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Click the word "posts" on the podcast box below, then click "Dave/Delirious"..
Several relevant issues to this blog, in order of appearance in the interview:
-Car crashes and discernment -becoming missional -the natural end of the band -Compassion Art -"You don't have to believe to belong" -"Where do the record stores file you guys?" -Getting cult-followers into Christian bookstores
Killer quote: "That seems to be only in America that they want to do that."
"Our song 'It's OK' caused controversy because of the word 'hell' in the lyric, and has been pulled from several Christian stores in the U.S., despite the fact it has touched many people profoundly. For us boys, this is a case of 'let's keep anything impure away from the church' when, in my opinion, purity is all about bringing justice to a God-less society.." -Martin Smith of Delirious context: an article on Delirious lyrics that God has used
KKeltic Ken and I interviewed Beth Maynard for KRDU about the U2 faith connection. Full of good stuff, of course.. like the quote "a recipe for distance."
So, I'm joined to Fresno in Spirit. If there were ever a group of people in which I felt understood, though miles away, it's gotta be Fresno.
A strange thing this is (I know, I sound like Yoda). But in all seriousness, it is strange. That people so far away would feel like home.
Yet, God seems to operate through oddities (at least in my life).
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I believe that God's calling is inherent to every individual and as the "individuals" that we are, some of us are conventional, Sunday church-goers in suits who'd rather not partake of a cup of wine or a cold beer. And it's ok. God sees the heart. Perhaps I may not be able to relate to my suited, non-wine/beer drinking brother in Christ on many levels, maybe I'll feel judged by him or awkward in his presence, but, on a core level, we are part of the same family. We share the same spiritual DNA.
Others (like me and like many of the folk in Fresno) are odd (yes you know you are... and that's why I love you guys), we lead unconventional lives... or not... but the way we view our relationship with God differs from mainstream Christianity.
And that's the beauty of it, that no matter how many times I've walked the streets of my very southern city, thinking that I really don't fit into mainstream Christianity and/or mainstream society and/or life in general... or that the four churches over here really aren't my cup of tea... which sometimes saddens me (couldn't I have been more normal and have felt content in a "normal" church, for Pete's sake?), the truth is that God DOES NOT make mistakes.
I'm not a mistake. The way I view life, the nuances that make me, "me"... My hurts, my hopes and dreams, my fears, my questions, my love, my smiles, my songs... these are not mistakes.
Some of us are anti-system, some have a deep questioning of institutions, some of us may feel a bit rebellious, a bit of an outsider (I know I do) some of us walk around a bit blindly, knowing that we love God and Jesus, but hey, that's about all we know.
And it's ok.
Not all of us are called to be spiritual giants or mountains of wisdom. Through our small efforts, through the muck we think we are spiritually, God is operating. Little by little. But rest assured that life and a path given to him (even if we take it back every week or so) will be guided by... him.
Psalm 37:5
5 Commit your way to the LORD; trust in him and he will do this:
6 He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.
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In God's kingdom, there is something for everyone.
My two years in this city have been marked by periods of extreme loneliness, a mistake or two (which God kindly saved me from, it could have been a lot worse) and a bunch of surprises.
For instance, many of God's blessings came from unexpected people. Mostly gay. I really don't have Christian friends in this city. I tried. I really did. But the only friends that came my way were gay. One was my roommate, whom I met the first day I came here. A lovely man who (though not prone to physical demonstrations of kindness, he says so himself) hugs me, kisses my cheek and just plain shares the love. The other was a colleague who just waltzed into my life and decided I was worth loving with all his heart. These gay friends dote on me, accept me, help me out financially (they furnished my apartment when I had no money to do so). And Christmases and all major holidays are spent with them. They have become family. Did I look for them? No... Was I a horrible sinner that went astray and thus met them... Ummm... nope. Quite the opposite, I was looking for God's deliverance with all my heart back then.
And the support I looked for at church, but did not find, I found in them.
Isn't God odd like that? Or is he "normal" like that?
And how about my "church", the ones I consider MY church? You guys are all in Fresno.
And what does all this say about God?
That God works in mysterious ways? The cliche is true. We may really never know what he's up to in our lives. We may not understand his times, we may be surprised at those he chooses to bless us. All we can really do is keep living, keep praying, commit our path to God, hold on to the faith, not lose hope, help someone out there with time, money, prayers (so much of it is about others, isn't it?) and enjoy and give thanks for the wine (or beer) we have every once in a while with the neighbors.
Love you Guys. Don't forget to drop a prayer or two my way. ;)
Also, the Spirit F68 helps us. We are very weak, but the Spirit helps us with our weakness. We don't know how to pray like we should. But the Spirit himself speaks to God for us. The Spirit begs God for us. The Spirit speaks to God with deep feelings that words cannot explain.
God can see what is in people's hearts. And God knows what is in the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit speaks to God for his people in the way that God wants.
We had a great time today, this first Sunday in Advent...I spoke on, as I do every year, what Jack Hayford calls "The Mary Miracle." It's always a highlight of the year for me.
We
bounced on Rob Bell's trampoline,
kicked off the Advent Conspiracy,
prayed to U2's "Yahweh,"
partook of some deep sharing,
read from St Henri's journal,
did some Trinitarian dancing..
..and all became pregnant.
.......well you had to be there. (if you were, post thoughts in the comments section below). Or see this post from a couple years ago:
Every year, about this time, I love preaching on Mary...(and I am a Protestant!..(:
...or am I? Maybe I used to be!..I'm not Roman Catholic, but how important are categories like Protest-ant any more? And what am I/are we now, anyway: emerging, misisonal, ?? Post-Protestant...pre-Christian...whatever!) It began years ago with Jack Hayford's little book "The Mary Miracle" (reisssued as The Christmas Miracle, no doubt because someone feared the title sounded too 'Catholic'!!)).
