Refugee

I recently (eh, call it a month or so) got into reading blogs. I'm absolutely fascinated by them. Maybe it's something about regular people being able to share their own thoughts in a way that ANYONE in the world can know what they are thinking. You don't have to be famous or powerful or saying only the "right" things. And I just keep finding people who are writing about the things I'm thinking, wrestling with the same questions I have, and tenaciously trying to stick to a Christ-like response to all the conflicting ideas and allegiances that always try to cause division and force us to take sides.

For example, I can't even tell you how good it is for my heart to read a post by a guy who supports a certain presidential candidate, but makes sure to blog about how much his heart is grieved by the lies and exaggerations this candidate says - because he believes that truth and honesty and love are more important than his chosen candidate winning an election. It stands out to me in a time when so many people (including heaps of Christians, who should have a Christ-allegiance, not political-allegiance) seemed to have switched to a "my candidate must win at all costs" mode of operation.

Or about the pastor from Seattle who decided to go off topic at a Southern Baptist Convention and criticize / name-call a bunch of emerging church leaders. But instead of defending themselves or fighting back, those "emergent heretics" actually took Jesus seriously and turned the other cheek, even when those comments got them booted from future SBC conferences they'd already been chosen to speak at. This kind of action (and not a defensive re-action) makes me believe (again) that Jesus was right, that love really can win, that good really can overcome evil, and that I can leave behind my automatic responses and become a person who loves first.

And I always intend to write about these things that encourage me and excite me so my friends can be encouraged as well, but I never do. So this time I will.

First, check out this video on missional church planting. It's 7 minutes long, but it hits on some keys that pastors should focus on. I thought it was really good, especially the discussion on how to pastor people through being hurt by the church. It's important that it is a one on one pastoral discussion, not a community-wide, weekly complaint session that puts the focus on what you are against instead of on what you are for.

You'll notice after watching it that he uses the term "refugee" to describe Christians who are often attracted to missional or simple or emerging churches. I've never heard this term used in this way before, and I was struck by how it really seems to describe how I, and I think a lot of my close friends, often feel when we talk about church and God.

Another blogger picked up on the word, and wrote about it here. It's a short read, so check it out, but here is one quote that stood out to me.

What is interesting about the concept of refugees is that it suggest displacement from the homeland. Refugees are forced to wander, and disconnected from community they have no roots to plant. Forces have appeared to work against them leaving them with no place to settle. Their heart is with their homeland, yet where is that? Is it back where they left? Is it somewhere right next to them?

I don't want to belittle people who are actual refugees by using the term for myself and pretending that I have some sort of solidarity with them now. Like, "yeah, you lost your home and possessions and family and friends and history and are living in a foreign land where the government doesn't recognize you and the natives dislike you and you can't work or care for your family, but I totally feel the same way!" Obviously it is a completely different thing, and I don't want to take that lightly.

But there is a real resonance to that "stranger in a strange land" feeling in my heart. I have felt spiritually homeless for a while. I've had to leave behind some of the things that used to be familiar and comforting to follow where I think Jesus is leading me. I've even been physically wandering from city to city because I just haven't felt at home in a long time. It's unsettling and confusing at times, but I keep finding reason for hope. I don't know where I'm going, but when it's the most difficult and lonely, God quietly reminds me that he is walking with me, and I guess that is enough.

And maybe I can learn to see the others all around (and far away) who are also stumbling through life. Maybe I can help them get back up.

We need the orphan as much as the orphan needs us

I live in a new suburb of the nice part of a city known nationwide for being the unofficial capitol of conservative Christianity, Colorado Springs. You could watch the local news for weeks straight and not see any stories about real crime in this city of somewhere around 600,000 people. In other words, you could say I live among some of the richest, safest, and most comfortable people in the world. I guess this should be a good thing, but sometimes I walk around outside and feel like I live in Disneyland. Like none of this is real.

