Jesus Wants to Save Christians is a new book by Rob Bell and Don Golden worth reading, but only if you are willing to be challenged by the biblical narrative in the way that St. Stephen challenged the dominant religious interpreters of that narrative in his day. The link goes to a blog devoted to a virtual reality game connected to the themes of the book. You may also listen to the authors read their book by clicking on the link in my 'links' sidebar.
This book deals with the dominant narrative of empire and power, how Christendom was coppted by this narrative, how we are being called out of that narrative to more fully and deeply embrace the alternative narrative of the God found in the Bible; both old and new testaments. if you've read Walter Brueggeman or N.T. Wright, among other biblical scholars of the late modern, postmodern age you will resonate with the simple scholarship of Jesus Wants to Save Christians.
Warning: if you are satisfied with Christianity as it is, as you've known it in your own personal and corporate faith life, then maybe this book is not for you. Hey, that's okay. I'm not being judgmental or critical of you. I'm protecting you, I think. And if you ar in this camp, you are probabl thinking, "Who is he, I don't need protecting. What harm could this little book cause? besides, I'm not an idiot. I can think for myself." You are right. And if you want to read it, be my guest. But don't say you weren't warned.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Acts 8
The dispersion of the apostles' ministry from Jerusalem to the "ends of the earth" is the result of a persecution against them in the holy city. When they are no longer welcome there, they take their message and their ministry to other places.
The first story about the mission beyond the walls of Jerusalem is the story of Philip in Samaria. Samaria is the location of that ethnic/religious group that had been overrun by Assyrians in the 8th century BC and diversified through inter- marriage. Jews and Samaritans were bitter cousins, who avoided each other. Samaria had its own religious capital and its own sites of worship. They were not Jerusalem temple-goers and so they were despised. Philip finds himself there first. And he finds an eager crowd ready to receive good news, submit to Holy Baptism as a sign of their repentence and conversion, and be healed by the compassionate touch of Jesus. Philip drove out demons and healed the sick, ostensibly carrying out the pre-passion ministry of Jesus. A magician named Simon becomes a baptized believer too.
Next, Peter and John come to Samaria. Imagine their surprise and excitement. If they are rejected by the Jewish establishment in Jerusalem, maybe they are being embraced and welcomed by Samaria. Jesus, after all, told that story about the man who fell among robbers, was robebd ans beaten on the Jericho road. When the Jerusalem pries and temple worker passed by they showed no mercy. But the Samaritan, Jesus said, was the merciful neighbor. In that passage Jesus was shockingly revealing that neighbor love means to cross border and boundaries to embrace the stranger and the enemy. And Jesus had a conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well, offering her living water. And now, Philip will offer them living water too. And they will receive it! The Samaritans were embracing the gospel message.
There is a curious scene in Acts 8 in which we are told that the baptized Samaritans had not yet received the Holy Spirit. So Peter and John are summoned from Jerusalem to confirm this new community of believers. By laying on hands a little pentecost experience occurs in which the power of the Holy Spirit comes to the baptized Samaritans.
What is happening here? Is baptism, as the reception of the whole Christ event into one's own body, and the gift of the Holy Spirit two separate experiences in Acts 8? Is it possible that people may be baptized into Christ, thereby receiving the gift and benefit of his resurrection life, who do not yet have the gift of the Holy Spirit? Or do Peter and John acknowledge for them the presence of the Holy Spirit through laying on of hands. Does the Spirit come to the Samaritans through their apostolic witness? Or are they confirming that the Holy Spirit is already at work in the baptized believers? In a Lutheran understanding, the Holy Spirit is the producer of faith in the hearts of people. Without the Holy Spirit we cannot believe or confess that Jesus the Christ is Lord and Savior. And we beleive that the Holy Spirit comes through the means of grace---God's Word and Sacraments. So hearing the Word, washing in the waters, eating and drinking, these are the sources by which the Holy Spirit comes to us. I affirm this truth. Apart from these means, how can we be assured that the Spirit is Holy? That what is happening in us is of the LORD?
