Transform Your Christmas…Give Well

What if you could transform Christmas? Would you?

As Christmas approaches many of us are asking the same questions. We’re no longer interested in the idea of buying for the sake of buying. We’re interested in discovering the redemptive meaning of Christmas.  Are our relationships deepening?  Are we stepping into what it means to love  our neighbor in a restorative way?  Are we giving of ourselves in a way that truly has value?

Americans spend an average of $450 billion on Christmas. That’s 1,485 dollars for every man, woman, and child in America.  And yet are we really experiencing the original meaning of Christmas?  To solve the world’s clean water problem would require only $10 billion dollars.  What that means is the problem is not only solvable, it’s easily within our reach.

We would like to extend an invitation to participate with us this year in transforming Christmas from purchasing and getting to really giving.  Our goal is simple: To transform Christmas by gathering families together and sacrificially purchasing as many wells as we can.

We’re working with Advent Conspiracy and Samaritan’s Purse, an organization that has a long history of working with the poor and oppressed in the world. A well costs about $800 to repair or retrofit.  That’s less than the average spending per American to transform the life of a village. It costs about $2,500 to rehabilitate a non-working well and about $15,000 to drill a large well that serves a large village.

And we’re not asking you to just write a check on top of everything.  We’re asking you to consider working with us as a way of stepping into the deeper meaning of Christmas, a day when love entered the world in a profound way.  We’re asking you to consider giving sacrificially in place of the traditional mad rush of gift giving we typically do.

We’ve also created a brochure to understand what we’re doing, invite friends to participate, dream bigger, and help transform the meaning of Christmas.

Donwload it here.

If you do participate with us, feel free to steal the bug on the right or the banner from this post to spread the word.

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52 to the 48

I wish I had thought of this idea.  It’s things like this that make me realize we can work together. (ht)

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May We Love So Well

(ht)

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Thoughts From The Cohort

Over the last 9 months Jeromy and I have been leading a emergent cohort.  It has been a fascinating exercise in listening and learning.  Both Jeromy and I simply wanted to create a safe space for people to discuss their questions, comments, stories and experiences within the church and in following Jesus.  We wanted to practice a generative dialog.

Creating this space was deeply valuable.  It gave both Jeromy and I the space to work through our own questions, mostly in the car rides to and from the cohort, but also within.  We talked about every possible conversation you could imagine from heaven to hell, salvation to conversion, following Jesus to walking away, and homosexuality to women in pastoral roles.  We explored McLaren, Pagitt, Jones, Scandrette, and many other authors.  It was awesome.

But over the last month or two we began noticing a trend.  People stayed for about 2-3 meetings and then disappeared.  And as much as we loved the conversations, many of the same questions were being asked by everyone.  “What is the point of the group?”  As Jeromy and I wrestled with that question over dinner this past week, we began to really ask if it was simply to ask and answer questions?  Is the point of the group simply dialog and generative conversation?

In the beginning it was.  But now we were no longer sure.

We recognized that the one thing that held us together was this fascinating person called Jesus.  Anything we changed would likely need to center on what it meant to follow in order for us to want to participate on a regular basis.

And as we explored the idea with those in the cohort we saw an idea began to emerge (no pun intended).  What if we as a group explored what it meant to practice following Jesus together.  Each month would essentially be about hearing the stories of the experiments from the previous meeting and exploring the next experiment.

Our first experiment is to practice being love to our neighbor every day until the next cohort, or about 30 days.  We defined “neighbor” as anyone we would come into contact with.  It was simple, brilliant and inspiring. We’re going for tremendous courage and tremendous grace.  If someone sees an opportunity, we’re going for it.  If we fail to remember we’re not beating ourselves over the head.  We’re just living into the life of Jesus for those around us.

I have to admit that the idea got my heart racing: practice love on a daily basis and to do it with people looking for something more?  Big ideas raced through my head at the simplicity of it all.  I was diggin’ the new direction.  This was something I could show up for.

We started a Facebook group if you would like to join us in the experiments.

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True Happiness

In this video, which is a must watch, the guy says, “Everything’s amazing, but nobodies happy.”  That’s a pretty profound statement regarding consumer culture.  It’s kind of one of those obvious statements that when spoken needs little defense.  It’s just so true.

Matthew West sings in his song, Nothing Else.