It's real easy to start to think that my life is just about me. After all, I'm bombarded by about 3000 advertisements everyday, all trying to convince me that I am in need of something to be more successful, happy, and comfortable, and their product or idea or system is just what I need. And of course, the product can be completely customized to meet my individual needs. I'm the customer who is always right, and the consumer who always wants to "have it my way".

You see, I don't actually know any poor people. In American terms, nobody would consider me wealthy- I'm a 27 year old kid who works for a non-profit! But from a global perspective, I'm a king (check out Global Rich List sometime to see where you fit in on the global wealth scale- you'll be shocked). The fact that you are reading this post online, in English, means you are probably doing pretty well too. If you have a car, you are immediately in the top 8% of the world. I don't know what that means for those of us who have 2, or 3, or 4...

Please don't over react and think I'm saying that money is evil and we should just burn it all (although the pyrotechnic in me might enjoy THAT bonfire!). It's nothing more than a tool. What I'm saying is that we, meaning you and me and our friends and family, are probably in danger of losing perspective on what life is about. Because we like to think it's about our needs and desires and happiness. The only problem is that that's not what the Bible says.

The over-arching theme of the Bible is about a God who hears the cry of the oppressed and rescues them. But what happens is that those rescued people quickly forget what it's like to be at the bottom, and soon become the oppressors. God tries to warn them, to remind them of who they were and what He did for them, but if they don't repent, something interesting happens. Remember, God always hears the cries of the oppressed, and He will rescue them. Which is not as fun if you are the one doing the oppressing.

When I think of this, I realize that I live in the richest, most powerful country ever. And I don't often hear the cries of despair and pain that come from the forgotten, abused, and forsaken, because I don't even see them. But God does, and He is on their side. I have to ask, which side am I on? Do my actions, decisions, dreams, and prayers lean toward those who are underfoot or to those who are standing tall and proud on the backs of the least? Am I working against God when I think I am following Him?

I worship a God who made Himself nothing, who left His rightful high and lofty place to live among the poor and forgotten, and who even allowed them to end His life of love (Philippians 2). But I, by accident of birth, find myself among the rich, and I don't want to humble myself to serve those just a little less privileged than me. I'd rather focus on my wants and desires, trying to make my life a little better. I even tend to view salvation as something for me, another product that is good for me to buy, one more thing to give me the life I want. Have I become a consumer of God rather than a follower of Christ? Have I become a taker instead of a giver? If I truly follow Christ, if I really want to be like Jesus, how can that path lead anywhere but lower and lower?

This is why I need the orphan. The orphan may need my help for real, physical needs in a broken and hurting world. But I need the orphan for my own salvation. I am in danger of hoarding more and more wealth for myself in bigger retirement accounts while ignoring the hungry all around (Luke 12:13). The orphan reminds me that I've been blessed to be a blessing. I'm in danger of focusing on my own comfort to the extent that I isolate myself from the poor (Luke 16:19). The orphan reminds me that if I separate from the poor, I'm also hiding from God. I'm in danger of saying to God "Master, we preached the Message, we bashed the demons, our God-sponsored projects had everyone talking," and hearing in reply "You missed the boat. All you did was use me to make yourselves important. You don't impress me one bit. You're out of here" (Matthew 7:21 Message). The orphan reminds me that God is not a genie in a bottle waiting to make my life better, but that I should be attentive to his voice and respond with love for those he loves.

But bigger than all that, I am in danger of missing the opportunity to join with God -who loves the whole world- in his beautiful project of redeeming his entire creation, not just me. He is inviting us, his children, to partner with him in the thing he cares most about, the thing he gave his life for. He is inviting us to be more like him. To give up our own lives to love, to serve, to share joy, to offer hope, to proclaim freedom, and to actually live to the fullest. Do we truly believe we can be like him? Do we truly believe the Spirit of God dwells in us? Do we really love the world so much that we will give our life for those who don't love us back, just like Jesus did?

