a church for the world

Eagles for the Win

HEAVEN – And we thought that hamburger was big.

Pain: We Missed the Point

After our talk today with the missionaries of Spokane (from Cup of Cool Water, Christ Kitchen, Youth for Christ, and more), I think I begin to see that which I have tried to ignore all along:

Pain IS the point. read more

When I picture the job of traditional pastors, they seem so busy with meetings, management and prepping for sermons that they end up with relatively no time left for day to day ministry to their own congregation. With this in mind, if pastors don’t even have time to spend time with their own members, how will they have time to be sent as well?

As a pastor how do you encompass the calling of mission for yourself? The traditional definition of a pastor is one who shepherds his church. But how do you fulfill that whole definition of pastor as well as being sent into the world of people who do not know Christ? So many pastors don’t even know non-Christians. They are so immersed in the work inside their church that they never step outside of it. With all the responsibilities that are put on pastors it’s hard for me to picture a pastor who fully pastors the already Christians within his church to maturity, as well as investing in the community around his church. read more

The Interplay of Church or State.

If this article makes ya wanna spew…

The politicization of the church is, in my opinion, the single greatest mistake in all of church history. States abuse their power, and if you have politicians claiming, “This is GAWD’s Nation!” while doing it, or worse, committing atrocities in the name of God, what message does that send about God? Most politicians are politically motivated. Take Constantine, he used Christ as a driving force for his military campaigns. Everyone on his opponent’s side who survived the battle therefore would be opposed to the God who conquered them. Or take the United States in the 1800s, when it slaughtered and displaced thousands of native inhabitants across a large portion of the North American continent in the name of “Manifest Destiny.” What does that say to the native people of North America? God’s hand is against you and upholding your white conquerors and oppressors. Sucks for you. We say “God bless America!” and claim this to be a Christian nation even when we torture prisoners and politically condone any sort of immoral lifestyle from divorce to sexual promiscuity to greed and self-centeredness. read more

But What About the Wealthy?

I have just been reading Rene Padilla’ New Testament Perspectives on Simple Lifestyle in his book “Mission Between the Times” and I have a hard time with the idea that God has a “special preference” for the poor. I do think that there is something about the position of poverty that can make it so that a person in poverty reaches out to God for help (as people often reach out to God when they feel at the end of their rope, and poverty makes people get to the end of their rope quickly), but I think that it would be a mistake to view this is special preference. The idea of special preference is that God plays favorites. I do not see evidence of favoritism in the Gospel. In fact, I see the opposite, as Jesus lavished his love and grace on rich and poor alike. The gospels show Jesus spending time among both the poor and the wealthy, and give account of many positive interactions that Jesus had with wealthy people. Jesus called tax collectors to be his disciples as well as poor fishermen (Matthew, Zachious). Wealthy men from the East brought Jesus expensive gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The wealthy Joseph of Aramathea was given special recognition in Mark’s gospel for courageously going to Pilot to retrieve Jesus’ body after the crucifixion. Women of means traveled with Jesus and helped cover his needs during his ministry. And Jesus even affirmed a woman who poured a costly perfume on Jesus’ feet, even when his disciples harangued her for the “wastefulness” of the gift. I am not saying all of this because I favor the case of the rich over the poor, I just believe that sometimes in the idea of “God’s special preference for the poor,” people forget that Jesus reached out to and interacted with rich people, too. It is easy to demonize wealth. But money is an inherently moral-neutral object (it is not inherently good or bad). And the truth is, God has given some people material wealth. The deciding question, then, that determines if the wealth is good or bad, is what the person does with it, if they will surrender it to Jesus or not. In the gospel, the rich people that Jesus spent time with laid their whole selves (including their wealth) at Jesus’ feet in offering to him (unlike the rich young ruler). This is the issue that is placed before every person, both rich and poor, upon which entrance into God’s kingdom is based: will you, or will you not, surrender everything to Jesus. BL

We Don’t Need God Anymore

I know it sounds drastic, but we really don’t have any need for Him. Or at least, we are not living like we need Him. Millions of people go about their lives without knowing God, and they are just fine. They have lots of food to eat. They drive shiny cars. They wear designer clothes. They have lots of friends, and they always seem to be doing such fun things with those friends. They raise their kids to live good, moral lives. Sometimes, they might even give back to their community by donating to charity or volunteering at the local soup kitchen. And to top it off, most of their Christian friends live similar lives, except the Christians go to church on Sunday and pray before eating meals. This is what we are up against. God is making little to no difference in many people’s lives, even people who think they are following Him. We focus too much on “saving” people, and not enough on what people should do once they are saved, so their lives stay pretty much the same because they don’t realize the magnitude of the power Christ can wield in their lives. In class today, the term counter-cultural was mentioned. That is our calling. Christians are not meant to be contented, average members of society. I don’t think God wants us to live lives of misery, but I’m not at all convinced that he wants us to be comfortable. In order for us to make a difference in the world, we must be different from the world. The worldly things that matter to others should be meaningless to us, because we have something so much better. I believe that would be much more meaningful for non-believers — to see a community that so believes in their God that they are willing to deny themselves the joys of this world (those things non-believers find most important, like material possessions and successful lives). By throwing off the things of the world, we are showing that something far more important exists. I truly believe people will be attracted to that, and will want to embrace the difficulty and hardships of a life with true meaning. – Diana C.

