Resistance and Victimhood

"The acquisition of a condition lends significance to one's existence. An illness, a cross to bear... Some people go from condition to condition; they cure one, and another pops up to take its place. The condition becomes a work of art in itself, a shadow version of the real creative act the victim is avoiding by expending so much care cultivating his condition. A victim act is a form of passive aggression. It seeks to achieve gratification not by honest work or a contribution made out of one's experience or insight or love, but by the manipulation of others through silent (and not-so-silent) threat. The victim compels others to come to his rescue or to behave as he wishes by holding them hostage to the prospect of his own further illness/meltdown/mental dissolution, or simply by threatening to make their lives so miserable that they do what he wants."

- Steven Pressfield, The War of Art page 27

Jimmy on Rollins Quote

Jimmy chimed in on the Peter Rollins quote from last week with this beauty on my facebook account.

"The general idea of resurrection for 2nd Temple Jewish culture was centered around vindication--that God will stand behind the lives of those who have been defeated by the world, yet have stood faithfully for God. Specifically, belief concerning resurrection for the righteous martyrs in Jewish history, for example, was that their persecutors were not ultimately the victors, but that YHWH and his faithful would win-out.

Jesus' resurrection is also vindication. In the resurrection God backed-up the words and life of Jesus. He _is_ the Son of God, Messiah and Lord. It shows that Rome, power, and death did not win. That the values of the kingdom are ultimately true: that the meek, the downtrodden, truly will inherit the land; that he first _will_ be last; that the kingdom _is_ at hand. If I act contrary to these words of Jesus, even if I think Jesus walked out of the tomb after his death, I think I do deny the essence of the resurrection."

This is Jimmy at his best.

Rob Merola Quote

My friend Rob lives in Northern Virginia, just outside Washington D.C. A really nice part of the country to live in. Rob can also put a few words together as you see below.
This is the kind of thing that seems to pop up in my conversations with friends recently. He just says it better.

"Sometimes, even right here in some of the nicest places in America, there are people suffering such anguish that it is a very real question of whether or not they will survive.

It’s not something I think any of us expect in our civilized world where most people’s lives look so neat and well kept. Maybe it didn’t seem so foreign in past generations when people faced death on a regular basis. Maybe it doesn’t seem so foreign today in those places where life is lived out in the midst of war. I really don’t know. I only know I feel a distinct incongruity between the insulation and comfort of modern life and the knowledge that a person not unlike you or me might not make it to see another day.

It happens more frequently than you might think. Eating disorders, addictions, and depression are all some of the things that can bring a person who on the outside seems to have everything to the place where inside they have nothing left. Sometimes, despite love and prayers, they do not make it through.

Our ability to affirm goodness in life is such a great gift; seeing it absent in the life of another makes us realize anew how fortunate we are, and what a mistake it is to take that fortune for granted without being deeply grateful for it."

-Rob Merola


You might consider reading Rob's blog. Link

I Deny the Resurrection

"Without equivocation or hesitation I fully and completely admit that I deny the resurrection of Christ. This is something that anyone who knows me could tell you, and I am not afraid to say it publicly, no matter what some people may think…

I deny the resurrection of Christ every time I do not serve at the feet of the oppressed, each day that I turn my back on the poor; I deny the resurrection of Christ when I close my ears to the cries of the downtrodden and lend my support to an unjust and corrupt system.

However there are moments when I affirm that resurrection, few and far between as they are. I affirm it when I stand up for those who are forced to live on their knees, when I speak for those who have had their tongues torn out, when I cry for those who have no more tears left to shed." - Peter Rollins

Link

Fun Quote

I heard this quote last week, or I read it. So forgive me for not knowing.

"I'm not a universalist. But I hope God is."

The Quote that won't go away (in a good way)

A quote I wrote in May of 2001 popped up again on Christianity Today's Out of Ur. Here's what I said.

"Conversion in the U.S. seems to mean we've exchanged some of our shopping at Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, and Borders for the Christian Bookstore down the street. We've taken our lack of purchasing control to God's store, where we buy our office supplies in Jesus' name."

Here's the original post. Give me some grace, it was 2001.. yes and parts that talk about authority make me cringe. I don't think I've actually said that again since 2001, but maybe I should.

Thanks to Skye to hanging on to that little quote for so long. Skye if you read this, we're both speaking at the NPC in San Diego in Feb. let's have a conversation. I'm interested to read Skye's book that he's writing on consumerism.

Eikon, a quote and the voices in my head

As a person leading a local community hoping to live I have a lot of voices (from the outside) telling me to do things differently than I am. It seems to me, that leadership has something to do with distinguishing between the right and wrong voices echoing with my grey matter and what to do with them.

A couple of the voices I hear from my past.
"You have to reach 200 people in the first 2-3 years or you'll never reach more people."
"You have to act like you have it all together."
"Change should happen faster than this."

Then I'm reminded of what I hope eikon will become, who we are and the power our community holds, and is only beginning to explore together. Eikon is becoming a radically hopeful expression of church. More every day.

