Sojourn

Hurricane Gustav Response

It's becoming more and more likely that I will be leaving sometime Wednesday, with a truckload of emergency supplies, and traveling toward Pass Christian, Mississippi where we have an organization that's been in place since shortly after Katrina. This organization has been rebuilding people's homes and providing them with food and shelter during the building process.

They are preparing for the worst with Gustav. My plan, if they do indeed take a hit and need help, is to arrive Wednesday with supplies and stay until Sunday. If you would like to contribute to help purchase the supplies and provide on-the-ground assistance, you can send a check to:

Christ Community Church
1819 Midtown Drive
Columbus, GA  31906
memo line: Gustav Relief

If you do decide to help with the relief by sending a check, send me an e-mail to let me know so I'll have an idea of how much we can purchase.

Borderline Anarchist Follower of Jesus?

A couple of weeks ago I succumbed to the culture and opened a Facebook account.  While filling out my profile information I got to the part where it asked about my religious views.  The best description I could think of for myself was, "Borderline Anarchist Follower of Jesus."  I'm sure many who've since seen this description on my page have wondered what such a phrase could mean.

I guess I have to begin with a definition of anarchist.  Dictionary.com offers the following three definitions:

1.	a person who advocates or believes in anarchy or anarchism.

2.	a person who seeks to overturn by violence all constituted forms and institutions of society and government, with no purpose of establishing any other system of order in the place of that destroyed.

3.	a person who promotes disorder or excites revolt against any established rule, law, or custom.

These definitions are all a bit clumsy for me, which is why I have to include the "borderline" qualifier in my self-description.  I would describe an anarchist as someone who sees no value in, and works to dismantle, law, government, and order. 

After 22 plus years in the church system, I am closer to an ideology of ecclesiastical anarchy than I've ever been.  And in so doing I take a seat at the table with Soren Kierkegaard, Leo Tolstoy, Henry David Thoreau, Ivan Illich, Fyodor Dostoevsky, the Desert Fathers, the Quakers, and many others.  Yet, in some ways, I remain not fully seated.  Let me explain.

As a person who has placed my faith in Christ, is set free from both the penalty and the power of sin, and believes that the book of Galatians is inspired by God, I believe that I am no longer bound to the necessity of a religious life that has "keeping the law" as its redemptive nexus.  Even so, I am not antinomian in totality as I see great benefit in living by the spirit of the law.  Being a person who doesn't steal keeps me free.  Being a person who doesn't commit adultery keeps me relationally and sexually alive.  Observing the Sabbath keeps me rested and refreshed.  As Jesus compared the law to the way of the Kingdom in his Sermon on the Mount he did not dismiss the law.  Instead, he encouraged his hearers to understand, embrace, and live freely in the spirit of the law rather than the powerless word of the law.  Where I am fully antinomian is in the dozens, yea hundreds, of ancillary, extra-Biblical laws erected and enforced by systems of organized religion over the centuries; Like the membership card I had to sign with one denomination promising that I would never dance or drink a glass of wine.

It is in the realm of ecclesiastical government wherein I find myself becoming more and more anarchist.  As I search the New Testament over and over again, I find no sign of church government.  What I do find is a rapidly multiplying community of people who have encountered Jesus, been set free of the penalty and power of sin, do life together in the most common and love-infused ways, and (as my friend Billy puts it) are devoted to inviting others to the table.  Among the community are those gifted as teachers, apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors who serve the community.  They don't rule the community.  They don't create ever-expanding hierarchies of management, command, control, and bureaucracy.  They are free people helping those around them to live freely and fully in the grace of Christ.  And the ethos of this community is one of mutual and voluntary love, encouragement, accountability, and correction.  The only King and Sovereign Ruler before whom every knee must bow is Jesus himself, the Head of the church.  Since that time, Jesus followers have left the trail he blazed for us and have given themselves to the creation and violent protection of religious nation-states ruled by clerical despots. Woe!

Finally, on the issue of order, I find myself not nearly as anarchist.  A properly functioning body of believers living under the influence of the Holy Spirit will not be chaotic or disorderly.  Where there is chaos, I suspect there is either an absence or quenching of the Spirit of God.  That said, I do believe that when forms, structures, orders, and liturgies arise out of the surpremacy of preference or an ego-driven need for control, an anarchist impulse is not only justifiable, but remedial.

