September 30, 2008

We're Going to Catalyst

Next week I'm sending two Urthlings, Marshall Shelley and Skye Jethani, to the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta. They'll be blogging live from the event October 8 - 10, and mixing it up with 15,000 other church leaders. Whether you’re at the conference or not, be sure to check Out of Ur and add your comments about the speakers, workshops, and frivolity.

Catalyst speakers this year include: Joel Hunter, Mark Batterson, John Burke, Scot McKnight, Matt Chandler, Andy Crouch, Reggie McNeal, Cathleen Falsani, Dave Ferguson, Efram Smith, Seth Godin, Andy Stanley, Ed Stetzer, Craig Groeschel, and others.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at September 30, 2008 | Comments (3) | TrackBack

September 29, 2008

Pastors Defy the IRS

This election season, a group of about 30 pastors plans to challenge the IRS law that prohibits churches from endorsing a political candidate from the pulpit. As part of the "Pulpit Initiative," organized by the Alliance Defense Fund, many of these pastors chose to explicitly endorse one of the presidential candidates as part of his Sunday sermon yesterday.

The pastors say that the IRS regulation violates their First Amendment rights by permitting the government to restrict the free expression of religion. The government should have no authority to restrict what a pastor says from the pulpit to his or her congregation, they argue.

Minnesota pastor Gus Booth, who encouraged his congregation to vote for John McCain yesterday, says, "If we [pastors] can tell you what to do in the bedroom, we can certainly tell you what to do in the voting booth."

On the other side, supporters of the IRS code also appeal to the First Amendment saying the church should stay out of political affairs, and those that choose not to should lose their tax-exempt status.

Here's more from CNN.com:

Read more on this story at Christianity Today Online or at the National Public Radio website.

Do you agree with these pastors? Is such civil disobedience warranted?

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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at September 29, 2008 | Comments (31) | TrackBack

September 26, 2008

Scot McKnight: The Eschatology of Politics

by Scot McKnight

Somewhere between 6pm and 8pm, Central Time, on November 4th, 2008, the eschatology of American evangelicals will become clear. If John McCain wins and the evangelical becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that evangelical has an eschatology of politics. Or, alternatively, if Barack Obama wins and the evangelical becomes delirious or confident that the Golden Days are about to arrive, that evangelical too has an eschatology of politics. Or, we could turn each around, if a more Democrat oriented evangelical becomes depressed and hopeless because McCain wins, or if a Republican oriented evangelical becomes depressed or hopeless because Obama wins, those evangelicals are caught in an empire-shaped eschatology of politics.

Where is our hope? To be sure, I hope our country solves its international conflicts and I hope we resolve poverty and dissolve our educational problems and racism. But where does my hope turn when I think of war or poverty or education or racism? Does it focus on November 4? Does it gain its energy from thinking that if we get the right candidate elected our problems will be dissolved? If so, I submit that our eschatology has become empire-shaped, Constantinian, and political. And it doesn't matter to me if it is a right-wing evangelical wringing her fingers in hope that a Republican wins, or a left-wing evangelical wringing her fingers in hope that a Democrat wins. Each has a misguided eschatology.

Now before I take another step, it must be emphasized that I participate in the election; and I think it makes a difference which candidate wins; and I think from my own limited perspective one candidate is better than the other.

But, participation in the federal election dare not be seen as the lever that turns the eschatological designs God has for this world. Where is our hope? November 4 may tell us. What I hope it reveals is that:

Our hope is in God. The great South African missiologist, David Bosch, in his book Transforming Mission impressed upon many of us that the church's mission is not in fact the "church's" mission but God's mission. Our calling is to participate in the missio Dei, the mission of God in this world. So, at election time we can use the season to re-align our mission with the mission of God. Therein lies our hope.

Our hope is in the gospel of God. God's mission is gospel-shaped. Some today want to reduce gospel to what we find in 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, while others want to expand it to bigger proportions (and I'm one of the latter), we would do well at election time to re-align ourselves once again with the gospel as God's good news for our world. Therein lies our hope.

