Let Us Consider Our Ways

Posted on April 18, 2009 by gophumek | Permalink 0

Today’s Devotional Tidbit
Let us Consider Our Ways
Haggai 1:1-13

The prophet Haggai had a message for God’s people. After being freed from captivity, they were to go back to Israel and build a temple. They laid the foundation of the temple but that was it. Over a period of sixteen years, God’s people had built their nice houses but left the house of the Lord not even half built.

When they first came back from captivity, the Israelites were gung ho for the Lord. “Yeah, let’s get his house built,” they said. They worked full speed ahead when they were just released from captivity. Then after a while, the daily worries of life and concern for themselves overtook their enthusiasm for the Lord. They had laid the foundation of the Lord’s temple but then they became ho hum. They were gung ho then ho hum.

I think that is the way life is for many Christians. We are gung ho for the Lord after we’re baptized into Christ and we receive the Holy Spirit. We may stay gung ho for a year or two or three, maybe longer. Then the worries of life, and concern for ourselves, our comfort, and our desires seem to overtake that gung ho spirit we had at the beginning of our Christian walk. We then become ho hum Christians.

The book of Haggai is short, but within its pages, Haggai uses the term, “Consider your ways,” four times. Let us consider our ways as we progress through a new year. Let us consider where our priorities in life may be. May our priorities be on Jesus instead of ourselves. May our priorities be on living for others instead of ourselves. Jesus certainly lived for others. More importantly, he died for others. Then after three days he began living for others once more and he’s still living for others today. Let us follow the example of Jesus. It’s hard to do on some days (okay, make that most days) but it is well worth the effort.

In Christ y’all,
Brian

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The Secret Message of Jesus by Brian McLaren

Posted on February 20, 2008 by gophumek | Permalink 0

 This review originally appeared Mmmmm, That’s Good Coffee – Written by Rick Stilwell (reposted here by permission)

 

With his latest book, Brian McLaren has given his readers a title that’s more controversial than the contents, and a thought process that is challenging and life-stretching for anyone wanting to look beyond the typical doctrinal stances of the New Testament gospels.

Secret The Secret Message of Jesus (copyright 2006, W Publishing Group) reads to me as the work of the disconnected-third-party-narrator of McLaren’s New Kind of Christian trilogy. After following Dan Poole and Neil Oliver’s journeys and conversations together, the narrator is voicing what’s been hashed and re-hashed by that series’ protagonists. That’s the feeling I got as I read Secret, feeling that this was part of a larger progression that’s been going on for some time in McLaren’s writing. Where last year’s A Generous Orthodoxy read as more of an overall doctrinal or post-doctrinal work, his new book posits the single idea that Jesus, in sharing His message with parables and questions to graciously protect those who would not want to listen (Matthew 13), was able to "hide" pieces and parts of the Gospel across the centuries from anyone unwilling to live for Christ in the Kingdom.

 

The book is broken out into three sections, each building on the one before. Part 1 is "Excavation: Digging Beneath the Surface to Uncover Jesus’ Message". The particular choice of "excavation", rather than the overused "deconstruction", is helpful to give a new spin on what’s being done. Some of us as Christians have found the whole experience lacking – but we know it’s not God’s fault. If there is an ethereal "more" out there to be found, it’ll be found in Christ. And it’ll be found apart from a great deal of the historical and philosophical baggage that’s built up in the system over the past two-thousand-or-so years. Getting rid of the hindrances while still holding to the foundational premises is a tough chore, and too many folks deconstruct themselves out of Christianity and out of Christ altogether. McLaren doesn’t cross that line – instead, he brings to bear the singular thought that in using questions and parables, Jesus was hiding part of his message from those unwilling to listen with whole-hearts. Instead of a conspiracy theory that might lead us to huge digressions, we’re faced with simply re-reading and re-thinking the Gospel stories and listening with ears willing to hear this time around.

 

Part 2 is set as "Engagement: Grappling With the Meaning of Jesus’ Message". One of my own beefs over the past decade has been the inability of some to question, to doubt, to begin to fully contemplate what the teaching and implications of scripture might really be about for our lives. We walk into a sanctuary, hear a message, sing songs, pray and worship, and then leave – with very little to show for those hours, very little transformation or growth or maturity in our lives. After deconstructing, we’re left (hopefully) with a foundational thing that can now support the weight of a growing and fluid life in Christ. McLaren keeps on topic by sharing the secret message as a scandal – if they only knew what Jesus was saying, what Paul was writing. Some did know, and some did get it. But along the way we’ve lost part of that subversiveness and challenge.