Then I read this quote from Peter Block.
"Something shifts on a large scale only after a long period of small steps, organized around small groups patient enough to learn and experiment and learn again. Speed and scale are the arguments against what the individual and communal transformation require. They are a hallmark of the corporate mindset. When we demand more speed and scale, we are making a coded argument against anything important being any different."

Eikon is becoming something beautiful, not because of we are getting big fast, but because something important is happen in our lives as a community, and in our lives individually.

I'm thankful for what God is doing amongst us.

Quote for the day

More and more, it feels like I'm doing a really bad impersonation of myself.
- Chuck Palahnik

Quote for the day

Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.
-Cornell West

Quote for the day

It ain't those parts of the Bible that I can't understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.
- Mark Twain

Quote for the day

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.
- Henri Nouwen

Quote

Chris Folmsbee mentioned Thomas Merton today in his facebook status and it reminded me of this Merton quote.

A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire.
Thomas Merton

People are starting to catch on

Something I've been saying for years, and something I hope our eikon embodies.
Link

I suppose they are catching on at least a little. After reading further the "Don't go to church ,be the church" thing appears as just another program to go to church by going to church and serving instead consuming.

A step in the right direction. but falls way short of such a good slogan.

Don't go to church, be the church.

maybe i should have trademarked that puppy 8 years ago when I started using it.

hmmm

Another Quote for the day

Bill Easum:

Small churches are usually small because of their small, petty attitude. That attitude can be negative, it can be elitist, it can be mean-spirited, or it can be just plain content with the status quo. But I have never found a small church that has been small for many years to be a healthy environment. (I’m afraid I just made some institutional folks unhappy.) My experience has been if the church is faithful to the Gospel it grows—period. I could say the same thing about a house church or small group. I base this on the Book of Acts—it is about the growth of Christianity and suggests to me that God wants the church to grow and spread. Read the story—it goes progressively from addition, to multitudes, to myriads of growth.

What do you think?

Read it in context here.

Quote for the day

Those at the edge, ironically, always hold the secret for the conversion of every age and culture. They always hold the projected and denied parts of our soul.

Only as the People of God receive the stranger and the leper, those who don’t play our game, do we discover not only the hidden and hated parts of our own souls, but the Lord Jesus himself.

In letting go, we make room for the Other. The Church is always converted when the outcasts are reinvited into the temple.

—Richard Rohr, Radical Grace

(thanks to Zach)

Celebrity and position

Zach is quoting Andrew who is quoting Mark DeMoss.

Here’s an interesting excerpt from a post from Steven Waldman, the editor-in-chief of Belief.net:

Mark DeMoss, former chief of staff to Jerry Falwell and now a leading Christian public relations executive, is hoping that Palin turns out well but has been shocked and worried by the reflexive Christian embrace of her.

“Too many evangelicals and religious conservative are too preoccupied with values and faith and pay no attention to competence. We don’t apply this approach to anything else in life, including choosing a pastor.” Imagine, he said, if a church was searching for a pastor and the leadership was brought a candidate with great values but little experience. “They’ve been a pastor for two years at a church with 150 people but he shares our values, so we hired him to be pastor of our 5,000 person church? It wouldn’t happen! We don’t say, ‘He shares our values, so let’s hire him.’ That’s absurd. Yet we apply that to choosing presidents. It blows my mind.”

Does anyone else remember Promise Keepers full on embrace and ordination of this guy at several of their stadium events?

Quote: Chesterton

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one's own country as a foreign land."
-G.K. Chesterton

Quote passed on by Daniel King

"A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down."
- Edna St. Vincent Millay

thanks Daniel!

Quote for the Day: justin Dillon/Tremolo

"Is art entertainment?
Art teaches about who we are.
Entertainment tells us who to be.
Art is a public service.
Entertainment is a private product.
Art opens our minds.
Entertainment thinks for you.
Art is publicaly offered.
Entertainment is publicaly traded.
Art is the words we wish to say, but lack the language to say it."

Link

Quote for the Day: Pete Rollins

"There are countless people who betray Christianity, individuals who turn their backs on its message because they no longer believe in it or because it asks too much of them. But there are a few who betray Christianity, not because they no longer believe in it, but because they believe in it so deeply, because they understand that unless the seed of our Christianity falls to the ground and dies it will remain a single seed, but if it is allowed to die it will produce many seedsâ?¦

The cost of Christianity, for so many, is thought to lie in the demand that we die to ourselves for the sake of our Christianity. The cross we are called to carry is thus one upon which we are to be put to death. But what if this cross we bear had another meaning? What if the cross that we are called to carry is not for us at all but rather, like the cross that Simon of Cyrene labored beneath, is really for another-a cross for us to crucify what we love? Is it possible that the cross we labor beneath must be used to crucify our Christianity? How many of us can truly understand this question? How many of us can really know what it is like to destroy what we love for the sake of what we love-to be the most faithful of betrayers? Yet perhaps it is precisely this that we are being called to: engaging in that most difficult task of putting our religion to death so that a religion without religion can spring forth"

Naked Pastor on Fatigue

Money Quote:

Years ago I read a book by Easum and Bandy called Growing Spiritual Redwoods. I don’t recall anything else about the book except one declaration that the future church would not support codependent relationships. I remember how radical and dangerous an idea that was because that would pretty much empty most churches. Imagine if you stopped supporting codependence in all your relationships. Do you wonder how lonely you’d become? Most of what we do is fulfill other’s expectations of us. We grant other’s their desires.