And yet, I read Acts 8 and wonder if we might limit the Holy Spirit's power to come through apostolic blessing. Philip's Christ-like ministry is an incarnational witness to Jesus' divine life flowing in the disicples. He has Jesus' power. He is for them the messenger of the Word. And by hearing it, the Holy Spirit works through Philip's proclamation and ministry to create faith in their hearts. Peter and John, in the laying on of hands, confirm the gift of the Holy Spirit in the Samaritan believers. And this is a powerful moment for the church, because their ministry and community extends beyond the walls of normative Jewish tradition and practice. I'm wondering, to whom are we being sent? I long to become an evangelist like Philip, sharing the good news in word and deed with people who are not yet part of communion with Jesus. I do notice, however, that the initial mission is not to the unaffiliated. These Samaritans, I suspect, are practitioners of the law of Moses and part of the Abrahamic covenant community. Yet they are outcasts. Who are the faithful outcasts? The exiles? The lost sheep of the house of Luther? And how can we connect with them anew? Not to replenish congegation memberships, but to make disciples transformed by the amazing love and grace of Jesus...May I meet someone today in need of the Word and Sacraments. And may I boldly offer them in the name of Jesus.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Servant weekend--gleaning and painting
I love to share what God is doing with us! Its so awesome to see ordinary people become ordinary saints simply by doing God's will and following the example of Jesus. Jesus calls us to a kind of obedience, but only as a response to His obedience to God, revealing God's mercy and love for sinners by dying on a cross for our forgiveness. He has rescued us, setting us free from the shackles of sin and death. And as a result, we are called to a new obedience by faith.
Six of us from Zion joined nearly one hundred others at Sycamore Spring orchard to glean apples for two hours on Saturday. It rained a little, but it was warm enough. We picked apples off the ground---red delicious. It's amazing how many good apples would go to waste had we not been welcomed there to glean. May our efforts bring fresh fruit to many hungry and homeless people in central PA. We had fun as usual. I don;t know how many bushels or pounds of apples we gleaned, but we guessed that each of us had filled between 10 and 15 half bushel bags.
Thanks to David and Janet Chalfant, Jeff and Joanna Neikirk, and Shelly Trupe!
On Sunday night, 6 teens, Jeff and I painted the future "Peter's Porch clothing store" downstairs. We spent two hours and finished the painting. Tonight some guys will come and work on mounting clothing racks on walls. All of this preparation is to launch a simple ministry to open the church to the community. We will serve breakfast and give away stuff. Any stuff---clothes, blankets, household items...we want to be the church in action, serving and blessing our neighbors. I hope to offer a time of healing prayer for anyone who seeks it, too. I am so excited about November 22 and the launch of Peter's Porch. For this ocngregation, a seminal moment in walking the way of Jesus!
By the way, two weeks ago about 10 of us, including my two boys, walked the three mile CROP walk. I don't know how mucgh we raised locally for hunger, but we visibly expressed our Christian witness to walk with those who walk for food and water and shelter. May we find ways to join them, meet them, beffriend them, share with them, and in a sense become them in the servant love of Jesus.
Thank God for the gift of the Holy Spirit working in the lives of people to increase the love of God and the gracious justice of His Kingdom on earth.
Woe Pharisees, Woe! Luke 11:42-44.
"Woe to you Pharisees! For you tithe mint and rue and every herb, but you neglect justice and love of God; these eyou ought to have done, without neglecting the others. Woe to you Pharisees! for you love the best seats in the synagogue and salutations in the marketplaces. Woe to you! for you are like graves which are not seen, and men walk over them without knowing it."
Why is Jesus so hard on these guys? I mean, weren't there other bad guys to deal with--- swindlers, murderers, thieves, perpetrators of injustice.At least John the Baptist tried to reform the "bad guys"--- Roman soldiers, tax collectors, Herod. those guys were abusers of power that everyone could point fingers at. So why does Jesus strike out at the members of his own tribe? What was it about the religious elite, the scholars, the righteous exemplars of the faith that Jesus detested? he calls them unmarked graves that men unknowingly walk over. Essentially they are dishonorable dead men to Jesus. Are they, the most respected leaders in Jesus' community, so off the mark that Jesus is compelled to bite off their heads? What would Jesus say about me? I am an ordained Lutheran Pastor, part of the religious establishment. do I exude self-righteousness? I suspect that every religious person ought to repent in some way, because by nature of our being religious we have excluded people who are not. I have rejected people unawares. And I am sorry. I think the whole church needs to repent for the ways we have rejected people, because they do not conform to a religious standard. Strangely our religious standards have not likely been serious or spiritual enough. We've required an annual pledge, but not a commitment of the heart. We have sought a devotion to congregation but not to Christ. Our religious expectations have been too low to inspire anyone.
