Let's get on with task of really saving marriage

Here's another article by David Waters at the Commercial Appeal.

An excerpt...

It's hard out here for a married couple. Just look at the divorce rate. One of every two marriages fail. If one of every two incumbents failed to get re-elected, Congress would have passed the Incumbent Protection Amendment years ago.

About the only thing harder than being and staying married in this society is being and staying married with children. Instead of making it harder to get married, Senator, how about finding ways to make it easier to be married?

Instead of giving tax cuts to the wealthy, give them to married couples in any income bracket, especially those with children at home. The longer you're married, the lower your tax rate.

Instead of rewarding unwed teenage mothers with government benefits, reward those who don't get pregnant with college scholarships or living-wage jobs after they graduate from high school.

Instead of forcing single mothers to get jobs or lose benefits, guarantee living-wage jobs and benefits (including job training or college) to all married fathers with children.

How about sending married soldiers home sooner, and for longer periods of time?

How about lower interest rates or zero down payments for newlyweds buying their first home?

There are a lot of amazing single mothers and fathers out there who are better and more responsible parents than many of us who are married.

There are children out there who are better off after their parents divorce. Divorce should be safe, legal and less common, but not forbidden.

This isn't about them. The divorced, widowed or responsibly single among us should not be treated as second-class citizens.

But the married among us should be encouraged, supported and protected because healthy marriages are good for all of us.

Rift Opens Among Evangelicals on AIDS Funding

This article comes from Christianity Today. I want to read more on the issue, but it's pretty troubling. You know it's crazy when Pat Robertson and Jim Wallis are on the same side of an issue.

Here's an excerpt:

As the world marks 25 years since HIV and AIDS first appeared, a clash among high-profile evangelical leaders over an international relief foundation threatens to take center stage.

The dispute also lays bare a faultline among American evangelicals, who have been divided over the treatment and prevention of AIDS because of the disease's perceived connections to homosexuality and sexual promiscuity.

The clash, which centers on the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, may have long-term ramifications, both for those suffering with diseases and for the reputation of American evangelicals, activists said.

If the U.S. fails to extend help because of objections from conservative Christians, "we will look on this as a very mistaken time," said Tony Campolo, a prominent sociologist and Christian activist.

More

Spiritual Transformation

I spent a little time this weekend organizing my office. I ran across this quote that a friend of mine gave me awhile back. If I remember correctly, it's from Dallas Willard. If it's not verbatim Dallas Willard, it's definitely inspired by him.

Spiritual transformation into Christlikeness requires conscious, clear-headed and public commitment to living as a disciple of Jesus Christ. That is, to a decision to give our lives to him as his constant students, learning from him how to live all aspects of our lives as he would live them. Evangelism should be understood as a call to receive the gift of such a life.

25 years on, AIDS is the 'worst, deadliest' epidemic ever

Today's cover story in the Commercial Appeal was on the AIDS epidemic. So far it's estimated that the disease has killed over 25 million people - that's since 1981!. Some believe that by 2025, the disease could kill 31 million people in India, 18 million people in China, and 100 million people in Africa.

From a Wikipedia article: In 2005 alone, AIDS claimed between an estimated 2.8 and 3.6 million, of which more than 570,000 were children.

Marriage under attack, but it's not by "them"

I read this article by David Waters this morning. It's from today's Commercial Appeal. Here's an excerpt:

"Today, the institution of marriage is under attack," Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said a few months ago when he promised to haul the Marriage Protection Amendment -- which defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman -- out of cold storage and up for a vote in early June.

"The danger this betokens for family life and a general condition of social justice and ordered liberty is hard to overestimate," stated a letter sent last week urging Congress to approve the amendment. It was signed by "the Religious Coalition of America," an impressive list of 50 religious leaders, including Rick Warren, James Dobson, Charles Blake and Eugene Rivers, and all eight U.S. Catholic cardinals.

Frist and the "Coalition" are right about one thing. The institution of marriage is under attack, but not by homosexuals.

By heterosexuals.

The percentage of men and women who get married every year is as low as it has ever been in this country.

More than half of all African-American children are living in single-parent homes. Fifty years ago, that figure was 22 percent.

One in five white children are living in single-parent homes. That figure has tripled in the past 50 years.

One in three children in America are born to unwed mothers!

In Memphis, three in five children are born out of wedlock!

I'm not a fan of exclamation points, but the previous two sentences should shock us all.

Read the rest of the article

The Lord's Prayer

I've started reading Scot McKnight's The Jesus Creed. Chapter 2 is on the Lord's Prayer. McKnight says, "we learn at least four things when we permit the Lord's Prayer to mentor our prayer life" (19).

1. We learn to approach God as Abba.
2. We learn waht God really wants.
God's love plan is for his glorious Name to be honored and his will to become concrete reality on earth. In pondering God's name, Kingdom, and will, we are prompted (daily) to yearn for what God yearns for.
3. We learn to think of others.
4. We learn what everyone needs.
Our concern is with God's breaking into history to make this world right for all of us. And that means praying for others so that they will have adequate provisions, spiritual purity, and moral stability.


McKnight points out that Jesus knew the dangers of prayer becoming nothing more than ritual. The Lord's Prayer can often become this. He says, "Jesus knows that his liturgical prayer will provide a framework for prayer, some hooks on which his disciples can hang their own praises and requests, their own complaints and queries" (18).


The following is a paraphrase of this passage by Dallas Willard (The Divine Conspiracy, p.269).

Dear Father always near us,
may your name be treasured and loved,
may your rule be completed in us -
may your will be done here on earth
in just the way it is done in heaven.
Give us today the things we need today,
and forgive us our sins and impositions on you
as we are forgiving all who in any way offend us.
Please don't put us through trials,
but deliver us from everything bad.
Because you are the one in charge,
and you have all the power,
and the glory too is all yours - forever -
which is just the way we want it!

A Review of Shane Claiborne's book

Here's a review of The Irrisistable Revolution from Relevant magazine.


I live an admittedly comfortable life. So comfortable, in fact, that when I picked up my copy of Shane Claiborne’s new book The Irresistible Revolution: Living as An Ordinary Radical, it didn’t even dawn on me to dawn on me that it would be anything other than some chewable food for thought. I had heard Shane speak his provocative words at my church, experienced first hand the rabble-rousing caused by his radical notions. I was fascinated by his hand-made clothes and dreadlocks and inspired by his ardent adherence to the uncomfortable parts of the Bible that most of us conveniently ignore. But I still didn’t get that the heart of Claiborne’s message is as simple as love.

From the moment I cracked the first page, I knew I was in trouble. I was not even through Jim Wallis’s introduction before I caught myself biting my nails in discomfort at the “cultural Christianity” describing to the letter my consumer existence. The Gospel is not comfortable, says Claiborne, and it is precisely our comfort inside church walls, inside our own homes, inside our own prejudices that has kept Christians immobile and ineffective as agents of social change. “I did not want to settle for a life detached from the groanings of the slums or the beauty of playing in open fire hydrants,” Claiborne asserts. “The more I read the Bible, the more I felt my comfortable life interrupted.”

