the Weary Pilgrim

(Extra)ordinary vision...

Just so you know I'm still kickin', I thought I would post this part of an e-mail from Fred Peatross:

If the church is going to turn the corner on the consumerist twist it finds itself caught up in, it will do so because leaders involve themselves in building a culture of the ordinary evangelist (a faith-community niche). Jesus’ apprentice is not going to be formed through Sunday morning sermonettes, drama, worship teams, or edifices fit for comfort but through clear, intentional teaching that says evangelism is forged through a process of salvation. And ordinary attempts are the turning points. Now, here’s something you might not know. Every Christian makes ordinary attempts. But Christians need to be made aware:

 

• They need to understand that the process of ordinary is as important as the event of salvation

• They need to understand how significant and important their role is in the process of salvation

• Christ wants them to know! The vision must come alive!

 

Teach it! Practice it! Talk about it every time the community

gathers!

 

It’s time we rally around a niche and there is none more important! Make your Sundays a time for ordinary stories among ordinary Christians! Culture building…until Christ comes back! So…Do we invite the missing to our environment? Or follow Jesus’ mandate to “GO” and walk with them in their environment?

 

Road stories are crucial. Like the early Christians, we need to, once again, become known as people of the way. How?

 

• By walking with and listening more to what the people Jesus misses the most have to say

• Drop the infamous slogan “We hate their sin but love the sinner,” and actually get to know and become a fellow sinner’s best friend

 

If we really desire to reach out to this culture, we’re going to have to become like the spies Joshua sent out and boldly walk across our faith borders and engage the land God wants to give us. It’s time we break out of our Christian circles, stop the busyness of church, face outward, take a look, and experience the world beyond the borders of our community gatherings.

 

subverting the ordinary...

tr.v.   sub·vert·ed, sub·vert·ing, sub·verts

1. To destroy completely; ruin:
2. To undermine the character, morals, or allegiance of; corrupt.
3. To overthrow completely

Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw are making the rounds, they were in Toronto ( Church of the Redeemer, Bloor Street ) a few nights ago...pimping the movie " Ordinary Radicals ", and talking about subverting the empire. Shane Claiborne has done wonderful work expanding the Kingdom, and God's mission. " Irresistible Revolution ", was a great book revealing the reality of simplicity...that small mustard seeds can grow into great things.

But on every seat...glossy brochures...Simple Way's new magazine " Conspire "; Ordinary Radicals, the Movie; Jesus for President, the book.

The Ordinary Radicals website, a website featuring some of the most highly regarded thinkers in the North American church. Among the names I noticed Tony Campolo –a man I greatly admire. It is hard to overstate my regard for Tony, he has mentored and help shape my faith. The blog is an advertisement for the upcoming documentary and as it lists, features Interviews with: Becky Garrison, Shane Claiborne, Jim Wallis, Brian McLaren, Tony Campolo, Rob Bell, John Perkins, Brooke Sexton, Michael Heneise, St. Margret McKenna, Logan Laituri, Zack Exley, Aaron Weiss and many more Ordinary Radicals. All great people, shaping the Kingdom...but;

I am frustrated by the absolute “un-ordinary-ness” of the people it is about. Alot of the people on the list are international superstars in the christian marketing culture, have been on “The Colbert Report” and CBC's " The Hour ", any number of high profile talk shows and television appearances. Most of the above names are regulars on the conference circuit. They are highly educated and enjoy flexibility and some notoriety. Wallis is the founder of Sojourners, a prolific author, and teaches at Harvard. Campolo " Red Letter Christians ", was a personal adviser to Clinton and a protégé of Albert Einstein. Claiborne is ...irresistible. McLaren the" New Kind of Christian ",is considered by most to be the foremost spokesman for the emerging church. Rob Bell, Nooma Video series, " The Velvet Elvis "...speaker extraordinare.

Subverting the empire: the movie. Subverting the empire: the magazine. Subverting the empire: the book tour.

Sadly we are being subverted from the reality of the " extra-ordinariness " of faithful living. It's not books, magazines, the conference hype. It is those simple acts of faith...stopping and talking, helping, feeding the poor drunken addict you find passed out on the street.

We want to subvert the empire...imagine if we all started living, by simply practicing extravagant love and faith everyday.

change...fearing the enterprise will crumble

A church is exploring the idea of an " alternative " service. The challenge, will alternative be anything more than a change of day and time. Will it be the same template with some slight editing...louder, more hip, maybe contemplative...candles,bells and smells. We like to think that traditionalism is those " liturigical " folk. The question is, sure numbers may be increasing, there is a sense of success...the program is working. But...the fear, we want to do something really alternative...but what happens if it doesn't work???