Our hope is in the gospel of God that creates God's people. God's gospel-shaped mission creates a new people of God. In fact, the temptation of good Protestants to skip from Genesis 3 (the Fall) to Romans 3 (salvation) must be resisted consciously. We need to soak up how God's gospel-shaped work always and forever creates a gospel people. The first thing God does with Abraham is to form a covenant people, Israel, and Jesus' favorite word was "kingdom," and Paul was a church-obsessed theologian-missionary. Herein lies the challenge at election time. We are tempted to divide the USA into the good and the bad and to forget that the gospel has folks on both sides of political lines. Even more: we are tempted to think that the winners of the election are those who are blessed by God when the blessing of God is on God's people. God's gospel-powered mission creates a new people, the church, where we are to see God's mission at work. Therein lies our hope.

Our hope is in the gospel of God that creates a kind of people that extends God's gospel to the world. Chris Wright's big book, The Mission of God, reminds us that election is missional: God creates the people of God not so the people of God can compare themselves to those who are not God's people, but so that God's people will become a priesthood in this world to mediate the mission of God, so that all hear the good news that God's grace is the way forward.

Our hope is in God's mission in this world, and that mission transcends what happens November 4th.

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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at September 26, 2008 | Comments (23) | TrackBack

September 24, 2008

The Green-Letter Bible

by Brandon O'Brien

Late yesterday afternoon, I received a copy of The Green Bible (HarperOne), and I'm not sure what to make of it.

The Bible is "green" in composition, which I appreciate. Its pages are made of 10 percent post-consumer recycled paper, the words are printed with soy-based ink, and the binding is 100 percent cotton/linen. It is certainly a good-looking book (that marketing sleeve comes off). And it smells nice. I wouldn't mind if my bookshelves were lined with cotton covers.

But to put things in perspective, Thomas Nelson released a "green" Bible printed on recycled paper - the first of its kind - almost a year ago. So it's not the composition but the content of HarperOne's ecologically friendly canon that makes it unique.

Before they make it to Genesis, Green Bible readers encounter an impressive roll of contributors, each offering a sermon or article on some aspect of creation care: "Reading the Bible through a Green Lens" and "Knowing Our Place on Earth: Learning Environmental Responsibility from the Old Testament" for example. There's a foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an introduction by Matthew Sleeth, poems by Francis of Assisi and Wendell Berry, and articles (mostly reprinted) by Brian McLaren, Barbara Brown Taylor, N. T. Wright, and the late Pope John Paul II, among others.

But what truly sets The Green Bible apart is that it's a "green-letter edition." It's akin to the New Testaments in which the words of Jesus are printed in red. Except in this case, "over a thousand references to the earth and caring for creation" appear in green ink. While there are certainly more instances besides the highlighted ones that would have applied, the editors tell us in the prefatory material, they have chosen only those "speaking directly to the project's core mission."

To meet their criteria for what makes it in green, a given biblical text must address:

? how God and Jesus interact with, care for, and are intimately involved with all of creation.
? how all the elements of creation - land, water, air, plants, animals, humans - are interdependent.
? how nature responds to God.
? how we are called to care for creation.

These criteria yield some obvious results. All of Genesis 1 and most of Genesis 2 is green-lettered, as is Romans 8:22: "We know that the whole of creation has been groaning in labor pains until now?" But there are some puzzling passages that make the cut. There's the final sentence of Revelation 19:20, for example: "These two [beasts] were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur." And Jesus' cursing of the fig tree is not green, even though it seems to describe "how God and Jesus interact with?all of creation."

The selection of passages aside, I have two concerns with this method of highlighting biblical text. The first is this: the implicit argument in the green lettering is that by sheer bulk of words in green print, the editors prove that creation care is a central concern of the Bible. But what if we tried a different subject - say, violence. A faculty of editors color-codes a Bible so that every passage that references an act of violence is printed in purple ink. Would that, by sheer bulk, prove conclusively that violence is at the center of God's plan of redemption? Or what about gold-lettering all the instances of sexual perversion? What I mean is this: frequency is not a compelling argument without context.