Three types of leaders

More from Confessions of a Reformission Rev...

Three types of leaders (145):

1. Opportunity Seekers – continually seek new opportunities and are highly motivated by change and growth
2. Goal Setters – make plans and break projects into phases to ensure chaos is managed so that success is achieved
3. Problem Solvers – continually seek to understand potential problems and needs so that barriers to success can be proactively identified and removed

Four Phases of Organizational Decline

I read this in Driscoll's book, but it originally came from Rich DeVos.


Four Phases of Organizational Decline (141)

1. Creative, the dream stage
2. Management, the reality stage
3. Defensive justification, the failure stage
4. Blaming, the death stage
   

The comfort zone is the place a church commonly falls into once they have learned how to survive. This is the state of most American churches, with between 60 and 80 percent of all churches in America either plateaued or declining in membership and/or attendance. In the comfort zone, often there is no longer a visible immediate crisis since the bills are paid, most of the big jobs are being done by someone, leaders are officially in place, a permanent facility has been secured, and the people in the church have generally grown to know and love one another. At this stage, the propensity is for the church to settle in, accept its size, and slip into a mode of maintenance. At some point, people will move away or die, others will get bored, and slowly the church will begin a cycle of decline unless it intentionally reinvents itself missionally to continue to grow by taking risks in an effort to reach lost people for Jesus (141).

I noticed that each time we were in a creative phase, our church attracted more entrepreneurial types of skilled leaders who were excited about the opportunity to try something new and make a difference in our city. This indicates that chaos and crisis can be leveraged to a church’s benefit (142).

The hope for every church is that they work through their management issues, thereby enabling them to return to the creative phase, where they dream up a new project and enthusiastically undertake it and raise a whole new set of management issues to overcome. Therefore, the goal of the management phase is not to get the church organized or under control. Rather, the management phase is needed to eliminate the inefficiencies and barriers that are keeping the church from refocusing back on the creative phase and creating a whole new set of problems to manage (142).

In the defensive justification phase, something has gone terribly wrong and has failed at the management phase. Or the church succeeded at the management stage but never returned to the creative phase and got stuck with a bunch of well-organized managers running the church but no creative and visionary new ideas to move the church forward. Because the church is in a defensive posture, people start to leave the church, and the best and brightest people are no longer attracted to the church because it has lost sight of any risky mission that calls people to rise up in faith (143).

I feared that deconstructing and essentially restarting the church would kill us. I had found it a bit easier to take a risky gamble when we had nothing, but now we had something to lose (144).

What comforted me most as I was prayerfully thinking through our next season was a lengthy study through the New Testament in which I searched for what God promises to do for the church. As I studied, I learned that God promises to grow his church, select elders, save people, bless the teaching of his Word, gift people with exactly the abilities the church needs, and providentially make up for human mistakes if people are repentant of their sins. By the end of my studies, I was confident that our future would be fine because the heavy lifting would continue to be done by Jesus and that we just needed to trust him with obedience and keep going (144-145).

Maturity is the point at which the senior leaders again call the church to the mission that Jesus has called them to accomplish. As a church reaches maturity, it in some ways returns to a relaunching phase, in which the church organizes itself for growth but in a very thoughtful and wise way, seeking to maximize all their resources to achieve their goals (167).

Confessions of a Reformission Rev

I finished up Mark Driscoll's newest book a few weeks ago. Here are some great quotes from the book.

Characteristics of the emerging and missional church (19-20)

• Missions is every Christian being a missionary to their local culture
• The church accepts that it is marginalized in culture and holds no privileged position of influence but gains influence by serving the common good
• The primary culture to reach is postmodern and pluralistic
• Theology ranges from ancient orthodoxy to heterodox liberalism built on postmodern denials of true truth and known knowledge
• Churches are the people who love Jesus and serve his mission in a local culture
• Churches grow as Christians bring Jesus to lost people through hospitality
• Community means the church is a counterculture with a new kingdom way of life through Jesus
• Pastors need not be ordained or formally educated in theology and are trained in the church
• Pastors are missiologists who train Christians to be effective missionaries
• Lost people are saved by the Holy Spirit when and how he determines
• Faith is lived publicly together as the church and includes all of life
• Worship services blend ancient forms and current local cultural styles
• Church buildings are sacred, as is all of God’s creation

Attractional churches need to transform their people from being consumers in the church to being missionaries outside of the church. Missional churches need to gather crowds to their church so that hard words of repentance can be preached in an effort to expose people’s hearts. Those whom God saves can then be trained to go back out into the culture as missionaries to gather more people to repeat the process. Simply, the goal of the church that is both missional and attractional is to continually follow Jesus’ example so that more people are saved for God’s mission and more influence is spread for God’s kingdom, without rejecting one aspect of Jesus’ ministry in favor of another (27).

One of the greatest inhibitors of keeping a church on mission is the erroneous spoken and unspoken expectations people have for church leaders and their families. In a missional church, the lead pastor is the architect who builds the ship more than he is the captain who pilots it, the cook who washes dishes in the galley, or the activities director who coordinates the shuffleboard reservations. The role of architect is incredibly important because most pastors have been trained how to work on a ship instead of how to build a ship (34).

Kingdom Workshops

These folks from Florida are experimenting with a new way of training missionaries. Their first gathering is this weekend. Here's an excerpt about these workshops.

A few months ago, T and I had a series of conversations with Chris about the need to expose some of their full-time workers and volunteers to training that would move Urban Youth beyond convert-making and into disciple-building. We struggled with this question for quite some time, not least because I had been resistent to the idea of simply providing information to people without the potential for long-term learning and application to occur. Chris too, frankly, was tired of seeing people go through training programs and then get wrapped up in a culture of busyness that is such an easy path to follow in an active ministry.

So if you've read this far, you're probably interested in what we've come up with: Kingdom Workshops. I've created a little website that will give you all the details so I won't go into everything here. Very briefly, Kingdom Workshops will be 2-day collaborative learning experiences around different values of the kingdom. They will not primarily be informational, but will be aimed at helping us understand and appropriate kingdom realities in our real lives. From the website: "The goal is to create a shared learning environment that enables everyone to participate in the discovery process. In God's world, there are no experts, only explorers." In other words, it will not be myself or T or anyone else getting up and lecturing about the kingdom. There will be some ideas offered, a lot of questions posed - but primarily it will be working out the implications together. The first one will be over Memorial Day weekend on the kingdom of God being the basis for the gospel Jesus preached.

Here's the rest of the post.

Church = A Training Center for Missional People

I read this statement on Dan Kimball's site awhile back. He was quoting Scot McKnight. I've been thinking a lot about this, especially since moving to Memphis. There are many people here in Memphis who were raised in church. Whether or not they had a good experience in church is a toss-up, but the fact that many were raised in church is one of the things that separates this culture from the bay area. This means that there is an awful lot of baggage in people whose church experience was less than ideal. But it also means that there are a lot of people with a good foundation. I think there are many here who have been going to church (or who spent a lot of years going to church), but were never released into the culture as missionaries. I see one of our primary tasks here as empowering and releasing people as missionaries.

