Seems Carson should read Davis …

Assumptions undermine conversations. In fact many times presuppositions not only inhibit talking with one another, but also bring anything resembling dialogue to a complete halt. I recently sent a letter to our church community suggesting we consider, "Where we are going?" in light of Jesus going to Jerusalem, Calvary and the Empty Tomb. Someone construed this as an opportunity to assume we would be interjecting another church’s methodology. Assumptions we would be implementing this strategy eliminated, in some minds, the occasion to have a conversation, dialogue or talk with one another.

Rick offers some thoughts growing from his own experiences at leading and talking with folks about new ways to network for the good of the Kingdom of God. He follows up here. Bob illustrates Rick’s post  giving a description of his dinner with D.A. Carson. Pay careful attention to Bob taking it in the face.

I am left thinking at some point the practice of the ethic of Jesus must trump my long held beliefs when it comes to relationships with others. How will we ever be heard if our tone contradicts the command to love one another?

Justice has come … Jesus has come …

" … learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause …" (Is.1:17)

Stacy sent a link to this video.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDrsGu33hfc]

Mentors … Bringing Me To Tears …

Christian ethical development requires mentors to model. Our current church models for developing ethics in our young people is largely accidental. My assertion stems from experiences with adults who grew up in church and how they often mishandle relationships in the context of church. These thoughts came to mind as I read Hauerwas and Willimon describe a suggested path of ethical formation for their particular denominational framework. Please note this does not mean what the suggest cannot be adopted to fit any group intent to partner with parents in helping young people develop the ethic of Jesus.

The key element came in connecting young people one-on-one with an adult mentor in an intentional relationship. They offer a few of the elements of the suggested project,

-Read the Gospel  of  Luke together. As each of you reads at home, keep a note pad with you and note those passages which you find interesting, confusing, inspiring. Every two weeks, make some time to discuss what you have read.
-Attend Sunday services together for the next three months. After each service, discuss your reactions, questions, impressions of the service.
-Get a copy of our church’s budget. Find out where our money goes. Discuss together how each of you decides to make a financial commitment to the church.
-Attend any board meeting of our church together during the next three months. Decide what congregational board or committee you would like to be on at the end of the Confirmation process.
-Explain, in your own words, "Why I like being a United Methodist Christian." Discuss two areas in which you would like to know more about our church. Ask our pastor or church librarian to help you find this information.
-Attend a funeral and a wedding at our church together. After the service, discuss "Where was God at this service?" "Why is the church involved in these services?"
-Spend at least fifteen hours volunteering at Greenville Urban Ministries, or one of the other service agencies our church helps to support. Why is the church involved here? (Resident Aliens,p.106-107)

Hauerwas and Willimon offer a couple of stories which note the mentoring works both ways. Some today are calling for reverse-mentoring. That is, older Christians being mentored by younger Christians in order to understand the different ways we view the world. In either case there is a great need to work in an intentional way to help our young people learn the ethic of Jesus.

A final story in this chapter (5) brought me to tears. The pastor of one congregation persuaded one of the women in his church who had been assaulted to seek help from a therapist for the trauma. In an attempt to help work through the ordeal the therapist suggested the woman find someone to whom she could tell her story. She relayed the notion to her pastor. The pastor asked who she had decided to tell.

    She said, "I think I will tell Sam Smith." Sam Smith was a sometimes recovering alcoholic in the congregation.
    The pastor was surprised. He thought that she would have preferred telling another woman, even another man who was a bit more "together" than Sam Smith.
    "Why Sam?" the pastor asked.
    "Because Sam has been to hell and back," she said. "I think he will know what it has felt like for me to go there. Perhaps he can tell me how to get back."(Resident Aliens,p.110)

Our mentoring experiences, "normal" or "reverse," will be full of times where we learn the ethic of Jesus from unlikely sources. What we need is to create intentional means to assist our young people along the way.

Season ending evaluation … Starbury’s come through just fine …

Leaving the gym last night after our season ending loss in the tournament Jeremy asked, "How about those Starbury’s?" Doubtless I did not put them through the rigors Marbury has or does. Yet, at the end of my first season playing in my Starbury’s I am still and advocate. They performed well even when I did not. Maybe next year I will live up to the hype I have given these shoes. Then again …

Seeing the world in a new way …

How we see the world matters. Apologists point up the competing "worldviews" in an effort to both educate people "in the church" and reason with those "outside the church." A person may register for an academy to help them live out of a "biblical worldview." Whose "biblical worldview" do we utilize? Will we look below the surface to see just how connected we are to the worldviews we battle?

