faith 4 tomorrow

The Challenge of Receiving

2010-10-19T11:44:00.001-07:00

As a pastor and spiritual leader, I have spent a great deal of my life caring for others and urging those in my flock to care for others as well. The mandate to be our brothers' and sisters' keepers is clear in all of the world's great religions, and I've gotten pretty good at fulfilling this greatest commandment.

But in the ten days since my fall and since being on these dreadful crutches, lugging around my 80 pound casted leg, I have been on the receiving end of the care of others, and I'm no bloody good at that. I have no idea why it is so difficult, so uncomfortable for me to receive the kindness of others. Last Thursday, my brothers and sisters in the Living Vision Community canceled our regular gathering and devoted the entire two hours to helping me move out of the family cottage in Bay View and into my new apartment in Petoskey. They showed up with a meal, boxes, and bags and started packing and transporting my stuff to my second floor apartment on Sheridan Street.

I couldn't help them! I couldn't pitch in. About the only thing I could do was tell them what to do, which was even worse given that I, myself, could do nothing. They were all smiles, even the couple who stayed behind at the cottage after the last box had left, scrubbing out the filthy refrigerator before defrosting it, something I didn't have the heart to ask anyone to do. They just did it.

Then today, I open up my mail and find three checks from people I hardly know, folks from a church in Chicago where I preach every now and then. They had heard of my accident and that I have no health insurance..."We just wanted to help," their cards said. I squirmed with an awkward discomfort. Is it humility?...Being out of control?... Some sort of pride that is making me resist all this unmerited goodness?

In the end, I don't know. And maybe it doesn't even matter. I am humbled by all this goodness that has come my way. I am grateful to have such people in my life. And I am inspired to join forces with them the next time somebody crosses my path in need.

Thank you! Thank you SO much!

Today - a very special day 10/10/10

2010-10-10T19:44:00.000-07:00

A new and very dear friend pointed out to me that today was 10/10/10, an oddity in our calendar that none of us will live to see again. Certainly such a numeric convergence makes today rare and special, but in a deeper, more profound sense, isn’t each day equally rare, beautiful, and filled with the stuff of gift, regardless of how the numbers come out?

Our Buddhist brothers and sisters teach us that the present moment is all there ever is, that yesterday is gone and tomorrow never comes – or, by the time it does, it’s today, part of the unfolding now.

There’s nothing quite like a sudden accident or illness to shock us into the power of now. On Friday of this past week, I was up and down ladders at a job site, riding my bike to the grocery store, and taking my thrice-weekly, 3-mile run in the Bay View woods. But on Friday night, moments after lying on my back with Eloise, gazing at the stars and the planet Venus, I took a freak and inexplicable fall that snapped my fibula and shattered my ankle. As I sit writing this blog, my right leg is elevated in front of me, covered in a cast that runs from my thigh to my toes. It will be well into 2011 before I am able to walk, climb a ladder, or even take a shower again.

The now in which I reside is a much slower paced one than I inhabited just two short days ago. Getting dressed takes an almost Herculean effort, not to mention the skills of a contortionist. The only way I can get up or down stairs is on my butt, one step at a time ... one step at a time.

My all-too-Western mind has wanted to focus on what a huge bummer this new reality is going to be, on all the terrific things I’m going to have to miss because of this stupid fall, and how much time I’m going to waste, as the simple, everyday things that used to take seconds now take minutes or even hours. But what is the value of such evaluative and judgmental thinking? It neither hastens the healing process nor fosters an environment in which I may benefit from my new reality.

Buddhists believe that one of the central and most crucial spiritual practices is non-resistance, a mindfulness that trusts in the flow of life, an attitude that each and every now has within it exactly what we need for heightened consciousness. The call that I have received in the form of this fall is to accept rather than to resist, to look toward it expectantly rather than away from it at what might have been. Jesus put it this way: “Which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?” “This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

Another reason never to judge others or limit our hospitality

2010-09-26T19:42:00.000-07:00

A little background first…I have a dog, a wonderful 12-and-a-half year-old Yellow lab/Golden Retriever mix for whom I have to find a new home. The only apartments I can afford don’t allow dogs.

So I’m at my gig last night, sitting at The Noggin Room bar during a break. I notice a dark figure at the far corner of the bar, cloaked both by the shadows and his dark clothing including a wide brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes. He had piercings all over the place and tatoos to boot. No one was sitting near him, and I witnessed several patrons start to sit in the empty seats next to him but then think the better of it once they got a look at this character.

I was conversing with a nice, well-dressed couple sitting next to me. At some point they mentioned their dog, and I shared my predicament with them. They soon departed and I headed back to the stage to tune up for my next set. Getting there, I realized I needed another water for the set and returned to the bar to get Dean to fill me up. I went to the space next to the man in the shadows to order. He looked at me and smiled, and I said, “Hi.” I was not prepared for what happened next…

He said, “I was just on the phone with my grandpa. I don’t mean to be nosey, but I overheard you talking about your dog. My grandpa is alone, and his dog died a few months ago. I thought he might be interested in a companion. I’m also going to check with my mom, who loves dogs and lives on a farm.”

“Wow…really? That’s amazing.”

The Jesus Question - 9/23/10 – by Toby Jones

2010-09-23T20:05:00.000-07:00

One of the toughest questions our emerging Living Vision community has had to wrestle with is the Jesus question – who is he? How do we articulate and convey who we believe Jesus to be? And can our faithful expression of and following of Jesus make room for people of other faiths or of no faith at all? Or is following Jesus tantamount to saying all other faiths are somehow wrong, false, or misguided? Is the only way we can ultimately relate to non-Christians be with the intent to convert them?

It is not surprising to me that it is this Christological question that already threatens to split our tiny fledgling community. America and the larger world is chock full of Christians whose battle cry is “Jesus is the ONLY way…No one comes to the Father but through Him…Jesus didn’t say he was ‘a way;’ he said he was ‘THE way!’” I have spent the majority of my life with this very kind of Christ follower. I have been a part of many church and para-church communities who have espoused this highly exclusivist theology. As a seminary graduate, I am also intimately familiar with the many New Testament passages used to substantiate this notion of Christianity as the superior and only “true” religion.

And it is, at least in part, because of my long history with exclusivist Christianity that I want our Living Vision community to offer the world something different. I know what happens to relationships, to conversations, and to all forms of service when they are undertaken by people who assume their way is the only way. As a dedicated follower of Jesus, I have been repeatedly embarrassed and even ashamed when members of my faith communities have - however unintentionally - presumed a spiritual superiority over others. I have felt a palpable dissonance between what my fellow Christians have said/done and the Jesus I have come to know and love through the scriptures. I simply cannot imagine Jesus - the one who came not to be served but to serve - “lording it over” others the way so many of his followers do. I envision Jesus being extremely respectful of and open to other religious expressions, much the way Mahatma Gandhi was when a reporter asked him if he was trying to convert the whole world to Hinduism. Gandhi responded, “No! I want to help Hindus become better Hindus, Muslims to be better Muslims, Christians to be better Christians, and Jews to be better Jews.” I want my spiritual community to be like that. Gandhi was deeply informed about and respectful of the way of Jesus. I see no reason that Jesus and his followers should be any different toward our human brothers and sisters of other faiths.

Christians have an unfortunate history of wielding scripture – particularly out of context scripture – as a bullying club. How many times have Christians quoted John 10:7-9 to “prove” Christianity’s exclusive truth claim, a passage in which Jesus says, “I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers…I am the door; if any one enters by me, he will be saved…” And yet why aren’t we Christians equally familiar with and respectful of Jesus’ own words a mere seven verses later, when he said: “And I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them along also”? Or why aren’t exclusivist Christians very familiar with Jesus’ parable of the weeds in Matthew 13? In this story a farmer sows good wheat seed in his field but is soon told by his servants that some weeds have grown up alongside the wheat. His servants impatiently and judgmentally seek permission to go yank up the unwanted weeds. But the master says, “No, for if you gather the weeds you might root up the wheat along with them. Let both grow together until the harvest.” Or when was the last time you heard a sermon on Mark 9:38-41, which recounts the unnerved disciples tattling to Jesus about some other people who were casting out demons in Jesus’ name but were not part of The Way? The disciples expected Jesus to be threatened, to claim some sort of monopoly on healing. But Jesus says, “Do not forbid them…For he that is not against us is for us.”

As a former pastor, I am painfully aware that both sides of any theological argument can use scripture to substantiate their view. But ultimately such an exercise is fruitless and far more damaging than edifying to all involved. I have only resorted to offering the above verses to illustrate how selective and one-sided we Christians have been and continue to be in our use of holy writ. When all is said and done, the place on which I hang my hat is the person and work of Jesus. What did he DO? How did he treat people? Were the things he did and the instructions he gave in the service of some religion or belief system? Or was he in touch and concerned with a deeper Truth or Truths, ones that superseded the tight boxes of any particular religion, including the one that was ultimately named after him? How many of us have had the experience of seeing and knowing a non-Christian who is more Christlike than we are? (see my blog entry on Chip Duncan, “An Unwitting Disciple”)

In addition to my desire to follow Jesus, I am committed to Living Vision’s experiment in spiritual community because of my deep conviction that everyone – EVERYONE – is a child of God, created in God’s own image. It isn’t only espoused followers of Jesus who are created in the image of God. There is no way that the God made known in Jesus could or would condemn people simply for being born into a non-Christian culture or family. And let’s be honest: isn’t 99.9% of the reason any of us are Christians because of where and to whom we were born? I want to be a part of a community of Christ followers who truly believes and lives as though everyone on the planet is a child of God. Period.

Who knows what Jesus had in mind when he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but by me”? I believe that what Jesus was saying was that our task in this life is to live like him – to walk according to his “way” - and to leave all gate-keeping questions to him. He wanted us to understand that there are limits to what we humans are to concern ourselves with. And if making conjectures about where other people are going to spend eternity isn’t one such forbidden place for us, I can’t imagine what is!

There is nothing experimental about forming a spiritual community around certain commonly held beliefs – such as Jesus being the son of God, the Savior, the Messiah, the only way to God. I have seen and the world has seen where such communities end up. What I long to see is a spiritual community that is willing to risk diversity of belief in order to live in the way of Jesus. Anyone interested in being a part of such an experiment is urged to join us each and every Thursday night from 6-8:00pm for our open community dinner and discussions. For more information just email me at tobyjones48@gmail.com

What my new-found poverty has taught me so far…

2010-09-19T19:59:00.000-07:00

First, let’s be clear about what I mean by poverty. When somewhere around 2/3rds of the world lives on literally 1-2 dollars a day, my current drop in income from about 50 k to about 20 k hardly qualifies me as poor. But, I don’t always know where my next check is coming from, which is probably why I have 3-4 part-time jobs.

But here are a few surprising things I’ve noticed about myself since I moved from a full time job with benefits to several low-paying endeavors…

1) I’m dog tired – It’s way more draining moving from job to job. It’s not just the added travel and time on the various jobs; it’s the stress of not knowing if you’re coming or going and still having to coordinate care for my child and care for my 78- year-old dad. I feel as though I’m in a constant state of fatigue. And while I’m a committed exerciser who knows full well the importance and benefits of staying fit, I’m far more likely to blow off the day’s workout after running from job to job.

2) I’m more sensitive – I find I can get a bit resentful when people who make five or even ten times as much as I do whine about their financial hardships. I know that, to some extent, everyone has got his/her share of problems. But when I hear my friends or even relatives moaning about not being able to take that trip to Cabo or the Mediterranean this year, I want to puke. For me the choice is whether or not to buy health insurance.

3) I spend more money on non-necessities – This one’s really got me scratching my bald head. I’ve always been extremely frugal…ok, downright cheap. But working much harder for a whole lot less money, I find that when payday comes, I’m more likely to go out for dinner or buy that cute new pair of shoes for my daughter than I ever was when I was making much more dough. I can remember criticizing those “undisciplined poor people” who would leave their manual labor jobs on Friday with a paycheck in their pocket and head straight to the bar on the way home to spend a healthy chunk of it, when they “should be saving.” As near as I can figure it, when I’m working as hard as I have to with three part time jobs and fighting the fatigue and even despair that comes with them, I feel that I “deserve” to treat myself…and, damn it, I do!

So life is teaching me some important lessons as I adjust to a very new way of life. I’m embracing where I am, even if I didn’t plan it quite the way it has worked out. Every day is an adventure, a lesson in both humility and perseverance, and I really wouldn’t trade places with anyone. Our Buddhist brothers and sisters tell us that life brings us exactly what we need to ascend to a higher consciousness. The task is to trust that process and receive each lesson as a gift. What else can we do?

On Love and Loss

2010-08-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

I’ve gone through some pretty dark times this year, including a spell of the most brutal sadness that I’ve ever known - a debilitating, breath-defying brokenness.

When you lose a love, there’s so much else you lose along with it. Like music…you can’t listen to the radio or your i-pod when you lose your love, for every song cuts to the very quick. Something as simple as going to the movies or even to familiar places on the heels of lost love is only an invitation to even deeper despair.

During such a darkness, it seems that everyone you pass has to ask, “How are you?” And who can find the words with which to respond? As an English teacher, when I lack the words to express my deepest feelings, I often find myself turning to the world of literature . Though it just about killed me when I came upon these words for the first time at the end of Muriel Barbery’s masterpiece, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, I am eternally grateful that someone said what my heart hasn’t been able to utter.

The context is that one of the two main characters of the book, a very isolated, misunderstood, brilliant, suicidal teenager, loses a dear friend…

“For the first time in my life I understood the meaning of the word never. And it’s really awful. You say the word a hundred times a day but you don’t really know what you’re saying until you’re faced with a real “never again.” Ultimately you always have the illusion that you’re in control of what’s happening; nothing seems definitive…But when someone you love dies (or leaves for good)…well, I can tell you that you really feel what “never” means, and it really hurts. It’s like fireworks suddenly burning out in the sky and everything going black. I feel alone, and sick, and my heart aches and every moment seems to require a colossal effort.”

Too often we forget the real grief is physical - not emotional. True gut-wrenching loss creates nausea, shortness of breath, deep, constant, and inescapable pain, which is why when people try to comfort their grieving friends with words it never works. Words can't relieve physical pain.

But that being said, the next dark time I'm called upon to give words to how I'm doing, I’ll find a way to choke out these words from Muriel Barbery.

O, For a Thousand Tongues to Sing...

2010-08-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

“O for a thousand tongues to sing my great redeemer’s praise, the glories of my God and King, the wonders of his grace…” I’ve been singing this great Wesleyan hymn ever since I was able to read, some 43 years. I’m guessing that means I’ve sung it about 700 times. And for 699 of those times, I’d always just assumed that Charles Wesley longed for a thousand tongues so that he could sing praises to God a thousand times louder than he could with just his own solitary voice. I’d always assumed that Wesley wanted to be a part of a thousand voice choir, blasting out this song of adoration, so that God could hear it loud and clear, all the way up in the heavens.

But the 700th time I sang this classic hymn, over in Bay View earlier this summer, it occurred to me that Charles Wesley might have been after something other than volume with his “thousand tongues” idea.

What if what Wesley was yearning for was a thousand different ways to communicate and live the Gospel that he loved, the Gospel of Jesus Christ? What if Wesley had come to realize through his years as a revival preacher that there were people – thousands upon thousands of people – who would not and could not be moved toward faith through traditional means? What if Wesley knew what many of us who have left the Church have found out – that the creeds and formulas, the doctrines and beliefs, the structures and sermons of the Church will never be sufficient to convey the beautiful complexity of who Jesus is to an increasingly diverse and globally minded population.

Let me tell you about a friend of mine named Jim. He’s struggled mightily to overcome his addiction to substances. Over the years he’s tried various churches in search of spiritual community and support as he fights the monster of alcohol. But in churches, he’s found judgment, scorn, condescension, and the tired creeds of yesteryear. “A.A. is my church,” he tells me. I walk in there and everybody’s the same. We’re all drunks…We’re all recovering. There’s no pretense, no B.S. I feel Jesus’ presence in our little basement room more than I’ve ever felt it in your beautiful sanctuaries. We believe in life, in helping each other, in refraining from judgment, and in living one day at a time. And if that’s not the Gospel, I don’t know what is.”

A.A. and its language of a Higher Power, its practice of forgiveness – no matter how many times one stumbles - and its sense of authentic fellowship has been a form of the Gospel that Jim has embraced. It’s the Gospel in another of the thousand tongues.

Another buddy of mine named Byron volunteers three days a week at one of the largest soup kitchen’s in New York City. He grew up in the church, going every week from the time he was a little runt. But after he attended college and graduate school, he found that he couldn’t believe in so many of Christianity’s tenets – the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection, or the world being created in 6 days. Because all of those church doctrines had always been so closely associated with Jesus, once Bob’s belief in those doctrines faded, he felt he had to let go of Jesus too. “We’d stand up to say those confessions and creeds, and I noticed I couldn’t get those words out of my mouth – even though they were on the page right in front of me. I figured since all the other people in the pews were saying them so easily and without any hesitation, it must just be me who had the problem. So I left.”

But about twenty years later, Bob heard about a little Episcopal church in Chelsea that shared its building with a Jewish Temple congregation. Together, these two communities had started a feeding program that provides and serves over 1300 lunches to homeless people a day. And they serve these meals face-to-face, person-to-person in the church sanctuary! “When I heard about this, I thought of that place in the gospel where Jesus says ‘For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink,’ and ‘when you did it to the least of these you did it unto me.’ When I signed up to volunteer, I asked if there was anything I had to believe in to be a part of this program. The lady chuckled and said, ‘Yeah…you’ve got to believe that hungry people ought to be fed.’ I’ve been a part of the soup kitchen community ever since.”

Bob needed to hear the gospel in a tongue that wasn’t so concerned with ancient creeds and confessions. He heard and was transformed by the tongue of the social gospel, the gospel of feeding the hungry with no questions asked, no strings attached. Bob needed to see the gospel in a place where, as Ian Lawton puts it “people put their humanity before their ideology. “

Last, I want to tell you about Janice. She’s a trip, very new-agey but with a broad and deep background in other religions, particularly Buddhism and Hinduism. She practices yoga and silent contemplation as well, believing that they are “portals to the Divine.” Janice has always loved and been drawn to Jesus. She just can’t accept the claim that Jesus is the “only way.” “There’s no way all these other ancient, beautiful, peaceful religious paths can just be dismissed, especially since they share so much with the teachings of Jesus…Jesus is bigger than Christianity,” Janice likes to say. “Christians don’t own Jesus. Jesus would refuse to let them.”

Janice is teaching me and some of the other folks in the community I’ve started about silence and contemplation, practices that have deep deep roots in Christianity as well as other Eastern religions. The tongue Janice needed to hear the Gospel in is a silent tongue, a tongue that holds itself so that the Spirit of God might speak.

To me, these three stories of my friends – Jim, Bob, and Janice - are Pentecost stories, stories about the importance of communicating the Gospel in as many tongues and as many languages and as many forms as we possibly can. Our story from Acts 2 shows us how committed God was to allowing the Gospel to take as many forms as was necessary for all people to hear it and experience it in a way that made sense to them.

My prayer, my dream is that when you hear about someone like me or someone like Janice, Bob, or Jim, who practices or understands Jesus a little differently than you do, that you won’t be angry or frightened, dismissive or judgmental. My hope is that you will remember Acts chapter 2, the Pentecost story, and the great Wesleyan hymn – “O for a thousand tongues to sing.” For the Jesus we’re seeking to follow is bigger than any of our minds. The Jesus we’re seeking to follow is not the sole property of Christians or the Christian Church. Jesus needs to be expressed in a thousand different ways, including some that we haven’t even conceived of yet. Let’s be thankful for those who are adding their tongues to the grand chorus that Charles Wesley longed for. Amen.

We Believe... (A Living Vision Statement of Faith)

2010-08-09T19:39:00.000-07:00

We, the Living Vision Community, believe it is important at this point in human history to experiment with new forms of spiritual community.

In that experimental spirit, we believe that:

Vital spiritual community can be developed even among participants who do not share the same beliefs or even the same religious persuasion

Genuinely open theological inquiry is a vital enterprise for spiritually minded people in a global society.

Seeking to do the actual things Jesus did is far more important than talking about or dissecting them

To do the things that Jesus and other great spiritual leaders did requires self-sacrifice, risk, and adventure

Hospitality and inclusion are meaningless unless they are offered to everyone. Everything the Living Vision community does is and will always be open to everyone – period.

Serving our fellow humans is important, but to do so in the fashion of Jesus requires us to serve without any strings or expectations attached – ever.

A spiritual community can function without property, a building, or a budget of any kind

A spiritual community can share leadership among its participants in much the same way as an Alcoholics Anonymous group does. We see no reason to pay someone to lead us.

