The Ugly Beautiful Garden

K-1 Soccer

I really enjoy coaching K-1 soccer.  I do.  I love just watching the kids go and make cool plays.  Today I taught them how to pass the ball from the side into the center.  They actually did it a couple of times and even scored doing it!  I love getting them fired up about being a pack of wolves and howling when they score.  I dig that they actually show up wanting and excited to play.  At one point three of them, including my son were taking on 8 from the other team and really running circles around them.  They scored.  I know its K-1 but it still is cool to watch them going for it.  Its a bit different from the regular Sunday morning. People don't always seem ready to play and excited about the game.  Its a much more passive affair.  I feel much more like a professional, than a guy just hoping the kids learn some skills but mainly that it is a really great and fun game.  I don't know how much people learn.  Maybe it tells me something.  Can a guy make a living coaching K-1 soccer and still love it?  How do you get on the field with people and teach them to live out their faith? 

At Your Age

I went to the eye doctor yesterday.  It is the first time I went to him.  My former optometrist was older than I am.  This new guy is younger.  I explained my eyes seem to be getting a bit worse.   He said, "At your age, it is to be expected."  I have never heard these words spoken to me before!  And if I did, they never struck me like this.  I am thirty-nine and feel like I am twenty.  At your age?  Man it is happening.

Excercise and Faith

I am trying to jog...again.  Its not that I don't know how to jog.  It is that I have attempted to be a person who jogs for health several times in my life.  I have never been a workout kind of guy.  When I find myself most fit is when I am playing something.  In Colorado I would be most fit when I mountain biked or climbed mountains.  In Pasadena, I played racquetball and several intramural sports although I could not describe myself as fit.  Lately I enjoy fishing.  Fishing is not a sport for fitness. I play softbal and softball is not the best fitness sport.  As a dad I find that I don't have a whole lot of spare time.  Usually I walk to work.  That helps.  But lately I have been trying to jog although running sounds better, jogging is the more accurate description.  So we will see. 

I have often thought one of the reasons Jesus never had much to say about caring for your body had to do with the Middle Eastern diet and walking being the main mode of transportation.  If you look at the map, the disciples really had to follow Jesus.  They put miles on their sandals.  So were they just naturally fit because they ate fish, bread and walked regularly? 

So is exercise an action of faith?  Is caring for your body an act of discipleship?  Could we say it is a stewardship of sorts?  A stewardship of the body?  Often in American Christianity, I see an emphasis on the spiritual side of faith.  That the more I become spiritual the better.  Taken to its extreme, this could be a neglect of the physical.  In some cases it is like, "spiritual good", physical "bad".  But it seems to me in the letter of James, faith and action are inseparable.  To love someone is a spiritual thing yet it requires action.  I can tell my wife I love her, but I also must show her with my actions.  And by this I of course mean taking out the trash and stuff.  

Of course I am aware we live in a culture that elevates the beauty of the human body.  I am aware of all the horrible stuff that comes with it and how we idolize beauty and the human body.  Yet, maybe its because we need to connect our faith with our body in more ongoing, concrete ways.  Maybe we need to say the body is sacred.  If sacred, then something we care for in a holy way?  I would think this means we need to be conscience of what we put into it, what we do with it, and how we proactively seek to make it stronger and healthier.  Could that be an act of Christian discipleship?   Aren't disciples called to be stewards of the things we have been given by God? 

Where Did the Good News Go?!

The gospel passage for Mark in this week's lectionary is Chapter 6:14-29(but while you are there click the bottom link to continue on to verse 30 and read it as well...they should have included it in my opinion) http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=114168926

Nice gloomy passage huh?  Where is the good news in that you may ask.  At least that is what I ask, since I believe in preaching the good news on Sunday. 

I think the hint is in verse 30.  Then go back and read the six verses preceding this week's passage.  Does that help you find good news? 

Maybe the good news is that I found it there and you can come on Sunday and hear the good news.  Or in the words of Reggie McNeal, watch "Jason work out!"  Or in this case...Joel.

