What the Hell! Love Wins?

Ok, I bought the book to read for myself what the commotion is all about. Glad I did.

My main criticism is that someone inflated a 40 or 50 page manuscript into a 200 page, triple spaced, 3/4 sized hard cover book with enough blank space for a second bonus book tucked inside.

Its not a book of poems. No need to take Rob Bell's words and sprinkle them so sparingly on each page. It almost appears as if the book is laid out to be read aloud, perhaps for a podcast series.

But back to the content. I suppose his notion that Heaven and Hell are within each other, intertwined, interwoven and bumping up against each other, is enough to gall any evangelical fundamentalist. (Remember its not what you believe but how you believe what you believe that makes one a fundamentalist.)

He goes on to define Hell as "our refusal to trust God's retelling of our story." The backdrop for this interpretation is Luke 15 and the story Jesus told of two wayward sons and a loving father.

The youngest son believes he is cut off, estranged, no longer deserving to be his father's son because of all the horrible things he has done. His sees his badness as the problem.

The older brother believes that he deserves to be a favored son because of all the good he's done. He obeyed all the rules and 'slaved' for his father all his life.

Yes the younger brothers wrongs have led him into misery and separation, but the older brothers rigid goodness has also served to distance him from his father. Bell's point is that our badness can and does separate us from God's love and so can our goodness.

The father throws a celebratory feast for the youngest son welcoming him back into the family with a robe, ring and sandals. The older son refuses to join in the lavish reunion party. He becomes bitter, thinks he has been wronged and is furious with both his father and younger brother.

The father responds with a different story, "My son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours." He redefines fairness. Grace and generosity aren't fair and the father sees the younger brothers return as another occasion to practice unfairness.

Obviously he doesn't deserve a party. That's the point. That's the profound unfairness of the father. People are given what they don't deserve. The father retells the older brothers story just as he did with the younger brother. After all, "You are always with me, and everything I have is yours."

Whose story will the sons believe? Their own or their fathers. As Bell points out, the difference between the stories is, after all, the difference between heaven....and hell.

Jesus puts the older brother at the party, but refusing to accept the father's version. Being at the party is hell for him and that's what makes it so hellish. It's not a picture of separation, but one of dis-integration.

Hell is our refusal to trust God's retelling of our story. We all have our own version of events and believe all sorts of things about ourselves.

The gospel confronts our story with God's version of our story. Beginning with the certain truth that we are loved in spite of our sins, rebellions and hard hearts. No matter what's been done to us, we are invited to live a whole new life without shame, blame or anxiety.

Hell is refusing to trust, often stemming from a distorted view of God. "We shape our God and then our God shapes us. A distorted understanding of God, clung to with white knuckles and fierce determination, leaves people in hell at the party."

"The father's love cannot be earned and it can't be taken away. It just is." It goes on no matter what, and all our darkness, sin and goodness and rightness are irrelevant when it comes to the counterintuitive ecstatic announcement of the gospel.

There is nothing left for the son's to do but trust the father's love. God's love simply is. "Father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing." Jesus forgives everyone without their asking for it. It is a unilateral love and God isn't waiting for us to get our act together.

"The only thing left to do is trust." We are already at the party. Heaven and hell, here and now. Our story? Maybe its time to listen to a new story, because the good news is better than that.

Love wins!

"Set down my name, sir!"

"Then the Interpreter took Christian and led him up toward the door of the palace; and behold, at the door stood a great company of men, as desirous to go in, but dared not. There also sat a man at a little distance from the door, at a tableside, with a book and his inkhorn before him, to take the names of them that should enter therein; he saw also that in the doorway stood many men in armor to keep it, being resolved to do the men that would enter what hurt and mischief they could. Now was Christian somewhat in amaze. At last, when every man fell back for fear of the armed men, Christian saw a man of very stout countenance come up to the man that sat there to write, saying, "Set down my name, sir," the which when he had done, he saw the man draw his sword, and put a helmet upon his head, and rush toward the door upon the armed men, who laid upon him with deadly force; but the man, not at all discouraged, fell to cutting and hacking most fiercely. So after he had received and given many wounds to those that attempted to keep him out, he cut his way through them all, and pressed forward int0 the palace."

John Bunyan Pilgrim's Progress

Finding our way back to the Garden of Eden

"The beauty of the female is the root joy to the female as well as to the male, and it is no accident that the goddess of Love is older and stronger than the god. To desire the desiring of her own beauty is the vanity of Lilith, but to desire the enjoying of her own beauty is the obedience of Eve, and to both it is in the lover that the beloved tastes her own delightfulness." C.S. Lewis

Catholic theologian Ronald Rolheiser points out the..."fundamental task of spirituality is to help us understand and channel our sexuality." The word Sex comes from the Latin root = and the verb "secare" literally means to "cut off", "to sever", to "disconnect from the whole." Therefore to be "sexed" essentially means to be cut off, severed from, to be amputated from the whole.

He goes on to remind us that sexuality is an all encompassing energy inside each of us creating a drive for love, communion, community, friendship, family, affection, wholeness, consummation, creativity, self-perpetuation, immortality, joy, delight, humor, and self-transcendence. Sex becomes an energy inside us that works incessantly against our being alone.

Sex is an expansive energy and we are healthy sexually when we have all these things, not just when we are sleeping with someone. A person can have a lot of sex and still lack true love. We can be celibate and still have community, family, friendship and creativity. Sexuality is as much about having friendships as it is about having lovers. Indeed as Rolheiser states, "It may be painful to sleep alone, but it is perhaps even more painful to sleep alone when you are not sleeping alone."