In Paraguay in 1998, I risked preaching a sermon (and I did..photo evidence right here) in Spanish about how we are all to become spiritually "pregnant" like Mary... (Just imagine how that might have come across..."Come to the altar and get pregnant"..!)
Can't wait to hear how I preach it this year(: ...
"Mary is, to that extent, the supreme example of what always happens when God is at work by grace through human beings. God's power from outside, and the indwelling Spirit within, together result in things being done which would have been unthinkable any other way." -NT Wright, Luke for Everyone , p. 11.
Come to the altar and get pregnant.
This year, several wanted to follow up with the resources on the Trinity, as we noted how Mary got caught up in the perichoresis: the dance of the Trinity (seethis) when Gabe announced her pregnancy in Luke .
So here you go..
Here is the Rob Bell clip:
Here are the books referenced, in order from most scholarly to down-home:
"The Trinity and the Kingdom" by Jurgen Moltmann (much of it readable here)
"Flame of Love" by Clark Pinnock, chapter 1, "Spirit and Trinity" (read page 21ff here)
"Delighting in the Trinity: Just why are Father, Son and Spirit such good news?" by Tim Chester (he's part of the Crowded House church planting movement in England)
You might start with the third volume, I know no theologian more practical and pastoral..one dedicated to living out theology in praxis in community, family and world... than Steve Seamands. The book is hugely helpful in applying the most "theological" and apparently "unpractical" doctrines of all to life and ministry.
How does the doctrine and reality of the Trinity impact everything we say/do/pray/decide?
"The Trinity is the language in which Christian truth is spoken. It gives shape to the truth. The Trinity is not peripheral, let alone optional. It is the marvelous, wonderful heart of our faith." [Chester, p. 17]
Here are several posts from my blog on the topic of Trinity, including
Trinity: My name's Trinity. Neo: *The* Trinity? Who cracked the IRS d-base? Trinity: That was a long time ago. Neo: Jesus... Trinity: What? Neo: I just thought... you were a guy. Trinity: Most guys do.
"Organic church life is not native to this planet. It began before time in the Godhead." -Frank Viola 2/4/09
Here below are the latest newsletter and plans from Ken and Cathie Metz in Peru. Just click (or right click) on each page to enlarge, read and rejoice.
(If you have not seen the movies of our previous trips down there, click this for 2004, and this for 2005.. But a warning, you are basically signing up to go with us next time if you do.)
Note: a helpful summary, with new pics, is here in the Grace Covenant newsletter..
May or may not be true, when the video says, "These people were always finding water all over their pool deck and furniture, every time they came home, after being away for a few hours. They thought the neighborhood kids were watching for them to leave, and using the pool. However, they could never catch them doing it. So they set up their video cam and watched the pool area. This is what they recorded.... v" More likely:
Well, I for one have been blessed the last few Sundays when different friends and family at Third Day have shared their recent struggles, missteps, challenges. I think that God opens up so much more healing when we share. We can know how to pray for each other more effectively.
Wow, there is plenty to pray for these days!
I suppose some might think that I don't share much. I know one brother poured his heart out awhile back, and then wondered why I didn't do the same. I don't have any great answer for that, except that I often think that many of my day-to-day experiences and minor struggles do not seem like a "big deal" to me. That may not be accurate, it's just how I feel. I don't want to rob my friends by not sharing enough, though. The truth is that much of the time I feel very blessed and thankful (i.e. not in crisis mode).
One of the things that trips me up is talking in a judgmental or disparaging way about others. I probably behave better at 3D than I do elsewhere, so maybe you haven't picked up on it. Deep down, I want to build people up rather than tear them down. So if you think I've stepped over the line, please keep me accountable, and pray that God would anoint my lips for encouragement. That's my full disclosure for the week.
And thank God that we trust each other enough to be real.
My dad's picture was on the front page of the Fresno Bee today (though not for the same reason I used to appear there!)..He also appears in the online video accompanying the article..see 53ff in the clip..he is the handsome distinguished man in the white hat:
"Jim Wainscott, 76, a former Equitable Life insurance administrator."
and for those dying to hear the song "Signs" by the Five Man Electrical Band, video is included!
We had a great time today exploring the second sign of John, but first we reviewed the concept of "signs"in John, noting they are all about their sign-ificance and sign-ature place in the gospel.
I make the case that the whole gospel is embedded in what John calls the "first"sign (water into wine at Cana). They way the word "first" works in Greek is not necessarily to feature first as in "first of a series," but "first in order of importance,or maybe best translated "only," not first."
This becomes clear in Matthew 6:33, famously translated and put to song and memory as"Seek (ye) FIRST the Kingdom of G0od...all all these things will be added to you."
But that translation doesn't add up, and does not compute with the context.
Notice we rea not told to seek the "other things "second" and "third," In fact, it's clear in context we are not to seek them AT ALL...they are given to us as a by product of seeking the ONE THING (=the ONLY thing), first (that is, foremost)....or EXCLUSIVELY.
"The Kingdom of God is not the first item on our priority list,"Joel Green says (in a great little book), "it IS our priority list."
So in a sense the first sign is the only one we need.
And the other signs are all commentary on;differing angles and windows on it.
Study it well.
Yet the other six signs are also a key part of the puzzle-picture John has embedded in the book for us.
We compared the seven signs to the Burma shave signs (read upon these here, here,and a postmodern version of them here ), where each sign is part of a series, and the last one is the punchline, revelation,or climax.
This is true in John's case as well. The definitive seventh sign is the raising of Lazarus.
Which is the same as the first sign of wine.
We noted that is common to connect the first sign of John to the first plague of Exodus (water into wine vs. water into blood) and the last sign of John with the last plague of Exodus (death of the firstborn vs.death of Lazarus)..... the Old Covenant plagues are undone in the new.
In a way parallel to Pentecost reversing Tower of Babel, the signs of Jesus in John reverse the curse of the plagues.
