• World Relief – Attn: Donor Service, 7 E Baltimore Street, Baltimore, MD 21202 www.worldrelief.org
• Samaritan’s Purse - P.O. Box 3000, Boone, NC 28607 www.samaritanspurse.org
• World Vision – P.O. Box 9716, Dept. W, Federal Way, WA 98063-9716 www.worldvision.org

As we pray for Haiti I think it also very important that we not try to analyze this crisis and pretend we have answers to the great whys of the event.  Below are just some things I feel followers of Jesus need to know before they throw stones.

The history of Haiti is one of great oppression.  The original inhabitants of the island of Hispaniola, of which Haiti and the Dominican Republic evolved, were the Taino indians.  Because of disease from the Spanish settlers that came to Hispaniola in the 16th century, the Taino indians were pretty much wiped out.

The decimation of the native population led to the importation of 790,000 African slaves. Tiny Hispaniola accounted for one-third of the entire African slave trade between 1783 and 1791.  When these African slaves would die because of the brutal living conditions and harsh labor requirements, more slaves were shipped in.  This caused an overpopulation of slaves.  And, the majority of those slaves were African born which explains the strong presence of African customs right up through today.

During the colonial period, a complicated form of racism created a complicated social ladder.  At the bottom were African slaves.  Right above them was a group of people known as gens de colour (people of color), the offspring of French colonists and slaves.  Gens de colour were free under law, and could have land and earn money.  Some even became slaveholders. However, they could not marry whites, mingle socially with them, and were prevented from wearing European clothing and holding certain jobs.

The voodoo ceremony which is believed to have launched the Haitian revolution in 1791 is an accepted (though not universally) piece of history.  The context of this however is very important.  This is the place where Pat Robertson has been making his remarks as of lately.

For centuries the slaves and gens de colour of Hispaniola had been brutally oppressed by Roman Catholicism.  Since many of them were African natives, they began to return to their African customs.  Voodoo restored confidence in the African slaves by connecting them with their heritage.  Disclaimer: I am not saying that I approve of voodoo.  But voodoo is a religious ceremony with deep roots in African customs with which the slaves would have been familiar.  Today, Haiti claims to be about 80% Roman Catholic and about 10% Protestant.  Voodoo is still present and active there.

This Haitian revolution, possibly sparked by the rise of voodoo ceremonies, was a struggle against the French for independence that lasted for 13 years.  This war rose to an incredible  level of cruelty.  One writer listed some of the brutal acts inflicted upon Haitian rebels and their response as follows:

“The French tried to terrorize Haiti into surrendering – I’m talking about burning alive, boiling in molasses, burying in piles of insects – but the Haitians repaid each act of brutality, blood for blood.”

France refused to recognize Haiti’s independence until 1825.  At that time, the Haitians had to pay 90 million francs to the French government for “lost property.”  The lost property were those slaves, either dead or fighting for independence, that the French government would lose.

The Haitians paid the fine to end embargos placed on them by countries friendly to the French.  One of those countries was the United States.  The U.S. could not support the independence of Haiti, a country of slaves, lest they give their own slaves ideas.  The U.S. would not recognize Haiti’s independence until 1862.  Haiti was forced to take out high interest loans which took them another 122 years to pay off.

In writing all this, I’m not shifting blame to anyone.  I just want the Body to be informed before it listens to the comments of people like Pat Robertson.  I do not feel Robertson’s comments were meant to be mean.  They just showed incredibly poor timing.

What I do want us to see is that tragedy is complicated.  We ask why but the why question is more of a road than it is a destination.  The larger why eludes us as we are strung along, point by point, through a myriad of smaller whys.

Evil is always nice to point out in others.  It’s difficult when many, including our own history, share it.  Right now, let’s stop pointing out whose sins caused what and begin to fall to our knees and cry out to God for His grace, mercy and hope to flood the people of Haiti.

Thanks for reading and as you pray, please consider giving to one of the organizations listed above in this blog.

Don’t get me wrong here…we’re not talking about what makes us significant.  We’re talking about what makes a life significant.  What makes you and I look at someone and say, “They are living life!”

As we were having our conversation, this question kept popping into my head, “Who am I becoming?”  Do you ever ask that question?  For those who know me, I think it is THE question of Scripture.  If we never take time to ponder that question, then we never move beyond a life that rolls out of bed, goes to work, comes home, and rolls back into bed.

Jesus’ sermon on the mount begs this question of his followers.  Listen to just two of the verses from that famous sermon:

• “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matt. 6:20-21)
• “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.” (Matt. 7:13-14)

What answers this question of who am I becoming?  The answer, your holy calling!  For centuries the great spiritual writers have written on calling.  Calling, in a sense, is what animates the soul.  So, what is holy calling?  Here is how I view it:

• If spiritual gifts answer the WHAT question.  Namely, what should I do for the Lord?
• And if personal style answers the HOW question.  Namely, how should I do whatever I should do for the Lord?
• Then holy calling answers the WHERE question.  Where should I be investing my life?

Calling transforms the drudgery of routine into the daily movements of a significant life.  Scripture is overwhelming on this idea of calling.  God is committed to your life being one marked by significance.  Check out the following passages:

• It is God who works within us to will and to do what pleases Him. Philippians 2:13
• Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness.  Delight yourself in the Lord; and He will give you the desires of your heart.  Commit your way to Him, trust in Him and He will do it. Psalm 37:3-5
• I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Jeremiah 29:11
• For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God has prepared in advance for you to do. Ephesians 2:10
• Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race that is marked out for us. Hebrews 12:1

Calling is not a thing to do; it is not a project.  Calling is not easy.  It will require great sacrifice for you to do it.  Furthermore, calling is not an idea that will be easy for you to embrace.  True calling will bring with it a slight overwhelming sensation BUT, and I stress this last part, living in your calling is the only thing that will bring you alive.