“Not friends or money or alcohol
None of these things, believe me
You can try them all
Not status
Not success
I know none of these things
will ever bring true happiness”

Why is that?  I was thinking about it and was thinking that none of these things allow our soul to rest.  Stuff doesn’t speak into the deepest questions of the heart, such as who will love me?  It just can’t no matter how much we have.  Stuff doesn’t speak back to us how valuable we are.  It just sits there entertaining us.

What if true happiness rests in the awareness of being loved?  If the love of God is true, then the most fundamental questions of the soul can be put to rest.  And if that is true, no matter where we are, we are then not defined by our circumstances.  I love that.

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What Am I Contributing

Ask yourself today, “What am I contributing?”  It’s so easy to get caught up in a consumer culture and get lost in the mode of taking.  But where are you contributing to the culture, your family, your friends, and the world around you?  It is those people who contribute on a regular basis that make a difference in the world.  It is those people who contribute that we remember.

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The One Thing

Ragamuffin Soul asked a really good question. He asked, “If I Would Only [blank], Then They’d Know I Was A Christian…”

The answers are really good and sometimes hilarious. But what caught my attention is that no one, who was being serious, said, “Know more Bible verses” or “Attend more church.” When it really comes down to it, I think we know what it really comes down to. Of the serious answers, about half came down to follow the leading of the Holy Spirit and love.

I dig that.

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Thoughts From Portland

I love it when I can spend a moment outside of my own element.

Yesterday I got to fly up to Portland, Oregon to spend the day with a long time friend, Chuck Bomar.  Chuck is one of the true pioneers in the church and is the leader of collegeleader.org, a ministry focusing on college age people.  I got to spend the day working with him on ministry development for the next chapter in where he’s going.  It was a lot of fun.  If you’re church doesn’t know Chuck, it should.  He’s got some really big things on the horizon for those reaching out to college age people.

But being in Portland got me really thinking about people.  Portland is such a beautiful and diverse city.  I got to see much of the downtown water district and take in the park by Portland State area.  I was also able to grab a beer at Henry’s, which was cool.

Portland has gotten a lot of attention, some through Rick McKinley’s great work at Imago Dei, and Don Miller’s work.  It has one of the highest youth homeless populations, one of the lowest church participation rates, and one of the highest church start failure rates, all in the country.  It’s known to be very liberal politically and rain a lot, even though it was partly cloudy when I was there. Interesting observations to mull as I was walking through the city.

And as I sat in the midst of this new world, I kept thinking one thing.  These are people just like me.  Everyone I ran into was human.  They may have had a pink streak through their hair or a few more tattoos or piercings, but they walked and talked just like me. Everyone I met was incredibly nice and polite.

It’s easy to assume that those who don’t know God, in a historical or traditional sense, fall into a “them” category.  But they don’t.  Part of what we as followers of Jesus offer is the ability to see the “us”, to see the humanity that we are all part of, that brings us together rather than separates us.  This is what love does.  It builds bridges by focusing on what brings us together. It restores everyone to a living, breathing creation loved by God.  And we are the messengers.

So much love to my friends in Portland.  I hope to see you soon.

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The One Person Challenge

There’s a story of a kid standing on the beach.  Hundreds of starfish have washed ashore and he’s throwing one by one back in.  A man approaches and says, “What are you doing?”

“I’m saving the starfish,” the boy says.

“You’ll never make a difference,” the man says seeing the hundreds left on the beach.

The kid looks at him and says, “Yeah but I’ll make a difference to this one.”

Who is that one person God is calling you to be the presence of love for today?  And if you take the risk how would you do it?

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5 Things We Got Right In The Emerging Missional Church

I posted an article over at Emergent Village.  You can find it here.  Here’s an excerpt.

Mark Twain once said, “The reports of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.” I think this aptly described how I feel about the conversation going on right now about the emerging church. And what tends to stand out to me is the idea that we are in a state of reorganization, or emergence, as a body of Jesus followers.

I’ve really been asking lately what is good about this emergence. Why am I committed to this movement when so many people want to go “post”al, and leave the word, the organization, or the idea behind? To be honest, I’ve actually had some significant relationships affected because I’ve chosen to identify with this movement, much of which sadly was because of the myths associated with it.