* We'd love to hear your reaction to this evolving statement! Please post your comments! And for more information on Living Vision's experiment, call Toby at 231-881-6734

The Silence is Deafening!

2010-07-24T20:42:00.000-07:00

As a person who has made a living from public speaking, it is very difficult for me to keep quiet. Stillness and silence have not been anything but natural or comfortable for me over the years. So as I learn more about Buddhist practices and eastern understandings of prayer, which put a tremendous emphasis on silence and contemplation, I have been challenged to my very core.

One of the weekly activities that our fledgling Living Vision community is a time of silence and contemplative prayer on Thursday evenings from 6:30-7:30 pm at a wonderful little chapel in Bay View. A few of us show up, exchange greetings and brief updates on our weeks, and then get on to the business of shutting up. It is not as easy as it sounds. Being quiet on the outside is a whole lot easier than being quiet on the inside. My mind races in an almost non-stop fashion all day long, kicking into an even higher gear when I slow down enough to lay down or be still. The discipline of silence and contemplative prayer brings all such racing thoughts to a deafening crescendo,as if someone is screaming at me from the inside.

The discipline of silence has taught me that my mind does not want to be quiet. It does not want to be controlled or limited in any way. My mind, quite bluntly, wants to rule me rather than be ruled by me. But if I allow my mind to have its way – as I have for the vast majority of my life – where will the space and quiet be for the still small voice of the Spirit to speak and be heard? When the mind runs without ceasing, there is no room for God’s voice to be heard, which means that for the vast majority of my life – yes, even and especially my life as a minister – I have not been able – even when I was willing – to hear the voice of God.

When I first began practicing this discipline of silence, I mistakenly thought that the point was to have profound revelations from God, to hear his voice each time I kept quiet long enough to do so. But the longer I practice and the more I listen to the experiences of my fellow journeyers, the more I realize that what I’m really doing is training my mind to learn to silence itself, to stop spinning ceaselessly, to stop controlling me with its relentless and often frivolous noise. If I am to renew a right spirit within me, I must first develop a core of quiet within which I can access whenever and wherever I need to, a place of deep peace out of which I may operate in an all-too-noisy world.

Several years ago I was teaching a confirmation class, and I asked my students to write in their own words what they believed about God, Jesus, and the Spirit. One student said the “The Holy Spirit gives us nudges and urges to do the things Jesus did.” I like that; I find myself coming back to it again and again. That definition of the Spirit’s work motivates me to keep practicing the often dry and revelation-less discipline of silence so that I might be more apt to feel those nudges and listen to those urges. Whether or not God ever speaks to me during these actual times of silence on Thursday nights is becoming less and less the point. Gaining control over my mind and creating a truly quiet place within me seems far more important to the on-going transformation of my mind, heart, and soul.

Thanks to Tim Pickett, Nancy-Laurel Pettersen, and the other Living Vision folks who are guiding me on this profound journey into silence, I am actually beginning to look forward to this discipline each week. Please come and join us any Thursday evening at 6:30 over at the Crouse Chapel in Bay View, right next to the post office. Don’t worry if you’ve never done this sort of silent meditation before. We’re all learning together and we usually start with a little 5 minute period of instruction for all of our sakes. See you soon!

Celebrating Each Other's Gifts!

2010-07-14T16:38:00.000-07:00

Last night our Living Vision community met for our weekly gathering at my place. After spending about 8 weeks working through our common text, The Way of Jesus: Re-Forming Spiritual Communities in a Post-Church Age, and agreeing on some foundational principles for our life together, we have turned our attention to forming the bonds on which our relationships may be based.

Each Tuesday night for the rest of the summer, one participant in our Living Vision experiment will lead us in some activity designed to help us know and appreciate one another better, so that we can journey side by side together in the way of Jesus. Last night, Tim Pickett hosted and led the gathering. Having recently completed his doctorate in Composition – he is a jazz composer – we sat around a piano as Tim played various tunes and pieces for us. We asked him questions about the ways his music intersects with and grows out of his spiritual quest.

Tim has been spiritually initiated in two traditions – the Vedanta Society, followers of Ramakrishna, and a monastic tradition within Christianity. For him, Jesus has been central in both initiation rites and in his daily practice of contemplative prayer. He spoke passionately about honesty, a characteristic his mentor in the Vedanta Society called “Thee spiritual practice of the current age.” Tim is zealously committed to honesty in everything he does, including his music. To see him at a piano as our community did last night is to witness the deep, authentic expression of his heart.

As I sat there, gathered in by Tim’s music and musings, I felt profoundly grateful that finally, at long last, I was a part of a spiritual community that was valuing ALL gifts as holy and sacred – not just the ones that we seminary graduates tend to have. For so long I have been a part of and even led churches where the gifts of public speaking, teaching the scriptures, and administering committees were the only gifts that seemed to matter. In Living Vision, we have set out from our very origin to honor and lift up all human gifts – whatever the true passions and expressions of our hearts are.

This commitment to each other’s gifts grows out of a conviction that the Creator God crafted each of us in the very image of Him/Herself. As such, we have different gifts – none of which is more important to our life together than any other. When only those gifts that shine in a Sunday morning worship service are honored, it becomes so easy to think of gifts like Tim’s as somehow less sacred or even secular. But what a slap in the face of a God who purposely made each and every human being with unique gifts and inclinations. Is Sunday a more important day to be in God’s presence and to serve God than Tuesday or Wednesday? Of course not, and neither is the ability to speak or sing hymns with a choir more important than the ability to compose jazz or to cook a meal that satisfies or even transports.

Last night was a true spiritual turning point for me, sharing and celebrating someone else’s gifts, recognizing God in those gifts, and seeing their transforming power on the rest of us. Those who were present last night will never look at Tim Pickett the same way again. We’ve seen his true heart. We’ve seen him at his most honest and most vulnerable place. What a privilege for all of us, and, I would imagine, for Tim as well.

I truly look forward to the coming weeks when other members of our small community will take the lead in offering their gifts to us. Why don’t you come join us? We would welcome you at 1905 Maple St. in Bay View. We’ll be on the porch and have a glass of lemonade waiting for you!

Grace & Peace!

Living Vision has sprung to life! Come join us!

2010-06-16T11:11:00.000-07:00

Blog Entry – 6/16/20

The Living Vision Community is really starting to take shape. A group of about ten of us has been meeting at my house every Tuesday evening for the last 8 weeks. In that time we have worked through The Way of Jesus: Re-Forming Spiritual Communities in a Post-Church Age and had some wonderful discussions about the following questions and more:

What would it look like for a spiritual community to have an open theology, where there wasn’t only one answer for the tough questions of faith?

How could a community interested in following Jesus structure itself so it spent more time on actions – doing the things Jesus did – and less time talking about the things Jesus did?

Since Jesus’ life was filled with spontaneity and adventure, how might we set up Living Vision to nurture those same qualities in us?

What would/could happen if we truly made this community open to anyone, regardless of beliefs or religious persuasion? Since we have defined ourselves as an experiment in community and since there is nothing experimental about gathering people of the same beliefs together, we want to see what happens when we form our community and do everything we do with the express purpose of being open to any and everyone who wants to come along.

We know that Jesus served others without ever attaching strings. How can we emulate that? How can we serve others near and far without ever expecting or wanting anything in return?

What would it be like to be a community without a building, without a facility, without one specific place to gather? What will it be like to be intentionally homeless?

Since we have decided not to have a paid leader, both in the short and long term, how will we lead one another and how might we maximize the gifts of the entire group?

It has been an amazing 8 weeks and I really feel like the adventure has truly begun. We have three community activities in place, each of which is open to anyone who wants to help. We have our Tuesday evening discussion meetings at 1905 Maple St. in Bay View from 7-9 pm on my front porch; we have our Thursday evening Practice of Contemplative Prayer from 6:30-7:30 in Crouse Chapel in Bay View; and we have our chicken coup on the north end of Milton Rd. in Alanson – an operation of 18 chickens whose eggs feed folks who patronize the area food pantries. (We could really use some volunteers to stop by the coup once a week to gather and wash the eggs and deliver them to Manna!) A group of us is also gathering sponsors to participate in the upcoming Petoskey/Bay View Crop Walk which is June 26 at 9 am, beginning at Evelyn Hall in Bay View. Come walk with us and learn more about Living Vision and how you can come adventure with us! You’re also free to call or email me at 231-881-6734 or tobyjones48@gmail.com

I can’t believe this long-developing dream is becoming a reality! Yee-hah!

On Eckhart Tolle – The Power of Now and A New Earth

2010-05-24T20:14:00.000-07:00

I am not usually up with popular culture enough to get on bandwagons the first time they come around. Heck, I didn’t even get into Springsteen until the 90’s even though Born to Run was out before I started college! So I missed the whole Oprah craze with Spiritual Teacher Eckhart Tolle. I literally “discovered” this guy when I was in my local used book store looking for some books on tape to make a drive I had coming up go a little faster. I saw this tape collection called “The Power of Now” and spent the $1 asking price – yes, that’s right – ONE DOLLAR – and figured with a title like that it’s got to be worth a buck. Suffice it to say that The Power of Now did not disappoint; in fact, it changed my life, and if you listen to it or read it, I believe it could have a significant impact on yours too.

My listening experience was filled with the sense that Tolle had written this work just for me. I felt spiritually undressed by him, like he stripped away all of my defenses and somehow knew how my mind worked. A good buddy of mine named George once said this to me in his inimitable way: “Tobes, you’ve got one foot in the past, the other in the future, and you’re just pissin’ all over the present!” Yeah, I know, with friends like Georgie who needs enemies, right? No, he’s a dear enough friend that he can tell me the truth and it won’t hurt, and this particular truth was unarguable. That is pretty much what I’ve done all my life! I spin over and over the past – regrets, painful experiences, disappointments – and I worry incessantly about the future. Tolle believes that the present is the only real time; it is the only moment that matters, the only time in which one can act, decide, or do anything that matters. He also believes that those of us who live in our minds, churning endlessly over the past and/or the future, have no access to God and His still small voice. Tolle argues that our minds have literally taken over us, controlling us when we were designed to control them. The inability to turn my mind off has resulted in everything from years of therapy to all manner of prescription sleep aids, most of which have been no match for my never resting brain.

If any of you struggle with turning off your mind or truly living in the present moment, please read Tolle! I can’t begin to explain the difference his work has made in my life in a few short weeks. One thing I particularly appreciate about his work is his deep knowledge and respect of ALL faiths and religions. He draws from Jesus, Buddha, the Hindu scriptures, and all manner of Zen masters. The truth he unveils transcends religious truth and plumbs the depths of psychology as well. I’m hoping when the group I’m meeting with to found Living Vision in Northern Michigan gets through its current study of The Way of Jesus: Re-Forming Spiritual Communities in a Post-Church Age, we will turn our attention to Tolle’s work. He is truly a gifted spiritual teacher!

More on Percy's The Message in the Bottle

2010-03-26T21:54:00.001-07:00

“The American Christian novelist faces a peculiar dilemma today. (I speak, of course, of a dilemma of the times and not of his own personal malaise, neuroses, failures, to which he is at least as subject as his good heathen colleagues, sometimes I think more so.) His dilemma is that though he professes a belief which he holds saves himself and the world and nourishes his art besides, it is also true that Christendom seems in some sense to have failed. Its vocabulary is worn out. This twin failure raises problems for a man who is a Christian and whose trade is with words.”
- Walker Percy, The Message in the Bottle

These profound words from Walker Percy articulate what I believe to be one of the deepest truths of our time: Christianity has in many ways failed, and its vocabulary is worn out. As someone who has functioned as an ordained pastor for nearly twenty years and who has also written books about Christian faith, I have become acutely aware of these dual failings.

Words have been my currency, my means to every end. Virtually all the leading I’ve ever done in my adult life has been through words. And as I tried to say in my last sermon (see my blog entry from December of 2009) I can’t lead that way anymore. The words I’ve always relied on, the stories I’ve always told don’t convey what they once did. Even as I hear them coming out of my mouth, I’m aware of a certain hollowness, an emptiness, a missing of the mark.

It’s not that Jesus has somehow changed or that his path or teachings are somehow less true or even less profound than they once were – not at all. But rather the ground beneath them has shifted. The context into which this message must meld is oil to the gospel’s water. Percy puts it this way: “The question is not whether the Good News is no longer relevant, but rather whether it is possible that man is presently undergoing a tempestuous restructuring of his consciousness which does not presently allow him to take account of the Good News. For what has happened is not merely the technological transformation of the world but something psychologically even more portentous…”

This shifting, this tempestuous restructuring, this peculiar dilemma is what has called me or even yanked me out of the church and out of organized religion. It’s like God has gifted/cursed me with the ability to hear his gospel words with the ears of post-modernity. I want to offer the world – or at least my little corner of it – a radically different way into this Jesus, this Way. I want to begin with actions, with a community, and then, if necessary, we’ll work toward a new language, a new form of story. When I’m ready to open my mouth again, I want to do so knowing that the words and stories won’t ring hollow, that the community I’m a part of has authenticity, traction, and credibility in the postmodern world.

Please, if this kind of conversation interests you – especially if you are anywhere in Northern Michigan – please leave me a comment on this blog or email me at tobyjones@booksandbridges.com. I invite you to be a part of a conversation that is getting started around my new book The Way of Jesus: Re-Forming Spiritual Communities in a Post-Church Age. And wherever you are, get a hold of Walker Percy’s The Message in the Bottle. It is profoundly important and well worth the trouble.

Walker Percy's The Message in the Bottle

2010-03-24T12:24:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a very challenging and esoteric work by novelist Walker Percy. It's not a novel but a collection of essays, written over a twenty year period, attempting to deal with some nagging questions that Percy was never able to shake. In one section he has this dialogue with himself:

"A boy has just come into the naming stage of language acquisition and one day points to a balloon and looks questioningly at his father. The father says, "That's a balloon," or perhaps just, "Balloon."...But consider....The balloon is not the balloon out there. The word balloon is not the sound in the air..Where, what is the word balloon?...The boy does not understand the particular sound balloon - which his father makes and which enters his ear - to mean the balloon. For it is precisely the nature of the boy's breakthrough that he understands his father's utterance as a particular instance of the word balloon. Where is the word itself? Is it the little marks in the dictionary which you point to when I ask you to show me the word balloon?

"Charles Pierce said the word balloon is not a concrete thing at all but a general one, a law.

"What about the balloon itself? Cannot one at least say that what the boy is pointing to and "means" is that particular round red rubber inflated object?

"No! It is precisely the nature of the boy's breakthrough that the object he points to is understood by him as a member of a class of inflated objects. A few minutes later he might well point to a blue sausage-shaped inflated object and say, "Balloon."

Percy moves on from this extended linguistic and philosophical exercise to make a point about language and the fact that it is our language that makes us humans distinct from all other creatures. But I couldn't help but think about Percy's balloon excursion in theological terms. Haven't we, as people of faith who talk a lot about God, tended to mistake our words about God as God Him/Herself? In our struggle to articulate what we believe about the invisible, indescribable Deity, haven't we constantly lost sight of the fact that our words are NOT the Thing itself, but limited, faulty expressions of God?

This false equating of our words or our favorite theologian's words with God Him/Herself or with eternal truth itself has led to countless wars, schisms, and divisions. We become entrenched in our religious views, which are nothing more than words uttered in attempt to express the inexpressible, and we do battle with each other as if somehow God or Christ Himself is at stake. But in truth, it is only our words about God that are at stake. God is unmoved, unshaken, above the fray.

As my friend Nanette Sawyer put it in her interview for my new book, The Way of Jesus: Re-Forming Spiritual Communities in a Post-Church Age,(now available at www.booksandbridges.com) "All our talk about God is but a calculated verbal idolatry." Maybe if we remembered that, along with Walker Percy's balloon musings, we could get beyond our constant bickering about the faith and get on to the business of living the faith!

You're Invited to be a part of the Living Vision Experiment!

2010-02-26T11:56:00.000-08:00

In the last week, my new book has come out and been made available to the public. It's called The Way of Jesus: Re-Forming Spiritual Communities in a Post-Church Age, and it articulates my vision of a new kind of spiritual community for those of us who are not inclined toward the institution known as "church." My sense over the last decade or so is that America is made up, more and more, of millions of spiritual islands, individual men and women who believe in God and want to live in tune with God, with the earth, and with one another, but are doing so alone and without the vital resource of community.

My book outlines seven principles upon which new kinds of communities can be built, authentic, intentional, post-Church communities. The book is available through two websites - www.booksandbridges.com and progressiveretreats.org You are invited to order a copy, start reading, and, if your are so led, to be a part of reading/focus group that just might alter the next chapter of Christian history. If you live in northern Michigan, you can join this focus group live and in person. If you live elsewhere, you can still be a part of this critical conversation through this blog and through my booksandbridges website. All you have to do is contact me at tobyjones@booksandbridges.com.

If you want to see what happens when a group of spiritual men and women get together without a building, without a paid leader, with a hunger for open theological inquiry, with a willingness to take risks and adventures, and with a radical commitment to inclusiveness, serving others with no strings attached, and living as disciples of the way of Jesus, PLEASE email me today. The future is NOW and we'd LOVE to have you along for this amazing ride.

I hope to hear from you soon!

Grace & Peace,
Toby Jones,
Author - The Way of Jesus:Re-Forming Spiritual Community in a Post-Church Age

Up in the Air - a MUST See Film!

2010-01-27T11:36:00.000-08:00

If you want to see a powerful, incredibly well written film, go catch Up in the Air. It is a penetrating look at the vital role of human relationships in a fast-paced, techno-centric society. George Clooney puts forth an Oscar worthy performance as Jack Bingham, corporate hit man who travels 350,000 miles a year firing people, so that their bosses don’t have to. Bingham’s home is up in the air. He is at a complete loss during the 50-odd days per year he spends at his hotel-like, one bedroom apartment in Omaha.

The payoff for his fast-paced, airborne life style is becoming one of seven people ever to accumulate ten million miles with a single airline and, of courses, every conceivable gold card, executive club pass, hassle-free travel perk imaginable. The price: meaningful, enduring human relationships. Even his family has no idea who he is, where he lives, or exactly what he does.

Bingham’s unusually unencumbered life-style is challenged by two compelling female characters – a fellow high flying, miles accumulating vixen, who seems as detached and uninterested in commitment as Jack, and a young, naïve but book-smart trainee, who simply can’t comprehend Bingham’s priorities. In very different ways, this tandem of women gets through to Bingham. He actually ends up pursuing a relationship at the expense of his work schedule, once he realizes that his ten million mile club card isn’t worth the silver it’s engraved on.

As one in the midst of a painful separation and divorce, this film hit me hard at a number of levels. It made me question my life choices and priorities. What have I pursued at the expense of my primary relationships? What false idols have I chased or what greener pastures have I preferred to the hard work and daily grind of commitment? At several points in Up in the Air, Clooney’s character is accused of everything from avoidance and escapism, to behaving like a twelve-year-old. While my life has been lived completely on the ground, I’ve been accused of similar things. How often my writing projects have gotten in the way of relationships. I have often used work – a more predictable, controllable environment – as an escape from the so often unpredictable, uncontrollable people who await me at the place called "home."

There’s no question that nothing in life is as hard as close relationships. Witness the over 50% divorce rate. In both my family of origin and my family of choice, I have again and again taken to the friendlier skies of work, academia, individual pursuits, and singleness. And while I have figured out the deep truth the Jack Bingham comes to toward the end of the film – that ultimately it’s one’s relationships that matter most - I’ve yet to figure out how to make those relationships work in the often dreary daily-ness of life.

Fortunately, there is still time. God, as the bumper sticker says, isn’t finished with me yet. And my 2 year old daughter, Eloise, is teaching me life’s most important lessons every moment we are together.

"Last Words" my final sermon delivered 12/20/09

2009-12-20T06:48:00.000-08:00

“Last Words…”
The Final Sermon Offered by Toby Jones to the People of FPCHS -12/20/09
(Based on John 1:1-5, 14, John 14: 5-12)

Today is my last official day as your associate pastor, and so this sermon represents the last words I’ll utter from this pulpit. But my words today are “last” ones in another important sense as well.

When I look at my life - particularly my adult, professional life - I see a life that has been filled with words. I speak, I write, I preach, I teach high school and college English. For years I have relied on words to captivate, educate, and motivate others. But God has been working on me lately, convincing me that my time as a man of words is drawing to a close.