We assert objectivity as we compare these worldviews. Is that possible? How do I objectively evaluate the comfort of a chair? Once I have discovered the comfort of a "Lazy-Boy" I may deem all other chairs "uncomfortable." A padded folding chair is less comfortable than a padded "Stacker II" with lumbar support. The "Lazy-Boy" outdistances both the padded folding chair and the "Stacker II." I only know this once I sit in the chair. Certainly I may read the research. But if my choices are a rock or the padded folding chair then the folding chair wins the day. In the end, my backside may well tell me more about the comfort of a chair. My experience with the chair is subjective knowledge.

We find it difficult to strip away the layers of our own cultural embeddedness to see the world in a new way. Our way of seeing youth culture, for example, is expressly connected with ways to make life fun. We are supposed to wait until we are older for our lives to be meaningful. The reason many experience mid-life crises comes when faced with the question, "Does my life have meaning?" When the answer is not clear everything we have ever done comes is called into question. If there is no meaning then why not throw caution to the wind - let’s have some fun.

Divorcing the eschatological realities of the Kingdom of God from our way of seeing the world results in not seeing the world in a new way. Our resulting values and ethics remain largely influenced by the way we always viewed the world. Instead we make superficial adjustments. Richard Foster, in Celebration of Discipline, asserts "superficiality is the curse of our age."

Pointing out some of the further implications of not seeing the world in a new way, Hauerwas and Willimon note,

    The removal of eschatology from ethics may account for the suffocating moralism in our church. Moralism comes up with a list of acceptable virtues and suitable causes, the pursuit of which will gie us self-fulfillment. "The Be Happy Attitudes." Or Christianity is mainly a matter of being tolerant of other people, inclusive, and open - something slightly left of the Democratic party. Being Christian becomes being someone who is a little more open-minded than someone who is not. E. Stanley Jones said that we inoculate the world with a mild form of Christianity so that it will be immune to the real thing. The aim of such inoculation is security - not security in Christ, but security from Christ and from having to rely on him and the shape of his Kingdom to give meaning and significance to our lives.
    Without eschatology, we are left with only a baffling residue of strange commands, which see utterly impractical and ominous. We ignore the commands on divorce and lash out at our people on peace. The ethic of Jesus thus appears to be either utterly impractical or utterly burdensome unless it is set within its proper context - an eschatologcial, messianic community, which knows something the world does not and structures its life accordingly.(Resident Aliens,p.90)

Until we see the world differently, we cannot begin to talk about "worldview."

The curse of pursuing individuality … avoiding formative relationships …

A retiring school Superintendent once told me, "You cannot overcome heredity and environment." He expressed frustration in attempting to work with young people whose parents and social context distracted them from learning. How could educators expect to impact students who spend more time in adverse conditions? Countless parents asserted the teachers failed their children when support for education came in a distant second to being sure "Johnny" or "Jane" could do as they pleased.

Social networking gains attention with MySpace and Facebook, among others. I am Linkedin. People really do find out there is little originality in our attempts to play up our individuality. Bred to be independent we look for ways to unhook from any shackles keeping us from "being ourselves." We want few commitments lest they become some sort of tyrannical overlord sapping us of freedom of expression. Conversations with our daughters over the years attempted to help them see most attempts to be different simply cast them in the normal. Everyone wants to be themselves. We think we are who we are independent of others.

That is precisely what my Superintendent friend attempted to articulate. We  really cannot escape forming relationships. Young children do not get to choose those relationships. As we get older we hope to learn to forge relationships forming us in healthy ways. One of the battles we face in the Church is just how to play up the understanding of individual responsibility while at the same time giving proper space to communal relationships. Our American West heritage props up the need for a "corporate" identity (patriotism) and at the same time the self-determination necessary to achieve the American dream (individual success). We face ethical decisions in the process. Do we choose for the community or the individual? What are the formative consequences?

Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon wrote Resident Aliens. I have read quotes on others’ blogs, notably Jordon Cooper’s. I began reading my copy this morning and am more than halfway through. The following quote stirred me to thinking about ways in which we in the Church should work to undermine notions of hyper-individuality and help each other see the beautiful way we could not be without the "other."

