The Word Missional

I had an interesting thought today about the word, “missional.”  If you type the word in Microsoft Word you’ll notice it gets underlined.  This means Microsoft thinks the word is misspelled or doesn’t exist.  Even in WordPress the word is not recognized.  This likely means the word hasn’t entered out lexicon as a general idea or thought.  It still lives on the fringes.

This really surprised me given our history of war as a human race.  It surprises me that we have never considered the word mission as a way of operating or moving.  It also means that the word can easily be misused, misread, ignored, abused, or treated unkindly.  And in a media saturated age where everything happens at light speed, the word can become passe very quickly.

I think this is because we’re still looking for and understanding what the mission is.  People want to live misisonally but they dont’ know what the mission looks like or how to engage it.  We’re still learning the story and what it means to follow Jesus into God’s mission.  We know how to talk about the right way to live, but we don’t know what it means to live the right way.  We’re good at hearing the word and even memorizing it, but we don’t know yet what it means to live it out.

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The Great Emergence Book Review – 2

This is the second part of a book review, exploring Phyllis Tickle’s, The Great Emergence. Part 1 is here.

Chapter 4 explores the agent of change in the Great Emergence we’re experiencing: science.  She points to Darwin’s theory of evolution and Faraday’s discovery of magnetic fields as the lines of demarcation for peri-Emergence.  I would offer that Tickle’s choice of Darwin is obvious but her choice of Faraday is brilliant.  Without Faraday’s breakthrough’s in electricity, the industrial revolution and the subsequent knowledge and Internet revolution would likely never have occurred, both of which have been pivotal tipping points to the Great Emergence.

Darwin on on the other hand is well known.  His work in biology led to the churches response, ultimately giving us the rise of fundamentalism.  Tickle states:

“That which has held hegemony (assumed leadership), finding itself under attack, always must drop back, re-entrench itself, run up its colors in defiance, and demand that the invaders attack its stronghold on its own terms.”

Sound familiar to anyone who has been attacked for being emergent?

This impact of science also extended to Freud and Jung in psychology, shedding light on the collective unconscious, asking what it really means to be human.  It was further pushed along by the radio and television, which propelled Joseph Campbell’s work to challenge some of the central themes of fundamentalism.

“A challenge that would have been rejected by believers as clerical heresy had it been delivered from the pulpit was now being listened to and thought about and talked about around water coolers and over backyard fences.”

The radio and eventually television allowed people to process valuable ideas and information in the comfort of their own home, as opposed to the “sacrosanct” space under the watchful eye of smarter people and religious leaders.  This served to fuel the collective imagination, freeing people to think and process ideas that were once off limits.

These freedoms eventually led to the cognitive sciences.  People began to ask:

“What are we/what am I?  Is there even such a thing as the ‘self’? … More to the point, how can ‘I’ be held responsible for anything anywhere anytime?”

This collective questioning then as Tickle states, reasserts “the same central question: Where, now, is authority?”  The process of reforming is then under the new authority established over time in the new expressions of religion.

Chapter 5 is the longest and by far my favorite chapter and essentially continues chapter 4.  It explores the central tipping points of the last 100 years, each seeming to build on each other.  It begins with Einstein’s special theory of relativity on, which then led to Heisenberg’s theory of uncertainty.  Heisenberg’s theory suggested that the act of observing something changes that very thing.  This called into question any notion of fact because the scientist observing fact is always changing the very thing he is observing.  Now apply this principle to the Bible and everyone gets scared.

“Enter the battle of The Book.  Enter the warriors, both human and inanimate, who will hack the already wounded body of Sola Scriptura into buriable pieces,” Tickle states.

This theory led Reimarus to ask if the Jesus of Western History is the same Jesus of the Nazareth.  This question spurred on the work of Crosson, Borg, and Pagels in the Jesus Seminar.

I find Tickles words fascinating here.  She says,

“Literalism based on inerrancy could not survive the blow (though is would die a slow and painful death); and without inerrancy-based literalism, the divine authority of the Scripture was decentralized, subject to caprices of human interpretation, turned into some kind of pick-and-choose bazaar for skillful hagglers.  Where now is our authority?“

This question of authority pervades the book.  It almost feels like a grand theme invading history. But Tickle offers the first possible insight into this question in Pentacostalism, which relied on the leading of the Holy Spirit.  “Here is our authority,” Pentacostalism suggests.  This shift even comes at the expense of the authority of Sola Scriptura and pastors.

It was also interesting to hear how the automobile, Marxism, and AA significantly affected the role of the grandmothers as a defining force in the family and the pastor as a guiding force for leadership.  I was also really surprised but impressed that Tickle included the drug culture as a force in culture and on our perceptions on what is consciousness.

Tickle also tackles the issues that have given significant blows to the concept of Sola Scriptura.  These include slavery, women’s rights, divorce, women’s ordination, and gay rights.  She says,

“When it is all resolved-and it most surely will be-the Reformation’s understanding of Scripture as it had been taught by Protestantism for almost five centuries will be dead.  That is not to say that Scripture as the base of authority will be dead.  Rather it is to say that what the Protestant tradition has taught about the nature of that authority will be either dead or in mortal need of reconfiguration.”

That is a million dollar statement if true.  And remember, Tickle is a staunch Calvinist and 65 years old.  But it is the following sentences that caught me as just as important, for it is the reaction to this statement that we will likely experience in strong measure.  She says,

“And that kind of summation is agonizing for the surrounding culture in general.  In particular, it is agonizing for the individual lives that have been built upon it.  Such an ending is to be staved off with every means available and resisted with every bit of energy that can be mustered.”

I know people who are going through this and to watch it is sad to watch.

Tickle does agree that there are many concepts she does not or cannot touch that were significant in leading up to the Great Emergence.  The ones I believe were deeply significant that she did not touch on include the shift from agrarian culture to industrial culture (an outcome of Faraday’s work).  This shift took the father out of the home as a dominant force in the family.  Tickle does mention the loss of the mother with the advent of the pill, but misses the first shift that took place some 100 years earlier.  I was also surprised she didn’t mention the assassination of the Kennedy’s or MLK as watershed moments in emergence.  These three assassinations were reasonably considered some of the defining moments of my parents (and Tickle’s) generation.  The third event I would have highlighted was the Vietnam War.  This was the first time an large portion of a generation rebelled against their parents for reasons of trust, and in a way that was broadcast in the media.  The affects of it were revolutionary to say the least, causing a radical divergence (or emergence) in thinking from one generation to the next.

