great small group discussion

Been flying through a bunch of books lately, trying to get through as many as possible in anticipation of Avery’s birth next week (if we haven’t had her by next Wednesday, we’re inducing on the 19th). One of the book I just finished was Hugh Halter’s “The Tangible Kingdom.”

Tonight at small group I’m handing out the following excerpt from that book that we’ll read and then discuss together. I also have some discussion questions to go with it.

Enjoy.

| excerpts from The Tangible Kingdom

At a St. Paddy’s Day party in 2005, we had most of the church over to our house. Most were new to faith and to our context; they were used to parties, notwithstanding ours. We drank green beer, ate and just sat around and had a great time. Earlier that day, I was at the ice rink with my daughters and I saw a father of a girl who had joined my daughter’s hockey team. The kids were becoming buddies and I knew Hanna was coming over for the party, so I invited her dad too. I didn’t think he’d come, but he did and as he came in I noticed that he was smuggling in a few beers in a cute fanny pack. I took him outside to where all the soda and beer was stored in ice chests, and he laughed and said, “I brought my own. I figured the church party wouldn’t be doing the normal green beer thing.” Later that night, when I brought out the home brew I’ve been preparing all year, he really came out of his shell and met all the other people who were at the bar doing the taste test.

I’m not sure what definition you use for evangelism, but my favorite has to do with “changing people’s assumptions.” To me, if we can dismantle their stereotypes of Christians as glorified puritans or the Amish who only enjoy the intimacy of sex to make a child and whose only hobbies are doing puzzles together, we’re on our way to helping them see the Kingdom in a new light. That is why having fun, enjoying life and celebrating people, food, wine, art, music and recreation become so critical in seeing friends find God.

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Based on the things Jesus asked us to do and to avoid, I believe that we’d be well served to offer a new perspective on holiness, on that take into account both sides of the equation. Try this out: What if whimsical holiness is simply “being like Jesus…with those Jesus would have been with?” How might this definition of holiness change the way we view people and live our lives?

The issue isn’t so much about how far you can go to “do evangelism.” Its more about whether or not we will enlarge our view of discipleship to include behaving like Jesus did with the types of people Jesus would have always made a priority. You can’t be a follower of Jesus unless you actually follow him. Whimsy is the posture we take that allows people to be themselves. Holiness is that quiet posture that shines through and subversively witnesses to an alternative way to live. Whimsy implies that you can seamlessly interact in the culture with ease, humor, love and holiness without being swayed away from clear biblical boundaries.

The issue is really one of leadership and understanding that avoiding the world is not necessarily the highest form of Christlikeness. Leaders are faced with tough challenges and tensions that they must learn to navigate so that they can model the balance that Christ demonstrated. Rather than extracting people from the world, there is an opportunity for leaders to influence culture and model a new way forward. If the leadership of the church doesn’t show the way, the church will continue to be an irrelevant subculture doomed for extinction.

Questions: 
What do we mean by Christlikeness?
What are “clear” biblical boundaries?
Jesus seemed to live almost completely in gray areas. What were some of them?
What are some of the gray areas in our life?
What would this sort of “whimsical” holiness look like in our lives?

more stolen material

Read this on my friend’s blog and thought it was FANTASTIC.

Ever think about small town firehouses and firefighters as missional entities?
If not, we probably should.
They may be the best metaphor for the church’s responsibility for missional engagement with the community.

When we lived in our old house I would drive by the firehouse in our town everyday to work – there and back. Here are a few things I noticed:

(1) Everyone trusts a firefighter.
There is intrinsic trust and respect. They are viewed by the community has being there to protect the community. They are a friend of the townspeople. When a problem arises people think of them immediately. They care about the safety of people.

[Q]: How can we as followers of Jesus gain the respect and trust from those in the community?

(2) They train their people.
 They undergo hours of required and constant training to help keep their people sharp and informed so that they are prepared to face any emergency.

[Q]: Are we being trained as leaders to be prepared for emergencies – and are we understanding the changes and shifts in culture to be most equipped to be relatable to the culture we are trying to reach?

(3) They train others in the community.
Education is important. Firehouses host classes, teach seminars and post reminders. On the sign out front it would sometimes read March is National Child Safety Month. Come in and we’ll show you how to properly install your child’s car seat. They are equipping people constantly.