The Greeks did not ask one aspect of love to carry all the others. Their understanding of "Eros" had six systemic dimensions:

1. Ludens - love's playfulness, teasing, and humor

2. Erotic Attraction - sexual attractiveness and desire to have physical union

3. Mania - obsessiveness, falling in love, romance

4. Pragma - sensible arrangement in view of family, life, home and community

5. Philia - friendship, soulmates

6. Agape - altruism, selfishness, sacrifice

"Mature sexuality is not simply about finding a lover or even finding a friend, its about overcoming separateness by giving life and blessing it. Its about giving oneself over to community, friendship, family, service, creativity, humor, delight, and martyrdom so that God can help bring life into the world. It is also the pulse to celebrate, to give and to receive delight, to find our way back to the Garden of Eden where we can be naked, shameless, and without worry and work as we make love in the moon light."

Rolheiser explains that..."all these hungers, in their full maturity, culminate in one thing: they make us into co-creators with God. Mothers and fathers, artisans and creators, big brothers and big sisters, nurses, and healers, teachers, and farmers and producers, administrators and community builders....Co-responsible with God for the planet, standing with God and smiling and blessing the world."

Here are four of his fundamental principles that I strive to live by and hope to pass on to the next generation:

1. Sex is sacred and never simply a casual, neutral act, it needs respect and it thus builds the soul as a sacrament and brings God's physical touch to us...conversely if not respected it becomes a perverse thing that begins to disintegrate the soul. In a committed, loving and covenantal relationship sex is sacramental and part of the couples Eucharist. A privileged vehicle of grace. (Casual sex is often destructive of true community, and often of the individual soul as well. It can never be casual, but it is either a sacrament or a destructive act.)

2. Sex by its nature needs to be linked to marriage, monogamy, and a covental commitment that is by definition, all-embracing and permanent. Sex outside of marriage is a schizophrenic act. By its nature it speaks of total giving, total trust, and total commitment. Thus, if real trust, commitment, permanency, and unconditionality are not present within the wider relationship, sex is partly a lie...it pretends to give a gift that it does not really give and it asks for a gift that it can't respectfully reciprocate.

3. Sex has an inner dynamic that, if followed faithfully, will lead its partners to sanctity = God's energy within us...sex leads people to sanctity. Young people initially want sex, yet love creates a new desire, and sexuality demands not just sex but intimacy, exclusivity and commitment as well, leading to marriage and children and how much they change our outlook! Children grow and community expands and adults continue to mature, mellow and ultimately bless...Sex followed in fidelity leads to sanctity. Desire, working through us, if followed faithfully, keeps opening us up further and further to gracious adulthood.

4. Sex requires a healthy chastity - which is not the same thing as celibacy. It doesn't mean that one does not have sex, nor that one is a prude. Chastity is first of all, not even primarily a sexual concept, though, given the power and urgency of sex, faults in chastity are often within the area of sexuality. It has to deal with all experiences - it is about the appropriateness of any experience...ultimately chastity is reverence and sin, all sin, is irreverence. To be chaste is to experience people, things, places, entertainment, the phase of our lives, and sex in a way that does not violate them or ourselves. To be chaste is to experience things reverently, in such a way that the experience leaves both them and ourselves more, not less, integrated. Conversely, we lack chastity when we cross boundaries prematurely or irrevently, when we violate anything and somehow reduce what is. Sex, because it is such a powerful fire always needs the protection of chastity.

Amen....enjoy the challenge!

O'

Adapted from Ronald Rolheiser's great book - The Holy Longing.

Ten Great Ways to Kill Your Church Staff - or just about any staff for that matter!

For those leaders who want to keep and develop talented colleagues, here are the 10 most common ways to accidentally eat them alive - and how to avoid becoming sharks. (For those leaders who want to get rid of troubling staff members, this is certainly the way to do it.)

1. Demand perfection and conformity: If you are an insecure leader you will tend to demand unrealistic expectations. Secure leaders seek out competent staff and free them to work toward their potential. Leaders can learn from them and even be challenged by them as they become vocational colleagues.

2. Overfunction and of course micromanage: Insecure leaders tend to be willful, lacking the ability to respect and establish appropriate boundaries. They take responsibility for what is not theirs and foster overfunctioning, herding and groupthink by offloading their anxiety on others and imposing it on their staff. Effective leaders treat their staff like professionals and encourage them to function at higher levels of maturity.

3. Play the game of 'divide and conquer': Ineffective leaders don't develop their staff into a team of colleagues. Instead, fearful of losing control or influence they participate in reactive secrecy, sharing information with some while purposefully withholding it from others. This results in staff member confusion and the perpetual staking out of territory. Good leaders understand that specialization doesn't have to result in compartmentalization. They encourage teamwork by developing a culture of trust through integrity.

4. Neglect a theology of calling: A key question is, "Does the church call the staff, or does the pastor "hire" the staff?" Answered one way it looks like the staff "belongs to the pastor." Answered the other way, it reframes the relationship between the congregation and staff. Mature pastors foster a theology of vocation and allow the congregation to participate in the call of staff. They also allow the staff and congregation freedom to work out these relationships.

5. Don't plan the corporate worship service together: A great way to isolate staff and fail at cultivating a shared culture is to not have a weekly worship planning time together. Staff members' participation in leading worship also validates their vocation in the eyes of the congregation. The benefits of doing so include - spending significant time together, cultivating a shared corporate theology of worship, opportunities for prayer, reflection, confession, while tapping into the various talents and expertise that each staff member can contribute. All this helps develop a diverse culture of shared values and perspectives.

