A picture says a thousand words...

P-U...and is that really a baby walker in the room? Surely there's not a baby in that house...ever.

Mysterious Music from the Menagerie of Mighty Mane Groomers

You know, for some reason, I really like Arcade Fire. Weird, but the truth.

Yeah sure I’m just a 30+ year old who was oblivious to them until he happened to catch them on Saturday Night Live by accident because I was tuning in to watch “Dwight Schrute”. But do I care? Do I feel uncool because they are so modern and current that they were flying under my radar screen? Nah. Should I? Maybe, but I’m making up for it as quickly as I can now. But that's all water under the bridge....lol.

I just consider myself lucky to have realized they exist at all. I'm sure they'll start to get on my nerves soon enought, so I better enjoy them while I can.

The Chicken or The Egg

Mention the word emergent and you will get one of two reactions: blissful ignorance or wary caution. The funny thing though is a person’s awareness and feelings regarding the word itself seem to have absolutely no correlation to a person’s like or dislike for what amounts to an emergently styled worship service in a church. The reason for this is that emergent actually functions on two wholly distinct levels, only one of which is truly valid.

The first and easiest to peg is the aesthetic. This is the dead giveaway as to whether emergent concepts are being brought to bear on the service. The second is easy to pinpoint, but much more difficult to nail down in terms of specifics: doctrine and theology.

Let me start with the first and probably largest part of the great and mystical emergent: Aesthetics.

Here’s a brief checklist of things to look for:
#1 Extremely simple, yet modern look in terms of architecture. No complexity, not a lot of expense. Basically a barebones, yet classy look at the same time. Sort of like something like you’d picture in an aspiring up and coming artist’s loft apartment.

#2 Decorating colors are basically natural colors: skin tones, earth tones, blue, green yellow. That pretty much sums it up.

#3 Food provided every Sunday in a coffee shop fashion, with all the nice cups, snack selection, etc….

#4 In the sanctuary itself, darkness. Not even enough light to read by while singing, worship, praise, prayer times are going on. During the sermon, just enough extra light to read by in case you’d rather read your Bible as opposed to take it off the screen. But candles, lots and lots and lots of candles.

#5 On a large stage, lots of people, constantly changing personnel and stage set-up, professional stage lighting, loudness level right on the edge between concert and worship.

#6 Prayer is central to the service and the set up is oriented around providing places to pray during the service.

#7 Chairs, not pews.

#8 Jeans and Crocs all over the place.

#9 Occasionally, you’ll find the congregations constituting the church bodies worshipping in this manner meeting in “odd” locations, such as subways, hotels, etc… And of course, in these instances, the presentation is completely defined by the location in which they meet.

#10 Always a lot of people in attendance of all ages and types.

And there’s more stuff, but you get the idea…



So on to the other area, and probably the issue that most have used as a way to define the great and mystical emergent as basically a culturally, shallow attempt at subversion of the Gospel message. This has been used as a flashpoint by the entrenched, over-reaching church authority (yes even protestants have an over-arching church hierarchy) to rid themselves of having to even think about emergent, thereby avoiding any real discussion of actively pursuing the great commission in the modern age. And on the flip-side, the “leaders” of emergent, or to be more accurate, those who brought the concept of emergent to the forefront of church discussion, have allowed themselves (maybe even foolishly welcomed) to be drawn into discussions of theology and doctrine.

I say that to tie emergent to doctrine does it an extreme disservice and completely misrepresents what is at the core. Truly, the liberal/conservative tendencies of those associated with emergent run the entire gammit of liberal/conservative theology. This understanding in itself should nullify any attempt to peg it as representing a specific type of theology. You can find emergent present in any and all denominations. All it represents is change, and a fairly harmless change at that. But isn’t that where the trouble always starts. Isn’t it always some harmless change, like moving chairs, playing a certain song in church, drinking and eating in the sanctuary, wearing jeans to church, playing drums during the service.

Emergent is not about theology, it is not about doctrine, it is not about denominations. Emergent is about attraction. It is about a thinking that asks Christians to exercise maturity in their faith and lay aside their own preferences for the good of the kingdom. Christ laid aside heaven itself to come to Earth to be treated as a criminal and brutally killed. Can we not simply alter the “performance” that we all put on each Sunday morning as individuals and as a church so that we are more attractive in a real and friendly kind of way to people who have not yet been reached in the name of Christ? Isn’t it all about aesthetics?

I’m kind of tired, but I hope this is making sense.

Transparency, Part 1

I had a thought today on the way to work. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m constantly trying to understand the delicate balance that a church seeks to achieve in the world.

