LET THE MARATHON BEGIN!

6 TOTAL CHURCH SERVICES STARTING TONIGHT!

1 tonight
2 tomorrow morning
3 tomorrow night

This is called combat preaching! WHEW! But, you know, I would not trade any of the stress, the feelings, the emotions, and the genuine peace of mind I get when people are grateful for what we pastors do on the two holidays (Christmas and Easter) during the year when all families get to be together. Definitely a calling and well worth it. My wife and I are headed to the frozen tundra soon, and will do the marathon of seeing our families in two day blurs. But, t'will be good, plus I plan on catching up on some sleep hopefully. So my friends, have a Merry Christmas with your families, and I hope and pray that the birth of Jesus celebrated once again, remind you that this baby's kingdom does not end, but goes on forever as the kingdoms of the world and the kings of the world fade away. May we the body of Christ, bring into focus and touch, the Kingdom of God for all people. Peace be with you. More later...

I had to laugh at myself today! I took the morning off, so I could go to the church for tonight's meeting and put in a full afternoon. So there I was, sitting there having some lunch, flipping through the channels on TV, when all of a sudden, I stop. My attention is immediately drawn to the screen. Why? Because all of a sudden I realize that my son's favorite show has in some small way become my favorite show too. I watched a full half-hour of Thomas the Tank Engine without my son being there. Yes, I watched it all by myself, and I am not ashamed to admit it. I actually enjoyed it. Scary huh? The 15 year old Jason would mock the 32 year old Jason had he known that one day, I would be so uncool as to sit and watch a children's show over MTV. But the 32 year old would defiantly utter, "Yeah, but MTV sucks!" Ahh, to be a parent whose child knows the term, "headbang!" God, I love it! More later...

By far, THE biggest influence on me in terms of how I think about church and ministry well, besides Jesus himself, is a man named ROB BELL! Rob is the founding pastor and teaching pastor at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The first time I had ever heard of Rob was from a wonderful older lady from the previous church I was at. She handed me a CD and the message on it was titled, "In The Dust Of The Rabbi." I listened to it, and was absolutely blown away by what I heard. His message was so not what I was used to. I mean adding small things like the Jewish roots of what we read in the New Testament was not something I was used to, as I usually found Jewish history very far removed from myself and the New Testament. One of the highlights during this time, was that I got to hear Rob speak in person at the National Youth Workers Convention in Dallas, TX in 2004. I sat through six hours of just him speaking about what works and what doesn't when we are these kinds of people who are meant to speak the truth of Jesus into people's lives, specifically how that truth speaks to our own life.

Rob also has this series of DVDs called Noomas which are short films in which he teaches about issues of faith, life, death, doubt, hate, etc. Wonderful and precise. I have used these in a class setting and were great discussion starters. I highly recommend checking these out. My favorites are "Bullhorn," and "Sunday." Great stuff!

So, over the years, I have been very much influenced by the way Rob thinks about and visions the church in ways that frankly, were not taught to me or even conceived in seminary, much less my experience in churches. I have this ritual that I have followed since the fall of 2004. I go to the Mars Hill website, and I download the sermon (most of them are by Rob, some aren't as they might have guest teachers) from that previous Sunday...I do all this Monday. Put it on the Ipod and listen to it as my devotional driving to and from work. Amazing stuff. His book is also incredible, and I highly recommend it to anyone who really feels disconnected and is struggling to make sense of their faith, life, and especially church. It's called "Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith." Go out and buy a copy right now for yourself. You will not be disappointed at all! So, if you want, check out Mars Hill's website, and from there you can listen to Rob's teachings. He has definitively changed my life, my perspective, my faith, and my understanding of this moving, changing, evolving beautiful place we call the church.

One of my upcoming blogs in January will be sort of a re-cap of the conference I am going to at none other than Mars Hill. Should be a very cool experience for me. Definitely looking forward to seeing Mars Hill, listen to some great speakers, and get some new ideas and new energy. So, take this all for what it's worth as it all sounds like I am a Rob Bell groupie, but I know there are some of you who are really struggling right now to make sense of your own spiritual journeys, and so I know, I have been there, and am still somewhat there with you. For me, Rob Bell has been exactly the voice of reality, vision, love, intelligence, and experience that I want to listen to so that I become a better follower of Jesus and a better servant for Him. Maybe his voice is a voice that can inspire you as well.

www.mhbcmi.org
www.nooma.com

More later...

The more that I keep hearing from those of you about some of the things that I have been expressing about the "church," the more I get this sense that I am not alone in my thoughts. What's interesting about who you are and what you say, is that all of you have at one point or another have painted this idea that you desperately want some place of worship that would be drenched in the Holy Spirit, who is inviting to you and your family, a place who is committed to living the best kind of life that Jesus invites us into, and that this church would somehow be relevant to where you are at not only generationally, but realistically. Trust me, I seek the same type of community too.