"Tradition is the living faith of dead people to which we must add our chapter while we have the gift of life. Traditionalism is the dead faith of living people who fear that if anything changes, the whole enterprise will crumble." -- Jaroslav Pelikan

letting it read you...

"We come to a biblical text, raising questions about its relevance to our present daily lives, only to find that the text questions us about our relevance to the way of Christ.

...The thick impenetrable nature of these texts may be by conscious design. A difficult to understand text catches our attention, begs for attention, and engages our natural inclination to figure things out. On the other hand, the texts may be difficult, obscure, and distant simply because they are talking about what is true, whereas most of what we live is false."

-Will Willimon, Pastor 

I have to be honest, there was a season early in my journey where I just read scripture...edited, cut and pasted. It led to a pretty comfortable faith. I did nothing more than download my edited version of the word onto the harddrive of my brain. Faith was not even faith, nothing more than building blocks of knowledge neatly packed in a box...the lid, tightly sealed shut. It really led no where...a dead end street. 

Then something weird happened, sort of like Psalmist talking about " deep calling to deep ". The biblical text started reading me, or should I say the inspiration, the wind that inspired it's writers started to read me. It's a little un-nerving to discover relevance is'nt about me...it is all about the way of Christ.

With the building blocks of knowledge scrambled around my feet like rubble...I discovered I was a lie. But, now, I could embrace every thing; the difficult, the obscure and the distant. The things I couldn't understand, the difficult passages that left fragments and holes, I embraced with faith, rather than belief, if that makes sense.

But having the text read me, to undo me, moved me beyond myself to Jesus. It became faith, it became a journey. Deep calls to deep; the breath of God, Holy Spirit; ... " Christ in me ", as Paul would say..." I will write my laws on their hearts." Having the text read you, is discovering the Living Word within, and being able to live and walk from that space.

Being read...have you?

"We come to a biblical text, raising questions about its relevance to our present daily lives, only to find that the text questions us about our relevance to the way of Christ.

...The thick impenetrable nature of these texts may be by conscious design. A difficult to understand text catches our attention, begs for attention, and engages our natural inclination to figure things out. On the other hand, the texts may be difficult, obscure, and distant simply because they are talking about what is true, whereas most of what we live is false."

-Will Willimon, Pastor 

missional ...transformation

“Being church” is first and foremost about nurturing the understanding that this is how things really are – even if the way we behave and the way the world looks to us often suggests something else. Church isn’t primarily about projects, meetings, fine buildings, grand ideas and great deeds. There’s nothing wrong with such things – if they really do embody God’s unconditional love. But if they are simply about our need to boast, to be needed, to neurotically “do something”, then they risk missing the point catastrophically. The point of the kind of community we call “church” is to develop the type of worship, common life and shared purpose that will continue to sustains us in living out Christ’s sacrificial love in every aspect of life, even when the going gets tough.

Hope in the triumph of a good able to achieve real change, to turn our grasping world inside out, is not a matter of individual aspiration or wish-fulfilment. It requires a community of character – people trained, through prayerfulness, through human service and through genuine mutuality (what we rather piously call “fellowship”), to go on enduring, in spite of everything. Such endurance becomes possible not via the superhuman efforts of a few spiritual athletes, but through the recognition of us plain, ordinary people that we are empowered by a promise and a possibility that goes way beyond our own capacities – one residing nowhere less than in the heart of God.

“The world is overcome not through destruction, but through reconciliation. Not ideals, nor programmes, nor conscience, nor duty, nor responsibility, nor virtue, but only God's perfect love can encounter reality and overcome it. Nor is it some universal idea of love, but rather the love of God in Jesus Christ, a love genuinely lived, that does this.” Bonhoeffer's Meditations on the Cross

A love genuinely lived by a people joined to Christ for the sake of the world. That is the church and its mission in a simple phrase.

Thanks to Simon Barrow @ Ekklesia

Missional Synchroblog...

From Rick Meigs...

To help reclaim it, I propose a synchronized blog for Monday, June 23rd on the topic, “What is Missional?”

There are any number of ways one could blog on this topic. You could illustrate what the term means, describe what it is not and how it is wrongly used, define the term, explore its misuses, explore its theological foundations, or you name it.

"missional landscape...borderless, scandalous table fellowship"

Well, here I am, it's Sunday night and I've had a week to reflect on " Missional ". I thought in the time the musings tumbling in my mind would have settled out and solidified into something concrete.Well, they have and they haven't. Maybe missional musing, should always be unsettled. But this morning, a typical Sunday morning gathering and these sound bytes; " ' we come here to meet God ', we come here for healing ', we come here to worship." Our focus is " Us " and " Place."

