Year          Income          Expenses          To the Poor
1                 47.40          44.24 (93%)          3.16 (7%)

2                94.80          44.24 (47%)          50.56 (53%)

3               142.40         44.24 (31%)           97.96 (69%)

4               189.60         44.24 (23%)         145.36 (77%)

Later      2212.00         47.40 (2%)         2164.40 (98%)

Wallis urged us to re-consider the concept of common grounds: sharing space and ownership and re-establishing what he termed, the “new old values”—values such as “enough is enough”, and drawing from the Native American value of measuring the impact we have today by the impact it will have seven generations from now. He challenged us to ask, “how will this crisis change us”, rather than, “when will this crisis end?”

This said economic crisis could be, if we are wise, humble and teachable, an opportunity. Yet if we close our hearts, imaginations and minds, it could be a long-term disaster, only to be repeated years later. I’m not going to pretend I am a financial or economic expert. I am a 28-year old who has been in school pretty much my whole life, and am currently living off a part-time job and school loans. My experience of the housing market is writing a rent check every month. That said, all this talk about the financial crisis makes me feel a bit oblivious. However, I do know that this crisis, regardless how much one understands the technicalities, must wake us—me–up in some capacity. As Wallis challenged, what do we do when the “invisible hand” lets go? This is a brilliant time when, as Christ followers, we have the opportunity to stand apart and offer our communities another way.

As Christians, the way we “do business”, the way we invest, what we invest in, and how we invest (be it our time, energy, money, resources, relationships) must reflect kingdom values. These values are those of solidarity, community, unity, self-sacrifice and humility—values that are sadly the opposite of what too many Christians are currently operating under in our country. I wholeheartedly believe that we must do everything with intention, because whether we realize it or not, everything we do sends a message and affects our community. We must be aware of this. Rather than looking out for our own best interest, how would our economy look today if we first looked out for the interest of the other? And isn’t that a Biblical mandate anyway?

As Wallis put well: instead of keeping up with the Jones’, we should check and see if the Jones’ are ok. This is what both Wallis and our upcoming conference on April 10^th address: building community not on hand outs, charity, or quick fixes, but on costly relationships and kingdom values in which both the poor and the rich need and empower one another in Christ.

We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and the yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.

Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.

In a world full of salesmen, where everything seems to be an advertisement for one thing or another, the interrelated questions of sincerity and character often seem to be fading in significance.  We are a people who have forgotten who we really are behind our own sales-pitches.

The film “The Big Kahuna” makes my list for its focus on the question of sincerity and character, as shown in the following clip alone.  The story follows three salesman who are on the road, waiting to make a sales pitch to the CEO of a large company.  Tension builds as the young, pious baptist unknowingly befriends the CEO, but rather than talking business, asks the CEO about his faith before sharing his own belief in Jesus.

I’ll let the clip speak for itself, but it makes me wonder how often the church is guilty of adding to the noise, as the young, baptist salesman is accused of doing.  In a world so full of people just waiting for their turn to speak, and usually speaking in order to sell you something, I wonder whether the church might better witness to Christ by simply taking a step back and listening.  Or perhaps listening and asking the right questions, questions that give people space to think about what is going on in their life, what is truly important, and who they are.  That moment of silent receptivity may be what people need in order to then hear what is being said.  I’m beginning to think the most “prophetic” possible act in our culture may be to simply slow down and listen to the voices usually drowned out by the noise, including the honest songs of birds.

I also think the film is brilliant for connecting sincerity to character.  Our culture tries to produce artificial character instantaneously like we would a twinkie.  As a consequence, one usually gets a reputation for being of good character more often than not by just hiding their s@%& better than average.  One of my favorite line from the film is when Phil tells Bob, “I’m saying you’ve already done plenty of things to regret, you just don’t know what they are. [Character] is when you discover them, when you see the folly in something you’ve done, and you wish that you had it to do over, but you know you can’t, because it’s too late.”

The more years I have under my belt, the more I screw up and the less excuses I have.  At the same time, the more I realize what true wisdom means, what character means.  If such a simplistic division can be made by someone as young as myself, I think the first half of your life is spent learning to be honest with yourself about who you are, and the second half is spent learning to be okay enough about it to open yourself to God and a community.  Character, then, is the honesty that comes from humility, the humility that comes from honesty.

I decided not to take the time to organize my thoughts better, hopefully the big picture behind the disconnected thoughts makes sense.  Go rent the movie, whoever produced it deserves a little of your money.

While I was writing about the first film on the list, the video (at the bottom of the post) of Mark Driscoll’s comments on “Avatar” during a sermon came to my attention.  Instead of spending much time criticizing it, I’ll just present it below and add that, based on Driscoll’s criteria for accusing “Avatar” of being demonic, “The Lord of the Rings” series should be seen as an equally pagan, modernist-industry bashing movie that hooked audiences through special effects.  Hopefully the absurdity here is evident.  Especially since it seems to go against some of Driscoll’s own comments concerning cultural engagement.

Though he may not appreciate the category, Mark Driscoll is, here in this one video clip, a poignant example of someone who is taking a “Worldview Approach” to cultural engagement.  He sees the world as a battleground between competing worldviews.  One convinces another to become a Christian by pointing out the flaws in their worldview and demonstrating the reasonableness of their own.  Part of a pastor’s job is to attack worldviews that may be influencing his flock.

Another typical evangelical method of engaging culture is known as the “Market-Driven Approach,” or also the “attractional model.”  In this method, one sees what is culturally popular and attempts to use that as bait to draw people in.  For example, there is (was?) a church in Chicago that regularly has a raffle for cash prizes (with the “Price is Right” music playing in the background, nonetheless) during services in order to attract people to attend their church.  There’s nothing more popular than money, and as long as it gets people in the door…

The last method I wish to highlight is what New Wine tries to espouse, however unsuccessfully, the “Incarnational Approach.”  The Incarnational Approach (also known as missional), looks to build relationships in the community.  While hopefully also showing the reasonableness and attractiveness of the faith, one simply loves other people in word (and so verbal evangelism is not left behind) and in deed.  Despite the fact that this seems to more closely resemble Jesus’ and the apostles’ ministry, people are rarely argued into a different position anyway (especially emotionally laden beliefs like religion or politics), and rarely stick around when the “raffle” is over.

I hope the following series will be an imperfect example of how the church can engage the arts, and specifically films, in an incarnational way.  I hope it shows how each of these films get at profound questions that the gospel is dying to answer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fW8amMCVAJQ

The title of the first entry, “Repentance”, is written by Kathleen Norris, a teacher who teaches parochial grade school.  Ms. Norris, in seeking to expose her students to the spiritual and poetic wealth found in the Hebrew Psalter, gave her class the assignment of writing their own personal psalm.  One psalm in particular stood out to Kathleen. It was the psalm of a little boy titled, “The Monster Who Was Sorry.”

“He began by admitting that he hates it when his father yells at him: his response in the poem is to throw his sister down the stairs, and then to wreck his room, and finally to wreck the whole town.  The poem concludes: ‘Then I sit in my messy house and say to myself, ‘I shouldn’t have done all that.”

I just love that little poem.  Why do I love the poem of the little “monster” so much?  I love it for the same reason that Ms. Norris loved it. I love it for its honesty, “the emotional directness”, and I love it for the subtle yet powerful lessons that it teaches us about repentance, an often misunderstood spiritual practice.

There are several lessons from “the psalm of the monster” (not surprisingly these lessons are found in the biblical variety as well).  First, it teaches us that people who practice repentance have this defining trait: they are “messy.”  The problem of course, is nobody wants to be “messy.”  Why do we have such a hard time with this – the fact that in God’s economy it really is okay to be messy?  This should be obvious: only “messy” people need to “clean up”.  Doesn’t the Bible say something like, “for all of us are messy and no one is clean, no not one”?

The second lesson from “the monster” is that it’s not enough to just be messy – you also have to be honest, and not just with yourself.  People who practice repentance are honest with themselves and with at least one other person (the monster wrote a poem for others to read).   Repentance is a process that begins with an honest assessment, which leads to a confession – “I’m angry”, “I’m hurting”, “I’m tired of living with the pigs.”

The third lesson on repentance comes from the closing thoughts of Kathleen Norris who writes, “If that boy had been a novice in the fourth-century monastic desert, his elders might have told him that he was well on the way toward repentance, not such a monster after all, but only human.” Like Aslan in, “The Silver Chair”, Jesus doesn’t give up on his children even when they turn into “monsters”, but like Aslan with Eustace, Jesus comes to the rescue of the boy trapped behind the “scales of the dragon”, and he patiently works at setting him free.

Repentance does not erase our sins, for only Christ can do that, but it does help us to recognize the “mess” we are in.  We are so easily deluded by our own assessment of things and confession breaks the spell of our denial, our delusions and our “blind spots.”  Confession puts us on the path of discovery, where we discover that if our room really is “messy”, perhaps it could be cleaned. Perhaps it could be a room we could be comfortable sharing with others . . . maybe even with God.

Here’s to all you “monsters” out there – Have a happy and penitent Lenten season!

C

Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart,

suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only a shade,

and once more I am blessed, choosing
again what I once chose before.

“Clarence, I can’t do that.  You know my political aspirations.  Why, if I represented you, I might lose my job, my house, everything I’ve got.”

“We might lose everything too, Bob” [his brother Clarence replied.]

“It’s different for you.”

“Why is it different?  I remember, it seems to me, that you and I joined the church the same Sunday, as boys.  I expect when we came forward the preacher asked me about the same question he did you.  He asked me, ‘Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?’  And I said, ‘Yes.’  What did you say?”

“I follow Jesus, Clarence, up to a point.”

“Could that point by any chance be – the cross?”

“That’s right.  I follow him to the cross, but not on the cross.  I’m not getting myself crucified.”

“Then I don’t believe you’re a disciple.  You’re an admirer of Jesus, but not a disciple of his.  I think you ought to go back to the church you belong to, and tell them you’re an admirer not a disciple.”

“Well now, if everyone who felt like I do did that, we wouldn’t have a church, would we?”

“The question is, ‘Do you have a church?’”

I want to affirm the sanctity of human life, and so I appreciate Tim Tebow’s concerns and his desire to do something with his faith. Not having seen the commercial, I cannot speak directly to it. However, while I affirm Tim Tebow’s zeal to speak out on this issue, and while finding the personal story of his birth significant, I do wonder about the approach. In other words, affirming the sanctity of human life is a great message, but is the Super Bowl a good venue? Will the commercial help move the discussion of the sanctity of human life forward, or will it simply serve to raise the volume on the culture war rhetoric from various sectors?

We should also ask about what is to be made of the use of celebrities in this discussion? Is this how we make our views as conservative Christians credible, as we seek to exist and thrive in a secular world that does not affirm our values? Are we saying that Jesus needs celebrities? The Apostle Paul talks of how God often uses the weak and foolish things to present the power and wisdom of the Gospel. We are attracted to high profile impact, but is it also long-term and deep-seated impact? Christian Scripture promotes saints, not celebrities. While there are many wonderful collegiate and professional Christian athletes, they must make sure that they serve as witnesses to Jesus, pointing beyond themselves to him (like John the Baptist, who said that Jesus must become greater and he himself must become less) rather than drawing people to themselves.

