Thursday, August 29, 2013
Sunday, August 25, 2013
Distortions Caused By Excessive Hellenization -- Clark H. Pinnock
- Clark H Pinnock from his piece, "Systematic Theology" from the book 'The Openess of God: A Biblical Challenge To The Traditional Understanding of God'
Community: I Didn't Know What Was So Near - Kayla McClurg at Inward/Outward
In community we begin to discover a desire for what we didn’t know was so near, or that it was ours. Traveling into the depths proves to be a lifelong journey, and happens best in community. One of the benefits of being in a community that strives to be on both an inward and an outward journey, not only as individuals but together, is that I don’t have to rely on my own sense of how it’s going. When I’m tired and grouchy, needing to retreat from activity, others are enthusiastic about being together. I can bow out while others bow in.
A church that is self-aware knows its weakness and welcomes you in your weakness, too. You will never need to wonder if you are “enough” to belong. The fact is no, you are not enough–and neither are the rest of us. So c’mon. The baggage room is over there–lay down yours and I’ll lay down mine and we’ll lean on God together.
I appreciate a community made up of people who know they are weak and wounded and know that’s not the whole story. Weakness doesn’t automatically translate into community, but it can be a starting place. At the base of community is not weakness, but the desire to grow in love.
The full article is available here
Monday, August 19, 2013
The Modernist Church's Obsession With Buildings - Kamahl Russell at Phuture
Our very reliance on buildings as our places of worship stems from our missiological (mis?) understanding fo what we think church is all about. It isn't about inviting to people to come out of their comfort zones and into a strange space to sing unfamiliar songs and hear a lecture about living a life of purpose and destiny. Somehow, we still believe that somehow a non-churched person (who we automatically assume isn't following any other valid spiritual journey) that is need of being programmed with our information might suddenly realize their need for church and then come strolling in. Thinking missionally requires to lose the manfactured "Us" and "Them" mentality of the modernist church.
I'm suggesting we should live missionally and build into people's lives, gathering them into a community as living stones, rather than using our time, budgets and energy in the effort to place them into a building of gathered stone.
Neighborly support in a time of crisis, a ride to work when the car dies, food when there is nothing in the cupboard; can of these events take place in the several hundred seat auditorium with fancy slide presentations and rock concert light shows? I would dare to suggest that even the well-intended ministries we run are dominated, designated and restricted by the facilities we have.
If we need to use space for our ministries - why not the ones that are already created out of and for the local community culture? Aren't those places created by the very people we are seeking to living in community with, to walk and suffer and rejoice and have fun with? Life takes place in the street and the cafe, in the bar and concert hall - not in a business park off of the expressway with stadium seating.
Jesus states very clearly his idea of true worship in John 4 and Matthew 25:31-46. How could we morally consider building another auditorium when there is a child starving or homeless? Just who do we really do our style of "worship" for?
The full article is available here
Saturday, August 17, 2013
Call to Worship: God Of Creation and Life (based on Psalm 96)
All of our manufactured gods; fame, wealth, power, greed, all of our idols - are lifeless. The Eternal God's live-giving power makes them look phony and cheap.
God is present in the entire universe and watches over everything in it. You can see God in all of the powerful and wild beauty of creation.
If we're looking for it, we find God's handiwork all around us. May we be moved by that to give God praise.
Friday, August 16, 2013
Postmodernism and The Emergent Church, Part Two - Thomas Jay Oord at The Ooze
Modern ways of knowing are based on the idea that abstract and universal thought are the only way to understand reality. But truth can't be captured in logical syllogism or scientific analysis alone because humans draw from and rely on personally-gained wisdom.
Even though language isn't the only lense on reality, modernity compartmentalized and fragmented knowledge of the world while failing to consider the experiences of those at the margins. This constitutes a critical failure in having a holistic approach to reality.
Postmodern revisionists seek to account for a variety of sensibilities; including religious, scientific, ecological, liberationist and aesthetic. They seek a story big and adequate enough to include everyone while still appreciating and promoting diversity. This revisionism is part of a perpetual practice of recasting and adapting a worldview to new experiences and information.