Speaking of context, I'm afraid the letter coloring will distract, in many places, from the actual theological significance of a passage. Take Genesis 2, for example. The majority of the chapter appears in green, except - oddly - a brief reference to the second river in Eden, Gihon (but the bit about Pishon is in green). The Lord's proclamation that it is not good for the man to be alone is in black, as is the great crescendo of the chapter: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh?" I can understand why the institution of marriage is not "green." But the predominance of green ink in that chapter diverts attention from the real significance of the passage - the completion of the creation of humankind.

I respect what the editors are trying to do here. We frequently need to be reminded that the Bible speaks to issues that we completely overlook for one reason or another. And I believe the Bible does challenge us to be better stewards of the planet. But I wonder if color-coding certain biblical themes disintegrates - rather than integrates - the unity of the gospel message by dividing the text into specialized issues. Does it help me understand the Bible to think of a passage about judging my neighbor as a "green" concern (Matthew 7:1-2 is green-lettered)? Or does it simply confuse matters? Does this advance the cause, or set it back a step?

Well, I guess I do know how I feel about it. For now, The Green Bible will have a place of honor beside my "Itty Bitty Bible" (the entire Scripture reduced to microscopic proportions so it fits on a single slide) and my talking Jesus action figure on the shelf of things I'm glad to have but don't have much use for.

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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at September 24, 2008 | Comments (27) | TrackBack

September 22, 2008

Pagitt on Emergence, Emergent, & Emerging...Huh?

In this video, Doug Pagitt explains the relationships between the terms emerging, Emergent, and "emergence." It strikes me as trying to decide which layer of the Incredible Gobstopper is the actual Gobstopper. But you should decide for yourself.

--Url

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at September 22, 2008 | Comments (29) | TrackBack

Cartoon: Out of His Depth

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September 19, 2008

R.I.P. Emerging Church

by Url Scaramanga

"The emerging church will disappear." That is what my informant told me as we shared drinks at our clandestine watering hole. I felt like Luca Brasi being handed a dead fish wrapped in newspaper. The hit had been ordered?the emerging church's fate had been sealed. In my informant's mind, the death of the emerging church was a settled matter. I double-checked my surroundings for listening ears before whispering, "How can you be so sure?" The informant (who worked for a publisher) leaned forward and said their marketing plans included dropping the "Emerging Church" brand within two years.

That was two years ago.

Now comes word from recognized leaders and voices within the emerging church movement that the term has become so polluted that it is being dropped. Consider Dan Kimball. He wrote the book on the emerging church - literally. His 2003 book, The Emerging Church, reintroduced the term into the evangelical lexicon. In Kimball's blog post from last week he writes:

Although I am finding that the term [emerging church] has become so broad now and so confusing, it is very important to know that I am not by any means stopping being involved and pursuing the heart and mission of what the term "emerging church" originally meant. At least in how I was personally using it when I wrote the book 6 years ago.

What did the term mean 6 years ago? Kimball defined it this way: "If you were to have asked me what the core of the emerging church is, I would have responded with ?evangelism and mission in our emerging culture to emerging generations.'" But, according to Kimball, few people associate emerging with evangelism anymore. (He finds himself using the term missional instead.) Today, Kimball says:

I can't defend or even explain theologically what is now known broadly as "the emerging church" anymore, because it has developed into so many significantly different theological strands. Some I strongly would disagree with.

The other recent voice in favor of dumping the term emerging church, is Andrew Jones (a.k.a. Tall Skinny Kiwi). Like Kimball, Jones has been an advocate for emerging ideas. (He even co-signed Emergent's "Answers to Critics" declaration.) Jones conducted a poll on his blog asking whether or not to dump the emerging church term. The results were 60/40 in favor of killing the expression.

Jones travels internationally, and he's recognized that in many places (particularly parts of Europe) the term emerging church is still a popular, defined, and generally positive idea. But he concludes:

There are some countries and circles where I am no longer using the word. The word no longer communicates what I want it to so, even though I will still be in support of Emerging Church ventures like this excellent one from the Church of Scotland, I will no longer be using the word for myself and the ministries that we support.

Words change. We give meaning to words and we take it away. The word is problematic for many American institutions and often insulting to European ministries that preceded their American counterparts.

So . . . most of you said to dump it and I will. But I am still staying connected to many ministries around the world that are using it.