 

And here, perhaps, is the most astounding contrast of all: the peace of God’s kingdom comes not through the violent torture and merciless extermination of the king’s enemies, but rather through the suffering and death of the king himself. The pax Christi is not the peace of conquest but rather the peace of true reconciliation. the king achieves peace not by shedding the blood of rebels but by – I hope the scandal and wonder of this is not lost because the words may be familiar – shedding his own blood. (p. 99)

 

Part 3 is aptly titled "Imagination: Exploring How Jesus’ Secret Message Could Change Everything" – again, if we’re missing anything in the conversations of the emergent church versus those who’d be anti-emergent, it’s the idea that if we took Jesus, Paul and the rest of the Old and New Testaments seriously, we would be living out something pretty different from our status quo tendencies. If the "kingdom of God" is only a future place and time after we die and after Jesus’ return in glory, then we can probably do whatever we want on this earth as long as we’ve got "fire insurance" to keep us out of hell. But if there’s a "here but not yet" component – if Jesus’ message that "the kingdom is at hand" means that the rule of God is being brought to bear right now, that’s a whole ‘nother thing entirely. We are to live in the kingdom, even as we live on this planet in whatever geographic location we’ve been planted, and that "secret message" plays out in myriad ways to show Christ real and living and vibrant and meaningful to a world that’s dying to know the truth of all that.

 

I don’t think this is McLaren’s best work, but it has done something that he hasn’t done before. He’s taken some of the vague details of his own "doctrine" and given some solid food to chew on. May those with teeth to chew, and ears to hear, begin to chew on what Jesus might be revealing to us.




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Organic Community by Joseph R. Myers

Posted on February 20, 2008 by gophumek | Permalink Comments Off on Organic Community by Joseph R. Myers

 This review originally appeared Mmmmm, That’s Good Coffee – Written by Rick Stilwell (reposted here by permission)

 

It’s been a long long time since I posted a legitimate review here. Or an illegit one, for that matter. I found myself unable to get into any of the books on my nightstand, and I haven’t made it much more than fifty pages into anything substantial in months. But I’ve got a backlog now, and this one came at a good time with the invitation to start in the middle, if that’s what worked best for me.

 

In Organic Community (copyright 2007, BakerBooks, publisher), Joe Myers tries to build a structure and a framework for natural things to happen. It’s not easy – most people reading "a church resource" want a blueprint for the whole thing. That’s not this book, and if that’s what you’re looking for, keep looking. Instead, this book asks mostly questions, gives very few answers, and then those pesky answers only serve to open up more questions – which is why I liked it.

 

I read the forwards and the intro, and on page 20 he gives an overview of the framework here:

 

 

This book will not build an argument from chapter to chapter. It is more like a mobile. Each chapter is independent in the sense that each has a self-contained message. Each chapter is dependent in the sense that each one is richer in the context of the other chapters. Each chapter provides some balance to the other chapters to keep the mobile swinging freely and in harmony as a whole. You can read them in an order that makes sense to you; I have organized them in a sequence that makes sense to me. (p. 20)

 

And with that, I turned to page 133 to read what Myers had written about accountability ("Partners: healthy alliances"), something that’s been around in my head the past few weeks. While reading, I kept hoping he would take a tougher stand against the practice of "accountability groups" for the reasons he was giving for them not always being a good thing. But then what he did say about "edit-ability" versus "accountability" – that was spot on. Where an accountant looks for problems, looks for rules being obeyed or broken, looks to make sure all the laws are followed – instead, an editor looks for the best way to make sure the author’s voice is heard, looks for what’s wrong, what can be better, what can be stated differently, and even finds where it’s already really good. There’s an encouragement aspect to being an "editor" – seeking to help the author find his voice. That’s good stuff, especially for this writer in search of his own voice, literally and figuratively in many ways.