From Spectator to Active Participator

**NOTE.  This post had been up then I added to it before I accidentally deleted it!  This is a different version of the original.

Here is the skinny.  Last week I preached from Mark 6 when Jesus sends out the 12.  I of course hit on how the church is never intentioned to be a static organization existing for its own self.  Instead Jesus' strategy is to equip and train disciples to send them out like missionaries proclaiming the Kingdom, healing the sick and casting out the demonic or( as blogger Kelly Kanwischer suggests) witnessing to the character and substance of God (and I would add Kingdom of God). 

So here is a quote from Erwin McManus (a pastor of Mosaic church in LA) I found thanks to Kanwischer. 

What is happening across the world and here at home is that there is an army of cross cultural missionaries who have become the new leaders of the church. Their calling isn’t to pastor churches that focus on the happiness of its members, but to mobilize the church for the purpose of fulfilling God’s mission of reconciling the world to himself. We used to send our missionaries out and it kept the mission a safe distance from us. Some how they broke back in and decided they were not going without us.

At Mosaic we have no members only missionaries. There is nothing to join except a community on mission. We have little patience for self indulgent spirituality that insists on everything being about us.

And there are implications. We have a zero tolerance policy for religious jargon or Christianese. We have little room for traditions that mean something to us but nothing to a person searching for God. We will not forsake the Word of God for the traditions of men. We are committed to removing every non-essential barrier between God and humanity. We refuse to allow the Gospel to become lost in our nostalgia or to appear irrelevant because we are.

And I must confess we are less concerned about whether mainstream Christians get us than about whether those searching for God get Him.

And if this makes us the bane of the church than so be it. Paul said he would be accursed if only Israel would be saved. If he was willing to take on hell for eternity, we can take a little heat from the watch dogs of Christian orthodoxy.

Cool is it not?  Identifying ourselves not as member but rather as missionaries.  Making little space for any traditions that mean so much to us but very little if anything to those searching for God.  What do you imagine your community or our community if we began to see ourselves not as members but as missionaries?  What would that look like to you?  And what traditions do we cling to that mean nothing to the person searching for God?  Can you imagine what we might look and feel like if we sought to act, worship, serve and be in ways that communicate the character and substance to those searching for God.  What would Sunday morning look and feel like?  Any thoughts?

A Little Rehabilitation

A member came up to my wife following worship.  Very excitedly, she told Juli, given the sermon and theme of worship, she wanted to recommend to Mariners (older adult couples group in the church) that they use the money they raised in a church-wide auction to help rehabilitate a friend of the church's house.  We thought, yes!  The group decided to spend most the money on rehabilitating this man's house.  He is a man who has had health issues and surgery as a result.  He has also gotten in legal trouble.  One might say he got himself into the situation.  One might think he has lived his life such that he can sleep in the bed he made.  Many people love the guy and his big heart.  In our town some sneer a bit at him because he owns a bar.  Sounds like a guy Jesus would hang out with, right?

So anyhow, I just spent the morning scraping paint and caulking windows and getting them ready to prime.  Many others have been hard at work the past two weeks doing what we can to help our friend, our neighbor's house.  I think it is beautiful.  Nothing glamorous about it but it is beautiful.  The house will look better and last longer.  But I guess the biggest point of the whole thing, is that God stirred one woman's imagination.  She shared that vision or imagination and it sparked the imagination of the group.  Now people are actively doing kingdom work outside of the church.  It is the church hearing and sensing the Spirit and then being obedient.  I am just thrilled.  It is cool to witness God bring life to the scattered seed and the seedling emerge.  The Kingdom of God is near.   

Seeds!

I am back on the lectionary...for now.  Here is the Mark passage link...http://bible.oremus.org/?ql=111752647

The kingdom of God is a phrase I never really paid much attention to until seminary.  In fact I took a class titled Jesus and the Kingdom of God.  Our professor Vic showed us some great things.  Two I will always remember.  The first is that the kingdom is not a place.  Instead the kingdom is God's authority or rule.   Second the rule is God's.  It belongs to God not us.  Therefore, how can we build the kingdom?  The answer is we can't.  God can, does and will. 

