the Weary Pilgrim

TONIGHT...Go, bring a friend

Tonight you have an opportunity to help an extremely important ministry in the inner city  of Victoria.

 

the Street Cafe'...redemptive imagination of the Kingdom

On June the 23rd at Cafe' Suburbia, Lambrick Park Community Church, you have a unique opportunity to expand the Kingdom on the city streets of Victoria. Its about local social justice, restoring realtionships, human dignity...and love. Through an evening of dessert, music and art money will be raised to fund this very unique ministry.

                                         Come and bring a friend...or lots of friends

What is the Street Cafe' all about? I'm glad you asked, this from the folks at Lambrick Park Community Church and The Place...

 Street Cafe’s mission has been to feed and love Victoria’s poor and homeless, and this April we celebrated our first birthday! With continued support from Lambrick Park Church and the Mustard Seed, our team of volunteers is consistently serving 100-150 people per month. Street Cafe is a restaurant-style dinner for the needy and homeless in Victoria that happens every second Friday. Each week, cooks from our community prepare two entrees, one of our musicians plays for our guests, and our team acts as waiters and waitresses to serve a meal and specialty coffee drinks, and then many of our guests enjoy a movie after dinner in the sanctuary.

This ministry evolved out of an initial desire to take action on the social justice issues, and it took shape around the goal of creating a ministry unlike any other in the city. The format of Street Cafe focuses on creating an environment in which dignity is restored, relationships can be fostered, and openness and conversation is encouraged. Our motive is not expressly evangelistic; we set out to find a need and meet it, to create a place that is less institutional and more centered on encouraging and blessing each individual that comes through our doors. The overwhelmingly positive response we consistently receive from the people we serve has encouraged us to continue to pursue and improve this ministry.

It has been truly inspiring to see the relationships that have formed between our volunteers and the regulars, as well as the conversations that we have had with passers-by and the help we have been able to give our guests (e.g. food-to-go, blankets, finding a shelter for the night, etc.) We have experienced Victoria’s homeless community to be one filled with friendly faces, hilarious stories, incredible experience and inspiration. While many stories are filled with tragedy and troubles, we have found Street Cafe to be a really positive and uplifting place in which many of those can be at least momentarily put aside. Your continued prayers are a blessing to us: please pray for the homeless community, the ministries throughout the city that reach out to them, and the volunteers who work with them; for Street Cafe, pray for continued strength for our team, continued impact on the community, and God’s hand in all that we do.

Michael Spencer...plumbling the depths of the gospels

Michael Spencer aka The Internet Monk has a great post called, " Ten Guidelines for Interpreting the Gospels."  Here's number 1 as an appetizer to get you hungry for more.

1. Don’t harmonize the Gospels. That’s like taking four paintings and combining them into one. You come up with something no one painted and no one intended to paint. Let each Gospel author be an artist in his own right. However, a Gospel synopsis, such as those available from UBS, are very useful and important in comparing Gospel texts to one another WITHOUT harmonizing them.

small, sustainable communities of formation and mission...

  

Jamie brought this out in a conversation on Resonate recently. Neo-monasticism was and still is a hot topic, as folks are looking at more intentional and sustainable communities. I have a friend in Victoria renting out a house with a few others that are fleshing out what the community will look like...the communal rule, and how they will live missionally in their city space. Another group in Kelowna is doing the same, with it's mission to some 300+ folks living in poverty on the city streets.

Below is how St. Patrick's Church uses priories as communities of formation and mission. Certainly not as strict as the usual monastery image, but offers real possiblities for the idea of new monasticism in urban spaces.

A Priory is a covenanted community under the oversight of a prior that utilizes aspects of monastic spirituality to foster Christian formation and mission.

Priory is a term from the monastic tradition. It denotes a smaller community of monastics that are attached to a larger monastic community.

The characteristics of a Priory are:

Instead of being built primarily around Bible study or the examination of a specific topic, the Priory meets around a shared meal and prayer using the Daily Office.

The Priory is designed to foster Christian friendship with the assumption that in Christian discipleship more is caught than is taught.