On the one hand, the church must be undeniably Christian, and therefore reject the ways of the world. In this sense the corporate church entity’s primary mission as a mechanism in God’s plan would seem to be to oversee, maintain, and care for the flock; with the ultimate goal of spiritual growth and independence within the members of the flock.

The catch-22 to this is if the church does a good job of caring for the flock and raising them to spiritual maturity, the flock’s natural spiritual impulse will be to begin reaching out through love and understanding to those around them that are unsaved. Therefore, odds are that this new group of mature and independent Christians will want to begin to alter the way in which people are brought into the Church by recognizing and altering the approach the corporate church takes in relating to those outside the church.

Out of love and understanding and yearning to serve their Lord, once we are saved, we begin to desire to see others saved……at all costs?

Perhaps at all costs….Christ laid down His very life. In light of what He did, aren’t we simply called to lay aside our selves. Seems simple compared to dying, but you’d think our task more difficult than that of Christ when you begin to look around at all the various denominational groups within the corporate church, each of which has been formed because of an inability to lay aside their self.

Oh, but wait, they did lay aside their selves, once upon a time, right? Wasn’t that why their group formed in the first place, because they wanted to reach out and go where people hadn’t gone before. Leaving behind their progenitors who were content to continue working with what they have seen work in the past, and expect to continue to work in the future. Something always overlooked is the fact that laying aside one’s self is not a one time act, it is an act that continues forever. The self must continuously be denied when it comes to serving another, especially when that “another” is Jesus Christ. If you aren’t serving Jesus, you’re only serving yourself.

And so, I suppose therein lies the beginning of an understanding of what love and understanding truly mean? Remember love and understanding…it’s what drives the mature and independent Christian to go out into the world and fulfill the commission.

So again I ask, what is love and understanding? Is it some sort of haughty type of pity? Is it remorse over what the unsaved are missing out on? Is it compassion? And if compassion, what type? Do we allow our compassion to compel us to action, or does our compassion find itself restricted to our prayers?
I think, in a lot of ways, regardless of where the Christian is coming from in their desire to show love and understanding, ultimately the burden of defining how that love and understanding is interpreted is completely on the shoulders of those in the cross-hairs of our Christian love and understanding.

Sacrifices

This year my wife and I have been reading one of those Through The Bible In A Year books. And being a month and a half into it, we have hit what many consider the most dreaded obstacle of all those seeking to read through the Bible.

“So high you can’t get over it; so low you can’t get under it; so wide you can’t get around it.”

Leviticus

So far, we’ve only been exploring the intricate descriptions of what fat to sacrifice, of which animal, when, and by whom. Maybe, for a reader who’s completely caught up on his sleep, these books would satisfy some trivial fascination, but when you’ve been through these readings before, and have two kids to keep your energy-level maxed out, all I find is mystery and dozing.

I realize that the words of Leviticus must be included for a reason. And because they are literally a part of God’s Word, they must be included in anyone’s attempt to genuinely study God’s word. Sooooo, when was the last time you heard a sermon on Leviticus, or had a Sunday school lesson or small group study on Leviticus? In my ten years as a Christian, the answer is never.

Of course, for Christians, the reason for this is simple--Jesus. But in my mind the book of Leviticus is also the reason for Jesus. The Law.

Christians are outside of the Law because of Jesus. Therefore we have very little interest in such things. However would we not be outside of the Law without Jesus? And would we not have Jesus without the Law? Although I can’t say I have even an inkling of understanding yet as to why it is important to read Leviticus, as Christians, there has to be some unique understanding of Christ’s atonement to be had from working through the Old Testament Law books such as Leviticus. At least that’s my guess.

We shall see if my current reading gleans me any of that unique perspective that I seek. My prayer is that it will.

These are the commands the Lord gave Moses on Mount Sinai for the Israelites. Leviticus 27:34

LET'S BE PERFECTLY CLEAR ON THIS...

butter = BAD!!!! :(

-butter-g= GOOD!!!! :)

God's Origami

I’ve been going through this daily origami calendar I received as a Christmas present. It's been a month and a half and every day I do a new little origami project. Some designs are a lot fancier than I'd have expected to be able to do. But the complex designs are no harder than the simple designs. They all boil down to the same ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS: directions, piece of paper, folding, imagination.

Directions = God’s Word (Inspired and Inerrant)
Piece of Paper = Me or You or Her or Him (the clay)
Folding = Rebirth as a new creation (Belief in Jesus as the incarnate Son of God)
Imagination = Seeing the world through a whole new set of eyes (LOVE)

“There are three things that will endure-faith, hope, and love-and the greatest of these is love.” Happy Valentines Day!