And then I read this post by Mark Sayers, which identified “5 Things We Got Wrong in the Emerging Missional Church.” And it’s important to say that Mark is specifically referring to an Australian context and not the American context. But his post allowed me to think about what we got right. Why am I so committed to this idea? And so I wanted to identify five things the emerging church got right. And to be fair, these are simply my observations, but I’m willing to take the risk that these are bigger than me.

Read the rest here.

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I Love Satire

Satire has a way of exposing significant issues.  This video offers the two extremes: the spoiled child and the impoverished child.  I love the comparison.

My wife and I were talking about this and realized that the problem lies on both ends.  Wealth that leads to affluenza, which is another way of saying selfishness, is not the solution.  But lack of wealth, or poverty is not the solution either.

This is why the Gospel makes sense to me.  It calls us to be stewards of what we’ve been given to address poverty, and in the process we get to be love to those around us.

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Order Vs. Chaos

In the movie Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader says to his son Luke, “Join me and we can bring order to the galaxy.”  There have been moments in my life when I have begged God to step and bring order to the universe.  And for some reason He just doesn’t.  He allows the chaos.

When I heard that line it struck me for some reason.  There is something about order that seems to feel right, at least in principle. Order implies the world is working right, that things are aligning and people aren’t hurting each other.  Order implies justice and control over people.  Order feels good because it means you likely won’t hurt me.  It means I can go to the store and not have to worry about getting shot or robbed.  It implies peace to a certain extent.

Yet for some reason God doesn’t choose to establish a controlled order in the universe.  He allows chaos.  He doesn’t take control over everything.  He allows people like Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong-il, and Omar al-Bashir. He allows pain and suffering to occur.

And it is in the face of these people, what could be considered the worst of mankind that we’re left with the same question Darth Vader presents to Luke.  “Join me and we can bring order to this planet.”  Taking these men down seems right.  But in doing so, we’re left with the question of which side we’re joining.  Is control and order really the answer?  Is force really the most restorative pathway?

Because once I join the effort to control, I then approve of its measure.  If I approve of the killing of these people, to remove what seems like the chaos of the universe, I approve of the removal of me the moment I create chaos.  And that line of order becomes entirely subjective on any side.  It can be moved at any time based upon whim and circumstance, or as the men above choose. And what eventually occurs is a culture based in fear, not freedom.  The order that was supposed to happen occurs, if only for a select group of people.  As long as we’re on the good side, we’re safe.  But step over the line and we’re at risk.

And then there is love.  I keep thinking of the moments Jesus is standing in front of Herod and dying on the cross.  He could have assumed control and brought order to the world.  But to do so would be to go against love.  Instead he established a world based in chaos that allows people to harm each other.  But more importantly, he provides the ability to transcend that chaos through love by the power of His Spirit.  It’s a culture based in the exact opposite, in freedom not in fear.

The sad thing is, it’s just easier to live in control than it is in love.  It’s just easier to establish a law that keeps you from stealing from me than it is to practice and teach love, which accomplishes the same measure by choice.  Love is the narrow path.  It requires taking one, or two, or a hundred on the cheek.  But when we do, when we choose love and live in the chaos, we become love.

And that’s what I want to be.

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I Won’t Sin

“And I, I won’t lie. I won’t sin.” – Letters To God, Box Car Racer

I resonate with that line.  It was in many ways an anthem of my childhood life.  When I was young I grew up in a church that told me that growing up meant, “not sinning”.  This mantra had a surprising affect of placing the dominant interest of my life on myself.  I was always worried that I was sinning.  And as wounded as I was from stuff in my life, I was deriving much of my love from others by being the “good” kid.  I truly didn’t want to sin.  I wanted goodness in my life.

“I won’t sin,” has a surprising way of destroying relationships.  It creates a strange paranoia that drove me to wonder if I had done something I shouldn’t.  I was always wondering had I said something or done something when someone gave me a look.  I was in reality a co-dependent, attempting to draw my identity and validation from those around me.  I was needy.

But as I grew older in age something didn’t jibe with what I had been told as a child.  Was life really about not sinning?  Or, could it be something else?  For about ten years I simply walked away from that statement.  Not sinning, simply didn’t work.  And truth be told, I sucked at it. In fact, the harder “I” tried, the worse I became, and the more I proved it out.  I couldn’t.

As I grew older I began to read the research of people like Piaget, Kohlberg and Erikson who suggested a far different interpretation of what maturity is.  Maturity is the ability to think outside the self and recognize the world around us.  It means to grow out of dependence to an interdependence.  Maturity was, in essence, love.  It startled me that scientists from Harvard could come to such a simple conclusion.