The Greek word for sign John uses is σημεῖον / semeoin (Nowadays we talk about studying semiotics...People (semioticians) like Leonard Sweet (and our former 3d webmaster, Chris McDonald) have reminded us how crucial semoitics is to our day and age).
We often think "We are not supposed to ask for signs." True, the synoptics cast a negative spin on following signs and not Jesus. But John uses sign in a very different and sign-ificant way. The signs are revealers of who Jesus is, and a summons/challnge to enter them and find deeper faith and meaning. Jesus even chews out those who followed him just because he fed them., and not because of the signs (John 6:26).
The whole point of signs is that they are moments when heaven and earth intersect with each other. (That’s what the Jews believed happened in the Temple.) The point is not that they are stories which couldn’t have happened in real life, but which point away from earth to a heavenly reality. – N.T. Wright John for Everyone, 21.
We talked today about the fact that the word "mission" or"misionary" appears nowhere in the Bible..
Huh?
In fact, contrary to what we often hear, the church does not have a mission..
It's the mission that has a church!
Or as Len has..better..said: "It is not the Church of God that has a mission in the world — it is the God of mission who has a Church in the world."
Mission is so fundamenhtal and inextricable to who we are..that it is assumed.
The word 'mission' comes originally from the doctrine of the Trinity. The word mission comes from the Latin word mission which means 'to send.' It was the word Christians used to talk about the sending of the Son and the Spirit into the world. Only in the sixteenh century did Christians start using the term to describe sending people to spread the gospel.
The mission of the church has its roots in the missionary character of the triune God. God is not only God in himself (the 'immanent Trinity), he is also God-for-us (the economic Trinity..)
We experience the Trinity through the sending of the Son and Spirit..the Trinitarian community is not exclusive. -Delighting in the Trinity
It's often been said"God only has one son..and he was a missionary". But all who are in Jesus are in the Trinity, and thus inevitanly sent,missioned co-missioned and commissioned.
Jesus was sent into the world as a sign of God, and we are sent by the Spirit as a sign of Jesus.
It's semiotics , baby.. read the signs.
We rea the signs, as Isiah says.
And we are sent signs.
We spent some time comparing the first and second (Healing of the nobleman's son, John 4:39-54) signs as John has gone out of his way to link them .. they are the only two signs he has enumerated for us, and they are interlinked and hyperlinked in multiplex ways.
We noted several fascinating relationships between the first two signs, as we:
The first was in a Jewish setting, the second gentile.
The first was a miracle while Jesus was present, the second while he was absent.
The first involved ordinary people, the second nobility.
We pause here to suggest part of the sign-ificance of the signs is to remind us that Jesus came for Jew and gentile, poor and rich...that is for all...
Both the first two signs are followed by folks becoming believers...hmm.
Both were in Cana after a return from Judea..
We notice an intriguing similarity in both signs in that Jesus seed reluctant to perform signs but when pressed and pressured by a persistent person ( Mary in the first, the nobleman in the second), he relented and repented. (Be sure to check out the Brother Andrew book we mentioned,"And God Changed His Mind") Of course part of the reason is as Leon Morris has "Once he performs a a sign, he is on the the road to the cross." It wasn't technically his time yet, but he cannot not respond to persistevering, bold, chutzpah, hutzpah and faith. Chronos seems to become kairos when we pray like Mary and the nobleman.
We have been following our UK brother Tony Maude's sermons and blogs ..as he is a few weeks ahead of us in his own series on seven signs :
We might think of the signs in John's gospel as signs of the kingdom. In turning water into wine, Jesus shows us the abundance of the kingdom of God. He shows us its joy. He shows us its richness. He shows us that God's kingdom is much, much better than the best that our earthly kingdoms can provide.
In this second sign we see the power of God's kingdom – power to give life and to heal our sicknesses. But we see much more than that. We see the response that we should make when God's kingdom breaks into our world. We are invited to respond with faith, to take Jesus at his word:
"... these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:30-31) In this way, we enter into the kingdom of God, become part of it and receive a treasure of immeasurable worth.
Tony covered lots of helpful ground that we didn't have time to, particularly about the meaning of the second sign and its connection to Samaria..read his whole post (excerpted below) ponder it and post him a commenthere.
Oh, two promises I made. First, the video from the George Stroumboulopoulos (the Oprah of Canada) show. Maybe The Shack was written just so author Paul Young could go on TV to tell Stroumboulopoulos what God thinks about him! See the amazing moment at 12:20ff:
Secondly,I also promised to follow up from two weeks ago, and link you to this next story.
"(It happened) nduring the annual Muslim pilgrimmage to Mecca in 1991, when a number of Nigerian Muslim mullahs were praying inside the Grand Mosque, the holiest place in all Islam. Suddenly, 'Jesus appeared to them and declared he was God.' {George Otis quote}.The Mullahs were converted to Jesus.
George Otis and the Sentinel Group and its "Transformations" videos are the most accessible sources for keeping updated on this amazing season we live in..
Related: bee sure to read this story (click)" from "Stories from the Front Lines"..it has to do with a n ine year old girl raised Lazarus -like from the dead (How's that for a sign?)
We spent the rest of the morning praying for physical (and other types of healing).
I am excited about our new series on the 7 Signs of John's gospel; Sunday we introduced the first: water into wine.
I will aim to actually post some follow-up afterthoughts each week. The audio will be on the podcast box; right hand side of page.
We talked Sunday about the uniqueness of John's gospel, when compared with the synoptics (Matt, Mark and Luke). It seems that anytime four people are in a room, three may have affinities, but the fourth may be on a different page altogether (maybe the John of the Beatles is an example..or me in my birth family (or married family) of four. One way John is different in that he is a deep theologian/philosopher and a mystic-heart. He rearranges..sometimes radically...the Jesus material. Here he is literally"on another page altogether." We found this Sunday in that all three synoptics place Jesus' "temple tantrum" towards the end of Jesus'public ministry; while John intentionally framejacks it, and drops it at the beginning of his book.