Link

read it and let me know what you think?

Fredrick Buechner on Patriotism

I read this Sunday night and thought I'd share it with you. Tell me what you think.
All "isms" run out in the end, and good riddance to most of them. Patriotism for example.
If patriots are people who stand by their country right or wrong, Germans who stood by Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich should be adequate proof that we've had enough of them.
If patriots are people who believe not only that anything they consider unpatriotic is wrong but that anything they consider wrong is unpatriotic, the late Senator Joseph McCarthy and his backers should be enough to make us avoid them like the plague.
If patriots are people who believe things like "Better Dead Than Red," they should be shown filmsof Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively and then be taken off to the funny farm.
The only patriots worth their salt are the ones who love their country enought to see that in a nuclear age it is not going to survive unless the world survives. True patriots are no longer champions of Democracy, Communism, or anything like that but champions of the Human Race. It is not the Homeland that they feel called on to defend at any cost, but the planet Earth as Home. If in the interests of making sure we don't blow ourselves off the map one and for all, we end up relinquishing a measure of national sovereignty to some international body, so much the worse for national sovereignty.
There is only one Sovereignty that matters ultimately, and it is of another sort altogether.

Quote

It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.
-H. L. Mencken

Crisis and Innovation

Stephen J Dubnar writes about Crisis and innovation here.

Money Quote:

Hippen writes that in the earlier days of kidney transplantation, both the U.S. and Iranian governments “paid for dialysis while continuing to develop transplant options.” As more and more patients needed dialysis, the U.S. made it a fully funded Medicare benefit. But Iran didn’t feel it could do the same. Why not?

[T]he expense of dialysis, the economic collapse in Iran following the 1979 revolution, and the expense of the subsequent protracted conflict with Iraq encouraged the Iranian government to pay for transplantation as soon as immunosuppressant drugs made it a viable alternative to dialysis.

So that’s how, and why, Iran began down the road to allowing people to freely buy and sell organs on a regulated market. Without the financial crises, Iran probably wouldn’t have felt pressure to pursue a plan that turned out to be, on some significant dimensions at least, very successful. (Hippen argues that Iran is the one country in the world with no waiting list for kidney recipients.)

sorta gross, but interesting. worth the quick read.

The Atheist Nightmare??? um....

Saw this on Andrew Sullivan last week. I have words, but I'll refrain, and let you draw your own conclusions.



Andrew then has a reader post this.

Here's what a reader says

The banana in question is a Cavendish Banana, which actually are asexual offshoots of larger, bulkier banana plants. These supermarket mutants bear little resemblance to their progenitor, the wild banana, which is a green oval-shaped thing full of large seeds and liquid (see above). The domestication of the wild banana began between 5000 and 8000 years ago, and only after thousands of years of farming and breeding (one can call that evolution if one wishes) did they even begin to slightly resemble their celebrated yellow hue, curved shape and 'natural' wrapper.

Christian apologetics has certainly deteriorated over the centuries. From Saint Thomas Aquinas and Rene Descartes with their long treatises to washed up child stars with poorly constructed 'common sense' appeals in only 800 years. The fruit, I suppose, has fallen far from the tree.

(sigh)

JK Rowlings on Imagination and Failure

Link

Money quote (from the given text):

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

(Thanks to Rick)

Shane Hipps Quote

Shane used to be a marketing exec for companies like Porsche and he wrote this on his blog. Brilliant stuff.

On a recent comment Russell asks:

I can imagine that there's a huge leap between Porsche culture and Mennonite culture, but does any of what they do still stick with you and inspire you today?

This is one of my most frequently asked questions. So I thought I would answer it here. In short the answer is no.

I try my best not to translate any of the things I learned from advertising into the world of spirituality, faith, church, etc. The reason is simple. Advertising is fundamentally a form of coercion. Granted it is a playful manipulation that most people enjoy when it's done well.

It's fun and funny, can't be that harmful. Nonetheless, the primary task of my previous life was to try and highjack your imagination, brand your brain with a Porsche logo, and then feed you opinions you thought were your own. I can't think of a method more opposed to the process of deepening and evolving the spiritual life. So I'm very aware of intentionally not translating or using these methods.

In my experience, the best thing I can do to lead people spiritually is to show them love. At the heart of love is making space, honoring the free will of the other. This requires that I intentionally divest myself of their outcomes, decisions, and conclusions. Sounds counter-intuitive, but then again, most things in the life of faith are. When someone senses that I need them to grow to validate myself, it usually hinders their growth. When they sense that I love them and have no need for them to take my advice, they're more free to do so if they choose. This I've found to be the most fertile soil for spiritual evolution. And it is diametrically opposed to the tasks of advertising and marketing, which are driven entirely by outcomes.