You see, the problem with being a man of words is that over time people can mistake your words for your faith. People can hear your sermons and read your books and assume that you’re a real man of God, a genuine example of the faith. And if the preacher isn’t very, very careful and self-aware, he, himself, can make the same false assumption – that his words equal the substance of his faith. In my particular case, my words have always been much better and a whole lot more Christ-like than my life. My sermons have always been more together than my relationships. And I’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with the gap that exists between my words and my actions, between my sermons and my daily doings. So I want all of you to know that today’s message represents my last words in the sense that God is calling me into a new ministry, one where words will all but cease.

I think it’s fitting that my transition from a life and ministry of words to a life and ministry of actions is taking place during Christmas time, because what Christmas is really about, more than anything else, is incarnation. Incarnation. Now I know when I say that word, some of you are thinking, “instant breakfast drink.” Others of you might be a little intimidated by this complicated sounding word. But it’s really a fairly simple idea. To incarnate something simply means to embody it, to flesh it out. In Christian theology, incarnation is most often understood as God’s action of becoming a person in Jesus. Incarnation has to do with God making himself and his will visible and real in Jesus. And it’s this incarnation, this putting flesh on God and his will,that is the true purpose of what we celebrate as Christmas.

John’s gospel says it beautifully and poetically in John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.” Jesus’ chief purpose in his time on earth was to incarnate God, to show God to people by living, behaving, treating others in a way that gave them a better understanding of what God was like and of what God was after.
It was Jesus’ incarnating purpose that enabled him to say to Phillip, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” Jesus took the Word, the Logos, the creative power and mystery of God, and fleshed it out, put skin and bones on it, as if to say, “If the Creator of the universe were a person, this is what he would be like, this is how he would treat people, make decisions, live his life.

I think most of us here probably believe that Jesus was and is the ultimate incarnation of God, the one to make “the Word flesh.” But my question this morning is what if God had more in mind for incarnation than just Jesus? What if there is a role for you and me to play in “making the Word flesh”? What if God’s plan from the very beginning was that others would be able to look at our lives and, from looking at our lives, see how God would behave and make decisions and treat others?

What I hope you’ll do this morning, as you listen to my last words, is consider the possibility that we may have tragically missed the point when it comes to Christmas - this notion of the Word becoming flesh. In our well-intentioned rush to the manger to honor and worship Jesus as “the Christ,” as the ultimate incarnation of the living God, we may have lost sight of God’s larger intention for all of us to incarnate the Word as well. I worry that there are hundreds of millions or even billions of Jesus’ followers out there – including you and me – who believe that we are here simply to believe in, admire, and accept Jesus. By granting Jesus unique status as the only incarnation of God, all that’s really left for the rest of us to do is believe in Jesus and perhaps talk other people into believing in him too.

I believe that it’s bad theology to conclude that Jesus made the Word flesh, but we’re only here to accept and believe that Jesus made the Word flesh. And if that’s our only role in the whole Christmas story – to accept and believe - no wonder people are leaving the Church in droves. That kind of theology sets up Christianity to be a religion of words, for a people who don’t really need to do anything, except talk others into believing what we believe. It’s almost as if Jesus took God and made Him flesh, while the rest of us humans have taken God and made Him words, theological doctrines, dogmas, creeds and even sermons. That’s certainly what I’ve done with so much of my life.

But I’ve come to believe that we were put on this earth for the same basic reason Jesus was: you and I are supposed to incarnate God too. We’re supposed to be incarnations of his love, will, and action too. Jesus didn’t come so that we’d believe in him; He didn’t come so we’d accept him and convince others to accept him as well. Jesus came to show us what God was up to and to invite us to join him in that work. So that’s what we’re to do with our lives – we’re to join Jesus in doing the work of God’s kingdom – feeding the poor, housing the homeless, comforting the downtrodden, befriending the lonely, healing the sick, providing gifts - and it’s important that we do all of this without fanfare and without calling attention to ourselves or even to our beliefs, without words…without words. Jesus was very clear about this in the Sermon on the Mount. “When you give to the needy, don’t even let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”

When we celebrate Jesus’ birth in a few more days, if we think it’s just about gathering around the manger bed to sing “O Come Let Us Adore Him,” then we’ll be making the same huge mistake Christians have been making and remaking for hundreds and hundreds of years. Jesus didn’t come to be adored, though it’s fine for us to adore him. He didn’t come to be worshipped, though it’s fine for us to worship him. He didn’t come to start a new religion and he certainly didn’t come to be invited in to our hearts. (What kind of arrogant and twisted idea is that, anyway? “O, God? I seem to have a little room left here in my heart. Would you like to come in? Would you like the distinguished honor of coming into my very busy, very important life?”)

Jesus came to invite US into HIS heart. He came to show us GOD’S heart and to invite US to participate in God’s movement. I love the way that Robin Meyers puts it in his amazing book Saving Jesus from the Church: “Too much preaching today is framed as man’s invitation to God to come into our story, but the Bible’s invitation is radically different,” Meyers writes. “We are being invited into God’s story.” Bono from U2 put it this way: “For so long, I’d been seeking God’s blessing for the things I was doing. ‘God, I’ve got this song…Lord, there’s this idea…But then a friend told me to stop trying to get God to bless what I was doing and to instead get involved with what God is doing, for that is already blessed.” And what God is up to is a movement that Jesus called “the kingdom of God.” God is inviting us to participate in the building of the kingdom of God. He’s inviting us to help make His Word flesh. Are you ready for that? Are you ready for THAT kind of Christmas?

I am. I am so ready and so hungry to be a person who incarnates the will of God instead of one who talks about it so much. I am so ready to become like my friend Pete, who is always giving, always helping, always trying to make things easier for others and for me. When he learned that I was going through a particularly hard time and was unemployed, he immediately looked around his house for projects he’d been putting off, projects that he was more than capable of doing himself, but he hired me to do them instead, to help me through my unemployment. That’s the kind of person I want to be.

I am ready and hungry to become an incarnator like my friendly neighborhood veterinarian. No matter how busy he was with patients, he would always sit down and ask every one of us about our lives, how we were doing, before he ever got to looking at our pets. And he’d listen to what we say to – he’d really listen. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in with my 11-year old mutt during that same stretch of unemployed time I just referred to. With my checking account close to empty, wouldn’t you know that that dog was due for every shot and vaccination, plus needed blood work and a diabetes test! Well, the good doc didn’t even examine my pooch until he’d sat down and caught up with me. When we got all finished and when my mangy mutt had been treated, we walked out to cashier, where the doc quietly said, “Let’s do this visit on an even exchange – pay me with an advanced copy when you publish your book.” “Excuse me?” Talk about incarnating the goodness and grace of God! My bill was definitely going to be over $200. My book would be lucky if it sold for $15. But that Veterinarian had listened to me. He had heard my situation, and he chose to become an incarnator; he chose to make the Word flesh for me. That’s the kind of person I want to be.

Sure, I can preach a good sermon, write a couple compelling books, teach an engaging class. But I want to help people when nobody’s looking. I want to secretly give away my stuff to people who need it more than I do. I want to show up at the hospital or at a bereaved widower’s doorstep when it isn’t my job to do so, I want to live simply, in harmony with the earth, producing and consuming locally. In short, I want to live a life for the next 25 years that is as compelling as my words have been in the past 25 years.

And so this Christmas, at long last, it’s time for this preacher to shut up. It’s time that I incarnate the gospel instead of preach it. We read John 14 together a few minutes ago, but I want to reread a couple key verses again. Did you notice what Phillip said when he approached Jesus? He said, “Please, Jesus, show us the Father…Show us the Father.” You know, I think people all over the world are hungry for the very same thing. People want to be shown the Father. They want to SEE God in action. Phillip didn’t want to be told about the Father, or argued with about the Father. He just really wanted to see Him. And Jesus replied with gentle understanding, “Phillip, anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” Jesus could say this because of God’s standard operating procedure. God incarnates. That’s His way of showing himself to us. It’s almost as if this whole conversation in John 14 is designed to set our incarnational theology straight. Jesus tells us “ I’ve come to put flesh and bones on God’s word and ways, so that anyone who wants to know more about God need only watch me and what I do.”

But then Jesus goes on. He doesn’t stop there, because incarnation doesn’t stop with him! He says, “I tell you the truth: YOU will do all the things that I’ve been doing, but not only that…you will do even greater things than what I have been doing.” (John 14:9-12) It’s as if Jesus says, “You, Phillip, and you John, and you Joan, Mary, Margaret, Bill, and Toby – you ALL are supposed to make the word flesh too. You all are supposed to be incarnators too. You guys are supposed to do the very same things that I’ve been doing, because there are people everywhere dying to get a glimpse of the living God.” People are saying to you and to me a thousand times a day in a thousand different ways, “Show us the Father!”

It’s not an accident that nowhere in the gospels does Jesus ever instruct the disciples as to what they should say. Jesus never offers a single lesson on how to speak on his behalf, and do you know why he doesn’t… because you can’t incarnate something with words. You can’t show God to anybody with words. I should know: I’ve been trying to do it for years! You and I can only continue the incarnational work of Jesus by joining our actions with the actions of Jesus, by joining the movement of God that was incarnated by Jesus two thousand years ago.

For far too long we Christians have been gathering at the manger Christmas after Christmas after Christmas. We’ve adored the baby Jesus and thought that the whole purpose of this holiday was to celebrate his birthday and invite him into our hearts. But that’s not what Christmas is all about. Christmas is about incarnation. It’s about God making very clear that his chosen way of turning this world around is by making the Word flesh, not only in Jesus, but in you and in me. The Christmas story is not about and has never been about welcoming or inviting God into our lives! It’s about God inviting us into His. He invites us to become a part of His movement, a movement of making the Word flesh by acts of kindness, compassion, justice, mercy, and forgiveness. That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown: making the word flesh!

My brothers and sisters in this wonderful community of First Presbyterian Church of Harbor Springs, I can’t thank you all enough for listening so carefully and so faithfully to my words these last seven years. But the time has come for me to set all words aside. The time has come for me to let my life speak…to let my life speak. It’s time for God’s Word to become flesh in me. Amen.

The Security of Simplicity (A Day in the Life)

2009-12-10T11:21:00.000-08:00

A Day in the Life of Toby Jones … I woke up at 6 am, looked out my window at the continuing snow storm, put on my Carharts and galoshes, and drove around the bay to shovel out a friend’s storefront walk and parking lot…by hand (Some call it insane. I prefer to think of it as kickin’ it old school). Then I drove back around the bay to help get a widow’s Christmas tree in her house and upright in the stand. She also gave me six silver candlesticks to polish in my “spare time.” I had a nice lunch with my editor, celebrating the completion of my second book and making plans for its March 2010 release. Right now I’m at Roast and Toast coffee shop with WIFI responding to emails and writing this long-overdue blog entry. Next it’s off to pick up my darling 23 month old Eloise from day care for an evening of puzzles, books, leftover meatloaf, and the occasional foray into the snowy white out that is Northern Michigan these last few days.

Such is the life of a tent-making pastor. Most days I wake up not really knowing whether I’ll have any moneymaking opportunities. A couple days ago I got a call from one woman who is preparing to move and another who wanted her cedar trees wrapped for the winter. It’s not an entirely bad feeling – this day to day not knowing what or whether any income will present itself. If work comes, I receive it with tremendous gratitude and approach the actual task with the contemplative spirit of a monk. If the work doesn’t come, I seize the unexpected hours to read, write, reflect, and play with my amazing daughter.

Being a theologian and an introspection addict, I move through this new pattern of existence with an eye toward my spiritual life. What does this tent-making have to teach me about life's heavier things and deeper truths? How might my working life inform or be informed by the Way of Jesus? As I prepare to re-hear the story of no room at the inn, the manger, wise men’s gifts, and a baby who would change the world, where will the resonance point be for me in 2009?

I think it will have something to do with simplicity and the strange form of security that comes with it. Simplicity’s security…sounds almost oxymoronic, doesn’t it? But I don’t think it is. Mary, Joseph, and their child had so little when Jesus came into the world. They were so vulnerable, dependent, even “poor” we might say. But they found an unusual abundance in the apparent scarcity of that night – no room at the inn, but a warm stable with the incredible, quiet companionship and warm, steady breathing of farm animals; no family or friends on hand, but visits from supportive strangers with gifts and angels; no peace in their Roman occupied homeland, but a blessedly silent, starry night nonetheless.

My new life as it unfolds each day is full of this very same abundance, little gifts of work and opportunity when I need them most; unexpected knocks on my door or cards in my mailbox; not enough money for groceries but some good hunting luck resulting in a bagged buck (a male deer that is) whose meat will sustain me through much of the winter.

There’s a little noticed passage in the ninth chapter of Luke’s gospel that has bubbled up for me again and again in recent months. It’s Jesus instruction to the twelve when he first sends them out to preach and teach, to heal and serve. He says, “take nothing with you on your journey – no bread, no bag, no money, no extra shirt…” Why would Jesus do this to these already frightened, inexperienced disciples? Why not give them a survival kit, a packing list of the stuff they’d need on this harrowing journey? I’ve come to understand that Jesus knows how quick we are to worship the idol of self-sufficiency, to live our lives with the assumption that it’s a cruel world out there and nobody else is going to take care of us. So Jesus forced the disciples to be vulnerable, to be trusting, to live in the uncertainty and risk of having nothing with them on their journey.

As I live through Advent 2009 and my journey of discipleship, I think Jesus continues to whisper these very same instructions in my ear. And as I travel without the security of all my usual provisions, I’m finding a security I’ve never known before. I’m finding a world that is less cruel than I thought; I’m coming upon strangers with gifts for me I neither expected nor asked for. I wouldn’t even be surprised to come upon angels one of these nights.

Mucking out the Chicken Coup 11/3/09

2009-11-03T12:11:00.000-08:00

Chicken shit…It’s the downside of raising one’s own chickens. Among all farm animal excrement, chicken poop is everybody’s number one for having the butt nastiest smell. We chicken farmers can be driving down an Indiana highway on a hot sunny day, suddenly come upon 300 head of cattle, and actually roll down our windows to get a fuller whiff of that shit. But try cleaning out a 12 x 15 foot chicken coup with only one window any time of year. The ammonia like stench makes grandma’s nursing home seem tame by comparison.

But muck out the chicken coup every week or so I must, and, until this morning, it was a task I simply tolerated and tried to finish as quickly as possible. What happened earlier this week to change my poopy tune was that a gardener friend of mine told me that chicken shit was some of the best fully organic fertilizer on the planet, vastly superior to cow and horse manure for the kinds of things we’re preparing to grow on our Living Vision cooperative farm. I checked out her story and found it to be substantiated.

So this morning’s time in the poop coup, as my daughter calls it, was not only much longer than my previous forays, but also much more diligent, thorough, and satisfying. I wasn’t just cleaning the coup; I was harvesting some really good shit. Every corner, every nook and cranny, I was practically wiping down every piece of hay just to be sure I wasn’t missing a single dropping of this brown gold. Once the harvest was complete, rather than pitching it angrily into my big burn pile, I wheelbarrow’d it cautiously over to the quarter acre we just plowed a couple weeks ago and shoveled it into the earth with both care and gratitude.

The earth is amazing, isn’t it? Whoever set this wonderful planet in motion sure knew what She was doing. To think that even chicken shit can be recycled, used post-anal cavity to produce rich and ripe corn, tomatoes, beans, and carrots is nothing short of miraculous. And what this shit did for my attitude this morning is no less transformational. Instead of cursing these crazy birds for sticking me with such a demeaning and penitential task, I was marveling over the wonder of their excrement, grateful for every squishy, trampled on cake I could scrape up with my trowel.

I can’t help but wonder if my little recycling revelation has broader implications for all of us and for the way we live on this planet. I’ve always bristled at those who preach “attitude is everything,” but there is no doubting that once my attitude toward the chicken shit changed, so did everything about this task. Think of all the times you’ve cursed having to rake leaves this time of year; but leaves, too, can be composted quite effectively. Could their restorative properties make yard clean up more of a collecting exercise than a removing one? My next door neighbor has an outdoor wood burning furnace that heats his water and most of his house. His wood pile looked to be a little short for the coming winter, when a huge dying oak fell over in a windstorm right between our two houses, taking out the power line in the process. He came out with his chain saw and a grin on his face and tore into that tree like it were…Chicken shit!

Living Vision Ground-breaking!

2009-10-25T20:01:00.000-07:00

What an exciting day at 2640 Quick Rd! My neighbor Andy helped me till the first 1/4 acre plot that we’ll be farming come spring. He scored a big-ass Massey-Ferguson tractor with a hydraulic tiller attachment that turned up the deep, sandy soil in no time. He did most of the driving with his two sons Wyatt (5) and Weston (2) on his lap in the cab.

The soil here is pretty sandy and lacks some key nutrients, but with plenty of manure, compost, and consulting with Michigan State’s Extension up here, we’ll be producing crops in no time. Speaking of manure, our other neighbors just brought their two horses home to their new barn and pasture. They were out shoveling horse crap while we were plowing, and so I sauntered over and asked if I could have some of their manure on a regular basis. They said I could take all of it off their hands (and feet) if I wanted to come and get it. So the soil should thicken up nicely with a regular supply of horse cocca.

How great is it to have neighbors who are so willing to chip in and give a rookie farmer a hand? They like the Living Vision project and are happy to help bring it to fruition. I’m really grateful to all the folks who are helping us get started. We must have a couple hundred egg cartons our friends have saved for us, so that once our 23 chickens start laying we’ll be able to store and deliver them easily. The projected lay date is early November, and our first couple dozen are going to the Manna Food Project and Brother Dan’s pantry – the two main food banks in the area. Living Vision is going to practice “first fruits” giving, a practice dating back to the ancient Hebrews, who would offer the first fruits of their harvest every year to the temple and its priests. It’s an important discipline that will keep our focus on others rather than ourselves and keep us grateful for every meal we eat. I can’t wait!

Farming is an incredibly vulnerable enterprise. The farmer is dependent on so many external forces, that he can never count his chickens before they’re hatched. Plentiful rain, moderate temperatures, and an absence of intrusive varmints are just a few of the things our community will be dependent on as this farming experiment gets underway. Living with vulnerability and the uncertainty that accompanies it will be a challenge for our community and for me in particular. But I look forward to living more harmoniously with nature’s rhythms and cycles, just as I look forward to producing and consuming totally local produce.

Hope you’ll stop by and lend a hand. We’d love to have you along!

Looking for Disciples in All the Wrong Places

2009-09-18T20:01:00.000-07:00

Throughout the research for my current book project, The Way of Jesus: Re-Forming Spiritual Communities in a Pluralistic Age, the single hardest thing to find has been genuine, authentic disciples of Jesus. I'm talking about disciples as Dallas Willard defines them in his epic work The Divine Conspiracy - people who actually DO what the master does - apprentices to the Way of Jesus. I've searched high and low in churches and Christian communities across the country, and while I've found a lot of terrific Christians, true disciples have been much harder to come by.

I found one today - or more accurately, he resurfaced in my life. It's taken me nearly four years to figure out what it is about this guy that I love and respect so much. I'm speaking of one Chip Duncan – documentary filmmaker, photojournalist, activist, author, and friend.

Chip's life is so compelling by virtue of the choices he makes, the actions he takes, the career path he travels, and the way he conducts himself, that I can only conclude that when I'm with him I am in the presence of a disciple. What makes my conclusion particularly unusual is that Chip is not a Christian. Duncan has never claimed to follow Jesus and has steered clear of organized religion in general and Christianity in particular throughout his personal life. While Duncan is curious and intellectually fascinated by spiritual practices and rituals throughout the world – most of his documentary work explores spiritual and religious themes - he claims no religion for his own, and he would never call himself a Christian. But I consider him a better disciple of Jesus than I will ever be. Why? Because his life is lived so compassionately and is so completely focused on telling the stories of the downtrodden and oppressed. He willingly goes to places where he could easily be misconstrued, captured, killed, or even tortured.

But Duncan is no thrill seeker; he simply believes in the goodness of all people, the bridge building nature of the human spirit, and the importance of telling the stories of those who might not ever be able to speak for themselves.

Chip has written, produced, directed, and narrated dozens of documentaries ranging in subject matter from C.S. Lewis to Woody Hayes and from The Mystic Lands of Haiti and Peru to the unintended results of the Patriot Act. He has been behind the scenes at the White House and explored the history of Prayer in America. His most recent book, which I consider a must read for any globally minded person, is entitled Enough to Go Around: Searching for Hope in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Darfur. It appears, at first glance, to be an expensive coffee table book, with large and beautiful color photos. But this work is so much more than just another pretty picture book. Its text is every bit as important and profound as the incredible photos that adorn its pages. Together, Chip's words and pictures tell the story of his travels - voluntary and self-funded trips - to three countries most dare not go near. Yet Duncan goes without fear, expecting only to encounter fellow humans with the same set of concerns that he has.

