Consumption

Consumption and discipleship don't mix. They're like oil and water. You can't get from one to the other. If you attend church to 'get fed', you will get sick. If you spend your time critiquing the 'worship experience' then you've missed the point. You've become a consumer. The tragedy is that the vast majority of the churches I have seen have been set up to point you in this direction. Why? Because they were set up by consumers who were happy to be the ones doing the feeding. That's the position of power after all. It's how I have spent almost all of my Christian life.

Jesus was the ultimate anti-consumer. He NEVER consumed in the way we do. Mark puts it this way.

"For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10.45)

If he didn't come to be served then why do we? Think of the way your church is physically arranged. I bet all the chairs point to the front where the experts put on the show. You may even be familiar with seeing their faces on the screen. Is this not a tragic symptom of consumerism gone mad? You come, get what you are given and then you leave. This format does not promote engagement with God or with the world. It's no surprise that the institution has grown fat, lazy and irrelevant.

Jesus calls us all to action, to a specific kind of action called service. This is where we recognise that church is not somewhere I go to receive, but the community I give myself away to. It's not a place I get fed but a group where I continually die for others.

Most churches aren't really serious about creating such communities - or at least they don't know how to - and so the quantity of people being discipled is at an all time low in both the UK and the USA. A new form is required, centred around service and a corporate expression of faith. 'More of the same' just won't work, neither will 'the same but better'.

Entrepreneurial spirit is required to re-birth the church and catapult it into the next generation. People need to be sought out and discipled where they are. The church as we know it may not survive for more than one generation, so we had better get finding some solutions, and fast.

Organisation or Transformation?

Organisation is OK, but it's not the goal of the Church that Jesus came to build. He set his life on transformation. I'm not even sure he gave much thought to how his band of merry men would be organised at the outset. In the gospel accounts it seems more like he just got on his way and collected people as he went. It's a beautifully uncomplicated way to live.

I'm not against organisation. I would rather have it than chaos, which I don't think is a particularly good thing, but I also see that there is no life in a clean stable. I'd rather have some mess around and lots of transformation going on. After all, transformed lives are what this is all about.

This perspective is a challenge to many churches, which pride themselves on excellence. Once again I think excellence is a wonderful value to aim for. We should seek to glorify God by doing our best in all things, but if we are squeezing out life as we do it we have utterly missed the point and we need to go back to square one again.

On Christ the solid rock I stand...

...all other ground in sinking sand, all other ground is sinking sand.

One thing that moving to the USA is teaching Amy and me is that it is so easy to try and play the game of desperately scrambling for some identity, something to hide the nakedness with and cover up under. But the trick is to recognise that the only truly safe place to find who we are is in God and in who he says we are, rather than who the world would have us be.

For once I am not talking about theory but about practice. We're really doing this and it is so freeing.

MLK otra vez

"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true."

Martin Luther King Jr...who else?

Conflict of interests

"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do."

Freya Stark - The Lycian Shor

Bob Dylan - To Ramona

Ramona, come closer,

Shut softly your watery eyes.

The pangs of your sadness

Shall pass as your senses will rise.

The flowers of the city

Though breathlike, get deathlike at times.

And there's no use in tryin'

T' deal with the dyin',

Though I cannot explain that in lines.

Your cracked country lips,

I still wish to kiss,

As to be under the strength of your skin.

Your magnetic movements

Still capture the minutes I'm in.

But it grieves my heart, love,

To see you tryin' to be a part of

A world that just don't exist.

It's all just a dream, babe,

A vacuum, a scheme, babe,

That sucks you into feelin' like this.

I can see that your head

Has been twisted and fed

By worthless foam from the mouth.

I can tell you are torn

Between stayin' and returnin'

On back to the South.

You've been fooled into thinking

That the finishin' end is at hand.

Yet there's no one to beat you,

No one t' defeat you,

'Cept the thoughts of yourself feeling bad.

I've heard you say many times

That you're better 'n no one

And no one is better 'n you.

If you really believe that,

You know you got

Nothing to win and nothing to lose.

From fixtures and forces and friends,

Your sorrow does stem,

That hype you and type you,

Making you feel

That you must be exactly like them.

I'd forever talk to you,

But soon my words,

They would turn into a meaningless ring.

For deep in my heart
I know there is no help I can bring.

Everything passes,
Everything changes,

Just do what you think you should do.