The Priory meets twice a month. This is to give enough time for the communities to grow in friendship but allow freedom in one’s schedule for other commitments and especially for friendship with other people inside and outside of church.

Each member makes one year covenant with other community members to attend the meetings of the group and fulfill any other commitments the groups agree to. This covenant is central to the aim of the Priory and will foster and strengthen the bonds of Christian friendship and ignite Christian discipleship.

The Priory intentionally encourages each of the members to commit to and live out the 4 Practices – Saint Patrick’s Rule of Life.

The Priory prays the Daily Office when together, and each member will also pray it daily at home.

Each Priory is led by a person who will not only serve as organizer and facilitator for priory meetings, but will act as a kind of lay pastor seeking to encourage and strengthen each community member in their Christian pilgrimage and help the group grow together into deeper Christian friendship. The group leader is called a Prior.

Each Priory will do common mission to reach out together to non-disciples through hospitality and to serve the surrounding community in concrete

The Rainbow Kitchen...a glimmer of hope amidst poverty

                                                       

                                          

 

In the economic chaos and the increasingly poor job market, it's the marginalized in our cities that seem to fall through the net of protection. The reality in the inner city is alot more people are falling through. We continue to see increasing numbers at the Rainbow Kitchen, and there not all the stereotypical crystal meth addicts. Its a collage of faces living in poverty. It's folks suffering with addiction, or worse the mentally ill with addiction problems, seniors living below the poverty line that can afford accommodation but not food, folks in part time jobs making minimum wage that juggle trying to paying for a room and food, it's single moms with kids.

A friend working at the Mustard Seed Food Bank Warehouse told me last month alone they had an increase of 700 people using there services. The injustice of poverty, homelessness and hunger are growing.

The Rainbow Kitchen about three years ago was feeding about 45 people a day. Monday morning the line stretched down Henry Street around the corner, down Catherine Street to Esquimalt Road, 160 meals were served.

This month we have kids and teachers from Monterey Middle School doing alot of the Monday meal preparation. For most of these kids it was a first to see poverty up close. The set tables, served the food, picked up dirty plates and cutlery. But it was cool to see the kids engage the guests that frequent the kitchen. One young boy dropping of a trolley of dirty plates into the kitchen made the comment, " there like ordinary people." They are ordinary people, wonderful people if you take the time to get to know them. Even just to sit and eat with them and listen to there stories is a privilege, something to be cherished.

What we were was really short of help today, not so much in the meal preparation but the overall clean up at the end. So much so, I had to recruit some of the street folk I've come to know. Kelly, a wonderful young woman  struggling with mental health issues and addiction helped me washing dishes...alot of cutlery feeding a 160. She never complains, is so grateful for what the kitchen does. " We're loved here and treated with dignity", Kelly said.

All the guests of the Rainbow Kitchen express the same sentiments. The Rainbow Kitchen is a ray of hope in the midst of their day. For me it is my favourite day of the week, not because I can puff myself because I'm doing something good. No, it's because I've become apart of this community. I look forward to seeing these people every week, the conversations, the laughter, the tears and the prayers. It is communion in different sense, the reality of brokeness around a meal.

But, the Rainbow Kitchen desperately needs help almost everyday, if you can volunteer even a couple of hours between 10 am to 2 pm, they can use your help.

Please volunteer >>>>> Here

evangelism...plain and simple

“[The early churches] model of evangelism … if you wish the world to believe what you say, you must live as if you believe what you say … Evangelism is not selling Jesus, but showing Jesus; evangelism is not mere telling about Christ, but about being Christ.”

Lee Camp’s Mere Discipleship

homeless...finding home here, and now

This was in my in-basket this morning from a dear friend who has an incredible heart for the marginalized in our society, in comes from the Denver Rescue Center.

As Jesus so clearly put it, the poor are blessed.  The homeless often have the clearest vision of eternal mansions.  Faith in the future is often strongest in those whose earthly situation is most tenuous.  Longing for the fulfillment of heaven comes most naturally to those who suffer the greatest frustration on earth.  In some ways, pity felt for the homeless is wrong-headed, since at least the believing homeless are richly blessed with a faith and hope that some of us will never know.  Perhaps the faithful poor should pity us, whose spiritual life is so easily smothered by the cares of this world, by the deceitfulness of riches, and by the burdens of other concerns of life.