You will know when you’re in your calling.  You don’t want to be anywhere else.  You get the sense that you were made for this time and this place.  You will feel a rush of the Spirit.  Where many things in our life are good but take away precious energy and time from us, calling brings new energy to us as we step out into it.  Calling moves a good life to a great one.

So, as I was pondering this signficance/calling idea, a few descriptors came to mind of people who live in their holy calling.  Those individuals whom I feel move their life from good to great:

• People who move their lives from good to great are able to subtract good to pour their limited amounts of time and energy into the great.  It’s easy to remove bad things from our lives.  (I say easy in that it’s simple to identify bad behaviors.)  It’s difficult to take something that is profitable and do away with it.  People who discover their calling are able to subtract good for great.
• People who move their lives from good to great are able to quickly and succinctly tell you the calling God has upon their life.  Calling is in your DNA.  It doesn’t take me 30 minutes of “ums” and “ers” to tell you what I do for a living, who my parents are, where I live, and what I enjoy to do.  Calling, much the same way, is woven deep into our souls.  You should be able, in even one sentence, to tell people what captivates (or consumes) your life.
• People who move their lives from good to great take captive each thought, each word, and each action to make sure it is moving them closer to their life’s passion.  We are all given a finite amount of time and energy.  Great are those who recognize this finitude and get busy to make sure every moment of their life is directed at the greater story of their life, namely, their holy calling!

My challenge to you this day, take time to break away from the busyness of life to be alone with God.  In your conversation take a journal or a scrap piece of paper and begin mentally doodling.  Think to yourself, “If time were not an obstacle in my life, I would…”

Follow the rabbit trails and discover thoughts/feelings that bring life to your spirit.  Listen to God.  Ask yourself a ton of questions regarding where you enjoy spending time, what activities do you look forward to, where are you finding life/fulfillment right now?

Then, begin to try to craft some sort of sentence, or sentences, based on what you’ve discovered.  Take those sentences/thoughts and run them by some people you trust.  Make sure these are people who know you and will be honest with you.

Take their suggestions, and return to the process once again, from the very start, and begin listening to the honing voice of God once more.  Never stop being amazed by the things God has in store for you in this most important area.

In closing, my friends, my prayer for you is summed up by this classic quote by Fredrick Buechner in his classic book, Listening to Your Life:

“Listen to your life.  See it for the fathomless mystery it is, in the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.”

May your life’s calling be found tucked away in the beautiful grace that is God’s love for you.  And, may your journey be a daily awakening of that grace poured anew upon you!

This particular cause has been one that I’ve received a lot lately.  Maybe because I’m a Youth Pastor and the sender of such cause invites assumes that I believe in their petition.  The cause: Put prayer back in school.

Put prayer back in school!

The heart of the sender is good and they deeply believe in the cause.  But, I sometimes fear that we expect too much out of government institutions (such as public schools).  In a public school, in one classroom, you can range from born-again Christians to Muslims, atheists to agnostics.  Do we really want to impose our prayer time on them?

But really, this only scratches the surface of the issue.  This issue is intrinsically tied to the Ten Commandments debacle and the call to bring God back into the public sectors of our nation.  We fear that “In God We Trust” has been removed from coins.  Politicians aren’t getting sworn in on a Bible.

The madness stems from this misunderstanding that somehow the United States is a Christian nation.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  The U.S. wasn’t even founded as a Christian nation.  Our founding documents show great influence of the Enlightenment and seek to separate, as much as possible, the state from the Church.  We live in a highly secular, skeptical society.  Plain and simple folks, our culture is open to spirituality but it is not ideologically Christian.

But really, the issue even goes deeper than that.  We followers of Jesus have failed to recognize the most basic principle of theology.  Upon acceptance of Jesus Christ and commitment to Him as our Lord and Savior, we were indwelt with the Holy Spirit.  Think how crazy that is for a moment…God lives in us!

So, when a student goes to school, the following Scriptures are lived out:

⁹You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. ¹⁰But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. ¹¹And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. (Romans 8:9-11, NIV)

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? (1 Corinthians 6:19)

We do not need the government to sanction out a space for God to be present in schools.  Governments are of this world.  This world will continue to be the fallen mess that it is.  Our job is to be the light of hope, love and grace.  We are to bring renaissance and renewal to public sectors like schools.  We do not wait around for a law or an amendment to put back up our sacred items or carve out sacred space for us.

When students walk into schools, this is what should be happening

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23, NIV)

These fruits should be exemplified in all our lives.  As the Holy Spirit takes dominion, judgmental attitudes, meanness, bitterness, narcissism, anger, hatred, gossip, demanding things to be my way…all of these things should be purged out of us.  As the old self flakes away, what is born is a life of love, a spirit of joy, a presence of peace, an attitude of patience, an outlook of kindness, a modeling of goodness, a call to faithfulness, a reputation of gentleness, and a commitment to self-control.

Attention Christians in America: the difficulties we face are not because prayer is out of school.  It’s not because Barack Obama is president.  It’s not because of our secular culture even.  Our world is programmed into sin…it knows no difference.  We cannot keep expecting the world to act like the Church.  Furthermore, the Church needs to stop acting like the world!

What this world needs to know is what we, as Christians, are for and not always what we’re against.  Prayer in school should be happening because the people of God are there.  God’s presence in school should be evident because the followers of Jesus there are shaped by Him and model Him to those around them.

It is time to allow this hope of Christendom to die.  We need to stop propping up these relics of putting prayer in school and hanging the Ten Commandments.  We need to stop hiding behind statements, government wish lists, bullying, and being sin detectives in the world around us.  We need to instead pick up our role laid out in Romans 8:

¹⁸I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. ¹⁹The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. ²⁰For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

²²We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. ²⁴For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? ²⁵But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. (Romans 8:18-25, NIV)

If we want prayer back in school, maybe we should begin developing a life of prayer becoming more and more aware of His presence.  If you want the Ten Commandments in public places, maybe we need to live lives shaped by their virtues.  If we want God back in schools, maybe we need to A) exhibit the fruits of His Spirit in the schools and B) grab hold of His purposes outlined above each and every school day!