But what this means is that the primary assumption actually drove me to the exact opposite of what was intended.  Focusing on the sin created a myopic approach on the problem and not the solution.  I was destined to fail before I ever began.

And so I began to ask, “Is there something to this invitation to love?”  Could my own restoration be wrapped up in beginning to look outside myself?  Love calls us to maturity.  It calls us to the very essence of our humanity, which is to reflect the very nature of God: to love.  And at that moment, I began to see everything different.  The law, which always led to love was not about “not sinning”, but about embracing love as the defining act of my life.

Jesus’ command to love wasn’t just something I had to do, but something I got to do.  And if I followed, my own restoration was at hand.  But to get to love I had to surrender to the reality that I couldn’t.  At 37 that wasn’t hard to do.  I had enough evidence to convict me of my inabilities.  I was a fraud when it came to “not sinning”.

Much of my fear was always derived from the idea that God could not love me unless I was good enough.  But what I now realize is that God’s love is not defined by what I do but by who he is.  And that love was validated by the undeniable evidence of the cross.  This was incredibly good news.  He has never stopped loving me, even when I break myself.  And that left me with the question of whether or not I would accept his love.  Would I allow him to love me?

And when I surrendered to being loved, I realized a startling truth.  Love would change me from the inside.  And the more I received His love the more I could reflect that love to the world around me.  And the cool thing was there was no law against love.  It was extraordinarily perfect.  By loving, I could accomplish the very thing I had attempted to do my whole life.  And this love became my pathway to maturity.

Love called me to step over my obstacles and fight my way through chaos.  It called me to restore my broken heart and broken relationships.  It called me to the best of myself by finding those God was calling me to love.  It called me to be the Good News.

—————————————————–

This post is part of a Synchroblog on maturity.  Below is a list of participants.

Phil Wyman asks Is Maturity Really What I Want?
Lainie Petersen at Headspace with “Watching Daddy Die”
Kathy Escobar at The Carnival in My Head with “what’s inside the bunny?”
John Smulo at JohnSmulo.com
Erin Word at Decompressing Faith with “Long-Wearing Nail Polish and Other Stories”
Beth Patterson at The Virtual Teahouse with “the future is ours to see: crumbling like a mountain”
Bryan Riley at Charis Shalom
Alan Knox at The Assembling of the Church with “Maturity and Education”
KW Leslie at The Evening of Kent
Bethany Stedman at Coffee Klatch with “Moving Towards True Being: The Long Process of Maturity”
Adam Gonnerman at Igneous Quill with “Old Enough to Follow Christ?”
Joe Miller at More Than Cake with “Intentional Relationships for Maturity”
Susan Barnes at A Booklook with “Growing Up”
Tracy Simmons at The Best Parts with “Knowing Him Who is From the Beginning”
Joseph Speranzella at A Tic in the Mind’s Eye with “Spiritual Maturity And The Examination of Conscience”
Sally Coleman at Eternal Echoes
Liz Dyer at Grace Rules with “What I Wish The Church Knew About Spiritual Maturity”
Cobus van Wyngaard at My Contemplations with “post-enlightenment Christians in an unenlightened South Africa”
Steve Hayes at Khanya with “Adult Content”
Ryan Peter at Ryan Peter Blogs and Stuff with “The Foundation For Ministry and Leading”
Susan Barnes talks about Growing Up
Sound and Silence considers Inclusion and Maturity
Kaiblogy with Mature Virtue

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Waiting

What if there really is a value in waiting?

I have a significant event in my life that requires me to wait.  There is absolutely nothing I can do to change the outcome or make it happen any sooner that it will.  I can move no mountain that will affect it in anyway.  I can turn no stone that will make it any easier.  I simply have to wait.

Inside I want the Holy Spirit to move.  I want my Father to makes things the way “I” want them.  I want him to fashion the world in my image.  And I laugh at myself for trying, for wanting what I really would not want.

Waiting asks me to trust.  It asks me to set aside what I think I need for what my Father wants to give me, which has the potential to be infinitely better than I can imagine, and usually is…when I wait.

And if I’m honest, this waiting process feels like dying.  If feels like I’m killing the desire of my heart.  It is requiring me to love in a way that is uncomfortable, to be what I say I am.  I say I stand for love and in this specific instance only waiting will reveal that I do love.  Only when I let go of the outcome will I become love.