We need the orphan because we have so many influences distracting us from the real point of life. The cry of the oppressed can pierce the siren call of self-love and refocus us on God's self-giving-love. The point is not to be moved by guilt or even by extreme need. The point is to spend time with the one who loved us first, to love him back, and to love the world just like he does. What could be a better life than that? It seemed to be good enough for Jesus.

heads up

Hey friends, World Orphans is currently working through the statement "We need the orphan as much as the orphan needs us". A bunch of the employees are responding to this idea on their personal blogs, and I'm taking part in it too. So that's what the next post will be about. You can check out the other responses according to the schedule found here and stay up on all World Orphan blogs here.

great is thy effectiveness?

Something's wrong. We pastors are the stewards, the spokespeople, the advocates of a message of hope, life, and peace. And yet so few of us seem to be experiencing these qualities in our own lives. Something's wrong. In a world saturated with fear, insecurity, and stress, we are to show a different way. And yet those at the center of the church are burning out and leaving ministry at a rate of 1,500 per month. If that's what's occurring at the heart of the church, why would anyone on the fringe want to move in closer?

That's the opening paragraph of an article at Christianity Today I just read that discusses the bigger is better myth that still holds so much weight in the Western Church. Some other quotes from the article:

It seems too many of us have our identities wrapped up in the measurable outcomes of our work rather than in the life-giving love of the Christ we proclaim. Something's wrong.
...

Some might say these leaders have failed to nurture their souls sufficiently. We usually want to blame leaders for their own burn out, but when I see the pervasiveness of this problem I wonder if there isn't also a systemic factor. Could contemporary church ministry itself be the problem?
...

Consider a chapter titled "Bigger is Better" from a popular ministry book. The authors write, "A church should always be bigger than it was. It should be constantly growing." Talk about pressure. The problem is this standard doesn’t hold water when applied to Jesus himself. John 6 describes the scene where "many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him."
...

Unlike contemporary business, ministry involves the baffling interplay of the human and the divine, the spiritual and the material. There is a mystery to what we are called to do. Embracing this mystery and releasing the outcomes of our work to God is what we must do if our lives, and not just our ministries, are to be filled with his grace.

I encourage you to read it for yourself. I know this is nothing new for some of you, but I also know there are a lot of voices still shouting for growth and numbers and performance and results, and those voices will go out of their way to silence anyone who doesn't repeat their words. I hope this is an encouragement for those left in the dust of a fast moving "ministry". May you instead walk in the dust of your rabbi.

blogs

I finally got around to updating my blog theme. I have spent a lot of time at work over the last few weeks working on blog headers, themes, buttons, and more, learning a lot. So I figured I needed to at least make my own blog look cool again. Yep, more California style, and surprise, Charger colors. Some things never change.

Also, I have been spending a lot of time reading blogs, because it's a great way to stay up with what other people are reading, thinking, saying, and doing. Plus I found Google Reader, an application that makes saying up on blogs really easy. It collects all your blogs in one place and lets you know when they are updated. Some of my new favorite blogs are Jesus Manifesto (subverting the Empire and such), Revolution in Jesusland (politics through an Emergish lense), and God's Politics with Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren, Shane Claiborne, Phyllis Tickle and others (maybe a little left leaning, but overall a pretty good attempt to engage politics as Christians without choosing sides and attacking the "enemy"). God's Politics has a really strong global focus too. And I can't forget the Showbread and underOATH tour blogs too! You can find links to these and others on the left, and I'd love to know what blogs you read. This is my new favorite hobby!

Preson

Check out Preson Phillips. He's a pastor of a missional church community in Tampa called Watermark. The website is for a cd he recorded of songs written about their journey. It's mostly acoustic, with a folk/indie feel. They lyrics are just fantastic, check out this song called "Until God's Realm Comes", it's one of my favorites and one of the best pictures of the church I've ever found. You can listen to it while you read, just go to his website and hit refresh a few times until this song starts playing in the top left corner...