Section 3 – Where Is It Going?

One of the things I appreciate about Tickle’s approach is that she is humble in her approach to being a prophet.  But she does use existing developments to begin reading the “tea leaves” of where the church is going.

Chapter 6 explores the history of moments that gave the reformation its name and asks the same questions about the Great Emergence, suggesting there has yet to be such a catalyzing event such as the Protestatio.

I would only suggest that the events surrounding the Young Leaders Network explored in The New Christians will eventually be considered such a shifting event.  Out of this rose important people (McLaren, Kimball, Pagitt, Jones) who could began to wrestle with what was emerging and what it meant to emerge.

Tickle continues with the issue of definitions, exploring what the potential distinctions are and wrestling with the generous orthodoxy and overlapping nature of these distinctions.  Most, I would imagine find thesmelves in more than one box.  She even says,

“And so it goes–semi-permeable lines of division that mean to suggest places on a spectrum rather than absolute boundaries.”

I kept thinking of McLaren’s Generous Orthodoxy and the mashup of music that occurred over the last twenty years.  Good things came out of learning from each other and expressing it in creative ways. But the cost of this is also the purity that is derived from the original form and tradition.  And some are just simply not going to like or agree with this.

Tickle clarifies the distinctions of orthodoxy and especially orthopraxy, calling it, “(An) emphasis on (correct) religious action.”  I was struck by the notion of the tediousness she placed on orthopraxy.  It kind of struck me as odd.  But I also get that.  Orthopraxy, in a religious sense can feel tedious.  I think this is why I prefer Rollin’s understanding of “believing in the right way.”  The emphasis isn’t on the specific action, which can become an unnecessary burden in itself, but instead on the heart and motive of the action.  To me, love and trust are the central motives, not just actions of the Gospel, and thus are not specific religious constructs in that sense.

For Tickle, and I would share this, the Great Emergence is blurring the lines between the traditional categories we place ourselves in, which also find their identity in specific and historical, orthodox opinions and practices.

I also appreciated how Tickle brought out the shift from rural to urban living as playing a large part in this blurring of the lines of religious conversation.  The move from isolation in the outer areas to the city where people live on top of each other, shifted the conversation and took religion to the watercooler.  She explores how this conversation created a center of communication and thought.

“American religion had never had a center before, primarily because it was basically Protestant in its Christianity; and Protestantism, with its hallmark characteristic of divisiveness, has never had a center.  Now one was emerging, but that was emerging was no longer Protestant.”

Tickle then explored what came out of these conversations: the emerging expressions of people gathered together in conversation.  She says,

“All however share on shining characteristic: they are incarnational.  Not only is Jesus of Nazareth incarnate God, but Christian worship must incarnate as well.”

I deeply appreciated this and have stated so here.  She continues,

“There is enormous energy in centripetal force, especially as it gathers more and more of its own kind into itself.   Centripetal force, though, is usually envision by us as running downward, like the water in a bathtub drain.  The gathering force of the new Christianity did the opposite.  it ran upward and poured itself out, like some bursting geyser, in expanding waves of influence and nourishment.   Where once the corners had met, now there was a swirling center, its centripetal force racing from quadrant to quadrant in ever-widening circles, picking up ideas and people from each, sweeping them into the center, mixing them there, and then spewing them forth into a new way of being Christian, into a new way of being church.”

This one paragraph so aptly states the nature of the emerging movement. The backlash to this was that the purists (Tickle’s word, and for lack of a better term) of each camp would resist all change.  But Tickle suggests that this reaction is actually good for everyone involved acting as sort of a ballast so the “boat” doesn’t tip over.  She suggest change is good but only so much and over time.

I liked this idea and agree with it.  The conversations I have had with my friends who argue vehemently against the emerging church have been good for me.  They have allowed, even required, me to question my own thoughts and intentions and come to some great conclusions.

Tickle also explores the new expressions of the traditional movements.  These include traditionalists, re-traditionalists, progressives, and hyphenateds.  Each serves a valuable purpose in the four original quadrants. I particularly liked the metaphors she used to describe each expression, which I leave to those who read the book.

Chapter 7 reiterates the basis for all transformation is the question, “Where is the authority?”  It explores the new abstracts that emerge in the Great Emergence: orthonomy and theonomy. These terms describe the tension between the left and right camps to answer the ultimate question.

Where we are going is thus answered in the expression of where the authority lies.  Will it include Sola Scriptura in modified form?  Will in be subject to the influences of community?  Tickle also offers the idea of crowd sourcing to explain why conversation is so important.  But within this idea lies a brilliant analysis.  What is appears she is saying is that the ultimate question will be answered not by one source but by a conglomeration of sources (Scripture, community, Holy Spirit, circumstance, priesthood), all designed to keep authority from being aggregated and controlled by a small group of people.  This will not sit well with some people.

What is interesting is that Tickle seems to suggest that the Quakers had it right all along, willing to be open to multiple forms of authority and community context all along.  This fascinated me.  She also looked briefly into the history of Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel (which I attended in the 80’s) and Wimber’s Vineyard fellowship, highlighting the tensions with emergence in the former and the embracing of emergence in the latter.  She credits Wimber with the rally cry of “authenticity”.

Tickle does touch on center sets and bounded sets, narrative theology and Constantine’s impact on the Hellenization of Christianity, and our revisiting of key elements of doctrine and theology, but her mentions are only brief if well thought out.  She concludes with a statement that I found fascinating.  She said,

“If in pursuing this line of exegesis, the Great Emergence really does what most of its observers think it will, it will rewrite Christian theology-and thereby North American culture-into something far more Jewish, more paradoxical, more narrative, and more mystical that anything the Church has had for the last seventeen or eighteen hundred years.”

How you feel about this statement will likely coincide with how you feel about the Great Emergence itself.

Conclusion: I cannot overstate the importance of this book on the church.  It’s a simple, elegant book that takes about four hours to read, but will give those looking for a clear understanding of the history and complexity behind emergence a big piece of the puzzle.

You can also continue the conversation with Tickle and many others at The Great Emergence conference.

Well done Phyllis.

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The Word Emergent

There is a big question right now about words.  What do we do with words?

