As we ended our nearly two year study on the book of Luke this morning in church, we took a look at how Jesus open the eyes of his disciples to see how the whole of scripture points to him. While on one level it would have been nice if Luke had included that sermon in his Gospel, one can also interpret the entire book of Luke as being that sermon. The whole book echoes the themes of the Old Testament fulfilled in Jesus Christ and his teachings.

Part of the discussion included looking at the categories N.T. Wright presents in Simply Christian. In summing up the main themes of scripture, that represent as well the deepest longings of human existence, Wright creates four categories. These include - The Torah which defines our relationships, The Temple which represents our spiritually, The Kingdom which demonstrates justice, and New Creation which demonstrates our longing for beauty. These themes show up over and over again in the Old Testament and in the teaching of Jesus. He is calling us to live lives that tap into those longings and can be fulfilled through them. By developing right relationships, discovering true spirituality, seeking justice, and pursuing beauty we live in the ways we were meant to live.

But those are often the very things that are ridiculed by the world and discarded in favor of power and success. It is often the countercultural revolutionaries who uphold those biblical values while the mainstream promotes contrary values. I found it amusing last night that I saw that cultural struggle represented in one of my favorite movies. Moulin Rouge tells the story of the fin de siècle Bohemian revolutionaries in Paris who are seeking a new way of living out their values of Freedom, Beauty, Truth, and Love. They are of course despised and condemned as silly and impractical and told to cure themselves of "this ridiculous obsession with love." I find the movie brilliant on many levels, but it was a good reminder that pursuing the values of the Kingdom is strange and challenges the dominant paradigm of culture.

To promote right relationships and to seek justice is to love others. To discover true spirituality and beauty is to love God and his creation. To actually live out these great commandments as it were goes against the messages of selfish ambition, greed, isolation, and power that the world promotes as primary. To follow Jesus one has to be revolutionary. Being ridiculously obsessed with love is impractical but it's the way we are supposed to live. If it takes changing the way we approach everything in order to live the life we were meant to live, are we willing to do it? Is our faith real enough for us to leave everything and follow Jesus? To stop caring about ourselves and start caring for others? To join the revolution?

Labels: Church, mission, Theology

Yesterday in church I led the conversation on the Great Commission. We have been making our way through the book of Luke for the last couple of years and have finally arrived at the end, which of course just means we are diving straight into Acts next. For many of us who grew up in the evangelical church, the Great Commission involves nothing more than convincing other people to believe in Jesus. Preaching forgiveness and making disciples simply meant getting people to intellectually assent to a certain set of ideas. We've left out the whole part about training people in everything Jesus taught.

So yesterday we looked at the mission Jesus sent his followers on (with the help of the Spirit) in light of how Jesus himself described his own mission in Luke 4 (to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners,recovery of sight for the blind, and to release the oppressed). The Spirit of the Lord was on Jesus to fulfill his mission and Jesus promised the Spirit so that the disciples could fulfill theirs as well (which included training others in the way Jesus trained them to follow). But sometimes doing that mission - spreading the message of forgiveness and freedom through our words and deeds - is hard. We obviously have failed at the whole setting the oppressed free and bringing good news to the poor (since there is still oppression and poverty), so there is a lot more work that needs to be done to fulfill the Great Commission. That's where the Spirit comes in to kick out butts.

I love the example Sarah Dylan Breuer gives as she compares what the Spirit does to a washing machine -

Washing machines don't work if the load is stagnant; without motion, there's no transformation. So the washing machines that I grew up with had something at their center that bounced around to push what's at the center out to the margins and bring what's at the margins in to the center such that the whole load could be transformed.

We call that thing at the center of the washing machine an 'agitator,' and I can think of no better word for what the Spirit does for us. The call of God's Spirit pushes those of us at the center of our world's all-too-concentrated power and wealth out to the margins to welcome the marginalized to the center. If we stay where we are and let the rest of the world stay as it is, we're not fully experiencing the presence and work of the Spirit, and we won't benefit as fully from the transformation that the Spirit is bringing.

We need that agitation, that kick in the butt, to actually be out there engaging in the mission Christ called us to. Our discussion yesterday concluded with a time of brainstorming of everyday practical things we each could do to engage in that mission followed by us having to list the excuses we give for why we don't actually engage. Here's a sampling of some of the stuff we came up with.