                                   

For all of us who are pilgrims, whether richly blessed in earthly things or not, for all of us who haven't yet reached "home," we know, as surely that Christ has gone before, that there is a "home, sweet home" yet on the horizon.  Let's not get our roots down too deep.  Let's not drop our anchor too heavily.  Let's not put all our eggs in the earthly basket, since that basket will soon be gone.  The home that awaits us will put all earthly mansions to shame.  Let's be worthy of its beauty!

Thought: They are most "homeless" whose eyes are satisfied with earthly mansions.

Prayer suggestion: Lord, please use the Mission and your servants to serve the needy, and use the faith of the needy to teach your servants your mission.

Beautiful, " use the faith of the needy to teach your servants mission." In the last year down at the Seed, The Rainbow Kitchen, and out on the local first nation communities I have been blessed beyond words by those you have so little, those who are oppressed by every social injustice imaginable, addiction and mental illness.

ReJesus...a re-boot to missional practice

                                             

Living in the age we live, we're all familiar with the term " re-boot ". Over time we download, upload, delete and edit things on our computers. Files get fragmented and corrupted and the original operating system ceases to function properly. In a nut shell, that would be the overall premise of Michael Frost's and Alan Hirsch's most recent book, " reJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church. We need to re-boot our operating systems to it's original formulation to the centrality of Jesus.

First glance of the catchy title left me a little apprehensive. In the back of my mind I mused the thought of a quick fix for all post-Christendom's's and the church's problems. Perhaps, like pushing a button, a clever program you cut and paste into your church's context and your fixed, " mission-al accomplished.

Far more than any program, this book will and should the spark the synapses in the mind of your church to see the redemptive imagination of Jesus and His Kingdom.

The book is broken down into seven chapters;

1. How Jesus Changes Everything
2. ReJesus and Personal ReNewal
3. ReJesus fro the Church and Organization
4. I've got a Picture of Jesus
5. The Shema Schema
6. Three, Two, One ...Engage
7. The Church that Jesus Built

Recently, I heard Len Sweet comment that the church suffers from JDD ( Jesus Deficit Disorder ). I believe Frost and Hirsch have done a superb job of tackling the deficit in this book.

It was interesting in that when I was sent the book to review a friend of mine attending seminary over on the mainland was reading ReJesus at the same time. So we enjoyed some great conversation from different perspectives, he from a more academic/ theological view, and me from a more practitioner/ street level view. If your reading this book for a theological grounding into the missional conversation you might find it a little thin. The most theological chapter in the book is chapter five, " The Shema Schema ", which focuses on Christology being the center and starting point into mission. It's only from here ReJesus reveals that we know the Christ-likeness of God. It's only in Jesus, we see God and what His mission is.

This is where my friend complains of the books theological thinness, we've squeezed Jesus ut the context of the bigger story. But Frost and Hirsch have made it clear that part of their motivation is to move away from complex theological propositions and formulas. I like this. I'm growing weary of books on the theology of mission. I's like throwing gasoline on a fire, it rages for awhile with great theological musings and eventually dies down until the fire is fed again. A friend who works the inner city streets, mused recently, " when all is said and done...will we have done anything more than just talk."

Again, I'm talking from a street level perspective, there is a real urgency out side the walls of your local faith communities, especially among the marginalized, the fringe in the inner cities. Jesus made the comment, " the harvest is huge and the workers few." We can wait until all our theology is lined up, and have the scholars affirm its soundness and then move. All I can say is take a walk down to your inner cities, if you listen closely you can here blind Bartimeaus calling from dark, garbage strewn alley. I believe Frost and Hirsch recognize the urgency and have opted for a practitioners approach to mission rather than theological.

In William Cavanaugh's book, The Church as God's Body Language, he says, " People are usually converted into a new way of living by getting to know the people that live that way, and thus see themselves as being able to live that way too. This is the way God's revolution works. The church is meant to be that community of people who make salvation ( Jesus ) visible for the rest of the world. Salvation is not a property of isolated individuals, but is only made visible in mutual love.