So how do we train missionaries? Over the next few months I'm going to be posting thoughts, articles, resources, etc. that will hopefully begin to bring some answers on this question.

Some scary statistics on pastors

I found these on Driscoll's blog. They're from George Barna and Focus on the Family. I think they speak for themselves. We are in a crisis.

Pastors

• Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
• Fifty percent of pastors' marriages will end in divorce.
• Eighty percent of pastors and eighty-four percent of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.
• Fifty percent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave the ministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
• Eighty percent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministry will leave the ministry within the first five years.
• Seventy percent of pastors constantly fight depression.
• Almost forty percent polled said they have had an extra-marital affair since beginning their ministry.
• Seventy percent said the only time they spend studying the Word is when they are preparing their sermons.

Pastors' Wives

• Eighty percent of pastors' spouses feel their spouse is overworked.
• Eighty percent of pastors' spouses wish their spouse would choose another profession.
• The majority of pastor's wives surveyed said that the most destructive event that has occurred in their marriage and family was the day they entered the ministry.

Read on for some signs that there are problems, as well as some helpful solutions.

Global Warming and Memphis

This article comes from the Memphis Flyer.

In a couple hundred years or so, some scientists say, Memphians who want to go to the beach will just pack up the car and head down to the river bluffs. They believe global warming could raise ocean temperatures and cause the polar ice caps to melt completely. The result: a dramatic rise in sea level that could swallow current coastal cities, eventually bringing the coastline up to Kevin Kane's front porch.

Far-fetched? Not according to Jerry Bartholomew, chair of the University of Memphis earth sciences department. "Memphis will be beachfront property," he says. "All of the major cities along the coast -- Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami, Tampa, Charleston, New Orleans -- would be underwater. If you raise sea levels 300 feet, they're under 300 feet of water."

It may sound like a gloom-and-doom scenario, but more than 20 percent of the polar ice caps have melted since 1979, according to The Weather Makers, Tim Flannery's new book on climate change.

Only time will tell how quickly the caps will melt -- or if the melting will continue -- but most scientists now agree that the earth is undergoing some sort of warming trend and that the outlook for the future is troubling.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (an international group of climatologists), the earth has already warmed one degree in recent decades. They say the reason is an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the result of more people burning more and more fossil fuels.

Locally, it's hard to say what effect, if any, global warming has had. Since it is a theory, nothing can be proven. However, Memphis has experienced hotter summers and milder winters for years now, and local plant life is changing. Some plants that don't normally thrive here are now thriving, while some native plants aren't faring as well. These could be temporary changes due to natural weather trends, or they could be human-induced, permanent changes resulting from global warming.

If it is indeed global warming, and the ice caps continue to melt, Memphis will experience more than just a great view of the ocean: Think overcrowding from migrating populations, crop failures, and increases in mosquitoes and disease. That scenario is admittedly a long way off, but scientists say the time to deal with the problem is now.

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Thoughts on Evangelism

This comes from Scot McKnight's site.

Many evangelistic efforts often close hearts rather than open them. How can you lovingly help someone wonder her way to Christ?

In April 2003, National Public Radio aired a news story about a standoff between an angry mob of Iraqi Shiites and a heavily armored patrol from the American 101st Airborne Division. Fearing that the soldiers were about to desecrate their holy shrine, hundreds of unarmed civilians pressed in toward the soldiers, waving their hands and shouting defiantly. Although the patrol’s intentions were peaceful, the standoff would most likely have ended in tragedy—had it not been for the quick thinking of U.S. Lt. Col. Christopher Hughes.

The commanding officer that day, Hughes picked up a loudspeaker and barked three simple commands to his group. First, he told them to take a knee; second, to point their weapons toward the ground; and finally, to look up and give everyone in the hostile crowd a friendly smile. Within moments of obeying his orders, NPR reported, the troops saw the crowd’s demeanor transform. Hostility and defiance melted away, as smiles and friendly pats on the back replaced shaking fists and screaming voices.

Though not immediately apparent, this hopeful story from the war in Iraq holds important implications for Christian outreach in a world that’s becoming increasingly hostile to traditional evangelistic methods. As author Ravi Zacharias says of today’s evangelism, “We must learn to find the back door to people’s hearts because the front door is heavily guarded.”

Much like the Shiites Lt. Col. Hughes dealt with, many people we hope to reach with the Gospel react defensively. They anticipate, and are amply prepared for, any direct attack on the holy places and sacred shrines of their hearts. Our message rarely gets through because they hear, “My worldview is better than yours, so let me tell you why I’m right and you’re wrong.” Instead of opening hearts to Christ, we merely perpetuate the “us vs. them” standoff.

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More on Germantown Baptist Church

As an update to my last post on this subject, the resolution to pass a new Constitution and Bylaws at Germantown Baptist Church did not pass. Apparently, things are still pretty tense. I don't want to give too much in the way of my opinion on this issue. Here are a few more links, though.

14-page letter by an anonymous staff member at GBC
Germantown Baptist drama goes on - 5/18 article from the Commercial Appeal
Germantown pastor says he can still lead, despite loss - 5/11 article from the Commercial Appeal
Comments from my last posting

Lost - there's never been a show like it!

I've been watching Lost since the first episode. There were a couple of times last season that I got online to "research" what the heck was going on. I realized that there are different types of fans. There are those who watch the show every Wednesday, but that's it. Then there are the others (not those "others"), those who treat the show like a PhD research assignment. I have to say that I don't have time to devote my life to this topic, but it sure is tempting. There are three more hours left this season, and it's getting good. Tonight I've been surfing the web, and am pretty much blown away by the creatives behind this show.

ABC has just started an interactive game called "The Lost Experience." This is a pdf document detailing the hints from the first week of the experience.

Here are several links to other interesting sites:

Lost in "Lost" - article from USA Today
Lost-TV
The Lost Experience
The Lost Experience Clues
Oceanic Flight 815
The Fuselage
The Hanso Foundation
Society for the Study of Lost
More "Lost" than Ever

Enjoy, and remember, if you haven't been watching this brilliant show, there are always DVD's! Yeah!

Hank Hill goes Church Shopping

I found this King of the Hill episode on Mark Driscoll's blog. Very funny!

Division at Germantown Baptist Church

Awhile back I heard that Germantown Baptist Church was going through some major division. A number of members, including the pastor, drafted a new constitution and bylaws. The primary change was that the 11,000-member church would move from a congregation-led church to an elder-led church.

Here are a couple of articles from the Commercial Appeal.

Article #1
Article #2

SaveGBC is a website recently set up by members who oppose the new constitution and bylaws. On the other side of the issue is GBC Plain & Simple. This site was created by those who support the new constitution and bylaws, and has letters by the pastor and many of the staff.

This Sunday night, May 7, the congregation will vote on this issue. Sam Shaw, the senior pastor, made the comment, "It really does give us an opportunity to demonstrate how Christians can disagree and remain family." Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I do not see this ending in a good way. My gut tells me that we'll see another church planted out of a split. I guess we'll find out soon.

Gracious Uncertainty

This morning Mandy and I read from My Utmost for His Highest. We read today's devotional, and then decided to read yesterday's as well. Yesterday's was titled "Gracious Uncertainty."