 

From there, I flipped to chapter six – "Power: authority, moving from positional to revolving". With so many churches and friends in churches seeing problems with authority in whatever shape or form, this one was another in which to sink my teeth. Myers gives a case for a revolving view of power, one where the power isn’t in the position but in the project, shared among the participants. In a marriage, if the partners only view themselves as just "the spouse" and not as growing participants of the whole, there might be something wrong. The marriage should drive the roles and the power, with each having the reins at various points around what needs to be done. His military analogy worked better for me, sharing the story of soldiers in Iraq seeking to build an ER on the frontlines. A solder had wandered from post, breaking rank and disobeying orders – but he had seen militants entering through an opening in the perimeter, so he left to protect "the project". The commanding officer "recognized that insistence on policy and protocol would not have been helpful. Power is not so much a system of submission as it is a system of living that maximizes individual and communal sources of power" (p. 101). In effect, "the project holds the power" (p. 102 pullout quote) – and I admit, what makes this book worth the time to me is that this is still working through me and through my thoughts on this in the setting of church, church leadership, small groups, and at work as well.

 

One more stop to detail as I went from accountability to power to chapter three on "Participation: responsible anarchy, moving from representative to individual". In reading through the book this week after the Virginia Tech shootings and the Don Imus debacle, this chapter title/tagline jumps off at me. Myers writes, "People long to participate. They are looking for their place, a place that feels like home. However, many times there’s a disconnect between longing to participate and actually participating" (pp. 53-54). I think his balance here, reading the chapters in "the order that makes sense to me", is to bring some rounding to the previous thoughts on the project holding the power. That balance is that the work is done by the individual – we participate as you and me with a mindset towards we and us.

 

At least, that’s my take in this first readthrough, and that might change as I continue jumping and flipping back and forth through this book. Anyone leading small groups, looking for encouragement and challenge, trying to do something that really impacts people in a meaningful way – this book is a catalyst for that. It will not revolutionize anything that’s not started already. If you’re not on a journey into these waters yet, I don’t think it’ll have the punch. But if you’re in the thick of it and need that next kick in the pants to just move forward, then this is a good kick in the pants to restart the conversation and creative juices.

 

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The New Christians by Tony Jones

Posted on February 20, 2008 by gophumek | Permalink 0

 

 This review originally appeared Mmmmm, That’s Good Coffee – Written by Rick Stilwell (reposted here by permission)

 

the_new_christians_tony_jones.jpg

 

This has been a fun, challenging, insightful read for me. As one who’s been reading and thinking and messing people up with "emergent" dialog, Tony Jones’ The New Christians (copyright 2008, Jossey-Bass Publishers) gets into the nitty gritty history and thoughts behind the movement in a way that’s accessible and personal.

 

I found "the emergent church" folks about ten years ago, reading some of their forebears and thinking new thoughts that scared me, to be frank. I attended a couple of seminars, traveled to Maryland for one of the Off The Map conferences, and read through alot of books. I put this new work right up there with the most meaningful of my library – good for anyone looking for someone "on the same page as me", and detrimental for anyone wanting to just keep the status quo religiously.

 

 But a funny thing happened on the way to the twenty-first century: we became more religious, not less. Fundamentalisms now thrive in all major religions, churches and religious schools keep popping up, and religious books outsell all other categories…. Back in the pulpits, ironically, pastors continue to bewail that we’re living through the decline and fall of the Judeo-Christian American empire, that secularism is a fast-moving glacier, razing mountains of faith that have been a part of America since its birth. (p. 3)

 

It’s into this mess of paradox, oxymorons and mystery that Jones and others have sought to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling".

 

 Some disparage the emergent church as the new liberalism, while others decry it as little more than hip, faddish evangelicalism for the cynical set. Some say it’s anti-intellectual because emergents are forsaking traditional academia for the more populist route of church work, while others vilify the emergents for overquoting postmodern philosophers and literary critics like Jacques Derrida and Stanley Fish. They’re nothing but overeducated elite white males, they say…. [But] They share little in the way of leadership structures or church architecture or forms of worship. What they share is an ethos, a vibe, a sensibility. And that’s squishy. (p. 35, 39)

 

What I like about Jones’ prose is that he doesn’t water anything down. There are problems on both sides, there are misunderstandings all over, and there’s a need for forgiveness and mercy and grace from each corner. He does this with the historical potions of the story, and then does much the same with the theological discussion of truth, the Bible, interpretation, missiology. There’s a flow that’s working for me, like a primer on what I’ve been reading from my own vantage point that’s developed over the same passage of years.

 

I wanted to make sure I put at least one post out for recommending this book to those who want something different, who’ve been tweaked and now want to find that meaningful missing piece that just has to out there. It’s out there, alright – might not be this book, but there’s at least a blueprint here of what it can look like.


 

First chapter available free here on Tony Jones’ blog]

 

 

 


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