It seems my informant's prophetic word has come to pass. The emerging church is dead - at least in nomenclature, if not in spirit. Both Jones and Kimball are dropping the term while trying to remain faithful to the original intention of the movement. And they represent many other church leaders and bloggers who are moving toward a post-emerging church reality.

As the emerging church rides off into the sunset, where does that leave things? Well, news has been leaking about a new network being formed by Dan Kimball, Erwin McManus, and Scot McKnight among others. I understand further meetings will be happening this week to help solidify the group. The still unnamed network has agreed to start with the inclusive but orthodox theological foundation of the Lausanne Covenant, and they intend to emphasize mission and evangelism. They appear to have learned from the emerging church's mistake - define purpose and doctrine early so your identity doesn't get hijacked. If they do their work carefully, perhaps the new network can avoid getting "wacked" in every sense of the word.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at September 19, 2008 | Comments (47) | TrackBack

September 18, 2008

What the Unchurched See in a Building

On the heels of David Gibbons' interesting thoughts on the way many churches squander their resources on underutilized buildings, Matt Branaugh has this piece over at LeadershipJournal.net. Apparently, if you're going to throw your church's money into a building, make it a sacred one. -Url

Does "sacred" space appeal to or repel the unchurched? A recent survey probed 1,700 unchurched American adults, putting photos of four different church exteriors in front of them. Respondents indicated their preferences by allocating 100 points across the four images, based on the appeal of the appearance.

The Gothic look averaged 48 points, more than double the next-highest finisher, a white-steeple-and-pillar exterior that averaged about 19 points. The other two churches, with more contemporary looks, averaged 18 points and 16 points, according to the study, commissioned by Cornerstone Knowledge Network and conducted by LifeWay Research.

So should churches opt for the cathedral look as a way to attract the unchurched?

Not necessarily, says Jim Couchenour, director of marketing and ministry services at Cogun Inc., a church building design firm that co-founded Cornerstone with Aspen Group. Aesthetics are an important element to weigh, Couchenour says, but the building must reflect the values and integrity of the congregation in order to work.

"Buildings without relationships have no meaning," he says. "The vast majority of people will go to church based on an invitation from a friend or family member. A small minority of people will make a decision based on the way the building looks. If it were aesthetics alone, we'd have a lot of beautiful buildings in inner cities that are full. That's just not the case."

And one style that works for one church doesn't necessarily work for the next. Younger respondents in the study, for instance, rated exterior design as a higher priority, while older participants tended to prize a building's usefulness.

"The style is not as important as the integrity of the design," Couchenour says. Integrity starts with the church realizing what God has called it to be, what ministry needs it can meet, and how a building can help meet those needs. "People - churched or unchurched - can tell if it has integrity, if it feels right."

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at September 18, 2008 | Comments (9) | TrackBack

September 16, 2008

Joining the Green Revolution

by Dave Gibbons

We are witnessing what some are calling the greatest transfer of wealth in human history. The McKinsey Global Institute has shown how assets are moving primarily from Europe and America to the oil countries of the Middle East and the manufacturing giants of Asia.

At the end of 2007, these oil producing countries owned about 4.6 trillion dollars of assets. That's about 1.6 times the whole economy of the UK. The six Arab countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council are receiving 1.5 billion dollars a day. Those are pretty staggering numbers.

Our "dangerous dependence on foreign oil" and the transfer of wealth it is producing, is moving both political parties to emphasize a new green agenda. This includes new technologies, further exploration into alternative energy, clean energy, drilling off-shore, and conservation.

As we consider conserving energy resources for environmental and economic reasons, maybe we should reconsider how we steward our resources in the church.

Around the country, there is growing concern with diminishing giving because of the state of our economy. People are giving less because they are earning less, and because they're having to pay more for things like gas. But this trend may prove to be good in the long run, especially if it teaches us to better manage church resources.

The largest expenses for most churches are facilities and staff. First, let's consider the stewardship of our space. Is it really the best to buy as much land as possible and erect large buildings, when the same dollars could be better deployed in other initiatives that prove more impactful? How much of our space is actually utilized during a given week? In expensive urban centers, every square foot comes at a very high purchase price, and we can't forget about the cost of furnishing and maintaining the space.