And someday maybe,

Who knows, baby,
I'll come and be cryin' to you.
Copyright ©1964; renewed 1992 Special Rider Music

Bring down the walls

"There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)

In the light of the above, I wonder why we maintain so many of the false boundaries we do. Questions such as 'can women serve in the church?' seem to me to be totally ignorant of the meaning of this passage. Here we are TOLD that now that we are in Christ Jesus, all the things that once made us distinct have been ameliorated. Our only identity is now in him. The self we once laid claim to has been crucified with him and he now lives in and through us.

So, women in leadership? Heck yes. Taking this issue specifically, I have heard it said that men are to be the leaders of the household/churches in the same way Christ is to be head of the Church. Yes, but in Christ leadership looks completely different. You want to lead like Jesus did? Then give your life up, be crucified, lay down your life for the others who have no life. Serve and don't look to be served. Can women lead in this way? I would suggest they are naturally better predisposed to it than men are!

God is a Lover, not a lawyer

The classic caricature of the evangelical message for conversion seems to me to be almost entirely useless. What I mean is the idea that when we come to know Christ our past, present and future sins are in some way obliterated and we can then carry on just as we were and expect to find ourselves in heaven when the whole thing is done. Behind this is the idea that God is merely a judge. Whilst this is certainly one metaphor to employ for God there are better.

I would suggest that a better and more basic metaphor is to see God primarily as lover particularly when we are dealing with conversion. We must recognise that sin is a state before it is an action. The good news is that we can be made new, that this fractured state will be gradually but inevitably reversed as the fruits of the spirit are unveiled in our lives. This is loosely speaking a Kingdom theology.

Firstly, the problems with the God as judge position...

1) It flattens out the concept of sin, making it 2-dimensional when in fact it is 3-dimensional. In other words it treats sin as a series of actions rather than as a state that leads to the actions. Whilst I recognise that the actions and the state are linked, I believe that the link exists in the state-action direction rather than the opposite way. The irony is that those that preach this message purport to be treating sin seriously but in fact are doing just the opposite. A doctor who only treated symptoms and never bothered with the root cause would be struck off before long.

2) Secondly and perhaps more importantly, I do not believe that the evangelical position deals with reality as people experience it. Does anyone ever really observe their sin being forever removed before God? No, of course not. What someone does experience at conversion is 'falling in love' with God and life and a corresponding knowing that life is good and that they are OK. This is my experience anyway.

3) Thirdly, the Kingdom approach is far easier to communicate to people who don't understand the outdated understanding of sin pedaled by the strict evangelicals. I think it makes more sense to this generation of people.

4) Fourthly, only the second approach is able to create a rich enough understanding of salvation. Salvation, as Dallas Willard says, 'is a life'. It's about the whole of our beings finding regeneration through meeting God in mind, body and spirit. It is not about some legal transaction in a far off and distant place, which we have no control over. Salvation is always something that is happening here and now or it is not happening at all.

Generally speaking, I think the gospel that Jesus preaches has more to say to the question 'who are we' than 'what are we doing'. Both matter, but he deals with the heart before the symptoms.

Do we still sin in the sense of committing sinful acts after we meet Jesus? Yes. But we recognise that as time passes we are being converted into the increasing likeness of God in Christ. In some ways this second approach is less neat and tidy but I reckon it fits the facts of experience far better. God is a lover before a lawyer.

Worry

The way to beat anxiety is to first detach and then attach. We need to learn to detach from the things we're holding too tightly to and instead attach to Jesus. This is something of what I think Jesus is getting at in the following;

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

The idea of a yoke is interesting as it implies that when we come to Jesus with our burdens he will place another different burden on us in its place. The difference is that his burden is light and we can carry it. A yoke also implies that Jesus will be directly guiding us along our way as we walk with him.

Love and Community

The goal of life is to have a real and authentic spiritual journey, to be transformed. In the New Testament the destination of this transformation is the person of Jesus.

Nakedness is the goal of the spiritual journey. What we see in the fall metaphor in Genesis is that our separation from God comes with a corresponding 'covering up'. This is regression. To progress towards God again we must be unclothed. We must remove all that has come in the way of our relationship with God, our pride and shame. God, for His part, promises to wear these clothes on our behalf, which is what happens on the cross. The God-Man, who we believe was perfectly united with God in all he did, wore the disgrace that we have become used to. He stepped into the breach in that event. He does that for each one of us again and again.

To experience this transfer we must join in with some form of community of like-minded people. This is otherwise known as a church. When we are loved in this context we come to understand what God's attitude towards us is and 'when we go to our brother and confess, we go to God' (Bonhoeffer - who else?). This has been my experience at a group I have belonged to for the last 9 months or so. We meet monthly and talk about who we are and what we're up to. We let each other in and in some small way we become naked with one another. That last sentence is in no way to be understood literally.