I love what George Carlin said about words.  It expresses so much insight into this thing we do with words.  He said,

“I love words.  I thank you for hearing my words.  I want to tell you something about words that I think is important.  I say they are my work, my play, they are my passion.  Words are all we have really.  We have thought but thoughts are fluid. Weweeeemmmwehemmsmarumpeedump.  But then we assign a word to a thought.  Dink.  And we’re stuck with the word for that thought.  So be careful with words.”  George Carlin

And the question is, “Do we abandon a word?”  And the reasons are many.  The word has become overused.  It has lost its original meaning.  It’s become attached to a myth that it can’t seem to shed.  We’re tired of saying it.  All of which are good reasons to ponder.  But are these really good reasons to abandon the original word?  And what is the cost of abandoning the word?

I would first ask if we have a better word to substitute what we are abandoning?  I get clarifying and being crystal clear about what we say.  It’s helpful.  But do we have something to replace it with, something more clarifying, more informative to the original idea?  Because if we lose the original word and don’t replace it with something, we lose the ability to have or continue a meaningful conversation about a thought or idea.

Abandoning the word then has the capacity to exacerbate the problems we hoped to solve in the first place.  Misunderstanding and myth become the norm rather than the exception because we have no way to talk about it.

“You know that thing?”

“What thing? You mean THAT thing?”

“No this thing!”

“But that thing is this thing.  Isn’t it?”

“For you it is, but not for me.”

“Say what?”

Life can easily resemble an Abbott and Costello routine.

I would then ask if we have moved past the original idea because something more meaningful has replaced it?  Have we, as Brother Maynard asks, “Emerged.”  And to what?  I personally think we haven’t yet.  We’ve simply grown tired of the space we are currently in.  We’ve grown tired of the cocoon we’ve been living in for some time now.  But I do think something is coming.

If we abandon the word, does that mean the word has lost its meaning or that we don’t want to work through the conflict (see #5) anymore.  I really get this tension.  Words have costs to our lives.  Misunderstanding is often harder to redeem than if no words had been said at all.  But I would offer that this leaves us in no better position.  It simple abandons our ability to have a thoughtful and generative conversation about what we originally assumed and hoped was a meaningful conversation.  It also leaves those are just beginning the conversation behind.

I keep coming back to John 1:1, which seems to echo Carlin in some ways.  “In the beginning was the word.” And I love words.

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A Response To Bill Easum – Part 1

Bill Easum and Tony Jones are participating in a blogologue about the emerging church this month over at Emergent Village. I think this will likely be one of the more important dialogs for people to listen to regarding the Emerging Church movement.  Much love to Bill for engaging that dialog with Tony.

The purpose of the blogologue can be found, in the words of Steve Knight,

“So we contacted Bill and asked him if he’d be willing to participated in a little “blogologue” (short for “blog dialogue”) with Tony Jones, discussing the questions/issues Bill has raised with Emergent. He quickly responded, Yes, and so here we are.

Easum’s first post can be found here.  It is interesting to read a clear and concise perspective from someone who sees himself outside of an Emergent perspective and looking in.  He makes a a surprising observation that I found fascinating and a few assumptions about Emergent that I didn’t agree with.

Easum’s New Metaphor: Easum offered a new metaphor for understanding the transition that I thought was brilliant.  He essentially calls the modern world the National Park and the postmodern world a Jungle.  I think this metaphor is one of the best I’ve seen.  One suggests control while the other is wild and free.  The first thing that came to mind when I read this is that as much as we want a National Park to live in, in doing so we inevitably tame God and lock Him up in a cage for people to gawk at.  He becomes something we study, dissect, make assumptions about but inevitably think we control.  The jungle metaphor appealed to me because God was likely around the next tree waiting to pounce on me like Aslan.  He isn’t safe but He is good.

But this loss of control means letting go of some of our historical assumptions about the way we operate and engage mission.  We’ve been a National Park for way too looooooooooong.  But to simply live in a jungle after operating that way for centuries is very hard to do.  Easum’s metaphor hopefully will make that transition easier.

Easum’s View Of Emergent’s Message: Easum offers an interesting view of what he thinks Emergents think. He says,

“Emergents will speak with passion and urgency but never with certainty. To them there is no certainty, only what one believes today, at this moment, in this locale.”

I think a better way to describe this is that Emergents are aware of our own limitations as human beings.  Our own brokenness affects the very information we receive and perceive.  We recognize that we live in language, are cognitive beings and that what we think today is based on limited information.  This awareness leads to faith, which is holding onto the idea that God is really in control (a jungle) and to step away from trying to control the message (the National Park).  The problem isn’t that truth exists but that certainty closes us down to learning and humility.

Easum also asks an important question.

“Is the message of the Gospel actual reality and eternally true, or is it nothing more than a construct of our own language within the community of faith at this particular time in history in this particular place with this particular community?”

Answering this question, I would hold, is central to understanding a postmodern, even an Emergent faith.  That there is “no truth” is one of the great myths about the Emerging church movement.  The answer is, “Yes, there is a truth.”

But the problem is that own humanity significantly taints that truth because we are cognitive and perceptual human beings.  We were never meant to “judge” on our own.  We were always designed to be in relationship with our Creator, as in the Garden State.  The Tree of Knowledge was a judgment process.  Humans became, “like one of us.”  This wasn’t a good thing because humanity trusted in its own capacity to judge effectively.  And we sucked at it.

The problem isn’t when we get it right, as in the disciples following Jesus.  The problem is when we get it wrong, as in the Pharisees, the very one’s who were certain, who couldn’t see God standing in front of them.  The Emergent movement and the postmodern world is coming to terms with that reality.  We’re humans who filter truth.

History has been an unkind teacher in some ways.  She has unfortunately revealed us when, where, and how we got it wrong. The Internet has allowed us to speed up that conversation, connect with like minds and discuss these issues.  Blogs have allowed us to process new ideas, alternatives and possible new scenarios in lighting speed.  What took ages before now takes minutes.  And for some this shift seems disconcerting because they are not used to such a seismic shift.  The truth is that we don’t live in an Intel 386 world anymore.

What is ironic about this whole point is that Emergents are the ones who are leading the conversation about coming to terms with our own humanity.  This process of admitting our own limitations is essentially repentance and it is central to our own restoration as followers of Jesus.