Treating Church as a Fetish

Pete Rollins has a great post titled, "Treating Church as a Fetish"
Here's the link.

I have, over the last few years, had numerous conversations with intelligent, thoughtful individuals who continue to attend dogmatic churches that they no longer feel subjectively connected to. Indeed sometimes I speak to so many people in this position that I wonder if some churches are made up predominately of members who do not subjectively agree with what is being said, how it is being said, and the structures within which it is being said. And what is even more perturbing is that many of these people are not just pew fillers but actively involved in worship, speaking and leading.

One of the problems I have with this is that, whatever a person says to me about not really believing in what their church is saying or doing, their very presence within the structure sustains it and supports it. It was Hegel who wrote about how the State can flourish even if no one really believes in it, simply because the majority continue to act asthoughthey believe in it. People involved at various levels of the State apparatus can say what they like behind closed doors, but if they are engaging in the rituals that sustain the State, then they are sustaining the State.

I must admit to getting increasingly frustrated with these conversations, particularly when I am speaking with confident, aware, independent people who are continuing to attend, not because they could not function without it, but rather because it would be too much hassle to make the break (perhaps because their wage depends on it, or their social networks are too intertwined with it).

This problem has a lot of resonance with Marx' writings on money as a fetish. It is all too common to chat with someone about how money is not some magical property that brings happiness, that working all the hours God sends to increase capital will damage the most precious relationships we have and that having a better car is not what life is about. Only to realise that, as soon as they turn from the conversation, they act as though they did believe all those things. This is fetishism at it heart, 'I know this thing before me is not magical but I act as though it is anyway'.

Those who stand in my position have all too often been sympathetic to these people who attend the church while saying, 'I don't really believe or endorse what is said' because they are intellectually closer to us than those who attend such churches 'naively' (i.e. those who attend without questioning). However, we must resist such a seductive temptation and avoid getting drawn into sympathy for our friends in this position (and many of these people are my friends). For these people are the ones we should be critiquing most rigorously:for knowing what ought to be done and yet refusing to do it.

Art and the Church

The quote below is from nakedpastor's post on how poorly churches engage the arts.
One of my hopes for our new church is that we will be a people who embrace artists and the art that they create.

Here's the quote:

The church is generally a censorious community. In this environment art is sanitized, tame and conformist. It is still art, but functions as a reinforcement of the system. Expression is controlled and edited from start to finish. This kills art because it kills creativity because it kills freedom. Instead, allow people to be free without scrutiny. (I even hate the word “allow” because it assumes it needs to be given when it is already ours.) In due time, after people begin to realize that they are loved and accepted unconditionally, the creative spirit will surface and artistic diversity will abound. This is the harder but more genuine way. It means taking care of the roots. If the root is unfettered freedom, then fruitful and artistic living happens. It is the diversity of human expression of personality that makes the artful life. Until this is nurtured art will be repressed.

Link

"Reaching new people"

So Kurt likes Craig's quote. I like it too, but would say it a bit differently.

Here's the Quote Kurt likes:
"To reach people no one else is reaching we must do things no one else is doing."
- Craig Groeschel; founder of Lifechurch.tv


So it makes sense right? I actually like Kurt's thoughts when he says,

"Andy's big thought related to this quote was that obviously the majority of things church's are doing must not be what most people are interested in because most people aren't going to the things church's are doing! Even a super cool worship service must not be what most people are interested in because most people aren't going to super cool worship services...they are doing a bunch of other stuff instead."


My thoughts:
I don't know the context of what Craig was saying, so I could be misunderstanding. But this sounds like the formula he's proposing.

Do different things that people like and more people will come.


I can go with him a bit on this. But what I'd prefer was that we were actually different people. That we encouraged expressions of church that were born out of people who were actually different rather than just trying to market Jesus differently. Marketing is easier than being different.

Don't do different programs. Don't try portray yourself as slick or cool or even different. Simply be yourself. Be a different people, a people created to love God with deep diverse expressions of faithfullness. Then be ready for different looking churches to spring up with different looking doctrine who are faithfully following God and connecting with people like themselves.

So yes I agree with Craig, we must be willing to do things differently and it must authentically come from who we are.

What do you think?

Seth on Charity or Bargain Hunting

Seth Godin has a great post today on Charity and giving.

Here it is:

Marketing the charity auction

By Seth Godin

How much would you pay for a twenty dollar bill?

In tough times, many schools and non-profits rely on charity fundraisers, and a popular one is the auction. The method is simple: supporters donate things, and then they're auctioned off, with all proceeds going to charity.

If you have a vacation house, the thinking goes, the incremental cost of donating a week is low. And wow, I can buy a week at that house for way less than it's worth. Everyone wins.

If you have a friend who works on the Letterman show, you can get two VIP tickets for free and donate them and someone at the auction gets to go to the show for not so much money.

This bargain hunting is fine as far as it goes, but it never leads to a wildly successful auction, because the story that's told is too small.

