Burned out religion...or Sabbath based work...?

"Repeat these basic essentials over and over to God's people. Warn them before God against pious nitpicking, which chips away at the faith. It just wears everyone out. Concentrate on doing your best for God, work you won't be ashamed of, laying out the truth plain and simple. Stay clear of pious talk that is only talk. Words are not mere words, you know. If they're not backed by a godly life, they accumulate as poison in the soul." -2 Timothy 2:14-17

Man-made religion burns out sincere workers, spoils the crops and drives people away from the way of Christ. It's rooted in the insecure, works based righteousness of broken, ego driven people. When performance based religion motivates our endeavors...people secretly compete, often complain, many times outright undermine or do so in a passive aggressive way with an insincere coyness. Like Christian masochists they internally seethe with insufferable persnicketiness and it can spread like battlefront gangrene. If you really love those who are called to work out the victory of Christ among the masses that the Lord loves; then Frontline surgery is often needed. That means in the fray of activity you have to chop the stumps off, hack away at the putrid rottenness, gouge out the disenfranchised disease. It's bloody, tiring work but its critical to maintain the life of your soldiers and sustain the advance of the unfolding of love.

"Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. "If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk..."If because of the sabbath, you turn your foot from doing your own pleasure on My holy day, and call the sabbath a delight, the holy day of the LORD honorable, and honor it, desisting from your own ways, from seeking your own pleasure and speaking your own word,
-Is 58:9,13

When wide, open-eyed, sweaty labor is motivating our works in order to earn acceptance; we end up spreading the natural divisiveness of fallen life. But when the blind works of grace are motivating the loving of our neighbors...a sweet fragrance of congeniality, silent humility and gentleness surrounds the movements of Christ. His mission is a yoke, but not one that chaffs raw or constantly divides or pits one ox against the other. Instead it leads in a non-driven way, not breathless but gracefully...it actually, meanders...purposefully.


“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.”-Matthew 11:28-30

His yoke is easy and its light. His work will make you tired but it wont make you weary in the bones...religion does that. It's light but not because it's without weight, it needs strength to carry...but He provides the power by His Spirit. It's a load but not the kind that buries the soul...it burdens but in a Christ illuminating way..we share in His sufferings, and there's a sweetness in that gift. It's a work of mission but not the heavenly draft...its not forced labor or demanded service but entered into freely. This freedom is the joy producing characteristic that should permeate the attitude of Christ followers. This path ensures that they lose the ability to point the finger or guilt others into the work.

This is the Sabbath sustained rhythm, of grace empowered mission....anything else, is like doing a full days work while being nauseous; it may pay the bills, but its sickening drudgery.

Holding hands....

You were pretty as a picture
It was all there to see
Then your face caught up with your psychology
With a mouth full of teeth
You ate all your friends
And you broke every heart thinking every heart mends

You speak of signs and wonders
But I need something other
I would believe if I was able
But I'm waiting on the crumbs from your table
-U2, lyrics from the song: Crumbs from your Table

I've been thinking about a simple gesture that is often absent in the rhythms of our church life...It's the act of holding the hand of someone next to you...whether it be in corporate prayer, or in a unifying act of presence.

Oh, I know theres hand shaking, it's done in greeting...or as a proper hello among semi-acquainted people...but that often seems so cold and impersonal in most instances. It just doesn't seem to embody the true feeling or expression I feel.

Then there's hugs, but they also get redundant, meaningless or become some kind of awkward anti-sexual endeavor: the pat on the back, the side hug, or the equally odd lean forward, butt out, absolutely no boobie touch thing. It's comical to watch and looks dumb...but I know it's a creation of fundamentalist fear of igniting sexual experience within the holy place. So we play out these mannequin like gestures of supposed intimacy or implied affection...in the end, we miss it more than express it.

I find myself aware of the isolation that is present in the crowds of worshippers. People have internalized the "Jesus & me" religion and now journey alone in churches. Sure we gather but it's more often the back of someone's head not their eyes that we are getting to know.

The act of reaching out and holding your neighbor's hand is a act of community. It's an expression of the fact that we are in this together. The road ahead is one that we will face as a family. It's sacramental in the sense that I connect with Jesus in you and you with Jesus in me. It's a reflection of identifying His Presence among us.

It's a humble confession of need. I need the person next to me...not just the songs and words being offered from the front.

I plan on finding ways to enculture these values more and more in my own life and the life of our community. It's a step...a far cry from the call of scripture which tells the church to exhibit a greater visibility of love when it encourages us to:

Greet one another with a holy kiss.- 2 Corinthians 13:12

But we got to start somewhere...

Net Ninjas, webcasting witchcraft, spiritual porn and community...

A Dialogue is different than a monologue and one has to determine as a commentator on a blog, if you are seriously interested in conversation or would rather engage in proclamation. They really are different beasts, both are valuable and have their place..the trick is realizing when one is working against the flow of the purposed endeavor.

Some blogs or blog posts are meant to become anvils that will draw the blows of hammers. But not just for hammering sake...hopefully some item of thought, some value, doctrine or issue is drawing those blows to refine, sharpen, blunt or thin the chunky unformed idea or belief. The work of the strong forceful thundering makes something in the foundry of bloggerville.