Duncan is up front about his purpose: “to put a human face on some of the world’s most difficult places;” to show that “even in the worst of circumstances, there is hope.” And, indeed, his book is profoundly hopeful. In his lecture this morning (9/18/09) at Crooked Tree Arts Center in Petoskey, Chip said, “Most depictions of Muslim people we see in America are threatening and aim at instilling terror. Those are the easy pictures to get and to sell. I am out to capture their everyday lives in a way that depicts their humanity, for they care about the same things we do – safety and education for their children, access to food and water, and peace.”

For those not familiar with the world of documentary film, it is not a financially lucrative field. While Chip has won all kinds of awards for his outstanding work, he is not a rich man. He is constantly raising money simply to get his documentaries produced, with the hope of eventually getting them on PBS, a largely non-paying gig. He gets asked by people to go to places like Ethiopia and Darfur to do what he does, but those who urge him to go to these far-flung lands don’t pay his way. Chip gets himself there to cover the stories of NGO’s and to promote the efforts of relief organizations, but rarely does Chip come away with any income from these very costly adventures.

But it’s never been about the money for Duncan. He lives an incredibly simple life and is as unattached to material comforts as anyone I’ve ever met. He travels so lightly, not counting his camera equipment, and when out on assignment, will eat what the natives eat. And that is not much, when one considers that his “subjects” are common folks in developing nations. But to hear Chip describe tea shared with an Afghani merchant or bread broken with a Darfurian woman in a refugee camp, you’d think he had been to Buckingham Palace. For what sustains Duncan is human conversation and connection, learning about and respecting another person and her culture.

In the early pages of Enough to Go Around, Chip describes an event he witnessed while traveling with a relief worker in Ethiopia named Abraham. Abraham had brought a small box of tiny sandwiches, one for each of the four travelers. As a man was passing by their 4X4, Abraham quickly broke his sandwich in half and handed it to the passerby. Not a word was exchanged, nor was any attention called to this “thoughtless” act of sharing. Duncan emphasized the thoughtlessness of the act because Abraham did not have to think, calculate, or consider whether to share with this random man. It just happened. Abraham neither received nor expected to be thanked, much less to have this stranger somehow “pay it forward.” It was sharing for sharing’s sake. Duncan claims that witnessing Abraham’s simple act changed his life.

Chip's story of Abraham made me think of the famous Gospel story of the Widow’s Mite. Jesus watches a poor widow offer two pennies to the temple treasury and declares it more valuable than the larger contributions of the other attendees who gave out of their abundance. Jesus' widow undoubtedly shared what little she had without thinking, without counting the cost, and without expecting anything in return.

Chip Duncan lives in this same way. He is utterly thoughtless in his generosity. He says “Yes!” constantly when asked to go somewhere or do something for the good of another, without regard for what it will cost him. I have consulted with Chip on both of my blatantly Christian book projects, not simply because he is a fine and experienced writer, but because he is one of the most authentic and deeply spiritual people I know. Not only does he know a ton about Jesus, but he lives more like him than most of Christ’s supposed followers. The book I am just about finished writing looks at the future for followers of Jesus. It proposes a radical alternative to the institutional Church, what I call The Way of Jesus, and Chip totally gets it. In fact, my vision excites and energizes him, despite his self-described aversion to Christianity.

When pressed, Chip confided in me that he has never had any problem with Jesus; it is his followers and what they have done that has troubled Duncan and kept him outside Christianity. It is no surprise that Chip finds Jesus compelling, for Chip’s instincts and natural responses to humans in need are exactly like those of the Nazarene.

I’m sure Chip will be uncomfortable with what I have written about him here. He is as self-effacing as he is generous. But I haven’t written this for Chip; I’ve written it for myself, as a way of wrestling with the tremendous impact he continues to have in my life. I've wondered for four years why I am so drawn to this man. It finally dawned on me this morning during his talk at Crooked Tree: he is an unwitting disciple. And I am blessed to have this unusual and wonderful friend in my life.

Learn more about Chip Duncan and his work at duncanenterainment.com

To Be or Not To Be...a Church

2009-08-19T08:39:00.000-07:00

To Be or NOT To Be…a Church?
(A Church by Any Other Name)

Ever since I took the plunge, resigning my position at a traditional church and announcing that I’m going to try to create an alternative spiritual community here in Northern Michigan, all sorts of people have come up to me and said, “I hear you’re going to start your own church.” Without missing a beat, my response has been, “Well, it’s not really going to be a church…”

A good friend of mine challenged me the other day, asking, “Why are you so reluctant to call what you’re doing a church?” I thought for a long time before I answered. Here are some of the things I thought about:

Is it that I genuinely believe that the church’s cons so thoroughly outweigh its pros as to render the entire institution irreparable?

Is it that I see all the various reform movements and Emergent trends as mere rearrangements of the deck chairs on the Titanic of the church?

Am I simply burned out, tired of trying to be a change agent for Christ in an environment and structure that seems constitutionally incapable of or unwilling to live as Christ lived?

Or is it more of a semantic problem, given that the word “church” is so laden with baggage, horrific history, and negative associations that I can’t bear applying that word to anything I do anymore?

And what IS a church anyway? And who gets to decide? Will the community I am in the process of establishing constitute a church or “just” some other sort of spiritual entity?

Here’s the important thing for me: I want change. I want to change the way I live, the way I think, the way I act, the way I make decisions and the way I interact with the world around me. And I want all of that change to be in the direction of Jesus of Nazareth. I want to see myself becoming more Christ-like every day; not just thinking about him, not just talking about him or discussing his teachings, but to actually DO more and more of the things he did while he was here. I want my family to be growing with me in these same ways. And I want – AND NEED - to be doing all this as a part of a community of folks who truly want their lives to deepen and grow, not just in some once a week or “in my spiritual life” sort of way, but in ways that matter to their community and their world.

My years and efforts within the institutional church have not elicited this kind of deep and substantive change in me, nor have I seen such change in the people with whom I’ve served all these years. Shane Claiborne put it so succinctly in my July 21st, 2009 interview with him. “We now know from all the mega-churches that we can bring a ton of people into the church without changing the way they live.”

Now, please don’t hear me as saying that lives cannot be transformed in and through a church. (And Shane is DEFINITELY NOT saying that in his quotation!) I’m simply saying that in my life and throughout my particular journey, there hasn’t been nearly the change in the way I live to keep me invested in the Church’s form(s) of spiritual community. I know I am not alone in this assessment.

Working on this book and traveling to so many vibrant churches and communities, I have seen transformed lives in all of them. Some were churches in the traditional sense, some less so. I have deep respect and admiration for the ways the leaders of these exemplary communities are going about their work and ministry, and, to a person, they have all emphasized that they believe in the church and see their communities as part of it. Again, to a person, they reject as heretical the notion that one may live outside the church and be a genuine, faithful disciple. Several of them also reject attempts - like mine - at forming alternative kinds of communities, seeing them as utopian and largely selfish endeavors. This contention has been problematic for me, and out of my respect for these leaders in both the Emergent and the New Monasticsm movements, I continue to wrestle with their perspectives.

Henry David Thoreau, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights activists have taught us that an unjust law must be broken by a just person. I think we all understand why, particularly in a political context, but what about in an ecclesiastic context? If the “Christian Church”- in whatever local manifestation we experience it - no longer bears much resemblance to the One whose name it bears, AND, at the same time, resists and even rejects change in a Christ-like direction, aren’t followers of Jesus obligated to leave it behind to seek and form a more authentic, world-improving expression of their faith? Would such an act be “leaving” the Church or being true to it?

All of the communities I visited in the research for my book are doing beautiful, compelling, and clearly transformational things. My sojourn in each community was intended to help me understand what made them so effective in both changing lives and their larger communities. At that level, I’m not really sure it matters whether these communities are part of the Church or not. What I care about is that they are managing to help people live like Christ in the context of a community that reaches beyond itself to better the world.

It is my desire to do that same thing, coupled with my proven inability to do so in a traditional church context, that has fueled my passion to experiment with an alternative form of spiritual community that, at least in some ways, lies outside the institutional Church. Our concern at Living Vision is that our lives be continually transformed and eventually become compelling enough for others to see something of God at work in us. (See Romans 12:1-2 and Matthew 5:16) If that happens, I don’t suppose it will matter much what we call ourselves or what category we fit or don’t fit into. I am really excited to get going and to see what happens. Would you care to come along?

Revolutionary Road - truly a must see film!

2009-08-17T17:49:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, a netflix dvd comes to our home and surprises the heck out of me. It happened last night with Revolutionary Road. It truly is a must-see. Despite the obvious eye candy for all genders and sexual orientations provided by Kate Winslett and Leo DeCaprio, this film offers a profound and penetrating insight into the “hopeless emptiness” of suburbia.

The film focuses on the marriage of Frank and April Wheeler, whose young idealism and commitment to discovering their passions and pursuing their dreams gradually get swallowed up by two kids and Frank’s meaningless job. Early in the film, they think that happiness might be found in a new house on the other side of town, which lands them on Revolutionary Road. But like the smell of a new car, the glow of their new home wears off all too quickly, and they’re no closer to contentment than they were before the move.

Winslett’s portrayal of April is brilliant, as she manages to capture the extremes of an undiagnosed manic-depressive with frightening authenticity. As the home on Revolutionary Road fails to satisfy, she tries to get Frank to move the family to Paris with neither a job nor a coherent plan in hand, by appealing to Frank’s long-buried dream. April convinces him that the key to lasting happiness lies in living in Paris, come what may. As they busily make plans to execute this pipe dream, their friends, on the surface, openly question the Wheeler’s decision. But underneath, April and Frank’s lust for life uncovers the widespread discontentedness of everyone else in the cast. While Frank and April are not deterred by the naysayers, they are eventually deterred by April’s unexpected pregnancy and Frank’s equally unexpected promotion.

The desperation April feels as she sees Frank’s resolve wane in the months leading up to their departure date creates a frenzy of marital strife, chaos, and desperate measures by April. Both of them have extra-marital affairs, lash out at one another, and come perilously close to separating.

The soul of this film is the tension it conveys between an individual’s - or a couple’s -dreams and the social pressures to live in lockstep with the masses of people who live unexamined, unremarkable lives in suburban America. The brilliant work by every minor character as they bring to life the amazing dialogue of both Richard Yates, the novelist, and Justin Haithe, the writer of the screenplay, brings the viewer face to face with his/her own suburban compromises and deep regret over un-pursued dreams.

For me, the film raised so many critical questions from, ‘What is happiness?’ to ‘Is it even possible for an individual or couple to live a life that is true to her/their own vision in the face of so much social opposition?’ Revolutionary Road also pushes us to look at all the ways we, like the Wheelers, tend to locate happiness somewhere out there, on the next block, up a few rungs on the corporate ladder, or even overseas. The Wheeler’s inability both to follow their dream and to bloom where they’ve been planted destines them for a tragic ending of Shakespearean proportions.

Don’t miss this truly remarkable, one-of-a-kind film. While Revolutionary Road is no “feel good” summer romantic comedy, it is as penetrating a look at the human condition as Hollywood has ever produced. A film this haunting that cuts so close to the bone is both powerful and painful to watch. But watch it we must, for whether we care to admit it or not, in the lives and marriage of Frank and April Wheeler, we see our own lives play out.

It ain't you, it's y'all! - Sat. 8/15/09

2009-08-15T18:12:00.001-07:00

Blog Entry – 8/9/09

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with the Bible. I love its stories, its characters, its drama. I hate its racism, its ethnocentrism, and its assumptions about God taking sides and supporting things like wars and ethnic cleansing. While I’m not in the habit of trying to defend the Bible against the very legitimate criticism it receives, I do think there is one hermeneutical lens that helps alleviate or at least ameliorate some of what John Shelby Spong calls “the terrible texts of the Bible.” I am speaking of the Bible’s communal orientation. Consistently in both testaments, whenever the word “you” appears, it is second person plural – not singular. This means that in the commandments, for instance, all the Thou (You) shall not’s are speaking to the entire community as a whole. When God promises things to the Israelites or when Jesus speaks of what the disciples will be able to do in his name, those “you’s” are plural.

What all this means is that God is seeking to form a community for himself that will draw others to Him. He has always been in the business of creating a community through which to bring about his will and to build his kingdom here on earth. If a community is to be worth anything and to function at all, people in it cannot be killing each other, sleeping with each other’s spouses, stealing from one another, etc. And if that community is going to effectively woo others to God and to God’s will, such behaviors are even more important to avoid.

In our American society’s rush to be ultra-individualistic, I think we’ve misread the Bible by over-personalizing it, turning Christianity into a “me and Jesus” thing. It continues to amaze me that the “personal relationship with Christ” notion, made so prevalent by American Evangelicals, literally occurs nowhere in the scriptures. Jesus made no reference to it; Paul made no reference to it; the Epistle writers made no reference to it. It simply isn’t scriptural, and yet our country has bought into this individualistic corruption of the Bible’s collective message, hook, line, and sinker, without realizing what we’ve lost in the process.

God’s interest from Abraham and Moses right through to the prophets and Jesus was, is, and always will be to get people together, to form and shape a risk-taking community of disciples who will do God’s biding. It can’t be done alone. There is no such thing as a rugged Christian individualist. In fact, the gospel as Jesus articulated cannot be lived out on one’s own. Everything in the Bible should be read with this hermeneutical lens. I enjoyed reading Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead as much as anybody else, but Ayn Rand didn’t write the Hebrew Bible nor the Christian New Testament. Judeo-Christian spirituality is not about individuals pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and climbing the stairway to heaven. It is, instead, about God’s dream for a community of people to live together in such a way that God’s kingdom comes and God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

As we all continue what I hope is our regular discipline of studying the Judeo-Christian scriptures, may we learn to read every “you” as a “you all” – or a “y’all” if you prefer. See if it doesn’t make a huge difference in what it is that God has been trying to tell us.

A Vision for Discipleship

2009-08-03T10:38:00.000-07:00

Blog entry – discipleship – 8/3/09

I had the amazing opportunity a couple weeks ago to interview Shane Claiborne, one of my Christian heroes and the author of two amazing books, The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus for President. I interviewed Shane for my current book project, The Way of Jesus: A Model of Spiritual Communities in a Post-Church Age, and we focused our conversation on discipleship.

It’s a big and important word in any conversation about authentic Christianity, and it has been defined very differently by various groups of Christians over time. I’m partial to Dallas Willard’s definition of discipleship in The Divine Conspiracy as “apprenticeship to Jesus…one who is with Jesus learning to be like him,” and I was curious about Shane’s. He began by talking about God’s efforts from the very beginning of time to form for himself a people who would “live differently from the patterns of the world around them.” He was careful to point out that this different way of living was not for its own sake but to “show the world what a society of love looks like and to woo the rest of the world to God.” Shane went on to point out that discipleship does NOT entail “signing on to a list of doctrines or beliefs” but “participation in a movement.”

Like Willard’s understanding of Christian discipleship, Claiborne’s is action oriented. One of the coolest things he said in our interview was, “In the West we’ve become so obsessed with evangelism at the expense of discipleship – so we’ve got millions of folks who can state what we believe, but without being able to show what it looks like.”

I believe that God is calling me to develop a community that will show - not tell - people what Christian faith looks like. That is what Living Vision is going to be all about. I’ve done way more than my share of talking about Christ and Christian faith over my 47 years. For what remains of my life, I want to live it, and I know there is no way I can do that on my own – thus my need/desire for a community of folks who want to live as apprentices to Jesus, who want to show the world what a society of love looks like.

Later in our conversation, Shane noted that the word “disciple” comes from the same root as the word “discipline.” There are disciplines involved in living as Christ lived. The New Monasticism movement, of which Shane and his community The Simple Way are a part, is a movement of rekindling the spiritual disciplines that reach way back in Christian history. The New Monastics realize that discipleship doesn’t come easily or automatically. If we want to be like the our Rabbi Jesus, we will need to practice the disciplines of prayer, fasting, gleaning, peacemaking, hospitality, etc. (I highly recommend Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s book New Monasticism for more on this topic.)

There is still so much that I don’t know about this adventure God has me taking. But one thing I do know is that I’m ready to be a part of a community that does the things Jesus did and taught in as simple and pure a form as possible. Let me know if you crave the same thing.

It's All About the Chickens!

2009-07-30T19:55:00.000-07:00

Blog Entry 7/30

My chickens arrived yesterday – 27 of them – a nice variety of brown layers. I put them in our trampoline box and put it in the coup I’d just finished, a converted storage shed. It’s pretty exciting for a city boy like me to make this foray into small farming. But I am catching some serious grief from my friends, especially my old friends. A lot of people just don’t get why I’m doing this, what chickens and farming could possibly have to do with following Jesus and this spiritual community I’m starting. So let me take a crack at answering that.

I believe that the earth really IS the Lord’s, like the psalm says. And I think that the closer we live to it, the more we touch it, the more we interact with it and acknowledge our dependence on it, the closer we are to the Creator, the deeper our spiritual connection. Our Native American brothers and sisters have understood this at a profound level for centuries. They see no separation between their Earth Mother and the Great Spirit, and the longer I live, neither can I. I am no longer able to understand, much less tolerate, those who would worship God on Sunday and pollute or disregard the Earth on Monday.

The vast majority of my 47 years on this planet have been lived with far too much distance – or at least perceived distance – between the Earth and me. I’ve grocery shopped for decades with little regard for where and how the food was produced or how far it traveled to get here or even how it was packaged. But I’ve learned that all those pieces have an impact on the world and all who inhabit it. I’ve learned that the “little” choices I make when I shop ARE theological decisions, manifestations of my faith, a part of my worship.

Which brings me back to my chickens and my foray into farming. I intend to love these chickens, to feed them organically, and to keep them interacting with the lush ground. Each egg I pull out of our hatchers will mean something to me and to the local folks who help consume them. We’ll know where they’ve come from and exactly how far they’ve traveled and what was and wasn’t used to produce them, and we’ll even take pride in the fact that they’re packaged in reused and reusable egg cartons. The same will be true of the fruits and vegetables we grow. All those who undertake this cooperative endeavor with us will devote their time, energy, and sweat to plowing, planting, watering, and harvesting, giving them a much deeper sense of connection to the earth as well. The shopping patterns of those in our spiritual community will be significantly altered, as will their environmental impact.

To me, farming IS a way to worship, a way to devote ourselves more fully to the gracious Creator and Provider without Whom nothing grows. I like the way Tony Jones puts it in his book The New Christians: “Most human activity is inherently theological, in that it reflects what we believe to be the case about God…The house I buy – where it is, how big it is, how much it costs – IS a theological decision. It reflects what I believe about the following questions and more: Does God care where I live? Does God care how I spend my money? Does God care about energy use? Does God favor public transportation? Maybe I believe that God cares about none of these things, in which case my decision to purchase the biggest house I can afford in the nicest part of town reflects my theological belief that God is not concerned with such things…So theology isn’t just talk…Virtually everything we do is inherently theological. Almost every choice we make reflects what we think about God. There’s no escaping it.” (The New Christians, Jossey Bass, pg. 106)

I’m hoping to assemble a community of folks here in Northern Michigan who get what Tony Jones is saying here, people who are tired of false divisions between sacred and secular, heaven and earth, Christians and non-Christians. Our farming enterprise will be just one dimension of our life together, but it will be a very important one with HUGE implications for the witness we bear to the One who created everything and called it “Good!”

Living the Vision - a proposed spiritual community in N. Michigan

2009-06-22T12:48:00.000-07:00

Well, I finally did it. I took the plunge, jumped off the cliff, took the proverbial leap of faith. I have resigned my position at the Presbyterian Church after 7 challenging years, and am setting out to found a new kind of Christian community right here in Northern Michigan. It’s not going to be a church, nor will it have any denominational affiliation or support. What it is, more than anything else, is an experiment, an experiment in community, in being connected to others, to the earth, and to the Creator in some ways I’ve always wanted to try.

Throughout my career as a pastor/theologian/teacher/writer/musician, I’ve identified seven principles that make sense to me for how a group of people might go about living in the way that Jesus lived. I make no claim of originality when it comes to these principles. In fact, I’ve visited other alternative communities who embody some of these principles already. What may be original, however, is my forthcoming attempt to set up a community that, from its beginning, seeks to faithfully live out all seven of these principles.

The first principle I think will be essential for thriving spiritual communities in the years to come is an open approach to theology. Most religious communities operate out of a closed theological system. They’ve already decided what “right belief” is and they form their community around those commonly held beliefs. But some emerging communities are learning to unite around their friendship and their common quest or search rather than some proscribed destination. I want to be a part of a community that, while it is rooted in the person and work of Jesus, is still trying to understand larger truths and is still respecting the Mystery that lies beyond even our best human language and our most time-tested religious constructs. I want to be involved in a community that asks questions – tough questions – but doesn't seek uniformity on the answers. I want to be a part of a seeking spiritual community that has rediscovered humility and has no real interest in having it all figured out where God and creation are concerned. I want to read and study the Christian New Testament and the teachings of Jesus alongside the Koran and the Hebrew Scriptures, the Gita, and the Upanishads. I want respectful, mutually edifying dialogue with folks from other religions. Would anyone care to join me?