6. Maintain a dysfunctional personnel committee: Ineffective leaders often don't spend enough time developing this type of committee into an asset for the staff and congregation. Smart leaders cultivate healthy congregational resources and a high functioning personnel committee encourages everyone to aim for higher standards across the board.

7. Try to make staff members responsible for other people's functioning: Take this as a sure sign of fear and reactive behavior when the pastor/leader insists on making staff members responsible for the behavior of others. (a youth leader held accountable for the actions of the church youth, or a church educator pressured to increase the numbers attending classes). Effective leaders encourage staff to be good stewards, but don't hold them accountable for the decisions or behavior of others.

8. Lower expectations and standards: Ineffective leaders settle for less. Wise leaders cultivate the perspective that their congregations deserve top quality staff. There is no good reason to settle for mediocrity, and in doing so you will actually lose the best people first. Effective leaders choose personal maturity over experience and invest in the long-term. (It takes several years to get to the top of your game and a string of short-termed staff tenures get the congregation nowhere.)

9. Neglect your own spirituality: Leaders can only enhance the spirituality of the staff and congregation to the extent that they are growing and maturing spiritually themselves. Staff knows when the leader is not studying, not spiritually centered and when they are not feeding themselves.

10. Don't invest in your staff's professional development: Effective leaders are intentional in cultivating their staff by providing vision, providing the necessary budget for individual development, providing a sabbatical leave program and by nurturing a learning environment that encourages and challenges everyone.

Finally, here are a few reminders (by church staff members) of ways that leaders can keep a good staff:

• provide challenge, vision, courage and a spirit of mutual accountability
• stimulate an environment of theological reflection throughout the staff
• become an enabler - helping your staff live into their vocational callings
• be a team leader and team player, living out your own calling to provide vision accompanied by appropriate action
• be a true servant leader and model redemptive relationships
• be an effective educator and keen learner, investing in the future and encouraging your staff to do likewise
• support your staff and value their input while inspiring and encouraging their vocational activities
• have a pastoral spirit toward the staff as they are true colleagues and not mere "hires"
• protect and champion the staff from the willful and destructive members in the congregation (be less fearful about losing a few troubling church members than about losing good staff)
• never ask the staff to do things you as a leader are not willing to do yourself
• never, ever, take credit for their work!!!!!

Adapted from Israel Galindo and his great book Perspectives on Congregational Leadership - Applying systems thinking for effective leadership

Enjoy the challenge,

O'

Peace be with you......

http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7747137/

Cheers,

O'

I and Thou.......A lack of clarity is indispensable !

I suppose it is by no accident that I just dusted off my tattered copy of I and Thou by Martin Buber (translated by Walter Kaufmann) and reread these words:

"At that time I wrote what I wrote under the spell of an irresistible enthusiasm. And the inspirations of such enthusiasm one may not change any more, not even for the sake of exactness. For one-can only estimate what one would gain, but not what would be lost."

I find it ironic that this is the beginning of the Jewish holiday of Chanukah - that eight-day festival of light celebrating the triumph of light over darkness, of purity over adulteration, of spirituality over materiality. (It almost sounds like another exuberant Celtic holiday channeled by Holy lunar gravitas.)

I admit that I have never knowingly celebrated Chanukah, but will certainly do so beginning tonight.

Apparently more than 21 centuries ago, the Holy Land was ruled by the Seleucids (Syrian-Greeks ?) who were forcefully Hellenizing the tribe of Israel. And of course, against all odds the Jewish rag tag army defeated one of the strongest armies on earth at the time. They drove the Greeks out, reclaiming the Temple in Jerusalem and once again dedicating it to G-d.

With only a single days supply of olive oil they were miraculously able to light the Temple's candelabrum for eight days, until more sacred oil could be ritually prepared. And of course the rest is history - to commemorate this miracle the wise men instituted the festival of Chanukah.

Let me get back to Buber for a moment. He too, wrestled with a desire to get back to the roots of Judaism - back beyond the roots of Christianity. Away from the subversive Greeks.

The Greeks were profoundly visual people, glorified in visual arts. The Hebrews at the other end of the continuum entertained a strict prohibition against the visual arts. The Greeks visualized their gods in marble and intricate vase paintings. The Hebrews expressly forbade these types of images as their G-d was not to be seen.

Rather He was to be heard and obeyed. He wasn't an It but an I - or a You.

Post-modern Christians also attempt to get back to a pre-Hellenistic primal Christianity. The problem is that there never was a pre-Hellenistic Christianity. The Christian faith was nursed in Hellenism for over three centuries.

Paul was a Hellenistic Jew and wrote in Greek. The gospels were also written in Greek probably sometime after Paul's epistles. Although Christianity didn't deny its roots in Judaism, it was "born of the denial that God could not possibly be seen." And as Walter Kaufmann goes on to remind us..."Christians were those who believed that God could become visible, an object of sight and experience, of knowledge and belief."

Christianity and Judaism both emphasize trust and confidence in G-d. Christian faith however, seemed to always land in the Greek territory of very specific articles of faith that had to be believed. This naturally led to ongoing disputes about what had to believed by those wanting to be saved.

As the Reformation shied away from visual images, it came to rely more firmly on the purity of doctrines that led to salvation. This eventually led to bloodbaths and further divisions as each group of splintering Protestants believed they had a corner on the particular truth necessary for salvation

Buber highlights the Jewish doctrine which holds that people can at any time return to God and be forgiven. Judaism stresses the action, the repentance, not merely the state of mind or intellectual belief in forgiveness.

Thus, the book of Jonah is read aloud on the highest Jewish holiday every year. Remember that Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrians who conquered Israel. How could God ever forgive them without demanding some conversion? "When God saw what they did, how they returned from their evil way, God repented of the evil that he had said he would do to them and did it not."

