Monday Morning Look Ahead

Grace Community, your Ministry Team met yesterday for a wonderful meeting that resulted in some exciting things in the days ahead. As we are seeking to Love God and Love People we’re finding the Spirit is already there before us and leading us on the journey.

This Sunday, be sure to be at the Worship Gathering. Some big news will be announced. This is exciting stuff!! I can’t wait to share with you what God has been up to!

Also, this Saturday at 8:30am, be sure to attend the All-church Training Day at the GCC Training Site. Breakfast will be provided and you’ll be on your way home, to the store, or to the beach by 11:30am. This is an important day for God to shape us into his servants. Adjust your schedule if you need to in order to be there. We’ll be discovering ways to work towards the strengths God has equipped us with. Come discover the freedom to become who you already are!

Finally, next Sunday night there will be a Super Bowl party at the Fitzwater’s for all the teens. Chips, cokes, way too much sugar and football! What could be better? All end by throwing a bone to Jeff: “Da Bears!”

Self-imposed Creative Catalysts

NPR ran a story this morning on the Pigou Club, “an elite group of economists and pundits with the good sense to have publicly advocated higher Pigovian taxes, such as gasoline taxes or carbon taxes.â€? They propose raising the gasoline tax at an obscene rate in order to release the creative energies of silicon valley to find means of energy that are environmentally conscious, ecologically stable, and financially viable. My first impression: that’s a pretty good idea!

Imagine self-imposed restrictions and obstacles that sparked creative fervor in finding ways to eliminate those restrictions or obstacles. It sounds a lot like what we did all the time during my days in professional theatre. There was a deadline to get a show up, a group of people working on it who at first do not agree, a (very) limited supply of money, and somehow that served as a catalyst for amazing creative that worked.

What if such an approach were taken toward church restrictions and obstacles?

We don’t have enough money:

• why? debt;
• solution? put all funds toward that debt and eliminate funds for compassion, ministry, service to others, etc.;
• result? you better believe people would find a way to eliminate unnecessary debt in order to be good stewards of monies for the purpose of serving others.

People won’t darken the doors of the building we call the “church” on the property:

• why? buildings are irrelevant in the realm of spiritual reality;
• solution? stop thinking of “church” as an irrelevant building and think of “church” as a verb carried out for the good of others by many participants in Christ’s work for the purpose of building bridges of irresistable influence;
• result? the church will be relevant, meaninful, and helpful in local communities (which is to imply it largely is not at present.)

We don’t see not-yet believers responding to God’s grace which we believe is already at work in their lives:

• why? we don’t pray for them and we don’t go to where they hang-out;
• solution? pray regularly and passionately for not-yet believers with trust that God really wants to answer those prayers; also, get our butts out of the “church” building and property and spend more time in “third places” (i.e., restaurants, bars, coffee shops, the beach, the park, etc. — places that people hang out when they aren’t at work or at home) especially if that means we must cancel some of the activities that weekly take place on “church” properties;
• result? we will see Christ’s kingdom multiply in surprising ways.

The social agencies and government authorities don’t seem to care much about the disenfranchised, nor are they very effective in helping them:

• why? Christians have not held agencies and authorities accountable, nor named the injustices for what they are in a public and deliberate manner;
• solution? we need to sing the dangerous songs of our Story on behalf of the disenfranchised and persecuted (songs which will put is un in harm’s way) while at the same time joining together with other believers to actually do something that moves persons from enablement to sustainability.
• result? we will see Christ in the least of all people, we will go beyond service to capacity building, we will finally understand and live compassion and justice.

There are other obstacles that could be turned into creative catalysts. I only suggest a few. Please submit other possibilities.

What’s Love Got to Do with It?

So this week’s Epistle Reading from the lectionary is the oft-recited love chapter from Paul.  Since the driving idea of the congregation I serve is “Loving God, Loving People” I’ve been musing over the nuances and implications of love.  I have tended to focus on the active aspects of love.  I think this greatly stems from the congregation I previously served that was almost exclusively focused on “knowing.”  Yet the impressive display and pursuit of knowledge did not translate into doing much of anything significant for Christ’s kingdom.