If you're only willing to bid $19 to buy a $20 bill at this auction, you're not doing charity, you're bargain hunting. There's nothing wrong with bargain hunting, it's fun, but it's not philanthropy. I think bargain hunting for a good cause is just fine, but wouldn't it be great if the event could raise far more money and change the way people view the organization?

The Robin Hood Foundation raised more than 24 million dollars at their last auction, because people competed to overpay. And that's the secret. The story the charity must tell is: "don't pay $19 for this twenty dollar bill, don't even pay $30, we need you to pay $40!" The satisfaction of overpaying (whether you overpay anonymously or in public) is what they sell, not a bargain.

This is not the easy path. It is much easier to sell your public on bargains than it is to sell them on generosity. The good news is that once you get over the hump, it scales. Bargains scale downward... better bargains are lower-priced bargains, which means you scale to zero. Philanthropy scales upward... better overpaying is more overpaying. A public auction is always a public competition. The challenge is to create social approval for what would otherwise be bad auction skills! Enlist a few stooges in the audience in advance, then start by auctioning off that $20 bill. When it goes for $45 and the winner gets an ovation, you've set a tone.

The goal of a non-profit seeking money needs to be to create an environment in which the community congratulates itself on overpaying.

Archbishop Rowen Williams answers "What is Church?"

Pete Rollins says it this way

The other day I talked my friend Tom who sees a Move away from church as move toward Jesus.
Pete Rollins, leader of Ikon in Belfast puts it this way.

There are countless people who betray Christianity, individuals who turn their backs on its message because they no longer believe in it or because it asks too much of them. But there are a few who betray Christianity, not because they no longer believe in it, but because they believe in it so deeply, because they understand that unless the seed of our Christianity falls to the ground and dies it will remain a single seed, but if it is allowed to die it will produce many seeds.

With this in mind we may wonder whether the deepest cost entailed in embracing the radical message of Christ—that we lay down our life and pick up our cross and follow him—may not simply be the call to sacrifice our own life (something we are asked to do before we pick up the cross), but the call to sacrifice what we love more than our life.

The cost of Christianity, for so many, is thought to lie in the demand that we die to ourselves for the sake of our Christianity. The cross we are called to carry is thus one upon which we are to be put to death. But what if this cross we bear had another meaning? What if the cross that we are called to carry is not for us at all but rather, like the cross that Simon of Cyrene labored beneath, is really for another—a cross for us to crucify what we love? Is it possible that the cross we labor beneath must be used to crucify our Christianity? How many of us can truly understand this question? How many of us can really know what it is like to destroy what we love for the sake of what we love—to be the most faithful of betrayers? Yet perhaps it is precisely this that we are being called to: engaging in that most difficult task of putting our religion to death so that a religion without religion can spring forth.

Link

Quote for the day

Marko quoted Mencken a few days ago. Here's one of my favorites.

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.
H. L. Mencken

Idiocy: See Jonesville Church of God's Sign

It reads,

OBAMA OSAMA
HUMM
ARE THEY BROTHERS

Link

Unguarded Moments of Weariness

My friend muses on is relationship with his eldest daughter off at college for her birthday. Rob is a gifted writer and Scot McKnight once wrote me saying that Rob had insights into the people like few do. Here's my favorite part of Rob's reflection.

Today is my older daughter’s birthday. How I tell her that I love her is between the two of us; it is her choice to share those words if and as she chooses. But how would I tell you how much I love her?

I’d tell you about worshipping with my little girl (who is now neither little or a girl) yesterday. She’s a kid who burns the candle at both ends, and does so long into the night. Between her studies, her activities, her friendships, and now a boyfriend as well, she pretty much always has something going. She is tired, and in unguarded moments the weariness shows for those who know how to look for it—and sometimes even to those who don’t. But she makes time for her old man, and for the Old Man (to use an ageist and sexist reference to our Creator that I hope you will grant me the grace to pardon), and both are gifts I do not take lightly.

She is also old enough now to have learned the hard way at least a little bit of something about life’s disappointments, heartache, sorrow, and loss. She has learned these things because she has cultivated the ability to care deeply; to be mindful of others, of what is important in the world, and of how the two intersect in her relationships. Ours is one of those relationships, and though our relationship could easily take a back seat at this stage in her life, she is careful (care full) to do more than conveniently work me in as she can, making the effort and sacrifice necessary to share her life with mine and allowing me to share mine with her. Is there any greater privilege one human being can give another than that?

The line, "She is tired, and in unguarded moments the weariness shows for those who know how to look for it" made my eyes swell. I can picture this for my kids. Can you? A busy room might not notice the fragile subtleness of our children, but a caring father does. Here is a father who knows his daughter because he's watched her for years and has insight only a father can have. In a world where kids are ignored, or abandoned because of over involved and over committed parents, this is a nice change of pace.

Here's Rob's whole post.

Quote of the Day

If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original.

- Ken Robinson

Another Great Quote

“Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure”

- Henri Nouwen

Quote for the Day

A NY Times article on the assassination of a priest in Baghdad and the safety of Christians there leaves me wondering few things.