[Q]: How are we equipping people to lead and serve effectively where they live, work and play?

(4) They use their facilities to bless the community.
Firehouses are oftentimes the places where emergency shelters are first established in times of great crisis. Numerous times I would drive by and the marquee would read Middle School Dance Friday Night 8 pm or Bingo Night every Thursday.

[Q]: How are our church facilities being used by a variety of people and organizations and groups throughout the week?

(5) They help towns celebrate.
They know how to throw parties. They host elementary school field trips. They sponsor pancake breakfasts and bingo nights. And fourth of July fireworks shows.

[Q]: The Kingdom of God is described by Jesus as a party. Most churches wouldn’t be described that way by outsiders. What parties could we throw? How can we help celebrate with the people in our community?

(6) They are willing to give their lives away for the betterment of other people.
They are always on call – all hours of the night – to provide help when it is needed most.

[Q]: Why isn’t the church viewed this way? What would have to happen for us to be viewed this way?

(7) They fight evil rather than run from it.
The thing a firefighter hates more than anything else is fire…and so therefore he or she rushes towards it, not away from it. He/she wants to do everything in his/her power to stamp it out because it knows its power and the destruction it is capable of causing. (Same with a doctor who hates cancer or a social worker who hates domestic violence. They do what they do not because they like cancer or domestic violence but because they hate it and want to eradicate it.)

[Q]: Do our churches have a posture of running away from evil or moving towards it in order to help stamp it out?

I’m sure there are other elements of firehouses and their missional expressions that the church could learn from.
What else would you add to the list?

Alan Hirsch

Caught this from my friend JR Briggs’ blog. Thought it was excellent:

Last week I was on a teleseminar conference call with Eric Bryant of Mosaic in Los Angeles and Alan Hirsch, missional guru and author of many books including The Forgotten Ways.

Here were a few highlights from the conversation…

Alan mentioned that there is a radical difference between traditional discipleship and missional discipleship.Traditional discipleship is done in the context of a church, usually based around personal morality/personal holiness. But we’ve missed the other half – that of missional discipleship – where we’re concerned about where we’re hanging out and who we are hanging out with, what we’re doing for the poor – where we’re concerned about being Jesus out in the world.

He mentioned that oftentimes we put way too much emphasis on personal morality and we’ve not emphasized where we stand. Great line: “What you see depends upon where you stand.”
Another marker of missional discipleship is a mindset that says its not just about stopping doing things, its about starting new rhythms as well.

Then he asked this great question: What cultural idols tend to disciple us more than Jesus?
That question deserves about a week of my attention.

if you’re not watching…

get on it. This is the best show on TV. It’s not even close. Look, I love The Office, watch 30 Rock and dig me some Tina Fey, really enjoyed the new show Trust Me and I won’t miss Big Love. But this is THE SHOW. If you’re not watching, you’ve got no one to blame but yourself.

Joseph’s Three Stages

Was privileged to have lunch with Mike Breen from St. Thomas-Sheffield in England today. Got to pick his brain with a group of people and really liked what he had to say about Joseph and his stages of development found in the scriptures of Genesis.

1) God has given me all of my gifts and they are mine
2) God has given me all of my gifts and it’s my responsibility to help others. I’ll go do that.
3) I can do nothing apart from God.

He commented that he feels like he oscillates between #2 & #3. I’d have to agree.

hello retirement

So Staunton, Virginia is the place where I’d like to retire. When I retire…I don’t mean to stop working, I mean where I can do exactly what I want, when I want, and not have to worry about income. For instance, my wife and I have talked about buying a small independent movie theater and maybe have a chance running out of it on the weekends. Just think it would be fun as we’re so into movies and I’ve always to have my own business.