Ways we can engage in Mission

• - Be a volunteer


• - Get to know our neighbors


• - Live more frugally and simply


• - Take the time to be educated on justice issues


• - Learn Spanish


• - Buy Fairly Traded items


• - Do chores for your elderly neighbor


• - Go to student's soccer games


• - Write actual letters to lawmakers


• - Visit the "unseen" in our culture

Our Excuses for Not Doing Anything

• - I'm too shy


• - I won't make a big difference anyway


• - It's too expensive


• - I don't know where to begin


• - There is always something better I could be doing to help others, so I end up doing nothing at all

What would you add to either of these lists?

Labels: Church, mission, Social Justice

I stumbled across this funny yet challenging post by Lainie Petersen (whose blog I will be checking out now). I'm posting it here because I think it's great, but you can find the original here.

Top Ten Ways to Fail at Being Missional

10. Be very annoyed that some people belong to religions other than your own. Express this annoyance freely.

9. Don’t bother becoming a “regular” at local businesses. Just shop/dine/get- your-clothes-drycleaned at whatever place has the best sales that week. If, by some unfortunate coincidence, you do become a regular at a local business, don’t get to know the owner, employees, or other patrons.

8. Fixate on the quality of your missional targets: Focus on the local Unitarian Universalist minister, Mormon bishop, and Wiccan high priestess (who also owns your town’s only occult bookstore). Don’t give a second thought to that rather ordinary looking lady who you see every morning on the train. She doesn’t have a large enough sphere of influence.

7. If you see a problem in your community, don’t bother to check out what other organizations or individuals are doing about it. Just start your own project: You’ll get a lot more accomplished if you are in charge!

6. Don’t waste your time reading the blogs of other missional folk. So what if they share their own struggles, hurts, joys, and ideas freely? You take all your instruction from God, directly.

5. Never, ever, check out primary source materials produced by representatives of other cultures, subcultures, and religions. Christians have already written all you need to know about those unbelievers, and besides, cult members will have a bias that you want to avoid.

4. Avoid being “unequally yoked” with unbelievers by not engaging them in conversation, learning about their families, having lunch with them, inviting them to your home (or accepting a similar invitation), or working together to address community issues of common interest.

3. Be sure to email (from your work account, while at work) your “unsaved” work colleagues (especially those that you don’t normally interact with) with regular invitations to your church and its activities.

2. Never consider offering financial or material support to other folks engaged in missional work. After all, you need all your spare cash for your own personal ministry. Besides, most of them don’t have their own 501 (c) 3 corporation, and not getting a tax deduction would be poor stewardship on your part.

1. Learn every evangelistic technique, theory, and strategy out there, and work hard to perfect your practice of them, even to the neglect of every other area of your spiritual life. What does the Holy Spirit have to do with drawing people to God, anyway?

Labels: Fun Stuff, mission

Bob Roberts of Glocalnet recently put up a post about "being missional in the Sunday service" (ht - Rick Meigs). He had some good suggestions about being missional within the cultural trappings of the Sunday service. Like - if your worship consists of singing songs, it would help if those songs focused on service instead of just being another "me" centered melody (which is way easier said than done since songs like that are limited). But I was a bit uneasy with his opening assertions about being missional and seeker sensitive. He writes -

Can you reach seekers and be missional? Yes. Reaching seekers is missional! The challenge is how do you communicate to seekers, change their perceptions of God and church, help them find Jesus, and then help them understand we’ve been called to community to together live out the Kingdom.

I see all of the things he listed as good things, it is the order that he presents them in that bugs me. First you give them the messages about Jesus, God, and church and then you get them on board with being missional. It might just be me, but that smacks of the whole bait and switch technique that so many of us so desperately try to avoid. If the point is to follow Christ then call people to follow Christ from the get go. Don't woo them with spiffy seeker services and then expect them to catch the missional mindset. It's that old saying - "what you call people with is what you call them to". Calling people to enjoy a service and get committed to the church before you expect them to actually serve God can lead to disastrous results. In our "me? centered culture that sees church as a place to come, sit, mingle, be entertained, and possibly fed, to get people into your church for those things and then ask them to serve doesn't work. They either ignore the call to get up off their butts, or they find another church that doesn't make such "extreme" demands on their life.