The 'return' has always been at the center of Judaism. For Buber, man stands in a direct relationship with G-d and he is not focused on what we believe as much as how we believe what we believe.

In Kaufmann's translation of I and Thou he states that, "Among the most important things that one can learn from Buber is how to read.....we must learn to feel addressed by a book, by the human being behind it, as if a person spoke directly to us. A good book or essay or poem is not primarily an object to be put to use, or an object of experience: it is the voice of You speaking to me, requiring a response."

I close with some Buber passages that encourage a return to G-d, a true Jewish celebration of faith indeed. Amen. Enjoy the challenge!

_____________

"The I of the basic word I-It, the I that is not bodily confronted by a You but surrounded by a multitude of "contents," has only a past and no present. In other words: insofar as a human being makes do with the things that he experiences and uses, he lives in the past, and his moment has no presence. He has nothing but objects; but objects consist in having been.

Presence is not what is evanescent and passes but what confronts us, waiting and enduring. And the object is not duration but standing still, ceasing, breaking off, becoming rigid, standing out, the lack of relation, the lack of presence. What is essential is lived in the present, objects in the past."

______________

"Feelings accompany the metaphysical and metapsychical fact of love, but they do not constitute it; and the feelings that accompany it can be very different. Jesus' feeling for the possessed man is different from his feeling for the beloved disciple; but the love is one. Feelings one "has"; love occurs. Feelings dwell in man, but man dwells in his love. This is no metaphor but actuality: love does not cling to an I, as if the You were merely its "content" or object: it is between I and You.

Love is responsibility of an I for a You: in this consists what cannot consist in any feeling - the equality of all lovers, for the smallest to the greatest and from the blissfully secure whose life is circumscribed by the life of one beloved human being to him that is nailed his life long to the cross of the world, capable of what is immense and bold enough to risk it: to love man."

_________________

"Relation is reciprocity. My You acts on me as I act on it. Our students teach us, our works form us. The "wicked" become a revelation when they are touched by the sacred basic word. How are we educated by children, by animals! Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity."

_________________

"Hatred remains blind by its very nature; one can hate only part of a being. Whoever sees a whole being and must reject it, is no longer in the dominion of hatred but in the human limitation of the capacity to say You. It does happen to men that a human being confronts them and they are unable to address him with the basic word that always involves an affirmation of the being one addresses, and then they have to reject either the other person or themselves: when entering-into-relationship comes to this barrier, it recognizes its own relativity which disappears only when this barrier is removed. Yet whoever hates directly is closer to a relation than those who are without love and hate."

___________________

"Man becomes an I through a You. What confronts us comes and vanishes, relational events take shape and scatter, and through these changes crystallizes, more and more each time, the consciousness of the constant partner, the I-consciousness. To be sure, for a long time it appears only woven into the relation to a You, discernible as that which reaches for but is not a You; but it comes closer and closer to the bursting point until one day the bonds are broken and the I confronts its detached self for a moment like a You - and then it takes possession of itself and henceforth enters into relations in full consciousness."

___________________

Tonight I am going to light one candle and enjoy Chanukah and the celebratory Jewish traditions of eating foods friend in oil, topped off with sufganiot (doughnuts).

Cheers,

O'

"Here we go.....again!" The 96th Thesis

This is not our attempt to re-create the Reformation.

"There are those who seem to wish to do so. They long for a Restoration. They would recover the old Confessions; constitute a catechism; rewrite the Tablets, even revert to sixteenth-century architecture.

Idolatry is not essentially the worship of a statue (in Iona or anywhere else!) Idolatry is essentially the worship of a static God....Our God is a God that moves. The paradox of his changelessness is that He is in constant motion. The sixteenth-century Reformers knew this. One of their mottos was 'A Reformed Church is forever to be reformed'. Thus to be true to them is to be imbued with the same Spirit that informed them. It is, like them, to be concerned only with how to make God living and relevant to one's own age." George MacLeod Founder of the IONA Community

MacLeod argued that most reforms had come, not because the Church had initiated them, but because of inexorable pressure from outside, and that it was more fruitful to look at the contemporary environment to see what it is saying to the Church than to look at the Reformers' insights and to try and recover them.

It is in this same Celtic spirit of Iona, that I post Brian D. McLaren's 96th Thesis (actually composed of 10 questions.)

Ten Questions to stimulate response: Preparations for the journey ahead.

1. Narrative question: What is the overarching story line of the Bible?

2. Authority question: How should the Bible be understood?

3. God question: Is God violent?

4. Jesus question: Who is Jesus and why is he important?

5. Gospel question: What is the gospel?

6. Church question: What do we do about the church?

7. Sex Question: Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting?

8. Future question: Can we find a better way of viewing the future?

9. Pluralism question: How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions?

10. What-do-we-do-now question: How can we translate our quest into action?

Remember that responses are not answers, which tend to end conversations even before they begin. Responses seek to stimulate more conversation and get the ball rolling.

To actually begin the journey, we need to address the short comings of where we actually find ourselves today and join him in confessing them to the watching world. Once again McLaren leads the way:

We acknowledge that we have made a mess of what Jesus started.

We choose not to defend what we have done and what we have become.

We understand that many good Christians will not want to participate in our quest, and we welcome their charitable critique.

We acknowledge that we have created many Christianities up to this point, and they call for reassessment, and, in many cases, repentance.

We choose to seek a better path into the future than the one we have been on.

We desire to be born again as disciples of Jesus Christ.

We pray that God will create something new and beautiful in and among us for the good of all creation and to the glory of the living God.