Unlike modernism, postmodernism doesn't diminish anything that is "other-than" but affirms that all creatures have direct interaction with the divine., whose spirit works in all of creation. This is interrelation of all creatures is what makes community essential. Our well-being is caught up in and largely dependent upon the well-being of the whole. Many revisionist postmodernists look to the doctrine of the Trinity to ground their emphasis on divine relatedness.
This is one of the rich narratives that modernism trampled under foot as it pursued progress full-speed-ahead, leaving a path of needless destruction in its wake while wreaking havoc on the planet. Postmodern revisionism seeks wiser ways to proceed in the future by turning to both ancient wisdom sources and emerging insights that could help to facilitate the experience of abundant life. It sees progress towards a better world as possible by divine common grace and proper creaturely responses, something Wesleyans call "prevenient grace."
The full article is available here
Theological Mistakes: "Everything Happens For A Reason" -- Mark Krause at Krause Korner
When someone's loved one dies, what do you say to those left behind? When someone is suffering a life altering loss or debilitating situation, what do you say to them upon learning about it? We often want to give words of comfort, but our desire to do this can often cause more damage than comfort.
It is not helpful to tell a son whose father just died, "This is God's plan, so it's for the best." There are many trite variations on this cliche, but the idea is that God either allowed or caused the death. It's the pseudo-theological variation of the pop psychology statement "Everything happens for a reason." What people usually mean is "Everything happens for a good reason," the implication being that something good always comes out of tragedy.
This is NOT a Christian idea, despite the fact that this pseudo-theology seems to have a Biblical patina.
How does this play out in real life to the unfortunate recipient or such words in a time of tragedy? Is there comfort to be found in "Everything happens for a reason" and (somehow suggesting that the person undergoing their own personal hell on earth is doing so because it is what God wants?)
I don't think so.
If you are in a position to offer words of comfort to someone grieving loss of ANY kind, I would suggest that you walk with that person in their grief instead of dismissing it. (Remember "Jesus wept?")
The full article is available here
Thursday, August 15, 2013
God Hates Figs
Westborough Baptist has got it all wrong. Maybe there was a typo in their translation?
Reflection and Renewal: The Idols We Create (based on Psalm 121)
But we don't always give you the credit that you deserve. Instead, we create idols - of status, of power, of wealth, of our careers, of our children, of our significant others. And then we look to these idols to be our primary guides, to make us whole and give our lives meaning. But God, only you deserve that role.
Forgive us. We know that when we confess our failures to you, you promise to not hold them against us, but instead move towards us in love and grace, where we can find peace.
Amen.
Benediction: Holding Tightly To Hope (based on Hebrews 10:23)
Wednesday, August 14, 2013
Postmodernism and The Emergent Church, Part One - Thomas Jay Oord at The Ooze
The current change from modernism to postmodernism entails a radically different way of looking at life. A whole new paradigm is emerging that beckons us to break from negative precedent. This kind of worldview shift occurs when people question, then change their core assumptions about reality. They have encountered data that just can't be explained by an older system of beliefs.
Deconstructive postmodernism works to identify inherent inconsistencies in the language we use to describe reality, arguing that language can't be definitely nailed down. Words inevitably contain meanings that authors did not intend. Propositions can't reliable deliver the truth about reality. So-called "objective" and "universal" reason relies upon biased and ambiguous language. Deconstructive theology steers clear of the idolatry of words and promotes the prophetic.
Narrative postmodernism finds meaning and truth in stories. It argues that the stories we tell and the way that we tell them arise from particular points of view. Additionally, our particular points of view are only intelligible as part of a larger story. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said that we speak from a context of a particular language game, which are our lens upon and filter for reality.
Narrative postmodernism argues that meaning is found in, and arises out of, particular communities. This is because truth is communal, not individualistic. George Lindbeck argues that being a Christian is to become a part of particular community and the Bible offers a story that arises from a particular form of life with a unique language. Joining a Christian community is more about joining a team than embracing a new set of ideas or beliefs. According to radical orthodox theologians, modernity is a heretical deviation.
The full article is available here
Can Contemporary Worship Music Mature? - Joan Huyser-Honig at Calvin Institute of Worship
So many worship songs are Jesus or "you, Lord" songs. The problem is particularly acute in churches that have no liturgy, so the songs bear the whole burden of theology.
Many contemporary worship songs are more about us than about God. We praise God for making us feel good and impress on God how much we are singing, clapping, lifting our hands. But Christianity is more than a private relationship.