But that can be a problem for churches. I've known churches where the people have left in droves after the church leadership started pursuing a more missional route. Our tiny little church plant continues to struggle with this as well. We don't want to present people with one conception of church and then push another agenda down the road. We try to be upfront about who we are and that scares people. They don't want to have to engage with the sermon, they don't want to have to give their time to missional events. It's too far out of their comfort zone. But it is who we are. We recently had a booth at our town's annual Hometown Days. We debated what to do with the booth (do we give away water or popcorn, what about free games for kids?). We eventually decided against the attractional gimmicks and instead sold fairly traded goods for Ten Thousand Villages - it sparked some good conversations about who we are as a church. What was amusing was that the new church plant in town went for all those attractional give aways (water bottles, candy, free games, ipods...). What you call them with is what you call them to - but somedays it seems like there are a lot more people out there interested in passive "gimme" styles of church than there are interested in missional churches.

That said, I also think that calling people to be missional does not come after the call to be a Christian, but is part of the call itself. In fact people can be serving God and helping others even if they are not onboard with the whole faith thing. Inviting people to engage with doing the work of Christ is part of calling them to Christ. We invite anyone to help out with our missional projects at church - even if they are not part of our church or any church at all for that matter. They are welcome to be the hands and feet of Christ even before they believe in Christ. And the interesting part is that action of serving and following Christ often makes them actually want to well, follow Christ. So being missional vs. being seeker sensitive doesn't follow in my book. It's about following Christ and that means being missional always.

Labels: Church, Emerging Church, mission

I have my Master's in Intercultural Studies and Missions from Wheaton College - a very Evangelical institution. I was a bit of an oddball in the program as I went through it and would most likely not even begin to fit in now. I appreciate what I learned there and the paths of inquiry and questioning it led me down, but in many ways it didn't seem to go far enough. I studied cultural anthropology, intercultural communication, linguistics and the like all within the framework of contextualizing the Gospel into other cultures. For many students in the program the whole concept of contextualization in the first place was "liberal and heretical." For them the ends justified the means. Getting converts was worth whatever cultural cost had to be paid. (granted most of them actually thought that the way evangelicals did church was the way it had always been, so why syncretize the Gospel through such dubious means as contextualization?). But it wasn't until later that I saw firsthand that the vestiges of cultural imperialism in the guise of Christian missionary work are alive and well in many areas of Christianity.

During my stint as a Children's Ministries Director at a small Baptist church, I had the horrific experience of encountering one of the worst examples of Christian missionary cultural imperialism that I have ever seen. There was a family from another local area church (the super conservative and filthy rich one) that was doing the rounds of local churches to raise support to go be missionaries in Africa. They came to our church to do a special presentation during the Sunday school hour. That meant that somehow I got stuck with them coming to do a mini-presentation for the kids during the children's church I led during the main service. The wife who was wearing a dress straight out of Little House on the Prairie didn't say a word the entire morning, so we got to listen to the husband give the most racist missionary talk ever.

To give a bit of background, this family was white, very white and most of the kids in the children's church were black. After giving a report on Africa straight from the World Book Encyclopedia, the "missionary" guy launched into the whole "white man's burden" to go help the savages in Africa sort of thing. It was the whole "go convert the heathen" sort of missions work, but that wasn't the worst of it. He talked about the Africans as if they were less than human. At one point he even said that the Africans do nothing but sit alongside the rode all day being lazy, but they like it if you give them peanuts. I am so not kidding, he actually said give them peanuts like they were some sort of animal at a zoo. I was so appalled and shocked I didn't even know how to respond. I could tell that the kids were uncomfortable, but didn't think that they could disagree with the adult missionary. So when they finished their talk about what they would be doing in Africa, I just asked them to leave and then I started in on damage control with the kids. I officially begged that our church not support them and was seriously stunned that missionaries like that were still being sent out as representatives of Christianity. I have no clue if they ended up actually making it to Africa and I hope to God they did not.

I react in horror to stories like those, but of course there are those who react in horror to any sort of missionary work no matter how culturally sensitive or contextual it is. But I am realizing that most of my perspectives for or against contextualization or missionary work in general have come from Western sources. I rarely hear indigenous perspectives on cultural encounters with Christianity. I instead hear selected reports from converts who have bought the Western Christian package in its entirety and I hear missionary reports that include only the success stories spun in such a way to keep the money coming (and yes I've written such reports). But encountering the whole postcolonial theological perspective is new to me. Not only are the methods of church and missions questioned, but the whole Western theological paradigm is deconstructed. I'm exploring how the pieces all fit together for me. Where does the line of imperialism lie? When is compassion and dialogue and contextual expressions of faith domineering and condescending, and when are they appropriate? How do I not place my cultural heritage at the center of my beliefs? I'm just beginning to struggle with how these questions play out in my life.