We need to evoke new ways of being, and being with one another. A new inner ecology, a spirituality of inner transformation via community, a growing and expanding network of connectivity. A people of "orthopathy" with distinct orientations of the blossoming fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Orthodoxy: good thinking

Orthopathy: good being

Ortho-affinity: good relating

All three must interact and express themselves through Orthopraxy: good work and practice in the world, the creation God made, loves and will never abandon or betray.

We express our dependence on the gracious Holy Spirit, from whom we receive life and every good thing, in whom we live, move and have our being, and toward whom we move in our journey through this life.

We embark on our quest, launched by prayer.......

Amen,

O'

Adapted from A New Kind of Christianity by Brian D. McLaren

Postmodern Transition...Between Something Real and Something Wrong!

Here we go again! Brian D. McLaren has posted the 96th Thesis and rejoined Martin Luther's invitation for a new discussion. As you recall Luther nailed a document to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany back in 1517 and his 95 provocative statements rocked the Middle Ages.

"Out of love for the truth and the desire to bring it to light, the following propositions will be discussed at Wittenberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology.... Wherefore he requests that those who are unable to be present and debate orally with us, may do so by letter."

McLaren begins his book A New Kind of Christianity describing his motivation..."Morning after morning I woke up in the brutal tension between something real and something wrong in Christian faith. The sense of something real kept me in ministry and in Christian faith; the sense of something wrong kept me looking for a way out. Somehow, by the grace of God, I held on to the something real long enough to begin to figure out what that something wrong might be. And eventually I began to get some sense of what to do to disentangle the one from the other, to hold on to the something real and let the other go."

With his spirituality intact he began to see that faith can transcend mere beliefs and what emerged was more a new way of believing rather than a rebuilt systems of beliefs.

He goes on to explain what he calls the "postmodern transition" from modernity where nearly all our Protestant denominations derived their institutional ethos in the first place: the mechanical universe of Sir Isaac Newton, the conquistadors, colonialism, the Enlightenment, nationalism and capitalism. In other words, our ancient Christian faith had been hijacked by a paradigm, framework or worldview shaped overwhelmingly by absolute scientific laws, consumerist individualism and rational certainty.

On the future side of the equation we have transitioned into a new postmodern realm of pluralism, relativism, globalism and ambiguity. Both modern Protestant branches of liberalism and conservatism were lost in the transition and in translation. McLaren states that both forms of modernist Christian faith were clueless in knowing and understanding the nonmodern and postmodern people outside their sanctuaries.

Roman Catholics were no better off and equally unable to evolve from their own medieval paradigms. They joined their Protestant brethren and made a similar bipolar adjustment, splintering into left/liberal and right/conservative parties that reacted to one another, while losing sight of the changing world outside their gated communities.

Harvey Cox, a Harvard Divinity School theologian speaks of the first era of Christianity (from Jesus through 300 CE) as the Age of Faith characterized by rapid growth, diversity, vitality, persecution, and courage. And that era ended under Roman emperor Constantine and the state alliance of Christianity with his Roman Empire. The unity of the church (and state) were promoted with creeds helping enforce submission to the emperor's regime.

This Greco-Romanization of faith codified belief as a tool of social control and the original catalytic faith of orthodox Judeo-Christianity and its three centuries of social transformation were effectively muted and diluted.

"Paradigms and dogma can be defended and enforced with guns and prisons, bullets and bonfires, threats and humiliations, fatwas and excommunications. But paradigms and dogma remain profoundly vulnerable when anomalies are present. They can be undone by something as simple as a question - a question about the divine right of kings, the origin of species, the relations between matter and energy, how races can and should relate to one another, the motion of planets, and the standard operating procedures used by the church."

Exactly my point! Perhaps it's time for another tipping point, another radical transformation, from"Here I stand!" to "Here we go again!" Not towards a new set of beliefs, but entirely fresh new ways of believing. In honor of Martin Luther, McLaren's 96th thesis is intended to generate new questions that inspire new conversations and ultimately launch believer's on a new quest.

"It is time for a new quest, launched by new questions, a quest across denominations around the world, a quest for new ways to believe and new ways to live and serve faithfully in the way of Jesus, a quest for a new kind of Christian faith." A New Kind Of Christianity by Brian D. McLaren

Stay tuned for the next blog highlighting his Ten Questions to stimulate responses: Preparations for the journey ahead.

Cheers, and enjoy the challenge! O'

Open Hand September Events - Say 'Yes' more than 'No'

September 3 - Friday Morning Prayer Liturgy: 7:00am - Rod's Hospitality Suite, 124 E. 32nd Street - The Van Gogh House (Every Friday Morning - 7:00am)

September 7 & September 21 - Tuesday evenings combined men's and women's prayer: those with kids figure it out! Locations to be announced. (Several women have requested that we do this at least once monthly....)

September 12 - Open Hand Worship: Sunday evening, Reynolds Home 5:45pm, baby sitting provided.

September 17 - Curb Your Anxiety Friday: Pizza, refreshments - and dialogue on the Reynolds front porch - 6:00-8:00pm

September 26 - Open Hand Gathering: Pitch-in feast at Kath and Derek Powell's home - bring a dish, and a date, or a friend - 5:30pm

Let me know if we have other announcements to post......cheers, O'

What they didn't teach us in Sunday School...

What we all learned in Sunday School......

A New Kind of Christianity

Two of my favorite people in the world: Elisabeth Harnes and Josh Kupke. I have learned much from these two loyal friends over the past decade and they have consistently challenged my thinking and encouraged my faith or perhaps I could say they encouraged my imagination and challenged my behavior. Either way they have been wonderful allies, deeply embedded in my life and the DNA of our Open Hand community.