Some musicians and thinkers are reevaluating how music influences us and whether worship music encompasses the whole of worship. Instead of asking "What will people really love to sing?", they are asking "What will be helpful for people in the long term?"
When you start to appreciate creation, fall, and redemption through a Trinitarian perspective, you realize we are enabled by the Spirit to worship in Christ - and that pleases God the Father. It's a more Christian understanding that injects God's grace into worship."
The full article is available here
Church Transforms Into Coffee Chain - Lark News
Connection Metro Church, which used its foyer coffee bars to attract visitors to its eight satellite churches in the Denver area, has decided to abandon ministry altogether to focus on coffee.
“People liked the coffee a lot better than the ministry, according to congregational surveys, so we’re practicing what we preached and focusing on our strengths,” says former teaching Pastor and now chief marketing officer, Peter Brown.
Many in the congregation seem downright relieved.
“The sermons were okay, but the vanilla frappes were dynamite,” says one woman who regularly attended the church for two years so she could enjoy the special brews. “I even brought my Jewish neighbors and they loved them.”
People in the surrounding neighborhoods say they are far more likely to stop by now.
The full article is available here
Monday, August 12, 2013
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Responsive Call to Worship: Mourning Replaced With Singing (based on Psalm 30)
All: We were down and out. It felt like troubles were going to overwhelm us.
Reader: Your grace helped us stand our ground and lean into life; no matter how painful.
All: Now, our mournful silence has been replaced with singing.
Reader: Now, our sorrow has been turned into joy, so from deep in our hearts ...
All: Let us sing of our thankfulness for the grace that gets us through.
Reflection on Grace: Still There Is Grace (based on Hebrews 6:19)
"We've all been through hard times. The world blows leaves across our paths. Branches fall and darkness falls. The world below can be a stormy sea with waves crashing all around us.
Still, there is grace ... because darkness does not destroy the light, it defines it.
Perhaps we've found that grace in lending each other a hand when we're falling. Perhaps we've found it when someone has been brave with their life and allowed us to brave with ours.
Somehow, a power beyond us reached out its hand and brought us peace in the midst of the storm."
Benediction: We Need Mercy To Set Things Right (based on Psalm 51:10)
In that awareness, may we share God's bottomless love all around us in life as we work to set things right here and now on earth as they are in heaven.
Responsive Call to Worship: God Of Creation and Life (based on Psalm 96)
All: Tell of all the good things God has done. Sing of God's kingdom; coming and already here.
Reader: All of our manufactured gods; fame, wealth, power, greed, all of our idols - are lifeless.
All: The Eternal God's live-giving power makes them look cheap.
Reader: God is present in the entire universe and watches over everything in it.
All: You can see God in all of the powerful and wild beauty of creation.
Reader: If we're looking for it, we find God's handiwork all around us.
All: May we be moved to give God praise.
Benediction: Putting The Message of God's Love Into Practice (based on James 1:17-27)
May God show us grace and be honored in our lives forever. May Jesus reveal to us the pattern of God's ways and may the Spirit fill our lives with love and peace.
Call to Worship: Mourning Replaced With Singing (based on Psalm 30)
Now, our mournful silence has been replaced with singing. Now, our sorrow has been turned into joy. So from deep in our hearts, let us sing of our thankfulness for the grace that gets us through.
Friday, August 9, 2013
Every Pastor's Worst Nightmare - Ship of Fools
Yes, it's that authentic "rabbit caught in the headlights" look. An expression of total disbelief and sheer terror crosses the face of Blake Bergstrom, a youth pastor at Southeast Christian Church in Parker, Colorado. In mid-sermon, he is describing what happened when the biblical character Lot put up his tents too close to Sodom and Gomorrah, when the mother of all sermon gaffes falls from a clear blue sky.
An Open Letter to Worship Songwriters - Brian McLaren at BrianMclaren.net
Too many of our lyrics are embarrassingly personalistic, about Jesus and me. Personal intimacy with God is such a wonderful step above a cold, abstract, wooden recitation of dogma.
But it isn't the whole story.
In fact – this might shock you – it isn't, in the emerging new postmodern world, necessarily the main point of the story.