In doing this I have learned so much about God, my brothers and me. It has been a total privilege to have been trusted and divulged to and it has changed me in so many ways. It is for this reason that I highly recommend you do the same. Get together with some people you can be honest with and start doing just that, being honest before each other and God. It will change your life - I guarantee it.

Symptomatic vs. Systematic

To be a prophet is to look beyond the symptom and to see the failing of the system.

Some thoughts on power

I have noticed that we often ask God to fill us with his power when we pray but I have a growing suspicion that we might be asking for the wrong thing. I can't think of a single occasion where Jesus asked God to be filled with power, although I could be wrong. He certainly asked for courage to be obedient to his Father's will, but power? Maybe it is a semantic thing, but is this pursuit of power - even God's power - not open to abuse? The recent fall of those in charge of seemingly 'powerful' ministries would seem to suggest this is the case.

Perhaps we would be better to ask God to fil us with His powerlessness, as this is the form that his power so often takes. In Jesus' life we see that God chooses to reveal himself more often than not in powerlessness. If you don't agree take a look at the cross! Yes, there are great miracles and works of power but even they are often done in the secret place. Even the resurrection, the greatest single event of power in history, is done in secret and only after the humiliation of the cross.

When Jesus receives the Spirit of His Father during his baptism (Mark 1.9ff), he is sent into the desert place to work out what this event means. He is tempted by the devil (Matt 4) and in this temptation he is offered ultimate power over the world. Three times he chooses powerlessness over power. This surely is a foretaste of the ultimate choice of powerlessness which leads him to the cross three years later and is also the perfect contrast to Peter's threefold denial.

As a brief aside, I mentioned this to my dad who said that it was interesting that in the acts of the apostles the disciples never asked for power but instead for boldness. Why was this? Was it not that they already knew that they had received God's power so they didn't need more, just the boldness to lean back onto what they already had.

Finally, Paul surely sums it all up for us in 2 Corinthians 12.10;

"That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

Or to put that last line another way, "when I am weak, then I AM is strong."

Idolatry

All sin is the sin of idolatry.

Idolatry is when we let the means become the end.

There is only one proper end in all the universe; God alone.

The reason we have messed this world up so badly is that we have exchanged God for something less than God. We have fallen in love with the process and let go of the destination. This is as evident within the church as it is without, perhaps even moreso. We love all our shows and grand events. We love sunday church and massive healing spectacles but we need to ask ourselves whether we love these more than we love God. How much of this is just entertainment with a spiritual twist?

We simply must stop taking ourselves and our actions so seriously, particularly our religious ones. Only God is to be taken seriously. Paradoxically, when we do this will we really have the great joy in us that Jesus promises.

Paul puts it like this...'they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.' (Rom 1.25)

Richard Rohr says that we end up loving the container (style) more than the contents (substance - God). He is right isn't he? We need to be so careful that what we think we are doing for God doesn't really become about fulfilling our needs.

The Third Way

"The church ... cannot be content to play the part of a nurse looking after the casualties of the system. It must play an active part both in challenging the present unjust structures and in pioneering alternatives."

Donald Dorr - Catholic missionary priest

Information = rubbish

Information cannot make us better people. This truth came as a disappointment to me when I realised it very recently, as I have spent the great majority of my life so far (25 years and counting) ammassing more and more information; some of it useful, most of it banal and redundant. I even went to a University to learn about God. As if I could learn much about God through a degree!

Most of us have idealised the faculties of knowing. It makes us feel good when we know something as it gives us an immediate ego reward. Those of us of western extraction have placed the rational on a pedestal. We want to know where someone went to school before we trust them in any major office.

The same is true in the church. The protestant tradition has taken this to the extreme with a huge emphasis on preaching. Now I think preaching is a very good thing, but true preaching is not the mere discussion or transmission of ideas and ideals. True preaching and true faith is a life lived towards God with all of our being.

The New Testament shows us both the limited importance and the limitation of head-knowing. Jesus works as if his actions are as important as his words. In fact, his verbal preaching was often simply an explanation of what he was doing. Paul puts it more directly;

"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith." (Phil 3.7-9)

In comparison to 'knowing Christ Jesus' all things are to be considered rubbish. Whilst we should continue to seek to know about God it is far more important that we know God. This kind of faith requires all of our faculties to be presented to God as one.