The fellowship we enjoy together reminds me of what Brian D. McLaren talks about in the opening chapter of his recent book A New Kind of Christianity. "Responses, please remember, are not answers: the latter seek to end conversation while the former seek to stimulate more of it....their primary goal is to start the interplay, to get things rolling, to invite your reply. Remember our goal is not debate and division yielding hate or a new state, but rather questioning that leads to conversation and friendship on a new quest."

In 1620 a group of pilgrims set out to embark on a quest from Holland to the New World in hopes of creating a faith community where they could live in honesty, openness and freedom.

Just before they boarded the vessel called Mayflower, their pastor had one last message of hope: "I charge you before God and his blessed angels that you follow me no further than you have seen me follow Christ. If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of His, be as ready to receive it as you were to receive any truth from my ministry, for I am verily persuaded the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word."

"The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw. Whatever part of His will our God has revealed to Calvin, they (Lutherans) will rather die than embrace it; and the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God, who yet saw not all things. This is a misery much to be lamented. For though they were precious shining lights in their time, yet God has not revealed his whole will to them. And were they now living, they would be as ready and willing to embrace further light, as they had received."

Much like these early pilgrims, our Open Hand community is on a quest, knowing that we have not yet seen "all things." Thank God there is "further light" to be discovered and more of Gods's will to be revealed as we "go beyond' our current understandings. For surely the Lord has more truth and light yet to break forth from His holy word.

Thanks Elisabeth and Josh for joining with me and our Open Hand community on our journey of faith over the past decade. You are both excellent traveling companions and I can't think of two more courageous mates that I would rather sail with. Climb the masts and tell us all what you see ahead......

Cheers and blessings,

O'Captain Steven

Curb Your Anxiety Friday the 20th with Kit Danley from Neighborhood Ministries

Please join our Open Hand community at 5:30pm on Friday the 20th (Reynolds front porch) for a dialogue with Kit Danley from Neighborhood Ministries in Phoenix, Arizona. Pizza and drinks will be provided as we interact with Kit.

Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes

Western scientific mentality steers us in the direction to deny the status of 'fact' (and therefore of truth) to anything not demonstrable by repeatable verification.

What if I say that on November 22, 1963...."A man with a rifle from a warehouse window shot and killed another man in a passing car." Every word is true (assuming we accept the Warren Commission finding), but how plain and meager the facts are. But take it further and say.."The President of the United States was assassinated." This is more fully factual because the victim is identified, the murder is stated as political and the overall perspective is truer.

Lets take it a step further and say that..."Men everywhere felt that they had looked into the abyss of evil and people wept in the streets." This actually tugs at the heart and is truer in a different way. It presupposes the other statements, and goes beyond them to describe more clearly the horrible nature of what happened.

Now look at the Gospels and the New Testament in the light of the above statements. They are much more like the third statement, involving more of the heart and soul in a confession of shared meaning - tied to history and to event.

That's how it is with Jesus - no neutrality, mere records or empty chronology. Rather a living participation and heart felt entanglement. For Jesus' story can't be described without a fuller telling involving heart, mind and soul.

Christian faith is fact, not mere telling of history, but poetry, not simple expressed imagination. Like the arched bridge that grows stronger with the weight placed upon it, so the story of the Gospels, bear up with reassuring strength, under the devotion of the centuries to Jesus the Messiah.

"What is music, asked Walt Whitman, but what awakens within you when you listen to the instruments? And Jesus is the music of the reality of God, and faith is what awakens when we hearken." Amen.

Wow, overlooked contributions from the Middle Eastern Christian perspective that have rarely been exposed to those outside the Arabic-speaking Christian world are readily available, texts that have inspired the faithful for nearly two millennia.

The idea that early Christianity was limited to Greek and Latin expressions has distorted historical reality and weakened our understanding of the roots of Christian theology and spirituality. During the 3rd and 4th centuries Syriac was the third international language of the church.

Middle Eastern Christians are the forgotten faithful, much like the Celtic Christian tribes dating back to the early Galatians and other Celt's scattered in Briton and Ireland.

We have so much to learn from our brothers and sisters in the Middle East and the wonderful book Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes by Kenneth E. Bailey is a a great starting point.

Cheers,

O'

The Bible as a Sacred Cultural & Community Library

Once again I have been greatly encouraged by Brian D. McLaren as he wrestles out loud with the authority question about how the bible should be understood. In his latest book A New Kind of Christianity - Ten Questions That Are Transforming The Faith he reminds us that we need a new approach to the Bible, ...."because we've gotten ourselves into a mess with the Bible."

From the Protestant Reformation forward, we in the Western Church inherited the slogan sola scriptura - "Scripture alone in enough!" That has now spawned over 27,000 different Christian denominations full of smart, articulate and well-meaning folks who find countless curious and unique ways to interpret the Bible over time.

McLaren asks the obvious question, "Enough for what purpose?" He goes on to answer his own question. "Enough to justify thousands of splits and to inspire centuries of bitter competition! Enough to keep preachers and theologians and writers in business for centuries? Yes, ....but that is not what the Bible is for."

What if the Bible is truly inspired by God, and yet it wasn't meant to stifle conversation but instead as McLaren states was..."intended to stimulate conversation, to keep people thinking and talking and arguing and seeking, across continents and centuries, then it has succeeded and is succeeding in a truly remarkable way."

Could it be that God's Word, God's speaking and self-revealing takes place between people in relationship, in community over time as we are invited to be part of an ancient and ongoing conversation that has the power to transform and disarm us....."rather than arm us with "truths" to use like weapons to savage other human beings?"