And what is surprising to me is that the more I wait, the more I give up what I want, the more I become what I say I want to be.

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A Response To Bill Easum – Part 1.2

This is a second part of my response to Bill Easum’s blogologue with Tony Jones on Emergent Village.  The first part of this response can be found here.  Bill’s original post can be found here.

Bill asked a series of questions for the Emergents.  And I thought I would respond to these questions.  But before I begin I would like to respond to what I mean by Emergent and what this word means to me.  I take it very seriously and have suffered the consequences for the baggage that it holds, most of which I find to be myth. And let me be clear that this is my definition.

Emergent, to me, is a creative attempt to find a wholistic understanding and practice in what it means to follow Jesus into God’s mission. It is an an attempt to get at the heart of what it means to be a broken human in a broken world that is dying for restoration.  This attempt begins with generative conversation, or the willingness to lay aside what we think is right so we can first address the reality that something is just not quite right with this body called the church.  The evidence is now (even as Easum admitted) overwhelming.  The conversation is organic, chaotic, unrestricted, and based in a deep grace and willingness to love.  It is taking a deep look into the existing frameworks we operate in and deconstruct as led by the Holy Spirit.  Some of this deconstruction is occurring in our orthodoxy, some in our orthopraxy, and mostly in our own hearts, or as Peter Rollins says, “believing in the right way.”

Our hope is not to destroy the church, but much like an architect take a deep at the foundations we often take for granted.   Our hope is to remove the dross that leaves us all exhausted and wondering if there is more to the cross.  The risk we take is to trust that no matter how much we get it wrong that truth will win out in the end.  We are attempting to be God’s creativity lived out.  We hold lightly to everything for the sake of abandoning quickly what should never be held.  But we also know that the more we seek, the more we will find, the more we knock, the more the door will open, and the more we ask, the more we will receive.  We step carefully in the footsteps of Jesus with the understanding that the Holy Spirit will reveal His kingdom and restore our soul.

With that being said, Bill asked the following question(s).  My responses are in italics.

Bill: So here’s my question for the Emergents: In a world where so many people are searching for spiritual guidance from so many venues, can you offer to take the position that Christians have to become like them in order to offer the direction they are seeking?

We already are like them.  We’re first human beings created in the image of God.  And we are first called to love them.  And this means sitting with them regardless of their circumstances as human beings created in them.  This willingness to love is God’s distinct aroma.  This love is perfect theology.  It is the outpouring of the Gospel into their lives.  It is to step into the spaces that are broken not for the sake of being heard but to be the space God shows up in the world and changes lives.  We don’t change people.  We simply get to participate in that change as the Holy Spirit moves.

Isn’t the Gospel always counter to the culture?

The original problem in the Garden was death of relationships.  And the world will always choose self-preservation at the expense of relationships over time.  This is our brokenness.  Jesus came to offer the third way, which is to love, empowered by the Holy Spirit.  Our offering to the world is then the willingness to be this love, to speak the value of God’s creation and the willingness to give ourselves for that humanity, even in deep sacrifice.

Do you really believe broken people are going to be satisfied with never being eternally certain about anything?

The promise of the Gospel was not certainty but restoration through faith.  What unfortunately has happened is that we have replaced faith with intellectual certainty, which usually led to arrogance.  The Emergent movement is attempting to find that space of humility again that resides in faith.  And faith is not the end.  Faith led to hope and eventually the realization of love.  And the greatest of these was love.

Do you really think people can have a personal relationship with Jesus when they know all that relationship consists of is the construct of their communal language?

I am always reminded of John 1:1-2 – In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

We begin with the Gospel. But as cognitive human beings we live in language as a way of communicating.  This means in order for us to communicate we have to use words.  And both parties often have different uses for those words. The hard part of this is we often have to deconstruct a lot of lies and destructive baggage that comes with every conversation.  No one is an blank slate. So the only way we can truly communicate is to listen first and then seek to understand as Paul did.  This is generative conversation.  Sometimes is means asking, “What I hear you saying is…”  But in every instance it means holding onto love so we get through the chaos of relationship.

This is why there has been so much confusion about Emergent.  Most people begin with what they think is Emergent, or from what they heard is Emergent, which is usually from sources outside of those who would place themselves in the Emerging conversation.  It is also why this conversation in the blogologue is so important.

