this or that. As the Methodist bishop William Willimon once wrote: "Decisions are fine. But decisions that are not reinforced and reformed by the community tend to be short-lived."

During our first year of marriage, my husband and I lived in a small apartment inside a church. On Tuesdays, Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon met downstairs. As I got to know some of the regulars, I began to wonder if there wasn't something the church could learn from the 12-step groups in our midst. After all, what are 12-step groups but communities of people expecting transformation? People show up because they want to change, and they know that making a promise by themselves — I will stop drinking — won't cut it. Alcoholics Anonymous explicitly recognizes that transformation works best when a community comes alongside you and participates in your transformation. Christians, like 12-step group attendees, are people who are committed to becoming, to use the Apostle Paul's phrase, new creatures. Living sexual lives that comport with the Gospel is one part of that.

Perhaps pledges for chastity need to be made not only by the individual teenager. Perhaps we also need pledges made by the teenager's whole Christian community: we pledge to support you in this difficult, countercultural choice; we pledge that the church is a place where you can lay bare your brokenness and sin, where you don't have to dissemble; we pledge to cheer you on when chastity seems unbearably difficult, and we pledge to speak God's forgiveness to you if you falter. No retooled pledge will guarantee teenagers' chastity, but words of grace and communal commitment are perhaps a firmer basis for sexual ethics than simple assertions that true love waits.

Lauren F. Winner is the author of "Girl Meets God" and "Real Sex: The Naked Truth About Chastity."

great good places

2006-05-22T08:49:00.000-04:00

My bedside reading these days is a book called, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons and other hangouts at the Heart of a Community by Ray Oldenburg. It is the birthplace of the concept of Third Places. Anyway I read something the other night that made me pause....

An investigation was done by the Presbyterian church in the state of Indiana in 1911 where it found that "80% of churches were strenuously opposed to social activities, even those sponsored by the church itself... Churches were weakest in membership and enthusiasm in precisely those villages that lacked informal gathering places and there, also, was where saloons of the unsavory kind took advantage of the void in wholesome play, recreation and informal association. The prevailing attitude of the clergy was that social life would not save anyone. One parson voiced the typical view, declaring that, 'what the churches need is not social life but more spiritual life.' Two clear conclusions were drawn: (1) Community social life is necessary for healthy religious life, and (2) If the church is going to succeed it must recognize the social needs of the community and assume its share of the leadership in social activities."

We are finding this to be true in the Open Door as we invest in and seek to enhance the social life of the East End through organizations and other third places that build community and enhance the while of our community. Spaces, places and people like, the Union Project, in particular Homegrown Saturdays coming up, a coffee shop called the Quiet Storm, a bar called the Sharp Edge, the Highland Park Community Club, and the Penn Ave Arts Initiative. These are amazing places and people who we see as essential parts of the fabric of our community and neighborhoods.

What other spaces and places are you investing in that are building a vibrant social life in your communities and neighborhoods?

a new kind of conversion

2006-05-19T08:23:00.000-04:00

Recently my son Zachary informed me that when he gets bigger Jesus is going to change his name and will also transofrom him into spiderman. If we only had the faith of children!

39 things I love...

2006-05-11T21:18:00.001-04:00

9 days ago my beautiful wife Katrina turned 39 and I wanted to share with you 39 things that I love about her...