I'm not saying buildings are bad, but are we being good stewards? I asked our director of operations who helped build three of the largest church facilities in America, to assess our space usage. I discovered that we use our facilities about 30 percent of the month - mostly on weekends. So how much were we spending for facility space that we didn't use? Around $60,000 a month; $720,000 a year! In ten years that's over $10 million dollars!

How about staffing? As culture moves from a hierarchical model to a more flat, open, or wiki model, how should we staff? When I looked more closely at our budget, I realized that over 55% of our budget was staff related. While our staff is amazing, it had unintentionally created a bottleneck in our mission - it impeded the development of our people because we were "staff-driven."

Our first instinct to address needs in the church tends to be hiring professionals. The economy is going to force us to re-examine that practice. Look at a church website. How many of the leaders listed there are lay people? How many unpaid people function as pastors/leaders in the congregation? Am I saying we should do away with pastors? Of course not. But we must see the congregation as the leading edge of the church and redefine our pastoral role to support and resource them. The movers and shakers should be in the congregation, not the professional staff. We serve, support, and at times lead - but we lead in the way Paul defined it?equipping our people to do the work of the ministry.

Can you imagine what would happen if the bulk of our resources focused on the development of our people rather than on staff and facilities? Can you imagine the impact that would have on our mission? It might just result in the greatest transfer of wealth in church history.

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Posted by UrL Scaramanga at September 16, 2008 | Comments (13) | TrackBack

September 15, 2008

Cartoon: An Unusual Spiritual Gift

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September 12, 2008

Stiff Necks and Bruised Reeds

Sometime last year, a short passage of Scripture lodged in my brain. It's been rubbing and needling there ever since and challenging the way I think about ministry.

The passage is from Isaiah 42. Describing Jesus, the Suffering Servant, the prophet says: "A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out." These beautiful snapshots of compassion and tenderness bring to mind the ministry Henri Nouwen describes in The Wounded Healer (Image, 1979). They present a vision of Christian service that suits my personality. That's why I find it so troubling how discordant this sentiment is with the following words of Jesus: "You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?"

To put the matter bluntly, this offends my understanding of authenticity. When I think of someone being "real," I usually have in mind that said person behaves the same way around everyone. He's confident "being himself." That's what makes the TV doctor House so endearing. He's a jerk, sure; but he's a jerk everywhere and always. He's so authentic. And, because authenticity is such a central cultural value for people my age, it's easy for me to adopt the mantra, Be yourself. If you're nothing else, be real. But Jesus - he interacted with some people in one way and others in another. That's the textbook (if junior-high) definition of "inauthentic."

I take issue with Jesus' apparent schizophrenia for another reason. I'm a writer and a (some-time) minister trying to make a name for myself in a marketplace - even if it's a Christian marketplace - that rewards people who have a distinct voice, angle, or shtick. It's important for me - and for you, if you want to succeed publicly - to solidify that voice, angle, or shtick and reinforce it consistently so that everyone recognizes my "brand." For some, the shtick is being deeply convicted, confrontational, and brash. For others, it's being open minded, relevant, and chill. Whole product lines and cottage industries are built on these brands, so that the personalities behind them dare not change.

As important as these values - authenticity and consistent branding - are to us, they did not concern Jesus all that much. He did not conduct his ministry according what suited his tastes or personality. He wasn't worried about being "himself." Instead, he did whatever the Father expected him to do (John 6:38). And he didn't present a consistent brand. For the stiff-necked and self-righteous, he narrowed the requirements for participation in the kingdom. For the bruised reed, he opened them. Such inconsistency hurt his fan base. Some people thought he was self-righteous ("Isn't this the carpenter's son?"); others thought he was licentious ("This man welcomes sinners and eats with them"). He didn't seem to care what they thought.