Right after the first "sign." On purpose. Folks shared some thematic reasons this might be.
This paragraph below is lifted from the Wikipedia article on John; it is helpful, but the last sentence is bunk/basura/skubala (I may edit it, and see if it my edited get edited. For a response to this kind of "all or nothing scholarship , see "'Interrupting Jesus,' Interrupted")
Seven Signs
This section recounts Jesus' public ministry.[2] It consists of seven miracles or "signs," interspersed with long dialogues and discourses, including several "I am" sayings.[3] The miracles culminate with his most potent, raising Lazarus from the dead.[3] In John, it is this last miracle, and not the temple incident, that prompts the authorities to have Jesus executed.[3] Jesus' discourses identify him with symbols of major significance, "the bread of life" (John 6:35), "the light of the world" (John 8:12), "the door of the sheep" (John 10:7), "the good shepherd" (John 10:11), "the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25), "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), and "the real vine" (John 15:1).[3] Critical scholars think that these claims represent the Christian community's faith in Jesus' divine authority but doubt that the historical Jesus actually made these sweeping claims.[3] The teachings of Jesus are so different in John from those found in the synoptic gospels, that since the 1800s scholars have understood that only one of the two traditions could be authentic, and they have unanimously chosen the synoptics as the source for the teachings of historical Jesus.[11] -link
If you want John's "number," it's 777. His gospel is embedded with seven signs, seven "I am" statements, and seven narratives. This kind of structural analysis can be overdone; but here it would seem vital to John's purpose and theme...especially the signs and "I am"s:
Seven Signs:
1. Turning water into wine (2:1-12)
2. Healing the noblewoman's son (4:46-54)
3. Healing the man at Bethesda (5:1-47)
4. Feeding the 5000 (6:1-4)
5. Walking on Water (6:15-21)
6. Healing the Blind Man (9:1-41)
7. Raising of Lazarus (11:1-57)
Seven "I AM" Statements:
1. I AM the Bread of Life (6:35)
2. I AM the Light of the World (8:12)
3. Before Abraham was, I AM (8:58)
4. I AM the Good Shepherd (10:11)
5. I AM the Resurrection and the Life (11:25)
6. I AM the Way, the Truth, and the Life (14:6)
7. I AM the True Vine (15:1)
What's intriguing is the signs are found in the first half of the gospel (The word 'sign" is used dozens of times in the first half, and only once in the second half (and then, only to summarize the purpose of the signs..20:30-31). The seven "I am" statements, and the seven narratives rea more evenly distributed throughout John's work of art. This is so obvious that noted scholar has called John 1-12 "The Book of Signs," an chapters 13-21 "the Book of Glory":
The first of these is a series of sign-miracles, coupled with discourses, which reveal to us something of who Jesus is. The second is an extended treatment of Christ’s death and resurrection, together with his final teachings related to the topic of his death and the glory which should follow. link
.
NT Wright helps us grasp John's vantage point:
I feel about John like I feel about my wife; I love her very much, but I wouldn't claim to understand her. I didn't get the job.
In style, emphasis, structure — in all the things that make a book what it is — John stands out from the rest. With Paul we are in the seminar room: we are e are arguing the thing out, looking up references, taking notes, and then being pushed out into the world to preach the gospel to the nations. Matthew takes us into the synagoguewhere the people of God are learning to recognize Jesus as their King, their Emmanuel. Mark, as we shall see, writes a little handbook on discipleship, Luke presents Jesus to the cultured Greek world of his day. John, by contrast, takes us up the mountain, and says quietly: 'Look — from here, on a clear day you can see for ever.' We beheld his glory..'
John does not describe the transfiguration, as the other Gospels do;in a sense, John's whole story is about the transfiguration. He invites us to be still and know; to look again into the human face of Jesus of Nazareth..with our awe and bewilderment reaching its height, to the point where we realize that the face is most recognizable when it wears the crown of thorns...When John says, 'We beheld his glory', he is thinking supremely of the cross...
I want here to explore three out of the dozens of strands which go to make up this extraordinary tapestry. The first one is all about signposts. John is a canny writer; he gets us to do half the work. In one of the early scenes in the Gospel, a passage much beloved of preachers at weddings, he tells the story of the wedding at Cana, and of Jesus changing the water into wine. John's comment, at the end of the story, hooks into the prologue, and at the same time points us forwards into a sequence of signposts.
...John starts off as though he's writing a new Genesis, a new creation story. And so he is. He is talking us through the seven signs of the new creation... -NT Wright,link
Elsewhere, Wright says:
The whole point of signs is that they are moments when heaven and earth intersect with each other. (That’s what the Jews believed happened in the Temple.) The point is not that they are stories which couldn’t have happened in real life, but which point away from earth to a heavenly reality. – N.T. Wright John for Everyone, 21.
We talked quite a bit about running out of wine at a wedding was a huge problem in tht biblical culture. Jesus's "frivolous"miracle really kept the family from shame and restored their honor. Some helpful background info on this is in the Social Science Commentary on the Gospel of John, and The Bible Background Commentary, two vital resources, both readable online.
Some other fascinating, but sometimes farfetched, resources for grasping the symbolism and strucure are "The Good Wine: Reading John from the Center" and "Mystical Christianity: A Psychological Commentary on the Gospel of John"
Oh, here is the section from "The Brothers Karamazov" where the Cana wedding scripture is read at the priest's funeral.
Bonus: I found that Tony Maude in the UK is a few weeks ahead of us in his series on the seven signs, and he too has been posting us he goes. His post on the first sign is here.
I found God On the corner of First and Amistad Where the west Was all but won All alone Smoking his last cigarette I said, "Where you been?" He said, "Ask anything".