The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste

You ever think about what you remember? I do. And sometimes I wonder about the things that I don’t remember, and why.

I started down this path thinking back to a time before I professed a belief in Jesus, back when I used to actually verbally argue in a public forum against the “logic” of believing in Jesus. I don’t know how important it is for us to remember what it was like for us as people in the world before we believed, but it can’t be worthless. Regardless though, it got me thinking…

Time goes by, sometimes a lot of time, but the things we remember, what we remember of them, we remember like yesterday. Why is that? Is there some kind of timeless quality to our memories?

We truly are the sum of our experiences in life, and we carry those experiences with us as memories. They define us as people. They define our character. In this way, they are not our past; they are our present and our future. In this sense, they are timeless. The only other thing I know that is timeless is God. After all, He is the creator of time, therefore He must be above it. So perhaps, in our minds, in the mysterious place where we carry the things that we know, from experience, we come closest to God. Perhaps it is in the self-reflection that comes only with memories that we can experience to the fullest our relationship with God.

And then there are the things that we forget. We “forget” something for the longest time, then suddenly there it is floating out there in front of us, overshadowing every other part of our days and thoughts, like a ghost appearing out of nothingness. And yet it is not a ghost, it is a reality, our reality, and we know it has shaped us, and we know it will continue to shape us. But where was it for all of that time, why now does it come back to us.

And what about the things we never forget, from the moment they happen until we die? And what about the things we will never remember? Did we even actually experience something if we have no memory of it? Maybe we are protectiong ourselves from who we are by not remembering. Or maybe we simply can't remember.

Some are tortured by their memories, bringing to bear guilt, regret, remorse, sadness, and sometimes driving people to drastic actions. But for most, these symptoms take a much more mild and molding direction. We all would like to think that we become better people as a result of the lives we have lived, but then again, so easily we forget, only to remember again, too late to prevent the formation of yet another bridling memory, nearly identical to one that we'd already like to forget.

I wonder if the soul might actually be the sum of our memories. When we stand before the judgement seat as someone whose life on Earth has come to an end, what more can we possibly be than the sum of our memories. One thing I know for certain, who we are, we shall be before God…

…but Praise God there is that one guy who came and took the punishment that belongs to us for who we are upon himself. Thank God for his Son, and Jesus’ willingness to do what he did for us.

Psalm 119:11 Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.

What do you call yourself

I wanted to post a message I got from my dad commenting on the subject of my prior post. Perspective always helps bring clarity.

When we were inducted into Uncle Sam's Army they asked us a couple of questions for basic info that went on our dog tags. They asked and I blurted out Protestant when they asked for religion. The popular choices were protestant Catholic and Jewish, but I was scared and tired, and thought that there was some kind of politically correct answer, and of course, they don't let you change anything once you've given an answer, you are stuck with that answer until the end of time according to the Army. Immediately after getting stuck with the stupid moniker "protestant", I wanted to change it to Christian so bad, that I regretted it every day that I spent in the Army. More than a few of my prayers had to do with my guilt over that word that prevented me from being known by Jesus' name.

I always assumed that the reason they wanted to know was in case of impending death or disaster while on duty, they would go and summon the appropriate man of the cloth to come and minister to the dying soldier. Still, I regret it to this day. For someone to walk around calling themself a Baptist, a Nazarene, a Catholic, a Methodist, or an "indie" is like me, as a scared and stupid buck private on his way to war, calling myself something as inane as a protestant. Looking back, I always go with my original instinct to avoid nameplates and labels, and I'm just satisfied to be known merely by what they were called in the first century, a Christian. That is good enough for me.

I once belonged to the Methodist church, just as you did, but I never knew what it meant to be a Methodist. I think in (anytown USA), being a (dominant religious group) gets you some really good political points, at least that is what everyone knows from bitter experience who has ever lived in (anytown USA) and is not a (dominant religious group). In the end man-made religious labels are frequently used by insecure folks looking for some kind of prideful advantage through association. On the other hand, humans need to belong, and groups label themselves to help each other identify like-minded folks. Join one (or more) church(es) (there isn't a limit on membership, you know), but let your heart show what you are. I feel totally secure as a Christian no matter where I might find myself attending church or who I might be associating with outside of church.

What's in a name?

