mexico prayers

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

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?

some thoughts on resurection

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!!!

"be the pose"

“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

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!!!!

yogi missiologilist

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?

Presbymergent grant and Flip the Script

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.

Young Mary

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.

Missional Adaptive Leadership

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.

cannondale 500

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!

story

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?

new year prayer

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)

the rhythm of learning

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?

In the way of Jesus

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.

My good freind Jake!

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

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.

the web is spinning out of control

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.

Missional Practices

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.

Sending the seventy

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.

1. 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
2. Don take anything with you be dependent on God and others to care for you
3. Don't worry about where you are not welcome just move on
4. Change produces rowers, watchers and grumblers focus on the rowers so as to convince the watchers.
5. Like lambs among wolves the mission is not safe it is risky and dangerous and uncomfortable
6. We bring peace and that is the message of the kingdom
7. Mission involves hospitality, stay and eat and drink
8. 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.
9. Ask the Lord of the harvest for more workers for the fields that are ripe
10. There is a lot of action, healing and then proclaiming that the Kingdom of God is here. The deeds proceed the proclamation
11. Mission is rooted in households and towns
12. The is a huge level of responsibility to be the mission of God for the 70
13. 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.

I am the Truth

I engaged our community at our worship gathering last night with this conversation and am hoping to continue it online this week, but make sure you know this is really long post.

I think we tend to have an unhealthy and unbalanced perspective when it comes to truth. Truth is most often associated with science, math, the abstract, precision, permanence, absolutes, rationality, and reason. But poetic language that is imprecise, ambiguous, intuitive, imaginative and symbolic is nonetheless truthful. The sun sets and rises; time flies; God extends his hand to the needy; the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart (Gen. 6:6). This is poetic language, metaphorical but no less true that scientific language.

There is a broader range and fuller understanding of what (or who) truth is. We have created an unnecessary dichotomy between scientific language and poetic language when we talk about truth. Scientific language seeks to remove ambiguity by using precise and absolute statements. Question: If Jesus indented to use scientific language what does Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life mean? Poetic language delights in the ambiguity and even plays with it deliberately.
Question: If Jesus indented to use poetic language what does Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life mean? See David Tomlison's book The Post Evangelical on this.

So how was Jesus using this phrase? I think like all the other I AM phrases he was using it as a metaphor or poetic language.

Now I must tell you that I am very much in process at this point in my life and am prayerfully and communally exploring what this means for my life and the life of the church so I do not by any means have this figured out and am open to input and critique as we journey through this together! The approach I am taking as I study scripture, read others and talk with our community is to let the Bible interpret me.

There is an ancient Midrashic-Jewish approach to Scripture that I think is very important for us to know and practice always but even more so tonight. The Jewish rabbis when approaching the Torah did not so much seek figure out how to interpret the text, but how that text interprets them. The text, the Bible can be, and is, fully and absolutely true, but its function is to interpret my life, not me its message. We need to sit under the Bible not over the Bible.

This is so important because as my friend Alan Hirsch said to me this week:
“Most of our congregations are professing particularists (Jesus only way, etc.) but practicing universalists. This text (Where Jesus says he is the Truth) IS interpreting the church today and it should be one that makes us stumble. For I believe, to give up on the uniqueness of Christ is to give up on the central anchor of the faith - Jesus and his claims on us.”

Read: John 14:1-7

How does Jesus’ radical claim speak to us and interpret us tonight?

Jesus shows us Truth is a person
Jesus did not claim merely to know the truth as a formula that he could impart to the ignorant; but he actually claimed to be the embodiment of the answer to human problems. Jesus' solution to perplexity is not a recipe; it is a relationship with him.

Truth is not primarily doctrine
Truth is not primarily a belief system
Truth is not primarily theological statements
Truth is not primarily abstract morals and values
We follow a person not teaching, beliefs or values, which flow out of following Jesus because...

Truth is primarily a person – Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus, the person, the Son of Joseph and Mary, the cousin of John, the carpenter’s son, and the Son Of God, He is the truth.

Jesus did not counter Thomas's question with an argument or a quotation drawn from his memory or from the Jewish law. He did not answer Thomas’ questions with the logical proofs for the way to heaven. He responded with an authoritative, self- asserting statement that the truth is found in relationship with him. He said I AM THE TRUTH. Truth with all its complexities, with all its twists and turns and all it mysteries is wrapped up in the person of Jesus Christ. If you want to know the Truth then get to know Jesus.