The Church as a Consumer

In class we began to talk about how much of the church’s time, energy, and money goes into catering to its own members. The general consensus in the class was that the church would be much better off allocating these resources in different areas outside of the church itself. As the church is a missional entity, I have no doubt that the class came to the right conclusion. Therefore I left class with very little troubling me about this discussion.

Coming home tonight though, something started to burn in my heart about this discussion we had. I looked at the many different items strewn throughout my room and thought about all the resources that these items have consumed in my own life. I will give just a small example. I really like to longboard. I currently have two of my own and have previously given one away. In total then, I could fairly accurately say that there have been over $700 worth of longboard gear in my hands at some point and time. Now I think that having hobbies is good and very beneficial, but I want to think about what else this money could have gone towards. For many organizations, $700 could support a child for 2 years. Or even locally, this could provide many meals for the homeless that I see almost daily. There are many other ways that I could have used this money to sow into the Kingdom, yet I decided to spend it on myself. Much like the churches we talked about, I am much more eager to provide for myself than to give money for Kingdom work. read more

“Teach Me Your Secular Ways”

Arrested Development is a wonderful show that was unfortunately cancelled after 3 seasons. If you haven’t watched it then Netflix it pronto, because it is incredibly witty. I just watched an episode where Michael Bluth finally meets his son’s girlfriend’s parents. Though knowing the girl’s family is a conservatively Christian, he learns that her father is a pastor, which changes the way that Michael speaks and acts around the family. Later on in the episode, Michael is explaining something to the pastor’s wife about “in the secular world…” and “we in the secular world…” and so on. And to thicken the plot, the Christians are shown to have temptations that they then act on: the wife kisses Michael, begging him to show her “his secular way,” the husband beats up Michael and the daughter decides that she wants to “go all the way” with Michael’s son.

I think it’s hysterical. I just have to laugh at the situation, because I find truth in these stereotypes. Yeah, Christians are screw-ups. Who isn’t? The beauty is, it is things like this in our pop culture that will hopefully teach people that Christians are no better at life than anyone else. Whoever started the rumor that Christians were better than everyone in the secular world needs to be punched in the face. Ok, that may be pushing it, so how about they need to be punched in the face with love? read more

Iron Sharpens Iron

“Church” as we know it in the West (a building with pastors and a sermon, etc.) is not the best missional tool.

For some reason, we keep coming back to the conclusion that many people like Jesus, but not the church. The “church” to people on the outside is political, hypocritical and full of hate. And I completely agree with them. I do not hate the church, but I really dislike it. If this is how Christians are portrayed in the world then missions will be met with hard hearts. read more

Patience

For me one of the most difficult things in the world is being patient. Due to the fact that I have grown up in consumer based culture, patience is not my best virtue. I find myself many times wanting something as quick as I can get. I believe this type of attitude transfers over to some of the attitudes in our churches. I can only speak from my own personal background and feelings toward this subject. It seems to me that some churches do take a more consumerist approach to cater to the needs of a certain group. The church has become commercialized. I see the church emphasizing programs that stress numbers. The numbers of Christians and converts become more important than actually developing people into Christ followers. The attentions of most modern day churches here in America have taken a corporate approach to the Gospel. This compromises of the Gospel highlights the positive attributes of Christianity and disregards the intense struggle Christianity can be. I believe that Jesus personified the Gospel through his relationships. This gets me to my point. I believe that many churches have concentrated on sheer numbers and not enough on actual discipleship. What is the point of numbers? Do numbers help us here or in heaven? This is one area of the church where I believe we have missed the point. Many new converts end up leaving the faith because the Gospel was not fully expressed to them. In other words they find the faith to be fraudulent and more difficult than expected. People new to the faith who undergo discipleship programs at least learn what Christianity is. I believe that churches need to be patient when they construct new programs and sermons. Understand that this is about God’s kingdom and his will. It’s not about having meaningless social status or having Christianity become the biggest religion based on numbers, but not actually practiced. Christianity is centered on God and should be taught accordingly. I’m not suggesting that this will fix the churches problem or create Christendom, but I’m suggesting that this will create people who are serious about their faith. Relationships take time and patience. Jesus took the time to express the Gospel to his disciples so that they could carry it out to all nations, and we are called to do the same.

-Cory

imagining how the church can reorient around mission