Second, I want to live a life that is compelling to others. I want my life to speak so that my words don’t have to. This is what Jesus did, as far as I can tell. Sure he preached and taught, but the only reason huge crowds would listen to him is that he lived a life that challenged the lives of others. He lived a life of simplicity, service, compassion, and self-sacrifice, a life that made others think about and alter their own lives. People chose to become Jesus’ disciples, and a disciple, as Dallas Willard says, is an apprentice, someone who wants to be with the master in order to become like him/her. I want to be a part of a community of disciples, people who together are trying to actually do the stuff that Jesus did. There are plenty of churches and communities that get together to talk about and discuss the things that Jesus did. What I’m seeking is a group of folks who will help each other LIVE like Jesus lived. Would you care to join me?

Next, I want the rest of my life to be filled with adventure and risk. I have lived a very conventional life, going to the right schools, getting the right jobs on the path to success. And I’ve done all this while trying to live a “good, Christian life.” But there have been times when I’ve sat in my church and wondered if somewhere along the line I – and a whole lot of other people – had somehow confused Christianity with politeness and good manners. Since when did “nice” become the best word to describe Jesus? Did the people who followed him back in the day concern themselves most with manners and with not rocking the boat? It seems to me that Jesus and those who hung out with him were huge risk takers – leaving their homes and families, going out on small boats in big storms, taking journeys with no extra clothes and no money, entering lands that their religion told them to avoid, gathering with the very people society despised and rejected. As Kate Layzer wrote in a recent Christian Century article, “It’s not a tame Jesus that people are craving. They want the genuine undomesticated Savior, the One who loves fiercely and speaks sharply, who looks us in the eye and speaks of God’s uncompromising love, who startles us with more forgiveness than we think we deserve, who challenges us to extend the same to others. They want the Jesus who commands us to love enemies, serve the poor and see ourselves in the stranger.” That’s the Jesus I want too, and his way is the way I want to live. But the problem is, on my own I can be a real wimp. I need a community of risk-takers to nudge me along and challenge me to step outside my comfort zone more frequently. I’m not talking about bungee jumping or sky-diving here; I’m talking about welcoming strangers into my home, spending time with prisoners, aids patients, and lonely widows. I’m talking about caring for creation, lessening my environmental footprint, and integrating my spiritual life with the life I live every single day. I’m talking about living with the unpredictable spontaneity of Jesus, and I need some other folks around me who are seeking to do the same thing. Anyone interested in joining me?

Fourth, I’m ready to be a part of a community that truly is open to all. Countless communities say that they want this or that they already are open to all, but my experience tells me that most every religious community excludes somebody, whether intentionally or unintentionally. I had the chance during my recent sabbatical to visit a community called Glide in San Francisco, and my week there was an overwhelming experience of being with a totally inclusive community. Everyone was welcome at Glide, and I mean everyone. Even at their Sunday worship celebrations there were homeless people, addicted people (including addicts who are still using and, in some cases, under the influence right then and there!) gay, lesbian, straight, bisexual, transgender people, black, white, yellow, brown, and red people, and everybody else - Glide welcomed all of them. I was changed by my week at Glide, stretched by my time there. I felt more alive there than I have felt in years. I couldn’t get over the fact that the homeless from the Tenderloin district felt comfortable enough to hang out in and around the Glide facility day or night, seven days a week. I couldn’t help thinking, “this is as it should be in a community that claims to serve Jesus.” Now I know that Northern Michigan isn’t exactly San Francisco when it comes to cultural, ethnic, and religious diversity. But I still want to find out what it would look like for a community to welcome and include anyone and everyone at its events and gatherings. I’m especially excited about having theological discussions where no viewpoint or religious perspective is shunned or considered inferior. Would you care to join me?

Fifth, I have been waiting a long time to be a part of an organization that exists not for itself but for others. One of the things I loved my Presbyterian heritage is that its constitution says, “The church is called to undertake Christ's mission even at the risk of losing its life.” What I take this to mean is that Christian communities are supposed to do the things Jesus did, even and especially when doing so could bring about their own demise. The problem is, I have yet to see a church, Presbyterian or otherwise, that is truly willing to live up to that high calling. Most of the decisions I saw the churches I was a part of make started with the question “can we afford to do this?” From there, deliberations turned to the all-important church budget, where the non-negotiables of building expenses, endowment fund balances, and personnel expenses were bowed to. In the end, the work that Jesus did, that “mission” the Presbyterian Constitution spoke of, was lucky to get the leftovers of a congregation's money and energy. What I'm curious to find out is what might happen if a spiritual community had no building expenses or personnel costs…ever? What if the only money and energy that ever changed hands in a community of disciples was going outside the community toward people in genuine need? Principles six and seven will address this more concretely, but for now, I simply invite you to consider what it could look like and feel like to be a part of a community that, from the outset, existed for the benefit of others. As my friend Doug Pagitt, the founding pastor of Solomon's Porch, puts it, “We only exist to bless the world. When we’re no longer doing that, there’s no point to our existence.” Would you care to join me in forming a community that will exist for others?

My sixth principle is that I want the community I'm a part of to avoid the real estate business at all costs. Buildings have become the tail wagging the dog of well-intentioned Christian communities for centuries. The average church budget in this country puts the vast majority of its dollars into paying for, maintaining, and improving its building. Obviously, this makes it very difficult for that community to have much left to do the things Jesus wanted done. Biblically speaking, the earliest followers of Jesus never had a building in which to worship or gather. For three hundred years they made due with homes, public gathering places, and beaches. I see no reason why Christ-followers today can’t do the same, particularly when we have free, available meeting places like the top of Boyne Highlands, Petoskey State Park, Thornswift, Church Beach, and the trails in the Bay View woods right here in our own backyard. And speaking of our own backyard, my family and I live on four acres of farmland that we're preparing to farm. We’d like this land to be used as one dimension of this new community. Perhaps we could offer it as a cooperative farm for folks not yet involved in one, and we could focus on generating fresh produce that could go to area food pantries. Who knows, maybe we could bring in a couple dozen chickens, some goats, and a pig or two. It just seems that our faith ought to affect the way we use land and the way we produce, consume, and recycle. The world doesn't need another building that's only used once or twice a week. So we're excited to see all the creative ways this community will come up with for using existing resources in a way that the Creator would appreciate. Would you care to join us?

Seventh and finally, I've gradually come to believe that pastors and leaders of Christian communities should no longer be paid by the communities we serve. Don’t get me wrong: getting paid is nice. I’ve made decent money serving traditional churches for years and the pension plan wasn’t too shabby either. But every year at budget time, when I would look at our church budget and see the huge percentage of church offerings that were going to my salary and benefits – not to mention the salaries and benefits of my fellow staff – I felt like I was keeping the community from doing the things Jesus asked his disciples to do. At the time I left my most recent church, 93% of its budget was going toward nothing but building and personnel costs! And this was an extremely generous and missional congregation. They raised thousands of dollars outside the budget to do wonderful things for others. But even so, budgets are moral documents, as Jim Wallis of Sojourners has so often said. So I want to try leading a community without ever taking a dime from the participants. I would like to experiment by becoming what used to be called tentmaking, making my living by some other means than my ministry with a community. The Apostle Paul literally made tents to earn his living. I will probably do a mix of part-time things ranging from music gigs to teaching and painting. I will also continue to write, speak, and lead retreats.

If you put principles six and seven together, you’ll see that the community I’m proposing will have no overhead. Participants will never be asked to pony up for a building or for my living expenses. If any money changes hands, it will either be because of the community’s decision to support someone or something outside of ourselves, or to contribute to our cooperative farming operation, much of which will serve local food banks. What all this also means is that numbers will never be important to this community. If only four families want to come on board to help live out this vision, that’s just fine. We won’t have some number of participants we’re shooting for to help pay the mortgage or my salary. We’re not going to spend a single cent on advertising either. If our lives and our community's story don’t compel others to join us, then why should some slick advertising campaign?

So there you have it – the broad strokes of my vision for a new kind of spiritual community in Northern Michigan. I’m not promising utopia, and I’m definitely not promising some perfected form of church. This community will be a very different animal with its own unique struggles and hurdles, not to mention its share of difficult decisions along the way. Let's remember that the kingdom Jesus talked about with his disciples was supposed to be built right here on earth, little by little, by ordinary people. It was a messy enterprise too. The Kingdom of God was so hard for folks to get their minds around that Jesus had to use parables just to try and describe it.

I’m so excited about getting this experiment in community going! All I need are some people who want to give this a try with me, people willing to roll up their sleeves, get a little dirty, take some risks together, and see what happens.Who knows - we might be starting something that could become a model for spiritual communities everywhere! Why not get in on the ground floor and grow with us?

If you’re wondering when we’ll meet or what we’ll do, those are things that the people who take this leap with me will figure out as we go. Maybe that’s why I’ve been calling this project “The Living Vision.” It’s a living, breathing, evolving experiment in community based on a clear and compelling vision that God has placed upon my heart. If my vision happens to resonate with your soul and spirit, stay tuned to this blog and leave me your comments. I look forward to continuing this conversation.

Grace & Peace – Toby Jones

A Wicked Good Night in NYC - 5/12/09

2009-05-12T21:14:00.000-07:00

I just saw Wicked on Broadway. What a profound and moving work of art. The adolescent in me wants to say its message is “It’s not easy being green.” But the theologian in me knows there’s much more to it than that.

It’s about diversity and learning to accept others - and ourselves - for who we are. It’s about the value of being friends with someone you don’t always understand and rarely agree with. It’s about the truth, who gets to define it, and the cost of standing up for it when everyone else clearly prefers the lie. It’s about how badly people need to believe in some things and how tempting it is for others to conjure accordingly.

The show is full of life, laughter, love, and loss. Every one of the principle characters grows, coming to a deeper understanding of themselves and of one another. But their growth comes at tremendous cost. Ephie even says at one point in her confrontation with the Wizard, “Don’t you think I want to go back to the way things were before?” But she knows she can’t. None of us can.

The real brilliance of this prequel to The Wizard of Oz is its unfolding of the character of one we’ve already written off as “wicked.” We see her goodness, her desire to help and not hurt, to liberate and not imprison. We ache for her when none of her good deeds go unpunished and when the corrupt work of spin doctors seems so much more believable than the truth. Wicked leaves us wondering what we are to do when, as another playwright put it, “fair is foul and foul is fair.”

I am so grateful for Gregory Macguire’s novel, Winnie Holzman’s book, and Stephen Schwartz’s music and lyrics. What a gift they have given to the world .

A night at Solomon's Porch, 5/3/09 Minneapolis, Minnesota

2009-05-03T22:54:00.000-07:00

I participated in the Sunday gathering at Solomon’s Porch tonight. This community is about 10 years new and was birthed by the vision and midwifery of Doug Pagitt. The church identifies itself as an “wholistic, missional Christian community,” for they truly look to involve the whole person – body, mind, and spirit – in the walk of Christian discipleship.

Doug is one of our most innovative and articulate theologian/pastors, and I recommend any of his many books to you. I’m especially fond of A Christianity Worth Believing and Reimagining Spiritual Formation.

The building in which Solomon’s Porch makes its home is a beautiful traditional church building on the corner of 46th St. and Blaisdel in Minneapolis. But that church look and feel is only true on the outside of this place. Upon entering and ascending the half a dozen stairs to the narthex, one turns left expecting to see the sanctuary, but what one sees looks a whole lot more like some friend’s enormous basement hang-out. Tons of comfortable couches and cozy chairs are in concentric circles. Even the former chancel area, which still sports the gargantuan cross with dozens of painted portraits of people’s faces surrounding it, is 'couched out.' And none of the furniture matches, for it was all donated. One woman in the community noted that, “These couches are a metaphor for our lives and what God is doing with us.” Pagitt agreed. “Our furniture isn’t pretty. It doesn’t match. Some of the pieces need repairs. But it invites us, as the broken, used people we are, nevertheless, to find a worthy place in the community of faith. Brokenness can cripple, but not when we allow others to come alongside us and help us become whole.”

It’s pretty clear from the get go, that this is not a church that is in to hierarchy or top down leadership. There is no “up front” or stage or podium. All there is is a spinning stool in the very center that is not occupied when the gathering commences. At various points throughout the gathering, whoever is leading a particular part in the service will go there to speak, and in the gathering I attended, 8-9 different folks went up there. Pagitt explained that, “our gatherings are designed to be interactive and participatory, so our furniture is set in the round so we can see one another. It was a stretch for us Minnesotans, who don’t like to draw attention to ourselves. But over time, we’ve gotten used to seeing faces in church rather than the backs of heads.”

Adjacent to the sanctuary and not separated by any doors is a sort of parlor room where coffee and tea was available. People wandered back and forth throughout the gathering without violating any protocol. It was a very relaxed, comfortable environment. It was also a very young bunch, heavy on the 20 and 30 something’s. But there were a few gray hairs in the bunch, not to mention a few other baldies like me.

The music was all original, an intentional part of the community’s theological enterprise. The words were projected on two screens along with some images that enhanced the music’s themes. While the songs were unfamiliar to me, I could tell the regulars had sung them before.

One of the things that Doug mentioned over and over is that the Solomon’s Porch community is always asking three things: What is God up to in the world? Who are we? And how do we fit those two answers together or find their intersection? They treated scripture in a very refreshing way, particularly in the sermon portion of the gathering. Rather than reading the scripture and then talking about what we can ‘take out of it’ for our lives, they seemed much more interested in finding themselves IN the story of the scriptures. On this particular night, they began to talk about the Pentecost event, seeing it as a very exciting time when God poured himself out to all the community in the form of his Spirit, but also recognizing it as a time of tremendous fear and uncertainty for that community. Doug talked about the fact that their own community was going to enter the Pentecost event and spirit by not gathering in their usual way for the 12 weeks of the summer, to rethink their structure, their location – it just so happens that the owners of the building they rent want to sell the building to Solomon’s Porch – and to meet in other places and times to consider the Spirit’s new call and mission for them. I found it incredibly profound and faithful that this community – a mere 10 years old – was already being incredibly careful NOT to establish their own traditions and routines in a way that could squelch God’s new action in the Spirit embodied in Pentecost 2009.

Every Sunday gathering includes communion at Solomon’s Porch. But don’t picture ornate silver trays with perfectly cubed bread and tiny little individual cups of juice. Think of about 6 different tables scattered throughout the room, each with a big loaf of fresh and flavored bread and a jug of both juice and wine. People all get up and gather in groups of 15 or 20, pour each other nice size cups of wine and offer the bread to one another, saying, “May Christ be alive in you!” This is no silent and somber ritual. It’s a meal at a friend’s house with plenty of bread and wine for everyone – even seconds! People talk and hang around after serving one another and mingle from group to group. There was as a sense of abundance in this place, and I was a welcome participant in that abundance.

From those communion celebration spots all over the room, the final song was sung, and its words washed over me like extra helpings of communion wine. The words of the chorus were: “You are good enough! You are good enough! You are good enough to be my sons and daughters!”

What a message! What a gathering! What a night! Visit Solomonsporch.com!

My sabbatical journey continues. After a few more days here I’ll head home briefly and then off to New York City and a trip to The Church of the Holy Apostles. Stay tuned!

Glide - Where grace and radical inclusivity meet 4/26/09

2009-04-26T18:02:00.000-07:00

I'm at my second stop on this whirlwind tour of alternative communities who have something to teach the rest of us about Jesus and his gospel. This one is in San Francisco, the place where Tony Bennett left his heart, and I fear I will leave a piece of mine as well. It is, without question, one of the most diverse cities in the world, but as Pastor Donald Guest said in his sermon at Glide this morning, diversity by itself doesn't necessarily create community. Only intentional relationships can do that, and Glide United Memorial Methodist Church is all about creating true community.

Glide's mission is "to break the multigenerational cycles of dependency, poverty, and low self-worth by providing a spiritual home of unconditional love." Everything at Glide begins and ends with unconditional love. I arrived at their building on the corner of Ellis and Taylor about 40 minutes before the 11 am "Celebration Service" was to begin, and a line had already formed outside the entrance. From the looks of those standing in it, the line could have been a line to a soup kitchen, a rock concert, or the opening of an art exhibit. But it was a queue to get into a worship service. I took my place in the line as it stretched the length of an entire city block. There was energy and expectation and genuine warmth in that line. People recognized one another and hugged, introducing friends to one another. It seemed that everyone had brought a friend, someone who, like me, had never been to Glide before. In that line with me were black, white, yellow, and brown people, tall, short, fat, and slim people, gay, lesbian, straight, and transgender people (don't ask me how I knew), and of course people who defied all categories.

At about 10:45, the line began to move and we were each welcomed by a Glide usher or two as we hurried into a dusty old second floor sanctuary to get the best seats possible. There's a jazz ensemble that leads the music, a 7 piece outfit that boasts a number of hot area artists. They were tuning up and plucking around as the excited throng poured in. I started a new pew about four back from the front and on the band side. As I looked around, it seemed that everyone was hugging and smiling - not mere Presbyterian handshakes, and not the cold awkward hugs I'm used to. These were the "welcome home" hugs of long lost friends who know just how much each has been through since they were last together. Folks willing moved down to create room and squeezed as many folks in as possible, for this was a celebration meant to be experienced toegether.

Without fanfare or introduction, just after 11, the band hit their first riff, the audience sprang to their feet, and clapped rhythmically as about 40 folks dressed in black and representing that same cross-section of America I'd encountered in the line streamed in to the risers by the band, and the celebration was underway. It felt like the beginning of Bruce Springsteen leaning forward to catch that first glimpse of the Boss as he barks his "One! Two!" except we were singing "Do not pass me by" and "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms."

Between a couple songs, one of the pastors said that "We are here to celebrate life! We are here to affirm that life is good. We are here to affirm love and to love each other so that afterwards we can go out and change the world!" The music rose and fell, ebbed and flowed as various soloists from the black-clad ensemble lead us in powerful praise and affirmation. A middle aged woman named Deane was baptized in the name of "Unconditional Love." "All we do here is about love and acceptance." And that's just what it felt like. The pastors then introduced and welcomed some guests and groups from Seattle and Chicago and South Africa. He welcomed us all saying, "Here we do not let anything divide us. All are welcome. We need everyone. We need you, each of you, to expand our vision, to challenge our thinking, to confront our assumptions, and to expand our love."

That said it all for me. Glide "gets" it - what so few if any of the rest of church folks seem to grasp - that we simply can't be the family of faith, the community of disciples, by gathering with only those who think, look, earn, or practice as we do. When they got around to the offering, a choir member took the mic and said he gives to Glide because he believes in the 87 programs the church houses and runs - everything from feeding programs for the homeless to tutoring children to free health care and recovery programs. I gave about 5 times what I usually give at offering time, and my hunch is that others did as well.

When Pastor Don Guest took the pulpit to begin his message, we had all been there for an hour and five minutes, and yet the anticipation was just as intense as when we'd all arrived. His message would be based upon three readings - one from the Christian New Testament, one from the Hebrew Scriptures, and one from the Holy Koran. He began talking about Abraham and Sarah, whom all three monotheistic faith acknowledge and learn from. He summarized God's challenging call to them while they were tribal people and very narrow in their focus and world view. "I want to show you something bigger!" Guest yelled. "Come with me and I will show you how to live without bigotry, without this familiar ghetto you've known all your life. I'll show you how to live with and love white folk and black folk, gay folk and straight folk, rich folk and poor folk...Are you with me?" The Glide crowd shouted their life affirming "Yes!" with "Amen's" sprinkled in. And I thought of the great eschatological banquet spoken of in scriptures where men and women will come from east and west, north and south to sit at table with the Lord. And I was there. Right there.

We closed with "We shall overcome" with held hands lifted above our heads. We'd been to the mountain top. We'd seen the Lord. It was time to change the world. As I made my way downstairs I peaked in a hallway where a group of Muslims were handing out bagged lunches to the homeless folks, many of whom were in the worship service with me. And behold, it was good.

Wicker Park Grace - a tiny church setting a HUGE example

2009-04-21T15:22:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been so long since my last blog entry, but I've been gone a lot lately. In fact, I'm writing this entry in Chicago, having just begun a 6 week sabbatical aimed at finishing up my latest book project. It's called The Way of Jesus: Reforming Christian Communities in a Post-Church Age. Right now I'm in the process of visiting and sojourning at some alternative communities that exemplify the principles I'm writing about, principles I believe will be necessary in any body of believers that doesn't want to go down with the sinking ship that is the institutional church.