Evangelical Christianity is close to popular culture, and often makes use of popular culture (such as sports) to share about the faith. While Christian Scripture does talk of sports and athletics, and while sports is very prominent in American culture and so provides a very visible forum for engagement, we still need to ask about the effectiveness of using professional sports for conveying our faith. For example, what are we to make of all the violence and materialism associated with professional sports? Sports as a vehicle of communication is not neutral, and it is not always pure. At the very least, I would hope that professional (and collegiate) Christian athletes would address these subjects, too. It would also be wise for them to acknowledge Jesus when their teams lose. Otherwise, are we saying that Jesus is only with the winners, and not the losers? Wouldn’t that be a form of prosperity gospel thinking?

As an evangelical Christian, I affirm sharing the good news of Jesus Christ publically. Yet public witness must be done thoughtfully and sensitively. We want to engage people from other sectors, not disengage them in our public witness. As part of our public witness, it is wise that we enter into discussion with other groups, since it is not simply what we say but also what we communicate that matters. Other groups can help us to perceive what we are actually communicating. Sound-bite, bumper sticker Christianity and Decal Jesus can appear shallow and simplistic—quickly uttered and quickly stripped away (being only decal deep), failing to communicate the richness, depth, and wisdom of the Christian faith.

Lastly, we’ve seen the conservative Christian movement make use of Christian celebrities previously. It does not always turn out so well. Will the conservative Christian public be there to pick Tim Tebow up if and when he falters and falls (and hopefully he won’t), or will we leave our celebrity in the dirt to be soiled by the late night talk show hosts of this world?

You can learn a lot about the relation of American religion and sports from journalist Tom Krattenmaker. You can also learn a lot about Tom Krattenmaker from his personal story with American religion and sports.

So, who is Tom Krattenmaker? Tom serves as a member of USA TODAY’s editorial Board of Contributors and writes regularly for the paper’s “On Religion” commentary page. In addition to authoring the controversial book on American Evangelicalism and sports, Onward Christian Athletes: Turning Ballparks into Pulpits and Players into Preachers (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2010), his article, “The Evangelicals You Don’t Know” (USA Today, Opinion, June 2, 2008), received critical acclaim as one of the top three pieces of religion commentary in the American Academy of Religion’s 2009 Journalism Awards program.

Dr. Metzger asked Tom for an interview to discuss his journey into the realm of American religion and sports as well as his own faith journey. What makes Tom especially interesting is that he is a reporter who positions himself as a member of the religious and cultural left (attending a Unitarian Universalist Church and serving as Vice-President for Public Affairs and Communications at Lewis and Clark College), who engages American Evangelicalism fairly, openly, and insightfully. Here’s what Evangelical leader Kevin Palau, Executive Vice President of the Luis Palau Association, has to say about Tom and his work. “Tom Krattenmaker—in my opinion—is one of the most informed and relevant writers on the Evangelical movement today. His critique is fair and his knowledge is impressive.” No doubt, some of his insights and expertise in this area derive from Tom experiencing numerous courtships with Evangelicalism over the years, including flings with Young Life and Campus Crusade for Christ. None of these flings with Evangelical Christianity stuck, but his fascination with the movement has not diminished.

Check out this audio clip from the interview. Stay tuned for the whole interview, appearing in Cultural Encounters Volume 6, Number 1.

The culture wars have entered the economic realm. What are your thoughts? If you, like me, feel this is wrong-headed for a variety of reasons, then why? What may be a better way to engage this issue?

It’s a clip of Sir Ken Robinson, an “internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources”. He claims that we get educated out of our creative capacity, and that  ”if we’re not prepared to be wrong, we will never come up with anything original.” Very interesting.

There are more clips of him on U Tube if you are interested.

What do you think about what he has to say as it relates to us being made in the image of an infinitely creative God?

Why do you think creativity is more and more being pushed out or undermined in our society and educational systems if it is indeed part of our core identity?

Since my conversation with Guillermo I have taken that question to prayer two or three times now. Just yesterday I was feeling really pinned down, really discouraged and I eventually made it to ”the closet” for some heavenly dialogue.

“Lord, do you understand my plight?  I feel so pinned down by my own ‘wrongness’ and there is no where to go?  I feel trapped!”

Just then I had this thought  that I needed to press further with my question - I needed to press the point until I had expelled every last bit of bile and angst from my soul.  I framed another question for God. 

“Lord, are you the one behind this?  Are you the one pinning me down?”

With each question I went deeper down into the chasm, the chasm which exposed the ”badlands” of my soul but there was still yet one more question to be asked.  One more question before I reached the bottom  of the chasm . . .  

“Lord, will you be my ‘wrongness’?   Will you be my ‘rejection’?”  

With that final question I knew that I had put it all on the altar and this was my ”bottom line” with God.  And though I didn’t see or hear heavenly “thunder and lightening”, there was an unmistakable sense that I was being heard. No sooner had I finished asking , ”Lord, will you be my ‘wrongness’?” I immediately knew the answer to the question.   I knew it like the Slumdog kid knew the answer to those first eight questions.  The answer was so simple and yet so totally mind-blowing. 

“That’s who I am for you.”

Until that moment in the closet, I knew that Jesus was the one who “takes away the sin of the world” but I did not appreciate how he does it – and how he does it for me.  I have come to discover that Jesus doesn’t bear our burdens from a remote location as though he was operating some kind of ‘cosmic crane’.  Jesus Christ does not deal with us in the abstract.  Jesus deals with us personally and therefore,  when he ”takes away” our sin and our sorrow he does it by “taking it on” himself.

“Surely he has born our griefs and carried our sorrows.” Isa. 53:4 

My desire in sharing this experience with you wasn’t to provide you with a “sweet devotional” but rather toopen a dialogue, “Who is Christ for us today?”  Biblical scholarship is a gift to the community of faith but thankfully, you don’t need a theological degree to care about this topic or engage this thread (thank God!).  You no more have to be a theologian to care about God than you need to be a botanist to enjoy flowers.  So for you churched-unchurched-lapsed-devout-mystical-skeptical-biblical-W-loving-Obama adoring-politics-loathing-young-middle-age-seniors out there, jump in and extend the thread even if it’s just a short phrase.

New Wine will be hosting a series of “Fireside Chats” beginning November 20th in the A-Frame. Come for prayer, food, and honest dialogue as a panel of speakers involved in the less-than-glamorous work of multi-ethnic integration will answer your questions and address such topics as: What is a multi-ethnic church? How does one create an open space for other cultures and ethnicities? How can Multnomah improve in this crucial area?

New Wine director, Paul Louis Metzger, articulated the vision and passion of New Wine.

New Wine Advisory Council member, Cooky Wall, and New Wine intern, Joe Enlet, spoke of New Wine’s role in their personal commitments to holistic cultural engagement.

Executive Vice President of the Luis Palau Association, Kevin Palau, spoke of how New Wine helped in providing the theological undergirding for the Luis Palau Association’s Season of Service.

That being my highest point, there have been many other intriguing aspects of my experience in America. One of which I would love to reflect on. I call it “the America pull.”

As a person of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, I soon encountered warring forces trying to put me in the categories of “conservative,” “liberal” or “independent”, terms of which I was not familiar with prior to my arrival in the west. In my opinion, “independent” is not a rather appealing bracket because it’s self concerned. I would rather suggest an attitude of interdependence.

Due to this forceful “pull” I was compelled to research and learn more about what appeared to be an American societal, cultural and political identity phenomena. I was genuinely interested because of the common sayings like: “While in Rome, do as the Romans,” or even most inspiring, “I become all things to all men to all men so that by all possible means…” What do these sayings really mean? The question of what I should become, if anything, began bombarding my brain.

Should I become conservative and seek to preserve the best of America’s historic values, promote life that begins at conception, argue against affirmative action, support fiscal responsibility in government, advocate for school vouchers and scream “You lie!” at the President, then raise millions of dollars in campaign contributions? Or should I be liberal, think progressively, de-campaign school vouchers because they are untested experiments, be bold in thinking new unconventional ideas, and protect the environment against the harms of industrial growth (global warming, etc.)?

Would my adaptation of these foreign labels mean working towards being Americanized? Well, how about my African decent…even more so, my identity in Christ? What a dilemma! I wondered as to whether conservatism had a Confucius and liberalism a Nietzsche? Who are the fathers and mothers of these sects?

One source described conservatism as the right wing people who generally like to uphold current conditions and oppose changes, while liberalism as the category on the left where anything goes. I remain puzzled as to why one would desire such labels. Jesus Christ did not espouse any of these identities.

While this grouping many serve to unite some people they also encourage division in the body of Christ. In my opinion, the label conservative can be limiting while liberal may be almost meaninglessly flexible. So I am inclined to the conclusion that these American categories are political terms and to some a form of religion, although unbiblical. These forms of identity are not the way forward to unity, mutuality, and oneness in Christ in any given culture.

“For there is no difference between Jew or Gentile- the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him” (Romans 10: 12). The “pull” to which I belong is self-evident: Christianity! It is simple and not about labels. T.S Eliot defines Christianity perfectly; a life of complete simplicity (costing not less than everything).

“Obviously, my death will justify the opinion of all those who dismissed me as naïve or idealistic: ‘Let him tell us what he thinks now.’ But such people should know that my death will satisfy my most burning curiosity. At last, I will be able – if God pleases – to see the children of Islam as He sees them, illuminated in the glory of Christ, sharing in the gift of God’s passion and of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to bring forth our common humanity amidst our differences.

I give thanks to God for this life, completely mine yet completely theirs, too, to God, who wanted it for joy against, and in spite of, all odds. In this Thank You – which says everything about my life – I include you, my friends past and present…

And to you, too, my friend of the last moment, who will not know what you are doing. Yes, for you, too I wish this thank-you, this “A-Dieu,” whose image is in you also, that we may meet in heaven, like happy thieves, if it pleases God, our common Father. Amen! Insha Allah!”

It’s from “Collision” a documentary which follows an atheist and theologian as they debate whether Christianity is good for the world.  What do you think about this clip?

No wonder the book was able to garner such a loyal following among adults and children alike.  What child hasn’t lashed out in anger, finding an uncontrollable “wild” side of themselves?  Who doesn’t remember those strong, confusing feelings of anger and the fear of feeling so out of control?  And, these days, what person hasn’t found themselves struggling with the modern tendency to repress those emotions?  Surely much of the book’s popularity owes to this tendency to dull the extremes of our emotional experiences through willful ignorance or self-medication.

Christians especially seem to find themselves prey to such repression, fearing that expressing negative emotions somehow betrays a lack of faith or goes against the biblical admonition to be joyful in all circumstances, as if we can trick God with a fake smile.  We forget that hope and despair are both ultimately longings for a new creation, longings for peace, justice, and the presence of God in a God-forsaken world.  The opposite of hope is not despair.  The opposite of hope is the unthinking acceptance of the status quo.  In a world full of sin and suffering, surrounded by resigned realists and head-in-the-sand hedonists, for the Christian to long for a better world, to be angry at injustice, to grieve over his or another’s loss, to cry out from the depths of abandonment and despair can be acts of profound faith in the God who promises to make all things new.