============
We gather to sing of your kindness that’s showered upon us
To whisper your promises, shout out the truths of your love
We lift up your name as we care for your children around us
Encouraged in unity, gathering strength from your words
Thank you for kinship thank for love.

Excited by life, we will sing with the gifts that you give us
Impassioned by mystery, mystical Lord upon high!
Heartbroken seeing what sin has destroyed all around us
Hopeful in knowing what will be fulfilled in your Word
Until your Kingdom comes…

Maybe in this there has been but a glimpse of the kingdom
And maybe our hearts will be stirred for the mission before us
Maybe in this there has been but a glimpse of you Jesus
And mercy will flow through these streets as we exercise worship
Until your kingdom comes

until all are fed
until all know home
until all are free
until justice done
until peace the way
until grace the law
until love the rule
until God’s realm comes
until God’s realm comes
============

Pretty sweet, eh? And if you still aren't convinced, he is actually giving the cd away for free on his website.

One of the most exciting parts for me is how I discovered him. My favorite band, underOATH, just put up a song from their new record on myspace. Their guitarist mentioned in a blog that he had produced a "folk record" for a friend of his, and so I decided to check it out and found Preson. I started looking more into this church and just loved reading about what they were doing and their heart for their city, their view of church and the role of God's people. It also was cool to see that the books they recommend are all the same books that have really impacted me! And it turns out 3 of the underOATH guys are part of the church community. So I was pretty excited about that! Well, check it out and let me know what you think!

Re-Discovery

GK Chesterton opens his classic book, Orthodoxy, with a story he says he always wanted to write, but never found the time to fully develop. It's a story about an explorer who set sail from England to discover a new world, but somehow, through slight miscalculation, actually returned accidentally to England thinking he had discovered a new island in the South Seas. He writes:

There will probably be a general impression that the man who landed (armed to the teeth and talking by signs) to plan the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the Pavilion at Brighton, felt rather a fool. I am not here to deny that he looked a fool. But his mistake was really a most enviable mistake, and he knew it... What could be more delightful than to have in the same few minutes all the fascinating terrors of going abroad combined with the humane security of coming home again? What could be more glorious than to brace one's self to discover New South Wales and then realize, with a gush of happy tears, that it was really old South Wales.

Chesterton uses this analogy to describe his own spiritual journey. Raised in Christianity in the late 1800's, he went through severe depression and skepticism at the age of 19, and left behind his faith. Then, through his adult life, he studied philosophy and religion, trying to piece together from different belief systems something true that would satisfy his doubts. He discovered, however, that the philosophy and religion he had developed, when put together, was actually orthodox Christianity. In his own words:

I freely confess all the idiotic ambitions of the end of the nineteenth century. I did, like all other solemn little boys, try to be in advance of the age. Like them I tried to be some ten minutes in advance of the truth. And I found that I was eighteen hundred years behind it... When I fancied that I stood alone I was really in the ridiculous position of being backed by all Christendom. It may be, Heaven forgive me, that I did try to be original; but I only succeeded in inventing all by myself an inferior copy of the existing traditions of civilized religion. The man from the yacht thought he was the first to find England; I thought I was the first to find Europe. I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the finishing touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.

When I first read this segment 18 months ago, I didn't think of it as anything more than a interesting analogy. When I remembered it again a couple days ago, it struck me how completely I identify with it today. Now I think it may be the best way to explain the last year of my life, both spiritually and physically. For a year ago I was desperate for something new, willing to leave everything familiar and comfortable and good. The “Old World” that I had been raised in was beginning to show cracks in the once-solid foundations, and I didn't know how to deal with that. What do you do when everything you've believed (or thought you believed...) suddenly (or really slowly and subtly, but you notice suddenly) doesn't make sense. When 1 + 1 adds up to something less than 2. When the world view you thought was solid and trustworthy and true is revealed to be shaky and weak and lacking.