Wicker Park Grace is a community started by Rev. Nanette Sawyer, a true pioneer in both theology and practice. The people she has assembled in the last 5 years are a testament to the fact that she has figured out something that very few other Christian communities have - namely, how to attract and keep young people involved in an intentional Christian ministry.

When I attended their Sacred Meal this past Sunday night, I was far and away the oldest codger in the room at 47. The arts and yoga center in which they gather was filled with 20-somethings and was alive with faith, hope, and love. And when I returned to the same rented warehouse space on Monday night for their Leadership Co-Op meeting (Wicker Park's equivalent of Elders), it was more of the same, 20-something's calling the shots, planning their next moves, being the church.

Now if you're of the "praise and worship" ilk, please don't make the mistake of assuming here that Nanette must lure these young folks in with a hot praise band with big sound and a bunch of 7-11 songs projected on the big screen. (7-11 songs are the ones with the same 7 words sung 11 times over.) The sacred celebration meal I attended was very mellow and subdued - no screens, no power points, no loud speakers or drums. Just hand-me-down chairs in a circle surrounding a tiny table with bread and wine upon it. There was an icon next to where Nanette sat that looked like something out of the 13th century, and she had a keyboard player and a guitarist who played beautiful, original jazz based progressions to which Taize-like chants were sung. This was not a hand-clapping, feet-stomping come to Jesus gathering. It was much more authentic and spirit filled.

Nanette introduced the theme of the night - atonement - and invited the gathered community to enter into this ongoing theological quagmire. She offered a handout articulating the 5 most famous atonement theories, shared a few personal stories about her church upbringing, and then turned us loose in a few small groups to hash it out. It was amazing. I hadn't seen or experienced discussion like this since my years at Princeton Seminary. These young men and women, half my age, were sharp, thoughtful, curious, and extremely open to differing viewpoints. There was no hint of debate, no attempts to convince - UN-like my Princeton days - just genuine articulations of where each person was in this sticky-wicket that is the cross and crucifixion of Jesus, along with many attempts to better understand where the others in the group were.

When Nanette called us all back together, we debriefed with the large group, again, with no movement toward consensus or agreement. And then it was on to the sacred celebration - the Lord's Supper. The transition from theological dialogue to the table was profound in that it illustrated, without anyone having to say so, that it isn't our theological views or beliefs that unite us. It is, instead, the grace and unconditional love of Jesus. And if I had to boil down all that this tiny community of believers has to teach the rest of us into just one lesson, it would be this: beliefs and theological doctrines are over-rated. The way Nanette and others in the community put it, "We don't draw boundaries or fences around our community. We don't draw lines and ask people to step over them in order to participate with us. It is our relationships with one another that keep us together. We have a center toward which and around which we are moving, but it's grace that we treasure and share."

Wow! What a lesson for the rest of us! What a challenge to those bodies of believers who rigidly cling to the conviction that it's one's 'position' on same sex marriage or abortion that matters most. Or to those churches who won't let anyone 'join' them until they say "Jesus is the only way."

I urge any of you who pass through Chicago to stop by Wicker Park Grace at 1741 N. Western Ave or just google Wicker Park Grace for more information on what this incredible collection of disciples is up to. - 4/21/09

PS - look for my next entry from San Francisco in about 5-7 days. I'll be visiting Glide Memorial Church near Union Square

Gran Torino and Atonement

2009-02-06T19:41:00.000-08:00

I just saw Gran Torino and was absolutely stunned by its brilliance. Not since Sling Blade have I seen a film that so elegantly captured life in the kingdom of God. If you can believe it, Clint Eastwood actually manages to create and portray a believable character who is part Archie Bunker, part Grumpy Old Man, part Dirty Harry, and, ultimately, part Jesus of Nazareth. This film and its grizzled, Korean War veteran main character, Walt Kowalski, are destined for Oscar accolades.

Gran Torino is a slow moving film with an undercurrent of violence, as warring gangs of Mexicans, Blacks, and Hmongs vie for control of Kowalski’s crumbling neighborhood and of his 1972 Green Ford Gran Torino. Kowalski's next door neighbors are a multi-generational but fatherless Hmong family, whose only boy, Thao, is being pulled into his cousin’s Hmong gang. Against all his instincts, Kowalski becomes the father Thao needs and then some, teaching him the lessons of hard work, manhood, and the effective control of his passions.

While much of the film is the story of Kowalski’s violent, gun-toting vigilante-ism, it is ultimately his single. brilliant act of non-violence that brings peace to the neighborhood. After the Hmong gang bores a lit cigarette through Thao’s face as punishment for his refusal to join them, peppers his home with machine gun fire, and rapes and batters his sister, Sue, to the brink of death, Kowalski reaches a point of no return. He cleans his weapons and talks with Thao about the need for a careful, methodical, approach to vengeance.

In the final, tense moments leading up to Kowalski’s ultimate confrontation with the Hmongs, he performs a series of religious rituals, preparing himself for his ultimate sacrifice. He takes a bath, gets a haircut and a shave, buys his first fitted suit, and goes to confession for the first time in “forever.” Locking Thao in his basement, Kowalski claims that he must confront the Hmong gang on his own. He tells a protesting Thao that he has his whole life in front of him while Kowalski has both bloody hands and a stained soul. What he didn’t tell Thao was that he would confront the gang armed with only a cigarette and a lighter.

There is a bloodbath in front of Hmong gang headquarters, but only one man’s blood is spilled. Kowalski is gunned down with his arms spread wide, crucifix-like, as blood trickles out of his pierced hands and sides. But Kowalski’s plan was thorough enough to ensure that every single neighbor witnessed the perpetrators this time, guaranteeing that Thao, Sue, and their family would never have to worry about these thugs again.

Eastwood’s Kowalski is as unlikely a hero as Harry Callahan and far less likeable. His non-stop spewing of racial and ethnic epithets begins with his very first line and actually continues even after he dies, as his last will and testament is read by an embarrassed, apologetic lawyer. Not only is Kowalski dismissive and offensive even to those “foreigners” he considers friends, but he’s more hateful still to his own children and grandchildren, actively disdaining them, writing them out of his life, not to mention out of his will.

And yet, in the end, Kowalski chooses to lay down his life for his friends, defeating the very force that had sustained him all these years. Is Kowalski’s death some sort of atonement for his sins? Or did he finally just come to see, as Gandhi did, that an eye for an eye only leaves the whole world blind? Any way you figure it, Clint Eastwood is still Hollywood's brightest star and her theologian in residence as well. Don't miss this film!

Reflections on Haiti 1/31/09

2009-02-01T20:14:00.000-08:00

There’s a tiny island nation only a few hundred miles from our southern border that couldn’t be further away. It’s a mountainous island…mountains as far as the eye can see… "Mountains beyond mountains” as author Tracy Kidder puts it.

It’s a land of beautiful simplicity…where one can easily imagine what life was like for everyone in the days before electricity, technology, and mass transit.

In Haiti, people can’t even imagine the things that we can’t imagine doing without: basic machinery, computers, desks, I-pods, or even matching shoes. There are no bathrooms or toilets in most of Haiti, not at school, not in stores or at public places, not even in homes - and that includes outhouses.

Only a few Haitians have cars or anything in which to carry their burdens. Haiti doesn’t even have the capacity to collect or deal with its own trash, and so the streets there are lined with garbage and filth. When a hard rain falls, the garbage flows through the streets like a river, leading all the way to the ocean.

Few if any of the roads in Haiti are paved, and if you ask a Haitian, “Which side of the road do you drive on in Haiti?” she will answer, “Which ever side has the least holes.”

When folks read about Haiti’s 80-90% unemployment rate, they picture a sedentary people, a lot of standing around. But nothing could be further from the truth. Haiti is a blur of energetic motion. In this land without welfare or any sort of social safety net, everyone is busy all day long, searching for water, scavenging for food, trying to make their own charcoal, seeking to make anything that they might be able to sell. Here in America, we recycle for the environment or to be politically correct. In Haiti they recycle to survive. Old newspapers become a blanket, discarded hubcaps become wok, and old tires becomes a garden liner.

But for those with the eyes and the hearts to see through and beyond the trash, a beautiful nation of people resides in Haiti – creative people, faithful people, hardworking people, hopeful people, and even playful people. The children of Haiti are all curious and eager to learn, but only the luckiest few get to go to school, for there is no public education in Haiti. Only those whose parents can pay 2-400 dollars a year get the benefit of schooling.

For those of us who visit this land of contradictions, two questions always seem to rise above all the rest. First, what is it that enables folks who have so little, who have all the odds stacked against theme, to carry on with such dignity, hope, faith, and joy? And the second, of course, is why? Why has so much hardship come to this one people, this tiny island nation and why NOT to us?

As for the first question - how can Haitians be so hopeful and joyful? - at least part of the answer lies with the countless people who are lending a hand in Haiti. I met folks both from Haiti and from other lands who are joining in the Haitian struggle, believing that God is alive and still at work, still creating, still restoring, still redeeming, believing that Jesus really does love the poor in a special way and makes good on his promise that they will be blessed.

As for the second question – why is Haiti so beleaguered and beset with such poverty and devastation? - I can offer no answer. All I can offer is a journal entry from one of my favorite theologians, Fredrich Buechner, reflecting on the haphazard way luck falls upon one and not another....

“The day I signed the contract for my first novel was a major event for me. Needless to say it was the fulfillment of my wildest dreams of literary glory. But of the actual signing itself in the offices of the publisher, I remember nothing. What I remember instead is leaving the publishers office afterwards and running into somebody I had known in college. He was working as a messenger boy, he told me. I was on the brink of fame and fortune. But instead of feeling any pride or sense of superior accomplishment by the comparison, I remember a great and unheralded rush of something like sadness, almost like shame. I had been very lucky, and he had not been very lucky, and the pleasure that I might have taken in what had happened to me was all but lost in the realization that nothing comparable, as far as I could see had happened to him. I wanted to say something or do something to make it up to him, but I had no idea how or what and ended up saying nothing of any consequence at all, least of all anything about the contract that I had just signed. We simply said goodbye in the lobby, he going his way and I mine, and that was that.
All I can say now is that something small but unforgettable happened inside me as a result of that chance meeting – some small flickering out of the truth that, in the long run, there can be no real joy for anybody until there is joy finally for us all…”

Impressions of Haiti

2009-01-28T09:27:00.000-08:00

A friend and I just returned from 8 days in Haiti, seeking a place for my church to establish an international missional partnership in the western hemisphere. As the poorest nation in our hemisphere and the second poorest in the entire world ,Haiti was as good a place as any to begin the search, especially since it’s just a couple hundred miles south of the Florida border .

What we found was a land of deep contradictions. It’s an island nation, sharing what was once the Isle of Sante Domingue with the Dominican Republic. While the DR is lush and green, Haiti is brown and burned over. While the DR is the wealthiest Caribbean nation, Haiti is the poorest. Tourists flock to the Dominican year round, while the only foreigners who come to Haiti are relief workers and U.N. election monitors.

Haiti’s mountains seem to go on forever, leading Tracy Kidder to name his famous book about Haiti Mountains Beyond Mountains. But the real mountains in Haiti, the ones the Haitian people must battle day after day after day, are the mountains that lie between them and food, between them and potable water, between them and a job, between them and an education, between them and a healthy, sustainable future.

When we read about a nation in which 90% of the people are unemployed,we tend to picture a people without anything to do, people who are just standing around , waiting for a break or a handout. But Haiti is a land of bustling, non-stop, energetic movement. Every day is a race against time, a race to fetch water, to make your own charcoal, and then search for an old, rusty hubcap in which to heat whatever you successfully scavenged from the trash-lined streets. There’s no time to sit still when diseases like AIDS, TB, and Hepatitis are bearing down on you simply because you happen to live in a nation with no means to collect, much less deal with, its own trash.

The things Haitians do without are almost impossible for us to fathom. Take toilets as an example. In Haiti people urinate and defecate whenever and wherever nature calls, and that’s often in the city streets. I watched school children – boys and girls - squat right in the middle of their schoolyard during recess. And these were the fortunate children, the ones whose parents could afford school, for there is no public education in Haiti. When I hosted my compassion child for lunch at our hotel in Cap Haitian, he used the toilet in my room. When he finished going, he simply closed the lid and started to walk away. I stopped him and gestured for him to flush, but he had no idea what I meant. When I reached around him to flush, he looked frightened and shocked. I opened the lid so he could see what was happening, and he stared in stunned silence. He literally wouldn’t leave the bathroom, transfixed by the swirling water. Even once it stopped, he kept staring down the magic hole, as if he expected his deposit to return.

But there is hope in Haiti. It is the hope of a resilient and tenacious people, and it is the hope of those who partner with them. We met one couple from the States who has created a new kind of composting latrine that actually recycles human and animal waste. They’ve installed 50 of these in northern Haiti so far. We met and worked with a small team of doctors, nurses, and engineers from Portland, Maine who are partnering with existing hospitals and small clinics to help Haitian doctors and nurses identify and achieve their own goals for health care delivery. We visited a center for malnourished children that not only helps feed and nurse these kids back to health, but also trains their mothers , giving them skills and micro loans on their way to self-sufficiency. We even visited an up and coming agricultural school, designed to help young men and women learn to produce crops and livestock in some of the most deforested and barren land in the world.

Who knows what our church will decide to do with the options for partnership we present to them. But I know that I will never forget the faces we saw, the beautiful, black, resilient, and hopeful faces of a people who have been dealt the ultimate in losing hands, short straws, and raw deals. So count your blessings, remember to pray for Haiti, and stay tuned, for God isn’t finished with any of us yet, not here and certainly not in Haiti.

First Kill

2008-12-17T19:30:00.000-08:00

I shot my first deer this afternoon. It was a doe: beautiful, strong, graceful. Then I cried. I’ve never killed anything before, unless you count the ants I used to fry with my magnifying glass back in third grade.

I can’t really describe the feelings that overwhelmed me in that moment of trigger pulling and smoke clearing (we’re in muzzle loading season), except to say that the doe’s final kicking felt like a "rage, rage against the dying of the light." Even the swirling of emotions in these four hours that have passed since the big bang seem to come from a place where there are no words.

If you’ve seen The Last of the Mohicans, you know the reverence and humility with which life should be taken. At the tail end of an elk hunt, when the arrow has hit its mark and the great beast falls to its last breath, the archer kneels slowly, almost remorsefully and asks the elk for forgiveness, promising to honor him for his speed and grace. I, too, knelt before my fallen doe, her blood reddening the snow beneath us. Putting my hand lightly upon her shoulder, I uttered a prayer of sighs, confessing a line I knowingly and willingly crossed.

My hunting buddies, who had ushered me into this brotherhood of blood, were torn between barbaric yawps and respectful silence, no doubt remembering the moment when they first ended life. This was big, even at 47. I called my father who said, “Congratulations,” but seemed to know it wasn’t the right word.

All that remains is for me to eat this thing, “venison,” they call her, once she’s dead and cooked. The eating strikes me as important. I must eat her. Otherwise I’ve killed for sport, and this was no sport – the pounding heart, the trembling hand, the light-headed nausea. At the table I will take her inside of me, where she will be, where she will stay. My life may well be measured in the before and after of this, though I will most certainly do it again.

“And they were filled with fear…”

2008-12-10T19:56:00.000-08:00

It’s Advent, the season of carols, tinsel, gift-wrapping, and arguments over where the community crèche can be displayed. It’s the season that those bozos who work for Hallmark once again over-romanticize the first Christmas to such an extent that we've all actually come to believe that it really was a peaceful, starry, silent night when Jesus was born.

And because of this perennially slick advertising job, we come to the Christmas narratives in the Bible, thinking that characters within it were just blank slates. A perfect example of what I’m talking about can be found in Luke 2, the famous “shepherds abiding in the fields” passage made famous by Linus. The text says that when the angel of the Lord appeared to them, “they were filled with fear.” (The King James renders it “sore afraid.”) What were they "sore afraid" of? We assume that it had to be the angel, right? After all, on such a peaceful, clear, starry night, what else could have put fear into their hearts?

Well, given that this was 1st century Palestine we’re talking about, there are all kinds of things that could have made them afraid that night. For starters, their entire nation was being occupied and oppressed by a hostile power. The Romans weren’t just hanging out or stargazing; they were taxing the living crap out of the Jews. There were taxes on everything, including sheep, resulting in financial ruin for many a merchant in Israel. If those certain poor shepherds weren’t fearful over their finances that night, perhaps they were a little concerned for their wives, since the Roman soldiers were known to satisfy themselves with Jewish women, often in front of their husbands. Or maybe the shepherds were afraid of being beaten or beheaded for sport, fairly common occurrences in occupied Israel, occurrences that today might be called acts of terrorism.

The point is the first Christmas wasn’t all that 'Hallmarky,' to use a Palin-esque term. And so, in 2008, this year, more than ever, we who read and celebrate the Gospel accounts of Christ’s birth need to remember the state of affairs into which Jesus was born: financial peril, wars and rumors of wars, violence at home and violence abroad, terror on every side. Those shepherds abiding in their fields didn’t need some angel to make them feel afraid; they were already sore afraid. In fact, I believe that when that angel spoke her first words, “Be not afraid,” he/she was addressing the constant condition of any 1st century Palestinian’s heart. That angel, and ultimately the baby whose birth he/she announced, was entering into the very center of that fear, into the open wound that was 1st century Palestine, with all its terror, insecurity, and financial ruin.

So let’s not let Hallmark or even the TV ad whizzes gild over the conditions into which Christ was born. His world was an awful lot like our world. The fears of the 1st century Jews were an awful lot like our fears. And, therefore, the peace that this unlikely Prince offered them in the midst of all their fear is profoundly appropriate as He offers it unto us in the midst of all ours. And that, my friends, is GOOD news, very Good News.

How Do We Atone for Atonement? 12/4/08

2008-12-04T17:37:00.000-08:00

The longer I serve as a pastor, the more frequently I encounter folks who just don’t get the whole atonement thing. It makes no sense to these intelligent, God-seeking people, that a loving, gracious, forgiving God would somehow “need” or “have to have” someone die for the world’s sins.

I fear that too many well-meaning Christians have dismissed these genuine and legitimate questions by uttering the quick and thoughtless refrain, “Christ died for our sins,” without every really wrestling with the “why” of it all. For those who want to live and learn beneath the surface of things, questions simply must be asked about a God who would have to have ANYONE, much less His own son, die a gruesome death to accomplish anything. One contemporary theologian called this “cosmic child abuse,”and I at least understand what he means. Brian McLaren has wondered how a God who would require such a punishment to truly accomplish forgiveness, could then expect us to do something that He, himself, couldn’t do – forgive withOUT hurting or punishing someone. McLaren’s example went something like this: Your wife sins against you and you say, “I forgive you,” and then go and kick the dog because someone has to be punished in order for forgiveness to work.

Classic atonement theories, be they Substitutionary, Punitive, or even Christus Victor, don’t seem to be satisfactory to the post-modern minds and hearts with whom I minister. In fact, this single doctrine may be the ultimate theological dividing line between previous generations of Christians and the present one.

My wife just offered, “Doesn’t the whole atonement thing have to be understood in the context of Old Testament Judaism and their notion of animal sacrifice to appease an angry God?” She’s right in one sense, but animal sacrifice and blood spilling pre-date Judaism. Anthropologists and historians have long held that all sorts of primitive and pagan cultures practiced animal and even human sacrifice in attempt to restore their relationship with the gods. But only Christians are left to somehow reconcile this vindictive, bloodthirsty God with Jesus of Nazareth and all he said, did, and taught. After all, isn’t the Jesus of Christianity supposed to be a reflection of – even the son of - the heavenly Father? Jesus and the woman caught in adultery; Jesus and the woman at the well; Jesus and the man born blind; Jesus and Zacchaeus; his parables of the prodigal son, the laborers and the vineyard, the lost sheep. How are we supposed to reconcile all this unconditional, no-strings-attached love with a God who demands blood payment for sins?

The traditional explanation focuses on God’s radical justice, his absolute commitment to a system of weights and measures that is so much a part of his nature that He cannot possibly ignore nor act against it. Traditional explanations then go on to emphasize that in “sending” Jesus to “pay the price,” God manifests the extent of His love. But doesn’t all this just bring us right back to “cosmic child abuse,” for what God would choose to show His love in such a bloodthirsty way? And what could that God possibly have to do with this Jesus?