Relativism: Bill comes very close, but to his credit doesn’t cross, the common excuse of pulling the relativism card.  The temptation within this dialog is to simply excuse those in the Emergents as relativists, a cheap move from my perspective.  It dismisses any further dialog because it excuses the other party from having to continue.  But I would offer Bill that what is relative is not the truth but our perception of the truth.  The evidence of this is obvious in science and in history, but apparently not in the church.

The evidence of this can be found in the points Bill is making.  His judgments of the Emerging movement don’t resonate with me.  Are they true?  Yes, in that they are his judgments.  Yet, they are not true for me because I don’t share his conclusions.  Does that make us relative?  No.  It makes us human.

Easum on Methods: Bill does share a concern for how we move forward.  He says,

“I agree with the authors that we can’t come on to postmoderns like gangbusters with an elitist attitude as if we have THE truth. I agree with them that the four spiritual laws no longer work. I agree with them that if we lead from the big story we are dead in the water. I agree with them (and with Frank Viola) that the distinction between clergy and laity is not biblical and shouldn’t exist. I agree with them that the new world sees everything in shades of gray.”

But he also says,

“But I do not agree that Christians must feel they have to be two steps removed from the reality of the Gospel in order to reach this new world. In fact, I think it is just the opposite. The clearer a leader is about the reality of Gospel and the direction of their calling, the more likely that person is to lead a growing and thriving community of faith.”

And this is where I see Easum perpetuating the myth that we are removed from the Gospel or that we don’t hold a Gospel.  In fact, my wife and I have come to the conclusion that much of the dialog within the Emerging church movement is simply asking for a more wholistic approach to following Jesus and being the church…because we’re tired of this thing we grew up with called, “doing church”.  We’re tried of simply being passive observers in the Christendom food chain.

To say that there hasn’t been problems in the past is to ignore the reality of the issues we face today.  We are in this space because the church has ignored the road it went down.  When more than 12 million people have left the church but not God the problem simply can’t be ignored.

Easum on New Organization: Bill states one thing that I found very sad because when I read it, it seems like a shout from the cheap seats.  If he wants to be honest in the dialog, I would suggest he lose this conception.  He says,

“They don’t even believe in planting churches in order to reach more people, nor do they believe in doing things to get people to come to their church. They plant churches only to save themselves, whatever that means.”

Again this is a myth.  I personally know people who are taking very serious looks at what it means to be the church and organize around following Jesus into mission.  The experimentation phase is just beginning.  And many of these ideas are still in the birth, or even the infant stage.  To say they don’t produce fruit yet is natural, but to say they don’t exist is to perpetuate a lie.  And these ideas likely won’t look what we have right now and thus the myth will continue to be perpetuated. This leaves us in the Emerging church movement the task of coming up with clear, creative alternatives and seeing them to maturity.  Nice.

Easum ends this section with a surprisingly honest assessment of where the church is at.  He says,

“The Emergent movement is providing a marvelous conversation for all of us. They have revealed the naked truth—the emperor has no clothes. The established Christian church is basically dead and in need of A Second Resurrection.”

This is from a man who has spent his life studying the church.  Right on Bill.

Bill does ask a series of question for the Emergents, which I will answer in the next post.

Much love to Bill for beginning a great dialog and I can’t wait to hear Tony’s response.

PS: Both Bill and Steve Knight responded in regard to my comments regarding what is essentially Tony’s quote from his book.  I have responded in the comments that I got the context for this quote wrong, but I don’t like to edit original posts even when I get it wrong.

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Deconstructing Doctrine

People slam the emerging church for not holding to objective truth (which is simply not true by the way), but is this even possible?  Is it possible as limited human beings to discover the entirety of objective truth?

I ask because this article is interesting regarding the state of the church (ht). But a line in the article caught my attention.

“The survey, widely promoted as an authoritative overview of religious values in the U.S., found that Americans believe deeply in God. But when it comes to doctrine, Americans are strikingly flexible.“

Authoritative? Ed Stetzer questioned that assessment.

But it was really the second part that caught my attention.  It seems no matter how much we want to proclaim a single Gospel, which I would hold there is, people just don’t seem to be able to find it.  It appears that the basis for “doctrine” is not as easy to find as we think. People just keep getting in the way. ;-P

This is why I tend to sigh when someone says, “We just need to preach a Biblical Gospel.”  And the inevitable question that follows, join with me now, “Whose interpretation of the Gospel?”

The reality is that as human beings we insert ourselves into the Gospel because we have to interpret the Gospel.  And this means no two people can understand it the same way.  Two people may be similar, but with time there is always going to be disagreement.

And I’m not saying that the Gospel isn’t knowable or that human beings aren’t able to come to conclusions.  God calls us to know Him.  In God we find our own image.  But the basis for doctrine in a human world eventually leads to a subjective understanding of it because as limited human beings we apply a subjective understanding to an objective truth.  And this is why there are thousands of denominations, belief sets, interpretations and eventually arguments.

And this situation is likely to increase rather than decline.  With a wired world, chances are people are Googling what their pastor says…during the service.  And the lens with which they see the evidence will shape the conclusion they make.  Disagreement is the norm.

The author of the article states,

Also, is it even possible, in the age of Google, to clamp a lid on spiritual exploration? Americans are accustomed to second-guessing their doctors, their financial advisers and their daily newspaper by researching topics online. “So why should they trust their eternal existence to the clergy?”

Do we really want to clamp down on spiritual exploration?  Or is the real concern we don’t want people to think differently than us, which is the inevitable.  Truth was only possible through the wisdom of the Holy Spirit.  And what this means is that I am called to constantly shed (dare I say deconstruct) my interpretation of the Gospel in favor of what the Holy Spirit is leading me to.

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Emerging Missional Converts

Mark Driscoll is at it again.

He essentially challenged the idea that Emerging or Missional Communities have converts. This dialog originated when Mark Driscoll made the following quote,

“And all the nonsense of emerging, and Emergent, and new monastic communities, and, you know, all of these various kinds of ridiculous conversations – I’ll tell you as one on the inside, they don’t have converts. The silly little myth, the naked emperor is this: they will tell you it’s all about being in culture to reach lost people, and they’re not.”

David Fitch followed up with a really great response that essentially said, “Yes it is harder to develop a missional community but we actually have more converts based on size.”

I would offer that emerging and/or missional communities actually have A LOT more converts but not the kind of converts you would typically think. And here’s what I mean.