Rather, Jesus was truly himself because he did the will of God; he was most authentic when he was least concerned with doing things that suited his personality (Luke 22:42). There's an important lesson here for Christian ministry. Our ministry should not simply flow naturally out of our personality. Our being real can't mean that we only focus on what comes naturally to us, our strengths. We are not our own ambassadors. We are Christ's. If God the Father opposes the proud but lifts up the humble and Jesus does, too, then maybe the Christian minister, who is an ambassador for Christ and who bears the image of God, should understand in these examples a rule for ministry: to the lowly we show mercy; to the stiff-necked, we offer rebuke. Perhaps one or the other of those activities will come more naturally to us. It doesn't really matter. It's the world, not Jesus, that calls us to be ourselves.

If we find our authenticity and identity in Christ, we'll have to be prepared to stop judging our effectiveness by how people respond to us. We'll no doubt be misunderstood by some. But we won't, as some people fear, be disregarded or discredited for speaking or acting in each given situation according to the need. That doesn't make us hypocrites. In fact, people are more likely to question your motives if you're always affirming, always in-your-face, always cool and groovy.

A dear friend of mine from college exemplifies what I'm trying to capture here. He was the only man I've ever met who has literally wept with me as I confessed a sin, doubt, or concern. He's also the only man that's ever taken me by the shoulders and told me (in a different circumstance) to get my act together. He wasn't terribly concerned about the consistency of his behavior from one situation to the next; he wasn't concerned about my feelings, really. He knew what I needed and gave it to me. He's the most authentic person I know.

It's hard to know how to develop my ministry skills if I'm to be less concerned with consistency and authenticity and more concerned with serving out of my identity as an imago Christi. I'll keep reading Nouwen's books like they're going out of style, because I think he understood Christian service better than most. But I'll have to remember not to be conformed into the imago Nouwen (or the imago Mohler, imago Calvin, or imago McLaren). But, to be quite honest, it frightens me to be the disciple of a Prince of Peace who said, "I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!"

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at September 12, 2008 | Comments (11) | TrackBack

September 11, 2008

Out of Context: Gregory Boyd

"It's not an issue of whether or not we should engage moral evil and politics, but is it our primary job? It's not the main job of the church to be running the government or to influence legislation. The main job is to live out the kingdom. I feel like some Christians put the political cart before the kingdom horse. Christians in America differ very, very little from the broader American culture. We're almost indistinguishable. I'm focused on getting my congregation to live out radical kingdom principles 24/7. If we get that done, I think we'll have a lot of clarity about how to engage the culture, including politics."

-Gregory Boyd is pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. Taken from "Body Politic" in the Summer 2008 issue of Leadership journal. To see the quote IN context, you'll need to see the print version of Leadership. To subscribe, click on the cover of Leadership on this page.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at September 11, 2008 | Comments (14) | TrackBack

September 9, 2008

Urban Exile: Following Jesus in the Face of Fear

by David Swanson

Pulling up to a busy intersection recently, my wife and I were startled to see a car with its rear windshield shattered. Out of the damaged car leaped a man with a baseball bat, yelling and chasing the two apparent perpetrators. As we slowly drove by, my wife reaching for her phone to call the police, we saw into the back seat where a young girl sat trying to make sense of the chaos that had erupted around her. Arriving at our apartment three blocks away I became aware of an emotion I hadn't felt in a long time: fear.

Three months after moving into Chicago from one of its affluent suburbs, we are still getting our bearings. Is it the Mexican or Polish market that has the better produce? What time is too late for my wife to take a walk by herself? How long will it take to get from the church office to my lunch meeting via the Blue Line? We expected these kinds of questions. Unanticipated, however, was the proper response to shattered windshields and guys with baseball bats. I knew the transition to life and ministry in the city might be tough, but this tangible sense of fear came out of left field.

Our eight years of suburban life and ministry were not without fear, albeit of a different kind. I oftentimes worried about the effect of affluence on our congregation. Anxiety about spiritual formation in a landscape of individualism and crass consumption is enough to keep any pastor awake at night. Conversations with friends and suburban colleagues often centered on pursuing the way of Jesus while being surrounded by the deep-seated values of safety and comfort. You could say my fear was of a spiritual nature: I was anxious about how suburbia affected our souls.

Guys with baseball bats? Never crossed my mind.