I love this quote from Ed Stetzer's Planting Missional Churches, " It's possible to be a missionary without ever leaving your zip code."

To understand " Missional", is to immerse ourselves in the reality of the gospels and rediscover that Jesus' church lived in the world and practiced an outrageous and scandalous table fellowship. From day one as Jesus calls his followers on a journey, he's not scouring the temples for the most religious and holy, he's not visiting the classrooms of Rabbi's for the wisest. Fisherman, tax collector, banker...a collection of the least likely to succeed on a faith journey. Jesus doesn't rent class room space to introduce a program, a plan, or start another religion. John's Gospel, in the opening chapters says Jesus pitched his tent in the midst of humanity, he moved into the neighborhood...Jesus moves his followers into the midst of humanity. They would journey dusty roads, back alleys, the open water...into poverty, oppression, sickness, homelessness, hunger.

The first experience of seminary on the road would be the Wedding Feast at Cana. Fascinating, that the introduction of the Good News would begin to unfold at a wedding, an instant snap shot of life. Here you would have the reality of life, community, family...the misfits, the dysfunction, the old, the young...the newly wed, and the nearly dead. Here Jesus, immerses, dunks his followers into the midst of humanity...as if to say, " this is what I'm all about...all of life, every speck of it. This is where I want you to live life, and give life."

This feasting and Table fellowship would weave its way throughout the gospels Here Jesus' followers would learn that missional may not be some arduous journey to a far off foreign land...that perhaps the longest journey maybe just sitting across the table of a stranger, the sick, the poor, and the oppressed. Whom you eat with defines whom you won't eat with. With Jesus it never appears to be a " social " program...it is radical, scandalous, outrageous...it's the Kingdom. It is the servant returning to his master's table with unopened invitations and list of excuses, and the master sending him out again. This time the servant heads to back alleys filled with syringes, skid row hotels, park benches, under bridges...any where, so his masters table will be filled to overflowing. All are welcomed all are invited. Here at this open table, we discover the world upside down...where suddenly the host is the guest, and the guest the host. Where the host is blessed more than the guest. Jesus entered into the other's world, and let them invite his followers as their house guests. In that way grace, life, healing, restoration could be poured back and forth.

Another story of outrageous table fellowship, is the feeding of the 5000.This table is not constructed of wood and four legs...it is the Lord standing on a hillside with 5 small barley loaves, and 2 fish, raising arms giving thanks and blessing. Two miracles here, one that 5000 people were fed...and 5000 people shared this table fellowship. There is the outrageous reality that in faith, we often find surplus when we welcome those outside our boundaries and borders.

These table fellowship stories could be the reality of what " Missional " is, it is " Sacramental Living." Not as a ritual, but as the redemptive imagination that is it's spiritual truth. It is sad in a sense that we have ritualized the bread and wine. This ritual of who's in and who's not...who's welcome and who's not. I wonder if Jesus imagined it to be that. Jesus table fellowship, the meals of bread and fish always reflected the Kingdom...surplus, and food the fed the poor. Jesus table fellowship always reflected the truth of the Kingdom, the truth of what missional should be about...redemption, restoration, justice, community, the reordering of a new creation.

And how can we forget the table fellowship stories after Jesus' resurrection. Jesus cooking fish on a charcoal fire on the beach. The disciples gone back to their old jobs fishing on the lake and not having much luck. Jesus calls out from the shore, telling them to drop their nets on the other side of the boat. They haul in an incredible draft of fish. Peter seeing his dear friend wades through the water to shore. On the beach Jesus, invites, welcomes, cooks fish for his friends on an open fire, and turns to Peter, " feed on my behalf." And I'm not talking just feeding food, a meal in the soup kitchen, I'm talking about feeding them the incarnational reality of the life of Jesus. In other words go and invite. To live in the neighborhood of Jesus...is to live and believe that all the world is welcome...to go. If the world is welcome to God, if my neighbor is welcome to God, then every living moment is a door into God into which the other is welcome. Our calling should be clear.

" It's possible to be a missionary without ever leaving your zip code." Missional is dispersed in the midst of humanity. Jesus mission started with leading of the Holy Spirit. He sends us into the world under the leading of the same Spirit. It is to bear witness, to build, to expand His Kingdom ...to redeem, restore, to feed, and to heal.

To read the rest of the Missional Synchro-blog musings, click on the following...