Where were you When everything was falling apart? All my days Were spent by the telephone It never rang And all I needed was a call It never came To the corner of First and Amistad
Lost and insecure You found me, you found me Lyin' on the floor Surrounded, surrounded Why'd you have to wait? Where were you? Where were you? Just a little late You found me, you found me
In the end Everyone ends up alone Losing her The only one who's ever known Who I am Who I'm not, who I wanna be No way to know How long she will be next to me [ The Fray Lyrics are found on www.songlyrics.com ]
Lost and insecure You found me, you found me Lyin' on the floor Surrounded, surrounded Why'd you have to wait? Where were you? Where were you? Just a little late You found me, you found me
Early morning The city breaks I've been callin' For years and years and years and years And you never left me no messages Ya never send me no letters You got some kinda nerve Taking all my world
Lost and insecure You found me, you found me Lyin' on the floor Where were you? Where were you? Lost and insecure You found me, you found me Lyin' on the floor Surrounded, surrounded Why'd you have to wait? Where were you? Where were you? Just a little late You found me, you found me Why'd you have to wait? To find me, to find me
Hey all. Please pray about joining us for this Kingdom adventure this Saturday. Read Rhonda Thomas's note below (read more of their recent story at her blog), see address at bottom of page, and let me know, so we have some idea of a head (AND PIZZA) count:
Ok first of all this is a very hard thing for me to do, I almost never ask for help. As most of you know my husband spent the past year in the hospital, actually admitted 20 times. We were pretty sure at one point he wasn't going to make it. But praise God we found a doctor at Stanford who figured out what was wrong and three days before Thanksgiving he had surgery {a tracheotomy, allowing him to breathe} and he is on the road to being well.
As I'm sure you can imagine our lives were spent in crisis mode quite often and it took all my husband had in him just to stay employed and provide for his family. Something he did an incredible job of! But everything else took a back seat and we are seeing that the work ahead of us is overwhelming, if not impossible to do by ourselves. We have had many many offers of help but haven't really been able to see clearly what we needed help with as we have just been focusing on learning to live this new life we have now and adjusting to the medical challenges and regaining health and strength.
So what do we need? Well....we have rented a dumpster and we are hoping to rally our friends to come help out on Saturday May 2nd from 10 am till it's done. We need the back and front yard cleaned up and hauled off! We could easily fill the dumpster and lots of trash bags. We don't have a lot of yard tools so if you have some you don't mind sharing that would be great!
We will provide pizza and plenty to drink and some of the biggest hugs you could ever imagine {Brandon has become a master at hugs!}. If this is something you think you could help with please message me here or call .. Our family would be eternally thankful and my husband will sleep better knowing he does not have as much responsibility and an just rest. Did I say that man amazes me? We are very blessed!
Thank you all my loved ones for all your blessings and support!!!
I found this 1990 pic of Dennis headed into a women's room in San Francisco. (long story, has something to do with taking a former rock star turned evangelist to SF for the first time).
Note you can click the photo to blow it up really big, and prove it's not photoshopped; to print is for a really cool wall poster; and to check out the very stylish 1990 shorts.
Just wanted to make Dennis laugh today, and to get the rest if you connected to the website for Dennis and Katie's son, Jerry, so you can pray for this family in light of Jerry's accident. We are having what Dennis calls "an old fashioned prayer meeting over there." Please join us.
In this clip, the late great (this was one of his last concerts...note how much he talks about dying here) Rich Mullins (see the documentary on his life here) speaks to issues we are speaking to recently on Sundays (coming OUT OF exile, Scripture prooftexting, the honesty of Psalms) in a hilarious and prophetic clip:
Trivia question: probably only Keltic Ken knows this: Rich's drummer the last several years was the amazing (wish he could play the drums!!)Aaron Smith, for many years with the 77s ( a band we talk a lot about; a band who can "Pray Naked") and.. (here's the trivia): as a kid was drummer for the hit "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" by the Temptations.
"By planting the flag outside the walls and boundaries of the church, so to speak, the church discovers itself by rallying to it---this is mission."
-Hirsch, "The Forgotten Ways," p 236 This beautiful park bench; and the house behind it, is the highlight of our neighborhood.
Actually, the saints who live in the house behind the bench are the highlight of the neighborhood, which is precisely the point.
Those Third Day saints who have been to our house and hood will recognize it; the family visited us last Resurrection Day to share the mom's prophetic art.
Which the bench also is.
The bench was placed on the prominent corner lot as a prophetic act/blessing/gift/gatekeeper/mission to the neighborhood. I have seen high-schoolers (clean-cut as well as gangster-looking), and senior citizens sitting on it; taking a break on their walk home; and journey through life.
Even though my family and I walk by it almost daily, I consider it almost too sacred to sit in.
Folks stop for a smoke, a prayer, to people-watch, to drink gin...
It might even be the postmodern version of Finney's "anxious bench." "Tear the curtain down; Pull the altar to the ground.." as St. Mike Roe and the 77s once prayed in a church..uhm bar I was visiting...2:20ff in this clip.
Of course the bench has to be screwed into the ground; the original bench was stolen.
But that didn't deter the mission, or the gatekeeping family.
This is church "as God wants it"; planting the flag outside the walls. Not as a gimmick; not as a sneaky, cheesy, sexy evangelistic strategy to get those butts into pews.
But to get those butts blessed, even if they never enter a "church building."
Which they already have...
PS The mom of the house asked the ginsters to kindly take their empty gin bottle with them as they left...that's not an unreasonable rule for a church that plants its flag and bench outside the boundaries and box.
PPS. Of course this is the same family who did THIS with their house at Eastertime.
PPPS. Some of you are savvy enough to figure out where this holy site is, and go to Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth and see who's sitting in it now.
"When the sun beats down and I lie on the bench...."