So, as I hear Jesus today in the gospel reading for Wednesday in pentecost 24, I repent. How can I become less like a Pharisee and more like Jesus?
Acts 7
Stephen's death by stoning is a poignant reminder that faithful proclamation will not always be received with joyful acclamation and acceptance. he is speaking to the synagogue of the freedmen. These are diaspora Jews, more likely non-ethnic Jews. And they were strict adherents to the law. Since they were visiting Jerusalem temple for customary reasons, its not a surprise that Stephen's anti-temple message resonates so sharply. Stephe essentially says that from the time of Abraham, Israel has been a refugee people, an enslaved people, and homeless population in the world. Their God, a refugee God on the road with them to rescue them and deliver them from the evil one. And yet, they always sought the status of other nations---settlement, property, kingly rule, temples, buildings, institutions. And these things are corruptible.
So Stephen uses the temple as an example of their rejection of the God who has been revealed in Jesus the Christ. Temple is not God's dwelling place. God is in Jesus and is found in the spiritual lives of His followers. For a Chirstian every place is sacred, evrey act is holy simply because Christ is present in and through the Holy Spirit who is active in the hearts of people who trust in Jesus as God's Word.
So Stepehen is killed for calling the temple an idol.
What about church has become an idol? The building? The governing structures? The instiutional hierarchy? The office of ministry? The budget? The congregation itself? A liturgy? Being religious can be a form of idolatry when it becomes that to which one is devoted. Christians are not devoted to a worship service or a building or a pastor or a budget. Christians are devoted to the gospel the story of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.
So, how do Christians get stoned today? (I have some friends who might think that's funny..Christians getting stoned.) Who throws rocks at us? The more I get connected to the way of Jesus, the weirder my life becomes. I want to play video games with the Clark's and visit inmates in prison and find out where homeless people are so that I might hang out with them. I want to seek the one's whom Jesus loves and the one's in whose face Jesus reveals himself. It is not me. in the other, I will see my Lord. As for Stephen, he did see the Lord in the eyes of the one's stoning him, as he looks up he declares that he seess the son of man and the Father in heaven. As he looks up he prays that his executioners might be forgiven. It was in their faces that he saw Jesus. That's love.
So Stephen uses the temple as an example of their rejection of the God who has been revealed in Jesus the Christ. Temple is not God's dwelling place. God is in Jesus and is found in the spiritual lives of His followers. For a Chirstian every place is sacred, evrey act is holy simply because Christ is present in and through the Holy Spirit who is active in the hearts of people who trust in Jesus as God's Word.
So Stepehen is killed for calling the temple an idol.
What about church has become an idol? The building? The governing structures? The instiutional hierarchy? The office of ministry? The budget? The congregation itself? A liturgy? Being religious can be a form of idolatry when it becomes that to which one is devoted. Christians are not devoted to a worship service or a building or a pastor or a budget. Christians are devoted to the gospel the story of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.
So, how do Christians get stoned today? (I have some friends who might think that's funny..Christians getting stoned.) Who throws rocks at us? The more I get connected to the way of Jesus, the weirder my life becomes. I want to play video games with the Clark's and visit inmates in prison and find out where homeless people are so that I might hang out with them. I want to seek the one's whom Jesus loves and the one's in whose face Jesus reveals himself. It is not me. in the other, I will see my Lord. As for Stephen, he did see the Lord in the eyes of the one's stoning him, as he looks up he declares that he seess the son of man and the Father in heaven. As he looks up he prays that his executioners might be forgiven. It was in their faces that he saw Jesus. That's love.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
MSC and the emerging paradigm
Europe Brings Insight Into Church Planting
Roger Ganzel
"American churches began to lose their connection with society in the late 1950’s. Prior to that society had regarded it “socially in” for one to belong to a church. But as we moved into the sixties there was something much larger occurring on the world scene, something that no one alive at that time had experienced before. We entered the transition from the over five hundred year Modern Age to the new Post-modern Age.
