…The latest in my wife’s wardrobe.  I LOVE IT!  “No one cares about your blog.”  I read that there are over 30 million blogs throughout the blogosphere, but only 1-3 million actually write something at least once a week.  Ya gotta hate people who get all riled up about their blog, tell all their friends, and then write for a solid month before quitting.  And yet their buds are left hanging, just waiting for something…ANYTHING.

But even of those who write at least once a week or more - do 1-3 million people actually have something worthwhile to say?  Consider the 1% rule.  If you take 100 people online, only one person creates the content, 10 will interact with it, while 89 just view it passively.  So even among the 1-3 million, only 1% are really delivering anything new and interesting.

What is my blog about?  What do I consider to be the purpose?  What am I contributing to the entire world by posting my thoughts and postulations?  I suppose more than anything, I’m joining a much bigger conversation that has been going on for a long time.  The principles of missional living, radical transformation, and simple, communal life are concepts that have been around for millennia.  I certainly don’t feel qualified to add much to the conversation.  So why do I write?  For me, I enjoy the struggle of reflection.  I believe learning only happens through action, followed by solid reflection (especially in reflective dialogue with others).  That is why I blog.

It could be that amidst the reflecting, I flow in and out of the “1%” that offers something new.  Is so, praise God - I hope others can use it for their benefit and reflection.  But truly the goal for me is to make my struggles and victories known, and invite personal reflection.  Those other blogs out there that I find myself reading regularly, (many of which are on my “links” list,) are not the ones with the coolest content or discussing the latest issues.  They are the ones that truly are dealing with life and issues and aren’t afraid to share those issues in a manner that invites reflection.  Over time it feels like I’m learning from their experiences, just like they are.

Recently Katrina and I have been getting into the show “30 Days” (check it out here); the same guy who did Super Size Me (ate nothing but McDonalds for 30 days) is now out to see other people try another life (usually a diametrically opposed lifestyle) for several weeks to see what personal changes take place. (e.g. A upper-middle class from NYC couple move to Ohio to live on minimum wage).

I was especially impressed with the episode Muslims in America, which reports on a Christian from West Virginia moving to Dearborn, MI to live with a Muslim family and experience Islam up close and personal. He engaged in political/theological dialogue with the Muslims he lived with, he went to Jumuah (Friday prayer service), ate Halal foods, and basically lived “on the other side of the tracks” for a whole month. It got me thinking about my own preconceived notions of who Muslims are - and what they believe as part of their faith.
Even beyond that, it reminded me that each religion of this world, while they share many of the same tenets, practices, principles, and even forefathers, are all going in different directions.

Buddhists are after enlightenment through emptiness.

Hindus seek the absorption and unity with the ONE.

Animism goal is cosmic harmony, and human well-being.

Islam’s religious end is total surrender to Allah.

Christianity’s ultimate goal is communion with God.

What does this say about the world’s religions? To me, it says that they are not necessarily “right” or “wrong” but it shows me what their aims are. After 30 Days, the man who had lived with Muslims learned to embrace the people, the culture and even their prayers/worship because he saw their aim as different from the aim of Christianity.
Can one aim be “better” than another? Sure! Before the world began, God existed in community. He is innately a relational God - he IS communion. Seeking communion with him through the salvation that Jesus Christ offers is the ultimate goal a “religion” can have. There are not many ways of being saved - because only Christ offers salvation. Salvation from self. Salvation from sin. We are only like God when we are tied in with God, and become communal just as God is by participating with God in communion with others. There are however many different genuine goals world religions can have which do not compromise the ultimate goal of communion with the one God.

If Christians took seriously the fact that they are fundamentally relational, then our outreach and good works would not come from a form of guilt, but from a deep sense of who we are as relational beings. As God is communal, so I am communal. We become the sacraments to the world.

I am sure that I do not have the authoritative voice on the issue of the world’s religious diversity. I do know that Jesus is the only one that offers salvation - and that is what I am desperate for. All other religious ends seem fickle in light of eternal communion at the Lord’s Table. In the end, a Buddhist gets what he is looking for: the end of existence. Could it be that Christ will offer then the ultimate goal of salvation in the moments after a Buddhist’s death? That’s a question I’m definitely not qualified to answer. …maybe if I got my doctorate…

Imagine: spending an entire day just driving around town praying for your city. Today my buddy Miller and I spent the majority of the day together in prayer; the first couple of hours in our abbey’s living room, and the rest of it in his old pick-up truck driving around the city with our eyes open to what God wanted us to see. Now that is graduate education - the kind that gets you out of a sterile classroom and onto the streets.