A couple of days ago I stopped by Kathy Escobar’s site because the woman knows how to speak it. And she presented a rather interesting, but condensed chart from this guy. It charted six stages of spiritual growth. I found it interesting but what stuck out to me was that there were essentially two macro stages to his process. The church stage and the following Jesus stage. And the guy was very astute to put a wall right in between the two. I also suggested that discipleship really begins after the wall.

And here’s where I would offer that the emerging/missional communities actually have more converts to the second category because we focus almost exclusively on the second category. When we have a convert, we typically begin with following Jesus into His mission, into participating into the restoration process started so long ago. Postmodern expressions (emerging/missional) aren’t interested in passive experiences that are fake. We’re interested in what’s real. When we invite someone to faith, it’s in practicing love and trust, not in saying the sinner’s prayer that they will forget in a couple of weeks. We’re not interesting in knowing ABOUT God. We’re interested in knowing God.

When we started the original group for Thrive we we’re all rubbing up against the wall and were not finding a way out. We were essentially sick of organized Bible studies, memorizing the right answers, and sitting in the pews on Sunday with blank stares on our faces wondering what we would have for lunch. We wanted to follow Jesus. And yet there was very little if any practical methodologies to do so within our church, nor any of the ten churches in our local area that we had all hopped from over the last couple of years.

You see it’s easy to get converts into the first category. It’s what most churches do because it doesn’t require much more than a well developed four point theology that convicts someone (re: guilts them in) to participating in a Sunday community. It’s easy to systematized, compartmentalize and even create a factory for the process. Is it well meaning? I would assume so, and would even hope so. But does it produce followers? I have my serious reservations.

The second category requires dealing with people’s bullshit, which are the lies that we tell ourselves so we can avoid our brokenness. And this requires love. It requires community in mission. It requires getting messy and crossing over, or even going through the wall. In Thrive groups we call this crossing the bridge of chaos, because dealing with our brokenness means looking at the lies we tell ourselves and the wounds we have accumulated…so we can let them go. It means dealing with fear and taking steps of trust in a God we can’t alway see. It means participating in His restoration process for our own lives, in being loved so we can love. And we don’t like to do that do we. Yet THIS is what it meant to follow Jesus.

To me I’d take ten converts to following Jesus over 100 people saying an organized prayer and then sitting passively in a pew listening to Mark Driscoll. But then again that’s just me.

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It’s The End Of The Church As We Know It

Leave it to REM to give voice to a revolution.

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Builders vs. Busters

In this video presentation by Reggie McNeal, which is a must watch when you have the time, he has a section at 14:00 in which he begins a dialog about the builders generation. This is the generation born after 1927. And in his dialog, he shares a conversation he had with this generation, Their thoughts were, “Everything was going to hell.”

But he captures something that has not always been obvious about the tension between the two generations: builders and busters. The builders build, and the busters bust it up. We’re seeing this before our eyes in the traditional vs the emerging church.

And Reggie shares,

“They’re mad. And they’re mad as hell, because the culture that they thought was screwed into place, nailed down, glued tight. They thought they had this sucker nailed. And now the whole place has come undone. The Huns just aren’t at the gate, their inside running the joint…And what builders are struggling with is loss, massive loss. They are grieving. And as you know anger is one part of the great grief cycle.. They come to church as the last place in America…and you start messing with that.”

I can imagine what deconstruction feels like but I’m on a different train.

He does offer a powerful alternative. He suggest shifting from loss to legacy. And the idea of this is for the builders to get back out there and participated in missional projects. Lead the way. Our generation is waiting for this to happen but we can’t make it happen. The builders need to make this step on their own.

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The Non-Religious Spiritual Affiliation

One of the things I’ve noticed recently is what I would call the non-religious spiritual affiliation. I’m sure that it’s not new but I’ve been noticing it a lot more lately. It feels like a backlash to the problem that we all have. In such a consumeristic, media driven society, not tag-line or distinction is safe.

The author Donald Miller was the first time I recognized someone tweaking the basic idea. I remember reading his now famous for tag line, “Nonreligious thoughts on Christian Spirituality,” and thinking, I like that.

And then I was reading the site dear-god.net recently and saw this at the end.

“Disclaimer: This website is totally independent and non-denominational. We are not a religious or spiritual/new-age organization. We have no affiliation or relationship to any church or religious or spiritual group or organization.” (From Dear-God.net)

Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now and A New Earth, is famous for positioning his books in this manner. He says,

“Eckhart Tolle is a contemporary spiritual teacher who is not aligned with any particular religion or tradition.”

What do you make of this?

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The Real Question

One of the assumptions we make is that our relationships are defined by beliefs. And this is true to an extent. Much of the tension we experience in relationships is the idea that we must share the Gospel, which over time has been narrowly defined by a single moment of acceptance of faith in Jesus that secures their eternal salvation. And so when we meet someone new, we encounter moments that offer us an opportunity to share the Gospel.

I meet so many people who have such a sense of shame around these brief moments. “I didn’t share the Gospel with them. I’m not living my faith.” As though our relationships becomes defined by this ticket punch.

Much of the tension exists in the assumption that the person we encounter has little or even no knowledge of Jesus. But if we listen, we will likely find this is not true. Most people are aware of who Jesus is. Even in Jewish, Islamic, and Buddhist cultures, Jesus is revered for being an Avatar or prophet. Some might even have an deep understanding of the Gospel.

And even when we share the Gospel story, we’re left with the real question. If this person says, “No,” for whatever reason, will we still choose to love them? Will we still share the Gospel with them? Will we still be love, which is the fullest reflection of Jesus and the call to mission? Or, will will simply treat the person as a transaction that is defined by our duty to get them into heaven? Because real evangelism happens after they say no.

In a postmodern world, they will likely say no until they see the reality of the Gospel in our lives. They are likely reject the Gospel because they want to see if it is “true” in our lives. We can’t hide behind a plastic, intellectual faith that ceases to produce fruit. We must share the Gospel by suffering with them, sharing in their pain, and brokenness. And this is only possible in love.

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Moby Sure Sounds Emergent

Moby has a new album Last Night out which I haven’t heard yet, so I was listening to Play. Too many good songs on one album. In looking Moby up I found this,

“I can’t really know anything. Having said that, though, on a very subjective level I love Christ. I perceive Christ to be God, but I predicate that with the knowledge that I’m small and not nearly as old as the universe that I live in. I take my beliefs seriously for myself, but I would be very uncomfortable trying to tell anyone that I was right.” Moby (source)

This for me is what it feels like to be an emerging Christian. I hold on to what I believe but at the same time I am hit with the reality of my own humanity, one defined by severe limitations in language, cognition, and ego. I want to be right, but I have found that it is this desire to be “right” that sometimes blinds me to the reality of God. And it is this tension that I am learning to navigate.

