Ron Cole : unplugged, unorthodox, heretic

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 )

Coexist: Interfaith/Inter-denominational projects...The Rainbow Kitchen

                                                          

"I'm not a champion of interfaith dialog. I think most interfaith dialog is a waste of time, because you just sit in a room and talk. You're probably not going to convince a Muslim to change his views, and he's probably not going to convince you to change your views about Christ. I am interested in interfaith projects. Can we work together on issues that apply to humanity like caring for the sick, assisting the poor, educating the next generation, ending corruption, and promoting reconciliation? I don't have to agree with you and you don't have to agree with me on everything, but I'm not insisting that you compromise your beliefs."

~ Rick Warren from Q & A: Rick Warren

I don't agree totally with Mr. Warren around the issue of interfaith dialog, I think it very important. I've often thought about the familial tree that the big three faiths have grown out of, all voice Abraham as the father of their faith. From this trunk of the tree arise the limbs of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. So from our past, there is this common point of divergence...this point of dysfunction in the family tree that know one wants to talk about. It's like going to a crazy family reunion and seeing how different we look to one another, but no one wanting to admit we're related.

Dysfunction, limbs, branches, broken branches and grafts all seem to be normal in the life cycles of family trees. In all faith stories, this appears to be a reality. This transcendent God, creator and writer of this divine plan, who is in all and knows all, must have foreseen this point of family dysfunction. We are left to grapple with it's profound mystery. But just as we avoid the dysfunctional members of our own personal families...we avoid each other as a family of faiths.

Even within our own faith lineages more dysfunction arises...denominations, sects...each feeling in someway it better, more functional from which it grew out of. Imagine what we would like, the reality is more dysfunction, more misunderstanding.

So I believe interfaith conversation important. To avoid each other, is to misunderstand each other, and out of that arises fear.

We need to hear each others stories of compassion, hospitality, redemption and restoration...this maybe the saving grace that brings " function" back to the family of faiths. We can spend alot of time looking for each others faults...or we can look for the golden thread of compassion, and hospitality that is weaved throughout all faith stories. and out of that will grow interfaith cooperatives where we work together to tackle issues that are destroying humanity like social injustices, poverty, homelessness, environmental destruction etc.

                                          

One such initiative of interfaith/inter-denominational cooperation here in Victoria is the " Rainbow Kitchen" which is hosted by St. Saviour's Anglican Church on the corner of Catherine and Henry St. on the border of Victoria and Esquimalt.

The Rainbow Kitchen in Vic West is open five days a week, serving hot & nutritious lunches to those in need of a helping hand. People come to The Rainbow Kitchen to feel supported, included, and to be surrounded by people that genuinely care.

Between 100 and 160 people in Victoria rely on the kitchen daily. Lutheran's and Anglicans working together on Mondays. The Salvation Army and Buddhist's working together on Fridays. There are people scratching around the surface of what faith is, working along long time pilgrims.

Everything flows out of the most common thing that all of humanity shares in...food, and a meal. Everything is filled with grace, compassion and hospitality our conversations flow from that truth, and in the meal we live out that truth.

The kitchen always needs volunteers. If your interested in interfaith/inter-denominational conversation and projects come join in this amazing experience.