Labels: Church, Culture, mission, Theology

Sorry for the silence here the last couple of days, I was at the Jubilee USA Grassroots Conference over the weekend. It was an exhausting weekend and I feel overwhelmed with information. At the same time, it was revitalizing and inspirational to be surrounded by so many people who have truly committed their lives to make this world a better place for everyone.

Jubilee USA exists to promote economic justice for the world, mostly through Debt Relief. They of course realize that to improve conditions worldwide debt relief is just one element that needs to happens, so they promote and partner with organizations that work on all eight of the Millennium Development Goals. But Jubilee's main focus is to end so-called third world debt. Most Americans are unaware of the need for debt relief at all. They hear the term "debt" and think of their maxed out credit cards. But Debt Relief refers to countries that have incurred millions of dollars in debt fron loans from other countries, the IMF, and the World Bank. The problem is that many of these loans were irresponsibly given, acquired (and squandered) illegally by dictators, or are remains of colonialism and the Cold War. These are debts that the people of these countries didn't ask for or approve (like South Africans having to pay back the loans that the Apartheid government used to fight anti-apartheid efforts) and now these countries are having to use up to 80% of their national budget to repay these debts and their insane interest rates. To come up with that money the countries have cut public education, health services, and stopped hiring doctors, nurses, and teachers. Most aid the country receives from Western countries just goes straight back to West in debt repayment. To put numbers to it - Nigeria has borrowed $5 billion, to date it has paid $16 billion and still owes $32 billion. There are a number of stories and reasons why these debts are wrong, but the effect is that they are keeping the poorest countries in this world in cycles of extreme poverty.

The Jubilee movement calls for a cancellation of these debts. They invoke the Biblical principle of Jubilee to forgive debts and break the chains of injustice. Why? Because the people of these countries don't owe and they shouldn't pay. Besides the fact that the principles on these debts have been paid already, these weren't their debts in the first place. A good way to help understand this is to imagine that someone stole your credit card, charged $10 billion in weapons on it and did all that before you were born. But for some reason you have to pay it all back, resulting in your children not being able to attend school, you not having clean water, and there not being health services available to you. To put a selfish spin on why cancel debts, if these countries don't have debt canceled the environmental degradation and political instability (potential for terrorism) increases. But most of all it should be a moral choice for all people of faith or conscious who claim to care for the least of these to do whatever we can to give all people a fighting chance at life and the basic rights they deserve.

So I got to spend the weekend hearing stories about debt relief, economic justice, and human rights. I knew most of the general ideas before, but got to learn the facts and the stories this weekend. I heard of the extreme injustices being perpetrated (Vulture Funds), attempts to stand up to injustice, and stories of hope from countries whose debt has already been cancelled. I met activists from around the world - a political cartoonist from Kenya, lobbyists from DC, a human rights watch journalist in exile from Columbia. We even heard from the Ecuadorian Finance Minister who came to report in how her country is choosing to stop making payments on their onerous debt so they can spend money on basic human services. As a country they are standing up to the World Bank and the IMF (and their puppetmasters the G8). They face serious legal, economic, and political (hopefully not military) dangers in doing so, but they choose to no longer be oppressed by the rich west.

I could share any number of stories - of both horror and hope. At this point, I realize the need more than ever to get the word out about these issues. It is the government that can effect change by canceling the debts (or pressuring the IMF and World Bank to do so). But it will take people telling their elected representative (they do represent us you know) to support morality and debt relief. As I posted last week a bipartisan bill was just introduced to Congress called the Jubilee Act. It's up to us to tell our Congresspeople to support it. Simple, easy, but something that most people (especially Christians) have an allergic reaction to (treating the government like the empire it pretends to be instead of the representative democracy it is).