I am wanting to unlearn everything I've learned about church and pastoring.
These are great days to experiment with such a task; and our church family are wonderfully
open and open source.
Sunday's message was themed around the theme of "God with us."
I was hoping there were connections in Scripture to "God with us" and
"The poor will always be with you."
But because I am learning not to overplan/produce a sermon anymore...(as if we even do "sermons"! They are more...gee, what word fits? Someone has suggested "habitats"), I didn't get the connections until I got in community.
Gee, that isn't supposed to happen; it supposed to be the one "professional" who prays and studies all week so they can deliver the ultimate answers as a monolgue/lecture...maybe with three points (power points) and a poem..
Yeah, right.
Maybe this "new" model of so-called (in both senses of the term) unwashed "laypeople" actually having something to contribute is worth pursuing! Maybe Helmut Baby was right: "the church is our pastor" (see this).
So going into the day, i had a few notes, a few Scriptures, and a few videos ready and on standby.
It is delightful and terrifying to be spiritually clueless and literally cueless about what God will say through the Spirit and Bride as the gathering emerges.
A young woman who had grown up in a churched family, but wandered, wondered and prayed aloud once:
"I don't know who You are;
but I'm with You."
I don't know how many churches have played the music video for Avril Lavigne's "I'm With You".
Probably not too many, as the refrain is:
"It's a damn cold night/ Trying to figure out this life...
I don't know who You are,
but I'm with You."
"
But damn, we just had to play it. It was stunning to see how quickly our folks (Jeannie lead the way!!)caught the God-hunger in this song ("Isn't anyone trying to find me??"). Explore this song more here on our forum; and huge thanks to RevKev for turning me onto the song. Yes, I admit that I cheated by uppercasing the "Y" in the "you" in her lyrics, but that's how I hear it.
It turned out to be a great wikiday; as we collaboratively listed some scriptures that included the phrase or thought "with you".
We warmed up by collecting ways we use "with you" in everyday ways.
If I am "with" someone, it means we are an item., for example. If I say "I'm with Scott Jones" at reastaurant, it means he's paying my bill. "I'm with you" can mean "I'm tracking with you" or "I agree with you."
Of course if a clerk or phone rep says "I'll be with you shortly," you may or may not believe it.
"I am with you in spirit," etc
Of course we noted that Jesus's very name, Immanuel, has "with you" embedded right in it. We caught the paradoxes:
Sometimes the "with you" presence of God seems to save you from trouble (Acts 18:9-10), and sometimes save you in the trouble (Isaiah 43:2). Ken remembered that Mary was promised that the baby would be named "God with us," but then the very angel split (Luke 1:38)
Guess God cant live with or without you.
And yes, we did show that very U2 video at the prayer meeting before the gathering... noting that the fluid lyrics seem at times Jesus speaking to us, sometimes us speaking to Jesus. We caught the overwhelmed Bono (having just buried his father, and playing to his hometown crowd of 80, 000) at 4:13ff moving into his spontaneous/Spiritaneous prophetic Bonglosealallia (see the comments on this post) utterance.
No wonder bassist Adam Clatyon (at the time not yet officially a Christian) said of this song:
"You don't expect to hear it on the radio...maybe in a church." (p, 66, "Into the Heart").
Well, we did it "in a church," and here it is:
.
We also were caught in awe of Jesus' wanting to be "with us" before sending us out into ministry (Mark :13-q4 ), let alone God dancing and singing over the sheer joy of being "with us." (Zeph 3:16-17)
But also we keynoted that being with God, and God with us, is not a passive hanging out.
The withness of God seems in part predicated that we are in motion and on mission. The very great Commission promised the "With you" will be with us as/if we go and make disciples of all nations." Lo, indeed. (Matt 28:18-20)
But what nailed us is the connection and conjunction of
"I will always be with you".
and
"The poor will always be with you."
Those words (Matt 26:11) of Jesus about the poor have been used as cop out and opt out. You know, "Jesus himself said there will always be poor people, so there is no need to help them...much. Let alone any possibility of actually ending extreme and unnecessary poverty.
Yada, yada. Yeah, and it will be a "damn cold night" in hell before that spin is proven to be what Jesus had in mind, He was actually quoting Deut. 15. The context there is the opposite:
"You need not have any poor among you... But they will always be among you...so help them"
Wow, is the church ever adept at framejacking Jesus and hijacking Scripture.
Sparks and Shekinah flew as we began to corporately connect the dots.
Only then did I remember and quote Bono's sermon: "God is with us if we are with the poor."
Then I had someone bring Amos 5:14 into the mix; the only Scripture with a condition on the "with-us-ness" of God. Wouldn't every believer love to know that there is apparently one thing we can do that will cause the Omnipresent ever with us Imamnuel to...in a sense...not be with us?
"The Lord will be with you, if...
you do good and not evil," the Scripture read.
I actually didn't recall , but was guessing/hoping that the context and definition of "being good" in that passage had something to do with helping the poor. I wanted a prooftext; and because I am a recovering pastor, I pressed in fake confidence; having Scott read deeper into the passage until he found the word "poor."
Thank God it was there.
Read it and weep.
Or hear it and weep in Bono's sermon.
Video of both versions of his messages are posted below; first the National Prayer Breakfast:
"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 like midday and the Lord will continually guide you and satisfy your desire in scorched places. (
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." complete manuscript)
But that was a pretty white crowd, so Bono's delivery was a bit understated.
Watch the version he preached at the NAACP, especially the last minute when we have
black-style church at its best.
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 yoke 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 an shirt
This is true religion. True religion will not let us fall asleep in the comfort of our freedom. “Love thy neighbor” is not a piece of advice, it’s a command. And that means in the global village we’re going to have to start loving a whole lot more people, that’s what that means. That’s right. “His truth is marching on.” ..Because where you live should not decide whether you live or whether you die.