In the first parable we see this point made very well.  The kingdom of God is as if a man went and scattered some seed.  He sleeps and rises and sure enough the seed sprouts, grows and bears fruit.  It had nothing to do with that man.  We can't make a seed grow once its in the ground.  Farmers spray pesticides and fertilizers and such.  Gardeners prepare the soil, tilling it and adding what it needs.  Both water it if they can.  But whether it comes up is beyond us.  Unfortunately in our part of the country farmers are all too well aware of this.  I heard someone say today, "This is our third seeding and it still is not coming up."  We have had too much rain.  It is raining right now.  So what is our responsibility in the God and human relationship?  Would Jesus say just sit back and let the kingdom grow?  Would he say don't worry about reading the scriptures because God will grow you as God grows you?  Is ours the role of passive spectator? 

The second parable talks about the mustard seed.  The mustard seed?  I think that is the question people hearing this would ask.  Why a mustard seed?  Its a weed.  It is not a great tree.  Why not one of those great cedar trees of Lebanon?  Maybe its ordinary.  Maybe its not the highest pedigree.  Maybe its small, common and unassuming, but in it lays the capability to grow into a something big where the birds of the air might rest?   The kingdom emerges out of nothing spectacular and that which the world understands as powerful.  It happens in the most unlikely place and through the most unlikely people and through the most unlikely manner. 

We today look to the great big movements.  We look and compare ourselves to the mega church folks.  We lift up the most "successful" pastors (you know who they are).  We are tempted to borrow their strategies, programs and stuff.  I wonder, and would even say am certain that is the wrong road.  What in your church is a mustard seed or plant?  Maybe there in the ordinary, unspectacular place is where the kingdom of God is emerging.  

My First Shack Thoughts

I first heard about The Shack just about a year ago and heard you just need to read it.  I did not read it.  Then some folks in the congregation began speaking about the Shack and expressed how much they enjoyed reading it.  Of course they encouraged me to read it.  I did not read it.  Then some of those folks decided to get together and talk about it after our regular Sunday school stops.   That is when I got excited.  It excites me when people imagine together and then do it.  So I am reading the book. 

Let me make a bit of a note.  I don't care if you hate the book and think Satan wrote it.  If you do post on someone else site who hates the book.  I have not made my opinion yet.  What I am intending is to lift out some points that stick with me.  If you want to comment on that please do so. 

So at the end of chapter 4 on page 68 of my book, it reads"

"He realized he was stuck, and Sunday prayers and hymns weren't cutting it anymore, if they ever really had.  Cloistered spirituality seemed to change nothing in the lives of people he knew, except maybe Nan (his wife).  But she was special.  God might really love her.  She wasn't a screwup like him.  He was sick of God and God's religion, sick of all the little religious social clubs that didn't seem to make any real difference or effect any real changes."

So here I am reading this and I think, yeah me too!  I am not sick of God.  I am sick of all the stuff that gets attached with  God in the United States.  For example pop Christian music that all sounds the same and talks about how in love with Jesus we ought to be.  And Christian radio that is more full of rhetoric than intelligence.  And Christian bookstore Christianity where you can purchase all these cool accessories for being a Christian including breath mints for the Christian.  I am sick of religion.  It does not work yet we keep on trying.  I mean I create the services this guy Mack is talking about.  I write ( or cut and paste) those prayers for people to say.  I choose the hymns.  Some days I too wonder if they really speak to the deeper realities of our life.  Yet what I hear, and I admit I have my lens, is that when we just simply think faith is something we do when we gather on Sunday morning, then it is impotent to speak to our deeper human life.   If it does not include a growing, authentic community where you are known and know more and more, then it will not work.  If church is just about providing spiritual goods and services then forget it.  If church is just what you do or don't do on Sunday and not a living organism of which you are part of and connected within then its toast.  If church remains a people who are not being transformed by the narrative of God in scripture  and therefore biblical Christ-likeness, then it is not a church.  If church remains a cloistered, social club that has nothing to do with God's ongoing mission of healing and reconciliation in the world then it will not speak to our own deep human-ness.  I think the author Wm. Paul Young is on to something and is speaking a strong, present voice in our American culture.  Church and the faith of the followers of Christ will be irrelevant, powerless, unbiblical, un-Reformed, unnecessary and disobedient if remains cloistered. 