If an extraterrestrial outsider from Mars were to observe us singing in worship, I think he would say, "These people don’t give a rip about the rest of the world, that their religion/spirituality makes them as selfish as any nonChristian, but just in spiritual things rather than material ones." The scary thing is that even though I don’t think these indictments are completely true … they could become more true unless we take some corrective action and look for a better balance.
The very heart of our identity as the church in the new emerging theology is not that we are the people who have been chosen to be blessed, saved, rescued, and blessed some more. This is a half-truth heresy that our songs are in danger of spreading and rooting more and more in our people.
Every era in history has rich resources to offer, from the Patristic period to the Celtic period to the Puritan period. When we look at the repetitive and formulaic lyrics that millions of Christians are singing these days, the missed opportunity is heartbreaking.
Sadly, many of our songs lyrics still feel like “cliché train” – one linked to another, with a sickening recycling of plastic language and paper triteness. Sometimes I think we’re already a little too happy, excessively happy on a superficial level: the only way to become more truly and deeply happy is to become sadder, by feeling the pain of the chronically ill, the desperately poor, the mentally ill, the lonely, the aged and forgotten, the oppressed minority, the widow and orphan.
The full article is available here
The Holy Spirit, Common Grace, and Art - Dialogue Magazine
Everybody is talented, Christian or non-Christian, because of common grace and because we are created in God's image.
The pretense of something being "Christian" or not ruins any chance of it being great artistically. There is a lack of faith in God's sovereignty and common grace that is inherent in something needing the pretense of being "Christian."
The problem with Contemporary Christian Music is that art becomes good only in how it works as religious propaganda, and it ceases to be graded on its craft. There should only be good music and bad music.
Art is at its best when it's not direct. Art and a newscast are on different ends of the spectrum. Art attacks our emotions first and sort of gets at our intellect from underneath in many ways. So the role of the artist is to tilt people's heads upwards and let God's message work itself into their lives.
The artist should rather ask a question that has God in it than give any sort of answer, because good questions compel the hearer of them to dwell on them and let the Spirit ignite the answer in their hearts.
The full article is available here
Belonging and Not Belonging: The Creative Margins - Paul Fromont
Many followers of Jesus today find themselves, relative to the established church, grappling with the paradox of both needing to belong but of also realizing that - in the end - it's impossible for them to fully belong.
They inhabit the "margins" of what's been and what is, while all the while deconstructing and reconstructing with an eye to what might be needful up ahead. They explore, as theologian Terry Veling writes, "relieved of taken-for-granted-convictions" and the need to unquestioningly perpetuate established models, values, and practices.
Not a few people talk of their experience of being "in-between" in terms of trauma, in terms of their feeling incredibly lonely, misunderstood, unlistened to and uncomfortable. They feel, in talking of change and new possibilities, as though they're speaking a foreign language; one that very few others understand.
Thankfully though, many also choose to stay in the flowing of transitioning modernity within the life of the church, and instead see these "in-between-spaces" as giving birth to an exciting new range of relationships, new networks, new conversations, new worship contexts and ways of responding to God.
People inhabiting the margins will creatively stretch outward from the edges. They will be characterized by an opening outwards, an unfolding of creative and meaningful new praxis and forms.
They will have a firm grasp of their core beliefs and values, and will operate out of a strongly theological framework. Their work will be less about perpetuating trendiness and more about integrity, faithfulness, authenticity, and relational depth.
The full article is available here
Church Bulletin Bloopers - Belief net
"Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Don't forget your husbands."
"The church will host an evening of fine dining, superb entertainment, and gracious hostility."
"This being Easter Sunday, we will ask Mrs. Jones to come forward and lay an egg on the altar."
The full list is available here
Confronting The Lie: "God Won’t Give You More Than You Can Handle" - Nate Pyle at Natepyle.com
This particular statement, that “God won’t give you more than you can handle,” isn’t even in the Bible. It is easy to spout trite Christian platitudes designed to make people feel better with bumper-sticker theology.
But insipid axioms do little in the face of the actual brokenness of the world. Limp, anemic sentiments will not stand in the face of a world that is not as it should be.
My questions before God about the reality of what my family has experienced over the last three weeks are the exact same questions anyone would ask. Not only am I okay asking those questions, but I think there is something holy and sacred in being courageous enough to ask them. Don’t be fooled, those questions are only to be asked by the courageous.