But we tend to skip over such emotions just as we skip over the Psalms that express such emotions (Ps 88 is especially challenging in this regard).  We are frightened at times by what we may find if we were to open our hearts and allow the Spirit to plumb its depths.  Too often this pseudo-piety betrays our own desire to hold on to the perceived possibilities of this world and to maintain some semblance of still having control.  But God Himself calls us to struggle and to long for the impossibile possibilities of His promises.  He calls us to hold Him accountable, like Abraham, Moses, and the psalmists, expressing even our anger, as numerous psalms show, when things don’t seem to go right while still trusting Him in faith.  He calls us to stop numbing the pain and ignoring the suffering of ourselves and others, and to experience the depths of our own suffering and, in so doing, open ourselves to the new life available to us through His grace.  A grace that listens to the cries of pain and longing, that meets us where we are in our anger, frustration, and despair, because through His Son, God has already experienced the full extent of our suffering and then some.

At the end of the movie Max misses his family and returns home.  He finds his mother joyful over his return, giving him a hug and a hot bowl of soup.  We can expect as much from our heavenly Mother.

My wife and I recently watched a news show that took us “Inside the White House” – a day in the life kind of expose on the Obama’s and their staff. It was really interesting but there was this one interview that stuck with me and it wasn’t with the President or the First Lady. It was with a woman who worked in Michelle Obama’s personal office in the White House as her personal secretary. I don’t recall her name but I remember her story. She explained that while the Obama’s were campaigning in her home town she was one of the many volunteers who assisted Mrs. Obama and taxied her around town.

The woman in the interview went on to describe the day she received a phone call from Michelle Obama, who was now the First Lady, asking her to join her staff. It came as bolt out of the blue and with that one phone call, her life magically transformed – she had been given a seat in the most powerful and prestigious institution in the country, the White House. This show happened to intersect me at a unique time and forgive me for not giving more background but here was my un-edited reaction to what I just described:

“Hey Lord, I have been part of your election campaign since the day I met you. I’ve given you my best time and energy for decades now (I just turned 42). I’ve helped organize, set up and break down countless rallies and events for you. I have made thousands of phone calls, held hundreds of grass-roots meetings in my home. I’ve donated money for the cause; I’ve even traveled to other countries as your good-will ambassador. And after twenty years of working the campaign trail for you I’ve got to ask you…

How come we never win? I’m getting the feeling that you don’t really care about getting elected. But you see, Lord, the problem is I was kind of counting on it. I was hoping that after your landslide victory that you would remember me and all the hard work I’ve put in for you. I guess I’m a little burned to see that lady sitting in the White House office after just her first campaign run. I guess I’m getting tired of working the trail and never attending an inaugural ball. I guess I was hoping that when you finally took office that you’d give me a cabinet post in your administration and a seat at your right hand…I guess I was wrong.”

This article presents a somewhat different viewpoint than what New Wine presented at the conference.  I agree with some of what he’s trying to get at, but have a little trouble with some of his conclusions.  Thoughts?

And it does include both St. Francis and evangelism, so it’s officially a series on the New Wine blog.

John Morehead of the Western Institute for Intercultural Studies

Milan Homola of Compassion Connect and Alyssa Agee of Second Stories

Mike Abbaté, author of Gardening Eden and Rusty Pritchard of Flourish

Tony Kriz and Dan Merchant of Lord, Save Us From Your Followers

Now leprosy may not quite be the socially divisive scourge it was then, but since moving to Portland, I’ve noticed an ironically similar tendency in myself and others. It seems that the wider church (or at least traditionalist and seeker-sensitive churches) have become lepers of sorts for more “missional” or “emergent” churches. And bashing the church has become a method of evangelism. In fact, I’ve seen several churches that seem to include an antipathy towards the wider church as part of their very identity as a church community, if I can be forgiven the obvious hypocrisy in such an observation. Rarely a church service goes by for these churches that they do not pat themselves on the back for not being apart of the Religious Right.

One of the main reasons for the criticism is the seeker-sensitive or attractional model so popular in the wider church, a model that has a tendency to increase one church’s numbers at the expense of other churches in the area and at the expense of the church’s wider mission. But by distancing ourselves from the wider church, we’re not only guilty of the same crime, we’re taking it to a whole new level! We’re now throwing the whole church, rather than just a few local churches, under the bus for the sake of our evangelistic efforts (and sometimes… just maybe… for the sake of our pride). Instead of hiring a U2 knock-off as a worship band or building a multi-million dollar church building, we attract people by telling them, “We’re just like you: we don’t like those guys (conservatives, complementarians, republicans, dispensationalists, etc.) either.”

Rather than admitting that we in the church are all a messy mix of broken people still in need of God’s grace, we like to distance ourselves from those who are different, even within the church and even though we hardly have things together either. But whether we’re focused on distancing ourselves from homosexuals or homophobes, the effect is ultimately the same: a distorted gospel and a hindered witness. We could all be reminded that the church’s unity will itself show the world that Jesus was sent by God (John 17:23). All this isn’t to say that there isn’t a place for criticism (Jesus’ criticism was mainly directed to the religious conservatives of His day), but to question how we go about it (first of all, we’re not Jesus and we’re not perfect either) and to question where we find our identity (in the church or a theology/ideology).

And so, I must ask myself and these well meaning churches: would you kiss Joel Osteen? Pat Robertson? Glenn Beck? What about good ole W.? And before any fundies get too excited, would you kiss Obama? Greg Boyd? How about Rob Bell right in the middle of one of his… patented… pauses… for… effect?

This jam-packed day of thoughtful enrichment included presentations, workshops, and panels by Paul Louis Metzger (New Wine, New Wineskins, Multnomah Biblical Seminary at Multnomah University), John Morehead (Western Institute for Intercultural Studies), Rusty Pritchard (Flourish), Mike Abbaté (Urban Design & Planning Director, Gresham), Clark Blakeman (Second Stories), Tony Kriz (New Wine, New Wineskins), Caleb Rosado (Warner Pacific College), Gary Tribbett (Compassion Connect), Brad Harper (New Wine, New Wineskins), Dan Merchant (Lord, Save Us From Your Followers), Cliff Chappell (New Wine, New Wineskins), Steve Baker (Southwest Washington Medical Center), Derek Chinn (New Wine, New Wineskins), Roger Trautmann (Multnomah Biblical Seminary at Multnomah University), Rachel O’Brien (New Wine, New Wineskins) and more!

Click here to see the complete conference schedule.

Click here to see a complete list of workshops offered at the conference.

Conference audio recordings are now available! Click below to download any of the plenary talks, panels, or workshops presented at the conference.

Plenary Session 1
Reframing Gospel Witness: Beyond Ned Flanders and the Fascists with Paul Louis Metzger
NEIGHBOR Subjective Life Spiritualities and Post-Christiandom Missions with John Morehead
NEIGHBORHOOD Neighboring, Community Development, and Sidewalks in the Kingdom with Rusty Pritchard
PUBLIC SQUARE Accountable to God While Answering to the People with Mike Abbaté
Panel with Paul Louis Metzger, Rusty Pritchard, and John Morehead

Workshops 1
NEIGHBOR From Cults to Cultures: Bridges, Grounded, and Transitions as a Case Study in a New Evangelical Paradigm on New Religions with John Morhead
NEIGHBORHOOD Together in Story; Holistic Proclamation with Clark Blakeman
PUBLIC SQUARE The Lost Art of Place-making: What We Build Shapes How We Love with Rusty Pritchard

Plenary Session 2
NEIGHBOR Practicing Faith Together with Tony Kriz
NEIGHBORHOOD From Duality to Oneness: A Fresh Perspective on Neighborhoods with Caleb Rosado
PUBLIC SQUARE Lord, Save Us From Your Followers with Dan Merchant
Panel with Paul Louis Metzger, Roger Trautmann, Tony Kriz, Caleb Rosado, and Dan Merchant

Workshops 2
NEIGHBOR The Life of a Friend: the Dynamics of Verbal and Non-Verbal Evangelism with Tony Kriz
NEIGHBORHOOD Which Way to the Future? with Caleb Rosado
PUBLIC SQUARE I Am Dobson: Converting Societal Structures with Paul Louis Metzger

Workshops 3
NEIGHBOR Won’t You Be My Neighbor? with Ben Malick & Rachel O’Brien, New Wine Interns
NEIGHBORHOOD Uniting to Serve: Churches Working Together to Demonstrate the Love of Christ through Unity and Service with Gary Tribbett
PUBLIC SQUARE Church-Based Medicine for the Underserved, Evangelism, and Engaging the Structures of Healthcare with Steve Baker

Plenary Session 3
Panel with Paul Louis Metzger, Roger Trautmann, Rusty Pritchard, John Morehead, Clark Blakeman, Tony Kriz, Caleb Rosado, Ben Malick, Rachel O’Brien, Ronaldo Sison, Gary Tribbett, Steve Baker, and Brad Harper

It made me think about a conversation I recently had with my dear friend and former New Wine intern, Crystal. We were talking about how dangerous love is—yet it’s something that we all pine for. Odd, isn’t it? Love is the very thing that breaks us down, ruins us, and makes us crazy, pathetic, annoying, delirious and sometimes a bit awkward. We lose our common sense. We forget or misplace our priorities. (I mean, I never do that. But I hear it happens.) We go BLIND over this creepy thing called love. Yet we all want it, and when we get it, we are so “in love” that when the person we love hurts us, we are shocked. Dismayed. Beside ourselves. Our guard was down because, well, we were in love, silly.

Are we all masochists? We are then so surprised that that this beautiful, irresistible love hurt us and we become broken, scarred, terrified.

The crazy thing is, we all love imperfectly. Yet love in this world is not only absolutely necessary and the glue that holds humanity together, but it is also the glue that sticks to our fingers, peels our skin off, and makes us go mad. It’s also a force that, when mismanaged, can turn ugly. It is crazy to me to think that the only love that is perfect and full is our Creator’s love. And this love still sometimes hurts, sometimes shocks, and sometimes hides from us. But it’s the most perfect love we will ever experience. It’s also the perfect love that we must learn from and imitate. God loves recklessly. How are we allowing love to manifest and truly be fostered in our lives?

Loving cautiously to me, is scared, untrusting love. It’s rancid love. I want to step out in faith on love a bit better. I want to know what it’s like to truly love my co-worker who can never seem to utter one positive thing about anyone, bless my roommate who can never seem to grasp that beautiful step of moving the dishes from sink to dishwasher, extend a helping hand to my overwhelmed colleague who, quite frankly, is in way over her head (no, I’m not talking about you) and awkwardly build a relationship with someone who is so different from me I don’t even know where to begin. But again, that requires stepping outside of myself and trusting that love truly does cover a multitude of sins.  I guess my question is, do we really believe this enough to risk allowing this sort of crazy love into our own lives? Or are we trusting more in our own fears, wounds and pride that we are depriving ourselves from experiencing this deep, reconciling love?

Oddly enough, the challenge for me in coming on board with New Wine has not been meeting new people – that’s actually been the easy part and the people in New Wine have been really great to me and my wife.  Being part of New Wine feels refreshing and hopeful but it also feels a little bit like déjà vu and vertigo. I’ll need to explain.  

 When I left LA in December ‘07 I left it all behind…    

 I left my hometown of 40 years. I left my remodeled four bedroom house with a Jacuzzi bathtub (I now live in a little house with pealing paint). I left my circle of friends (my band of brothers), my family members including our youngest daughter, and my neighbors of ten years.  And with all of that I’ve left, I confess that the hardest thing I’ve had to leave behind has been my identity, “Pastor Chris”     

Since moving to Portland I have struggled deeply with these issues surrounding identiy, belonging and usefulness and I have been haunted by these questions:  “Will I ever be good again?” ”Am I of any use?” 