This has been a difficult transition for me.  I have always been somewhat of a renegade who eschews compliance simply for the sake of compliance.  But my observance of and participation in oppressive and contentious religious environments has inspired me to embrace the shaking of such superstructures.  May that which honors Christ and frees people to follow Him with unencumbered passion be all that survives the shaking.

For more information about Christian Anarchism, click the link.

Spiritual Listening and Action

We are in touch with God every moment that we live, for the simple reason that God is life; not religious life, nor church life, but the whole of life.  God is the Life of life.

Spiritual awareness, then, is about being aware of God in the midst of the change and movement and flow of life, in the rising of the morning sun, in the work and relationship of daily life, in the great struggles of society and nation, in alertness to the interior life of the soul, in times of rest and sleep and even dreaming.  God is at the heart of all life, in both the visible and invisible.  We don't have to try to reach God through acts of devotion, for God is closer to us than our very breath.  We have been given union with God whether we like it or not.  Our flesh is his flesh, and we can't jump out of our skins. This is not pantheism.  It is rather to believe, like Scott, Eriugena, and other Celts before him, that God is the Being on which all being rests, the Light within all light, the Life at the heart of all that has life.

The true mark of Christian spirituality, according to George MacLeod, is to get one's teeth into things.  Painstaking service to humankind's most material needs is the essence of Christian spirituality.  In other words, to move more deeply into life, and especially into its places of struggle and suffering, is to move closer to the life of Christ, the light that is within even the darkest of situations.

What most debilitates our prayer life is not bad prayer technique. It is our presupposition that the pressures of life are on one side while God is on some other side.  Instead, it is precisely at the pressure points of life that God is to be looked for.  God is to be found on the high street of life, in the busyness of our lives.

~J. Philip Newell (on the teachings of George MacLeod)

Contrasting Church Experiences

I was particularly aware of a stark contrast this past weekend.  Sunday morning my wife and I drove to the building where our church gathers.  We walked in and waded through the two-way crowd of people, one lane rushing out from the 9:00 service and one lane rushing in to the 11:00 service.  We took our seats, smiled at a few people, and the service began.  The music was good.  The sermon was good.  And then it was over.  We waded through the crowd of people and, without any real conversation with anyone, ended up in the car driving back home where we later spent the rest of the day watching television, surfing the internet, and playing a computer game.

One day earlier, on Saturday, I received a complimentary copy of the new book, Reimagining Church, by Frank Viola.  While Lynn was in Target I read the introduction, specifically, this letter written to Frank by an international marketing and business consultant.

I was raised in a Christian home and attended church every time the doors were open.  I knew how to live and behave like a Christian should.  You might say I was the poster child.

Late in high school and early college, I met some Christians who sparked a passion in me that I never knew was possible.  I saw their passion to know Christ in deep ways, and more than that, they actually seemed to know Christ much more deeply than I.  In meeting them, I discovered that my own faith and knowledge of Christ was very shallow.  You see, I realized that although I enjoyed going to church to be with my family and friends, I really viewed church as an obligation to endure in order to "hang out" with them before and after Sunday school, services, or youth group meetings.

I quietly sat through sermon after sermon hoping it would hurry up so we could go to the restaurant afterwards.  Minutes after the sermons I couldn't actually remember what was said.  I already heard that I needed to go to church more, I needed to tithe more, I needed to read my Bible more, and I needed to witness more.  It wasn't until I met these other Christians that I realized that all of the previous churches that I was a member of didn't fulfill my thirst for Jesus.  They gave me rules and regulations instead of something that gave life.  Instead of growing in Christ, I was "dying on the vine," filled with fear, shame, and inadequacy.  I didn't actually enjoy talking about the Lord.  Nor was I near as bold to share Jesus with nonbelievers.

I would ask myself, "If I was such a good Christian like I thought I was, why do I feel so far behind the curve?"  The more I was with these believers, the more I wanted to know Christ like they did.  I was drawn to Christ like a moth to a streetlight.  I gradually began to spend more time with them and started going to their meetings.  Their meetings were free and open.  There was no liturgy.  There were no clergy.  They didn't actually need them.  There were plenty of believers who had encountered the Lord and had encouraging things to share with the others.

They didn't need someone to give them permission to speak.  They didn't need someone to buy them in rules and lifeless duties.  They wrote many of their own songs.  They prayed together, taking turns talking to Jesus unrehearsed from the heart.  They met together as if Jesus was actually in the room.  They treated each other like a family that loved each other.