Do you really believe that people will believe that words brought Jesus back from the dead?

I don’t know anyone who is saying this, although I could be wrong.  Perhaps I’m missing something.  Although I word also say that God is breath and Word.  So maybe this is how He did it.

Do you really believe you can reach the bulk of the population when you take the conversation as deep as you do?

Some of the best conversations I have ever had have occurred in this deep space.  It is this willingness to go deep where we share intimacy, relationship and trust.  It is the willingness to go deep where love is proved out. Deep is one of the distinct elements of generative conversation because it requires sitting with something without trying to change them.  And this requires releasing change into the hands of the Holy Spirit, where it really belongs.

Or are you really only concerned with appealing to philosophers?

Not really.

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A Generative Space

This quote is from Ikon’s “Queer” service.  It embodies the very space I would like to be part of and participate in.

“But in this room, for the next hour, we lay down these debates to concentrate on the fact that all are welcome at the table and to reaffirm that the only ones who are excluded are those who exclude themselves by not wanting to sit with others, listen to others, learn from others and love others.  We are a community attempting to work out what it means to be open to God, to loving and to being transformed in love and as such, the community is primarily for those who embrace this journey – whether conservative, or liberal, protestant or catholic, theist or atheist, gay or straight.  This is the unity that exists amidst our diversity – this is why we need this place.”

From How Not To Speak of God by Peter Rollins

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The Will To Courage

I finally figured out why I like this commercial.  It’s about courage.

The commercial, which is for Nike, is not the best of what we can be.  It’s not what we typically think of when we think of sports.  It’s not about the glory or the even the victory.

The dominate image in the commercial is the moment when we doubt, when we wonder IF we can.  It also reveals the fear, the moment before someone scores, the moment when we haven’t done it yet.  This is the moment, not of victory, but of courage.  And I believe it is this moment that we need more than the one that follows.

I think of all the great heroes in my life, or in history, and I think about why they are my heroes.  It actually wasn’t because they were always victorious.  It was because they weren’t afraid. I think of Gandhi who was willing to put it all on the line and starve himself to death.  I think of Lincoln who almost lost the soul of the people of America only to regain it with his victory against slavery.  And he gave his life for it.  And I think of Jesus, who could have easily walked from the Garden of Gethsemane left us to our own devices.  But he didn’t. He chose the cross.

I want to be the one who faces my deepest fears, my most notorious enemy, and say, “Screw you.  I am not afraid of you.” I want to be able to rise up to the moment I am called and say, “I will trust you Father.”  I wish for the victory, but I need the courage.  It is in the will to courage that I find my soul.  It is in the will to courage that we find love.

Many of you pointed out that it has a killer (no pun intended) soundtrack to it.  Music has a way of resonating at a level of the soul.  And the line “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier,” speaks of fighting not just for a medal or award but also for our dignity.

PS: I completely forgot to mention my appreciation for all those who helped me with this.  It was very helpful.  Thank you very much.

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A Movement Of People

This is an post I wrote for Emergent Village.

If Jesus stood in front of you and said, “Come follow me,” would you follow? Would you drop everything in the very face of God and become a fisher of men? I’d like to believe I would. These three words have become, for me, a clarion call for what it means to be a Jesus follower. They suggest action, participation, and movement. Something is happening, and I want to be part of it.

I like the idea of being part of something restorative. I want to be part of a movement that reflects the very face of God. I want to be part of something that people walk away from and say, “God was present here.” We see the change that is emerging and know it is good. This is what attracted me to the emerging church conversation. It is asking the question, “How do we find the soul of what God is already doing yesterday and today?”

But historically movements can quickly divide. Not everyone wanted to follow Jesus, or Gandhi, or MLK, even though in hindsight we could see it was good. Not every movement was about positive restoration (see Hitler, Pol Pot, Castro), even though it looked like that in the beginning. For every positive movement, there is an equally negative one to put everything into question.

The tension this creates is substantial. What if we get it wrong? What if we lead people down what we think is the path towards positive change only to discover that we made significant errors in judgment? What of those who have followed us? Important questions to consider and wrestle with. Finding the true soul of a movement is an important task.

And then I read something that for me brought so much clarity to this question. Jenell Paris wrote in a recent blog post the following quote:

“In movements, ideology quickly becomes more important than individuals.”