Listening: My Weakness by Moby

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Thoughts From The Cohort

Tonight was our Emergent cohort meeting. And it was good for me in a lot of ways that I was able to express some of the deeply held ideas and beliefs that have been brewing inside of me. Here is some of what I said.

• The church system is designed to produce dependency on the system.
• The two major obstacles to removing people from dependency of the church system (someone called it The Matrix) are the church building and paid professionals.  We need to find a way to create organizational systems that don’t rely on either.  Jesus didn’t.
• We need to find a way to redeem people’s tithe by removing the obstacles and thus releasing it to missional opportunities.
• Dependency is ultimately dysfunctional because we’re not designed to be dependent forever. We’re designed to become interdependent mature people who can love.
• We know how to do 500 people really well. But we don’t know how to do 12 people really well. Jesus modeled the latter.
• The primary concern for releasing people to become the priesthood of believers is heresy. Yet heresy exists regardless. Example: We have 30,000 denominations. Some of them are wrong.  Jesus left, releasing His Spirit to lead ordinary people.  Can we do the same?
• Exponential growth happened when people participated in what God was already doing.

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Meeting God Where He’s Already Working

This post is part of a Missional Synchroblog. To participate, please see the original post. The first question is, “What does missional living look like to me?”

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About two years ago a friend and I went to a conference. The speaker was a well known pastor that shared his thoughts on the concept of “missional”. And his words really captured me in a way that clarified what this term means. He said, God is already doing something to restore his creation. Are you participating in that? This single statement radically reshaped my life and understanding of what it meant to follow Jesus. Missional wasn’t just some theological concept but a practical experience I could participate in.

And what was interesting is that I was at a place in my life that I was ready to chuck all the stuff that I had done. Because if I were truly being honest with myself, my stuff looked like me. And no one really wanted a ministry that was about me. People wanted to participate in something that looked like God, that had His hand all over it.

And as I looked at the other faces around the room I could see the same sense of exhaustion from trying to “be all things to all people.” Here around me were so many pastors and leaders who had built reasonably effective ministries but they were dying inside. And not in a healthy way. We were all trying to do ministry on our own.

It was at that moment that I surrendered to missional. I had a new trajectory. Instead of coming up with 1,000 different ways to do ministry to suit a thousand different opinions, I was began asking God where he was calling me to meet him. And what was extraordinary was that he called me to focus on love and trust, very fundamental things. And these became the foundation for Missio Dei.

Was I really going to trust him. Not appease him, but trust him. Was I going to practice surrendering my own desires so that I could discover what He had for me. And this trust always required me to face my obstacles.

And as I began to practice trust, I was constantly reminded of my own desires not to follow. Trust required me to face my own immaturity and brokenness. It required me to get honest with myself about my own need for God, that I was separated from relationship.

But trust allowed me to hear and begin to follow His voice. And this was a very strange process. Sometimes He would lead me to some very strange places, ones that seemed ridiculous. But ever time I did He would meet me there. I kept having these really stupid conversations with myself. Every time.

“I’m not really hearing this. Did you say go here? What was that again. Can you say it one more time?” My own resistance was so ridiculously strong to trust that it sometimes baffles me. But when I would get to where God was calling me, He would always show up. And then the conversation was, “Why do I keep questioning myself? Why won’t I just get in gear?”

But over time this impulse to fight it wore down. The evidence of God’s capacity to act was becoming too strong. I now had a story.

And then I began to notice the second practice, to love. Within each calling was God’s desire to restore His creation in some way. In the beginning it was a lot about my own heart. Would I let God love me? Would I let God create a story within my heart that was captivating and profound. Trust had brought me to love.

And as I began to let love in, or in the words of Lenny Kravitz, to let love rule, I began to see that each time God was calling me to a specific place was an opportunity to be love for someone. Love was the fullest reflection of my Father’s image. It was Jesus in the moment. I didn’t have to be someone’s god. It wasn’t a program. It wasn’t thought out ahead of time, and it didn’t have my stamp all over it. It was divine.

In fact, much of the joy over the whole process was simply seeing God’s Spirit work through me. When I loved, I got to see my Father’s reflection too. And I needed that.

And as I began to choose love, I began to see that my own restoration was intimately tied to the restoration of those around me. The more I began to be love for people the more my relationships grew, the more people began to ask questions about this God I apparently believed in. I didn’t have to attract anyone through show. Love was doing it for me.

So what does missional living look like to me? It looks like trust and love. It was meeting God where He’s already working. And it was good.

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Synchroblog Participants

Ben Wheatley – Are Things You Are Living For Worth It

Blake Huggins – What Does Missional Living Look Like

Alan Knox – Living in the love of God

Dave DeVries – The Missional Challenge

Bryan Riley – What Does Missional Living Look Like To Me

Jeromy Johnson – What is missional living to me

David Wierzbicki – We are missioning

Tim Jones – Living Like the Word Says

Nathan Gann – Inevitability?

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The Red Bull Gospel

This is Kara Powell. You probably don’t know Kara but you should. She’s Executive Director of the Center for Youth and Family Ministry at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Kara gets it.

She’s presenting at Shift, Willow’s Youth Ministry Conference. She has what I think is a killer observation.

“She says that a lot of what students are fed is a guilt based gospel—what Dallas Willard calls the “gospel of sin management.” Powell compared it to a diet of Red Bull. It’s fast, energetic, and easy, but not very nourishing. And after the rush is over you deflate. We’ve fed students a gospel of rights and wrongs, but nothing nourishing that they can internalize and grow from. No wonder they fall away shortly after graduation. The buzz is over.” (More at Out of Ur)

Love it.  Listen up people.

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Top 50 Possible Reasons Why You’re Not Emergent

In the spirit of the new book, Why We’re Not Emergent, the accompanying website, and this post, I thought I’d present the Top 50 Possible Reasons Why You’re Not Emergent.