My experience has been that the church does a terrible job at speaking language that speaks to you and I. The language it speaks, is often not genuine, or real. It tries to relate to where you and I are at often compromising the real reason why it exists as a church at all. It desperately packages itself in a nice, neat, shiny package so that you and I will be attracted to it. The church, wants you and I to seek IT out, and not the other way around, which, if you think about it, goes against everything that Jesus was about. My experience has also been that the church has these huge, gaping gaps between the generations, and not enough healthy relationships to even try and bridge those gaps. One time, at an annual meeting I was at, I actually heard the comment, "Well, if these changes to the church are that important, let the younger generation pay for it." Now, changes like the roof, boiler, windows, flooring, etc., are all important, but the changes that so many older folks were pissed at, were things they felt was unnecessary or too strange or lavish like, say a projection unit with screens for the front of the church (using technology in church, how dare you?), gutting out the gym and making it usable and inviting to youth, tearing out some walls and making a more welcoming and inviting space with which to actually share some fellowship with others in. But see, when you are in a church in which the dominant god people serve is money, of course the most cost efficient and best values are going to be hammered out first...namely those that can be seen as to what the money is going to. People know that heat is important...but they do not see the importance in renovating a gym so that that snot nosed, damage making, punk of a youth can actually come and feel as if that church is his home too. What all this smells like to me is idolatry. Too many idols...too many people willing to serve those idols.

There is a wonderful story in the Old Testament about Moses and the people he leads out of slavery. Moses goes to the top of Mount Sinai, to receive the commandments God wants to give him. The problem is, that he has been there for forty days and forty nights. This whole time, God has been giving some instructions to Moses as to how he and the Israelites are to worship God...some specifics about worship. The people at the base of the mountain are getting restless, and so they get bored. They begin to wonder if Moses is ever coming back, and so they convince Aaron (Moses's brother) to build gods to go before them, to continue leading them into a new life. So, Aaron listens to them, is convinced by their asking, takes all the gold the people have, melts it down, and casts this odd looking calf. This calf is placed on a make-shift altar. Which in turn, becomes a place of worship for the Israelites. Moses sees this as he is coming down the mountain, gets cranked, and throws the stone tablets containing THE ten commandments to the ground. He goes to his brother, and in the most eloquent of Hebrew asks him, "Uh, dude, how you could be so stupid and gullible?" Moses' own brother is subject to the ease in which excuses are used to replace the living God, in which idolatry becomes a reason to celebrate and mock the care and redemption of God.

I sometimes think our churches are like the Israelites and we pastors are like Aaron. People in the church get sucked into this way of thinking about their golden cows...be it the building, the stained glass windows, the boiler, the ladies circles, the foundation/endowment, the second brick from the left on the upper northeast corner under the raingutter...people have their sacred cows to make them feel good about not doing the difficult work of actually being the kinds of people God is inviting them to be. People find the easy excuses of placing their allegiance somewhere else in the church rather than in the one who IS the church. Although, they might possibly say, "It's all a part of how we worship." Well, yeah, but even the best of intentions can be nothing but disguised cows waiting to be danced around because it allows for an easy, cheapened faith. I wonder if Dietrich Bonhoeffer had it right when he wrote about the difference between life that is costly and life that is cheap (check out The Cost Of Discipleship...definitely worth your time to read it!) I want to be the kind of person who sees the cows for what they are, and be a voice who calls churches to account for their dancing, their mocking, and their disregard for patience and faith. Because the real damage this does, is that it paints all of us with the same brush, and I am really sick of it! I don't want to be a part of some worn out and lame attempt to prove how we need to be all things to all people without doing the hard work of building a church that leaves no room for idols, but leaves space open for loving people for who they are and not for what we want them to be so that we like them. I would rather fail at being a pastor than lead a church and vision with them only to find that they mock God just so that they can be comfortable with who they are, who each other is, or worse yet who I am, or even worse, how they want this generation to fit with their agendas.

You and I have so much work to do to build up the church, but the difficult work begins with each one of us first. Take the time to work on you. Allow the restoration of God to capture your whole being, so that your life becomes the life God dreams for you...the life He made for you, the life He invites you into, and the life He loves you with. That breath you just breathed, was his life coming out of you. Take another...you feel Him? More later...

I got an email from a friend of mine who wrote about her dislike for how the church has become centered in a consumeristic lifestyle, and how those who come, aren't really interested in being revoluntionaries for the world because of what Jesus is doing in the world. No, these people, according to her, have this Pharisaic understanding that to be seen in the arena of worship, proves that their seat is still there! So many times in the Lutheran churches I have visited or served, one of the first things that I am just put off by is this idea that the sanctuary has selective seating! I remember serving my recent church, and at the traditional service, 99.98% of the people that came, all had their favorite spots to sit. I actually saw one time, an usher seat a fairly new person at this same service, and when the "owners" of the particular spot in the pew arrived to church, I actually saw in their faces, an outright expression of disgust. It made me ill to witness this.