It is more courageous to ask the hard questions of God and wait for him to answer than it is to find hope on the side of coffee mug. Asking those questions requires courage because, in the end, it is very likely they will not be answered.
The full article is available here
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Man starts church for jerks - Lark News
Two years ago, Hanson noticed a “growing population of total jerks” in his community that nobody was reaching with the gospel.
Walk into Mark Hanson’s church and nobody will greet you. The guys hanging around the foyer might even make fun of what you’re wearing, or your haircut. A sign over the entrance reads, “Grab a seat in the back and shut up. Nobody cares what you think.”
Walk into Mark Hanson’s church and nobody will greet you. The guys hanging around the foyer might even make fun of what you’re wearing, or your haircut. A sign over the entrance reads, “Grab a seat in the back and shut up. Nobody cares what you think.”
Welcome to Jerk Church.
“You know these guys,” says Hanson, the pastor and founder. “They sit with their arms folded the whole time, leave during the altar call, criticize the pastor, snort when other people state their opinions and never create lasting bonds of friendship. Their wives are always really stressed. Bingo — that’s my mission field.”
Two years ago, Hanson noticed a “growing population of total jerks” in his community that nobody was reaching with the gospel.
“They’re like white noise, filler — they’re everywhere but nobody sees them,” Hanson says. “They are trapped in their own jerk-dom. My heart went out to them.”
Hanson left a position at a larger church to plant a church aimed at this population. He played around with names like “Church for Guys,” but ended up going straight to the heart of the matter.
The full article is available here
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Awakening, Counter-Awakening, and the End of Church - Diana Butler Bass at Religion Dispatches
We can choose to move forward into new emerging spiritualities, or we can heed the siren sound of the traditionalists calling us back to a romanticized, rigid, past. We are not passive observers but active participants in shaping what’s to come.
An awakening is not a revival. An awakening is not an individual or ritualized event, but a larger cultural event where the whole of a society or group of people become changed, transformed, reoriented toward something new. In the literature of awakening, they are typically understood as revitalization movements that happen to groups rather than individuals.
We are in a period of intense cultural reorientation or revitalization, and that during an awakening, politics, worldviews, religion, education—the whole way a society approaches being community, and connecting with one another, and understanding their God or their gods—it all changes.
For an awakening to happen, old institutions have to go away. What once existed has to change. What we’re in the moment of right now in American culture is that our old institutions, our way of being a church—our way of understanding any kind of religious tradition, be it Judaism, Islam or Christianity—all of those older patterns are dying.
I think you can look at the first decade of the 21st century and see that there has been a massive failure of religious institutions. When that kind of failure happens, what is happening concurrently is that the people who used to be part of those institutions are now unaffiliated. The institutions have failed them and they are now just floating around without a clear set of religious labels that they identify themselves with. Or they lack an institutional home.
The full article is available here
Worship - Frederick Buechner
"Phrases like "Worship Service" (besides being cliche) are tautologies. To worship ... means to serve. One way is to do things ... that need to be done. The other ... is to do things ... you need to do - sing, create beautiful things, tell ... what's on your mind and in your heart.
A Quaker Meeting, a Pontifical High Mass, the Family Service at First Presbyterian ... unless there is an element of joy ... in the proceedings, the time would be better spent doing something useful."
-- from 'Listening To Your Life' by Frederick Buechner
Cultural Tectonic Plate Shift - Joseph Myers at The Ooze
There is no question among sociologists and anthropologists that we are/have been in a major transitional period of history.
As with tectonic plate shifts that lead to an earthquake, so it is with social tectonic plate shift. There is a continuous movement of social plates until social quakes create a new cultural landscape.
Some of the quakes are obvious and felt by everyone (September 11th for example). Most are much more subtle and felt only by the observing few. However all social plate shifts catalyze aftershock ripples that reach deeply into the cultural plate, moving a society forever.
Americana's roots are deeply agrarian. Modernity and industrialization worked hand-in-glove to provide momentum for the agrarian way of life. But as their influence cooled, the Agrarian Cultural Plate began to sink. Postmodernism and digital technology combined to heat and provide the energy for the next cultural plate to the rise; the Technomadic Cultural Plate.