Anyways, had the chance to spend about an hour and a half in Staunton yesterday and took two pictures. The first is “The Black Friars”…a Shakespearan theater with ongoing shows. The second is one of the two movie theaters in Staunton that I think is particular cool looking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

thinking about Dr. King

Was reading Greg Boyd’s blog and ran across the experience he had at a dinner where Colin Powell was reflecting on the legacy of Dr. King. Now, I’m not going to say whether his thoughts are right or wrong (I’m leaving reflective space for you), but it was at least interesting and provides for some excellent discussion:

Every year Shelley and I attend the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast with some friends. As you might have expected, there was an excitement in the room this year that was unlike anything we’ve witnessed in the past. Tomorrow we will witness what is undoubtedly the most remarkable achievement of King’s dream as America inaugurates its first non-white president. Colin Powell was the keynote speaker of the event and he delivered a moving (and surprisingly humorous) tribute to King while celebrating Obama’s election as a manifestation of King’s dream coming to fruition. When he finished he received a well deserved standing ovation.

I respect Collin Powell a great deal and appreciated most of what he had to say. But as one who has studied King’s speeches and writings a good bit, I couldn’t help but notice a glaring irony that characterized his entire speech. The very fact that this tribute to King, at this turning point in history, was delivered by a four-star military general was ironic. The fact that Powell illustrated King’s call to “service” by praising America’s soldiers was even more ironic. And the fact that Powell claimed America was a great nation on the basis of the greatness of our soldiers throughout our history was, in my opinion, stunningly ironic. For you see, at the heart of everything King stood for was an unqualified conviction that violence can never achieve a good end that endures.

Taking his cue from Jesus and Ghandi, King insisted, over and over again, that lasting justice and peace can only come about when we resolve to love our enemies rather than retaliate against them. In fact, in some of the speeches King gave before demonstrations, he told this audience he didn’t want anyone participating who harbored hatred in their heart toward their oppressors and who were not willing to commit to non-violence, regardless of what may be done to them. In his speeches and writings (e.g. Stride Toward Freedom) he proclaimed that true freedom can only come when the oppressed care as much about freeing their oppressor as they care about freeing themselves from oppression. The only way forward, King rightly saw, was through self-sacrificial love, even toward – especially toward – our enemies.

The heart of King’s dream wasn’t about racial equality. It was about racial equality only because it was first and foremost about a society in which love prevails and that recognizes the insanity of hatred, oppression and violence. And while America has certainly made important strides toward racial equality – as evidenced by Obama’s presidency – it seems to me that we have not progressed one iota toward the ideal of non-violence. If anything, it seems we’ve gone backwards in recent years on this ideal.

speaking of the church…

Was reading some this morning from Carlo Carretto, the great Italian spiritual writer, and this passage resonated so true with me as someone beginning a new community. I can’t imagine that this isn’t the experience for any follower of Jesus when thinking about the Church:

“How much I must criticize you, my church and yet how much I love you!

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe more to you than to anyone.

I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness.

Never in this world have I seen anything more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face–and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your sure arms.

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.

Then too–where would I go?
To build another church?

But I cannot build one without defects, for they are my defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church.”

What fantastic perspective. He wrote this as one of his final works and it seems to probably be his most mature, measured and humble. As a church planter it speaks to the nature of the fact that what we do, we don’t do in a vacuum. That we don’t do for ourselves or view our community (or at least we cannot) as any better than other churches. As Susan Howatch said, “It is all one.”

more reflections

Working on finishing up “The Holy Longing” today. Here’s a pretty poignant story that I pulled out of it that I’ve been thinking about for the past 24 hours. Essentially, some years ago a woman explained why she didn’t believe in God. Never in her explanation does she mention dogma, morals or rationalizing the existence of God.

“Don’t come talk to me of God, come to my door with religious pamphlets, or ask me whether I’m saved. Hell holds no threat more agonizing than the harsh reality of my own life. I swear to you that the fires of hell seem more inviting than the bone-deep cold of my own life. And don’t talk to me of church. What does the church know of my despair–barricaded behind its stained-glass windows against the likes of me? I once sought repentance and community within your walls, but I saw your God reflected in your faces as you turned away from the likes of me. Forgiveness was never given me. The healing love that I sought was carefully hoarded, reserved for your own kind. So be gone from me and speak no more of God. I’ve seen your God manifest in you and he is a God without compassion. So long as your God withholds the warmth of human touch from me, I shall remain and unbeliever.”

I use the phrase a lot that God has no hands but our hands and no feet but our feet. But this story really puts the statement into a much different reality, doesn’t?

words from Goethe

“Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in ones favor all manner of unseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man coulud have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do or dream you can–begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.”

Goethe