Unlike with the corporate world, this transition went nearly unnoticed in the church, now to our chagrin. Today the vast majority of our congregations are growing older, greyer and smaller. Over the next thirty to forty years the majority of them will likely disappear. For decades before this transition, however, attendance shrinkage was already part of the European church experience. This came about because their state church model had already grown more and more out of touch with society.
Whether churches in America or Europe can do anything to stave off the wolves depends on their ability to “get” and implement a significant reality: churches based on membership will not survive in the Post-modern Age. Both membership and denominations belong to the Modern Age and can no longer produce long range effectiveness. Effective congregations for Christ’s mission in the 21st Century will be organic systems of discipleship, similar to those seen in the 1st Century.
But a new wind is beginning to blow. In the more beleaguered churches of Europe we are now seeing a fresh insight into church planting. We see a new movement emerging that comes in a variety of expressions, congregations or networks made up of mid-sized communities, groups, identified as MSCs. A limited number have named these communities pastorates.
Retaining some similarity to what we in America call small groups, MSCs are larger than our 12+ member small-sized groups referred to in Europe as cells, and smaller than celebrations, where multiple MSCs gather together one or more Sundays per month with over 100 in worship. Not always, but most often MSCs gather weekly, and then sometimes not on the weeks they gather with other MSCs for celebration. Ideal MSC optimum size is 35 with maximum being considered 50. Having once thought 72 was maximum, today MSCs larger than 50 are encouraged to divide so as not to compromise their sense of family, belonging and purpose.
Not all, but the majority of MSCs, describe their purpose as threefold: UP which focuses on their relationship with God, IN which is their relationship with one another and OUT, their relationship with those beyond their community. Diagramed as an equilateral triangle, reality demonstrates most MSCs are stronger in one focus than the others, similar to experience with small groups."
I wonder if the MSC is the model we are suggesting for a new missional church in LSS? Maybe we should go to Europe to learn more...
Roger Ganzel
"American churches began to lose their connection with society in the late 1950’s. Prior to that society had regarded it “socially in” for one to belong to a church. But as we moved into the sixties there was something much larger occurring on the world scene, something that no one alive at that time had experienced before. We entered the transition from the over five hundred year Modern Age to the new Post-modern Age.
Unlike with the corporate world, this transition went nearly unnoticed in the church, now to our chagrin. Today the vast majority of our congregations are growing older, greyer and smaller. Over the next thirty to forty years the majority of them will likely disappear. For decades before this transition, however, attendance shrinkage was already part of the European church experience. This came about because their state church model had already grown more and more out of touch with society.
Whether churches in America or Europe can do anything to stave off the wolves depends on their ability to “get” and implement a significant reality: churches based on membership will not survive in the Post-modern Age. Both membership and denominations belong to the Modern Age and can no longer produce long range effectiveness. Effective congregations for Christ’s mission in the 21st Century will be organic systems of discipleship, similar to those seen in the 1st Century.
But a new wind is beginning to blow. In the more beleaguered churches of Europe we are now seeing a fresh insight into church planting. We see a new movement emerging that comes in a variety of expressions, congregations or networks made up of mid-sized communities, groups, identified as MSCs. A limited number have named these communities pastorates.
Retaining some similarity to what we in America call small groups, MSCs are larger than our 12+ member small-sized groups referred to in Europe as cells, and smaller than celebrations, where multiple MSCs gather together one or more Sundays per month with over 100 in worship. Not always, but most often MSCs gather weekly, and then sometimes not on the weeks they gather with other MSCs for celebration. Ideal MSC optimum size is 35 with maximum being considered 50. Having once thought 72 was maximum, today MSCs larger than 50 are encouraged to divide so as not to compromise their sense of family, belonging and purpose.
Not all, but the majority of MSCs, describe their purpose as threefold: UP which focuses on their relationship with God, IN which is their relationship with one another and OUT, their relationship with those beyond their community. Diagramed as an equilateral triangle, reality demonstrates most MSCs are stronger in one focus than the others, similar to experience with small groups."
I wonder if the MSC is the model we are suggesting for a new missional church in LSS? Maybe we should go to Europe to learn more...
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