... whatever thoughts we have about God, who He is, or even if God exists, most will agree that God has a special place for the poor. The poor are where God lives. God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is where the opportunity is lost and lives are shattered. God is with the mother who has infected her child with a virus that will take both their lives. God is under the rubble in the cries we hear during wartime. God, my friends is with the poor. And God is with us if we are with them.
Saved Humans. Creatures capable of such outstanding declarations of faith and yet, at the bat of an eyelid, they become cowards and it seems that the astounding miracles they have witnessed mean nothing in light of their current tribulations.
Like a pendulum, we oscillate between believing - waiting for deliverance and lack of belief.
I'm at the top of the list when it comes to what I've described above. And it's been on my mind recently. I am actually going through a period of doubt right now.
But before I continue let me recall the men and women of the bible who have been afflicted with the same condition. Actually I'll only name one. Enter Elijah, a Hollywood tale
We have Elijah whom longing to show the people of Israel the power of the one true God, beckoned them to Mount Carmel, for a showdown of Hollywood proportions. (1st Kings 18:1-39)
Four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal showed up that day, offering a sacrifice to their God, calling out his name, requesting that his fire consume the sacrifice. But nothing happened.
When Elijah's turn comes, we read the following:
30 Then Elijah said to all the people, "Come here to me." They came to him, and he repaired the altar of the LORD, which was in ruins. 31 Elijah took twelve stones, one for each of the tribes descended from Jacob, to whom the word of the LORD had come, saying, "Your name shall be Israel." 32 With the stones he built an altar in the name of the LORD, and he dug a trench around it large enough to hold two seahs of seed. 33 He arranged the wood, cut the bull into pieces and laid it on the wood. Then he said to them, "Fill four large jars with water and pour it on the offering and on the wood."
34 "Do it again," he said, and they did it again. "Do it a third time," he ordered, and they did it the third time. 35 The water ran down around the altar and even filled the trench.
36 At the time of sacrifice, the prophet Elijah stepped forward and prayed: "O LORD, God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel and that I am your servant and have done all these things at your command. 37 Answer me, O LORD, answer me, so these people will know that you, O LORD, are God, and that you are turning their hearts back again."
38 Then the fire of the LORD fell and burned up the sacrifice, the wood, the stones and the soil, and also licked up the water in the trench.
39 When all the people saw this, they fell prostrate and cried, "The LORD -he is God! The LORD -he is God!"
This was a man who prayed and saw fire fall from the skies. Fire.
Afterwards, the prophets of Baal were slain and of course Queen Jezebel, in a rapt of fury over her prophets went after Elijah.
We read that Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. So much so that he prayed he might die. He was tired, weary, afraid and lacking the faith that had made the miracle he had seen before, possible.
1 Now Ahab told Jezebel everything Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. 2 So Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah to say, "May the gods deal with me, be it ever so severely, if by this time tomorrow I do not make your life like that of one of them."
3 Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, 4 while he himself went a day's journey into the desert. He came to a broom tree, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. "I have had enough, LORD," he said. "Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors." 5 Then he lay down under the tree and fell asleep.
Now, if a man who prayed and believed the good Lord would in fact show his power and then saw FIRE fall down from heaven can, two seconds later, throw the towel, fear for his life and get utterly depressed, then what is to say that we, the many who are not prophets of such caliber, the many who have not seen fire fall from heaven at our request... what is left for us then, but to realize that we too can have horrible faith swings.
A Personal Testimony
In December 2006, Christmas eve, I was sitting on a park bench, weeping while a friend held my hand. I had been unemployed for 6 months and had lost my house and everything in it. I was reduced to living in a room at a relative's house where I was humiliated and treated unkindly for not contributing with enough $ to the household.
My prospects of finding a job and ever moving out of there were bleak. It is nearly impossible to rent a furnished place in Chile as rent is so high. And for years I would have to save money to be able to have all that I once owned. That meant living at that relative's house for an even longer time and I was afraid bitterness would fill my heart. I feared I would not be able to cope.
This particular Xmas eve my relatives had picked a fight as there was not enough $ for Xmas supper and it seemed to be my fault.
**********
Every single day, from my bedroom window, I saw a cross against a backdrop of mountains. The angle made it so that this stubborn cross peeked at me wherever I moved. Stubborn in its determination, a reminder that I should not give up, that help was at hand. This cross was no architectural whim, it was God's way of strengthening me, perhaps not with an angel like he did Elijah, but with an object that made an indelible imprint on my heart.
I prayed that my circumstances would change, I prayed that I would be able to forgive these relatives and not be filled with bitterness, I prayed for deliverance.
One night, after another bitter fight, I wept and prayed until 6AM.
Two months later I received a call from a Canadian company willing to have me relocated to the South of Chile. A chance to start over. A job.
Today, I'm off to Canada in a week or so to take over their marketing and IT section. I am also studying at the university (courtesy of the company).
The company owner is Christian.
I have a house of my own. Mine.
I have seen the hand of deliverance in my life, I've seen answers to prayer in what is nothing short of a miracle.
(I must also mention that once upon a time I asked for a street prophet and I got a Christian street evangelist follow me with a message. He told God he would not speak to me unless I spoke to him first, otherwise I'd think he was a stalker. And guess what. I spoke to him first for no apparent reason... but that is another story).
*************
In light of these miracles in my life then why, I wonder, am I so f****ing sad? For over a week I have not slept right, I've been fearing financial struggles, I've cried (which is something I do not often do), I've felt lonely (I'm at that age where you need a husband)... I've worried about my mother's future (I support her financially so she means the world to me)... I've been ungrateful thinking that I don't enjoy office work (and I have the best work environment you can ever want, my boss is my best friend in this city). I've longed to find a place where I feel I belong, a job that makes me feel alive. A husband.
And in all these "wants" I forget where I was taken out of a little over a year ago.