Of course it's fair to neither city nor suburb to make such generalizations. Violent acts take place in suburbia just as consumer culture affects many in our new urban congregation. In some ways, my wife and I actually feel safer in our new urban environs. She is more comfortable being home alone at night; the voices of our neighbors provide a friendly soundtrack. I worry less about my numbed soul as the exposed beauty and evil of the city invite increased awareness and dependence on the Holy Spirit.

And yet this newfound fear can't be ignored. A woman in our neighborhood was recently attacked with sulfuric acid. It was less than assuring when her assailants turned out to be a couple of high school girls. Occasionally I'll check an online map for the location of each of Chicago's summer shootings, hoping the latest fatalities weren't in our neighborhood. Do I sound paranoid? Maybe, but after eight years of placid suburban life, shattered windshields, sulfuric acid attacks, and daily fatalities are taking some getting used to.

Fear is not the only new reality resulting from our suburban exodus; faith too has taken on increased significance. Prayer has become a regular response throughout the week - for mercy for the homeless men living under the dank overpass and wisdom for our multi-ethnic small groups as they debrief a sermon on racism and reconciliation. The city, with its in-your-face beauty and pain, has renewed my dependence on the God who holds Chicago together. A sign of my spiritual shallowness perhaps, but my former homogenous and safe suburban life didn't regularly provoke this response of prayer.

What if a healthy dose of fear is important for faith? After all, God often acts in the face of our fear-inducing circumstances. Yet many suburban churches simply blend in, patterning buildings, teaching, and programs on the accepted values of safety and comfort. Likewise, an urban tendency has been to maintain a fortress mentality, protecting congregations from the dangers and temptations of city life. Both responses minimize the fear we experience when we encounter the grief and injustice of a dangerous world. Additionally, when such fearful realities are ignored, people are hindered from experiencing a vigorous faith that must depend on God's presence.

As Christians, surely we are meant neither to blend into our surroundings nor be protected from them. Eugene Peterson writes that following Jesus "is as much, or maybe even more, about feet as it is about ears and eyes." The feet of Jesus carried him and his anxious disciples into some nerve-wracking situations. Field trips in the Samaritan countryside, conversations with scary Gentiles, and parties with prostitutes and tax collectors must have been terrifying to those early Jesus followers. During these encounters, their faith was stretched and strained to the breaking point. Shattered windshields are nothing compared with demon-possessed pigs leaping from cliffs.

Should we purposefully lead people into fear-inducing experiences? Of course! Following the feet of Jesus will often lead us to dangerous places, whether in the city, the suburbs, or elsewhere. Peril is not the goal, but it's a result of pursuing Jesus in our world. Are we calling people to this dangerous way of living? Or has the fear-confronting life been substituted for something safer and more comfortable?

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at September 9, 2008 | Comments (10) | TrackBack

September 4, 2008

The Hansen Report: Where Are You From?

by Collin Hansen

Where are you from? No, where are you from from?

If you live in a suburban or urban area, you have probably asked and answered these questions countless times. The follow-up question is meant to uncover something about your conversation partner that can't be learned by hearing which faceless suburb he or she inhabits. But at the rate Americans continue to move, this follow-up question may not elicit a better answer.

According to a USA Today report last fall, nearly 50 million Americans - more than 16 percent of the population - moved in 2006. Mobility increases during inclement economic weather, which is one reason why during the late 1990s the rate slowed to pre-World War II times. Though 2008 data has not yet been analyzed, we can expect the moving rate to increase given the high number of home foreclosures.

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan recently connected this trend to the Republican and Democratic nominees for President. Sure, you know Sen. Barack Obama lives in Chicago, and Sen. John McCain lives in Arizona. But do their places of current residence tell you anything about them?

Noonan doesn't think so. "Neither man has or gives a strong sense of place in the sense that American politicians almost always have, since Mr. Jefferson of Virginia, and Abe Lincoln of Illinois, and FDR of New York, and JFK of Massachusetts," she writes. "Even Bill Clinton was from a town called Hope, in Arkansas, even if Hope was really Hot Springs. And in spite of his New England pedigree, George W. Bush was a Texan, as was, vividly, LBJ. Messrs. Obama and McCain are not from a place, but from an experience."

These would-be presidential vagabonds share their interstate experience with millions of fellow patriots.