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50. They’re all a bunch of false prophets. Really, that’s what they told me

49. My mother will disown me.

48. I just don’t like Doug Pagitt. He scares me.

47. I heard from a famous pastor that Emergent is from the debil.

46. I don’t like Rob Bell’s hair.

45. The word Emergent is not in the Bible.

44. It’s just not allowed in the Vanderhoeven family.

43. I heard Calvin would simply not approve

42. Mark Driscoll told me I couldn’t.

41. I’m just not “certain” yet it’s the right way to go.

40. I heard from this guy who knew this lady who had a brother who was Emergent and he went blind doing it.

39. I enjoy being a skeptic.

38. I didn’t learn about Emergent in seminary so I’m not going to start now.

37. I like being on the bigger team.

36. I heard you had to take yoga.

35. I’ve heard from a famous prison ministry guy they don’t believe in the Bible.

34. Where would I be without absolute truth.

33. Tony Jones went to Princeton Theological Seminary…that liberal.

32. They didn’t teach this in Alpha.

31. I’m not white.

30. I’m over 40.

29. I don’t have any cool, black eyeglasses.

28. I don’t like coffee or Guinness.

27. It’s immoral to smoke pipes or cigars.

26. They haven’t yet come up with my denomination of Presbymergent

25. Emergents read unapproved books.

24. I’m allergic to candles.

23. I like Jesus but not Emergent.

22. Brian McLaren’s books are not theologically correct. I’m not sure why, I just know they are.

21. I like my Christianity strong and hot.

20. The orthodoxy police will bust me.

19. I’m not uber-cool. In fact, I don’t even know what “uber” means.

18. I don’t understand it and I don’t want to.

17. If it doesn’t have the letters SBC in it, I’m not interested.

16. All they want to do is love. Where’s the truth in that?

15. I’m a bullhorn type of guy.

14. I prefer Joel Osteen.

13. I just finally bought into fundamentalism and you want me to shift?

12. I don’t really want a generous orthodoxy.

11. I refuse to switch to Apple

10. I can’t. I go to John MacArthur’s church.

9. My friends will think I’m a heretic.

8. I already was a New (Kind of) Christian.

7. I refuse to grow a soul patch

6. Hell fire and brimstone works just fine, thank you.

5. I don’t like loud, rock music at church. It’s a sin.

4. Their hermeneutic of ecclesiology is unorthodox, fundamentally esoteric and meandering. It borders on epistemological ambiguity that is really troublesome. I’m afraid it will lead to heretical uncertainty of the most pernicious kind.

3. But then I might have to really have faith.

2. Brian McLaren is the debil.

And the number one possible reason Why You’re Not Emergent is:

1. The emerging church is so yesterday.

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Just in case you were wondering. The answer is yes, this is humor.

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Greek vs. Hebrew Thinking 2

This reminds me so much of the modern vs. postmodern conversation from a few days ago.

Abstract vs. concrete thought

Greek thought views the world through the mind (abstract thought). Ancient Hebrew thought views the world through the senses (concrete thought).

Concrete thought is the expression of concepts and ideas in ways that can be seen, touched, smelled, tasted and/or heard. All five of the senses are used when speaking and hearing and writing and reading the Hebrew language. An example of this can be found in Psalms 1:3; “He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, and whose leaf does not wither“. In this passage we have concrete words expressing abstract thoughts, such as a tree (one who is upright, righteous), streams of water (grace), fruit (good character) and a unwithered leaf (prosperity).

Abstract thought is the expression of concepts and ideas in ways that can not be seen, touched, smelled, tasted or heard. Hebrew never uses abstract thought as English does. Examples of Abstract thought can be found in Psalms 103:8; “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, Slow to anger, abounding in love”. As you noticed I said that Hebrew uses concrete and not abstract thoughts, but here we have such abstract concepts as compassionate, gracious, anger, and love in a Hebrew passage. Actually these are abstract English words translating the original Hebrew concrete words. The translators often translate this way because the original Hebrew makes no sense when literally translated into English.

(Source)

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Modernity and Postmodernity

Newton’s third law of motion is, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” And over the last thirty years we’ve seen a distinct change in culture from a modern to a postmodern society. And after watching Jill Bolte Taylor I began to really wonder if this is a shift in culture from right brain to left brain.

Jill describes the two halves of the brain in very distinct terms. Physically the are independent of each other and are connected by a thin white matter called the corpus callosum. She describes the two halves by saying, “they think about different things, they care about different things, and dare I say they have very different personalities.” This sounds like the culture issues with the traditional church and the emerging church to me.

The right brain:

• functions like a parallel processor
• this present moment.
• right here/right now
• thinks in pictures
• learns kinesthetically through movement of our bodies
• information through sensory input and explodes in a collage of information
• connected to others

The left brain:

• functions like a serial processor
• think linearly
• methodically
• about the past and future
• take the collage of the present moment and picks out details and more details
• take this information and projects into the future and projects possibilities
• thinks in language
• connects internal world to external world
• the calculating intelligence.
• The little voice that says, I am, separate from others.

After reading Tony’s book, I realize that much of the threads that show up in modernity are left brain oriented. And the threads that show up in postmodernity are right brain oriented. Modernity is interested in facts and figures, charts and graphs. Modernity is the PC guy from the Apple commercials. Postmodernity is the righ brain interested in images and colors, the present moment when we’re having coffee. Postmodernity is the Mac guy in the Apple commercials.

But what is the most interesting to me is that the right brain is about connectivity and relationships. What draws us together, not divides us. And much of the postmodernity movement/era I think is a response to the long drawn out centuries of living exclusively in the left brain world that can’t operate in relationships.

Must of what Jesus did was about restoring relationships, especially us to the Father so we could discover the power of the Holy Spirit. I for one think that this can only come from the right brain that draws us together.

PS: After seeing Jill, I realized why I gravitate towards the postmodern emerging church conversation. I’m right brain. You can test yourself here.

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Book Review – The New Christians Part 3

This is the third part of the book review. You can find part 1 here and part 2 here.

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Chapter 5 – The paradoxes of our faith.

The section continued a dialog of what it means to engage a humble hermeneutic. He cites the issues of women’s suffrage and slavery as example, ones in which we now have a different opinion than 100-200 years ago. What was really strange was reading the name Daniel Henderson, the very man who baptized me, and now a pastor in Minnesota. Weird.

Tony does a good job of bringing out the slippery slope issue. He says,

“Based on his comments, he fears that humility – at least in the interpretation of the Bible – will lead to meaninglessness, to an inability to stand for something.”