I often wonder if it makes God ill? I am fairly certain that God is sickened by our behavior as people who follow his Son. We do so much damage to people around us, and the hard pill to swallow, is that we rarely notice when we do it. Yes, there are those who in their design of being people, are at the core, assholes! But even Jesus embraces them too, as one shirt I read says, "Jesus loves you, but everyone else thinks you're an asshole!" So, we can assume that Jesus's death was for the sphinkterly challenged, and the arrogant, and the rude, and the mean, and the evil. This definitely proves that Jesus was and is better and more accepting than you or I will ever be towards those people around us who would rather allow life to happen to them so it gives them more of an excuse to make up more excuses about why life sucks and how they are victims, rather than giving life to other people, so that they can feel the love of God ooze from their hearts as Jesus prefers it that way.

I think that even though we might be Christian in our Sunday going presence, we are not living the holistic life that the gospel touches us with. It's been that way for a long time...well at least since Jesus lived and breathed as you and I, and even then, groups of people were convinced their understanding of faith to God was based soley on "getting it right." I want to be with people who could care less about getting it right, and more about getting it, period! I mean that we would embrace the value of valuing others, using our lives to give life to others, and that we would be gentle with people, living in the humility of a Servant. Yesterday, I had a discussion with a pastor I am working with, and he and I were talking about what type of Christmas messages he and I could preach on. And we were talking it out, and one of the themes we kept coming back to, was this mention in the Gospel of Luke 2:14...the angels coming to the shepherds to call them to see Jesus for themselves...to be the first witnesses of his birth. "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to all people on whom his favor rests." Let me share with you what I told my pastor friend.

I suck at peacemaking. I am not all that good at being merciful with those who hurt me, or my family and friends. In fact, I want to have some sort of Monty Python scene where a big damn foot comes out of the sky un-announced, and squashes my enemies to a flattened pool of muck and grease! That would be cool! But, because of the Christ who lives in me, I cannot wish that on anyone. I can wish that Christ would take a 2 by 4 and knock some sense into them, and sometimes that 2 by 4 comes in the form of a humility experience...one in which that person or persons are deflated so much, that it changes their entire lives. But, I admit it! I suck at peacemaking! The Air Force used to have a motto for its defensive understanding of who they were as a combative force, also known as the Strategic Air Command. Their motto was, "Peace Is Our Profession." Actually, it was deterrence that they excelled at. Bombers, missiles, jets, nukes, and any and all other weaponry was meant to deter any country who wanted to sack up, and attack us as a country. Their idea of making peace was one of negotiating or promoting fear, living with paranoia, threat management, and staying alert! I would venture to say, we are the same way as people. We tend to fear others. We are afraid of the potential that the damage done to us, would wipe us out, and kill our spirits. We are afraid that if we drop our defenses, our vulnerabilities will come out and they won't be received well. They could even be used against us. And depending on what ethnicity you are, this fear of others is deep in your fiber of design. The more Norwegian you are, the less you allow your defenses down. The more German you are, the more you fortify and build up your defenses.

This really is more than an ethnic problem though. This is a people problem. And it is rampant in our churches. We fear others because giving life to others as Jesus would, means that we might just change, and be somebody different, somebody we are unfamiliar with, somebody who is not in control, somebody who lets love destroy every one of the deeply planted defensive structures in us. I think the laziness, the indifference, the consumerism, the arrogance, and the fear, all have to do with mistaken identity. If our faith is all about what we do and how much we give, and how much we begrudingly sacrifice, then the work of faith is all up to us. It's as if, we can choose just how effective our good works are going to be because we want to believe that without our work, nothing can be accomplished, and therefore God will not be pleased, and then his big right foot comes out of the sky and...well, you get the point. In this dominant understanding of faith, our identity is shaped by us...by our own doing.

Faith is something that is done to us, for us, and in us. Faith works itself literally from the inside of us to the outside of us. I love the Greek translation of the word for compassion...it literally means, "a tearing of the guts." Faith does that same thing. A faith that works its way from the inside-out of a person, leaves no room to be lazy, or concerned with selective seating, or afraid of others. NO! Faith tears at us and opens our eyes, tunes our hearing, and uses our moments to notice the mundane and the ordinary around us in the lives of our friends, our co-workers, the person next to us who we do not know. Faith that comes to us from a Jesus-shaped God leaves little room for excuses, justifying why one is not fully engaged in the best life Jesus invites us into. Faith is breathing life into us all the time so that it works its way out of us to GO where we are needed. And sometimes that going is to our families, our jobs, our schools, our spouses, our churches...definitely the world. In this dominant understanding of faith, our identity is shaped by a Jesus-shaped God who is so in love with us, that He gives us a way of living that penetrates the indifference to the world AND of the world. That way of living is Jesus. Jesus is love. And therefore, love will always win over the assholes of the world...and maybe one or two of them, will see just how long Jesus has been loving them and has been trying to get their attention. Maybe love in winning over the indifference of the world (assholes too), is the only way that making peace between you and I is ever going to have a chance.

I could write more, but I will let that set into your heads for now, as it is doing in mine. Must have some iced tea! More later...