So far I like it.  Remember, (and I don't even know who reads this)  if you are going to write something stay within the present dialog and keep your Shack hammers in your tool belt.  Oh and peace be with you.

So I Send You...and Do Not Think Its on Your Piety and Power!

I am reading John 20:19-31 for the lectionary, gospel passage for Sunday.  In this passage the resurrected Jesus shows up in the room where his disciples are gathered and maybe hiding out.  Jesus says "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you."   When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit."  For me its a fat, fastball waist high and just a enough inside.  I have to swing. 

Jesus having been resurrected sends the disciples out empowered by the Spirit to be a people of forgiveness. 

Then in Acts 3, which is not the lectionary passage, but precedes it and gives it proper context, we have this story of Peter and John healing the lame man at the Beautiful Gate.  And afterward when the Israelites are amazed and astonished at this healed man Peter speaks up, saying...

  "You Israelites, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?  13 The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him.  14 But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you,  15 and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.  16 And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you.

Don't think its because of our piety or power!  It is the Spirit.  The Spirit Jesus breathes on them.  The Spirit of Pentecost that blew through the people (Acts 2)  Spirit empowered, Spirit led mission grounded in the life, death and resurrection in Jesus Christ is what is necessary.  Of course you might say.  But even as I prepare for Session (leadership team) tonight, do I trust the leading and power of the Spirit?  How do I cultivate as a pastor the garden for discerning the Spirit? 

Well first of all the place is not where we gather.  They are out there in there everyday going about when they encounter this man.  They give him Jesus.  I would say John 20 is a missional passage, at least its one of the go to passages for missional justification.  God sends us.  Got it.  Acts 3 is a missional encounter and engagement.  I meet many people who are lame in different ways.  I don't believe that if I were to say to them, what I have to give you I give in the name of Jesus Christ, get up and walk and that that the man would be totally healed.  And for those who I have said such things, there have been a few and they did not walk I continue in faith.  What do we have to give in Jesus name?  John 20 tells us we are to give forgiveness.  We are to forgive others.  Go and forgive.  How are you doing on that one? 

Easter is not about gathering in a room.  Its not simply a Sunday in Spring.  Its about going.  Its about going out to be a force of forgiveness.  The world needs that right?  Jesus thought so.  What if we ask the Spirit to show us  those in our going about who need forgiveness?  Are they in our neighborhood, our house, our workplace, our school or sitting in the pew next to us on Sunday?  Why don't we ask the Spirit to show us where we still need forgiveness?  Easter in us and use us to easter in others. 

An Interesting Thought From our Leadership Retreat

Allen manages and leads within a local agricultural business.  He stated in our Elder retreat, (or leadership team) he has discovered younger people whom they hire are entering the job market with a different mindset.  “Younger people want the freedom to do what they want.”  They don’t want to do what we want them to do.  Maybe more appropriately they don’t want to do something to maintain an institution or organization to which they are not loyal, hold suspiciously and have no ownership.  Instead they want to do what is on their heart and in their imagination.  How do we allow for the younger members of our congregation who did not grow up with us to do what they want to do within the current organizational structure?  Or maybe how do we cultivate their imaginations around the Kingdom or what God is up to in our community/neighborhood rather than in our church?  In Allen’s business organization, they have adapted.  Rather than giving interviewees the job description they want them to do, they ask those being interviewed to discuss how they will impact the organization, what will they bring and given their abilities what do they want to do.  Once hired they have a stake and legitimate say in what they want to do.  In other words instead of giving them a job description, they ask them to write one.  Instead of telling new members what we expect of members and our description of appropriate member behavior could we ask them to write their own descriptions?  Could we immediately begin to stir and cultivate their imagination around God’s activity and call?