I recently discovered that I am not the only one struggleing with these issues of work and soul and in fact, I’m presently sharing this foxhole with two of my new Portland friends, Jeff and Johnny.  Despite the fact that both of these guys are very skilled in their fields, Johnny and Jeff have been working for months now under the stress of impending corporate layoffs and the uncertainty of finding work in this fragile job market- John has been with his company for twenty-five years!  We have a saying among the three of us, “This affects us all, man.” 

With the help of some wonderful people, God has been gradually weaning me off a ”Pastor-Chris Driven Life.” He’s teaching me to look elsewhere for my significance and identity and He’s teaching me to let go of things that I once thought I couldn’t live without. It’s a totally different way of life for me - it’s like I’ve moved to Mars. There is a haunting scene in the movie Schindler’s List that really captures the essence of what I’m talking about. I identify with the man with only one arm who is defending not only his job but his very life as he pleads with the SS officer, “But I am useful!”  (But wait, isn’t our “reason for being” as humans to serve God and be “usefull” to his kingdom?)

This region of soul I’ve just shared with you is not merely “personal” (not just for me) but it’s relational.  You see, as we continually allow God to re-orient our “reality”‘; as we learn the difference between living from Love instead of for Love; and as we learn to recieve our identity from a place of “rest” (very counter intuitive isn’t it?),  we will inevitably be confronted with this question: 

Will I now learn to love others…even the ones who don’t appear to be of any real “use” to me?  

 Your thoughts?

Obviously this is a bit of a caricature, but theology does effect how we view the process of evangelism, and in turn how we evangelize.  How might different aspects of the evangelical church’s theology negatively effect how we witness?  How might we improve our sharing of our faith in word and deed?

In today’s world, it indeed takes the eye of faith to see God’s faithfulness to prayer.  For example, disasters, both natural and human-made, do not seem to relent despite the countless prayers of the faithful.  So much suffering seems to stagger on unabated.  Though I believe God does act on prayers, He does not seem to do so often.  Why not?

I believe this problem is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer had in mind when, in his Letters and Papers from Prison, he wrote that “God would have us know that we must live as men who manage our lives without him.”  Humanity has turned its back on God, and God has granted humanity’s wish by allowing us to live without Him.  God allows Himself, in a certain sense, to be “pushed out of the world.”  To see the suffering in the world is then to see our need of God.  On the other hand, then, to see the one child saved is to see God’s intention for the thousands of others.  That answer will not silence many critics, and will not, in itself, offer much comfort to those in pain.

The Christian response does not end there, however.  As God is pushed out of the world, so God becomes one with us through Jesus Christ.  God is present to us in suffering and weakness because we have rejected His power and strength.  He experiences the struggle of a creation without a Creator, even experiencing the height of our abandonment in His death. As Bonhoeffer continues, “Man’s religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world: God is the deus ex machina.  The Bible directs man to God’s powerlessness and suffering; only the suffering God can help.”

And so, I would add, only the suffering church can help.  Not all of our prayers will be answered, at least not in the ways and with the timing we wish them to be answered.  Not everyone will respond to God’s love.  Not everyone will find their pain eased.  In this sense, we must continue to struggle as those who have pushed God out of the world and so live without Him.  But we can now pray with the knowledge that God is present in our pain and with the hope that God is even now setting things right.  That knowledge should drive us to be present with people in their suffering, to love, serve, and pray for them as Christ loved, served, and prayed for us, no matter the consequences.  Our prayers, then, may not be effective in any immediately perceivable sense, but the ultimate point of prayer is not to be effective.  The point is to be faithfully dependent on the One who will be effective in setting things right.

In the last weeks of summer leading up to 8^th grade, I began thinking about the football practices in 100 degree heat that would accompany going back to school in the fall. I had joined the team mainly because of family pressure, and I was not excited. Although not religious by any stretch, I prayed with all the earnest, melodramatic passion of middle school that God would make the upcoming season worth my while. “Just one touchdown. That’s all it would take. Do it, and I’ll read the whole Bible.”

For the first game of the season my coach put my then 90 lb. body at second-string linebacker. During the second quarter I was thrown into the game, and spent the first two plays running for my life from a lineman twice my size (and age, for that matter) without even feigning an attempt to go after the ball. The third was a pass play, and, forgetting what I was supposed to do on pass defense, I just stood still. The quarterback, perhaps as confused as I was, threw the ball directly at my feet. I caught the pass, ran for my life, and, just barely squeaking into the endzone, scored what ended up being the only points of the game. I then read up to the genealogies in Genesis before abandoning my side of the bargain.

I know it’s a silly thing for God to take action on, and I realize that it’s not even much of a coincidence when you think about it, but that memory still reminds me of God’s faithfulness, even as it makes me wonder about the role of prayer. And I think it’s more than fair to wonder why an all-knowing, all-powerful God listens to prayers, especially trivial and selfish prayers like mine above. I think the answer lies in the nature of the relationship between God and humanity.

The Bible presents the first act of sin in the book of Genesis as an act of autonomy against God, a declaration of independence from God. The following chapters in Genesis then portray a downward spiral, as the order God created under His leadership dissolves into the violence and power-plays stemming from our willful rejection of Him for our own devices. If this is the case, it would make sense that our participation in God’s restoration of peace and order in the world would invovle a constant submission to God’s leadership, a submission expressed in humble prayer. I believe God hears and acts on prayer because it reflects His original intentions that we be dependent on Him, that we put aside our aspirations for power and independence.

Too often our (or at least my) ministry finds its foundations in my own reasoning and devices. When that happens, we easily find ourselves building up our own kingdoms. Instead, the loving service of our neighbors and neighborhoods must find its foundation in humble prayer that acknowledges our dependence on God and asks Him to build His kingdom with us and through us as His servants. And even when our dependent prayers focus less on His kingdom and more on our selves, I believe God in His grace still desires to provide for His children and reward dependence on His provision.

Discussions of prayer usually begin with what is referred to as the Lord’s Prayer, and not without good reason. But if sharing in the sufferings of Christ is central to the spirituality of the New Testament, then I believe the prayers of Jesus from the cross should be the starting point for any discussion of Christian prayer.

“With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.” Mark 15:37

The last prayer of Jesus recorded in Mark’s gospel does not have words. It is an unintelligible cry of abandonment, pain, and desperation. It echoes the prayers of those under oppression, the prayer that God is seemingly most likely to act on (Gen 18:20, Ex 3:7, etc.). In Christ, God shares in our humanity and experiences the pain of His creatures who have chosen to turn their backs on Him. In Christ, God becomes one with us, experiencing both abandonment from the Father and death for us, and cries out to the Father from the depths of that suffering. In short, Jesus’ prayer is a crying out to God both for us and with us.

The prayer that Jesus models, then, is a cry on behalf of and in solidarity with those who are suffering. Though we cannot experience the suffering of others in a literal sense as Jesus did, we can, however, empathize with them in prayer, petitioning God not just by reading off a list of requests, but by allowing our hearts to break for them, and as much as possible, with them. Even though Everett’s prayer in the previous post is theologically flawed in some fairly obvious ways (the characters are kids, after all), he gets at this truth in a poignant way. The prayer that would best provide the foundation for “lifestyle evangelism,” the proclamation of the gospel in word and deed to neighbors and neighborhoods, is the prayer that imitates Jesus by seeking to be on behalf of and in solidarity with others.

“Well,” Everett began, “I warned you it’s stupid. But the other night, after Freddy’s little prayer, I got to thinking about how easy my life is compared to Papa’s. Then I started thinking what a strange notion it is that Jesus supposedly got strung up on a cross to save zillions of other people – as if his one life, in exchange for zillions, was some kind of even trade… It didn’t make much sense to me, really,” Everett said, “but what I thought was: What the hell. If that’s how things actually work, why not propose a similar swap – on a much smaller scale, of course – to help Papa out. Why not ask God, if He exists, to let me do for Papa what Jesus supposedly did for everybody on earth. Why not ask to trade some of my good luck for some of Papa’s bad, just to get his life back on track.”

“That’s not stupid at all,” Peter said.

“I don’t think so either,” I agreed.

“Me neither,” Irwin said. “Except… I don’t quite get it. Yet.”

“The way I see it,” Everett said, “God either made everything there is, Satan included, or He’s nothing. He’s in charge of all of it, or none of it. So what I was thinking about prayer – especially ours lately – was that when people turn it into begging, when they use it to try to blackmail God into giving them nothing but miracles and money and new cars and babies and marriages and all that, what they’re really asking Him is to remake, or even unmake, what He’s already made… so I was gonna propose to God, if there is one, not that He change His will, not that He remake or unmake the life he gave Papa, but just that He hand me enough of the rotten part of Papa’s life, and Papa enough of the good part of mine, to get him back out on the ballfield.”

“Why do you say your prayer was stupid?”

“It’s not the prayer that was stupid,” Everett muttered. “It’s praying to someone who isn’t there that’s stupid.”

“But He is there!” Irwin bellowed.

“Whisper, you moron!”

“But He is.”

“Then you do it,” Everett said. “It’s not too late. You’re the big believer, Irwin. Why don’t you ask God to put Papa’s bad luck on you and your good luck on him. Go ahead! Do it up good! And we’ll see how much it changes anything.”

“I’ll do it,” I said.

“Me too!” Irwin cried.

“Then let’s everybody do it,” Peter said, laughing at the look of disgust on Everett’s face. “That way, if it works, we’ll spread the rotten luck over a wider area.”

Freud said that religion was little more than a way for people to alleviate the harshness of the real world. I am convinced he had it backwards. I think what we often perceive to be the ‘real world’ is an attempt to alleviate the harshness of what the Gospel reveals. The same Jesus whose love and solidarity with the suffering and the God-forsaken led to the cross bids us to come and follow Him by loving others in self-sacrificial solidarity, no matter the consequences. I fail to see even a hint of escapism. If anything, the Gospel’s call is a self-consciously probing realism, a call to proactively seek out suffering in the world and participate in God’s redemptive work. If it has been a source or encouragement of escapism, I’m afraid it’s because we’ve misread the Gospels along with the rest of the New Testament.

I don’t know the ins and outs of blog-ethics, but this post borrows heavily from British atheist-Marxist Terry Eagleton’s Reason, Faith, and Revolution. As I said above, unlikely places.

Pathfinder R.S.

God has given me a burden for Christ-centered ethnic diversity in the church and Christian institutions and organizations. The other day, I had the opportunity to discuss this topic with a leader in a Christian organization, and remarked how I have noticed that there is hardly any diversity in the leadership structure of her group and organization at any level.

“I noticed that for the past two years, the set of officers in your organization have been white Caucasian. There has been no ethnic diversity. Even with your incoming administration, every one is a white Caucasian. How do you suppose that affects the majority of the non-white people you represent?” She was candid, and honestly admitted how difficult it was to encourage other ethnicities, or those belonging to visible minorities, to run for office. I suggested that such encouragement must be deliberate, intentional and identity-driven.

Thus, we had an engaging conversation on how to really live out of the bubble that our churches, Christian institutions, and organizations often foster. We agreed that it was difficult for her to get into the world of the non-white Caucasians in her midst given that (1) they constitute less than 5% of the representative population (and therefore, I would add, are not beneficial to relate with as they are very few in number), (2) the staff in the organization has less than five non-white members (most of this staff’s exposure to multi-ethnicity would probably have been a feel-good two-week missionary visit to Africa,  Asia, South America, or anywhere not urban America). 