If I understand John Wesley’s read of the apostle John’s writings, it seems that knowing and loving are synonymous; for to love is to know God precisely because God is love.  So the crux of the gospel life is to love God and love all people.

Over on Emergent Nazarenes, Brian Postlewait weighs in on this perspective while considering the book “How (Not) to Speak of God.”  I look forward to reading the book.  Meanwhile, it seems that Paul’s understanding of love (in the afore mentioned love chapter) requires action in the context of sustained relationship.  Aren’t our neighbors everyone we come in contact with, after all?

Disclaimer: “24″ Plot Confessions

***If you are into the TV series “24″ be warned that this blog post will discuss the current plotline (or dialogue, at least)***

So I’m hooked on “24” and the intrigue surrounding the hero Jack Bauer. It all started for me when my wife and I cancelled our satellite TV description about a year ago. We signed up for one of the DVD rent-by-mail subscriptions. We’ve watched a lot of movies this year! But we also decided to take the “24″ plunge and see what all the hype was about. We finished Season 1 in about 4 days (that’s 24 episodes, totalling about 45 minutes each). 18 hours later we were in for the long haul. Just about a week ago we finished up Season 5 with great anticipation for Season 6’s two-night premiere this past Sunday and Monday. In fact, after moving to another state we got satellite TV again, pretty much just to watch “24.” ( A decision I’m regretting, and we’ll probably be sans TV again and back to DVD world). Nevertheless, we caught the series premiere. Yes, this pastor often labeled a “pacifist” is addicted to a show about counter-terrosism with lots of guns, explosions, and killing. I guess I’ll ask forgiveness after Season 6!

***Now’s your last chance to stop reading if you don’t want to know details about Season 6 of “24.”***

Jack Bauer has been locked up by the Chinese government for over two years. Tortured beyond imagining, and changed in ways yet to be discovered, Jack returns to the US at great cost to the US government in order to be given to a terrorist organization as a ransom for the country. As Jack is handcuffed to a grate by a coworker and friend in order to be picked up by the terrorists, tortured, and killed so that terrorist attacks against US civilians will stop, he divulges “I didn’t give into the Chinese for two years because I didn’t want to die for nothing. Now, I’ll die for something … by my choice.”

Though watching “24″ is generally a time of escape from reality for me, with these words reality smacked me upside the head in a big way. This is clearly a Christ-motif: he was the ransom who will die (and rise to new life) for the ultimate thing to die for — salvation and reconciliation for the world. And I also am clearly aware that this should be the cry of all who call themselves followers of Christ: let us die for something that matters by our choice.

Serving as a pastor of a congregation there are many hills I could die on. So many intra-church conflicts are, unfortunately, a reality. I readily confess the sin of the Church that over centuries has determined to place importance on structures, organization, and systems instead of following the Way of Jesus in selfless love for God and others. If I chose to die on the hills erected by “church interests” and “organizational structuring” and “program agendas” and “building funds” I’d be dying for nothing. But I am not ashamed to say that I want to die for something (dare I say Someone?)

This realization alone should entirely change the way church is traditionally done. “Church” can no longer refer to a building or weekly Sunday gathering time. Church is a verb. We should be about “churching” in places where life happens so that Christ can build his church. Instead of “inviting people to church” what if Christians took the church into the world out of great love for others? Remember: “for God so loved the world.” If I’m spending more time with faithful attenders of a weekly worship gathering than with those in my community that are searching for relationship and something to fill the voids in their lives, (even as a pastor … especially as a pastor) then shame on me. Christ came for the sick not the well. So who am I here for? A spiritual ancestor of mine once wrote, “The world is my parish.” I’m finally understanding what he meant.

Like Jack Bauer, like Jesus, I want to die for something by my choice. Who will join me?