I don’t write this blog presuming to have an answer. But I do intend to point out that this particular doctrine and the questions it precipitates show us that theology is neither fixed nor finished. Our thinking about and writing about God must continue. All theologies and doctrines are human, and all of them are somehow inadequate or at least limited by their time. I like the analogy Rob Bell uses in the introduction to his first book, Velvet Elvis. To Bell, theology is like art, like a painting. No matter how great any particular work is, we will still need other artists and other paintings that seek to express what is beyond expression. No single painting has ever or will ever stop other artists from taking up the brush. The same is true of Christian theology, and I hope that more of us will be willing to wrestle with this sticky wicket of atonement. As we do so, I hope that Christians will genuinely open themselves to the problems this particular doctrine creates for the post-Modern mind without reverting to quick and thoughtless answers, whether they’re from the Bible or a bumper sticker.

May the painting continue…

Helping the Church Learn to Keep it Real

2008-11-24T20:04:00.000-08:00

Have you ever noticed that whenever someone in your church gets separated or divorced, they just stop coming to church? Have you ever known a mom who, upon finding out her kid is addicted to Ecstasy, stops attending worship? Or how about when a minister has a bout with depression and resigns his/her position, leaving the congregation in a cloud of mystery?

I’ve seen all these and more, up close and repeatedly. And it breaks my heart each and every time. The very people the church was designed for, the very people Jesus died for, come to feel unworthy of the church, embarrassed by the turns their lives have taken. What a travesty! Shouldn’t a church be the first place people want to be when they go through life’s travails? When and how did we get the idea that we're supposed to hide our struggles and our true selves from our church family?

While there are many institutional dynamics in Christian churches that have fostered this falseness and inability to include our human failings in our church relationships, I believe that much of the blame lies with the pastor(s). If the preacher refuses to talk about his/her own sins, shortcomings, and broken places, he/she unwittingly sends the message to the rest of the flock that “we don’t do that here.”

I once worked with a pastor who believed that he should never talk about himself or his own life in his sermons. He created the sense that he was a very “private” person, that his own family and foibles were somehow none of the congregation’s business. His reasoning for this approach was admirable, all in the name of protecting his loved ones and drawing boundaries between his personal and professional life. But over time, his congregation became fundamentally incapable of confronting difficult issues or even sharing their struggles with one another. Virtually every family in that church who went through any sort of crisis - from adolescent drug use to adult alcohol addiction, from divorce to foreclosure - would simply disappear, never to be heard from again.

Some wise soul once suggested that the church of Jesus Christ is more a hospital for sinners than a hotel for saints, but you’d never know that from the way most congregations conduct their business. The unwritten dress code for Sunday worship involves much more than our Sunday bests. Even where a tie isn’t required, a smile most certainly is. We Christians expect positive politeness, where every single “Hi, how are you?” is met with an enthusiastic “Just great! How are you?” This kind of social pressure is exerted with particular power on us pastors, which probably has something to do with the pastor I spoke of earlier. I, myself, am a pastor, and in almost every one of my annual reviews, the personnel committee tells me that I’m not smiley or cheery enough on Sunday mornings. How often I’ve been tempted to respond with something like this:

“Oh really? Not cheery enough, huh? Well just how cheery would you be if you’ve been getting 3 hours of sleep a night? How bright and wide would your smile be if you spent half of your last week in the hospital watching a few people die right in front of their families? It’s a little tough being cheery around here when last Sunday, after preaching my heart out, I got 7 calls from people who didn’t like the hymns I chose and a grand total of zero calls from those who were moved by or at least appreciated my sermon? Pardon me for not being Mr. Congeniality but I just found an ounce of pot in my 15 year-old’s backpack, and my wife isn’t speaking to me because I’ve been at church meetings every night for the past 8 days.”

But instead I just smile and say, “I’ll work on it next year.”

If the church is going to survive and have any sort of future, it’s going to have to learn to keep it real. It’s going to have to get over its infatuation with The Cleavers and start spending more time with Ozzy and the Osbornes

Just Back from New Orleans 11/9/08

2008-11-09T19:15:00.000-08:00

A week ago I took a small group from my church down to New Orleans to work with Habitat through an organization called RHINO to rebuild a block’s worth of homes. It’s almost impossible to describe just how much building remains to be done in and around New Orleans. Entire neighborhoods are still completely gone, nothing but concrete slabs and perhaps a few steps leading nowhere. The stories of those who remain homeless more than 3 years after the storm are too gut-wrenching and frustrating to convey.

My questions abound: Why is it taking so long? Why can’t more resources be brought to bear on this tragic situation? Why aren’t more corporations pouring their profits and foundation dollars into the rebuilding effort like Barnes and Noble is? I’ve always been an independent bookstore shopper, myself, but I must admit that what B&N is doing in New Orleans makes me want to send a little business their way.

But the story I shared with my congregation at worship this morning is the story of a man named George, who lost his Lower 9th home and his entire extended family in Katrina. George is spending all his time rebuilding other people’s homes with Habitat and RHINO clear across town, while he, himself, remains homeless, at the bottom of some huge waiting list and bureaucratic nightmare. I got to work alongside him last week and I simply couldn’t believe his commitment to the big picture of bringing his beloved city back, even as the work progresses at a snail’s pace. He has so much to be bitter about, so many reasons to have completely lost patience. But he works with a painstaking diligence and attention to detail that would make his favorite carpenter from Nazareth proud.

In my ongoing efforts to reshape this thing we call the Church as we move further into the 21st century, I can’t help but think that future communities of Christ’s followers will put a much bigger priority on disaster relief than has been done in the years following Katrina. And I don’t say that intending any disrespect for the terrific and constant efforts of groups like Presbyterian Disaster Assistance who have been in the Gulf Coast and in New Orleans from Day One and will continue to be. I simply mean that it makes less and less sense to me that millions of American Christians (including me!) can go about the business of holding Sunday worship services and Advent Wreath workshops while people like George still have nowhere to call home. I wonder if more “liquid,” less building-bound communities might be more flexible and readily able to suspend their day to day operations in exchange for being the church to those who need it most?

Whatever we followers of Jesus do, I hope we will not forget the victims of Katrina, most of whom are still without a place to live. Contact RHINO through the St. Charles Avenue Presbyterian Church in New Orleans if you’d like to help.

Election Night Reflections - 11/04/09

2008-11-04T18:39:00.000-08:00

It’s almost 10 pm EST on election night. We’re getting down to the wire. Projections are rolling in at a frenetic pace and the electoral map is blue and red with fewer and fewer states left to call. It’s time to talk about what happens next.

I’m purposely starting this conversation without knowing who our next president will be because what I’m about to say is equally true whether we have President McCain or President Obama. I’m talking about how are we going to become one nation again? How are we ever going to become one nation that is some shade of purple rather than two nations divided by a fence of party colors?

I am 47 years old and this has been the most intense, heated, angry campaign I’ve ever experienced – and I’m not just talking about the candidates or their attack ads: I’m talking about the citizenry! Americans are vehement in their support of one candidate and their hatred of the other. This election year people on the red and blue sides of the fence seem to really believe that one would have to be a complete idiot to vote for the other’s candidate. I would love to point fingers here, but even I have had to come to terms with my own feelings of intense judgment toward those on the other side. I’ve caught myself thinking things like, “This guy is an idiot. How can anybody think he’d make a good president?” “This guy isn’t even remotely intelligent. Do people honestly think he can fix the economy?” “This guy’s vice presidential pick is ridiculous, irresponsible even! If anybody votes for him now, that voter would HAVE to be insane!”

So many of us have gotten sucked into this divisive, disrespectful, and arrogant thinking. Just listen to the whispered conversations within your party friends. And so I return to my opening question – what happens next? How do we come out of this civil war mindset and begin to rebuild a unified America?

In one sense, the rebuilding will start with the winning candidate and his advisors. The new president will have to reach out and reach across in ways that go beyond gracious acceptance speeches and cordial, conciliatory phone calls. I believe the new President of the United States will need to appoint key leaders from the other party to significant cabinet posts - not mere tokenism but genuine power sharing. Our new president will also have to be a true listener, one who is more interested in hearing and considering the views of others than in steamrolling ahead with his own agenda. There may even need to be a new kind of meeting – gathering the very best minds from all perspectives around a huge round table, where everyone has equal status.

But our nation is far too divided to expect a single executive with a collaborative leadership style to reunite us. The citizenry is going to have to step up to this vital challenge too. The winning side of this particular election cannot and must not gloat. The losing side must not make excuses or blame the media. We need to realize what is at stake and step up to a new kind of citizenship, a mutual respect for one another and our interdependence, an awareness that listening is probably more valuable right now than talking. We’ve got to exercise this new kind of citizenship in our churches and in our school boards. We’ve got to do it in our neighborhood associations and even at our dinner tables.

Our nation is at a crossroads, and no matter which party prevails in this particular election, the real challenge will not have been winning an election. It will be to unify this once great nation both with itself and with this global, highly interdependent world in which we our situated.

a new kind of church meeting

2008-10-21T19:28:00.000-07:00

I just returned from my favorite church meeting. It's a small group that calls itself The Yahweh Group, and our purpose is to explore our deepest, most authentic questions of faith. Our name comes from Exodus 3, God's response to Moses when Moses wants to know God's name. There is no name given, no noun uttered, just the offering of a verbal phrase - "I am who I am; I will be who I will be." We have taken that to mean that God is beyond names, beyond genders, beyond human categories, beyond all human constructs, and, most of all, beyond us and our puny minds. In other words, when God uttered the verbal phrase "Yahweh," God was saying, "You folks better stay humble. Don't ever presume to have me all figured out."

So our little Yahweh Group meets two Tuesday's a month to discuss questions like

"Do Christians have to believe in atonement? Why would God have to punish some innocent person in order to pay for sin?"

"Why do Christians focus so much on Jesus' death? What about his life? Ok, so he died for our sins. But what did Jesus live for?"

"Am I a heretic if I'm not sure that Jesus' way is the only way? Can I still be a part of a Christian church like this one?"

"What exactly is salvation? I know it has to do with God saving people, but which people? And what are they saved from, exactly?"

We also read books together, like any book club I guess. But our books are theological in nature. At tonight's meeting we were wrestling with Phillip Jenkins' book, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South. Jenkins explores the huge differences in how Christians below the equator interpret the Bible compared to American and European Christians. Tonight's chapters focused on poverty and wealth and on good and evil. Jenkins posits that evil in the third world south is an external force, universally acknowledged. We debated our various understandings of evil and whether we see evil as something outside ourselves or not. I confessed that I am reluctant even to talk about evil with those who see it as somehow separate from themselves. For example, I've never been comfortable with those who identify Russia, Iran, or North Korea as "evil empires," particularly when the people using that moniker are unwilling to acknowledge the evils we Americans have perpetrated throughout our history. Neither has it ever made any sense to me for us Christians to categorize other religions as evil or false, when we have been behind some of history's greatest injustices and tragedies, from the Crusades and the Inquisition, to the slave trade and the destruction of the Native Americans and their land.

We don't decide or accomplish much at our Yahweh Group meetings. We don't use Roberts' Rules or keep any minutes. But we sure do speak from our hearts and listen respectfully to each other. We don't hold back and we feel safe in our unusual dialogue. It feels good to be with other Christians who are wrestling with some of the same questions that I am.

I hope that as we move into the unknown future together, more and more Christians and people of all religions will have a chance to be a part of group like this one. It is so important that faith communities learn to embrace the questions and doubts that come with faith. Who knows? Maybe if groups like this were more prevalent within churches and faith communities, fewer people would choose to live their lives outside such communities.

What the Financial Crisis Could Mean for the Church

2008-10-12T17:56:00.000-07:00

For a long time, I've been accused of having some pretty radical ideas about the future of this thing we call the Church. (Visit my blogs of 9/5, 9/21, and 9/28) Two of my bolder predictions have suggested that any church or Christian community that is going to survive into the future will be both building-less and led by a part-time, tent-making pastor (that is, one who is not paid by the congregation and makes his/her living by other means, as the Apostle Paul did).

Long before there was any talk of a financial crisis or even a pronounced recession, I have maintained that over time churches will simply not be able to sustain the two largest line items in their annual budgets - building expenses and personnel expenses. It's simple math, really. Dwindling membership = fewer dollars in the collection plate. With an average of more than 75% of church revenues coming from members who are over 65 years of age, and fewer and fewer younger folks joining and/or giving, the income well will eventually run dry. Churches and denominations have already been cutting back and tightening their belts for years, but those two beefy line-items are fixed costs. They're non-negotiable...until, that is, the money simply isn't there anymore.

The recent financial crisis - even with the very shaky, unproven bail-out - will hit churches very hard and very quickly, starting with those congregations carrying a lot of building debt. Where do people over 65 get most of their income? Retirement savings and pension plans are often stock market based. Many retirees I know have already lost 1/4th of their portfolios, and experts project that we're nowhere near bottoming out yet. We must keep in mind, also, that retirees don't have the time to hang around until the long-term market patterns of recovery kick in. If you don't think these bleak and on-going financial realities are going to start negatively affecting the income side of church budgets yet this year, I'm going to want to know what you've been smoking.

My point is not to frighten people, nor is it to pronounce more doom and gloom for the institutional Church. Instead, my hope is that congregations will start talking and planning NOW about how to transform themselves into viable, vital mission centers in a fast-approaching, almost unrecognizable future. You can certainly take the conservative approach - as most churches undoubtedly will - and look for other places to cut church expenses, such as programs and mission giving. But if that's the route we take, someone is bound to ask: "Are we even a church anymore when nearly 90% of our budget goes to serving ourselves? Are we really serving God and "the least of these, his children" outside these four walls anymore?"

Be bold enough as your congregation's leaders to ask what your community might look like without its property. Where might we meet for corporate worship? How might we utilize existing facilities in our community - both indoor and outdoor - for our corporate gatherings? How many of our other gatherings really require a building the size of our church building? What would it look like if our pastor(s) found another job and served us in a much more limited capacity? How might we develop lay leadership for some of our most vital ministries? What possibilities would those huge changes (no building expenses and no full-time pastor(s) with benefits) open up for what we could do in Christ's name with our budget dollars?

I recognize how uncomfortable these questions make us traditional church folk. I've been darn near crucified simply for bringing them up! (And don't forget, I, myself, am a full-time pastor with benefits! I stand to lose a lot more than a sentimental attachment to a building if my predictions come true!) But I fully believe that the time is NOW for all of us, no matter how much we've enjoyed or benefitted from the current system, to prepare for a very different future, a future that will either be thrust upon us when we no longer have a choice, or one we can thoughtfully and prayerfully prepare for, now that so many of the signs are pointing to it.

Please join me in this conversation. Let me know that there are folks out there who love God and Christ's mission enough to at least envision a future that, for the Church, may look a lot more like the first century than the twentieth.

Look What My Baby Has Done to Me

2008-10-07T08:01:00.000-07:00

The following blog entry was offered as a children's message on World Communion Sunday, 10/5/08 to the kids of 1st Presbyterian Church of Harbor Springs, Michigan

I want to introduce you to my 8-month- old daughter, Eloise. Isn't she adorable? She's the first child I've ever had, and it's been amazing to go through these 8 months with her. You know, there were certain things I expected to happen once Eloise came into the world. I expected to love her more than words could say. I expected to spend hours just watching her sleep and grow and play. I expected to change her dirty diapers and hold her when she cried. I expected to give her baths and feed her and watch her make huge messes.

But what I didn't expect was that Eloise would make me think about ALL the little children all around the world - all their moms and dads. I didn't expect that every time I looked at my baby, I'd realize more and more that every other dad in the whole world loves his baby girl or boy just as much as I love Eloise. I didn't expect that through Eloise I'd come to understand that every other dad in the whole world wants the same things for his baby as I want for mine - things like health, enough food, safety, no war or fear. Eloise has made me think about and feel closer to dads everywhere, even in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, and Nairobi.

At our house, Eloise's crib is right next to my bed. Since my wife Molly and her kids - Miles and Liza - have already left for school by the time I wake up, the first thing I see every morning is Eloise sleeping. Every morning I look at her as she sleeps and I start to pray. First, I pray for her, for her health, her safety, her family. But the more I look at her, the more I start praying for other children too. I pray for children in places like Darfur - where there's not enough food and far too much violence. I pray for children in Iraq - where armies clash every day and bombs explode, even in schools. I start to see in Eloise's lovely, innocent, helpless face the faces of kids I don't even know. I look in the mirror and as I see my worried, fatherly face, I see the faces of dads everywhere who just want their kids to be ok - safe, warm, well-fed, and out of harm's way.

Today is a special day in the church because it's World Communion Sunday. When we partake of the bread and juice on that table, we're supposed to think of people everywhere in the world who are doing the same thing. It's so easy just to think about ourselves, our families, our houses, our church, or our country. But God made the whole world and God loves the whole world. He doesn't love us more than other people. God doesn't care more for Presbyterians than for Catholics or even Buddhists. And God definitely doesn't care more for Americans than he does for the Japanese or Norwegians or Palestinian Arabs. So we've got to remember to pray for and care for ALL people all across the world. We've got to learn to see the face of Christ in other people - ALL other people. That's what World Communion Sunday is all about, and that's what having a baby is all about too.

I believe that God gives people like me babies so that our hearts will grow, so that we'll feel more of the world's joy and pain, just like God does.

Let's pray...Dear God, thank you for making the whole world. Thank you for making people all different colors, shapes, and sizes. Thank you for loving all people the same. Help us to love all people the same too, and not give special treatment to the ones who think, act, or look like us. Amen.

**I believe that if there is a Church in the future, it will be known for having a HUGE, inclusive heart. If there is a Church in the future, it will be filled with people who have learned to see in their own children's faces the faces of children everywhere, and to see in those faces the very face of God.

It's not whom you vote for; it's the questions you ask to determine your vote

2008-10-01T07:34:00.000-07:00

I think it was all the way back in 1980, when, during one of his presidential debates, Ronald Reagan faced the camera and asked, "Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?" He boiled the entire election down to this single question. Reagan's question - and, I suppose, the huge landslide victory it led him to - really bothered me. It seemed to make presidential elections all about "me," as if the only thing that any of us should consider when voting is which candidate or party will enhance "my" economic and material well-being. Even as a 19 year old, this question struck me as way off the mark, particularly for those of us who try to follow Jesus. So I came up with a few of my own election year questions, questions I wish voters would ask themselves before making up their minds:

Under which candidate/party will the poor be better off and better

served?

Under which candidate/party will the homeless and hungry be housed

and fed?

Under which candidate/party will the environment - God's creation -

be protected, respected, and properly stewarded?

Under which candidate/party will people from other countries be

valued and respected as equals, as fellow children of God, deserving

of all the same rights we, ourselves, treasure?

Under which candidate/party will those of us who "have" be

challenged and asked to sacrifice for the good of those who

"have not?"

JFK's famous remark, "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country"certainly comes closer to the kind of thing we should be asking during an election year. It's far less selfish than Reagan's query, far less materialistic, and it at least hints at the fact that individuals ought to be willing to sacrifice for the good of a larger community. But, for me, even Kennedy's famous quotation is a bit too narrow in its scope for the global and interdependent world we inhabit in 2008. In this age when our neighbor is an Afghani Muslim, our kid's teacher is a German Jew, our family doctor is a Pakistani Hindu, and our business partner is an Irish Catholic, putting our nation above the world and America's children above China's or Iraq's seems both ethnocentric and short-sighted.

As our nation prepares to vote on November 4, my prayer is that people will ask the right questions, questions that look out for the well-being of those Jesus spent most of his time lifting up - the poor, the hungry, the widow, the prisoner, the orphan, and the disenfranchised. We may disagree as to which party or candidate will most effectively lift up the downtrodden or protect the environment, and that's ok. But if we're at least asking the same questions - the compassionate, unselfish, and global questions - we can all have reason to hope that the next four years will be more pleasing to God than the last eight have been.

And as I continue to wrestle with what the Church will look like in the future, I have to believe that we will not shy away from political engagement, even though so many of our parishoners continue to insist erroneously that "Jesus wasn't political." Instead, we must find ways to enter the political fray, asking the questions that reflect Jesus' chief concerns AND behaving in ways that bring him honor and not shame.

I've Been Reimagining Church

2008-09-28T20:05:00.000-07:00

I’ve been reading Frank Viola’s book Reimagining Church, and it has been extremely refreshing, challenging, and affirming. Like so many other thoughtful ecclesiologists, Viola sees the traditional church as way off the track and in trouble. But unlike many of his peers, he sees the heart of the Church’s problem as being structural. Building on some of his points from Pagan Christianity – another extremely worthwhile read - Viola sees the traditional, institutional church as operating out of an American corporate structure, “along the lines of General Motors and Microsoft.” He calls for a more organic, egalitarian community, that is spontaneous, free-flowing, and lay led, just as the 1st century church is described in the New Testament.