Multi-ethnic involvement, not in a token condescension by the predominant white Caucasian race, but in a loving way of breaking down barriers between the modern-day Jew and Gentile divide of the Christian church, serves many purposes. First, it tells the world that the Jesus of the Gospel is not the white, blond blue-eyed, middle-aged, upper-middle class purveyor of Christianity. It further makes the statement that today’s Christocentric Church and Gospel are neither an adherent nor a promoter of the homogeneous unit principle of church growth. It tells us that today’s evangelicals have waged- and have won – the battle against the Balrogs of their existence.

When other ethnicities involved themselves in theo-political activities, such as taking on leadership positions, they demonstrate an integration of races and an acceptance, beyond token tolerance, of other cultures and ideas toward expressing the profound love of the Triune God. Such an integration of ethnicities forges a single, united church of God. Paul said that the undivided church, which includes the church being multiethnic, demonstrates and makes known to principalities, rulers and authorities “the manifold wisdom of God” (Eph. 3:10). 

When other races, outside the predominant white (and now, black) race, are allowed to voice out their ideas, experiences and cultural differences within the purview of God’s love in the crucified and risen Christ, then this Jesus Gospel ceases to become a vanilla-flavored neo-colonization of the “barbarian” natives in Asian boondocks at the turn of the 20^th century. It painfully addresses the evils of the Manifest Destiny annihilation of the true First Nations and natives of this land of the free, of this home of the brave.   

Vanilla is said to be a bland flavor. It is supposedly tasteless and colorless, and provides for a racially and culturally neutral “background” color of our society. Or so, wrote one contributor to the Consuming Jesus blog. If it is so, then, we all must plead for a little less vanilla. A little less tastelessness, a little less colorlessness, because a little less neutrality in our society will take us quite far in the struggle for a more Christocentric engagement of theology in the culture of our day.

May we, with little less vanilla and more Dylan Thomas, not go silently into that good night. May we rather, in view of the compelling love of Jesus, rage, rage against the dying of the light!

MORITURI TE SALUTAMUS! (We, who are dying for Jesus, salute you!)

Perhaps our hesitancy to take Jesus’ call to take up a literal cross, and not merely some generic “burden” as we often read the call, and follow Jesus results from how we view the significance of the cross. If Jesus’ death on the cross is solely a once-for-all substitutionary sacrifice, then it makes little sense that He would call us to take up a cross alongside Him. But what if the cross has a wider significance? What if the same cross that the powers of this world placed Christ on unraveled their own pretensions to power? On the cross, Christ takes the worst the powers have to offer, and rises again victoriously as Lord of all, showing that God will not let the evil in this world to have the last word.

What might the cross then tell us about ourselves in the grip of these powers that be? It says that a man who unflinchingly stands up for love and justice can expect violent resistance for his trouble. It reveals the depth of our rebellion and hostility against God. The cross puts to death any hope of our finding peace and justice on our own, even as it gives us the hope that God will stop at nothing to find a way. The depravity of humanity guarantees that Jesus will die alone in His godforsaken but God-obedient death; at the same time, Jesus’ death in our place allows the Spirit to enter our hearts, opening up the possibility of participating in the sufferings of Christ so we may participate in His resurrection life.

As Terry Eagleton asserts, albeit hyperbolically, “If you follow Jesus and don’t end up dead, it appears you have some explaining to do.” So we must ask ourselves, is the comfort we all presumably experience in the American church a comfort from an improved and cleansed world, or the comfort of a weakened witness?

My previous post, in this same vein, was an attempt to explore what would have happened at Gethsemane if Christ was a little more like me (and I’m guessing all of us), and what consequences one could expect in turn.

Listen to Podcast

They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took Peter, James, and John along with him, and he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” he said to them. “Stay here and keep watch.”

Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. So take this cup from me. Unless you say otherwise, I’ll assume that is your will.”

Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Simon,” he said to Peter, “are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Watch, for if danger comes we may need to leave quickly. We all know that the spirit is willing, but if you keep watch, we won’t have to prove it.”

Once more he went away and prayed the same thing. When he came back he found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. They did not know what to say to him.

Returning the third time, he said to them, “Are you still sleeping and resting? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man will be delivered from harm. Rise! Let us go to Rome! We will be safer there.”

Just after they left Gethsemane, Judas, one of the Twelve, appeared. With him was a crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests, the teachers of the law, and the elders. Unable to find Jesus, the men seized the seated disciples who had not fled to Rome, and they took them, without any struggle, to Pilate to be crucified.

In his post titled, The Death of Americanity, Tyler suggests that Christianity in America is:

a mix of American nationalism–and all that it implies (consumerism, materialism, isolationism, arrogance and apathy, zenophobia, historical and cultural ignorance, missionization by Americanization, simple, propositional faith claims with no new way of being, etc)–mixed with anywhere from a semblance of the Christian message to a fetishization of some of its most obscure and useless dimensions…

While in my opinion Tyler correctly describes the state of affairs concerning what he calls Americanity, his post is not a cynical rant that leaves you in a state of despair.

And perhaps this is why Americanity will fail, too, because it has tried as it may to cover up the radicality of the event of the Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection, the events that change everything and leave nothing in tact as it was, except as a new order of love, constituted by charity and community and zeal.

Here Tyler is trying to turn things back to the reality of Christ, and all the implications that come with Him. Whether or not you agree with his assessment of Christianity here in America and the urgent need for change, I am sure you agree with having Christ at the center of our faith.

I for one am looking forward to June 15th. It will be interesting to hear how Dr. Metzger and other panel members address this issue.

Milan and I explore aspects of the New Wine, New Wineskins paradigm and how Compassion Connect is uniting local churches to serve their neighborhood at a most crucial time.

Listen to Podcast

Clark and I sit down and talk about the most recent developments with Second Stories, a biblical framework for community development and how to get involved.

Have you ever thought of where the gesture “thumbs up” originated? Your thumb is a unique digit on your hand, so maybe it’s from sign language.  We’ll have to Wikipedia it to find our for sure. Wherever it came from, it sure does feel good to get them, especially from people you’ve just met.

On April 25^th, I had a chance to reflect on some great “thumbs up” moments as I presented a portion of our New Wine Intern “Created to Create” conference workshop. I spoke of an experience I recently participated in with a diverse group of fifteen others as we gained exposure of Portland’s Alberta Streets Last Thursday Arts festival. I had been struggling with coming up with an idea of how to create exposure to different perspectives on art, faith, and racial reconciliation. It was in my cultural anthropology class at Multnomah Biblical Seminary that I started learning of the gentrification and displacement of the African-American community in the Alberta Arts district. During the 1990’s, the city of Portland along with private investors poured money into an extensive urban renewal “face lift” in Alberta’s crime infused area. As property values in the area skyrocketed, many of Alberta’s long-lived African-Americas were displaced because of unaffordable increases in housing rental costs.

The neighborhoods around Alberta Street look a lot different than they did fifteen years ago. Now, the community is predominantly a mixture of young hipster white middle class Portlanders and what remains of the traditional African community. On the last Thursday of every month, Alberta Street opens its sidewalks to experimental art venders and performers. The hipsters and hippies come out in droves to hang out for this uniquely Portland block party. To create space for exposure for this New Wine Immersion event, I decided to look at the aspects of restoration and beauty as well as observation and participation as it related to arts, faith, and racial reconciliation.

When our group first arrived to Alberta Street I unpacked how the night was going to unfold. Then I began to pass out bright purple latex gloves and black garbage bags to everyone. With looks of confusion on their faces, I explained that, as a matter of our faith, we were going to participate in the beautification of the Alberta neighborhood. Neighborhood clean up, or restoration, is an artistic act of worship. Artistic expression often times puts a greater emphasis on scarcity, or an individual’s creation of a uniquely original work. It seems that God’s involvement in the creative restoration and beautification of what was once damaged in creation, points us to places where our artistic expression can move into areas of collaboration and participation in this process.

We divided our beautification efforts between Alberta Street, where the Arts festival takes place, and the surrounding neighborhood residential streets. Not too long after we began, I noticed the group really getting into the project. We were having a great time interacting with each other, when we began noticing the neighbors paying closer attention to us. Folks on Alberta were giving us “thumbs up” and shouting thank-you’s wherever we walked. As we started moving off Alberta and deeper into the less admired parts of the neighborhood, residents began to come out of their houses and meet us on the street as we were picking up garbage.

One woman came up to me and said, “Thank you so much! No one ever does this sort of thing, especially not around this side of Alberta. Everybody forgets about us down here.” As our trash bags became full we took in a gorgeous sunset and deposited our restoration waste into a nearby dumpster.

We finished off the night with some observation of the art work being displayed by the various venders as we asked ourselves questions like, “What makes good art?” and “What is the artist trying to communicate through their work?” As we entered a time of reflective dialogue in our group, I began to ask myself how the church at large can best integrated the arts into the proclamation of the gospel in both word and deed. I’m still wrestling with this question. I’m starting to realize that I’ll probably be living in this tension for a long time. I’m just glad I have some of those “thumbs up” moments of reflection to soak in while I’m wrestling.

I’m interested in hearing how you are engaging creatively through the arts in the holistic expression of the gospel. In what ways has the church done this well or perhaps not so well? Where do we go from here?

The name of the band came when one of the band members read Lauren Weisberger’s critically acclaimed novel The Devil Wears Prada. The story is about a controlling, stylish-New York fashion magazine editor who is known for her stuck up, selfish attitude, and is referred to as “the Devil incarnate” by some of her employees. From the reference to fashion comes the catchy title, The Devil Wears Prada.

TDWP lead vocalist Mike Hranica states the band’s name, while from the novel, is about the concept of how the devil uses materialism and consumerism to remove our focus from loving God. Hranica stated in an interview, “if the devil were walking around, he would be wearing Prada or Gucci, or some super expensive clothing just so he could go around and be like, ‘Yo! Check out what I’m wearing! I’m wearing this sweet stuff!’ God, on the other hand, would be walking around wearing rags because he wouldn’t care. He’d be like, ‘You know what? I’m clothed; it’s all good. I am just as good as all these other people walking around.’”

The show was intense as mind blowing, as I was expecting, but I noticed something in particular that I’ve never really noticed before. I think music is certainly a gift from a loving God who created us to be creative and reflect His love. I’ve noticed that when I’m at most rock shows, up close and squished between sweaty bodies of people I’d probably avoid if I saw them on the street, this overwhelming sense of passion begins to overtake my body, and with the adrenaline rush from the live show, I all of a sudden I feel like I am capable to take on anything and save the world. I’ve noticed that I frequently find myself thinking of social justice initiatives and global peace advocacy when I am with that crowd, rocking out! I’m sure it sounds strange, so let me clarify a few things.

I’ve always had a strong connection with music that is different than just enjoying a song or a band. I seem to really find myself and often find God in music in more often than in nature or in a story. Music just seems to have a special place in my life. Historically, throughout American Evangelical History, metal music has been primarily associated with the demonic influence, Satanism, and evil. The sound of people screaming lyrics seems to resemble more the shriek of demons and appear to be filled with anger rather than the “baah”of a lamb or the peaceful sound of a babbling brook. However I think I see things a bit differently.