I'm sure that I will be mentioning other aspects of this event on this blog in the future. I just want to conclude by mentioning something I realized during the conference. Exactly five years ago I was at another conference at Moody Bible Institute just a few blocks from the Loyola building I was at this weekend. Both events were "Christian" events (although I don't think Jews, Muslims and Atheists would have been welcomed at the Moody one). But what sticks in my memory from the Moody event is the insane amount of time given to discussing exactly what type of clothing the women at the conference were allowed to wear - what sort of swimsuit, the exact width tank top straps had to be, and whether or not it was okay to wear jeans in church). When such an "adventures in missing the point" defines who we are as Christians instead of seeking justice and proclaiming good news to the poor I rejoice to no longer be immersed in that sort of christian experience. For although I spent this past weekend hearing depressing and horrific stories of oppression and injustice, I came away more full of hope in God and the potential of a better world than I do from "ministry" conferences where the focus remains on stuff we should have gotten over a long time ago (accepting women's rights for example). I got to be (for once) in an environment where gender equality was assumed and not debated and racial and ethnic diversity was the norm. It was encouraging to see that such things actually do exist (as opposed to just being endlessly discussed and debated). I am very thankful to have had this opportunity this weekend and look forward to continuing to meet with the Chicago Jubilee group to build on the grassroots campaign for justice, mercy, and love.

Labels: Events, Gender Issues, mission, Personal, Politics, Social Justice

I think I've become too used to the language of the missional church. The language that sees the Kingdom of God present in this world, that sees the good news as being about more than getting one's butt into heaven when we die, and that takes seriously the call to bring freedom to the oppressed. So this past Sunday as I visited the church I grew up in, I wasn't prepared to go back to the old perspective. That of a church doing missions as opposed to being missional.

My first clue should have been that it was the church's missions conference. Missionaries from all around the world had been brought in to report on what they were doing. So the sermon that morning was from an Indian man who runs a Seminary in India. He was there to tell us about the "Divine Strategy for Missions." As he put it - the way missions always has been and the way it always should be. The strategy is apparently composed of a mere four points.

1. Spreading the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ - which as he explain is a lot easier in India than America because they allow prayer in schools.

2. Raising support from the believers - this has to come from Americans because indigenous people can't afford to support missions.

3. Engage in social outreach - This is done only to soften people's hearts because "physical help that doesn't result in spiritual help is no help at all."

4. Reach the influential in the community - because finding and using power is the only way to spread Christianity.

During most of his sermon he kept talking about the tiny tiny amount of Christians in India. But then at one point he said something about how Pentecostalism is really popular and spreading fast in India because they focus on healing so much (but that we of course know that the only true healers are doctors who have been gifted by God and trained at medical schools). So besides sounding more like a high modernist atheist than a spiritual Christian, he was drawing lines at who really are Christians. Apparently only those who follow cessationist conservative Evangelicalism are true Christians.

I'm sure there are good things coming out of this mission, I was just saddened at how limited a perspective they have. Serving Christ in a missional way involves so much more than getting people intellectually convinced about the facts of the Gospel. It is so much more organic and contextual than this "divine strategy for missions."

Labels: Church, mission

In my reflections on Colossians, I would be remiss to ignore the news coming out of Turkey this week. Apparently, knife-wielding attackers slit the throats of three people at a Christian publishing house in conservative eastern Turkey yesterday. The Zirve publishing house had previously been the target of nationalist protests for allegedly distributing Bibles and proselytising.
Read the full story here.

Followers of the way of Christ trying to subvert the empire in Turkey are persecuted by those who oppose them. Sounds strangely familiar. Its all good to talk about how the letter to the Colossians encouraged the believers to follow a different way of life than that promoted by Rome and hint at the danger of spreading that message, but how does one respond to the same thing today?

The first thing that comes to mind is to wonder if it is the same thing. I don't know much at all about this publishing house, what their intentions are, and how exactly they live out their faith. I've known enough missionaries to closed countries to not be naive about some of the manipulative and underhand ways they work for converts. The process often has little to do with making the world a better place or spreading Kingdom values, and everything about getting notches on their belts and getting butts into heaven. And I've also known some amazing people who care about spreading God's love everywhere who are in the same places. It is interesting to note that it is often the churches that are most vocal about supporting the American government (the whole we have to submit to governing authorities thing) that are the most insistent about subverting other governments by illegally sending missionaries into closed countries (and yes, I know that officially Turkey is secular, officially). What was this group doing? Were they just trying to impose some Western conception of Christianity onto a foreign culture (exchanging empire for empire)? Were they there to persuade others that Islam is absolutely wrong and Christianity absolutely right? Were they there to promote freedom of knowledge and access to the Bible to those who desired it?

I don't know what to think. I am pained by the hatred of the terror and violence. But the history of Christianity is seeped in the tradition of imposing one version of empire onto another's. I am supportive of tolerance and respect for other cultures, but then wonder how to spread the hope of Christ in a way that continues to be loving and respectful. Subversion and tolerance - is there a balance? Should there be?

Labels: Church, Colossians Remixed, mission