Remember: God is in school when His people show up!

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (18-20, NIV).

Right now, you may be asking, where is he going with this post?  The reality is that this message is foundational to the life of many churches, especially evangelical churches, and rightfully so I would argue!

I just feel that many times the church is not fully obedient to the words of Jesus.  We read the “go” and announce that people need to get out of their spiritual laziness and hit the streets sharing the good news.  But, if you’re like me, you may have felt like the messengers of this glorious news need a little work?

This little slice of Matthew’s Gospel has a lot to teach us about what it truly means to be a missional follower (read disciple) of Jesus, one whose life is captured by the mission of God.

1. Jesus messianic authority. The verb translated “given” is understood as divine action in which God placed authority over all existence into the hands of Christ.  Jesus is the King and we are His subjects.  It’s not about what can the church do for me or whiny attitudes about whether the church is feeding me.  It is about the Kingship of Jesus and announcing that to the world!

2. The charge to make disciples. The controlling imperative of the Great Commission is the simple charge to make disciples.  This is the only verb in the entire commission that is actually a command.  The central motif of this commission is disciplemaking.  In fact, the rest is merely three participles that explain how the making of disciples is to be carried out – going, baptizing, and teaching.  What do I mean?  Where we read “go”, the Greek is actually saying, “while going“.  While we are going we are to make disciples.  Large numbers at a church service does not equate with discipleship.  Disciplemaking takes time, a commodity that is in scarce resource in our culture.

3. The charge to go.  The word apostle implies one who is sent or commissioned to go on behalf of the sender.  The tendency for a Jew during this period would be to stay in Jerusalem where it is safe.  That tendency still resonates with us today.  But apostleship transforms one’s identity.  These disciples were no longer just living life for themselves.  The radical call of the Messiah mandated that they go to all nations.  Just because followers of Jesus don’t like something doesn’t mean that they must stay away.  We may not like drug addicts, crack moms, drunkards, porn lookers, etc, but God does and we’re called to show His love to even “the least of these”.

4. The charge to baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Disciples become disciples by being united with Jesus.  In the Christian community, we join, are united to, Jesus through baptism.  Baptism is the public declaration of our allegiance to the kingdom of God.  Baptism has been trivialized to simply become a membership development issue in some churches and denominations; I join the church through being baptized.  In the ancient world, and much of the world today, baptism could, and does, mean physical death.  When a believer is baptized they announce to the gathering that they have truly counted the cost of their discipleship with Jesus.  Do the waters of baptism signify to us to count the cost of our allegiance to Christ?

5. The charge to teach them to observe all that Jesus had commanded. Disciples need to be taught what the life of a disciple is all about: the character of the disciple, the ministry of the disciple, the meaning of kingdom membership, how to live as disciples in a Christian community, and where to fix their hope.  This teaching and training are ongoing and unending.  There are always new challenges for disciples.  In the context of Matthew’s Gospel, the expression translated “all that I have commanded you” refers to the teaching/training Jesus did with His group of disciples.  My fear for Christianity in America is that it has become a head game. Theology, Bible, and faith have all become things to study. Orthodoxy and orthopraxy have been forced to stand alone in separate corners while denominations bicker about why the other is wrong for their choice.

6. “I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (28:20). This mission is ongoing.  Even with high times and low times, tragedy and triumph, event or no event…the mission of God moves on.  The hope through it all is that the rabbi, Jesus Himself, journeys with us every step along the way.

In the end, I’m left with a question, how am I, how are we, doing in this mission of disciplemaking?  Are we picking and choosing which parts of the Great Commission we desire to follow?

We’re not called to effectiveness, we’re called to obedience.  Paul declares that we’re not even called to win the race but to finish it.  My fear is that we’ve learned to associate big numbers, events, worship services, and buildings with how we live out the life of a disciple.  We wait for the church to create a program or event so we can plug and play into whatever we want.  This week the church is having a community outreach project, I’ll plug into that and check community service off my list.

The life of a disciple is more involved than that.  It’s more beautiful and more heart-wrenching, all at the same time.  In the delicate tension of already and not yet, Spirit and flesh, Word and Spirit, sacred and secular, big and small, deep and wide, in the world and not of the world, we find the pathway to which God has called His disciples.

We can bring the gospel to the world!  I hope that we never lose this missional impulse in the Body of Christ.  But, as we encounter people and as we examine the churches in which we find ourselves, are we also bringing people to the gospel.  Simultaneous to our evangelistic stream should be one of sanctification.  As people are reached for the gospel of Christ, are people meeting the gospel in a transformative way?  As the good news goes forth is it also going within and manifesting lives of purity and holiness.  As we follow the Rabbi are we getting some of the dust kicked up by His sandals on our face?

1. Did we lift the name of Jesus up as a centerpiece of why we gathered? (See Revelation 5:6 and 5:13-14, Colossians 3:17, and Philippians 2:9-11.)
2. Did we have a time in the Scriptures learning the story of God and humanity?  Did we invite everyone to be part of his story today in Kingdom living? (See 2 Timothy 3:14-4:4.)
3. Did we pray together and have enough time to slow down and quiet our hearts to hear God’s voice and yield to his Spirit? (See Acts 1:14 and John 4:23-24.)
4. Did we experience the joy, love, and encouragement of being together as a church? (See Hebrews 10:25 and John 13:34-35.)
5. Did we take the Lord’s Supper together as a church regularly  OR call people to an awareness of the implications of the Elements upon our gathering? (See 1 Corinthians 11:20-32.)
6. Did we somehow remind everyone of the mission of the church and why we exist? (See Matthew 28:18-20.)
7. Did we enable people to individually contribute something as part of the body of Christ? (See 1 Corinthians 12:27 and 14:26.)