I love her out loud laughing
I love her crazy faces
I love her passion for yoga
I love her hospitality
I love her athleticism
I love her prophetic voice
I love her artistic creativity
I love her insatiable desire to learn new things
I love her spontaneity
I love the way she teaches our children
I love her clavicle
I love her thirst to study the Bible
I love the way she mis-quotes cliches
I love her silliness
I love her gardening
I love her amazing interior design sense
I love her discernment
I love the way she invests in others
I love her honesty
I love her willingness to challenge me
I love her cooking
I love her cleanliness
I love her flexibility and carefree heart
I love that she is my wife
I love the way she drools on her pillow when taking a power nap
I love her beautiful skin
I love when she childishly plays with our kids
I love her independence
I love her naivete
I love her smile
I love her strength
I love her wisdom and insight
I love her integrity
I love her eyes
I love how she seizes the moment
I love her nose ring
I love the creases on her face when she wakes up in the morning
I love her faithfulness to me
I love her more today than when I met her 19 years ago

I love you Katrina!

the web is spinning out of control

2006-05-05T14:51:00.000-04:00

I have been communally and individually meditating on this quote over the past week. It is challenging to me on a number of levels.

The church is "a dynamic set of relationships, friendships and acquaintances. It enhances and flavors the host community's living social fabric. It thus creates a medium of living relationship through which the gospel can travel. It emphasizes the importance of a group of Christians infiltrating a community, like a salt and light, to make those creative connections with people where God-talk and shared experience allows for real cross-cultural Christian mission to take place." (The Shaping of Things to Come, pg. 42)

If the church embodies this decentralized and incarnational mindset it will in turn become unmanageableable, more difficult to keep track of, more obtuse to define, more cumbersome to hold on to and more out of control. This is a wonderfully difficult thing. I am experiencing the joy and the dis-ease of leading a community that is taking this seriously and running with the idea that the church is scattered and gathered and as we scatter the Gospel is traveling through organic and invisible webs of relationships. We are learning how to bless people and organizations with no strings attached. We are giving ourselves and our resources away. We are caring for serving and loving people and organizations that have no direct return benefit on us. The difference between who is "a part" of our church and "who is not" is becoming fuzzier and fuzzier. This is the nature of salt and light. It brings out the God-flavors in the world and the God-colors in the world. Thanks be to God for the joy of following after my community as they lead me into these uncharted waters.

Can a statement of faith stay living?

2006-05-05T14:42:00.000-04:00

There is a great post by Leron Schultz about why Emergent is not going to do a statement of faith and how in general they tend to inhibit conversation. I hope you will read it an comment. I think it has potential for local church communities as well. Click here to read it.

Missional Practices

2006-04-24T21:16:00.000-04:00

The Open Door has been talking a lot about how we can congeal and orient our life together not just around the worship gathering or a set of doctrinal beliefs (although important) but around a way of life or what some are calling missional practices. What are missional practices?

Missional practices are specific, intentional, organized and purposeful ways of living that a community agrees to live out together. Missional practices form us in Christ while propelling us into the mission of God. Missional practices orient us around the common pursuit of loving God, one another and the world. Missional practices for us at the Open Door are focused and ordered ways of living that enable us to fufill our mission of creating passageways to God, one another and the world.

Alan Roxburgh and Chris Erdman said, “Without missional practices it will be impossible to cultivate the kinds of imagination and encounters among God’s people that will birth missional congregations. The cultivation of these practices will take time for a number of reasons. Congregations have ceased to be covenant communities. Modernity transformed them into voluntary associations of free individuals who join congregations out of needs and stay out of personal choice as long as those needs are met. Missional practices question the core of these assumptions and are, therefore, strongly resisted by many of those who currently populate congregations.” from their blog called Oddesy.

I am interested in other people's thoughts on the purpose of missinal practices.

picture share

2006-04-18T15:31:00.000-04:00

I am enjoying playing with my camera. It is theraputic! It is helping me look for beauty and oddity in life in my everyday activity.

kudos to hot metal

2006-04-18T15:24:00.000-04:00

Hot Metal Faith Community, front page Easter Sunday in the Wall Street Journal - read all about it!

PS - nice tat Jeff but what is up with that face!

Sending the seventy

2006-04-09T09:26:00.000-04:00

Thanks to my partner in crime, John Creasy, the Open Door steering team spent some time looking at Jesus sending out the 70 in Luke 10 this past Thursday night. It is an amazing picture of what it looks like to be sent by Jesus. Here are some of our random comments and insights.