When I’m at a hardcore show or even just listening to metal and hardcore music, I envision the screaming and fast paced music more like the roar of the Lion of Judah as He wages war against injustice and sin rather than Satan torturing a soul in Hell. I believe that there will certainly come a day where God will judge the living and the dead and there will be a great war between good and evil and evil will be destroyed.

On the contrary, when I’m enjoying mellow, slow, acoustic music, I envision myself basking in the awe of God’s presence and enjoying His blessed creation. With this sentiment in mind, I wonder if this is how God uses music to connect to us, His creation. It’s one thing to sing a song; it’s another thing to be completely swept away, in awe of grace, joy, beauty, and wonder.

Furthermore, I cannot seem to get over the fact that God uses music and art as a platform to transform us and mold us into His image. I’m not talking about singing praise songs on a Sunday morning in church, I’m talking about the emotions that are drawn up when you hear your favorite band singing your favorite song and what the melody and notes crafted together create within you. While some would say it’s selfish, I think it’s an example of who God made us to be: loving, passionate, and affectionate creatures. God created us with emotions and music is just one way in which we respond with emotion.

I’ve noticed that during a live show, as soon as the band takes the stage, all of a sudden it’s as if all of those little mundane things that separate us as a culture (race, class, religion, skin color, etc) seem to melt away and for a moment we are united together, all focused on one thing, the music that we love. A common good unites us regardless of diversity.

In his captivating story, The Magician’s Nephew, C.S. Lewis depicts Aslan the Lion creating the great mystical land of Narnia by singing. Rather than stern, rigid statements and commands, Aslan’s creation comes out in the form of a beautiful, sweet song, with each note building on the previous one. The song begins to reach certain points of climax as Aslan’s creation becomes more and more beautiful and more complex. Lewis brilliantly captures a rather beautiful expression of God’s artistic ability through the use of a beautiful medium, song. Lewis weaves together the intricacies of the Creation narrative while simultaneously capturing the beauty of what the experience of creation would have been like if we were there to see it, because God said that it was good and beautiful.

There is no song or music piece that captures God’s heart perfectly, for I think if such a song existed, it would have to contain elements of heavy metal, jazz, acoustic guitar, piano, etc. The music of God is something that is so mysterious yet so revolutionary, it cannot be captured.

I believe God has written us to perform certain parts of his song called Redemption and that we all play a different tune at different times. When put together this displays a beautiful example of the true and living God. God the Father through Christ’s redemptive sacrifice given by His Spirit is a song that is being composed and written and will one day be performed. As each day goes by He is making edits and deletions of parts of that song in each one of us until it is just right. When that day comes He will return and will look at his beautiful creation once again and say, “it is good.”

Until that day, I ask you to think of what song you are singing. What music are you playing with your life? Maybe you’re destroying injustice or maybe you’re relaxing in God’s presence. Or maybe you’re playing a sad song that makes God weep and He desires to retune that song until it’s a beautiful reflection of His love for you. What song are you playing, and what song are you called to play?

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At the sight of the bloodsplotch I think of Jesus sitting with the disciples at the Last Supper and his explanation of the cup of wine from which they drank symbolizing the new covenant inaugurated by the pouring out of His life for us (Lk 22:20). I think of His prayer to His Father in the Garden of Gethsamene and am reminded of the anguish He experienced when sweat fell like blood from His forehead (Lk 22:44). I see the splotch and my mind pictures His blood drops that hit the dusty road He walked to the cross, beaten and bloodied. In the gospel accounts there is a build – up of tension and an expectation of a reordering of powers. In the Fourth Gospel, the Apostle John creates this sense of anticipation by referring to Jesus’ ‘hour’ or ‘the hour of glory’. Of course we learn that Jesus’ ‘hour of glory’ (John 12:23, 27) was not the expected hour of power in which the Messiah would overthrow the Roman occupants. Jesus’ glorification was being lifted up, but on a cross to death. What does all this mean that Jesus, Lord of lords and King of kings chose this life of suffering?

For those of us who have been brought up in the church, we know the story of Jesus’ life, and we’ve got our favorite verses for swift employment and brief contemplation. For me, I held much tighter to a list of New Testament doctrines forgetting the life of Jesus from which those doctrines came. Don’t misunderstand me, I do not want to devalue doctrines in the least, but knowing the story in which these doctrines are framed literally gives flesh and bone to the teaching of God. It is in this taking on of flesh that we come to more clearly understand who God is because He so clearly presents Himself to us.

John, the author of the Fourth Gospel, synthesized the paradox of glory and the cross. In the 16th century Martin Luther saw the Late Medieval Catholic Church holding onto a theology of glory through power, contradicting the theology of the cross. They seem antithetical, yet Christ’s bride, the Church adopted the pursuit of power instead of following Christ’s path to the cross, the path of discipleship (Luke 14:25-35). For us today we’ve done something very similar. We avoid seeing the cross as the destination of discipleship. Somehow we miss it; we’ve made the same exchange for our glory and autonomy and have only submitted ourselves to Christ’s lordship on our terms, precisely confined to the gaps of our lives in which we sense he might be useful.

Let “my personal Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ” read something more like “Jesus, lord of my religious/spiritual self, or even just sunday morning.” But God is calling us to so much more! I am fighting to return to a theology of the cross and to bow my head and drop to my knees before my Lord who found me in His gallows. I need a theology for my whole self for the whole of my life. Is God any less God when all goes wrong and when I lose the life I expected? That expectation is what I made my salvation to be. When life has gotten dirty and doesn’t look like the optimistic brochures of the “American Dream”, Jesus’ lordship unites the spheres of my life. He brings together the entirety of my life and all that He has in store for me, sufferings or successes under His presence. That is what relationship with Him entails. To remain in Christ because He is my life.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer spent the last 2 years of his life in a Nazi prison because of his ties to assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler. He understood the cost of discipleship; he a was pacifist who felt it necessary to rid the evils of Hitler by killing him, a decision he did not take lightly. For that conviction and the courage that led him to the attempt, he came to know that God was not limited to the gaps in which he needed to be rescued. Jesus’ ministry was one in which He took on suffering. Jesus had no home, He was abandoned by those closest to Him and the authorities wanted His life and eventually got it. Yahweh, The Great I AM, whose presence made Israel a distinct people, was with Him in his sufferings, for He is God in the gallows and reaches out to us in His sufferings. It is through weakness and death that Jesus most clearly demonstrates and communicates Himself to us in His powerful presence and love. Bonhoeffer was concerned with living a ‘worldy – life,’ not one of sin, but one where he wanted to live (spiritually) unreserved in all of lives’ successes, and sufferings. I want the God in the gallows because I’m tired of drawing back out of fear for self protection and autonomy. I want a life where I increasingly see my life in Jesus’ life and my security in my Heavenly Father.

Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. Psalm 86:11

I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 11:19

Dr. John Franke, Professor of Theology at Biblical Seminary was recently in Portland, Oregon presenting ideas from his forthcoming book Manifold Witness, Plurality of Truth. Multnomah Biblical Seminary and New Wine, New Wineskins invited Dr. Franke to share some his most recent work. The forum, on March 6th, began with Dr. Franke presenting an overview of his book and followed with various responses from  Drs. Al Baylis, Brad Harper, and Paul Metzger. The forum also gave the opportunity to the broader audience to ask questions of Dr. Franke and to present some of their personal concerns where they might have diverging opinions.

Personally I really enjoyed the opportunity to listen to Dr. Franke’s ideas. His insights about language as a cultural construct and the “word games” and symbols that the authors of the Bible use to point to Christ strike at the core of gospel contextualization. This point became especially evident in view of the Gospels. Instead of imposing a rigid systematization of uniformity, Franke seeks to preserve the distinctiveness of Gospel accounts, thereby highlighting there uniqueness as authentic witnesses to God’s revelation in Christ. He views the many voices united in Scripture as distinct and holding their own valid testimony. Franke referred to this as the “irreducible plurality” of Scripture’s testimony.

Franke pointed to this sort of contrived “reconciliation” of facts to be like racial reconciliation which at times can lead to the destruction of the minority through assimilation into the majority. Likewise, the assimilation of varying points of truth can lead to a loss of the richness of Scripture’s testimony. Franke follows this line of thinking and applies it to the church today. How can there be real unity in the Church when there seems to be so many disagreements? Franke surmises that instead of assimilating traditions and doctrines into one coherent whole, we should view the unifying thread of the Scriptures and church history’s witness as a unique pattern of the Christ – transformed life fundamentally important to each narrative.

Many of the issues brought up at the forum are sure to be provocative points to ponder as we move into a post – Christian era. The same issues that we face in contemporary culture are questions and concerns shared by Christians dedicated to bearing witness to Christ in cultures across all borders.

I once attended an art exhibit displaying several portraits of Holocaust victims during WWII. They had been photographed during their release from the concentration camps. As I stood paralyzed by the overwhelmingly pressing weight of trauma worn on each of the victims’ faces, a thought occurred to me. I wasn’t just staring at the photos, the photos were staring at me. With all that going on, I also thought of the thousands of stories I had heard connected to the Holocaust. As this flood of emotion crashed through me, the eyes of each victim starred through me to the point of penetrating my very soul.

A few weeks ago I began reflecting on how art, story, and advocacy are connected. It started after I had the privilege of attending the Oregon Center for Christian Value’s (OCCV) conference, entitled Vote Out Poverty Advocacy Training. The event, in association with Sojourners, was hosted by Mosiac Church here in Portland. Aaron Graham, the keynote speaker from Sojourners, began the session with a talk entitled “The Power of Stories”. It went something like this.

The LORD says in Exodus 3:7, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.” God’s concerned love initiates His movement down to rescue these oppressed people. He does this through calling Moses to be an advocate for justice.

So, what is justice? In the recently release anti-slavery movie, “Call + Response”, I remember Dr. Cornel West saying that justice is what love looks like in public. Aaron Graham spoke of justice as an act of worship. These concepts spun around in my head over and over again that day. In what ways do we, as proclaimers of God’s kingdom, communicate in word and deed, this deep longing to engage the people of injustices to the world around us?

So, what does communication look like that breaks down the callousness of people’s hearts, penetrating their very souls? Can we see it in a photograph or painting? Does it embrace us in a song? I believe that artistic expression has a way of penetrating one’s soul, without one’s soul giving it permission. Art is never absent from the lives of oppressed people. Aaron went on that day to teach of the importance of the art of story. Throughout scripture we are gripped by God’s character being revealed through the narrative story. God is first introduced in Genesis 1 as the Creator, the artist who’s writing His story. We receive the invitation to participate and write our own story with Him, united in Him in community.

Aaron Graham has experienced a severe disconnect between Church priorities and what he reads in scripture concerning how much God cares for the poor and marginalized. This is why he is passionate about advocacy training for the Christian community. In Matthew 9:37-38 Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” This rhythmic drum beat for justice is the call. Our activity is the response. As we have been created in the image of the Creator Artist God, how are we bearing the imaginative response to his love for us and those suffering at the hands of the oppressors? If you really love people, you don’t want to see them abused. How are we practicing the Art of Advocacy for Jesus? What stories are we telling? What portraits are we painting?

Sometimes as I read the Bible, I picture Jesus in his humanity with a sort of halo around his head during his treks through Galilee. The French painter Georges Rouault captures the humanity of Jesus (seen in his piece, ‘Christ Mocked’) in a much different way. His depictions of Christ are not with a halo but as a clown, one despised and mocked. A clown represents the victims of society, the refuse of the world, the perishable, the transient, the foolish (1 Cor. 1:26); this is what Christ took on in his humanity according to Rouault’s art.