After just a short wile, I realized that this organic experience of Chrst was exactly what was missing from my own experience.  I began to crave gathering with these believers.  I would go to their meetings and see a much bigger Lord than just someone who died for my sins.  I would see Him in much deeper ways.

I was no longer satisfied with watching a performance.  In this organic meeting, I began to want to share with my brothers and sisters what I had seen of the Lord.  Instead of being passive, I now thought it was easy to function and contribute.  Every one of our meetings was free to be different.  Sometimes we sang for hours.  Sometimes the believers were bursting at the seams to share what Jesus had done in their lives that week.  Sometimes we revered the Lord's awesomeness in silence.  No one had to tell us to do these things.  The Spirit was moving in these ways and they just spontaneously happened.  We often ate together as one family.  Sometimes we shared scriptures with each other.  Other times we enacted scenes and stories from the Bible that shed light on Christ.

We met all throughout the week.  In the mornings, the brothers would find another brother or two, and the sisters would get together with sisters.  And we would pursue the Lord in prayer and contemplate Scripture together.  We would start our day with Christ.  In the evenings, wome of the members would open up their homes and share Christ over dinner.  We had brothers and sisters meetings where we could collectively decide on matters relating to the church.  and we would share responsibilities for caring for one another.

If there were no pressing needs, we would just sing to the Lord and pursue His presence together.  If there was a member in need, we would think of ways to help them.  Sometimes we would just plan ways to bless each other for the fun of it.  Sometimes the single people would babysit for the parents and give them a night out on the town.  Sometimes when one of the brothers or sisters went away on a long trip, the whole church would show up at the airport to greet them upon their return.  And we would have a church meeting right in the airport.

There was always something happening where you could share Christ and love the Lord together.  We would also have spontaneous times of outreach to the lost.  Everything we did, the Spirit was free to move and change the direction of the event.  When we did get together, I saw a Christ glorified and magnified.  We were constantly making new discoveries in Him.  Every time I saw Him in a new way, I wanted to see more.  The feeling of guilt, shame, and unworthiness was gone.  I had a passion to know Christ in deeper ways.

I am through with dying on the vine.  I have now seen the freedom that Christians can really have in meeting together organically, just like the early church did.

On Being a Phony

To me a Christian is either a man who lives in Christ or a phony.  You Christians do not appreciate that it is on this - the almost external testimony that you give of God - that we judge you.  You ought to radiate Christ.  Your faith ought to flow out to us like a river of life.  You ought to infect us with a love for him.  It is then that God who was impossible becomes possible for the atheist and for those of us whose faith is wavering.  We cannot help being struck, upset, and confused by a Christian who is truly Christlike.  And we do not forgive him when he fails to be.

~ A 23 year old woman in grad school at the University of Paris (quoted from The Importance of Being Foolish by Brennan Manning)

It's Okay, Jump!

We were probably about 11 or 12 years old, my friend Steve and I. He lived on a large, older farm just across the field from me.  A few yards from the door to his house was a storm cellar.  It was a large, cylindrical, concrete cellar with steps leading down into it and a small round opening in the top about 3 feet in diameter.  One day after the testosterone surges of puberty began to wreak havoc with our common sense we decided to see how good we would be as stunt men.  I don't remember who went first, but I do remember that we took turns doing this over and over for much of the day.

Here was the idea.  We retrieved some empty paper grain sacks - dozens of them - from the barn and filled the storm cellar with them leaving only a small corner clear on the opposite side of the steps. The stunt man would then go down into that corner and the other person would close both the opening to the steps and the hatch in the ceiling.  Heavy pieces of tin were used to close these exits and large concrete blocks were piled on top of the tin.  The stunt man would then light the bags on fire and then, surrounded by flames, attempt to escape through either the stairwell opening or the hatch in the ceiling. 

This was only one of many stupid things that as a kid I filled my days with.  It was exciting; the risk, the danger, the rush of cheating death, and the bragging rights with which to impress the little girls of the neighborhood who naively mistook our obvious lack of cerebral function for bravado.

I'm much less adventurous today.  At 40 years old I'm not quite as excited about setting myself on fire and seeing if I can survive, or car surfing on the hardtop while my slightly inebriated friend simulates waves by wildly jerking the steering wheel back and forth at 30 or 40 miles per hour.

In some ways I really miss that adventurous spirit, but at the same time I've matured enough to recognize that there is a fine line between admirable risk-taking and pure stupidity.  Today, I want to recapture the boldness to chase my dreams with abandon while at the same time guarding myself against pure stupidity.  And you know...sometimes those lines are a bit blurry.