Perhaps the Bible was never intended to give us all the answers and short cuts to truth, but rather to guide us into a more intentional posture of humility, awe, respect and even rebuke and insignificance in the face of the mysterious and unknown?

If we consider the Bible as more of a sacred community library..."the record of a vibrant conversation, and a stimulus to ongoing conversation, it is beautiful, I'd say." The same creative Holy Spirit we read about in Genesis, calling forth life from chaos and darkness....."is the same Spirit running like a current through the characters of Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, Elihu, and God. And we might add, this is the same Spirit evoking the text from the chaos of human writers in a vigorous culture. And this is the same Spirit hovering over us now, running like a current through us today, at this moment, evoking understanding as we seek to understand, to know, to learn, drawing us like an orchestral conductor into the holy conversation and symphony of the sacred Scriptures. And this is the same Spirit by whom Jesus is conceived, filled, and empowered..."

So from this perspective perhaps the Bible is enough - as a sacred cultural and community library to help us encounter the living God. "As the portable library of an ongoing conversation about and with the living God, and as an entree into that conversation so that we actually encounter and experience the living God - for that the Bible is more than enough."

As McLaren goes on to point out, this approach is beyond both liberal and conservative dogma. "The Bible they want to put us "under" tends to be the Bible as they have interpreted it, which unsurprisingly means we are actually under their authority as they stand over us with Bible in hand."

He closes this chapter with his hope: "...that this approach will not try to put us under the text, as conservatives tend to do, or lift us over it, as liberals often seem to do. Instead, I hope it will try to put us in the text - in the conversation, in the story, in the current and flow, in the predicament, in the Spirit, in the community of people who keep bumping into the living God in the midst of their experiences of loving God, betraying God, losing God, and being found again by God. In this way, by placing us in the text, I hope this approach can help us enter and abide in the presence, love, and reverence of the living God all the days of our lives and in God's mission as humble, wholehearted servants day by day and moment by moment. Even now."

AMEN!

Cheers, O'

The Sex Question

I am currently reading A New Kind of Christianity - Ten Questions That Are Transforming The Faith by Brian D. McLaren. I must admit that it is a much better book than I suspected.

Starting from the back of the book and reading Chapter 22 first - Conclusion: A New Kind of Christianity, gave me the motivation to plow ahead reading from back to front each chapter in descending order. (This has been a useful practice that helps me determine whether or not to actually begin reading an entire book.)

Chapter 17 is entitled: Can We Find a Way to Address Human Sexuality Without Fighting About It?

The chapter begins with this admission from Brian:

"I don't want to be closed-minded or judgmental, but in good conscience I simply can't approve of the lifestyle. I believe it's a choice, although upbringing and genetics may have a role. Freedom has limits - one limit being where others are hurt by a chosen lifestyle. And this lifestyle, there can be no mistake, is hurting a lot of people. Families are being torn apart by it, and churches too. There is absolutely no question about God's opinion on this lifestyle if we begin with the Bible. This orientation and the behaviors associated with it are thoroughly condemned by Jesus. He was compassionate toward all kinds of people, but he had an absolute and uncompromising commitment to confront and expose one group: those who dishonor themselves and others by engaging in this lifestyle and its practices.

When people choose this lifestyle, they often cut themselves off from everyone who doesn't agree with them. They end up being assimilated and absorbed in closed communities where only their own voices and views are heard, and everyone who disagrees is mocked and condemned, often with very strong language. Some, after giving themselves over completely to the lifestyle, have a crisis of conscience. But when they want to leave, their leaders and peers depict their changing perspective as a betrayal, and pressure them to stay, often using fear tactics to intimidate them and keep them in their gated community. Special ministries have formed to help people exit the lifestyle, recover from the abuse and pain the community has been known to impose, and be reoriented to a healthier life and perspective. But even with professional therapy, many people feel they have been wounded for life by their years in this lifestyle.

Advocates of this lifestyle are eager to recruit others into their "love," as they call it. Through various organizations, they raise huge sums of money to recruit youth and children into their chosen way of life, and they have been extremely adept at using media - radio, TV, and now the Internet - to gain an aura of credibility and legitimacy. They organize huge and mass rallies to celebrate their growing clout and demonstrate that they are proud of who they are and what they stand for. Everyone knows how much influence they have in our political system, and how one political party in particular panders for their votes.

Yes, activists may use the word "love" to justify their behavior, but those who disagree with them are seldom treated with love."

As you may have guessed by now, Brian is speaking of what he terms fundasexuality. This neologism describes a very reactive, confrontative form of religious fundamentalism that is preoccupied with sex. It refers to that boisterous and righteously angry crowd which tends to dominate conservative branches of religion while declaring war on any who differ.

Fundasexuality is essentially an anxious orientation, less rooted in faith, and more in fear. A fear of new ideas, of new ways of processing life and of heterophobia - a fear of people who are different.

Sociology teaches us that groups often need a scapegoat to project their anxiety upon. They can manage without a god, but often need a devil or someone identified as an evil threat to rally the troops around. Groups in the majority are fond of projecting their fears and anxieties on smaller minority groups and gay people makeup between 3 and 10 percent of each society. Just the right size to be the brunt of many self-righteous blame throwers.

McLaren goes on to point out that our current cultural preoccupation with sexuality is a symptom of a much larger and growing dissatisfaction with inherited frameworks and stock answers to the basic questions he addresses in this book.

In Book One he highlights 1. The Narrative Question, 2. The Authority Question, 3. The God Question, 4. The Jesus Question, and 5. The Gospel Question. In Book Two he highlights 6. The Church Question, 7. The Sex Question, 8. The Future Question, 9. The Pluralism Question and finally, 10. The What-Do-We-Do-Now Question.