Our natural inclination is to be so precise—trying always to forecast accurately what will happen next—that we look upon uncertainty as a bad thing. We think that we must reach some predetermined goal, but that is not the nature of the spiritual life. The nature of the spiritual life is that we are certain in our uncertainty. Consequently, we do not put down roots. Our common sense says, “Well, what if I were in that circumstance?” We cannot presume to see ourselves in any circumstance in which we have never been.

Certainty is the mark of the commonsense life—gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life. To be certain of God means that we are uncertain in all our ways, not knowing what tomorrow may bring. This is generally expressed with a sigh of sadness, but it should be an expression of breathless expectation. We are uncertain of the next step, but we are certain of God. As soon as we abandon ourselves to God and do the task He has placed closest to us, He begins to fill our lives with surprises. When we become simply a promoter or a defender of a particular belief, something within us dies. That is not believing God—it is only believing our belief about Him. Jesus said, “… unless you … become as little children …” (Matthew 18:3). The spiritual life is the life of a child. We are not uncertain of God, just uncertain of what He is going to do next. If our certainty is only in our beliefs, we develop a sense of self-righteousness, become overly critical, and are limited by the view that our beliefs are complete and settled. But when we have the right relationship with God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy. Jesus said, “… believe also in Me” (John 14:1), not, “Believe certain things about Me”. Leave everything to Him and it will be gloriously and graciously uncertain how He will come in—but you can be certain that He will come. Remain faithful to Him.

A few thoughts on this...
More and more this is becoming for me the essence of the spiritual life with God. It's the life of faith. Our culture teaches us to take hold of our life and make something out of it. This involves being in control, in charge. The spiritual life is about giving everything up to God. I am discoving that there is more confidence and strength in this type of life. I may be uncertain about tomorrow, but I can be certain about God's role in my tomorrow. Notice I said "I can be." It is my choice. When we give up control to our lives, yet then cease to walk in faith, it can be one of the hardest, most depressing, things. We were never meant to do the first without the second. We have to continue to believe. Once we surrender, trust and obey, he "begins to fill our lives with surprises." Two nights ago Mandy and I were sitting outside, just marveling about this house. Even six months ago, we would not have dreamed that we would be living in a place like this. I chalk it up completely to a blessing from God.

We talk about the upward, inward and outward journeys. This would fall under the upward journey. The great thing is that it also affects the outward journey. One of the greatest ways to share Christ is to walk in faith. Many people around us are tired of being in control. They realize that they're really not that much in control anyway. Surrender is a tough discipline to master, though. When people encountered Jesus, they were so captivated by his presence that they often did crazy things. The person of Christ no longer walks this earth, so it is up to us as the Church to live a life that would so captivate people. How do we do this? By living a life that is completely surrendered to Christ.

Incredible Video

Go to this site and scoll down. It's on the right, where it says "Click Play for a Special Treat."

You'll need a broadband connection.

I promise, you will be moved!

Long-overdue update

Sorry for the long absence. Things have been very busy lately. Here's an update on the last few weeks.

We bought our first home. It's been great. A few problems here and there, but nothing major, which is good for a house built 85 years ago. We still have a few boxes left to unpack, but otherwise are pretty much settled in. We love our neighborhood, and have met most of our neighbors.

My days as a temp are once again over (at least until I plant another church). I'm now in a permanent part-time position (three days a week) at a Science company. I'm doing AP and AR.
We've had several projects with the house. This weekend we're putting together a storage shed. We don't have any storage right now, and need somewhere to put a lawnmower (once we buy a lawnmower).

Last weekend I spoke about Project Mustard Seed twice. We've had a lot of great response.

I just got in a few books from Amazon. I'm halfway through Mark Driscoll's newest, and will probably post some thoughts soon.

I think that's enough catching up for now. I'll try to do this again soon.

Our house

We close on our new house next Wednesday. That's also Mandy's birthday. This house was built in 1922, but was remodeled last summer. Here's a picture pre-remodeling, followed by a few current pictures.

Pics

March Madness

Tonight is the championship game - Florida vs. UCLA. I hope it will be a good game. I was really bummed that neither Duke nor Memphis made it to the Final Four. I also have to confess that Mandy might just beat me in our brackets challenge. Guess who she picked to win it all???

I was shocked by her pick. In fact, I made fun of her every chance I got. She said she had no real reason for this pick. She just made it.

Can you guess who she picked?


Florida!

Evangelical Teens Rally in San Francisco

More than 25,000 evangelical Christian youth landed Friday in San Francisco for a two-day rally at AT&T Park against "the virtue terrorism" of popular culture, and they were greeted by an official city condemnation and a clutch of protesters who said their event amounted to a "fascist mega-pep rally."

More


Below is an article from Sojourners magazine.

Battle for a wholesome generation?

by David Batstone

What cause do you suppose could bring more than 25,000 evangelical Christians together in San Francisco this past weekend: Immigration? The Iraq war? Climate change? Nope, a celebration of "virtue."

The two-day rally branded itself as Battle Cry for a Generation and fits into a broader national campaign to provide Christian youth with alternative entertainment - Christian rock and rap - and teach clear values.

The moving force behind the campaign is Ron Luce, host of the cable television show Acquire the Fire and author of literature geared for Christian teens. Luce freely uses the language of warfare to express how youth are under attack from a culture that celebrates wanton violence and sexual promiscuity. Corporate commercial centers target youth with a "virtue terrorism," Luce charges, and are winning the battle for their souls. Luce frames his efforts as a culture war, and wants to arm Christian youth with Bible-based solutions for life. The red flags and slogans he uses for Battle Cry for a Generation are revolutionary chic and emotive. Luce is savvy enough to realize that if you are going to resist mainstream pop culture, you have to provide youth a compelling alternative.

Despite my misgivings about the onward Christian soldier motif, I share the concerns that inspire the Battle Cry movement. As a father of four children quickly moving into adolescence I am painfully aware of how advertisers and entertainment outlets hone in on their demographic. The sexualization of youth culture is a primary tool to motivate their desires for consumer behavior. At first blush, that statement appears to be an oversimplification. It's not - titillation is the engine that drives the commercial machine.

So when Luce bemoans the MTV stereotypes of attractive young women and the celluloid images of manhood packed with violence, I am ready to raise his red flag of counter cultural resistance. I, too, do not let my kids run loose on MySpace and closely monitor the DVDs they bring into the house. So much of pop culture is a values cesspool, and I want my kids to understand how those distorted values corrupt a healthy soul.

Of late there have been some encouraging trends in pop culture. A relatively new film company, Walden Films, is making family entertainment that embeds meaningful values. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Charlotte's Web are two of their initial forays into the theaters. And at a time when marketers tell us that only promiscuous sex and violence sell, a rather wholesome "High School Musical" has become a pop phenomenon. These successes hopefully will spawn a new wave of media that I will be happy to see make its way into my home.