In a post from a blog long, long ago and far, far away, I talked about the things that cause our dreams to die and one of the things I mentioned was the fear of failure.  As I fought my way through the flames of that storm cellar, I didn't give a thought to failure.  I knew I could make it.  The fear of losing my balance and rolling off the top of the car didn't keep me from enjoying the adrenaline rush of riding the "waves."  But now, as I've aged...as I've experienced heartache, pain, and disappointment...as I've seen suffering and death up close and personal, I know that in reality things won't always turn out the way you hope they will. 

The truth is that risk can be either rewarding or costly.  The questions then become, "Will you allow the potential cost to keep you from pursuing your dreams?  Or will you risk everything for the possibility that your dreams will become reality?"

We need to consider a few things.  Before we even begin thinking about the chances of success or the risk of failure we need to come to some degree of certainty that the dream we are pursuing is God's dream for our life. If we have reasonable certainty that the dream we are pursuing has been inspired by God, and we are eager to chase that dream with our heart and mind fixed on God and His purposes in the dream, then I think we need to reevaluate our definitions of success and failure and come to the place of understanding that when our heart is fixed on God and we are pursuing his dream for our life success and failure aren't necessarily measured by the visible outcomes.

Listen to the first half of Psalm 1.  "Oh, the joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or stand around with sinners, or join in with scoffers.  But they delight in doing everything the Lord wants; day and night they think about his law.  They are like trees planted along the riverbank, bearing fruit each season without fail.  Their leaves never wither, and in all they do, they prosper."

Did you catch that last part?  "In all they do, they prosper."  That sounds like inevitable, measurable success...right?  But that can't be true.  Things don't always go as we planned when we began chasing the dream.  Projects fail, budgets aren't always met, pregnancies don't always go well.  How do we reconcile the very real disappointments we face when chasing our dreams with this promise from Psalm 1 that in everything we do we'll prosper?

I believe God defines success and failure differently than we do and like I said earlier, it has very little to do with outward, visible outcomes.  I'm convinced that as we chase our dreams, God defines success and failure more by what happens IN us than what happens THROUGH us. 

When we experience what outwardly appears to be failure, I believe God then invites us to ask these questions:

"Through this event, did I sense God with me?"

"As a result of this event, is God's grace more real to me?"

"While going through this, did I discover things about myself that need to be changed to make me stronger, wiser, and more dependent on God?"

Regardless of the visible outcomes of chasing our dreams, if we can answer yes to those three questions, then we have experienced success...the "prosperity" that God speaks of in Psalm 1.  You see, when God gives us dreams to pursue with our life, it's not so much about us accomplishing a task "for God" as it is God accomplishing in our hearts, minds, and souls the very thing that Jesus died and rose again to make possible; the restoration and discovery of who we were created to be as His beloved son or daughter.

Defining Poverty - Resources or Relationships

If you lost everything, how long would it take you to get something to eat, find a place to stay, and get some work? Brazilian crazy pastor, Claudio Oliver, offers up a definition of poverty.  Follow this link to watch the six minute video and, perhaps, have your idea of poverty challenged a bit.   Maybe after watching the clip you'll come away with some fresh ideas about how to alleviate the poverty around you.

Cancer, AIDS, and a Veggie Bus

As followers of Christ I think one of the things that needs to be "refreshed" is our understanding of the Biblical principles of dealing with money as a community of faith.

Here is one story from a site linked on the sidebar called Relational Tithe.  It's a great story that I think beautifully illustrates the heart of God regarding money, the hurting, the poor, and the church.  Enjoy.

Ok, let me tell you a story that just happened a few minutes ago.

A young man, dying with cancer who runs an HIV/AIDS home a couple of days ago gave his $200 check to a woman who's electricy was going to be turned off leaving him $8 to live on. Fast forward 2 days and he recieves a $7000 check for back gov. support. He prays for where to tithe thinking the reasonable choices- churches, AIDS home etc then he knows that the tithe needs to go to Bryant Russo, tagged the Homeless Evangelist. The $700 tithe is the exact amount he needed to fix his Veggie Bus.

The Bride, WV, and Bryant, this past weekend had touched the community with free bands, free food, free health products, free clothes etc giving all the access to the HIV/AIDS home. The tithe was only one relationship away - We have tons of these stories.