The Technomadic Cultural Plate has effectively undone the rational, settled and controlled Agrarian worldview. The way we once saw truth and life has now changed. Truth is no-longer the end result of rational propositions and trademarked conclusions; it is a mosaic of personal and collective experience. In like manner, life is no longer lived in attachment to dogma, but in attachment to others - not to just family or friends or one's own tribe. For the Technomadic, connection is not a matter of geographic proximity. It is about the quality of the connection.
This shift affects everything that we are and do: how we see and live out our relationships, work (career) life, leadership strategies, politics, education, economics, arts and religion/spirituality.
Consequently, those involved in these affected areas of live must make tectonic shift. Incremental change is not enough. We must move beyond reacting to redesigning and restructuring; the innovation of entirely new paradigms and practices. Groups and organizations must question every assumption about their "market" and remake themselves. This isn't just changing the tools in the same toolbox. The toolbox has changed. We have changed.
The full article is available here
Detoxing from Church - Jason Zahariades
In the Americanized church, the organization is designed to turn life and faith into a simple prepackaged consumer product. This is what John Drane calls the “McDonaldization of the Church.”
Imagine what you would have left after you remove from your life everything connected with the organizational church. I mean everything.
I’ve discovered the hard way that living most of my adult life in cultural Christianity has formed my entire identity as a Christian. And when everything in my life connected with the church is gone, including sixteen years of professional ministry, I’m confronted with the true raw status my personal faith.
In order to BE the Church, we need to leave the consumerist church culture behind.
In other words, in order to truly become God's people as he intended, we must abandon our cultural version of organizational church. The application of this statement might vary, but it must happen. And as we abandon the church to become the Church, we will go through a detox period.
Why such drastic measures? Involvement in an organizational consumer-driven church blinds us to the real state of our lives. In the McDonaldized church, Christianity is prepackaged for me; books, music, entertainment, news reports, advice, etc. And as I consume it, it forms a façade over the real condition of my life.
The full article is available here
Word and Deed - Frederick Buechner
Moving Beyond the Worship Service - Justin Baeder at The Ooze
The central gathering has remained essentially unchallenged since Constantine. Having people attend a worship service as the primary way of doing church communicates that being a Christian is about passively attending to someone else’s ministry efforts.
There is little room for any involvement by the average person, save for trivial roles such as ushering, the occasional prayer or scripture reading, and, of course, paying for everything.
Perhaps the most destructive effect of the worship service is to convince us that it’s all there is to church – there are no other legitimate gatherings. Perhaps the modern church does not realize the diversity and beauty of the spiritual practices that the church has engaged in through the centuries.
We find ourselves inheriting a worship service that has seen no fundamental format change in 1700 years, and there is no room for valuable practices that don’t fit the paradigm. I’m suggesting not that we do worship in a certain way, but that we free ourselves from thinking it has to be the same four or five elements every week.
Even so-called "emergent churches" seem to have swallowed the worship service paradigm relatively whole.
Do a Bible word search for “service” and see if any reference is made to a Sunday gathering. You’ll find references to helping others, making personal sacrifices, and suffering for the Kingdom of God. Likewise with “worship.” You will not find references to a formalized gathering of passive Christians who have paid top dollar to sit and absorb their spirituality for the week.
We have invented the worship service, and made it the essential activity of the Christian faith.
The full article is available here
A Second Reformation Is At Hand - Mark Driscoll & Chris Seay
We’re not returning to a modern world with its rational, cognitive, scientific, evidentialist, imperialistic understanding of reality. Rather the world is quickly reinventing itself as a global culture with multicultural and technological contexts, and defined by artistic, mystical, and supernatural orientations. It represents, in effect, a second reformation for the church.
The modern, church-as-franchise mentality where "one size fits all" no longer fits. There are two major roadblocks that are preventing the church from successfully navigating this time period. First, the modern, Western theology and methods we’ve been using for the last 30 years are becoming less and less effective every day. Second, the church isn’t recognizing characteristics of and changes in the ever-increasing number of cultures and tribes out there.
That’s why—as we exit modern ways of processing reality—it’s crucial to reexamine long-held beliefs and assumptions:
- Many of us learned early on about "garbage in-garbage out." You know—whatever you think, you become. The garbage in-garbage out philosophy assumes that the brain is a sponge that will buy into whatever it’s given.