Thus, it saddens me to see an event such as the Battle Cry for a Generation rally detour off its original path. It throws itself into the polarized debates on same-sex marriage and abortion. Ostensibly, that is why San Francisco was chosen as the site of the high profile rally last weekend. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the Battle Cry invitation stated, "[Come to] the very City Hall steps where several months ago, gay marriages were celebrated for all the world to see."

Predictably, advocates for a libertine culture came out of the woodwork to host a counter-rally. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a front page story covering the conflict - protesters were quoted as calling the event a "fascist mega-pep rally." In the scuffle, the profound range of issues that the Battle Cry raises are lost. Opposition to gay marriage drowns out all concerns about greed, materialism, and the assault on our kids' innocence.

Lamentably, the media fans the flames of the conflict. The Chronicle knows which story will sell papers in San Francisco, in other words. But I also fault the narrow vision of those who stand behind the Battle Cry. If you want to make a symbolic stand, why not go to the town where Desperate Housewives is filmed? Or host the rally in New York City where Sex and the City is set. A gathering outside the studios of MTV also would be rich with symbolism.

I simply cannot understand why so many evangelicals consider same-sex marriage as the prime threat to the virtue of heterosexual families. Honestly, which has ruined more marriages: The extramarital affairs that are so brazenly celebrated on Desperate Housewives or the decision of two men or two women who love each other to make their lifelong commitment public? I don't think there is any doubt about the answer to that question. Yet most discussion of sex and values in the church veers inevitably to the gay and lesbian issues.

I have a proposal: Let's do an honest appraisal of teenage sexuality and lifestyle. Let's evaluate how the values of youth are shaped, and what forces are at play to move them in one direction or another. And let's ignore those political blocs that want to utilize vital family issues for their own agenda.

Tempin'

After college I worked for a Temp Agency for awhile. Eight years later, and one degree more, I'm back in the temp world, and, as the classic song goes, "you know it's hard out there for a temp."

I'm currently working full-time doing accounts payable for a company in east memphis. I'm hoping it might turn into a permanent part-time position. It's been a little frustrating that I'm doing this again. Actually, it's mostly just hurt my pride. I'm making a little more than a third of what I made in the Bay Area, and I'm making a little more than half of what we pay our employees at the tutoring network.

But...it's honest work. So I'm not pimping. I'm temping.

In all honesty, I know that this is part of what God wants to work in me. What am I willing to do for the mission that He's called me to? He's been teaching me so much in the little time I have to study. The last two mornings I've woken up before 6:00 and have had lots of time to read, pray, and write. Yesterday I spent my lunch break at Starbucks writing. Most wouldn't consider that a lunch break, but it's been really good for me. It's energized me.

I'm also reading The Divine Conspiracy. In the book, Dallas Willard writes that discipleship is "learning from Jesus to live my life as he would live my lilfe if he were I." I'm learning how to do my job as if Jesus were doing my job. Brother Lawrence wrote that discipleship occurs in the mundane and the ordinary. I think that's a lot of what I need to learn right now.

Humbled by Humility

Last month, on my other blog, I wrote a little on the topic of homosexuality. It came after reading Brian McLaren's and Mark Driscoll's thoughts on the subject. Driscoll said some pretty harsh things. I've been learning a lot from Driscoll over the past couple of weeks, but it's always saddened me that he has an attitude that if you disagree with him on an issue, you're wrong.

Well, Mark Driscoll has apologized to both Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt on his blog. I was very touched by his humility. There are not many men in his position who would do this, and it makes me respect him even more now.

Sudanese refugees in Memphis

The Memphis Flyer has a great article about the hunderes of Sudanese refugees who have settled in Memphis. The following quote is from Rhodes student Rachel Boulden, and really summarizes the article.

"We have to get people to pay attention and realize the refugees are here. They really are like invisible people. No one knows they're here - or they just don't care."

In this article there is a plea for more volunteers. There is a plea for churches to get involved. We first have to educate ourselves. I continue to be amazed that it is a periodical like the Memphis Flyer that educates me about the world. Once we learn, we have to give. We have to get involved. I know that this is one of the reasons we are in Memphis. It's one of the reasons why Project Mustard Seed exists.

A Great Tribute to St. Patrick

Link

This "Thing"

This is a great post by a guy wrestling with what this "thing" we call church is supposed to be.

What interests me is this: Intentionally Spirit-led communities of faith wrestling with message of the kingdom. Communities/churches that have really gotten the whole missional "thing" and see the message of the kingdom as the message to live out together. No doubt that I have a personal preference to see these communities be as grass-roots and/or organic as possible. But not because I think that those types of communities have it all figured out. But because my experience has led me to believe that this type of church is the one that is the most conducive to true disciple-making. But that's my preference … I don't arrogate to myself the perspective from which I can declare that one form of gathering is "better" than another … as a rule.

Continue reading here.

Mark Driscoll

Last night I finished listening to a lecture by Mark Driscoll, pastor at Mars Hill in Seattle. The talk was from the 2006 Acts 29 Network Bootcamp.

There were parts of the session that I loved, and there was a lot that made me cringe. I cringed for two reasons. At times Driscoll says things that I feel are just wrong. Often it's just the way he says them. However, I also cringed because I was convicted. He said some things that stopped me in my tracks. Mandy and I are going to listen to a few more sessions, then I'm hoping to get some of my thoughts on paper (or at least on the blog).

All of the sessions can be downloaded here.

Scot McKnight on the Emerging Church

I just read this article by Scot McKnight on the Emerging Church. Although I've just discovered this guy, I really like him. He is definitely a fan of the Emerging Church Movement (EM), but he is still on the outside, and therefore, I believe, not as biased either way. He starts out by describing the positives of the EM. He describes these positives as the "pros" and the "posts" of the EM.

Here are some of those positives that he describes.

• Pro-missional
  
• To be "missional" means embracing a holistic gospel, which is a gospel for the whole person (heart, soul, mind and strength), for the whole society (politics, economy, culture, environment), and for the whole world.
  
• The mission of the Christian community is to discover the "mission" of God in that local community and participate in that work of God.
  
• Pro-Jesus
• The EM wants to root its theology, which is more practical than it is theoretical, in the incarnate life of Jesus. It wants a theology that is shaped by relationship with the person of Jesus rather than rationality and systematic thinking.
• The rest of the New Testament and Bible are read through the lens of the kingdom vision of Jesus.
  
• Pro-church
• The EM is ecumenical - not in trying to find doctrinal common ground, but in trying to find a common mission. Because it is focused on mission, the EM finds it much easier to cooperate with other Christians.
  
• Pro-culture
• Concerned with the postmodern generation
• Emerged and is shaped by a youth culture
  
• Pro-sensory worship
• Engages all the senses (we are to worship God with our heart, sould, mind and body)
• Participatory
  
• Post-evangelical and post-liberal
• Post-doctrinal statements
• An EM website will often include a "rule of life" or a "missional statement" and often will not have "what we believe."
• Theological statements are easily turned into monuments and statues, and the EM wants even its theology to be conversational.
  
• Post-Bible-study piety
• Not because the EM doesn't read the Bible or believe in the Bible or preach from the Bible, but because it believes that the Bible is to be read formationally and not just informationally.
  