The prayer is very simple in its more common, extended form:

“Lord Jesus Christ Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”

Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, the late Russian Orthodox Moscow Patriarchate’s diocese for Great Britain and Ireland said the Jesus Prayer, “more than any other,” helps us to be able to “stand in God’s presence.” This means that it helps us to focus our mind exclusively on God with “no other thought” occupying our mind but the thought of God. At this moment when our mind is totally concentrated on God, we discover a very personal and direct relationship with Him.  One Eastern Orthodox theologian has said, “It also serves as perhaps the most succinct Gospel message available.”

The Jesus Prayer is one of the oldest of Christian prayers, dating in its original form to the words the two blind men cried out to Jesus in Matthew 20:31. It was formalized by the Orthodox Churches in the 5th century.  Contained in the prayer is a uniquely clear summation of the Christian faith:

Jesus the man is declared by name to be the Christ, the annointed one of God, as well as being the Lord of our lives; he is declared to be the Son of God, and therefore divine; he is declared to be in the position of judgment and mercy, and we confess to be sinners requiring His grace.

The practice of the Eastern Orthodox Churches calls for the Jesus Prayer to remind them of  constant prayer that the Apostle Paul speaks of in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, where the prayer is kept on the lips and in the hearts of believers at all times.  In its ultimate form, this prayer method is called Hesychasm (Greek: ἡσυχάζω, hesychazo, “to keep stillness”).

A spectacular jewel from Eastern Orthodox theology is their view of repentance.  In the West, we take a very juridical understanding of sin and repentance; a wrong has been committed, somebody needs to pay, Jesus paid, we come to Jesus and make a transaction, we take His righteousness and He takes our sins, we are blameless before God, the Father.

This age old understanding of justification is not wrong by any means.  Nor is it complete.  Eastern Orthodoxy takes a different approach to repentance.  John Chryssavgis, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, wrote the following in his essay, “Repentance and Confession”:

Repentance (Greek: μετάνοια, metanoia, “changing one’s mind”) isn’t remorse, justification, or punishment, but a continual enactment of one’s freedom, deriving from renewed choice and leading to restoration (the return to man’s original state).

The Jesus Prayer stands at the center of this journey.  It is merely two statements and a petition.  The first statement is the declaration of Jesus Christ as Lord.  The second statement is the acknowledgment of one’s own sinfulness.  Flowing out of the meeting of the two is a petition for mercy as holiness meets sinfulness, divinity meets humanity, strength meets weakness, love meets scorn.

As the pray-er recites the words of the prayer, the hope is that an inward journey takes place.  At first it is an oral prayer as we encounter for the first time the words and recite them allowed.  The second is the prayer of the mind as we analyze and explore the meaning of the prayer we are reciting.  The final movement is the prayer of the heart where we begin to become the prayer.

My friend, Jerry Flora, often tells a story of a prayer retreat that he attended many years ago.  He was struck at how the prayer gathering began.  The woman leading closed here eyes, paused for a few minutes of silence, and then proclaimed, “We are sinking into prayer.”  Prayer wasn’t so much a formality to begin a meeting as it was likened to a giant, overly-stuffed chair that enveloped him that day.

Brennan Manning in his latest book, The Furious Longing of God, writes:

When the night is bad and my nerves are shattered and the waves break over the sides, Infinity speaks. God Almighty shares through His Son the depth of His feelings for me, His love flashes into my soul, and I am overtaken by mystery. These are moments of kairos — the decisive in-break of God’s fury into my personal life’s story.

It is then I face a momentous decision. Shivering in the rags of my seventy-four years, I have two choices. I can escape below into skepticism and intellectualism, hanging on for dear life. Or, with radical amazement, I can stay on deck and boldly stand in surrendered faith to the truth of my belovedness, caught up in the reckless raging fury that they call the love of God. And learn to pray. (pp. 130-131)

His words bring tears to my eyes.  It seems that I have been misunderstanding this prayer thing all along.  I should not come to prayer because I should but because I must.  Prayer is not encountering an omnipresent, narcissistic deity.  Instead, prayer is crawling into the lap of my Dad.  I may ramble, I may fall asleep…but my Dad just loves when I come to Him.

The Jesus Prayer just might be the great reminder to the church through the centuries that prayer is more than a transaction of sins for righteousness.  It’s not a rags to riches story.  It’s not a laundry list of demands and requests.

Prayer is a becoming.  Prayer is a belonging.

The Jesus Prayer reminds me that I am becoming more and more like Him with every day that I surrender my life and will to Him.  With every decision of every second, I look at my dear friend, Jesus, and decide whether my decision will honor our friendship, will promote His Lordship, and will allow me to experience the deepest of intimacies from God’s parenthood over my life.

The Jesus Prayer reminds me that I belong.  I belong to a passionate, wild, reckless, extravagant, hilarious, steadfast, committed, stay-at-home, out-on-the-street, head-over-heels in love Daddy who would love nothing more than to woo His children back into His arms.  Oh that I could hear His heartbeat and feel the warmth of His embrace!  The tears that would be shed as Abba/Daddy whispers to me, “I’m proud of you, little guy…I will always love you.”

The Jesus Prayer reminds me how simple it really is.  The Gospel is not in need of vast textbooks or great exposition.  It is more than a relationship…it is two lovers meeting and upon their encounter find it unable to take their eyes off of one another.  As close as my next breath is the desire for God to meet with me.  As close as your next breath is the desire for God to meet you.  Are you meeting Him?  Can you feel Him?  Does He bring life to your weary soul?  Does He provide moisture and sustenance to your dry, and brittle bones?

Take the next week and practice the Jesus Prayer as you live each day.

INHALE: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God…”

EXHALE: “…have mercy on me a sinner.”

Inhale His goodness, completeness, love, mercy, renewal, and passion.  Exhale your failures, doubts, insecurities, trivial lusts, pains, sorrows, wrongs, hurts.  May each breath be a reminder of the Gospel, the good news for everyone.  May the good news begin transforming you!