Other Synchroblog Contributors

Alan Hirsch
Alan Knox
Andrew Jones
Barb Peters
Bill Kinnon
Brad Brisco
Brad Grinnen
Brad Sargent
Brother Maynard
Bryan Riley
Chad Brooks
Chris Wignall
Cobus Van Wyngaard
Dave DeVries
David Best
David Fitch
David Wierzbicki
DoSi
Doug Jones
Duncan McFadzean
Erika Haub
Grace
Jamie Arpin-Ricci
Jeff McQuilkin
John Smulo
Jonathan Brink
JR Rozko
Kathy Escobar
Len Hjalmarson
Makeesha Fisher
Malcolm Lanham
Mark Berry
Mark Petersen
Mark Priddy
Michael Crane
Michael Stewart
Nick Loyd
Patrick Oden
Peggy Brown
Phil Wyman
Richard Pool
Rick Meigs
Rob Robinson
Ron Cole
Scott Marshall
Sonja Andrews
Stephen Shields
Steve Hayes
Tim Thompson
Thom Turner

Kent Leslie
Maria
Pat Loughery
Hamo
Dave Faulkner
Peter
Malcomb+
Arnau van Wyngaard

The Mustard Seed...in My Father's House

This scene from the movie " The Blues Brothers " sort of sums up last Saturday evening at the Mustard Seed inner city church. We knew something was up right from the very start, people just seemed a whole lot more agitated. Usually there is 100-120 people show up, living in poverty, homelessness, addictions and mental issues, but Saturday there were over 190 people...not including dogs and cats. And then throw into the mix, we had new servers that evening. The food just wasn't coming fast enough...for some it was the first meal of the day. So there was yelling, shouting and screaming, usually it never gets to that point. But tonight, the whole place was like a washing machine on the agitation mode...tumbling and bumping.

We prayed over the meal, for love, care and protection over this collage of humanity from the inner city. You get an image, that maybe these are the guests the servant brought back to his masters table when the invited guests didn't show up because of their excuses. This is church...not peaceful, with fragrant incense...it was noisy, with the stench of poverty. But you really sensed Jesus was here with us...praying, blessing, hugging, kissing and weeping. 

At one point the noise was getting a little out of control...that we should be playing behind a chain link fence. We prayed and talked about homelessness, that Jesus was in fact a homeless man, and how Jesus talked about his Father's House...the openness. No matter what your condition, what you've done, where you've been...the door is always open. Then we sang this song.

Slowly it was almost as if a gentle breeze blew throughout the gathering. One after the other tables became silent, the listened...there was a hush. There was some tears, uncontrollable sobbing, holding hands and hugging. And we prayed, prayed and prayed.

He is so faithful, in the midst of the chaos, our clumsy efforts...all we did was to try and get out of the way leave Him some room, a seat. Jesus always has away of showing up when we least expect it...usually in the midst of poverty and suffering, and always when there is hunger.

( Later, we would find out the cause of much of the agitation was due to bad cocaine on the street...and that there were 3 overdoses that night. We could see a couple of fairly well dressed guys, at the end of the evening standing outside the Mustard Seed...likely preying on the least of humanity )

the collision with Jesus and sacrament...the fusion of mission

This is why we have often been at sea in thinking the Eucharist as first and foremost the representation of Christ's passion. You can see why: ' Do this in rememberance of me ' says the Lord as He breaks the bread and pours out the blood. That clearly brings the Passion to mind. But the more we focus on the Eucharist as the representation of the Passion in and of itself, the more I believe we lose that sense of the Eucharist as the act of encounter with the Risen Christ. ( Rowan Williams @ Trinity College, May 2002 )

Not to prove the Archbishop of Canterbury wrong, I decided to perform a random survey. Following a communion Sunday, during coffee I tossed out the question, " What does the Lord's Supper / Eucharist mean to you?"

Most peoples answers hinged on Jesus dying for their sins, and forgiveness. So, I'm wondering, when Jesus said, ' do this in rememberance of me ', have we been as Rowan Williams says, ' been out to sea in our thinking.'  

Brother Randy made the comment in an earlier post, " the fusion of mission and sacrament seem to be on my mind as of late." Man, I love that...in physics fusion is the release of incredible energy. I truly believe when Jesus says, ' do this in rememberance of me ', it wasn't to be thimble and wafer, a toast to a friend that took our place on death row, saving us from a death sentence. The spiritual reality behind the table and meal, us colliding with the Life of Jesus creates an incredible fusion reaction...a release of resurrection energy.

The sacraments are more about life than death. It is about our invitation and then us...inviting. It is us living the reality of the Lord's Supper. The fusion of mission and sacrament...is what Jesus says in ' do this ', it's living life abundantly.