Here's the quote:

The invasion had caused only harm for Iraq’s Christians, he said.

“I heartily believe that we were living better under the old regime. No one could threaten the Christians then.”

Link

Quote for the Day:

The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. Communication does not depend on syntax, or eloquence, or rhetoric, or articulation but on the emotional context in which the message is being heard. People can only hear you when they are moving toward you, and they are not likely to when your words are pursuing them. Even the choices words lose their power when they are used to overpower. Attitudes are the real figures of speech.

Edwin Freidman

Money Quote my Crossfit Trainer

The Money quote from my crossfit trainer Eric last Friday was:

"Pain is weakness leaving the body."

nice.
and I like it.

Truman on Kennedy (sound familiar?)

This is from meet the press.
for the whole transcript go here.

MR. RUSSERT: ...and we've been able to find exactly what Harry Truman said about John Kennedy back in July of 1960. Let's watch this.

(Videotape)

PRES. HARRY S. TRUMAN: Senator, you--are you certain that you are quite ready for the country, or the country is ready for you in the role of president in January 1961? I have no doubt about the political heights to which you are destined to rise, but I'm deeply concerned and troubled about the situation we are up against in the world now and in the immediate future. That is why I hope that someone with the greatest possible maturity and experience would be available at this time. May I urge you to be patient.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Incredible. Two days later, this is how John Kennedy responded to Harry Truman. Let's watch.

(Videotape)

PRES. JOHN F. KENNEDY: The world is changing. The old ways will not do. It is time for new generation of leadership to cope with new problems and new opportunities, for there is a new world to be won, a world of peace and good will, a world of hope and abundance, and I want America to lead the way to that new world.

Today I say to you, with full knowledge of the responsibilities of that high office, that if the people of the nation select me to be their president, I am ready.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Forty-eight years later, maturity, experience, "be patient," "I'm ready."

MR. CARVILLE: Yeah.

MR. SHRUM: It's the same debate.

MR. MURPHY: Yeah.

Buechner on Memory

I could think about this quote all day and still see new nuances to it. Few can put words together like he can.

"Memory is more than a looking back to a time that is no longer; it is a looking out into another kind of time altogether where everything that ever was continues not just to be, but to grow and change with the life that is in it still. The people we loved. The people who loved us. The people who, for good or ill, taught us things. Dead and gone though they may be, as we come to understand them in new ways, it is as though they come to understand us - and through them we come to understand ourselves- in new ways too."

Fredrick Buechner, The Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days, page 21-22

Who said this?

"Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it's to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its apologist."


A. Bill Gates
B. Rick Warren
C. Bono
D. Bill Hybles

A Great Post from John Frye

"Imagine that the 5000 "men" and the 4000 "men" that Jesus fed with bread and fish each had a wife and, let's say, two children. That would mean that Jesus fed to complete satisfaction some 36,000 people. The disciples picked up a total of 19 basketfuls of leftovers (I know there are two different words for "baskets" in Mark 6 and Mark 8).

Soon after these two startling miracles the disciples fuss about not having any bread in the boat. In an exasperated, classic understatement Jesus asks the Twelve, "Why are you talking about having no bread?"

Jesus goes on, "Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear" (Mark 8:18)?

These questions are bracketed between two miracles: Jesus heals a deaf (and speech-impaired) man and Jesus heals a blind man (see Mark 7:31-35 and 8:22-26)."


Link

Technology Thought

To almost quote from a previous post, here's a thought.

The technology and change you work so hard to lead people into, tomorrow will be the status quo you are trying to lead them out of.

Quote

"In most evangelical environments, including mine, we have been overwhelmed with models and programs that are designed for local churches to grow bigger. Unfortunately, most really don't work...Many have also come to define Christianity by a set of beliefs. Churches are concerned that people know a set amount of doctrinal truth, and there is nothing wrong with that. But that set of knowledge is not Christianity."

-Mike Breen serves at Community Church of Joy in Glendale, Arizona.

(thanks to Out of Ur)

Quote

I have spent hours going over the things I did wrong. I should have fired that one babysitter we had two afternoons a week – the one that favored her sister. I should have spent more time playing on the floor with her. I shouldn’t have focused on teaching my kids the Broadway musicals I loved so much when the rest of the third graders were focused on the Spice Girls. The list goes on. Why didn’t I force her to stay with swimming lessons? Maybe I should have chosen a different nursery school… I used to forgive her shyness and speak for her on occasions when she seemed too quiet to talk. Maybe I should have practiced more “tough love” and forced her to handle certain things on her own.
Or maybe not. The irony of her crisi of confidence is that it has become my own crisis. I was once a very confident parent, but I’ve now begun to question every decision I’ve ever made. Worse than that, I’ve begun to question my own daughter! I notice that I’m not only blaming myself, but I’m becoming her critic. What is she doing, I wonder, that would make people reject her? How has she behaved that has caused former friends to turn away? Maybe she’d too self-involved. Maybe she’d too desperate for friendship. Maybe she’s kind of boring. Maybe she – What am I doing, for goodness’ sake? She’s my daughter and I love her. No, she’s not perfect, and she never will be. Am I one of those thirteen-year-old girls myself?
-Pamela, middle school mom