- In the modern context, the church ignored biblical narrative and complexity, instead reducing the gospel to a set of propositions.
- The church as a whole has become a business that exists to attract consumers by marketing a product. So the gospel is no longer something you participate in—it’s something you consume.
- At some point we began proclaiming the notion that there’s a "safe Christian culture" out there. And because we’ve constructed this alternate reality, we’ve told ourselves that Genesis 3 won’t affect us.
- Inhabitants of the Western world are very individualistic, very consumeristic, very rugged, and very entrepreneurial. Much of what we believe is gospel truth is actually founded on Hellenistic thinking and informed by Greek ideals and the history that’s been given to us since Descartes.
- The church has falsely believed it could safely divide the world into things that are sacred or things that are secular. That kind of assumption is based, again, on our modern, Western version of Christianity. We must look at things in terms of what can be redeemed and what cannot be redeemed.
Algebraic Preaching - Frederick Buechner
"If preachers make no attempt to flesh out (their) words but simply repeat with variations the same old formulas week after week, then the congregation might just as well spend Sunday morning at home with the funnies.
If people's understanding of (Christianese) goes little deeper than their (repetition to the point of meaninglessness), then to believe in them has just about as much effect on their lives as to believe that Columbus discovered America in 1492 or that E=mc2."
-- from 'Listening To Your Life' by Frederick Buechner
A Churchless Faith? - Craig Bird
The post-congregationals have left the building; not just any building, but our church buildings. On their way out, they were overheard to say: "Why won't someone at least listen to the tough questions?"
Others say they are leaving in order to rescue their faith. Many say they struggle to find a way to worship in honesty, to forgive "church abuse," to grow in Christ-likeness or to reach an equilibrium in their spiritual life.
In his book, A Churchless Faith, sociologist Alan Jamieson studies "post-congregational" Christians. Throughout his research, he again and again found longtime Christians with significant leadership resumes who, while definitely adrift from the traditional church, were just as definitely on a journey to know God -- a God not intimidated by the hard questions that were unwelcome in their former churches.
Jamieson wanted to know why people with a deep longing for God decide that they must abandon their congregational homes to continue growing spiritually.
"The church needs to realize that God is in the question as well as the answer, and that living with the questions is part of the journey," he points out. "For many people it would help if this journey was talked about, preached about, and discussed in the life of the church."
The full article is available here
Raging Against Your Own Machine - Keith Giles at The Ooze
His message was a threat to the Pharisess and the Roman Government. It threatened their authority structures. It called into question their defintions of righteousness, equality and holiness. It was a message that got our founder arrested, tortured and ultimately put to death.
From the earliest days, the followers of The Way continued this subversive, counter-cultural movement. They met quietly in homes. They re-defined family. They called one another brother and sister and loved and cared for one another as if they truly were of one family.
Today, the Church looks an awful lot like the world around it. We do not stand out from the crowd. We are not known for our acts of kindness, love or compassion. We have aligned ourselves with a politcal platform and allowed figures in the media to speak for us.
In many ways, we have become the machine we intended to rage against. We have joined the system we were created to subvert and overthrow. The solution is to return to the way of life modeled by our founder, Jesus. The solution is to embrace, once more, the loving, yet counter-cultural, way of life modeled by the early Church.
The full article is available here
Is Your Worship Welcoming to Those Not Like You? - David W. Manner at The Ooze
Welcoming includes those who are not and may never be present. Welcoming worship accommodates culturally, contextually, and systematically.
Welcoming worship is not just what we do on Sunday, it is who we are and how we treat people out in the world every day. Welcoming worship purposefully considers those who are often neglected and easily ignored.
Most congregations can answer affirmatively when asked if their worship welcomes those not like them…all are welcome if or when they come. Where conflict often arises is when a congregation changes its culture in order to be intentionally welcoming to those not like them.
- Welcome is passive. Welcoming is active.
- Welcome is safe. Welcoming is usually risky.
- Welcome may be accidental. Welcoming is always deliberate.
- Welcome is comfortable. Welcoming can stretch.
- Welcome satisfies givers. Welcoming won’t pay the bills.
- Welcome tolerates. Welcoming embraces.
The full article is available here
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