Well, I ran off to California to find out who God really is, what he really said, what I can really believe. I guess you could say that my miscalculation that sent me in the wrong direction is that I assumed people who had learned the right things about God could teach me the right things to believe, and all would be better. I put all my faith in people, and, shockingly, they didn't save me. I returned to the very place I left, feeling foolish in many ways for “missing God's voice” or “not finishing what I started” or a number of other guilt-soaked burdens. And I was still hurting, still broken, still questioning.

I was cynical about churches only being concerned with bigger programs and brighter lights. I was frustrated with an approach to prayer than can quickly become a method of screaming at God what He needs to do so He can make my life easier. I was crushed by authority figures who abused the trust of those “under” them in order to manhandle the fulfillment of their own dreams at the expense of everyone else's. I was disillusioned with worship that seemed like a psychological hype-fest to escape the real world with the tinglies of God, the wonderdrug, or just a rock show because Jesus is so cool. I was disturbed by a political agenda that looked a lot like trying to impose the will of a few on the many, cause it was the “right” way to live. Yes, those are rather harsh statements, but if I'm honest that was how I felt at the time, and this was the world I was leaving behind. I was going to discover a new continent of Christianity, where people followed God in the real “right” way.

Imagine my surprise when, like the explorer in the story and like Chesterton himself, I find myself back where I started (and I don't just mean in Colorado Springs). Through the last couple months, and only after returning to the “Old World” in deeper brokenness and humility than ever before, God is putting me back together. And these new things look awfully like the old. It's not that I believe something new, or that I've discovered a new way to heaven, or have found the “right” way to live. I believed in Jesus a year ago, and I still do now. It's just that my eyes have been opened to see His words and His life and His death and His life in new ways. The problem was never God, the problem was me and all the extra things that had quietly been added to the pure Gospel.

I also realized that those twisted additions were not done by evil people who wanted to hurt others. It's just that all of us people are good at messing up the good things God is up to, and out of the best intentions things went a little off. It's not that these people or churches or ideas were wrong and evil, it's just that the dreams God has given them are different from the dreams God has given me. I don't have to be “right” anymore. They don't have to be “wrong” for me to feel ok about myself. Now, I can see their value and purpose and realize that they are just being faithful to what God has asked them to do, and I can be free to support them and champion them without the responsibility to change them, cause that was never my responsibility anyway. (RANT: cause how do I know if they are right or wrong- I don't know what God desires for them. They aren't supposed to be obedient to me. If they are wrong, that is up to the Holy Spirit to speak into their lives and bring conviction and repentance and fresh hope and re-dream with them. I think He is better at that than me anyway.) It's my responsibility to love them. And maybe if I love them, I'll have the opportunity to share my stories and dreams, and we can actually love one another and be one in God like Jesus prayed.

So, to sum it up, I've sort of rediscovered my faith. That may not be the best wording, since I didn't really lose it, but... I still believe in the local church as the hands and feet of God, serving the forgotten and broken and oppressed, even if we still have a tendency to want to serve ourselves. I still believe that every prayer matters, even if sometimes those prayers are best expressed in questions and short sentences and listening. I still believe in leadership as an opportunity to serve effectively and empower people to become who God wants them to be, even in a consumer culture where we exalt leaders who give use what we need in place of God. I still believe in worship as the best response simple children can give to the Father who has given them far more than they could ever hope to understand, even if our best response falls far to short.(I'm still pretty cynical about politics, but truthfully I always have been... I guess I'm not perfect yet! Um, yeah...)

I feel like God is restoring me, giving me new vision, new hope, new dreams, and they are all fresh perspectives of the old ones. Which is really a beautiful thing. And as I think about all this and begin to ask what it all means, I have found that I am more excited about being a follower of Jesus than ever before.