From the book Queen Bee Moms and Kingpin Dads by Rosalind Wiseman

A Sad and Dangerous Little Game

"There is a sad and dangerous little game we play when we get to be a certain age. It is a form of solitaire. We get out our class yearbook, look at the pictures of the classmates we knew best, and recall the days when we first knew them in school, all those years ago. We think about all the exciting, crazy, wonderfully characteristic things they used to be interested in and about the kind of dreams we had about what were going to do when we graduated and about the kind of dreams that maybe we had for some of them. Then we think about what those classmates actually did with their lives, what we are doing with them now ten or twenty years later. I make no claim that the game is always sad or that when it seems to be sad our judgment is always right, but once or twice when I have played it myself, sadness has been a large part of what I have felt. Because in my class, at the school I went to, as in any class at any school, there were students who had a real flair, a real talent, for something. Maybe it was for writing or acting or sports. Maybe it was an interest and joy in working with people toward some common goal, a sense of responsablity for people who in some way had less than they had or were less. Sometimes it was just their capacity for being so alive that made you more alive to be with them. Yet now, a good many years later, I have the feeling that more than just a few of them are spending their lives at work in which none of these gifts is being used, at work they seem to be working at with neither much pleasure nor any sense of accomplishment. This is the sadness of the game, and the danger of it is that maybe we find that in some measure we are among them or that we are too blind to see that we are."

- Fredrick Buechner from Secrets in the Dark

Quoting Damien

"I’m reminded that a revolution is what’s needed.

I cannot bring it.

I cannot own it.

I cannot be it.

But I can feel it’s invitation so loudly that I get sick to my stomach… overwhelmed."

- Damien O'Farrell

Dan Hughes Thoughts

profit is this: finding, building or buying something that puts out more than one puts in.

commerce is this: sustainably scaling the production of profit through core growth, related offerings or new markets.

wealth is this: taking profit off the table and transforming it into sustainable vehicles that store, grow and enable the use of profit as power over time.

Link

Grapes

Jaden and Zach were running around with grapes today. They were threatening to squeeze them and pop juice all over the rest of us. Lots of laughter. Lots of running around the house. Then the remarkably quoteable Jaden said this...

"With grape power comes grape juice. With grape power comes grape responsibility."


No he hasn't seen Spiderman... but he's obviously heard the line somewhere. I love his creativity.

More Perfect

Seth Godin speaks to the reality that it is hard to reach people who are actually unreached. He's not just talking about the church. He's talking about businesses trying to reach new customers.

He says, "In fact, as the Food Network and cookbook publishers have demonstrated over and over again, you're way better off helping the perfect improve. You'll also sell a lot more management consulting to well run companies, high end stereos to people with good stereos and yes, church services to the already well behaved."Link

Becoming Human Beings

“In 1963 I went on that famous March on Washington, and the clearest memory that I have of it is standing near the Lincoln Memorial hearing the song “We Shall Overcome” sung by the quarter of a million or so people who were there. And while I listened, my eye fell on one very old Negro man, with a face like shoe leather and a sleazy suit and expression that was more befuddled than anything else; and I wondered to myself if, quite apart from the whole civil-rights question, that poor old bird could ever conceivably overcome anything. He was there to become a human being. Well, and so were the rest of us. And so are we all, no less befuddled than he when you come right down to it. Poor old bird, poor young birds, every one of us. And deep in my heart I do believe we shall overcome some day, as he will, by God’s grace, by helping the seed of the kingdom grow in ourselves and in other and in each other until finally in all of us it becomes a tree where the birds of the air can come and make their nests in our branches. That is all that matters really.”
- Fredrick Buechner

Billboard

I'm not a fan of churches using billboards. There's nothing sinful about it, but I have my reasons. I'm also not a raving fan of some of the ecclesiology of my friends at Lifechurh.tv . But this made me laugh.

I'm driving down the highway here in Tulsa. I drive past a church who has recently had a billboard saying "Exit here - God" for people to come to their church.
Lame.

Then today I read this red billboard.

-------------------------
Boycott LifeChurch.tv

- Satan

--------------------------

Hilarious. Only in Tulsa. I laughed out loud for at least a mile.
Totally creative. Completely original. and very very funny.

You need to know Wade Hodges

We Can't Do Megachurch AnymoreWhat happens when an "attractional church" is compelled to go in a different direction?

This Article was published in Christianity today.

My good friend Wade Hodges is a gifted communicator and leader who is doing the hard work of leading his congregation through change.

A few highlights for me:
"Was it time to plant an emerging type church? Or could I help an existing modern-ish church position itself for ministering to the next generation by developing some emerging sensibilities?

Rather than giving up on existing churches, which is what the prospect of church planting felt like to me, I wanted to believe that an existing church could make the transition. So I came to Garnett Church of Christ and set the transition in motion.