Macaroni Dreams

In 1854 Henry David Thoreau penned these words while writing Walden:  "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.  What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

I believe that Mr. Thoreau was quite right  with these insightful words.  I personally know what it is to live life in quiet desperation.  I've been there a few times.  And I have seen it in the faces and heard it in the voices of the majority of people that I've interacted with over the past 16 years.  Lynn and I have moved around a lot since we married.  We've lived in the Midwest, the north, the south, again in the Midwest, and again in the south.  Over the years our lives have been loosely entangled with the lives of literally hundreds of people, most of whom appeared to be living just as Thoreau described.

I'm not really sure of Thoreau's spiritual beliefs.  It seems I remember hearing that he was agnostic.  Nonetheless, with those words he pressed in on a deeply spiritual issue.  Why is it that so many around us live such lives of quiet desperation?  I believe it is because they have lost their sense of purpose.

As children, we are all existentialists.  We are very aware of our unique and mysterious existence in the world and insist upon the world taking notice of said existence.  And though as children we don't use these words, we all seem to have a brilliant, unfettered sense of destiny about the role we will play in the world.  "I'm going to be an astronaut!"  "I'm going to be a scientist!"  "I'm going to be a soldier!"  "I'm going to be a pirate!"  As children, not only do we make these bold, imaginative declarations of personal destiny.  We believe them!

But then something happens.  As we grow older our existentialist dreams become subdued by the numbing effects of rationalism.  "I can't be a scientist because my parents can't afford to send me to college." "I can't be a soldier because I have a disability."  "I can't be a pirate because there are laws against such things and I get seasick." "I can't, because."  "I can't, because."  "I can't, because."

We blink our eyes and we're thirty-five years old with a wife, three kids, a mortgage, two car payments, twelve-thousand dollars of credit card debt, and a job that has us packaging boxes of macaroni.  And we stand at the macaroni packaging conveyor belt trying to figure out how to justify our personal consumption of the world's resources.  Not that there's anything wrong with someone earning their living by packaging boxes of macaroni.  Somebody has to do it.  But I wonder how many macaroni packagers dreamed about that job as a child.  I have the utmost admiration for the person who did indeed grow up dreaming about packaging macaroni and is now living their dream.  But most of us somehow, somewhere along the line stopped believing in and pursuing our destiny and resigned ourselves to simply surviving.  Quiet desperation.

I believe that every human being is created by a God who has an amazing destiny in mind for that person.  To a young would-be prophet named Jeremiah God said, "I knew you before I formed you in your mother's womb.  Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my spokesman to the world."  We may be tempted to think, "Well that's Jeremiah.  He was special!  He was a prophet."  All of which would be true.  But guess what.  You are special.  I am special.  Every human being was known by God before they were formed in their mother's womb.  And every human being has been set apart and appointed for...something.  Paul makes this very clear to us in his letter to the Galatians when he said, "For we are God's masterpiece.  He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago."

An amazing destiny.  What is that?  It is the unique purpose for which God created you to accomplish.  You and I are "assembled" and "equipped" in such a way to accomplish something in this world that no other person can accomplish.  And the adjective "amazing" has nothing to do with WHAT we are doing.  It has everything to do with WHY we are doing it.  If the macaroni packager was created and gifted by God to package macaroni then he is living an amazing destiny and God will do amazing things through him in that environment.  But if the macaroni packager is punching that time-clock every day because he has given up on his dreams and is simply in survival mode, then his amazing destiny is still waiting to be discovered.

So how does he discover it?  I believe that your life purpose is now and always has been hidden in plain sight.  What fascinated you as a child?  What games did you play the most?  What nicknames did the other kids give you?  What subjects in school did you really enjoy?  What have you been most frequently complimented on?  What subjects could keep you engaged in conversation until 2:00 a.m.?  If you had a full week to do anything you wanted to do, what would it be?  What do you daydream about while you're doing your job.  What coincidences have most startled you?  Which three movies could you watch over and over again without getting tired of them? 

Get a pen and a piece of paper.  I'll wait until you get back.

That was quick.  Now look at those questions again and then write down all of the answers that come to mind.  I'll wait.

I had time to refill my coffee that time.  Thanks.

Now.  There you have it.  You now have, on the piece of paper in front of you, all the clues that you need to discover the purpose for which God created you.  Get after it.  Don't ever again let the words "I can't, because" cross your lips as you set your mind and heart to pursuing your destiny.  Don't let anything stop you.  Take whatever risks you need to, regardless of how ridiculous or dangerous they may be.  Just do it.  The worst that can happen is death.  But how would you rather die:  chasing wildly after your dreams or in quiet desperation?