ReJesus, is the best book I have read in a long time. If you've been walking along the side lines of the playing field of what missional really is. Maybe be you're a little anxious, a little apprehensive, a little unsure that you don't know the game plan but, you feel Jesus calling you out on to the field. This book is for you.

It is a book for faith communities trying to under stand mission, but more than that, it's for communities courageous enough to put mission into practice. I can not recommend this book enough.

One last thing I loved about the book was the vignettes ( little Jesus' ), stories of people through out history who engaged in Jesus' mission. If your looking for something theological, this might not be it...but, if your interested in the " practice " of faith, Jesus and God's mission, this book will inspire and encourage you. 

From Frost and Hirsch, " As should be obvious by now, we believe that the Christian faith must look to Jesus and must be well founded on him if it is to be authentic. If NASA was even .05 degress off in luanching a rocket to the moon, they would miss the moon by thousands of miles. And in many ways this is the same as it applies to the gospel. Because of the fundamental role Jesus plays in Christian identity, ministry, and mission, we believe it is critical to geth this right and to constantly keep checking. Church history makes it clear that such shifts take place. But these shifts are usually in advertent and take place incrementally as other issues press in and traditions create their own overlay obscuring the core of the faith. Wahtever the process, it results in an insidious change in the resulting religion."

" Therefore we propose that the church should be recalibrated around it's founder, Jesus. But, what would this look like?

" Here is a curious question that will highlite the issue for us: If the church only had the four gospels to go by, what would it look like? Certainly discipleship would be emphasized, as would the prominence on living in and under the Kingdom of God. There would likely be a strong emphasis on uncluttered lifestyle and adventuresome community with lots of love, faithfulness, mercy and justice going around. Would this be an adequate expression of Christianity"

" The renewal of the church in our time is dependent on the renewal of the gospel. And the renewal of the gospel requires the recovery of the centrality of Jesus for faith and thought. We must reJesus our theology as well as our churches."

D. Ritschl in a quote from the book says, " The ultimate problem, which has caused our theological helplessness, lies in the separation between Jesus Christ and the Church."

I think if we're all honest in that separation we will find the " Wild Messiah for a missional church " that Frost and Hirsch write about. We have over time downloaded, uploaded, and deleted this from the original operating system of the church and it's mission. The operating system is corrupt, fragmented and ceases to function properly. Frost and Hirsch have not got a clever program to install into the context of your church. They ask you to re-boot everything back to Jesus. They offer everything Jesus, not quick fix solutions or answers. You might even find you have more questions. But the answer is in the total focus on Jesus. The question is are we courageous enough to reJesus.

What if church... ... ... ???

Churches aren't the first organizations that come to mind when you think about intelligent adoption and incorporation of social media. Nevertheless, many feel that if there was ever an organization in need of modern relevance, the Christian church in America is it.

One denomination, the United Methodist Church, has opted for a boldly redesigned web presence to ask users, "What if church wasn't just a building, but thousands of doors? Each of them opening up to a different concept or experience of church - and a journey that could change our world. Would you come?"

10ThousandDoors.org goes far beyond a Facebook page or Twitter account. It pulls in information scraped from the web to track trending topics, then curates collections of articles on those subjects. It allows users to login using Google Friend Connect. The site gathers social video content about "people making a positive difference in our world," and its GO/DO page uses a Google Earth plugin to get users to make connections between the online and the offline.

A huge thumbs up to the United Methodist Church's response of social media and cultural engagement. Read the whole story here, and thanks to Bob Carlton for pointing it out.

the cross road into pain and suffering...

                                 

It is the suffering already present in the world which we can either ignore or identify with. If pain were not real, if it were not the lot of so many, the way of the cross would be pathological. But in our world with its hungry and homeless and hopeless, it is pathological to live as if pain did not exist. The way of the cross means letting pain carve one’s life into a channel through which the healing stream of the spirit can flow to a world in need.

(Parker Palmer; The Promise of Paradox ) ( image by artist He Qi )