McKnight does not stop simply with the positives he sees. He next addresses potential problems.

• Primarily made up of white, middle class postmoderns
• Needs to find balance between "Christian gospel work" and "Creation-only social work"
• Needs to grapple with the rest of the Bible. A Jesus-first theology is ok. A Jesus-only theology is not.
  
• Theology has to be dealt with coherently. Theological statements are not wrong. Theology needs to be articulated.
  

The Church as Subversive Community

On Sunday evening I'll be at my parent's church. Mandy and I are going to lead worship, and then I'm going to share about Project Mustard Seed. As I was working on the talk this afternoon, I reread an article that has influenced me about as much as anything else I've read over the past few years. The article is by Mike Bishop, a member of a Vineyard community in West Palm Beach, FL. The article is called "The Church as Subversive Community."

I saw that he had a blog, so I decided to check it out. I came to a post that really got my attention. As we're beginning a new life in Cooper-Young, I think there are some practical points that I need to hear. Here are a few of them:

1. Expect to make mistakes. They are all covered.
2. We need to quit praying from a place of fear. Begin to pray from a place of thanksgiving and then ask, “God, what are you already doing?”
3. Begin practicing awareness.
4. We cannot afford to live in A, work in B, and worship in C.
5. Define your life as a contribution and then live there.

New Monasticism

I was reading Darin's blog this morning and came upon a couple of links related to the New Monasticism movement. The first link is from an article out of the San Francisco Chronicle. The second link is chapter three of Shane Claiborn's new book, The Irrisistible Revolution. Happy reading!

Views on Tithing

This morning I came across an article from the March 16 TN Baptist and Reflector newspaper. The cover page article is titled "Clergy, laity hold different views on tithing."

The researchers polled four groups of individuals:
1. SBC clergy
2. SBC laity
3. All clergy
4. All laity

They posed four statements. Below are the statements, followed by the percentage of people within each group who agreed with the statement.

1. Biblical mandate to tithe to the local church
SBC clergy: 76%
SBC laity: 51%
All clergy: 56%
All laity: 36%

2. Biblical mandate to tithe, but not necessarily to the church
SBC clergy: 4%
SBC laity: 28%
All clergy: 12%
All laity: 23%

3. Biblical mandate to give, but no specific amount or percentage
SBC clergy: 12%
SBC laity: 16%
All clergy: 20%
All laity: 27%

4. No Biblical mandate to give at all
SBC clergy: 1%
SBC laity: 3%
All clergy: 1%
All laity: 10%



I think the most revealing of all of these statements is the second one. It's apparent that, at least among SBC churches, there is a difference of opinion on where the tithe can be given. 96% of pastors believe that the tithe should go to the local church (the storehouse), while only 72% of laity believe this. It's not that laity do not want to give. The first statement makes that obvious (51% believe that there is a Biblical mandate to tithe). I think there are two possible reasons why so many believe that the tithe can go outside of the local church. The first is that they do not like how the church is stewarding the funds. The second is that they want to make decisions as a family how they give away their resources. They want a hands-on experience, be it globally or locally.

The bottom line here...when there is this much of a difference between what pastors think and what their parishioners think, I think we need to be a little concerned.

Ed Stetzer on the Emerging Church

This article came out a few months ago, but I just read it today. In it he separates emerging church leaders into three categories:

Relevants - those who are simply trying to contextualize the gospel in their communities
The churches of the “relevants” are not filled with the angry white children of evangelical megachurches. They are, instead, intentionally reaching into their communities (which are different than where most Southern Baptists live) and proclaiming a faithful biblically-centered Gospel there.

Reconstructionists - Here he is referring to those who think the models that have worked for so long but now no longer work. They therefore are trying to get rid of structures that prohibit the gospel from spreading.
The reconstructionists think that the current form of church is frequently irrelevant and the structure is unhelpful. Therefore, we see an increase in models of church that reject certain organizational models, embracing what are often called “incarnational” or “house” models. They are responding to the fact that after decades of trying fresh ideas in innovative churches, North America is less churched, and those that are churched are less committed.

Revisionists - those who, in trying to contextualize the gospel, have moved away from the gospel.
Revisionists are questioning (and in some cases denying) issues like the nature of the substitutionary atonement, the reality of hell, the complementarian nature of gender, and the nature of the Gospel itself. The revisionist emerging church leaders should be treated, appreciated and read as we read mainline theologians -- they often have good descriptions, but their prescriptions fail to take into account the full teaching of the Word of God.


I think this article is very good for someone who is trying to understand why there is so much controversy over the Emerging Church. I'm just not sure if it is this cut and dry. That would be my only hesitation with it. For example, many would not lump the nature of the Gospel and complementarianism into the same "heresy" category. I know he was just giving examples.

More About Project Mustard Seed

When we talk about Project Mustard Seed, we talk about three journeys that we are on.

1. The Upward Journey
This is the journey of spiritual formation. We have been created in the image of God, and for relationship with God. We follow Jesus as our King and our Teacher. We help others come to know and love this God. The Scripture that comes to mind is Matthew 22:37-38, which says, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment."

2. The Inward Journey
We were never meant to walk this journey of faith alone. Spiritual formation cannot happen apart from community. We need people around us who love us, encourage us, admonish us, and above all, urge us towards maturity. A key verse for us is John 13:34-35, in which Jesus said, "Let me give you a new command: Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other” (The Message).

3. The Outward Journey
The outward journey is one of mission. Just as Jesus gave His life away for the world, so we are to do the same. The Church is the called out, sent forth people of God. The second commandment that Jesus gave in Matthew 22 fits well here: "and love your neighbor as yourself." The question, "who is my neighbor?" must obviously be asked. We are called to love our neighbor across the street as well as our neighbor across the world. We cannot afford to be ignorant of the world's problems. We believe that the Church is called to be on the front lines of ending poverty, disease, and injustice.


Even as I post this, I am excited to be a part of a community like this. Todd Hunter defines the church as this (I think he got it from Dallas Willard):
"The cooperative friends of Jesus, seeking to live lives of constant creative goodness through the power of the Holy Spirit, for the sake of the world."

I think this is a great definition of a community that I'd like to be a part of. I'll probably update this posting from time to time.

If you're at all familiar with the Church of the Saviour, you'll see that we've been influenced by their life and their writings.

Abundance in $20

This is a great post from my friend Kenny McCord. Kenny has been one of my closest friends over the last few years. I continue to learn from him, not just through the things that he says but through the way he and his family live their lives. Thanks Kenny!

Project Mustard Seed

I have a new blog up. We'll be using this blog to tell more about our new ministry in Memphis.

Millions More Starving by 2015

The world will have 100 million extra hungry people by 2015, say scientists.

Despite great improvements in food availability in the 1960s and 1970s, these trends are reversing in many developing countries, they say.

The United Nations' goal of halving hunger by 2015 looks unattainable without new technologies and greater financial investment, they add.

Ten pre-school children die every minute from malnutrition and this number has not changed since the early 1980s despite global promises.