    Modern people usually seek individuality through the severance of restraints and commitments. I’ve got to be  me. I must be true to myself. The more we can be free of parents, children, spouses, duties, the more free we will be to "be ourselves," to go with the flow, to lay hold of new and exciting possibilities. so goes the conventional agrument.
    Yet, what if our true selves are made from the materials of our communal life? Where is there some "self" which has not been communally created? By cutting back our attachments and commitments, the self shrinks rather than grows. So an important gift the church gives us is a far richer range of options, commitments, duties, and troubles than we would have if left to our own devices. Without Jesus, Peter might have been a good fisherman, perhaps even a very good one. But he would never have gotten anywhere, would never have learned what a coward he really was, what a confused, the confessing, courageous person he was, even a good preacher (Acts 2) when he needed to be. Peter stands out as a true individual, or better, a true character, not because he had become "free" or "his own person," but because he had become attached to the Messiah and messianic community, which enabled him to lay hold of his  life, to make so much more of his life than if he had been left to his own devices. (Resident Aliens,p.64-65)

More and more we want to unhook from the very communities designed to form us to be "the Church" in the world - including the trouble we experience there.

Friday Photo …

Take His place … An Ash Wednesday Reflection …

A church I pastored some years ago thought I came to fill the shoes of the previous pastor. In an awkward moment the church gathered around our family for prayer. One person, who either represented what Marshall Shelley would have termed a "well-intentioned dragon" or my own perception of an "ill-intentioned ner’ do well", prayed admitting to God I was unable to fill the shoes of the previous pastor. Knowing the proclivity for one to be measured against another we pastor types must reckon with those who went before. For many cads become saints over time. Others forget and saints become cads.

Southern Baptists often find any practice or idea not directly connected to the stream of Baptist history or easily "baptized" suspect. We insinuate by practice and publication spiritual formation habits should only include Scripture reading and prayer. For the really spiritually mature you may find Scripture memorization and fasting helpful. Disciplines suggested by older traditions or encouraged by Quakers, for example, should be considered dabbling in unwarranted and unbiblical mysticism. We are not sure what to make of solitude, simplicity and submission as habits to practice. Even spiritually forming disciplines like worship and study serve different functions for most of us.

Imagine helping good folks overcome "genetic" misgivings to any habit intended to help us focus on following Christ. For many in our fellowship the time we spend in repentance and reflection at our Ash Wednesday service elevates their awareness of the Jesus journey and our need to follow His way. Others remain a bit skeptical or quietly disapprove.

This morning using the Morning Prayer fashioned after the Northumbria Community, and taken from Celtic Daily Prayer, I found the "Daily Reading" especially pertinent to the Season of Lent, and to all of life for those following Jesus.

Seven times a day, as I work upon this hungry farm, I say to Thee, ‘Lord, why am I here? What is there here to stir my gifts to growth? What great things can I do for others - I who am captive to this dreary toil?’

And seven times a day Thou answerest, ‘I cannot do without thee. Once did My Son live thy life, and by His faithfulness did show My mind, My kindness, and My truth to men. But now He is come to My side, and thou must take His place.’ (p.65)

Stetzer, Stetzerification and the SBC …

A commenter on my brother’s blog suggested his mention of Ed Stetzer would give a nice bump to his site traffic. We recently joked with Ed about this blogworld phenomenon. Could be the reason I titled this post as I did. You should read Paul’s two posts on his impending Stetzerification and the result in Definitions.

We experienced a brief time with Ed in Greensboro last year. To his credit he remembered; quite a task when you speak often meeting countless folks along the way. He can turn a phrase well. Ed gave us quite a few laughs in the main sessions, breakout session and over dinner.

I bought in to "stetzerification." I confess to thinking Ed could go further. For example, the idea contextualization is simply finding out if those in your community drive a truck and wear a hat so we  should do the same does not go deep enough. I am sure the illustration served to open up some to what he meant by contextualization. His assertion we should be counter-cultural needs to address deeper social, economic and political issues facing most, if not all, communities. I imagine Ed addresses these issues on some level in other places. I want to think this is so.

Ed told us he would be speaking at the Baptist Identity Conference at Union University. You can listen to his talk here. He mentions some statistics you may want to look at and so you may download his paper here.  I have yet to listen to all of the talks from the Baptist Identity Conference but I tell you if the challenge Ed gave those in attendance is carefully considered and not summarily dismissed, some of us who have wondered what and if there is a future for the SBC may find hope. Many will think me too optimistic Ed would be heard. I admit to wondering about Ed’s job security. Gauntlets such as his are not often take well.

Solid job Ed. Great to spend some time together.

Friday Photo …

Next Page »