4While a large crowd was gathering and people were coming to Jesus from town after town, he told this parable: 5″A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds of the air ate it up. 6Some fell on rock, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. 7Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. 8Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.”
When he said this, he called out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

9His disciples asked him what this parable meant. 10He said, “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that,
” ‘though seeing, they may not see;
though hearing, they may not understand.’[a]

11″This is the meaning of the parable: The seed is the word of God. 12Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. 13Those on the rock are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. 14The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature. 15But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop.

This past week I began reading a new book (no surprise there!) and a conversation broke out between myself and the Lord regarding the Parable of the Sower (see above).  This same parable is found in Mark 4:1-20, Matthew 13:1-23, and Luke 8:1-15.  Upon review of this passage, a list of questions flooded my mind:

1. Who is the farmer?
2. What is the seed?
3. Why is the farmer so reckless in scattering the seed?  He throws it on rocks, on the path, etc.
4. Why is the farmer scattering seed over thorny patches of the garden infested by weeds?  Shouldn’t he/she weed first?
5. What is the meaning of the crop that is yielded “a hundred times more than was sown”?  That means the entire garden was filled to capacity!
6. Why does Jesus “call out” after this parable, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”?  Isn’t this passage simply about spreading the word of God?
7. What is the “knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God”?
8. What is the word of God?

I have read and re-read this passage for years.  Everytime the point seems to be painfully clear, be like the good soil and receive the word of God.  I’ve also heard this passage evangelistically, as we spread the good news, some people will be receptive to it and others will not.

It is not that these explanations are false.  We should all seek to live lives that are prepared for the goodness and richness of Christ Jesus.  Likewise, out of our lives should flow the good news of Christ to those around is.  And, some people will receive that news and others will not.

The power of this passage lies in what the language we take for granted would have actually meant to Jesus.  This parable is so important that in Mark’s version of it Jesus asks His disciples, “Don’t you understand this parable?  How then will you understand any parable” (v. 13)?  So powerful is the message of this parable that Jesus stakes His entire teaching/training ministry in its contents.  Why?

As I encountered this passage in reading I am immediately drawn to this farmer.  It is not strange for Jesus to use an agrarian parable.  Agriculture was of great importance to those He was speaking.  This farmer, however, seems to be a little sloppy.  If you live a life totally dependant upon the harvest you receive back and you have a limited amount of money with which to buy seed, why would you scatter it so haphazardly as to cover the pathways, rocks, and weeds?  Furthermore, why wouldn’t you first weed the garden?

Verse 8b shows us an amazing feat, “[The seed] came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.”  It seems that the farmer knows the quality of the seed he is spreading.  He knows there is no need to uproot the weeds or chase away the birds.  True to his foreknowledge, the seed produces a crop a hundred times more than was sown.  The garden is filled to capacity (and overflowing)!

This brings us back to a question, if this parable is all about being faithful, why does Jesus  to his followersm “The knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of God has been given to you, but to others I speak in parables, so that, ‘though seeing they may not see; though hearing, they may not understand’” (v. 10).  This language finds its roots in the commissioning of Isaiah.  God is calling for a prophet to go forth and do two things: 1) Warn the people of God’s anger and judgment for them to repent AND 2) to proclaim a day that is coming; a most blessed day of Yahweh.

In this little parable found in three of the four gospels, Jesus utilizes that same language.  Kind of odd if this message is incredibly simple for Jesus to 1) hinge the meaning of all other parables in this one, 2) to declare that the meaning of this parable is enveloped in the “secrets of the kingdom”, and 3) to have the people recall the commissioning of the great prophet Isaiah.

As I said early, the traditional understandings of this passage are not incorrect.  But, I want to argue that they are not complete either.  There is a grand story at play in this parable.  In verses 11-17 of the passage above, Jesus offers the pieces of the puzzle.  Scripture is forcing us to put the pieces together.  It’s asking us, you’ve read this passage many times BUT do you know the larger story of my narrative?  Do we know the fuller story of Scripture and why this parable is so radical?

The radical piece of this story lies in the discovery of the identity of the seed and the farmer.  The seed is the word of God.  What, then, is the word of God?  It is not the Bible.  The Bible finds its ultimate purpose in meaning flowing out of the true word of God.  John’s Gospel declares, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He [the Word] was with God in the beginning.  The Word became flesh and made his [the Word's] dwelling among us” (1:1,14, NIV).  The seed is Jesus.

The farmer is us, the Church.  We are called to proclaim the identity (the Savior, Lord and King) of Jesus Christ.  The fascinating thing of this story is that the weeds, the rocks, the birds are not eliminated.  Think for a moment the implications of this for our journeys of faith.

Too many Christians spend inordinate amounts of time petitioning Congress, their city councils, etc to remove things they find offensive and sinful.  Here lately, the rhetoric of America as a Christian nation has been written everywhere.  Many Christians think the way to change America is to get rid of all the sin.

I want to argue counter to this.  I find that many people who live according to the above philosophy have golden hearts.  They truly want to see Jesus manifested and people coming into a beautiful relationship with Him.  But look at this parable, the weeds, rocks and birds are not removed.  Instead, the seed is scattered and the crop, in spite of the weeds, grows a hundred times more.

What would it look like if instead of trying to remove the problem of evil, the Body of Christ began to exemplify the overhelming goodness of the Gospel?  What if instead of trying to shut down a strip-joint the people of God sought ways to truly love those entrapped to a life of lust and shame and bring freedom to the captives?  What if instead of saying how much you hate abortion you began to fight for better adoption education and stood in the gap for women who feel they have no other choice?

All throughout Jesus’ earthly ministry, he would declare that the kingdom of Heaven (or God) is at hand.  This parable does not show the destruction of the garden but an all out restoration of it.  The barren spots, weedy spots, rocky spots…they’re all overtaken by the unstoppable growth of a hundred fold crop.

There comes a time where the people of God need to stop picking weeds and need to start planting seeds.  You can pick all the weeds out of the garden and be left with a garden even more barren than it was before.  If you plant seeds, you not only grow a crop.  The crop that is grown has the capacity to produce seed for future crops.  This grassroots, organic, everyday-person adventure allowed the Church to spread like wildfire in the early Church and begs of us to experience it afresh today.