And in an instant something became very clear to me. It helped me to understand why I am participating in this movement called the emerging church. From my perspective, the emerging church is the first church movement in my lifetime, or recent past, that is not simply about ideology but about people. It’s about restoring the heart of what it means to follow Jesus. It’s about restoring relationship, humanity, and dignity.

Yes, we have to deal with ideology. But central to the emerging movement is the willingness to be in conversation with those who disagree, to engage a dialog that could easily leave both parties running for the exits, but instead challenges both parties to discover the dignity of each participant, which is the very thing most positive movements are fighting for in the first place.

Because what good is a movement of people whose ideology eventually leaves everyone crushed in its wake? What good is it to win an ideological war when no one is left to enjoy its fruits? The very essence of a good ideology is one that leads its people to restoration, to love.

When I look at the words of Jesus, I see a movement of people. And the ideology, the core essence of what that movement believes, must not just be pondered but practiced. Do we really, really love our neighbor as ourselves? When it matters most, in the heat of debate and conversation, will we choose to love first? Will we reveal to those we are in conversation with that they too are just as valuable as we are? And most importantly will we, when called upon, lay down our lives for the other instead of taking one?

When we do that, when we lay down our lives for others, we are a movement whose very ideology is about people. And that’s a movement I want to be a part of.

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The Final Judgment

Imagine for a moment you’ve died. Everything about time shifts and you’re immediately brought into the throne room.  White lights and beauty fill your senses of all that is good.  Everyone you know is there, faces you haven’t seen in years and faces that were by your side throughout the journey.  The crowd is also there, people you don’t know but remember watching your life as it flashed by.

And for the next 80 years you watch your life played out on a giant plasma screen for the world to watch. Some of the moments are beautiful, some are disgusting, some are joyous and some are painful.  And one thing is clearly revealed, a brokenness the seems to infect the crevices of your life.

Your movie ends leaving you stunned.  You close your eyes for a second glad that it is over and then you look to Jesus for a response.  He stares off into the distance as if to ponder the reality of a life that reveals, “Yep, you got most of it wrong…”

You stand there is utter amazement and disgust, wondering how it was possible to spend thousands of hours in Bible study, small groups, prayer, teaching, retreats, conferences, school, and even a degree in Bible and yet it still comes to this moment?  How could you have gotten it wrong?

And just as you begin to turn away, when you think Jesus is ready to be done with you and send you away he says, “And I still love you.”

The question for me is at that moment, do you believe him?  Do you turn around and let him embrace you, or do you walk away, unable to let go of the shame?

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From Perfection To Wholeness

One of the most important discoveries in my journey was the shift from perfection to wholeness.  And as simple as this may seem, these two words are worlds apart.

Perfection, for me, was derived in performance, in doing all the right things.  I spent much of my early years in this things called Christianity trying to be perfect.  But good wasn’t good enough. Perfection becomes a prison of debilitating proportions.  It focuses on what is wrong as opposed to what is right.  It focuses on what is bad as opposed to what is good.  The engine of perfection actually drove me into the ground emotionally because perfection became a standard of impossibility.

Wholeness is different because it is not derived from a particular action or set of actions that I can accomplish.  There’s a tremendous amount of freedom in the search for wholeness.  It’s not dependent on what I do but who I am as a person.  Wholeness focuses on being who I am designed to be, an eikon of Him, a reflection of the One I am cast from.  And from this love I draw my validation, my love.  And it is in being loved that I am made whole again, each day.  I can’t earn that love.  I can only accept it, embrace it, revel in it.

One of the things I have noticed in much of my listening to the story in the Garden is that it’s not declared perfect.  But it is declared good.  There’s a wholeness to that.  God’s original design for humanity was based on wholeness, not perfection.  And that wholeness was always worked out in being who I am designed to be, an partner in His creative endeavors.

And underlining wholeness is love.  First to be loved by my Daddy.  Surprisingly this took a long time to get my head around.  And once I did I realized that I was called to love because that is what I was designed to do.  I was designed to mimic my Father, to be like him, to be His reflection to the world.  And when I chose to love I discovered that perfection followed.

There is only one place I can find that Jesus talks about being perfect.  It’s in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5.  Jesus says,

43“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

And this statement is talking about love.  My wholeness is found in love.  It’s not based on a subjective sets of laws or propositions, a set of beliefs or creeds, but on love.  And when I do that I find His perfection.

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