I am quite captivated by Viola’s vision and am interested in connecting with anyone out in the blog-o-sphere who has first hand experience in a house church or organic church, particularly if Viola or Milt Rodgriguez were involved in planting it. For people like me, whose church experience is almost entirely traditional, the real life stories of those who have deepened their connection to Christ through alternative communities are extremely important and vital.

I have so many questions about all this and a genuine hunger to connect with those who are experiencing some of what Viola discusses in Reimagining Christianity. Here are a few of my most burning questions:

-Any church planter would operate out of certain principles and convictions about how the emerging community should and should not function. How are these principles and convictions articulated and promoted on the one hand, yet not dogmatized or controlling on the other?

- How does such an emerging community avoid being just another self serving small group? Or, put more positively, how can such a community emerge as missional and other-focused from the get go?

- How do such communities avoid the doctrine trap (or should I say doctrine crap?) that pulls members into divisive arguments over what we believe?

- How long do planters of such communities usually stick around before determining that the community is ready to function and flourish on its own? Is the transition generally a tough one?

As I continue to wrestle with what the Church might look like in the future, I look forward to your responses!

It's Time for a New Word

2008-09-21T19:06:00.000-07:00

It’s time to retire the word “church” and come up with a suitable replacement.

A month or so ago, I delivered a children’s message in our worship service in which I gave everyone – kids and adults alike – a small piece of paper and pencil and gave the congregation a minute to draw the first thing that came to mind when I said the word “church.” All 300 people drew the same thing…a building with a pointy steeple on top.

It’s a sad state of affairs. The truth is that American Christians are no longer capable of distinguishing the New Testament concept of “ekklesia” – the Greek word for gathering – from the bricks, mortar, pews, and steeple of our church buildings. Just last week, I went to my presbytery’s New Church Development Team, the group responsible for supporting start-up churches. I approached them with an idea I have about starting a building-less Christian community. Not only did they not support my idea, but they couldn’t even conceive of a community of Christians not having its own building eventually. I pointed out that Jesus and his disciples never had nor needed a building. In fact, it wasn’t until Constantine made Christianity the official religion of his empire in the 4th century A.D. that there were any church buildings at all. The biblical writers were very clear about the fact that “God does not dwell in temples made by human hands.”

The House Church movement has produced active congregations who meet in each other’s homes, and I know of other vital “alternative” Christian communities who own no real estate. But those who rely on the overloaded, outmoded, building-centered word “church” will often miss the deeper truths of communities seeking to live according to the way of Jesus.

For now, I have begun referring to a “post-church age” which, I hope, will get the conversation going on finding us a new term. Suggestions are welcome on this blog, which is dedicated to thoughtful reflection about what the Church of tomorrow will look like.

God Bless THE WORLD

2008-09-12T19:53:00.000-07:00

This time of year - an election year, that is – it seems that everyone running for office or speaking in support of someone who is, is required to end his/her speech with the same three words: “God bless America.” Am I the only American who is truly bothered by this proverbial tag line?

Now please don’t accuse me of being “unpatriotic” for questioning our addiction to this phrase. I love my country and its good points. I appreciate its history. I have benefited from America’s affluence and opportunity. No, I haven’t “served my country” in terms of the armed forces, nor have I been a P.O.W. in enemy territory. But I have relatives who have and I understand the unique value of that particular form of service to country.

So why, then, do I object so strongly to this phrase? For starters, IF God IS in the business of blessing certain countries - and I’m not sure She is – haven’t Americans been blessed enough already? Rob Bell reminds us in his new book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, that

“America controls nearly 20% of the world’s wealth,” even though we represent “less than 5% of the world’s population…One billion people in the world do not have access to clean water, while the average American uses four hundred to six hundred liters of water every day…More than have the world lives on less than two dollars a day, while the average American teenager spends nearly $150 a week…Americans spend more annually on trash bags than nearly half the world does on all goods…Human history has never witnessed the abundance that we consider normal. America is the wealthiest nation in the history of humanity. We have more resources than any group of people anywhere at any time has had. Ever.” Bell concludes, “God bless America? God has. And we should be very, very grateful.” (Jesus Wants to Save Christians, pgs. 122-3)

So my first reason for wanting to do away with this phrase is that if any nation needs more of God’s blessing, it isn’t America.

Secondly, we live in an increasingly interdependent, global society. Developments in the world economy alone should have taught us by now that we are not really a world of divided, self-determining nations anymore. Instead, we are a network of highly interdependent countries and economies that will stand or fall according to what happens in places half way around the world. Likewise, the military landscape has changed in very similar ways. While there still are a few military superpowers like China, Russia, India, and the U.S., world peace today depends just as much on tiny nations with nuclear and chemical weapons capabilities, not to mention terrorist groups and cells that have no national identity nor connections at all. In such an interdependent, complex web of relationships – economic, military, and other – it is the WORLD that needs God’s presence, wisdom, and blessing, isn’t it? For if the right 'wrong thing' happens in Kuwait or the Georgian Republic, it could be the end of all of us.

Third, aren’t ALL people from ALL nations children of God? Isn’t that what the Bible teaches? Isn’t that what American Christians believe? Or are only some of us God’s children – those with white skin? Blue eyes? Certain beliefs and religious practices? Capitalist economies? Have you ever thought about what it must sound like to a Haitian to hear an American President or resident say, “God Bless America”? Or how would it sound to a famine victim in Ethiopia or a potential genocide victim in Darfur? When you add American foreign policy of the last 60 years and our unwanted intervention in places like Central America and the Middle East, particularly the CIA’s now well-documented attempts to overthrow and destabilize elected leaders who didn’t suit our fancy, claiming or expecting God’s blessing upon our country must seem even more offensive to our foreign neighbors.

And what about global warming and other environmental threats to this planet that we all share? Don’t environmental crises provide us with the ultimate reason to pray for and seek to bless the entire world? We’re all in the same boat when it comes to things like the ozone layer, clean air, safe water, and healthy, sustainable ecosystems. God made the whole darn thing. Do we honestly think that God only wants to bless some of it?

Finally, there is a religious reason we Americans should do away with our favorite phrase with which to end speeches. It’s bad theology. It’s utterly unbiblical. All blessing in the scriptures was bestowed so that the blessed could become a blessing to others. Israel forgot this deep truth from time to time and paid dearly for her forgetfulness. Witness her exiles in Babylon and Persia, not to mention her various occupations at the hands of other foreigners. Biblical blessing is never something to selfishly hoard, nor boast about. It is, instead, a huge responsibility and call to serve one’s fellow humans, especially those outside your borders. The whole trajectory of biblical, salvation history is outward moving. What began as apparent blessing for Israel was always intended to spread to other nations. Everyone in the Old and New Testaments who tried to restrict God’s blessing to their own certain group, tribe, or nation ultimately had to come to terms with God’s love for all people. The big argument in the gospels was whether or not Jesus’ grace was available to Gentiles as well as Jews. Read Peter’s vision on the rooftop in Acts 10. Pay particular attention to his conclusion in verse 34 when he says, “I now realize how true it is that God truly shows no partiality, but accepts people from every nation who revere him and do what is right.” I am completely convinced that if there is a Church that endures and thrives into the future, it will be loyal to God first, the world second, and its own country(ies) third.

So what, then, should our well-intentioned politicians say to end their speeches? Here are a few suggestions:

May God help America live up to her ideals
May all those individuals and nations who are blessed BE a blessing to others
God bless those nations and peoples who need it most
May America BE a blessing
God bless the world

Vertigo: U2 Nails American Culture in the New Millenium

2008-09-10T17:46:00.000-07:00

Vertigo – by U2

Unos, dos, tres, catorce…Turn it up loud, captain!

Lights go down. It's dark. The jungle is your head - Can't rule your heart
I'm feeling so much stronger than I thought
Your eyes are wide and though your soul it can't be bought
your mind can wander

Hello, Hello Hola! I'm at a place called vertigo (Donde esta?)
It's everything I wish I didn't know
Except you give me something I can feel - Feel

The night is full of holes. Those bullets rip the sky of ink with gold.
They twinkle as the boys play rock and roll.
They know that they can't dance. At least they know

I can't stand the beat. I'm asking for the check
Girl with crimson nails has Jesus 'round the neck
Swinging to the music - Swinging to the music. Whoa!

Hello, Hello - Hola! I'm at a place called Vertigo (Donde esta?)
It's everything I wish I didn't know
But you give me something I can feel – Feel.

All this, all this can be yours
All of this, all of this can be yours
All this, all of this can be yours
Just give me what I want and no one gets hurt.

Hello, Hello - Hola! I'm at a place called Vertigo (Donde esta?)
Lights go down and all I know
Is that you give me something I can feel
You're teaching me hoooowwwooww
Your love is teaching me hooowww
How to kneel – knee-eel

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah...
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!

It is no secret that U2 is not only one of the biggest rock bands of all time, but also one of, if not thee, most respected. How often does the lead singer of a rock band receive Time Magazine’s ‘Man of the Year’ award AND get asked to be the keynote speaker at the U.S. President's National Prayer Breakfast? In Bono’s case, these honors had little to do with his singing voice and everything to do with his political voice. By bestowing these high honors on this diminutive Irishman, the people at Time and the White House were acknowledging Bono’s enormous impact on our world, an impact that has political, economic, and moral dimensions.

In the 2005 smash hit “Vertigo,” Bono and the boys unleashed a dizzying barrage of images that captures American culture in the 21st century. The mathematically flawed first line, “One, two, three, fourteen” knocks us off balance, and the rest of the song makes sure we stay that way. (It also made me feel a little better about the D’s I used to get in math!) “The lights go down,” putting us in a “darkness” where the “jungle is your head” that “can’t rule the heart.” In this dizzying darkness, while our “soul can’t be bought,” our “minds can wander.” This opening verse transported me back to a video arcade I used to frequent that was inside a shopping mall. Talk about major sensory overload!

In verse two the rapid-fire images keep coming with “bullets ripping the sky,” creating “holes of ink and gold” that “twinkle.” “Boys play rock and roll” but “can’t dance” to the music they create. As the dizzying whirl of “Vertigo” continues, we begin to sense that the narrator is both attracted to and repulsed by all that is swirling all around him - the thumping “beat,” “asking for the cheque,” a “girl with crimson nails swaying to the music” with “Jesus ‘round her neck.”

Taken together, the first two vertigo-inducing verses create an almost Yeatsian world, where “the center cannot hold” and “the falcon cannot hear the falconer.” (Yeats, “The Second Coming”) The singer himself calls this “everything I wish I didn’t know.” And, to make us even dizzier, Bono calls upon and repeats the universal shriek of nauseous amusement park riders: “Whoa-oh-oh! Whoa-oh-oh!” The last time I took my youth group to Cedar Point and rode the “Magnum Force,” I coughed up that cry, along with some regurgitated elephant ears. By the end of the second verse and chorus, U2 has not only vividly described vertigo, they’ve created an experience of it.

Vertigo is defined as “a condition in which one feels a sensation of whirling or tilting that causes a loss of balance.” Is there a more apt or compelling metaphor for life in the new millennium? The pace of change in our post-modern world is dizzying. Not only can few if any of us keep up with technology, but technology can barely keep up with itself! I got a “new” iBook G-4 last February and am already on my third “new and improved” operating system!

We live at break-neck speed, packing more into a single day than our ancestors did in a week. My older brother recently took a week’s vacation with his wife and asked his in-laws to babysit his 13 and 15-year-old boys. When my brother returned, his father-in-law was passed out on the couch in exhaustion. Once his daughter revived him, he said, “I’ve never worked so hard in my life – driving one boy to soccer, the other to hockey, picking them up from band, getting them their meals at different times and always to go. I haven’t watched a half-hour of T.V. all week! I need a vacation.”

And through all our running, we are bombarded with images – images from billboards, television, advertisements, and the internet. Theologian and cultural critic Leonard Sweet writes, “Postmodern culture is image-driven…Images have replaced words as the primary social currency of the day.” (PMP, pgs 86, 98) The latest video technology allows producers to put hundreds of images in front of us during a single thirty-second commercial. Watch the introductory segment of Sports Center, aired hourly on ESPN, and you’ll be deluged with rapid-fire sports highlights set to music. None of the individual clips woven into the opening SC montage lasts longer than a half a second. But if a picture truly is worth a thousand words, we’ll need a calculator to determine what’s being said to us during a typical thirty-second image barrage on TV. The net effect of this full-on image assault can best be described as vertigo.

But somehow in the disorienting whirlwind of our culture - and of this song - Bono affirms the presence of an anchor, a “You,” who gives him “something (he) I can feel.” And, as is so often the case in the corpus of U2 lyrics, we’re never told who, exactly, this “you” is. Is it the ‘you’ who is swaying to the music? Or is it the ‘you’ who calmed the stormy sea of Galilee? Is it the one who offers us a “peace that passes all understanding,” and who is “our refuge and our strength” even when “the earth gives way and the mountains fall into the sea”? (Philippians 4, Psalm 46)

Whoever Bono’s “you” is in “Vertigo,” he/she has a rival, whose presence emerges in the final third of the song. To highlight the rival’s entrance, the instruments, the tempo, and the volume all drop way down. At the very same moment, Bono alters his voice dramatically so that we can’t help but notice the entrance of another character. Bono drops from a high-pitched, high-intensity yell all the way down to a soft, seductive, almost conversational whisper. And in this new voice, the voice of temptation, we hear, “All of this, all of this can be yours. All of this, all of this can be yours. Just give me what I want and no one gets hurt.”

It’s hard not to recognize in this second voice the echoes of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. In part two of Satan’s three-part temptation, Satan takes Jesus to a high place and shows him “in an instant all the kingdoms of the world.” And at this dizzying and precarious moment, the tempter says, “All of this can be yours, if you bow down and worship me.” (Matthew 3: ) Just as Jesus rejects his tempter in the wilderness, so, too, does the primary voice in “Vertigo.” Instead, Bono chooses the one who gives him “something I (he) can feel,” the one whose love teaches him “how to kneel.”

Bono seems to locate truth and reality in his own experience – something he can feel. In doing so, he speaks for all of post-modernity. Once again, in Postmodern Pilgrims, Sweet notes, “It is one thing to talk about God. It is quite another thing to experience God…In postmodern culture, there is no interest in a ‘second-hand’ God, a God that someone else defines for us…The encounter, the experience is the message.” (PMP, 31 & 43)

In my current role as youth pastor, I have an easier time getting 20 high schoolers to give up a week of their summer vacation to go on a mission trip than I do getting 5 kids to come to a one hour Bible study. Why? Because these kids want something they can feel. They want an experience that is real and their own. They’re not interested in a book that was written thousands of years ago. They’re not interested in someone else’s experience or knowledge of God. They want – they demand - their own. And when they find that genuine feeling, when they find that authentic experience of the Almighty, then and only then will they kneel, bow down, and worship. This hunger for real religious experience is everywhere in “Vertigo,” and that is why U2 concerts not only sell-out in minutes, but they also leave the audience feeling like they’ve had an authentic encounter with the divine. And they have!

For more than 25 years, U2 has managed not to bow down to any of the gods that rock and roll stardom offers. And that refusal to worship other gods is, at least in part, what gives this diminutive Irishman the credibility and the courage to walk boldly into the halls of power with a radical, biblical vision of global justice and to walk out with yet another nation’s commitment to help him achieve that vision.

As I continue to envision what the Church will be like in the future, I have to believe that folks with the boldness and integrity of Bono will lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Author's Note: For more theological reflections on secular rock songs, visit my website at
www.booksand bridges.com

In Search of a New Politics

2008-09-07T19:31:00.000-07:00

Blog Entry #2 – Monday, Sept. 8, 2008 – Faith 4 Tomorrow

One of the things that has made it really difficult for me to be a Christian in the last decade is the American political climate, particularly when a presidential election is at hand. We’ve become such a highly politicized nation, divided into red and blue states, pro-lifers and pro-choicers, proponents of the surge and proponents of troop withdrawl. And to make matters worse, we’ve all used religious language to bolster our various positions, sides, and stands. Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw put it this way in Jesus for President: “One of the things that’s so troubling when Christianity and America become so fused together is that what becomes at stake when things like Iraq happen is not just the reputation of America, but the reputation of what it means to be Christian, because it’s been totally baptized in Christian language and the blessing of God.”

We Christians have been way too quick to claim God’s blessing upon our positions and political views. I’d love to be able to tell you that I have never fallen into this dangerous trap, but I’m just as guilty as everyone else. Say, for example, that I am one of those folks who look at the George W. Bush years as an unmitigated disaster, as the nadir of American history. Say that I happen to believe, as Jim Wallis does, that a right wing fringe of Evangelical Christians has hijacked my faith and turned it into a narrow, two-issue concern, robbing Christianity of its long-standing commitment to fighting poverty, hunger, and all forms of injustice. And then, along comes Barak Obama, preaching a message of hope, of change, and of repairing America’s relationships abroad and our divisions here at home. How easy and tempting it becomes to anoint Obama the candidate for whom “we Christians” must vote. And once we do that, the inevitable next step - for those on my hypothetical side – is to begin to put all our eggs of hope in the Obama basket. We begin to feel that if “our candidate” doesn’t win, all will be lost, and it will be time to move to Canada. And once we’ve taken those mental steps, are we really any different than the Bush Republicans we’ve come to despise, due particularly to their linking of their candidate and party with Christ himself?

The deeper truth and hope for change lies in all of us, in average Americans. It does not lie and cannot lie in our political system, nor even in the outcome of our elections, no matter how high the stakes may seem. Again, Claiborne and Haw are right when they say, in an interview in Relevant Magazine (Sept./Oct.08) “The world is going to change when we begin to change, and when we begin to change our neighborhoods… Figure out how we can vote for the people who Jesus voted for or spent His life with. Let’s vote for the poor. Let’s vote for the immigrant. Let’s vote for the people who are hurting.” Haw concludes, “What is more important than how we vote on November 4 is how we live on November 3 and November 5.”We must never forget that. Never.

As I continue to concern myself with what communities of Christ’s followers will look like in the future, in a post-Church age, I hope I can find a way for those of us who want to be a part of those communities to, on the one hand, be political in the sense that Jesus was political, but on the other hand, not wed ourselves to either side of a system that is, at its root, corrupt and incapable of the transformational change and establishment of justice that we crave in the name and spirit of the one we call Lord. I hope we can find a way to live our politics, whichever side on which they fall, in a way that honors the God who is so much bigger than our small-minded and reductionistic stands.

Envisioning Christianity in a Post-Church Age

2008-09-05T09:07:00.000-07:00

I recently caught Bruce Springsteen’s Magic tour down in Detroit. When he came out onto the totally blackened stage, he screamed, “Is anybody alive out there?…I said, Is anybody alive out there?”For him, that line was an obvious reference to his latest hit, “Radio Nowhere," which asks that very same thing in its oft’ repeated chorus. As a pastor and preacher in a very traditional church, I’ve often wanted to scream that “Radio Nowhere” line from the pulpit. “Is anybody alive out there?”

I’ve never done it…at least not yet. But I’ve always wanted to…because I’ve always wanted to know.

Or have I? I mean, do I really want to know the answer to that question? Can I “handle the truth?” to quote Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men. It’s a scary thing to consider, isn’t it - whether the people to whom I - and countless other pastors - are pouring out our souls week after week are even alive enough to hear what we're saying, much less act upon or be changed by it.

As a pastor, I’ve struggled for years with the life and health of the Church. In so many ways, it seems like this institution with which I’ve always had a love/hate relationship is on life-support. When will it breathe its last breath? I guess it depends on whose predictions you buy into. But I’m pretty convinced that the Church’s last rites will be delivered in my lifetime. (I’m 46, so do the math.)

And so I’ve begun to spend more and more time trying to envision what communities of Christ followers will look like, once the Church, as we’ve always known it, is gone. I’m writing a book called The Way of Jesus: Reforming Communities in Christ’s Image, and I’ve created this blog – faith4tomorrow – because I want to connect with people who are willing to have this difficult but necessary conversation about the impending death of the Church and the nature of the resurrection that I hope will follow it.

Here are some of the questions I’m in the process of asking, questions for which I’d love to hear your answers…

What might Christian communities look like if they are not churches?

What is or should be at the core of a community that seeks to live like Jesus?

Can we even envision a community of Christians that exists without a building – NOT just temporarily without a building but permanently without a building?

What kind of Christian community would genuinely attract the authentically “spiritual but not religious” and others who have written off the Church?

I hope you will join me in this conversation and spread the word to anyone you know who might be interested in such an open-ended, exciting journey. You can learn more about me by visiting my website at www.booksandbridges.com or checking out my previous book, The Gospel According to Rock.