For Jesus, Heaven is not something we wait for.  It’s not something we purify the world for.  Instead, it is something we look forward to, walk lovingly towards, journey with others in the mindset of, and seek to be ambassadors of right here and right now.

May we recognize that the farmer is not God.  The farmer is us!  May we recognize that the seed is the relational good news of Jesus Christ and spread it everywhere we go to produce a harvest for which we will be told, “Well done, my good and faithful servant!”

David’s book fleshes out eight things that bombard the residents of suburbia.  I will not list those things out of fairness to Dave and because it would be much better for you to read and discover those on your own.  At the conference, however, he hit upon three major addictions in the life of the average suburban resident.

1. Suburbanites are obsessed with the success of their children.

2. Suburbanites are consumed with their neighbor’s life.

3. Suburbanites are fixated on the speed of their lives.

The reality of these three forces, if you will, in our lives is that we end up living very bloated lives obsessed with getting ourselves ahead, being successful, appearing like we have it all together.  The bloat is too much of one thing and too little of everything else.

I’m not talking about finding time for church.  Rather, I’m talking about being the church within time.  How has the drive to be as efficient as possible deterred the growth of healthy families?  What if the lack of time for intimacy has left spouses as hollow shells of their once committed selves, hollow shells that soon shatter with the reality of divorce?

The painful truth of this suburban “paradise” of a picket fence, a golden retriever named “Theodore” or “Theo” for short, two kids, nice, big vehicles, plenty of spare cash to spend at the movies.  This style of living appeals to many of us.  Suburbia isn’t popular because it causes people to suffer.  Suburbia is popular because it anesthetizes us.  It lulls us into false senses of security.  Our “gods” are satisfied.  We have a flat-screen television, we have a beautifully cut lawn.

The enemy of suburbia is the “wantingness” of humanity.  If Mr. John Jacobs has a new SUV then my minivan doesn’t look so hip anymore.  If she can afford those kinds of clothes then I need to buy something better to not only match her fashion move in this game of clothing poker but to up the ante a little bit.  If she spends $35 for a shirt I will find one a little more expensive in the hopes of being a little more unique.

The problem: uniqueness in suburbia is only an illusion.  The only thing unique about most teenagers is the inseam of their jeans.  The brand is the same as 50 other students living on the same block.  The only unique thing about that person’s car are the people it’s hauling.  Buy a new car sometime and just see how INSTANTLY you see that same car everywhere.  We’re not unique…there is nothing individual about our individualistic culture.  It’s all vanity and we have bought into the lie and pay homage to the gods of consumerism every day.

So, what’s to be our response?  Goetz uttered three words that have haunted me, my closest friends, and the community of faith I call home for some time, we must “die to self.”  One way to solve a bloating problem is to stop eating or drinking that which is bloating you.

Goetz contends that the Protestant church has been especially great at creating beginners on the Christian journey.  The only problem, you cannot program converts and you cannot program spiritual transitions.  The deeper (thicker as he calls it) life is not a mere three programs away.

Transitions on the spiritual journey involve suffering and prayer.  These things, however have no consumer appeal.  People do not flood churches for a Wii when it involves losing their family members, becoming disowned by a social group, giving up straight A’s to become a beacon of hope to your neighborhood, going to community college instead of an Ivy League school.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”  Jesus had to die, His followers had to die, we must die to experience the fullness of the Kingdom.

Jesus’ death seemed like the end but, in reality, it was the beginning.  Only through His death were we granted true life, abundant life.  But Jesus is not a gateway to inner bliss.  Instead, Jesus is a model of what all of us must do to experience life.  Paul wrote to the church in Galatia, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me.  The life I live in the body I live by faith in the son of God who loved me gave himself for me” (2:20).

Before we go any further, dying here ultimately means physical death.  But for us now, death implies dying to all those things that we find identity, security, hope and love in other than Christ.  We’re talking about dying to self.  Even though there is something about dying to self that fully brings us alive, it is a difficult journey for it goes against every fiber of our being.  We avoid dying to self because dying to self requires the greatest amount of faith in God, namely, that He is able to bring us back to life AND that the life He offers is really the best offer on the table.  We so desperately want to live because we have not allowed for the evidence of God’s unending love and immense provision to sweep into our lives.

Just read the following scriptures and hear the call to lose control and give it to God:

• “Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:39, TNIV)
• “You are not your own; you were bought at a price.  Therefore honor God with your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20, NIV)
• “Then Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear.  Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes.  Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them.  And how much more valuable you are than birds!  Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?  Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?’” (Luke 12:22-26, NIV)
• “Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground, dead to the world, it is never anymore than a grain of wheat.  But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over.  In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it  is destroys life.  But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.” (John 12:24, The Message)

The dilemma of Protestant Christianity, Goetz argues, is that believers are living in a perpetual state of Christianity.  The call to transition to the deeper end of the spiritual pool is one that calls us to lose control.  For churches to transition to the deeper side of life they need to begin thinking in terms of spirituality and move away from the thought process of ideas fleshed out in programs.There is no way to get deeper with Christ without suffering and prayer.  There is no consumeristic appeal to come to these.  Ultimately, in light of Bonhoeffer’s quote above, there is really no consumeristic appeal to the Gospel.  Dying is ultimately giving up control.  For the suburbanite (and small town resident I would argue) this is counter-cultural to the well-groomed, carefully maintained, life under control existence to which we’ve become accustomed.

In the far recesses of my mind and heart, I know full well why I’m up at this hour.  My spirit is in grieving mode.  I’m not sad as much as I am reflective.  One of my heroes, Charlie Munson, passed away this past weekend.  The reality sunk in even more as I read his obituary today:

“Dr. Charles R. Munson, 90, formerly of Ashland, and Goshen, Indiana died on Sunday afternoon May 10, 2009 at Vitas House in Irving, Texas. He was born May 3, 1919 in Scalp Level, Pennsylvania. He was a 1937 graduate of Ferndale High School of Johnstown, PA; a 1947 graduate of Ashland College, in 1952 he graduated from Ashland Theological Seminary and in 1954 he graduated from Western Seminary of Pittsburgh, PA; he was also a doctoral graduate of Case Western Reserve in 1971.