Rouault was born 1881 in Paris into a poor family. At the age of 14 he began an apprenticeship as a glass painter and restorer. This early experience as a glass painter is the likely source of the heavy black contouring and glowing colours which characterize Rouault’s mature painting style. When you view Rouault’s work, as in the picture above, what do you feel?

The sorrow and suffering that comes with everyday life is something Rouault fully engaged in his art.  This is why Rouault commonly painted clown and prostitutes. In both Rouault’s depictions of clowns and Christ, there is the same downward curve of the lips, the same elongation of the face, and the same deep emanation of suffering from the eyes. This is the tragic plight of humanity according to Rouault.

There are those who have criticized Rouault for his melancholy depictions of Christ as a clown. Some have even labeled him irreligious. He explains, however, that his art was meant to give a taste of the extent of God’s compassion, “I saw clearly that ‘the clown’ was myself, ourselves . . . this rich, spangled costume is given us by life, we’re all of us clowns . . . wear a ‘spangled costume,’ but if we are caught unawares . . . who would dare to claim that he is not moved to his very depths by immeasurable pity . . . King or emperor, what I want to see in the man facing me is his soul, and the more exalted his position the more misgivings I have about his soul.” (Harvey Cox, A Feast of Fools, p. 139)

I think often we want the resurrection without the cross, the promise of hope without any suffering, new life without the death of the old. Rouault reminds us that it is through the pain and suffering that God’s joy and promises come. In the same way that Rouault’s paintings were made to have light shine through them, the light of God’s hope goes through the cross to the resurrection.

As a group of us reflected on a few paintings of Rouault’s today, we were astounded at how this master painter could portray Christ in utter sorrow but at the same time in amazing serenity. We came to the following conclusion: in the midst of taking on our shame and pain as the clown, Christ entered into a new confidence and peace in his Father’s love. There is symmetry between Christ’s endurance of pain and the embrace of his Father’s love. Christ only enters the pain because of the warmth of love he first feels from the Father and that warmth grows in the midst of the suffering.  And the cross extends this same love of the Father, amazingly, to us.

Rouault’s art has made me think about how Christ’s engagement of humanity as the clown impacts our interactions in society today. If you agree that Christ took on the form of a clown, how do you think this metaphor of the clown should inform how we should relate to others? Have you experienced a ‘clown encounter’ in your life?

Click here to see more of Rouault’s art.

Underøath is perhaps one of the most prominent metalcore/hardcore bands to come on the “scene” in the last 4 years or so. With over 1 million records sold, they’ve reached mainstream status followed by musical grandeur. With success at their doorstep, you would think that they’d be like any other rock band….alcoholics, womanizers, and drug users. But Underøath is different. Underøath is, as a band, about the name of Jesus Christ. Underøath is what several within Christian subculture would consider a “Christian” band. However you won’t find them doing mega-church tours or Christian youth events and you won’t find them preaching a salvation message from the stage. In addition, you won’t find the average gathering of “churched” youth group kids at an Underøath show. The band of course has fans who are followers of Christ, but they aren’t out to “target” a particular demographic and aren’t about “selling Christ.” Nevertheless Underøath is my favorite band, not just because I love their music but also because of their faith in Christ. The band, at their core, is real and honest with people about who they are and do not separate their faith from the culture they’re part of. Their message is revealed by their actions more than their words (not necessarily lyrics, but “words” from the stage and in the media) and I am particularly eager to see them play tonight!

On this cold November evening at the Roseland Theater in downtown Portland, Underøath puts on a stellar performance and my small yet energetic body is enthralled by the show. The energy from the crowd of devoted fans is astounding and ecstatic! It’s down to last minutes of the show and after an amazing and hard hitting 14 song set the band takes the stage once again for their encore performance.

As anxious as I am to know what their encore will be, my ears prick up and I am soon screaming my heart out in approval as the band begins to play a new fan-favorite off their latest record (Lost in the Sound of Separation), a song entitled Too Bright to See Too Loud to Hear. Unlike the typical scream-rich hardcore/metal music you get from Underøath, this song utilizes the smoothness of vocalist/singer and drummer Aaron Gillespie rather distorted screams of front man Spencer Chamberlain. The song is slow and sweet! I, as well as many other fans, love this song because it speaks of the reality of God’s forgiveness and grace and how we are all loved and cherished as God’s children.

Chills overcame me as I peered at others in my proximity. Not surprisingly, I saw several people, bodies drenched in sweat, with their hands raised in praise and worship to God and embracing the song’s beauty. I soon felt something move inside me that I couldn’t hold back. In the midst of hundreds of sweating, tired, hardcore kids I lifted my hands in worship to my savior, singing along at the top of my lungs. Before long, it became apparent that I was encountering God’s presence! I stood there basking of the awe of my Savior’s grace in quite a strange place–a hardcore show! My experience encountering God with Underøath is something I have not forgotten! Every time I hear this song, I am reminded of that night.

I think so many times in our American Evangelical subculture we tend to limit the places and ways in which we can “encounter” God’s presence, having created religion. It seems as though we’ve put God in this box with rules attached to Him, and we’re only “allowed to” encounter and experience God in certain ways (Prayer, “quiet time”, church on Sunday morning, etc) as if He’s not around other times or doesn’t care. I think worship is holistic in nature, being an embodied response to God for what He’s done for us, regardless of our environment, upbringing, etc.

When it comes to encountering God in the arts, artistic expressions of faith have been limited, if not totally removed from “Christendom” except for the likes of Thomas Kinkade paintings or Fireproof-esque movies (the list could go on) that are created within the subculture with the sole purpose of bait and switch evangelism of the broader culture or being created specifically for Christian people within the subculture. It appears to me that we as evangelicals have restricted God to our finite, western, American, religious systems and nothing more. Where have the artistic expressions of faith gone? Where has the engagement of culture gone?

Too Bright Too See Too Loud to Hear was not written with the intention of worshiping God and the band’s purpose was not evangelism, but it appeared to create an atmosphere of worship among the crowd that night and I believe people encountered the true and living God. The song is first and foremost a work of art, regardless of whether it expresses the faith of the band or not. It led me to encounter God and I felt no different worshipping God in that crowd of people than I did in a church on a Sunday morning. While several within Christian subculture today would say that a hardcore concert at a “secular” venue with “secular/non-Christian” bands performing alongside “Christian” bands is not where we’d go to worship our Savior, I know for a fact that God revealed Himself to me there! I experienced God in a place that was not expected and I experienced God through the medium of poetry and music…through art.

I believe the Kingdom of God will break in when and where we least expect it, and God will move in ways we least expect Him to. As MTV’s Diary of a Rock Star says “You think you know, but you have no idea!”

To listen the song Too Bright to See Too Loud to Hear, go here. Click on the “more info” link in the side bar to see the lyrics while the song is playing.

Call + Response has been out for a while, but alas, I just watched it. And go figure, I am inspired. First of all it is inspiring to see individuals who are giving their lives, their voices, their careers, their talents, to abolishing modern day slavery.  I realize I need to fight that voice in my head that says it can’t be done, because it CAN be done. Slavery has been abolished before, we can do it again, and this time with the help of much more resources. I am sold: I do believe that this is a 21st century challenge to an age old problem that we all are faced with and called to respond to. We are responsible. 

We must do what we can with what we have. And what we have is… a lot.

We have our voice, resources, education, talents, gifts, consumer power, the wisdom of God, the power of the Holy Spirit and community. Slavery was abolished before because of concerted effort and solidarity. It can and will happen again in the same way.

But I’m afraid.

I’m afraid that I will forget the hopelessness in their voices 

and the emptiness in their eyes.

I’m afraid I will forget the anguish I felt for them.

I’m afraid that the empowered voice in my head that said “Yes! I must do something. I can liberate these people!” will fade away.

But what if we don’t let it fade away.

What if we encouraged one another to 

consider the challenge 

to fight for another’s freedom

to fight for another’s laughter and song

to fight for another’s dignity.

What if “holding each other accountable” took on a whole other level?

What if we followed the ramifications of our actions to the ends of the earth (rather than foolishly thinking they stop at us)

and what if we saw the tremendous power we have as consumers, decision makers, social changers?

What if we harnessed this power and freed the oppressed 

to sing the better song of freedom.

I’m afraid I will forget the way I felt sitting there, looking at the faces of God’s beautiful creation–

tormented and broken–

wanting so badly to break into their lives and bring them hope and liberation,

to rescue them from their hell and lead them outside,

so they can look up at the endless sky

simply because

now they can.

I fear that the blatant corruption and evil I saw will be overshadowed,

that the moving music, impassioned calls, fiery convictions

will be subsumed by 

a stressful paper to write

a job to find

a family member I must call

a traffic jam I must endure.

And I will forget

the 27 million (individuals with names, fears, hopes, desires, just like us)

who know no freedom

of writing a paper

searching for a job

talking with family

battling traffic

And beyond this, they don’t even know how

to read or write,

express themselves or laugh.

They don’t 

even know how

to smile.

Again, I am pleading with my self, with my flesh in all its funk, with my community

with you

to cry with them

and to fight for them.

I fear I will move on and say one day,

Yes, I saw that movie.

Yes, I knew there were 27 million oppressed, enslaved individuals (each created and loved passionately by a God who knows them by name and calls us to love and liberate them)

and…no

I didn’t respond

because I had a paper to write

a phone call to make. 

And besides, what can one person do?

That, my friends, is the voice of an oppressor.

And I fear that in all my shock and paralysis, I will only succumb to being

yet another slave trader

out of cowardice and disconnect.

Like Ashley Judd said (something to the effect of), ” I don’t want my purchases to be another’s torture, my  freedom to be another’s slavery.”

“And now let us consider how we may spur one another on towards love and good deeds.”  Hebrews 10:24

Solidarity + Action = Call + Response

Addendum:

It starts somewhere, and somewhere is all it takes. No action is too small.

In my humble opinion, these are the 4 first main steps we can take:

1) Become a conscious consumer. I am convinced that this is the first most tangible, immediate, powerful step. Know who you are oppressing. Know who you are empowering. Live, love, shop and eat intentionally. It does make a difference.  ”What you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” (Gandhi)

2) Identify your strength. What are you good at? Do that. God intentionally gave us different gifts and I believe he desires us to use this to love and liberate the world. Making a musical documentary (a “rockumentary” if you will) was creative and beautifully harnessed the power of music for a greater cause. Those people used their strengths. If organizing is your “thing”, then organize an event to have a group or community write their senator requesting him/her to address slavery. 

3) Pray– for wisdom, vision, courage, for the slaves and slave traders

4) visit  http://www.callandresponse.com/responsinator3.asp

would like to cordially invite everyone to attend the upcoming membership meeting at *Warner Pacific College on Thursday, November 13, 2008 at 6:30 p.m. * The meeting itself will be held in Kardatzke Hall  below Schlatter Chapel, on the west side of campus near 68th Ave.

This will be a time of music, prayer, reflection, and fellowship.  Stephanie Ahn will also be providing a brief introduction to biblical justice.

You will also be able to hear about upcoming opportunities to serve together to promote God’s heart for the poor, sick, and all of creation.  Our hope is that this will be a time of reconnecting and spiritual refreshment for all.

If you are interested in attending this event and have not yet RSVP’d, please contact Seth in the office at 503.222.2072, or e-mail us at info@occv.org.