Build it and they will come

Build it and they will come

This line was of course made famous in the movie Field of Dreams. However, it's also been a strategy (perhaps an unconcious one) of the church over the past few decades. It's one of the reasons why I was first attracted to the house church movement. The idea was that instead of trying to get the world to come to the church, we, the church, the missional people of God, would go to the world.

We've been working on a proposal for a church start over the last few months, and this morning I was reminded again of this principle. I first read Jesus For a New Generation, by Kevin Ford, during the summer of 1996. It was the first book that I had read on the subject of Generation X. It had a tremendous impact on me. A little over a year later I was helping to plant a church in Nashville that targeted this generation. This morning I was rereading the proposal that our pastor had written for that new church. In the proposal there is a quote from this book. Here's the quote.

"I have met very few Thirteeners (another term for Generation X) who actually hate God. When I meet someone who has an aversion to church, I sometimes ask why. With the exception of the few satanists I've encountered, no one says, I avoid church because I hate God.' Instead, they say, 'Church is boring.' Or 'Christians are hypocrites.' So I respond. 'Well, gee, I go to church, and that's not my experience. If you could go to a church that was not boring, and where the Christians were not hypocritical, where people talked directly and honestly about life, where you got a chance to see how God intersects with human lives - do you think you might be interested?' Without exception, they all answer, 'Yes.'

The idea at the time was that we had to make church relevant to this generation. They no longer fit in their parents' churches, and they were no longer going to go just because it was the cultural thing to do. So how did we make church more relevant? We replaced choirs and organs with drums and guitars; we encouraged people to take off their masks and be real with one another, believing that authentic lives were key to sharing the gospel; we sought to figure out how Jesus fit into our lives Monday through Saturday; etc. So where has that left us?

All of this is great, but my feeling now is that we didn't take things far enough. The paradigm was shifting, and we made part of the leap, but not all of it. The question was still, "If you could go to a church that was not boring...do you think you might be interested." This is not the problem. I think we're going to have to dig deeper as to why people do not come to our churches. I think we're going to have to go back to Scripture, as well as to history. How did the early church make such an impact on society. We won't find the answers until we first learn the right questions to ask.

My prayer is that we will have the courage to discover and then ask these questions.

What is Project Mustard Seed?

Jesus once said that the Kingdom of God was like a mustard seed (Matt. 13:31). He explained that a mustard seed was the smallest seed that one could find, yet, when it was fully grown, would become the largest of all plants. Jesus taught us to pray that God's will would be done here on earth as it is in heaven. This involves prayer, but it also involves work.

Project Mustard Seed isn't a church. It isn't even a true organization. It's more a set of values for us. We believe that at some point a church that lives out these values will be birthed. Our mission is to bring about spiritual and social change to our neighbors. This involves those neighbors here in Memphis, but also those throughout the world. Some may say that this mission is an unrealistic one. Perhaps it is, but if we're not hoping for this, then what are we really doing?

This morning Mandy and I watched Bono's speech at the February 2 prayer breakfast. By some of his statements, I don't think he considers himself much of a public speaker, but I thought he did an incredible job. He encouraged, celebrated, and challenged. Below are a few excerpts from the speech, along with the links for both the video and the transcript.


I’d like to talk about the laws of man, here in this city where those laws are written. And I’d like to talk about higher laws. It would be great to assume that the one serves the other; that the laws of man serve these higher laws… but of course, they don’t always. And I presume that, in a sense, is why you’re here.

Even though I was a believer.

Perhaps because I was a believer.

I was cynical… not about God, but about God’s politics. (There you are, Jim.)

Then, in 1997, a couple of eccentric, septuagenarian British Christians went and ruined my shtick—my reproachfulness. They did it by describing the Millennium, the year 2000, as a Jubilee year, as an opportunity to cancel the chronic debts of the world’s poorest people. They had the audacity to renew the Lord’s call—and were joined by Pope John Paul II, who, from an Irish half-Catholic’s point of view, may have had a more direct line to the Almighty.

‘Jubilee’—why ‘Jubilee’?

What was this year of Jubilee, this year of our Lords favor?

I’d always read the Scriptures, even the obscure stuff. There it was in Leviticus (25:35)…

‘If your brother becomes poor,’ the Scriptures say, ‘and cannot maintain himself… you shall maintain him… You shall not lend him your money at interest, not give him your food for profit.’

It is such an important idea, Jubilee, that Jesus begins his ministry with this. Jesus is a young man, he’s met with the rabbis, impressed everyone, people are talking. The elders say, he’s a clever guy, this Jesus, but he hasn’t done much… yet. He hasn’t spoken in public before…

When he does, is first words are from Isaiah: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,’ he says, ‘because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.’ And Jesus proclaims the year of the Lord’s favour, the year of Jubilee. (Luke 4:18)

What he was really talking about was an era of grace—and we’re still in it.

So fast-forward 2,000 years. That same thought, grace, was made incarnate—in a movement of all kinds of people. It wasn’t a bless-me club… it wasn’t a holy huddle. These religious guys were willing to get out in the streets, get their boots dirty, wave the placards, follow their convictions with actions… making it really hard for people like me to keep their distance. It was amazing. I almost started to like these church people.

When churches started demonstrating on debt, governments listened—and acted. When churches starting organising, petitioning, and even—that most unholy of acts today, God forbid, lobbying… on AIDS and global health, governments listened—and acted.

I’m here today in all humility to say: you changed minds; you changed policy; you changed the world.

Look, whatever thoughts you have about God, who He is or if He exists, most will agree that if there is a God, He has a special place for the poor. In fact, the poor are where God lives.

Check Judaism. Check Islam. Check pretty much anyone.

I mean, God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill… I hope so. He may well be with us as in all manner of controversial stuff… maybe, maybe not… But the one thing we can all agree, all faiths and ideologies, is that God is with the vulnerable and poor.

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house… God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives… God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war… God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them. “If you remove the yolk from your midst, the pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness, and if you give yourself to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted, then your light will rise in darkness and your gloom with become like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places”

It’s not a coincidence that in the Scriptures, poverty is mentioned more than 2,100 times. It’s not an accident. That’s a lot of air time, 2,100 mentions. [You know, the only time Christ is judgmental is on the subject of the poor.] ‘As you have done it unto the least of these my brethren, you have done it unto me.’ (Matthew 25:40). As I say, good news to the poor.

But here’s the bad news. From charity to justice, the good news is yet to come. There’s is much more to do. There’s a gigantic chasm between the scale of the emergency and the scale of the response.

And finally, it’s not about charity after all, is it? It’s about justice.

Let me repeat that: It’s not about charity, it’s about justice.

And that’s too bad.

Because you’re good at charity. Americans, like the Irish, are good at it. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can’t afford it.

But justice is a higher standard. Africa makes a fool of our idea of justice; it makes a farce of our idea of equality. It mocks our pieties, it doubts our concern, it questions our commitment.

6,500 Africans are still dying every day of a preventable, treatable disease, for lack of drugs we can buy at any drug store. This is not about charity, this is about Justice and Equality.