Do not move around from house to house plant your feet somewhere, do not spread yourselves to too thin rather focus on households and neighborhoods
Don take anything with you be dependent on God and others to care for you
Don't worry about where you are not welcome just move on
Change produces rowers, watchers and grumblers focus on the rowers so as to convince the watchers.
Like lambs among wolves the mission is not safe it is risky and dangerous and uncomfortable
We bring peace and that is the message of the kingdom
Mission involves hospitality, stay and eat and drink
The kingdom of God is comes near to both those who receive it and those who do not and to those who receiveitt, it is peace.
Ask the Lord of the harvest for more workers for the fields that are ripe
There is a lot of action, healing and then proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is here. The deeds proceed the proclamation
Mission is rooted in households and towns
The is a huge level of responsibility to be the mission of God for the 70
There is not a concern about this person saved or not it is just go and live out the good news and let the Lord of the harvest take care of it.

I hope and pray to see more of this kind of missional activity in the church as Jesus sends us, just like Father sent him.

Sunsets and rainbows in East Liberty

2006-04-04T14:46:00.000-04:00

Are plights deepening for black men?

2006-03-26T11:36:00.000-05:00

My new blogsphere comrade (pomonegro) has a post on Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn from a NY Times article that has to be read byany of us who are engaged in inner city work or ministry. Make sure you watch the video about Strive in Baltimore, MD. Here are some of the findings.

The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic peak of the late 1990's. In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20's were jobless, that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts. Even when high school graduates were included, half of black men in their 20's were jobless in 2004, up from 46 percent in 2000. Incarceration rates climbed in the 1990's and reached historic highs in the past few years. In 1995, 16 percent of black men in their 20's who did not attend college were in jail or prison; by 2004, 21 percent were incarcerated. By their mid-30's, 6 in 10 black men who had dropped out of school had spent time in prison. In the inner cities, more than half of all black men do not finish high school.

Words that Linger #4

2006-03-10T08:32:00.000-05:00

Perhaps our real task in prayer is to attune ourselves to the conversation already going on deep in our hearts. Then we may align our conscious interactions with the desire of God being expressed at our core. The foundation of all prayer is being present to [God’s] presence.

[Contemplation] is an experience of being present only to the moment, unconscious of time. Deep contemplation draws us, momentarily into the eternal realm that transcends time…. When we let go of all effort to speak or even to listen, simply becoming quiet before God, the Spirit is free to work his healing mysteries in us: releasing us from bondage, energizing new patterns of life, restoring our souls beauty. Here we allow ourselves to be loved by God into wholeness. Such communion with God is an end in an of itself, not a means to another end, however good." From Soul Feast by Majorie Thompson pgs. 31, 33, 45

Words that Linger #3

2006-03-10T08:31:00.000-05:00

All your love, your stretching out, your hope, your thirst, God is creating in you so that [God] may fill you…. God is on the inside of the longing. – Maria Boulding

Words that linger #2

2006-03-10T08:26:00.000-05:00

[The discipline of joy] “requires choosing light even when there is much darkness to frighten me, choosing for life even when the forces of death are so visible, and choosing for the truth even when I am surrounded by lies… the reward of choosing joy is joy itself… Joy never denies the sadness, but transforms it to fertile soil for more joy… People who have come to know the joy of God do not deny the darkness but they choose to not live in it. They claim that the light that shines in the darkness can be trusted more than the darkness itself and that a little bit of light can dispel a lot of darkness. They point each other to the flashes of light here and there, and remind each other that they reveal the hidden but real presence of God… Every moment of each day I have the chance to choose between cynicism and joy. Jesus wants me to enjoy the same joy he enjoys:
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (John 15:9-11).” The Return of the Prodigal Son, by Henri Nouwen pgs. 115-118.