If this is not enough to make you interested in reading his new book, listen to how he starts the chapter titled The Church Question: What Do We Do About the Church?

"Many if not most of our churches are perfectly designed and well equipped to promote and support the five paradigms we have questioned so far: the Greco-Roman narrative, the constitutional approach to the Bible, a vision of a tribal and violent God, a rather flattened view of Jesus, and a domesticated understanding of the gospel. When we unlock the gates of those paradigms and begin to emerge into new territory, we find this question waiting for us: What do we do about the church?

I would recommend you get a copy of this thought provoking book by McLaren, but be prepared for angry rock throwing antagonists that might want to take off your head with a well placed stone.

What did Stephen say when he was dying?

O'

George MacLeod and the Iona Community

There are some faithful Christians today that are seeking to re-create the Reformation of the 16th century.

George MacLeod - Founder of the Iona Community, reminds us that many Christians...

".....long for a Restoration. They would recover the old Confessions; reinstitute a catechism; rewrite the Tablets, even revert to sixteenth-century architecture. But such a re-creation, superficially laudable is, in fact, idolatry. Idolatry is not essentially the worship of a statue (in Iona or anywhere else!) Idolatry is essentially the worship of a static God....Our God is a God that moves. The paradox of his changelessness is that He is in constant motion. The sixteenth-century Reformers knew this. One of their motto's was 'A Reformed Church is forever to be reformed.' Thus, to be true to them is to be imbued with the same Spirit that informed them. It is, like them, to be concerned only with how to make God living and relevant to one's own age."

Amen, and cheers to Baron George MacLeod of Fuinary (1895-1991)

Orthoparadoxy....hold it, hold it, hold it......!

We may be familiar with the Judeo-Christian emphasis of orthodoxy (right thinking) and orthopraxy (right doing) as vital expressions of our faith, but Pastor and writer Dwight Friesen highlights a third category, orthoparadoxy.

In his book, Intuitive Leadership, Tim Keel describes this as.... "living rightly in the tension and mystery of the mysterious and revealed God of the Scriptures. Doing so requires and invites a radical dependence on the Spirit of God living in and working through his people in creation."

With an ability to hold and contain mounting tension (and a no quick fix approach) we encourage creativity and the limitless possibilities that emerge organically from an adaptive posture. He reminds us that uncomfortable tension is a dominant product of the creative process and necessitates us having an ability to "hold seemingly opposing forces in dynamic relationship without privileging one at the expense of the other or too quickly resolving it."

Too often we simply want to reanimate that which has come before us. Instead of embracing new life (which is often messy) and forming flexible organic structures to support this growth, we rely on traditional command and control formats of stability that seek to resolve our anxiety and tension with all too familiar solutions.

This results in historic organizations with rigid inherited structures trying ever harder and harder to find new life and then squeeze it into hierarchical management chains that merely uphold the status quo.

Creative communities and organizations are now tapping into informal networks and decentralized environments where dialogue and mutual discovery are more highly valued than so called expertise.

Instead of chasing the 'specialization experts' and pigeonholing solutions and staff into linear programing where one size fits all, they tap the collective wisdom of the distributed tribe to promote unique frameworks, encouraging these emerging expressions of new life.

One size does not fit all.......Amen.

O'

Intuitive Leadership - Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor & Chaos by Tim Keel

HOW (NOT) TO SPEAK OF GOD by Peter Rollins

If you haven't yet read How (Not) To Speak of God, I would challenge you to pick up a copy today and dive in. Peter is one of the new leaders forging an orthodox Christian theology within a postmodern context. He has woven a complex tapestry of emerging patterns from his profound knowledge of postmodern philosophical scholarship and his equally insightful perspectives of orthodox Judeo-Christian faith.

From the Hebrew prophets to the great Christian mystics, Peter combines his perspectives through the contrasting lens of his Pentecostal/Evangelical experiences as a disciple of Jesus.

He is a leading voice in the 'emergent conversation' and firing the imagination of a whole new generation of faithful scholars and theologians that are learning to speak of God meaningfully in the context of post-modernity.

Get in on the conversation and enjoy the challenge of what God is doing right here, right now, and all across the world. Amen. You can find Peter at http://peterrollins.net/.

Cheers,

O'

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall......

"If a man says, "Humpty Dumpty is falling," you see at once that this is not a complete story. The bit you have been told implies both a later chapter in which Humpty Dumpty will have reached the ground, and an earlier chapter in which he was still seated on the wall. A Nature which is "running down" cannot be the whole story. A clock can't run down unless it has been wound up. Humpty Dumpty can't fall off a wall which never existed. If a Nature which disintegrates order were the whole of reality, where would she find any order to disintegrate? Thus on any view there must have been a time when processes the reverse of those we now see were going on: a time of winding up. The Christian claim is that those days are not gone for ever. Humpty Dumpty is going to be replaced on the wall - at least in the sense that what has died is going to recover life, probably in the sense that the inorganic universe is going to be re-ordered. Either Humpty Dumpty will never reach the ground (being caught in mid-fall by the everlasting arms) or else when he reaches it he will be put together again and replaced on a new and better wall. Admittedly, science discerns no "Kings horses and men" who can put Humpty Dumpty together again. But you would not expect her to. She is based on observation: and all our observations are observations of Humpty Dumpty in mid-air. They do not reach either the wall above or the ground below - much less the King with His horses and men hastening towards the spot. The Transfiguration or "Metamorphosis" of Jesus is also no doubt, an anticipatory glimpse of something to come." Amen, O'

C.S. Lewis MIRACLES