“He was ordained on July 17, 1949 in the Brethren Church by the Johnstown Second Brethren Church of Johnstown, PA; he served as National Youth Director for the Church of the Brethren from 1948-1953 and as the National Moderator of the Brethren Church in 1965, he also served pastorates at Gretna Brethren Church, Williamstown Brethren Church, Johnstown Second Brethren Church, Savannah Presbyterian Church and Lexington Presbyterian Church. He had also served as Master of Ceremonies at many banquets. He was professor of Practical Theology and Academic Dean at Ashland Theological Seminary from 1954-1985. He lived in Ashland until 1996 when he moved to Goshen and in November of last year he moved to Texas.

“On August 14, 1942 he was married to Aida May Snyder, she preceded him in death on July 6, 1994. He is survived by his daughter, Deborah M. (Don) Vick of Coppell, Texas and two grandchildren, Rachel and John Vick. In addition to his parents, and wife, a daughter Bonnie Christina Munson, died on March 5, 2008 and a half sister, Ruth MacDonald Ely and two half brothers, George and Ray MacDonald all preceded him in death.

What do you say to a life like that?  How does a person my age even begin to fathom 90 years of joy, pain, reflection, gain, loss, and above all, hope in Jesus Christ?

I’m currently reading numerous books (not unusual for me).  One of them is really causing me to reflect deeply.  It is The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel.  It is forcing me to examine the implications of the Sabbath on my own life.  Deep pondering of the seventh day of the Creation poem forces me to realize that rest is not something to be found when I have time for it.  Rather, rest is a presence found as the eternal manifests Himself in time.

A few quotes from the book will help illustrate what may sound like incoherence above:

“The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.  In a religious experience, for example, it is not a thing that imposes itself on [humanity] but a spiritual presence.  What is retained in the soul is the moment of insight rather than the place where the act came to pass.  A moment of insight is a fortune, transporting us beyond the confines of measured time.  Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time” (6).

“There is no equivalent for the word ‘thing’ in biblical Hebrew.  The word ‘davar,’ which in later Hebrew came to denote thing, means in biblical Hebrew: speech; word; message; report; tidings; advice; request; promise; decision; sentence; theme; story; saying, utterance; business, occupation; acts; good deeds; events; way, manner, reason, cause; but never ‘thing.’  Is this a sign of linguistic poverty, or rather an indication of an unwarped view of the world, of not equating reality (derived from the Latin word res, thing) with thinghood” (7)?

“One of the most distinguished words in the Bible is the word qadosh, holy; a word which more than any other is representative of the mystery and majesty of the divine.  Now what was the the first holy object in the history of the world?  Was it a mountain?  Was it an altar?  It is, indeed, a unique occasion at which the distinguished word qadosh is used for the first time: in the Book of Genesis at the end of the story of creation.  How extremely significant is the fact that it is applied to time: ‘And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.’  There is no reference in the record of creation to any object in space that would be endowed with the quality of holiness” (9).

“The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time rather than space.  Six days a week we live under the tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to become attuned to holiness in time.  It is a day on which we are called upon to share in what is eternal in time, to turn from the results of creation to the mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the creation of the world” (10).

I’m haunted by the tension between what I’m reading and what I’m feeling.  I’m reading of the importance of rest.  Heschel’s words call the reader to recognize that rest is not a thing to be held but a presence to be experienced.  The Sabbath is not created by man for God, but rather out of God for the good of man.  There is a way that we experience what it means to be made in His image when we rest.

At the exact same time I’m writing this, my little brain is screaming, “Full steam ahead…more power!”  I laid in bed wondering what would be said of me if I’m fortunate to make it to 90.  How do people view me now?  What is up on my docket for tomorrow?  How will I get everything done on my to-do list that needs to be done?  And, by the way, one of the heroes of my faith passed away recently!

Today, I received a wonderful phone call.  I was asked by the family of Charles Munson to be a pall-bearer at his memorial service.  My heart sank upon the request.  The full weight of the moment hit me.  I paused.  How in the world did I get asked to participate in the memorial service of one of my heroes?

What I think I felt, though, was a collision of the two forces woven all throughout this post.  My soul grieves at the lost of Charlie.  He was a mentor, a hero, a legend, but, above all, a friend and brother in Christ.  Upon hearing of his passing I felt the happiest sadness I’ve felt in a long time.  My mind continues to race processing his death, processing my schedule, processing processes!

At the same time, I keep asking myself, where is Jesus in all this stuff?  In asking the question, an answer comes to mind.  Jesus is not to be found but to be experienced in the process of journeying.  It’s not as if He’s some cosmic Easter egg hidden just behind the divine lilac bush.  Rather, like an afternoon hike in the mountains, he is the realization when you get to the top of the mountain and realize that all along you’ve been walking in him and the ‘finding’ was just a grand vantage point He gave you as you peered from atop a cliff over a pristine valley below.

As I write this, two images from Scripture come to mind.  The first comes from the John’s gospel.  Jesus says in this passage:

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you. This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.”

The call is to “abide” in Jesus.  To make our home in Him.  Our primary calling is intimacy with Him.  Intimacy entails time.  Time entails moments of movement and moments of rest.  Like a piece of music, we are sung along by a long string of notes and rests.  The beauty of music is that in the act of listening, we often fail to realize where movement ends and rest begins, and vice-versa.  Eliminate either rest or movement and the music fails to be.  Might Jesus be calling us to continually rest in Him?

The second image comes not so much from an exact passage of Scripture but a period of time brought forth in Scripture.  What might the world have been experiencing on the Saturday between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday?  I believe that many Christians fail to understand rest and presence because we too quickly rush from Good Friday to clean it all up with Resurrection Sunday.  In the cosmic scope of things, is our world not living in a continual Saturday?  Is creation not groaning for the ultimate restoration and renewal promised at the end of the age (Rom. 8)?