He calls out the problem of certainty, which can lead to imperialism and instead offers Newbigin’s “proper confidence”. He brilliantly offers,

“While an emphasis on interpretation does preclude the many propositions about eternally “right” and “wrong” answers, it doesn’t mean that there’s not truth. Instead, it means that there are inherently better interpretations – that one interpretation can trump another.”

History clearly reveals that we have had better interpretations based on new information and dialog. The tension lies in the fact that we don’t like it when there are different interpretations than ours. Tony offers that this intellectual bravery to engage conversation and not settle is founded throughout history in Luther, Assisi, Day and Bonhoeffer.

Tony offers the idea that we can learn from any text in the library, not just the ones deemed “approved” by the church or written by Christian authors. This practice is one of the critical tensions between the traditional church and the emerging streams. To me, one is based on fear. The other is based on trust.

His dispatch #13 I would offer sums up the heart of the problem surrounding the misconceptions that Emergents don’t believe in truth. It says,

“Emergents believe that truth, like God, cannot be definitively articulated by finite human beings.”

What most people will probably hear or read or say when talking about Emergents is what amounts to an edited version of this statement; “Emergents believe that truth cannot be known by human being.” I appreciate Tony putting it into such a succinct, articulate statement.

Tony also explores a really good discussion on the nature of paradox and our desire to constantly solve the paradox. He shared his encounter with a physicist who explains that paradox is inherent to nature. An example is that a electron is both a particle AND a wave. He quotes the physicist as saying,

“I just think, if there are paradoxes in physics, then why shouldn’t there be paradoxes in theology too?”

Good food for thought for those who want to box God in. I would offer that the willingness to live in the tension of the paradox is one of the strongest traits of the emerging church.

Chapter 6 – Emergent community in the new world or “Do you trust me?”

In this chapter, Tony explores different ways emerging communities are exploring a generous orthodoxy. He profiles Tim Keel’s Jacob’s Well and shares what it’s like. He then offers an intriguing insight into how Wikipedia, an open source community of share concern can offer much to the emerging church communities. I must say that I really, really liked this idea of open source church. The concern for church heresy is mitigated by the group’s desire for truth. Messiness will occur but so will a burgeoning community. I love this section. At the heart of emerging churches is the willingness to fail and learn. We’re not afraid to grow from failure. Isn’t this real life anyway.

Tony provides a very short section on Binitarianism (the belief in the two of the three parts of the trinity). The point was that we have lost the Holy Spirit. This to me could have been a much larger section, especially in regards to interpretation. It is my sense that much of the emerging church stems from a desire to discover what the Holy Spirit is doing organically and participating where God is already working. His critique is that we do what we think works and then wonder why we’re burned out.

One of the pervasive notions of this section is the question, “Are we going to trust people?” This extends the generous orthodoxy to a generous orthopraxy, which is essentially what Jesus did when he left humanity and gave us the Holy Spirit to follow.

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Book Review – The New Christians Part 1

Summary: Tony provides a deep historical account of how and why the emerging church and emergent movement arrived and is what it is today. This is a must read book for those interested in the emerging church, or anyone who wants a clear picture of the emerging/emergent movement. If you are unwilling to read this book, you have no real leg to stand on in your critique.

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Note: Tony blends the use of Emergent and emerging church, where I would not. Emergent is an organization that coordinates activities and conversation, where the emerging church is the natural organic movement of God within the world today. It’s not a big deal but it helps to know the difference if you are reading this as a new comer.

Chapter 1 – Summary: What it means to deconstruct.

Tony created a valuable distinction for me in three words: reactionary, resolutionary, and revolutionary. Instead of jumping to the left/right, us/them mentality of the first two, Jesus chose the third way, staying in the tension of not demonizing the other.

I especially appreciated his quote from Anthony Smith in describing his view of the emerging church. Anthony said,

“First…there is an epistemological humility with this particular movement.”

That’s it. He gets it. So much of the emerging movement is a move a way from the arrogance that has pervaded Christianity, the run to know it all. I don’t know it all. And it’s nice to have great conversations with those who don’t know it all. And as we share together we can discover how God is moving.

Chapter 2 – Summary: The history of the emergent movement.

First I want to say that this chapter was worth the price of the book alone.

I really appreciated the metaphor of the lava flow. No matter how hard we try to contain it, creating hard, crusty shells on the surface, God finds a way to break through. This metaphor adequately describes the tension of any movement to break free from the chains that history always creates. That we don’t see the chains, when history is filled with examples, is a testament to the human condition.

Tony creates another distinction of Gospelism, which is mans desire to control or put rigid forms around what God is doing in our midst. To me, that’s religion.

He also continues the dialog on the natural human instinct to polarize, right/left, us/them, etc. He brings out the cultural swings from secularization to fundamentalism, and again draws us to the third way of Jesus. He finds describes it as,

“It’s what might be called the postmodern posture: an attempt to both maintain one’s distinctive identity while also being truly open to the identity of the other.”

The problem as Tony describes is that this living in the tension doesn’t fit into neat little packages.

I also appreciated reading the deep history of the initial Young Leaders Network and how it got started, the UK history with Jonny Baker and NOS, and the background to the interactive process of the web. It puts it in a framework that is larger, more global than just evangelicals.

Tony succinctly draws the distinction between bounded sets (unity based on membership), centered sets (unity based on beliefs), and emerging (unity based on relationship). I appreciate this distinction because it draws us into relationship not based on commonality but in our humanity.

Continue on to Part 2 here…

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Linkin Park Is The Emerging Generation

I got to see Linkin Park last night. It was an awesome concert. I got to take my nephew for his birthday although I went because I love this band.

I highlight this because I think Linkin Park is THE most significant band of the emerging generation (25 and below). Their music has resonated at a level that is profound. I think Meteora was an album that represents a generation better than any album of the last twenty years. They have sold over 50 million albums over what is essentially three albums and a short period of time. Their songs speak of the pain and isolation that comes from woundedness. Yet they are not simply a numetal, emo, or even goth band. Musically they are exceptional.

This song is there new video release. It has profanity, so please be aware. But I think it is an important view into the heart of a generation looking for restoration. Most just want to give up. This song got one of louder cheers last night. Please don’t just assume they are screwing around. They want to know love and mercy.

The temptation is simply to judge, to push aside and say they are rebellious. But a deeper question is, Are they seeing love? Are they seeing our Father’s reflection in us? Are we going to judge them, or show them a way out?

Please choose love.

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