Of course, we were idiots for driving around town in the middle of the day’s heat (104!?!) expecting to see much more than closed up homes. It was facinating to see how cultures can change drastically from one side of the street to the next. We began thinking about how our prayer and hope of seeing a “vibrant family of Jesus in close reach culturally and geographically of every Abilenian” was much more complex than we ever thought. How can we ever hope to watch God saturate a city with his family when one person’s geography has absolutely nothing to do with their culture? Let’s say a man lives on the Northwest side of the city, but he frequents the bars and parks on the Southwest side, because that’s where he finds life - that’s where his friends are. Where does this man find plant/find his “vibrant family”?
How do missionaries move forward in systematically saturating a city with God’s presence and his family when the people of that city are bouncing all over the town’s community wells like pinballs????
Whatever it means, I know that we are changing our paradigm of what it means to live as ministers and missionaries in this country. We don’t have all the answers, but we know that the attractional methods of evangelism “come to our nice program!” will not cut it. The church is not a program, its a people. People can not “come to church”, they are “sent as a church“. Today when we were praying for this house or that house to become an outpost for God’s Kingdom, I couldn’t help but think how overwhelming all of this is. There is nothing else I’d rather put my energy toward.

This past week I’ve been feeling guilty.  The blossoming faith community that I am a part of has been an interesting influx of social/spiritual communion of which I am most grateful.  One of the things that we are inquiring about together is the notion of simply being a spiritual family together under Christ, rather than just another event or program people “go to”.  So one of the principles behind that desire is for all of us to be contacting each other throughout the week - and therein lays the problem.  I feel this little twinge of guilt when I go a whole week without talking to every person in the faith community I am a part of!
I am trained to be a “minister” in every sense of the word.  I’m supposed to be the leader of this program; I’m supposed to have the nice wrapping paper and bow to decorate our little worship times; I’m supposed to have all the answers.  Or at least I THINK I do…
Instead of making life so complex and hard on myself, I need to remember that this is first and foremost about simplicity and natural relationships.  Those in my faith family that I am naturally drawn to I will hang out with more than others.  I can’t spread myself so thin that no one, not even me, gets a worthwhile portion.

I remember a youth pastor at a mega-church I was a part of in High School; no matter how many times you “met him” his greeting was always a firm handshake, a warm smile, and “Hello friend, remind me of your name?”  That’s the picture of a man who doesn’t have a clue about his social center - or at least doesn’t care about the names of his regular kids.  If everyone in our group is to be a minister to each other, then everyone must take the initiative - all I can do is spread the vision and invite others to join in.

I have a really good friend who is engaged to a young woman in Beirut.  Of course, right now that city is under attack from Israel, and it looks very grim for even the civilians of that Lebanese city.  What makes this even more intriguing is that my friend has devoted his life to Jewish studies, and is planning some pretty amazing work on the language of 1st Century Palestinian Greek.  So to see him dealing with the hate and anger for the nation of Israel, and yet working so passionately on this project in Jewish history has got to be making his head spin.

More than anything of course, he just wants his fiancee back.  I don’t blame him.  Last night as I was laying in bed I looked over at my beautiful bride and kept thinking to myself, “Why do I get to lay close and keep safe my wife tonight, while my friend aches with fear and is riddled with the political imbroglio of the Near East?”  I don’t deserve the life I live - the maddeningly gorgeous woman that sticks with me through thick and through thin - the opportunity to devote an entire week carefully examining God’s Word, not to mention the years I have been involved in training for mission in the US… The blessings in my life are a mystery.  Last night as I lay there wondering why I had been offered the undeserved blessing of watching my wife sleep soundly, I gave up all pretenses of wondering “why” and just began to thank the Lord for the gift of the moment.  I thanked him for the gift of my wife.  I thanked him for the life he had given me and the life I was leading.  I gave thanks to him for the peaceful situation we live in, even while there is so much turmoil in the world around us.

The peace is not universal or fair, and that means the thankfulness should not lead to apathy.  But for one moment - one blissful evening, I am reminded of just how much I am to be thankful for.