Several years ago, a professor of mine prayed a powerful prayer at a chapel service.  The words he uttered to conclude that prayer have stuck with me for years.  “And now, Father,” he prayed, “may we live as the light of Resurrection Sunday in the darkness of a Good Friday world.”

Maybe that is why I grieve Charlie’s passing so much.  The world still looks so much like Good Friday.  Hope is so hard to move away from the abstractness of imagination to the concreteness of reality.  At the same time, is reality merely something to be grasped?  Merely a thing?  Or, is reality a presence!  Might the hope that Charlie and I share be just as real as the computer on which I’m typing this post?

In the tension of life and death, movement and rest, song and silence, may we find hope.  My friend, Charlie, was a shining example of a man who experienced hope not as theory but as reality.  In the mystery of Creation and Creator, Charlie basked in the love and light of Jesus Christ.  Maybe my grieving is not so much for Charlie but for all of us who wait eagerly for our hope to be fully actualized.  Maybe I’m struggling to be a Resurrection servant in a world reeling from Good Friday.  Maybe my immature spirit is trying to grasp for words to describe the tension between being happy and sad at the same time.  Or, and I believe they’re all true, maybe I just woke up at 4:00am to process with God that I’ll miss my friend and cannot wait to see him again!

In the 1950s the paradigm for society was very friendly towards the life of the church.  People found their social networking through the operations of the local church.  Close friendships and bonds were formed and held through a community’s involvement with the local church.

Fast forward now to the present time.  People do not seem to find their closest friendships and relationships through the life of the church.  The church is experiencing a push to the margins of society.  Our soceity has gotten increasingly pluralized, increasingly secularized, and increasingly individualized.  What should be the church’s response in the 21st century?  Do we roll over and play dead?  Do we continue to operate via old strategies from a paradigm, or two paradigms ago?  How will the church in the West respond?

Alan Hirsch is an interesting presenter.  He comes from Australia.  The significance of this in global Christianity is stunning.  Europe is basically dead.  Large cathedrals and monasteries now stand as tourist attractions.  A spiritual malaise has fallen over the face of the continent.  In one word, Europe has become incredibly secularized.  What I mean by secular is a culture that is consumed with worldly rather than spiritual things; one that sees religion as an archaic system of rules and regulations.

Australia and New Zealand stand in between Europe and the United States.  Hirsch’s prophetic claim is that this secularization has infiltrated areas like Australia and New Zealand.  His warning to America, do not think your fate is any different if you continue to do things the way you’ve always done them.  An awakening of sanctified imaginations needs to happen quickly in our contexts.

Think of with this graph:

(simple)       m0     m1     m2      m3      m4        (complex)

[m= significant barrier to effective communication of the gospel]

The church, Hirsch contends, operates within a sphere around m0.  We are continuing to become incredibly isolated.  In a sense, the church exists within its own orbit around m0.  Thus, many churches operate out of an attractional paradigm.  People will come to us when they reach our orbit.

A difficulty arises.  Culture is moving more and more to the more complex end of the spectrum.  More and more people are being missed because they fail to reach our orbit.  And, when people do reach our orbit, we institutionalize them.  The same people that had tons of non-Christian friends at the bars and workplace, now fall into a Christian bubble.  We speak our own language, listen to our own music, wear different clothing with jokes/phrases/sayings that are confusing at best to the larger culture.

We draw people in through an attractional model (if they come into our orbit) and send them out through an extractional model.  These institutional clones cause culture to move further and further away.  The church becomes its own worst enemy.

Hisrch polled a group of people about four large components of religion.  He first asked participants of the survey about God, 100% said they believed.  He then asked how they viewed Jesus, most believed.  He then asked them about spirituality, all regarded it as important.  When he asked about the church, he found no positive reactions.  Keep in mind, he comes from more secularized contexts than small town Ohio.

The reality is that what is happening in the cities trickles out to the suburbs, trickles out to the small towns, and trickles down even to the countrysides.  What is happening in large cities is a moving trend that will soon afflict small town churches.  I already see it in my own context.  We need to stop arguing about whether the city is right or wrong and start realizing the catclysmic cultural shifts occuring in our country.  America is always moving more towards the secularized level.

What should be our response?  Our response should not be to run or hide or to step out and condemn.  We need to discover, once again, the sacredness of sentness.  We in the church have lost the reality that we are called to go, not to stay or come.  Thus, in a culture that is increasingly alienated from Christ, we respond with organizational insanity.  We think if we keep doing the same thing we’ll get different results.

Hirsch describes it this way.  Imagine two holes are being dug.  One is being dug by culture at large and the other is being dug by the church.  The church’s response to recent trends is likened to us saying, “If we only dig this same hole deeper we’ll tap into that hole over there.”  The illustration is ridiculous but so are some of the ways we’ve attempted to change/shape/influence our culture.

Leverage in the missional movement is found not in changing culture but in changing churches.  Churches need to step into the marketplace and point people to the healing of their deepest doubts, wounds, and confusion.  I love the church…it is God’s vessel of restoration and renewal.

We must remember that it is God’s vessel…not our soapbox or place of judgment, not our building of escape, not our list of rules, and not a religious system.  Hirsch identifies the problem as a “death of the imagination.”  We fail to think differently and fail to have the courage to let certain things die and bring to life new things that people may resist at first but so desperately need.  We cannot violate our incarnational impulses.  Jesus came and took on our flesh.  How will we live incarnationally in the flesh of culture?

Right now, 90+% of churches are seeking to become contemporary, attractional growth churches.  In a culture like our own, this is a strategic problem.  Why?  Studies show that almost 60% of people are alienated by this model because they never come into its orbit.  That is a missional problem.  May the people of God reclaim their missionary imagination and live incarnationally, missionally, and relationally in this world that God so deeply loves!