Because there's no way we can look at what’s happening in Africa and, if we're honest, conclude that deep down, we really accept that Africans are equal to us. Anywhere else in the world, we wouldn’t accept it. Look at what happened in South East Asia with the Tsunami. 150, 000 lives lost to that misnomer of all misnomers, “mother nature”. In Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month. A tsunami every month. And it’s a completely avoidable catastrophe.

It’s annoying but justice and equality are mates. Aren’t they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.

I want to suggest to you today that you see the flow of effective foreign assistance as tithing…. Which, to be truly meaningful, will mean an additional one percent of the federal budget tithed to the poor.

What is one percent?

One percent is not merely a number on a balance sheet.

One percent is the girl in Africa who gets to go to school, thanks to you. One percent is the AIDS patient who gets her medicine, thanks to you. One percent is the African entrepreneur who can start a small family business thanks to you. One percent is not redecorating presidential palaces or money flowing down a rat hole. This one percent is digging waterholes to provide clean water.

One percent is a new partnership with Africa, not paternalism towards Africa, where increased assistance flows toward improved governance and initiatives with proven track records and away from boondoggles and white elephants of every description.

America gives less than one percent now. Were asking for an extra one percent to change the world. to transform millions of lives—but not just that and I say this to the military men now – to transform the way that they see us.

Video

Transcript

What is Church?

Here are excerpts from an article I read this morning. Thanks to Kenny for the link.

Recently I was speaking with a good friend about his dream to plant a church/ministry in New York city, since his dream is seemingly the same as mine just opposite coasts, I was more apt to listen closely. He made the statement that he wanted to plant a church in the city that truly lived out the church 6 days a week, and on the 7th day he didn't care where they went to worship.

I must admit that this idea resonates deep in my heart of hearts but at first this idea struck me as strange, why would you plant a church with no visible numbers to report? Why would you submit yourself to such hardwork and arduous labor without being able to write a prayer letter detailing the size of your services or the size of your sanctuary? With no tangible results how will anyone know what is going on? This is the mindset of the church today, a mindset that must change if the kingdom is to be increased.


...it is because of these friends that my mind, more importantly my heart, has changed. Being the church is more important than a Sunday morning service. Sure we'll probably have one in Portland. Yes I hope it grows. But my prayer is that our leadership never get bigger than Jesus. That we never let our human greed defeat our desire to meet human need. And that we look nothing like the "money changers" of old, but rather the True church of Jesus Christ.


Continue reading

Welcome to the Project Mustard Seed Blog

Mandy and I will from time to time be posting about the things we are learning here in our new home - Memphis.

Sanctification

My Utmost for His Highest, February 8

The Cost of Sanctification

“May the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely …” (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

When we pray, asking God to sanctify us, are we prepared to measure up to what that really means? We take the word sanctification much too lightly. Are we prepared to pay the cost of sanctification? The cost will be a deep restriction of all our earthly concerns, and an extensive cultivation of all our godly concerns. Sanctification means to be intensely focused on God’s point of view. It means to secure and to keep all the strength of our body, soul, and spirit for God’s purpose alone. Are we really prepared for God to perform in us everything for which He separated us? And after He has done His work, are we then prepared to separate ourselves to God just as Jesus did? “For their sakes I sanctify Myself …” (John 17:19). The reason some of us have not entered into the experience of sanctification is that we have not realized the meaning of sanctification from God’s perspective. Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the nature that controlled Him will control us. Are we really prepared for what that will cost? It will cost absolutely everything in us which is not of God.

Are we prepared to be caught up into the full meaning of Paul’s prayer in this verse? Are we prepared to say, “Lord, make me, a sinner saved by grace, as holy as You can”? Jesus prayed that we might be one with Him, just as He is one with the Father (see John 17:21–23). The resounding evidence of the Holy Spirit in a person’s life is the unmistakable family likeness to Jesus Christ, and the freedom from everything which is not like Him. Are we prepared to set ourselves apart for the Holy Spirit’s work in us?

In the past, I've thought about sanctification in light of the chief sins: lying, cussing, cheating, etc. If I could keep from sinning, then I'd be holy. I would become who God created me to be. Today I see things much differently. Sanctification is not something that I do. It is something that God works in me. I have to ask for it, then yield. As He works this in my, I have to trust His work and then obey. That's not as simple as it sounds, yet it's a lot more simple than for me to work at becoming holy.

The cost will be a deep restriction of all our earthly concerns, and an extensive cultivation of all our godly concerns. Sanctification means to be intensely focused on God’s point of view.

Yesterday Mandy and I went to see End of the Spear. It's the story of the five missionaries who were murdered in the jungles of Ecuador in 1956. Among those missionaries was Jim Elliot and Nate Saint. This movie is about sanctification. It causes the viewer to ask why a group of people would risk their lives, why they would leave the comforts of America for the jungle, and why, after their husbands' deaths, would the wives return to the jungle with their children. In the movie we see Nate Saint's overwhelming urge to find the Waodani Indians before more of them were killed. These families seemed to have had in mind God's concerns over their own. One cannot muster this up. It comes over time, as God has His way in a person's life. The amazing thing is that these people had such joy. They never seemed to regret their choices. Two nights ago we watched the documentary Beyond the Gates of Splendor. The story was not over in 1956. God has continued to bring transformation through the sacrificial love of these families.

What is a blogger?

According to Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start, a blogger is "someone with nothing to say writing for someone with nothing to do." He is of course being a little sarcastic, but he's probably pretty right on.

The question of homosexuality

I just came across this article from Leadership Journal by Brian McLaren. There is the original article by Brian, followed by a second article that is really a selected response by a reader. The next response is from Mark Driscoll. Finally there is a response by Brian McLaren. Throughout all of these there are comments by readers.

Here are a few thoughts.

1. It saddens me how much (I'm going to use the word) hatred there is. Hate normally comes as a result of prejudice or fear. Maybe there is a little of both of these going on.

2. We've just moved to Memphis. We're going to be living in a place where there are more homosexuals than anywhere within at least a 200-mile radius. I am hearing church leaders struggling with this topic. Being from the San Francisco area, we are being asked our opinion. I'm glad the questions are being asked.

3. I've been a fan of both Driscoll and McLaren. I feel like one reader who asked if it was possible to like both of these guys, or if he was going to have to choose. Maybe that's one of our problems. I first heard both of these guys at the same conference - the Young Leader conference in New Mexico in 1998. Over the years I've learned a great deal from both of them. It's too bad that they now feel this way about the other.

4. I think this is a very difficult issue. I don't think I should be ashamed to admit that I have trouble with this. I don't think it's like slavery. At the same time, I don't want my fear and prejudice to dictate how I relate to a homosexual. I don't think my job is to repel a person with the truth. Enough of that is happening today. If a person wants to truly dialog, then I am willing to engage, to build a relationship. We can look at Scripture. We can pray. We can be honest with one another. If that person wants nothing more than to pick a fight, I'm probably not the best one to engage with.

5. I want to be careful what I write, as well as how I write. So many things can be misunderstood. Dialogue is much better. I'm glad only about two people read this blog. Maybe that will help to keep me out of trouble.

Some help on the words "emerging" and "missional"

This comes from Andrew Jones' site. I think it gives some good clarification and history on these sometimes confusing words.