Words that linger

2006-03-10T07:50:00.000-05:00

I have been on vacation this whole week and I took a 48 hour solitude retreat on Monday and Tuesday. I did a lot of reading, praying and hiking. My next few posts will be some quotes that caused me to pause and reflect. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. They are still lingering in my heart, mind and soul.

"The question is not, how am I to find God? But, how am I to let myself be known by God? And finally the question is not, how am I to love God? But, how am I to let myself be loved byGod? God is looking into the distance for me, trying to find me, and longing for me to come home." From The Return of the Prodigal Son, by Henri Nouwen pg. 106.

The journey of racial reconciliation

2006-03-03T09:47:00.000-05:00

Over the past month many of us have gathered on Mondays nights to talk about race, economics, and how we can continue the journey towards racial reconciliation and justice. Here are some random thoughts about continuing that journey from our last meeting.

Here is our reality: By the year 2050 there will be more nonwhite than white Americans and most of the nonwhite population will be Asian and Hispanic, not African American. There are over 2 million mixed-race children in the United States. One in every 20 children born is of mixed-race in the United States.

How do we live into this growing multicultural nation of ours? As cliche as it sounds start with yourself. Examine yourself and understand your context. Become familiar with your own cultural heritage. Become familiar with your own story and the circumstances and people who have influenced who you are. Allow that self reflection to lead you to confess your stereotypes and prejudices. Study your own situation (neighborhood, city, state). What does its story reveal to you about race and ethnicity?

Commit to a lifelong journey and persevere regardless of response and outcomes in all areas of life. Ask yourself, "where do you eat, shop, worship, live, hang out etc." Is that furthering reconciliation and education or separation and ignorance?

Step out of what is familiar to you. How can you place yourself in the context of another group? Seek a situation where you are invited and welcomed. As a majority culture person, be an observant listener and learner as you engage in a place where you are a minority

Build friendships with 1-2 people of another race or ethnicity, who share common interests; where you can practice hospitality; where authentic conversation can happen. Bring others along; share with others what you are learning; speak out when issues come up.

Jointly develop cooperative partnerships and build on a foundation of friendship and trust. Resist the temptation to be sole initiator, wait and choose to plan unilaterally from the ground up. Include styles and forms from each ethnic group represented.

We, the Open Door and Union Project do not have all the answers but we trust God as we seek his face and journey further up and further in towards him and his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

For some interesting thoughts check out pomonegro.

chilin wid' da' boys

2006-02-27T11:15:00.000-05:00

Greek is done......... hopefully

2006-02-25T11:00:00.000-05:00

Well the test took 4 hours. It was REALLY hard. At 12 noon when it was supposed to be done about 3/4 of the class was still working say he extended it an extra hour. Exhausting! The last question was almost two full paragraphs of translation. I felt good about 80% of my work. Thank you for all who prayed. I did feel God prompting me on a number of things, mistakes corrected, words remember in the last 5 minutes. All glory and honor to him no matter the results. I hope and pray that I passed the class but even if not he is all the more glorified in my weaknesses.

By the way the quote at the end of my last post was not Barth but the Apostle Paul from 2 Corinthians 1:20 "For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ. And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of God."

Sola de Gloria!

Greek............................................

2006-02-23T12:16:00.000-05:00

Over the past few months I have been suffering and struggling through Greek as a faithful subversive in the PCUSA ordination process. Tomorrow the bell tolls. Tomorrow is my term 2 final and when and if I pass I move on to exegesis which is much easier and more enjoyable. Thanks to everyone who has suffered with me; put up with my complaining and whining; and prayed for perseverance and good memory retention. Throw up those prayers one more time between 9-12 tomorrow.

For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "Yes" in Christ. And so through him the "Amen" is spoken by us to the glory of God.

World Press Photos Awards

2006-02-17T16:01:00.000-05:00

I discovered from Jonny Baker across the pond that the world press photo awards are out and there are some amazing images for 2006.