"All this is part of a national story that wasn't new even a quarter century ago," Noonan observes. "Americans move. They like moving. Got a lot of problems? The answer may be geographical relocation. New problem in the new place? GTT. Gone to Texas."

This mentality, common both inside and outside the church walls, makes pastoral ministry exceedingly difficult. How do you encourage the deep fellowship that only develops with years of experience if the congregation switches like a hockey team's line change? Longevity is necessary for the kind of lay leadership that really gets things done in the church. Those lay leaders need pastors they can trust who aren't always looking around for churches that offer higher salaries and bigger ministry platforms. Writing in No Place for Truth, David Wells observes that congregations during the early 1800s would rather put up with poor preaching than lose their preacher. That won't fly today, but we could learn something from them about the bonds that unite parishioner and pastor.

Longevity in one place also makes church discipline possible. Discipline means little if the offending member finds a new church home across town. For discipline to work, members must know each other well enough to confront one another over sin. Fences may make good neighbors, but they make for lousy church members. Anonymity is the enemy of ministry. Yet anonymity results when frequent moving breaks down the difference between suburb and suburb, state and state, and region and region.

"Modernization has broken up many of the small social units that used to be so important in the raising of children and the shaping of national character, such as the nuclear and extended family, the neighborhood, and the larger community," Wells writes. "These were the contexts in which children used to learn about life. Today, however, extended families have been scattered by geographical mobility, nuclear families by divorce, and the more functional ethnic and urban neighborhoods by the social and economic forces that make flight to the loose-knit, anonymous suburbs a temptation."

For the sake of loving each other and loving our neighbors, Christians should re-learn how to put down roots in one community. There will often be valid financial and educational excuses for leaving. But if you invest in your community, the community will invest in you. For too long Christians have followed that American dream to greener pastures, to the neglect of their genealogical and ecclesiological families. If we hope to reverse this trend, shepherds should set the example.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at September 4, 2008 | Comments (12) | TrackBack

Out of Context: Efrem Smith

"People cannot tell the difference between a conservative evangelical message and Rush Limbaugh, or a mainline Protestant message and Howard Dean. Because of the media, any news item related to a major social issue...is politicized in 24 hours. By the time I get up to preach about it on Sunday, it's been spun and polarized a hundred times over."

-Efrem Smith is pastor of The Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis. Taken from "Does Your Preaching Touch Politics" in the Summer 2008 issue of Leadership journal. To see the quote IN context, you'll need to see the print version of Leadership. To subscribe, click on the cover of Leadership on this page.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at September 4, 2008 | Comments (11) | TrackBack

September 3, 2008

"Have to" or "Want to" Sermons?

by Bryan Wilkerson

As men and women created in the image of God, believers are designed to become like Christ in ever-increasing measure. Effective, biblical preaching taps into this innate longing by helping people envision what God created us to be in Christ. This is the definition of visionary preaching.

Visionary preaching is not content merely to instruct people in the ways of God, or to confront the sin in their lives and the world, or to exhort believers to do better and try harder. Visionary preaching empowers people to pursue God's better future by painting a vivid and compelling picture of that future with words, images, and stories.

Consider one of the pastor's most daunting but essential topics - tithing. Some preachers will explain the Old Testament foundations of tithing and offer some grace-based principles for giving drawn from the New Testament. They assume that once people understand God's expectations they will conscientiously adjust their giving habits. Other preachers will take a more prophetic stance by summoning the words and spirit of Malachi to confront the materialism of our culture and warn believers not to "rob God."

But both of these approaches, the informative and the prophetic, fail to understand how people grow.

Willow Creek's popular REVEAL survey provides us with insights into how and why people grow spiritually. Those identified as "spiritually stalled" in the survey overwhelmingly said the reason was their failure to make spiritual growth a priority in their lives. In other words, the problem isn't that they don't know how to grow, but that they simply don't want to grow. It is not important enough to be a priority.

Click here to finish this article at Leadershipjournal.net.

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at September 3, 2008 | Comments (11) | TrackBack

September 2, 2008

Cartoon: Am I Called to Preach?

Posted by UrL Scaramanga at September 2, 2008 | Comments (5) | TrackBack