But other blogs or posts are meant to facilitate something more than just the forming, reforming or refining of things. These blogs become a further conversation rooted to real people. They are extensions to having face to face relationships furthered not intended to be replaced by the blog. These are conversations that are meant to build up the body local. Places where a group of people are enfleshing the ideas, putting skin on them...not just trumpeting phrases, quotes and ideas out into the net air. These places become "open-sourced" endeavors that combine the wisdom of the many into the life of a community wrestling with truth and life. They are ingredients in the ongoing fermentation of communal life that needs all kinds of catalysts to become what God intends us to be. The blog serves "us"...

Its the balance of not allowing technology to rule us and not becoming servants of the technology.

Visible church, day to day community becomes a safeguard against the temptations associated with internet anonymity. Too many people hide in the internet, they become "net ninjas" who only come out of the shadows to strike, slash, burn and stab. They lurk behind the conversations and posts. Stealth, secrecy and obscurity are their cloak. Their comments come like arrows shot from some dark corner of the roof from which they have perched themselves to look down on the ignorant masses...or victims to be.

Their comments are not rooted in the work of localized, community building; which has the boundaries of accountability, place, context and continuity...we see each other this week. These safeguards, become the sides of the riverbank, they hold the flow of conversational water....and the river has less chance of becoming a death dealing flood, instead of a life giving source.

Some of my blogs are meant to be a "free for all" type of experience...others, like the Christ & Culture" blog are for in-house church relationships that have the disciplines in place mentioned above.

The beauty and tragic thing about blogs is that they often represent both the abundance that is present in ones private or community life...or they represent the poverty. In some places, especially churches, there is hardly many people willing to engage issues, ideas, movements, films, books, music or sadly, even God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit and scriptures. Blogs can become unhealthy substitutes, alternatives, overdosed-supplements or even for some their daily bread.

Blogs can end up being pumped breast milk from surrogate mommies in the faith. There is a absence of touch, breath, warmth, voice, eyes looking at you, hands and arms coddling you. Blogs or video venues, tv and webcasts become our modern form of incantations...we bring up the dead, or we commune with people in modern forms of astra projection...going places, transporting into one another's presence...but its almost dangers on an unholy lack of boundary. We have to be careful that we are not practicing an advanced form of technological witchcraft or high tech necromancy.

Some times death is God's way of putting an end to conversations that shouldnt continue beyond their context of time.

Now obviously all of this thought should be tempered with the realties of some peoples lives. Shut in, people living in spiritual deserts, missionaries, or physically challenged, handicapped or people dealing with health issues are all able to derive life sustaining help from these forms of technology. But other people can cheat on one another with this cheap, easy, always waiting, stimulating mental and spiritual pornography...all pleasure...no commitments or faithfulness required.

Place, time, life, faces and relationships...help ground us in the ancient practice of localized community.

New Rhythms of Living

“And all those who had believed were together, and had all things in common; and they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all, as anyone might have need. And day by day continuing with one mind in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.” -Acts 2:44-47

One of realistic challenges of commuter churching in this culture; is the lack of proximity to one another. Unfortunately in this day, its harder and harder to find the time to be in each others lives. Our crammed schedules wrestle for the precious little free time we all have and leave us scrambling to fit people, events and serving into an already overloaded day planner. Our prosperous economic lives enabled us to live and drive great distances that didn't used to be the norm. People lived, ate, worked, got educated and worshipped within a very short distance of the very people called neighbors...that is often not the case today.

Building community wasn't a programmed idea...it happened as a by product of life. But today our rhythms of life almost fight against us...simply due to the issue of proximity. We live in diverse places, we work different jobs, our kids go to different schools and have different friends, we shop at different stores and our leisure time is often in different places of the city.

This presents a significant challenge to nurturing body life, community care and serving; when most of our core relationships with believers or unbelievers are spread out over miles of distance. The practicalities of living a more integrated, whole, rhythmic life...together, is a difficult endeavor. As economic challenges put pressure on people and their pocket books and extra money is eaten up...the freedoms of waste, will diminish and that will force people to redesign their relational, religious and even work lives.

I think there is going to have to come a radical realignment with Kingdom values in order to see true Kingdom life and impact emerge in a viable, New Testament way, in the days ahead. The above scripture has to be a divine center that we aim at in order to foster and cultivate the relational and practical proximities to build true biblical community and centers of service. Being close doesn't guarantee these things will automatically happen, it has to be conscious choice and action...but the ease of it would be greater.

Economic need, might realistically force this kind of downsizing, realignment and restructuring of our personal lives. People will need each other more than ever before and find that being close to those you call brothers and sisters...means you are closer to the support, opportunity and resources you or your family need. Choices that we once had to move down, will be eaten up as people scamble to find housing, work and worship within their means.

In my opinion the challenges facing the nation are prime opportunities to ignite fresh new ways of living together, caring for one another and growing the true, present, accessible and next door neighbor body of Jesus. Soon the way of Jesus and kingdom living will appeal to people in greater and greater ways, simply through the common sense of it all. Sharing gardens, pooling money, eating meals together, car pooling, sharing goods and services, maximizing space and alternative housing ideas, community, communal or shared housing, creative alternative homeschooling, co-work endeavors, etc...

So maybe the times are setting us up for fertile ministry and relational life together if we dare to embrace the wind of change and adjust the sails of our living and capture the momentum for the kingdom. For some this will be minor adjustments, for others more radical. But if we all think and live creatively in the days ahead...we can see more and more people added to the church...daily.

Tuesday Night Community Dinners:
You are invited to our weekly Tuesday night community dinner hosted at our Community Resource Center, from 5-7PM. Come out and eat, build relationships, serve and help each other save money by eating together. A practical way to adjust to the economic changes in our lives and neighborhood.