i am paradox

Daily Show Theology, Part 2

Jim Wallis was on the Daily Show last year, promoting his book God's politics. Jim, and his organization Sojourners are really picking up momentum. Their website finally has the video clip, which is pretty amazing. "Jim joins Jon in the tradition of Hebrew prophets who use humor and truth-telling to make their point."  You can also listen to and download 3 free samples from the audio book.

Jim Wallis and the Daily Show Clip

The Community of Faith

I have been given the opportunity to speak to our congregation recently and have been working on a series of messages about the community of faith. In a nutshell, it's the importance of living out the Christian experience through relationships.

I was struck by how important this is when a friend and fellow youth worker was in a traumatic car accident lately. Kari Morris-Guzman is a youth pastor at our Redlands church and her husband Aaron was driving her around on a trip back to the Midwest when they were involved in a serious accident. Aaron drives off the road to avoid a pickup truck that had stopped in front of them in the northbound lane. (The truck was waiting for oncoming traffic to turn left.)   The convertible dives into a ditch and flips end over end, landing upside down.  The impact of the accident completely flattens the windshield of the car and shatters Kari's 5 th Vertebra.   Aaron is not seriously hurt.       

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A few minutes late, the police arrive, but are unable to free Kari or Aaron from under the vehicle until the paramedics arrive a couple minutes later.

One of the worst parts was that doctor's in Colby incorrectly tell Aaron that Kari's spinal cord has been severed. Can you imagine having to go through this and then to hear news like that?  Thank God the news was wrong!

She is recovering more each day. Back to my original train of thought, one of the most exciting things that happenned out of this story was

a family from a local Free Methodist Church donates the use of their house for Kari's family and friends and a Greenville College alumna donates the use of her car.  There is something about our faith when it comes to being worked out in relationships. For too long, the christian faith was just about believing the right things, not necessarily doing the right things.

If you want to read more about the story and progress that Kari is making, a blog has been set up:
Kari's blog

More details can be found on her website, where everyone is encouraged to send email or make a donation:

We love you Kari
 

Sensuality and Spirituality

How should the Church respond the sexuality in our culture today?  The Christian message contains the truest guide to sexuality in existance, but too many people refuse to listen b/c all they here the church saying in regards to sex is NO!

Perhaps we should change our approach, much like this recent article in Wired Magazine:

" I stayed up all night Monday reading Smut: A Sex Industry Insider (and Concerned Father) Says Enough Is Enough by Gil Reavill. He's no prude, and he's no extremist. But he is tired of the porn creep that has turned mainstream entertainment into a sex-saturated parody of itself. And as I finished each chapter, I found myself thinking "yeah!" and "what he said!" instead of what I'd expected to think (which was something along the lines of "whatever, get over it").

"(The) internet ... represents a shared commons or public square," he writes. "It presents an engrossing portrait of who we are as a society, as a culture and as human beings." And it also houses "the nastiest neighborhoods of any town on Earth."

C.S. Lewis said in Mere Chrisitanity that "You can get a large audience together for a striptease act--that is, to watch a girl undress on the stage. Now suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply bringing a covered plate on to the stage and then slowly lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a piece of meat or food, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally queer about the state of the sex instinct among us?"

Continue Reading Put smut in its place

American Christianity?

Wow!  I was speechless after reading this:

"Christianity started out in Palestine as a fellowship; it moved to

Greece and became a philosophy; it moved to Italy and became

an institution; it moved to Europe and became a culture; it came to America

and became an enterprise." Sam Pascoe, American scholar.
From http://www.religioustolerance.org/christ.htm, via Anna at Deep Soil.

 

The Internet Gospel?

Earlier this week, I was sitting next to a friend of mine and noticed something that freaked me out: they were still using Internet Explorer!  I couldn't believe it! How could anyone still use that?  Tens of millions of people know and understand the greatness of Mozilla. And then, this week Firefox was hit with it's first security flaw.

So how does this relate to the gospel?  Well, it should be obvious that the internet is bigger and greater than any one browser, no matter how good that certain browser might be. And isn't this also true of the christian faith? Isn't is bigger and larger than any one version?  From time to time, doesn't our faith need to be updated, debugged, and reinstalled into our lives?

What is sin?

I will be moving up to the next stage in the ordination process of our denomination  next week. And in order to do so, I have really been reading and learning a lot about John Wesley . I even wrote a paper on what he has in common with this new way of thinking and being church that so many of us are apart of.

But one of the beliefs that he held that really stood out to me was his concept of sin. Too many evangelicals in the West only think of sin(s) in terms of individual action(s). But is this truly what we find when turning the pages of the scriptures? 

For example, when does adultery start?  Which sin is worse: doing a sexual sin or speaking out against it without love?  What about generational sin, systemic sin, sins of comission vs. sins of omission?  Maybe we need to rethink and redefine sin for this generation.

While attending a conference this week on holiness in the 21st century (Chris blogged about it here: ),
this very subject came up during small group discussion at our table. I don't think people in the world in which we live have no concept of sin, they just see it differently than most in the church. What do you think?

hmmmmm

"Our rigorous “back to the Bible” efforts turned Christianity into more of a head-trip than a journey with Jesus. Christianity as head-trip focuses on reading the Bible in such a way as to get everything just right:you know the drill."

Via Aaron via Wade Hodges

Quote

" God is always personal, but never private."  -- Jim Wallis

Evangelism ?

 

Did the early Church practice evangelism?  Should we?  And if so, what should be our approach?  There is much conversation taking place about the Church being a community that lives out its faith and invites others into the community of faith. The New Testament refers to the Church as a body and a bride. Does modern evangelism fit into these metaphors?

I was recently talking to someone who was making some phone calls for us. They said they felt like they were trying to sell paradox, or sell Jesus. I knew exactly what they meant, I have felt the same way before!  Should we rethink evangelism all together, or just "tweak" it?

Reaching the Post-Christian

You might be surprised at what Daniel Hill suggests as connecting with this group of people. Great article.

"I began to re-think the whole process of engaging the emerging culture for Christ. This journey has since led me to leave Willow Creek and plant River City, a new church in inner-city Chicago. Here we continue to experiment with ways to introduce this generation to Jesus.

People are way too complex to put into boxes, but it helps to describe two very different spiritual portraits, and then ask which portrait best describes your friends who don't yet know Christ. First, "Pre-Christians." These are individuals who at some level are open to the idea of Christianity and, given the right circumstances, could see themselves embracing it. Second, "Post-Christians." These are people who have seen Christianity somewhere along the way and have decided they are not interested."

Leadership Journal Article