Jesus shows us Truth is relational
If truth is found in Jesus the God-man, then it must involve knowing him and being relationship with him and being intimate with him. Truth cannot only be known in the abstract but must be known in relationship with and experienced through intimacy with Jesus.

At the heart of being a Christian is a personal and intimate encounter with God in Christ (who is the Truth) that shapes and molds us. There are certain aspects of truth that cannot be grasped by reason. Love is not always logical. Blaise Pascal said, “The heart has its reasons which reason cannot know.” If we are to know the truth we must shift our language from abstract scientific concepts to poetic language like a loving relationship. If you want to know the Truth then love Jesus.

Truth must change and transform us
The Danish philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard talked about how when we encounter truth it will subjectively or intuitively change a person. So if something is really true then it must change me. A person can't claim anything to be objectively true if it doesn't somehow change them. If it has not changed me, then it is not true. When you are in love with a person, a band’s music, a food, a book, whatever it changes the way you see the world.

Therefore if Jesus is the Truth and if we genuinely engage him we will be affected and changed by him. Jesus said elsewhere that "If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." The Truth will change you if you know it. Moreover, Jesus' truth claim can only be known if I personally appropriate it to myself. I must be existentially involved to really 'know' it as true.

If Jesus is the truth you cannot know/experience the truth from a safe distance. You cannot have a virtual relationship with Jesus. You cannot and will not know Jesus, the Truth abstractly, empirically, analytically or scientifically because truth is relational and it inherently produces change. Scientists seek to be objective and disengaged with the thing they are empirically studying and that supposedly gives you pure and unbiased insight. If you want to know the Truth then get to know Jesus, not from a distance but intimately.

Truth is dynamic and on the move
If Truth is a person, relational, experiential and transformative it must also be dynamic, not static. Jesus is the Truth as he said, but we as humans cannot fully know Him as such because we are limited by our sin, our culture, language and our location.

This does not make Truth relative, nor promote indifference or a kind of universal blending together of all religions; rather it humbly confesses our humanity, our limits and our inability to articulate the full scope of Jesus, the truth.

The great English missionary Leslie Newbigin said, “We do not have all the truth, but we know the way along which truth is to be sought and found. We have to therefore call people to come to this way with us, for we shall not know the full glory of Jesus [the Truth] until the day when every tongue shall confess him [so].” (To Tell the Truth, pg. 34)

"When Christians affirm, as they do, that Jesus is the way, the true and living way by whom we come to the Father, they are not claiming to know everything. They are claiming to be on the way, and inviting others to join them as they press forward toward the fullness of truth, toward the day when we shall know as we have been known.” (Gospel in a Pluralist Society p.12)

Truth is always one step ahead of us. Truth is knowable in Jesus yet not fully. Truth is revealed in Jesus yet hidden. Or as Bono said,
The more you see the less you know
The less you find out as you growI knew much more then than I do now
This is what compels us and calls us further up and further into the heart of Truth in Jesus – the longing for more.

Relational and poetic Truth in Jesus is like a multifaceted diamond in which we are always discovering the further beauty, depth and richness of it depending on our location and how the light that shines upon it. The diamond is still a diamond and our perspective on the diamond does not change the diamond; its clarity, color, cut, and carat do not change but our perception, and understanding, our appreciation and knowledge of that truly beautiful diamond do change.

I wrote this poem last winter about Truth that might cast some light on the complexity of what Jesus clamed, it’s called to walk with her.

walking with her
talking with her
longing to be with her
her beauty is staggering
(her breasts are full and firm)
she is wonderful, playful and intriguing
YET…
seeing her is blinding
my impairment leads me further down the path
knowing her is ignorance
which grants me wisdom?
intimacy with her is distancing
leading to dependence
fleeting and compelling
the unattainable search
the closer I am to her the farther I’ve to go
the more her radiance shines the clearer I see
but I want to flee because of me
she calls me further up and further in
her voice is captivating
so I journey toward her
wadding amidst obtuse fogginess
the mystery d r a g s and d r a w s me
longing yet kicking and screaming
contagiously spreading throughout my body
when I arrive I have farther to go
simultaneously endless and relentless
she is ever with me
but never enough
the longing… is the gift…

I do not have or know all the truth but I do know I am following the Truth who is Jesus, the way, the truth and the life, please join me in following him and discovering more of him.