 Ron’s vision came in to fruition because of the help and support of churches and people in the area. This is a testimony to the power of community. It is amazing to me what can be accomplished when visions are shared and callings are fearlessly pursued. But this was only possible because Ron’s vision and calling was supported within the context of community. He shared his burden with others, and this was like oxygen to his dream. 

Rachel and Ronaldo shared their testimony regarding what New Wine has been and continues to be for them. It is refreshing to hear two totally different testimonies that both attest to the power of building relationships, and the transforming power of engaging culture with a loving, compassionate Christ, who deeply desires to have a deep, dynamic relationship with everyone. Realizing that our calling is to bear witness to this relational, compassionate God is powerful.

The night went well and I am excited for the opportunity we had to share what New Wine is about, and to, like Ron, invite others to catch the vision of living out the redemptive power of Christ in this broken world.

The theme for this year’s Christian Community Development (CCDA) Conference, referred to in the quote above, is “Shalom—Seeking The Peace Of The City”. It’s a great idea, right? I mean who doesn’t like peace? But how do we move and act to bring it about in this broken world? Peace is a great idea, as long as brokenness never enters the picture.  We often think of peace as the absence of any sort of tension. However, defining shalom apart from its relationship with tension is like defining courage without mentioning the need to face fears. True shalom seeks to lovingly redeem through entering into brokenness. The whole, completed picture after the restoration is where shalom rests.

So often in my personal experience, especially in regards to relationships, I have had this incomplete picture of peace. Rather than addressing and resolving tensions with people in my community, I tend to disregard, downplay, drown, or even desert associations with conflicts. This disengagement of emotional sufferings never results in my attainment of peace. Jesus suffered for the sake of love, bringing victory in the form of entering into and defeating death by his resurrection. As I find Him pursuing my heart here at the conference I am realizing true “Shalom for the City” must begin with the shalom of my heart that can only be found by living in Him. By being united in His Spirit I have courage to engage my emotional sufferings from the past, present, and future.

2 Cor. 5:17-19, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.”

Any attempts that we may have to “Seek the Peace of the City” apart from Him are impossible. As God’s community, we are found in the Prince of Peace and called to reconcile the tension in our hearts so that we may go out and bring that message of shalom to our cities and the world. Thread by thread He is weaving us all back together.

One, there is only one true incarnation, and he is Jesus of Nazareth.  Jesus is the only pure embodiment of the gospel; we are not.  I think we would all agree with this statement.  Yet, I find myself at times eclipsing Jesus in my attempt to be incarnational rather than simply pointing people to Jesus (as well as looking for them to point me to Him), the one full incarnation.  When we say we are living incarnationally this does not mean we are Jesus but that we represent and point to Jesus.

Second, we must acknowledge that incarnational living is a two way street.  If we are able to embody the gospel through the Spirit in a concrete location, then it would follow that we will at times also have the gospel embodied before us by others.  In other words, we reciprocally point one another to Jesus.  I know when I think of living incarnationally, I think of it as my behavior towards others and not others’ behavior towards me.  We must expand our view of living incarnationally to also include learning from others’ incarnational living.

What do you think?  Do you think speaking of living incarnationally in our neighborhoods undermines the incarnation of Christ, why or why not?  What other dangers do you think there are in using this language if any?  How would you define living incarnationally?  And what does living incarnationally mean to you?

Dr. Paul Louis Metzger and Dr. Brad Harper spoke about how the church is to minister in culture as the triune God’s kingdom community. Their talks were based on their forthcoming book with Brazos: Exploring Ecclesiology: An Evangelical and Ecumenical Introduction (2009).  Metzger and Harper addressed such questions as “What is the gospel?”  “What should the church’s relation to culture be?” and “What difference does it make for the church in its ministry in the broader culture that it is the triune God’s kingdom community?” 

Tony Kriz will served as the MC for the workshop.  He led an ample Q&A session during the proceedings. 

As Christ-followers committed to Christ’s church’s missional outreach, it is important that we exegete rightly the Bible as well as the culture into which we seek to communicate the gospel. 

Conference audio recording are now available! Click below to download the talks and join us as we continue to wrestle with these important issues. 

The Church as a Being-Driven Community, part 1 with Dr. Paul Louis Metzger
The Church as a Being-Driven Community, part 2 with Dr. Paul Louis Metzger
Discussion Session 1 and The Church as a Kingdom-Building Community with Dr. Brad Harper
Discussion Session 2, part 1
Discussion Session 2, part 2
Discussion Session 2, part 3
Discussion Session 2, part 4 and closing with Crystal Santos

New Wine, New Wineskins is an official program of Multnomah Biblical Seminary and is committed to assisting the entire Multnomah University community in its efforts to bear witness to Christ in contemporary culture.

It has always been useful to me to think of engagement with  culture when proclaiming the gospel using three categories:

1. Things we accept
2. Things we reject
3. Things that are redeemed

I believe that this fits in with Paul’s approach when proclaiming the gospel on Mars Hill in the book of Acts as well.  Admittedly this is a bit reductionistic in that some things aren’t quite this simple, but I wonder if these categories can serve as a primer to thinking through how the Gospel is proclaimed in a specific cultural context.

Do you think that there is anything of merit in the system I propose?

What can we learn from it?

What are weaknesses to this sort of approach?

If you totally disagree with this sort of approach, how do you think through issues of relating Gospel to culture?

Moreover, if you took a room of 100 people, 50 Christians and 50 non-Christians, and asked similar questions, you might as well put a bunch of hungry monkeys in a room with only one banana. The vibe in the atmosphere would certainly not be pleasant.

I think we as humans can correctly state that we can become rather uncomfortable around those of which we do not agree with. Be it theology, politics, ethics, personal practice, etc. we, the human race, throughout history have naturally tended to gravitate toward those in which we are in alignment with.

Ever since I can remember I have always struggled to love and befriend those of which I find disagreement with. More recently within the last few years, as my theological and political beliefs have shifted quite profoundly, as a Bible college student I have found myself becoming more and more uncomfortable with those of which I disagree in areas such as theology, politics, and personal practices. In some cases it has even gotten to the point where I don’t feel like I can completely be myself in some ways unless I am with people of whom I agree with. This is sad, but true. As in other cases, it has become a rather shameful practice of mine to subconsciously stereotype individuals of whom I disagree with into a completely separate group of people. For example, when disagreements arise, I have essentially said to myself “you think (blank) about this, you must be one of them” Fill in the blanks with whatever labels you wish (liberal, conservative, Calvinist, Arminian, etc) and voila, you have my rather vial thought process. I have conceived a rather dangerous “me vs. them” mentality. This is a personal aspect of which I do not envy, and I have spent many restless nights fighting with myself over my desire to be a truly loving person.

On a wider scale I have always asked the question of how we as evangelical Christians can engage those within our postmodern culture who share different beliefs. I have noticed that we seem to get so hung up on the other’s “wrong” beliefs that we never get past arguing, wasting precious time bickering with one another.

It wasn’t until recently that I truly began to understand engagement with culture can look like. I was listening to a sermon MP3 and the pastor mentioned this…
We could spend our time asking questions about rather mundane issues of theology, politics, morality, etc.

But what if we asked different kinds of questions?
Can we as opponents agree, as different as we are, that Christ’s body was broken and blood poured for the healing of the world? Can we agree on that? What would it be like if the next time we were in a shouting match with a fellow Christian we said
“Can we agree that Christ’s body was broken and his blood poured out for the healing of the world? Can we agree on that?”

Imagine what it would be like if the we engaged someone who was not a Christian, who didn’t want anything to do with God, Jesus, The Bible, or Church? What if we asked, “do you agree that the world needs healing? I believe Jesus’ body was broken and blood was shed for the healing of this world. Can we agree that the world needs healing? Can we agree on that?”

Also, can we agree on our need for the grace and peace of Christ? Can we agree on that? The interesting thing about our opponents is that we both agree that we both need the grace and peace of Jesus Christ. We have a connection we didn’t know we had. Our boundaries would soon look much different and we wouldn’t want to throw bombs at each other if we realized our mutual need for the grace and peace of Christ.

What it would be like if this was how we viewed things?
How would our world change?
How would our faith as followers of Christ be changed?

So what role does culture play? Is the gospel a part of–or apart from– culture?  I don’t want the gospel to be some abstract idea that I dance around, or am studying so closely that I miss the gospel for the theologies. (Get it…?) I want it, essentially, to be evident in and through my life. Ideally, our lives should paint a picture of the gospel. Do we need to disentangle ourselves from culture in order to embrace the gospel? Or do we need to embrace culture in light of the gospel? Does culture reflect the gospel, deflect the gospel, or both?

Thank the good Lord these issues will be addressed and explored on October 18th for the New Wine, New Wineskins Autumn workshop led by Dr. Metzger and Dr. Harper, as well as at the New Wine Benefit Dinner on November 6th. This is what New Wine is about: getting to the heart of these issues, and wrestling with how to live this gospel out in tangible, contextual ways. We comprise culture. And hopefully our lives, in community, exhibit Christ. So how do the two- gospel and culture- work together for his glory? In my opinion, that’s when it gets good. These are not simple questions. And, because the gospel is so profound and beautiful, it doesn’t not warrant a quick, simple answer. This would only limit Christ’s love, and show a lacking gospel.

The gospel is good news. But how do we show that to, for instance, a co-worker who is “just fine, thank-you-very-much”? What is so compelling about the gospel? Are we fanning the flame of this little light of ours, by engaging culture and issues (which, essentially is people) or are we cupping it with our hands, fearful that this light might wake up the neighbors, or be extinguished by the issues of today?

The workshop will provide an excellent time to explore these questions, but until then, what do you think? What is the gospel to you, and what relationship do you think gospel has, or should have, with culture?

We are looking forward to the conversations and reflections that will be posted here. In the meantime, I would also encourage you to check out consumingjesus.org the blog site for Dr. Paul Metzger’s latest book, Consuming Jesus.

Dr. John Perkins of the John M. Perkins Foundation

Rick McKinley of Imago Dei Community

Nancy Haught of The Oregonian and John Fortmeyer of Christian News Northwest

Richard Twiss of Wiconi International

…and Georgene Rice herself!

New Wine director, Paul Louis Metzger, articulated the history and passion of New Wine.

New Wine Advisory Council member, Lindsey Smith, and New Wine intern, Ross Halbach, spoke of how New Wine has provided a theological basis for their personal commitments to multicultural engagement.

President of Wiconi International, Richard Twiss, spoke of his and New Wines’s shared value of engaging culture faithfully, not fearfully.

New Wine director, Paul Louis Metzger, articulated the vision and missional passion of New Wine.

New Wine interns, Andreas Lundén and Crystal Santos, spoke of New Wine’s role in their personal efforts to engage culture.

Environmentalist and director of Restoring Eden, Peter Illyn, gave a talk entitled “Belly Button Christianity – Encountering Jesus in Tribal Culture,” giving a tangible example of how cultural engagement refines our understanding of Christ.

New Wine director, Paul Louis Metzger, articulated the history and passion of New Wine.

New Wine friends, Letha McCloud, and graphic designer, Steve Mitchell, spoke of New Wine’s role in their personal commitments to holistic cultural engagement.

Don Miller (author of Blue Like Jazz) spoke of the necessity to build a bridge back to culture, crystallizing New Wine’s commitment to bearing witness to Christ in contemporary culture.