The results have been astounding.

850 members in 2003.

550 members in 2006.

Everyone told me that church planting would be hard, but I don't know if anyone warned me how difficult making this kind of church transition, with its epistemological, cultural, and sociological elements, would be."

"Our facilities were built with a megachurch in mind. With a 3,000-seat auditorium built in the center of forty acres, Garnett was positioned in the mid-eighties to grow exponentially like the oil-boom neighborhoods that surrounded it.

It never did."

"To relinquish our rights as members to a church building that we are no longer able to pay for by ourselves. The Garnett Church of Christ building is becoming the Garnett Event Center.

Already, several other churches are using our facilities on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon: a Messianic Jewish community, a charismatic Hispanic church, a rock church called Rolling Stone, and a new church plant.

Throughout the week, a number of other events, some church-related and others not, are held at our building. Not only is the rental income from these events helping to pay the bills, but it's also giving us a hospitable presence in our neighborhood.

But not without some difficulty. Everyone, myself and all ministry staff included, must reserve any classroom or meeting space equally with those in the community who are using or renting space.

The way we're trying to see it: this building no longer belongs to us. It belongs to our community. This isn't easy to explain to a charter member who's been helping to pay off the building for 20 years!

We've started a bi-lingual preschool that has grown to 50 students, half Anglo and half Hispanic. We've projected beyond our ability to speak Spanish, putting "Bienvenito" (Welcome) on the front doors and asking Spanish speakers to help us translate for different events."


Check out Wade's Blog.

No Words for this

No words for this. humbling.

I'm going to record it here on the blog so I can refer to it in the future. Such a great sermon and call to live by.


From Ted Ferris' sermon preached at an ordination service on May 9, 1971.
Because the church is where it is today—at the cross-roads—the younger he is the better able he will be to lead in into another chapter. People of my age and generation are too emotionally attached to the past to even see, let alone dare to make the changes that will almost inevitably be a necessity of survival. We may like to think that we are broad-minded and flexible, but when we get down to brass tacks, to the sticks and stones of the buildings we love, to the words and phrases of hymns and prayers that we know by heart, to the organizations we’ve given our time and energy to create, to the budgets and cash balances that we are accustomed to—then we know that we’re not quite so fluid as we thought we were. Perhaps we’re not yet frozen, but we’re pretty well fixed...

Whom did our Lord ask to start a new movement of the Spirit at a time when the spiritual temperature of the civilized world was far below normal—a group of elderly men who had been through the gaff, knew all the pitfalls, and could spot the crackpots a mile off? Not at all. None of them was much more than thirty—not even Jesus; or Paul, or Peter, or John. They were young, inexperienced, open to new ideas, sensitive to new visions, willing to try anything, ready to pay any price.

Don’t misunderstand me. I’m not yet ready to turn the whole church over to the teen-agers, or even to those in their twenties. What I am saying is that when it comes to the kind of rebirth which the church now calls for, the lead will come from young men like the one before us now—intelligent, serious, flexible, imaginative, gentle but firm, and fearless; ready to break new ground, not tied body and soul to any particular organization or way of worship; with preferences, obviously, but not prejudices and preconceptions.

All I ask of him is that he go about his work remembering Jesus: he was outspoken, he made no peace with legalism or narrowness of any kind; but he carried no battle-axe, and he made his greatest gains when showed people something they had never seen before—the royalty of service.

Tony Jones Article

Three Choices in a Pluralilstic society.

I really like what Tony has to say here.

The Gospel we Preach

Yesterday I had a conversation with Dr. Danny Grimes of Oral Roberts University. He's in Phoenix with the Free Methodist education bigwigs and has been visiting with really smart folks. I won't include who Danny is quoting, because I'm not sure it was a comment for public consumtion, though I think it would be fine. Ted Haggard came up in the conversation and something close to this comment was made to Danny.

"Ted has always preached a gospel that would allow him to do what he did."

Wow.

I immediately began to wonder, what does the gospel I preach and live allow for me to do? Thanks for asking great questions Danny and sharing that with me.

Something I'll be chewing on for a while.

Of course I know my answer right? It's the stuff I deal with and have always dealt with. The gospel I preach allows for that. But how? What would change?

Things to think about.

Funny Demotivator

Is this what you think of?

Is this what you think of when you think of Consulting? I found this here

Christmas Post #2

"Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of him again. Once they have seen him in a stable, they can never be sure where he will appear or to what lengths he will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation he will descend in his wild pursuit of humankind. If holiness and the aweful power and majesty of God were present in this least auspicious of all events, this birth of a peasant's child, then there is no place or time so lowly and earthbound but that holiness can be present there too. And this means that we are never safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from his power to break in two and recreate the human heart, because it is just where he seems most helpless that he is most strong, and just where we least expect him that he comes most fully."

Fredrick Buechner, from "Secrets in the Dark"

Quote for the Week:

"For every complex problem there is an easy answer, and it is wrong."

-- H. L. Mencken

(thanks to my pastor Steve of the quote.)