The invitation to the Lord's table, to be at peace with God and to be a child of God is not determined by religious ritual performance, or even orthodoxy...it is determined by whether you believe Jesus when he tells you, God welcomes you. This is the redemptive imagination of Jesus, if you accept the invitation and welcome, anything is possible...if you don't, nothing is possible.

Sacramental living can be upsetting to some, it can be miraculous, an incredible dinner party and a time of redemption and restoration.

" Do ' THIS ' in remembrance of me." Don't try and turn it into a memorial like you wanted to do on the mountain when Jesus appeared with Moses and Elijah. As Peter was babbling, a light-radiant cloud enveloped them, and sounding from deep in the cloud a voice: "This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of my delight. Listen to him." The " This " is the redemptive imagination of Jesus. It is sacramental living...living constantly in the invitation and welcome of God. This is the spiritual reality, truth and power behind all things missional.

Have we forgotten that many of the resurrection stories pivot around invitation and welcome. Jesus invites himself into the locked upper room after his death...he then invites his disciples who have abandoned him to make him there guest. " Have you anything to eat ", Jesus asks. I love this beautiful divine redemptive waltz, first Jesus leads by inviting himself in....and then invites the disciples to lead. Sacramental living lives in this profound space, that Jesus always extends the welcome and invitation of God...and invites us to do the same. It always seems, between Jesus' open and welcoming invitation, and our invitation...that we have to errect something, hoops to jump through, barriers, boundaries...a fine print clause. We need to get out of the way.

How can we forget on the beach. The disciples gone back to there old jobs fishing on the lake, and not having much luck. Jesus calls out from the shore, telling them to cast their nets on the otherside of the boat. They haul in an incredible draft of fish. Peter seeing his dear friend wades through the water to shore. On the beach Jesus invites, welcomes, cooks fish for his friends on an open fire...and turns to Peter, " Feed on my behalf." In other words, go and invite.

Sacramental living in the neighborhood of Jesus...is to live and believe that all the world is welcome...to go and invite. If the world is welcome to God, if my neighbor is welcome to God...then every living moment is a door into God in which the other may be welcomed...then our calling should be clear. This is sacrament...this is the fusion of mission.

Think of in the upper room, the night before Jesus' death. There gathered around the table...traitor; a friend who would deny ever knowing him; a group of followers that stumbled, messed up, who weren't really sure who he was or what his Kingdom were about, but, the invitation... was welcome and open.

Welcome...Come,take and eat...you go do the same.

disturbing...the good news

"The more I read the gospels; the more I try to understand what Jesus and His Kingdom are really all about, the more he has the audacity to come into my life and totally turn it upside down.

He shows me the real gods I serve and worship.
He makes me think about every dollar I spend - who is benefitting from it and how?

He shows me whether my life sustains and enhances His creation...or do I use and abuse, waiting for a new heaven and new earth.
He challenges me to make my children into risk-taking disciples, using thier unique gifts, instead of neat, luke warm, middle-class carbon copies of myself.

He asks me to go places where I am uncomfortable, and to invite people into my house when I’d much rather have a quiet night alone.
He intrudes on my free time and tells me to invest it in the things that matter to him.
He tells me that the politics that seemingly support my interests aren’t necessarily the ones that support his Kingdom.

He shows me church is important...but not as important as His Kingdom. 

Far from being a cosmic Mr. Fix-it, Jesus is taking every priority and ambition that I ever held and - without so much as asking - turning it over like he did the tables in the temple.

The Good News...it's disturbing...it's life changing if you read it...and let It read you. 

missional isn't magic...its (extra)ordinary living

"These signs we call sacraments say to us that the power of the Holy is available to us not by way of magical rites but through the natural channels along which our energy flows for daily living; profound truths mediated through everyday deeds - taking, breaking, eating, drinking, washing and spilling." (Colin M. Morris)

These sacraments of bread and wine...we sometimes loose the profound reality, and the awesome vision of redemptive imagination they point to. It's almost as if we've turned them into a rote ritual, like the secret handshake of a club membership. Bread, wine...Body, blood...broken and poured out. This body, this christ...His church.

Jesus led outside the walls of the city, outside the walls of the temple...the walls of religion. Its is here the sacrifice is made, the body broken and blood poured out. The body is poured out into messiness of humanity.

The sacraments are not the ritual to signify your " IN "...it should ignite the redemptive imagination that it is all about being " OUT ". The sacraments point to the reality that missional living is poured out. Paul exhorts the Galatians, " Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.

Missional is just extra ordinary living...knowing Christ is in us...to break ourselves open...and to pour Jesus out on every moment of our everyday living. Missional is sacramental living...being bread and wine...body broken and poured out.