What is a Nazarene? What about an Emergent Nazarene? I ask those questions a little tongue in cheek. The obvious and most honest answer is: “a Nazarene is a Christian”. Beyond that however, Nazarene is similar to a country in and of itself within the world of Christendom. And how can one know much about a country until one sets off with the intent to explore that country. Don’t get me wrong. This affliction is not specific to the Nazarenes. No less can be said of any other denomination or “brotherhood”.

As I type this, I’ve got a membership form waiting to be filled out and turned in to a local Nazarene church here in OKC. Aesthetically at least, this church seems to profess a vision in line with the great and mysterious EMERGENT. From what I’ve read so far, I think I’ve got EMERGENT pegged as a some sort of distant cousin to the great and mysterious OZ.

I’ve never been a Nazarene before, and don’t think I have ever planned on being a Nazarene. However, I have been a Christian before, and that’s got to count for something, right? Since my salvation nearly 10 years ago I’ve always considered myself a part of a group which professes to NOT be a denomination. So, by default, NOTness is where I’ve taken my stand over the last decade. But as things tend to do, things change. God has most definitely shown my family that it has come time for us to make a change.

From the outside looking in, one quickly finds that the NOTness of the Indies and the SOMETHINGness of denominationalism are pretty similar to one another, only on a much smaller, and even more divisive scale.

And so, growth begins again. I’ve grown spiritually from milk to meat within the “confines” of the Independent Christian Church movement. When you’re inside of the indie group, and probably most any other group or denomination, as a young and maturing Christian it becomes very easy to begin to feel as if you live in one of a multitude of countries, each with its own borders, leaders, laws, and politics. And for no other reason than we were born in this country, we begin to speak the language, adopt their beliefs and ideals, and become emboldened to the point that we are even willing to fight to protect, and occasionally expand, our borders. Soon enough we start believing that our country is the biggest and the baddest.

And yet in the hard, cold truth that can be Christian Reality (a hard place to visit, and an even more difficult place to call home) the ONLY thing that a denomination truly can be is a word. And it isn’t even a good kind of word. It’s the bad kind of un-PC word that I’ll go ahead and label a “Label”. As Christians I wonder why we so willingly allow ourselves to be labeled with a denominational moniker when regardless of the label, underneath it all we can ultimately be nothing more than Christians.

All you need to do is read a history book, or maybe go to the grocery store, and quickly enough you see that labels are good for nothing other than the application of rules and guidelines, specifications and instructions, directions and orders, competition, and ultimately power and control, usually all in the name of maintaining worldly order. This last fact explains why labels are very important in the World, but in Christendom show why all labels but one should be of no importance.

Need a Proof?: Ask a Baptist, a Nazarene, a Catholic, a Methodist or any faith-filled, loving Christian the following question: What do you want to hear come out of Jesus’ mouth when you get to heaven? The answer is obvious: “Well done good and faithful servant.” Not “good and faithful Baptist”, not “good and faithful Nazarene”, not even “well done Indie”. Rather, we all want to hear “good and faithful servant”.

Yet, as I stand ready to bare my neck to my potential Nazarene brothers and sisters (sheesh…), I suppose I must come to terms with yet another fact of my existence. To Join, or Not To Join. I must Join, I suppose for no other reason than because I must.

Or must I? Why join a church? Where is that in the Bible? Why do we even practice it? Where did it originate? What on Earth is Church membership, and what in Heaven’s name is it truly good for?

Really, rather than joining a church, aren’t we actually joining a denomination. Aren’t we already a part of The Church before we’re a part of a denomination, hence the fact that we’re allowed to “join” a denomination in the first place? And isn’t the hard truth that we do so to the exclusion of all other denominations or groups. As Christians, we do these things and we truly believe we are exercising good theology, when really there is no scriptural basis for something which is truly at the core of so much divisiveness. And if you don’t think it is divisive, then simply attempt to implement wholesale changes to the “professed” non-essentials of whatever denomination to which you happen to belong. I’ll bet you’ll soon find yourself knee deep in the blood of the “defenders of the faith” over some matters which, prior to being at the root of what has become a blood-bath, were of no consequence at all.

As for me? I’m throwing my lot in with the Nazarenes; at least until God leads my family elsewhere. Quite simply put, “it’s the way the world works”. And honestly, the place God has led us to seems to have a genuine caring about them. They may call themselves Nazarenes, and they may preach a solid and grounded Nazarene Faith, but can a church which has grown from 15 to 600 in attendance every weekend, in as short a time as 3 years, truly call itself Nazarene? Or is it much closer to truly being The Church. I’m hanging my hat on the latter, and I don’t think I’ll be disappointed. God is good!!! Amen!