Yes, I'm ungrateful. Yes, like Elijah I forget the miracles, the love and the deliverance. Elijah wanted to die, he was feeling a man of little courage. I wanted to sleep for ages, feeling a woman of little value, of bitter thoughts, a woman who in spite of seeing God's hand feared she would end up an old maid working in an office, with a heavy heart and a bitter countenance...
As if God could ever be that cruel!!
Yet my shallow mind has irrational fears and like a pendulum I get these faith swings.
And I feel like a faithless underachiever.
Me, the Eternal Trier
Yet I stumbled upon the writings of Grantley Morris, who wisely states:
It is not unusual for an explorer trekking through new territory to stumble. It might be an unpleasant hindrance, but what matters is not his falls but whether he keeps pressing on. It's his determination to keep forging deeper into virgin territory that makes him a hero, and his falls cannot detract from it. In fact, even if his progress seems abysmal, the more setbacks he suffers, the more impressed people are when he keeps trying.
If ordinary, self-centered people have this attitude towards those who have the tenacity to keep trying despite enormous failures, imagine how much more impressed God is when you keep trying. More than anyone in the universe, the God of infinite knowledge understands just how tough you find it. Moreover, love sees a person in the best possible light, and God loves you infinitely more than anyone else is capable of.
Yes... we can fail and fall a thousand times, we can become an Elijah... we can have faith swings. But we can forgive ourselves and choose to not give up, knowing that God sees our faith swings with love. And knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, how much he delights in us getting up and holding on.
We can become Eternal Triers and that's not a bad thing.
In follow-up to Sunday's message on temptation in exile, in which the interaction was phenomenal. I love wikichurch...especially on days like Sunday when I feared it would be too acadamic and "talking head."
The Scriptures are clear that "no temptation has seized us except what is common to all humans" , and that with the common temptation God will provide a (common?specific?) way out. (1 Cor 10:13-15)
But within these overall common temptations; there are characteristic and unique temptations in different times and seasons.
If ever there was a unique time and season in church history; in Western culture--and our personal lives....
..this is that time.
We might coin such a time, season and place as "exile."
For an honest example of one of our own saints (a Celtic one) journals from exile," read some blog posts here.
On the church/culture level:
“post-Christendom is the culture that emerges as the Christian faith loses coherence within a society that has been definitively shaped by the Christian story and as the institutions that have developed to express Christian convictions are in decline.” (Murray, Post-Christendom, 19).
Here we are.
On the good news of the economic crisis/opportunity/exile, read Len:
...Given the meltdown in the US economy, and the reverberations throughout the world, one wonders at our current location. This morning on CBC on the way to breakfast I caught part of an interview with Margaret Atwood on her new book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth. Margaret is a respected Canadian author who has always had a fascination with debt. It began, she relates, when she prayed the Lord’s Prayer as a child. She noticed that some versions of the prayer asked for forgiveness from sin, others from debt. It turns out that this theme is common in the great faiths. What great faith could really claim to be comprehensive in human affairs that says nothing about economics in human communities?
What really caught me today, however, was how we are all in the same boat. On the one hand a millionaire may stare in the face of the credit crunch and wonder if he can access the resources he needs for his business; on the other hand those of us with ordinary mortgages wonder if they will be sustainable by 2009.
The result of all this uncertainty: fear. And that is where the resources of the Gospel become relevant. Len Hjalmarson
How about that...wemight as well be relevant for once!
Sunday we suggested that three probable temptations of a person or church in exile are (click underlined words for more)
And we can be trained to recognize the antichrists as the men and women who tell us that Jesus wasn't human the way we are — "how could he be? He is God! ...recognize that for all their fancy talk about Christ, for all their superspiritualities, such people are just that, antichrists" ...
"The antichrist option has always been a convenient loophole for not loving actual, named people." (p.324) (click "Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places" )
We also glanced at Mike Frost's outline in the book "Exiles" click here to read our friend Len Hjalmarson's helpful review of this important book..
..unless you don't WANT to cultivate the four delighfully dangerous disciplines we need, if we are to resist the temptations/testations of exile:
• DANGEROUS MEMORIES reaching back to Abraham and Sarah. Israel was tempted to substitute more reasonable and respectable memories rather than embrace the ambiguity and embarrassment of such messy heroes.
• DANGEROUS CRITICISM that mocks the deadly Empire. We need two kinds of critique. First, we need an ongoing religious critique of the tamed gods of the Empire (commercialized Christianity). Second, we need the political critique of entrenched power, wherever we find it.
• DANGEROUS PROMISES that imagine a shift of power in the world. The kingdom of God will come. The poem of Isa.54:1-3 is first despairing, but then affirms a wild and outrageous hope.
• DANGEROUS SONGS that predict unexpected newness of life. We sing a new song and affirm a reality we have not fully experienced. Worship is a political statement.
Does sitting by a nice cozy fire, with a cup of hot tea/chocolate, and a book you can read for hours even when your eyes grow red and dry and you look sort of scary sitting there with your insomniac appearance? Then you fit this category perfectly! You love the power of the written word and it's eloquence; and you may like to read/write poetry or novels. You contribute to the smart people of today's society, however you can probably be overly-critical of works.
It's okay. I understand.
Here are the wikiteam members (besides me) of this new page so far. I haven't figured out an easy way to get the list of team members to post prominently since the profile box disappeared from the layout.
Help, anyone?
Anyway these are the first amazing folks to sign on for full posting power..join us! We'll make this pahe holy chaos together!
Many have assumed the viral video on YouTube, "Jesus is a Friend of Mine" by Sonseed
is a spoof.
But Dougsploitation scored a recent interview with the lead singer from this 25-year old video here. And Skib will want to take advantage of the full album download.
AND...best news of all:
After seeing it projected during the announcements at their church, The David Crowder Band quickly came up with a cover version on the spot:
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