We had a great Chicago mission team retreat over the weekend.  It gave us some new perspectives on our philosophy of “team” and I believe the Lord spoke to us through Kent Smith about the importance of putting first things first…

…Many of the passionate followers of Christ I have come across in America are avid ministers.  They pursue missions and ministry with all their heart.  They believe that we are to “love as we have been loved” and “love your neighbor as yourself.”  But strangely enough, it is not uncommon for these same well-intentioned disciples to end up losing their family, or hurting people for the sake of “ministry”.

Many others enter into a life of service to God and leadership among God’s people for the pursuit of true community.  They see God as the triune, perfect community, and they believe it is part of the Christian life to experience that same communion with brothers and sisters.  The only problem is, my definition of community is almost always incongruent with your definition of community!  Therefore we’re always fighting each other in order to obtain that ideal community that never really existed in the first place.

These two things - ministry and community, quickly become idols in the minds of many disciples of Christ.  They are important and godly, but they are not God himself.  There’s something more central that ties these two things together - IDENTITY.

Finding one’s true identity in Christ is essential to truly entering into meaningful ministry and community.  Jesus shows us this in his own life.  He is affirmed in who he is at his baptism BEFORE he does a single miracle, preaches a single sermon, or rounds up any disciples.  His Father says to him and to all others listening, “Behold, this is my son, I love him, and I am well pleased with him!“  What that would do for so many mission teams and even your average Christian if they knew that they were deeply loved by a Papa who knew them first and foremost as his beloved child; BEFORE they ever did anything for him.

But we can only find this identity when we are living in intimacy with Father.   Jesus found regular space in his life to connect and love his Father.  They loved each other uniquely, madly, and constantly.  It was out of this cultivated, intimate relationship that Jesus was able to find his identity, and participate in ministry and community in powerful ways.  Jesus says, “I only do what I see my Father doing.”

Alongside connecting one on one with Father, he found it helpful to hear the intimate words of his God through a band of brothers; Peter, James and John.  These guys knew Jesus inside and out - they spent more time with him than any of the other disciples, and saw him through thick and thin: the night he cried in the garden before he was betrayed, the mountain where he was transfigured into a glorious presence, and there for miracles of resurrection…

I know I’m desperate for this kind of fellowship.  I admit that its more elusive than I ever realized.  People…I…am far too selfish.  I don’t want to commit to anyone else - I want to be my own rugged cowboy, going it alone.  I pretend that I can hear God and participate in life with him all by myself - and that just isn’t true.  There are times…often…that I can’t hear from God.  That’s when I trust on brothers who’ve got my back and help me with the manna from heaven; God’s continual words of LIFE.  It feels as if this kind of community comes and then goes before you know it.  “Either you’re moving, or everyone else is moving around you,” a good friend of mine once said.  It’s sad but true.  I feel like this is a hinge point for North American missions.  If we can’t find meaningful ways of finding intimacy with Father, both on our own and with a small band of disciples, then we will fail.

Jesus’ intimacy with Father continued into a large, wildly diverse community.  The crowds, the disciples, the townsfolk that new him…they were a part of how Jesus connected with God.  This is the choir of coordinated voices singing their love song with God together.

But thank God, there was no formula - no set of principles for us Americans to decipher.  Jesus’ means of connecting with God and becoming intimate with him was in constant flux.  I’m guessing that that bible reading plan you started Jan 1st is already slacking.  Maybe God’s ready for you to find another way to connect with him.  Ride a bike, write a song, meet someone new.  Whatever it takes to find deep, lasting connection with your Creator Father.

Thanks to Kent for pointing some of this out to me.  It is a goal of mine to live in the reality of my own identity in God.  I pray that missions in my life will flow not out of a sense of ungodly jealousy or sense of guilt, but out of who I truly am, and my intimate connection with Father.

Thoughts on the diagram?  Others?

Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day; for most the first chance to fire up the grill after December snows. For others, a chance to stand up to current injustices and pronounce a new Kingdom economy in the United States of America.

In Abilene, there is a large bridge that crosses HWY 80 over a large, undeveloped, wooded lot. Nearby there is an abandoned energy plant with busted windows, teetering smoke stacks, and weed-smothered fences. I know that about 350 homeless frequent this “Hobo Jungle” as the locals call it. Many of its inhabitants are children. A little village of the mentally ill, socially discarded, and abused live right underneath and around one of the busiest bridges in the city.

This bridge has two names:
1. The Martin Luther King Jr. Bridge
2. The “Singing Bridge”

Why the “Singing Bridge”? It got this nickname because of the rivets in the street to help drain the rainwater off the bridge. These rivets, as tires drive over them, create a “hum” that sounds eerily like a choir of human voices singing.

What in all of this might God be saying to his people in Abilene? What obvious (or unfortunately, not so obvious) connection might there be in these circumstances?

MLK was a saint - “an incarnated capsule of the Kingdom” that I talk about in this post - I imagine his cries for freedom and justice and equality in this land, and I mourn. I see such devastating prejudice, such insurmountable inequality, and I wonder if MLK failed completely. I wonder if anyone can see or is willing to do anything about the irony of the situation on HWY 80’s “Singing Bridge”.

On Martin Luther King Day, how will we spend it? I know that every year there is a small parade that march across the MLK bridge. Maybe I’ll go this year. Only maybe I won’t just walk over the top of the bridge, but head down underneath it - and meet someone new…maybe Martin Luther King himself.

The latest Speaking of Faith podcast had Krista Tippett interviewing Janna Levin, theoretical mathematician, philosopher and author of A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines. She has spent her career looking into the realities of existence and truths of the universe. In the interview, she describes how the universe through mathematics is completely predetermined, and nothing can be considered “free-will” as we understand it.

Now, this might just be my American free-spirit predetermining my response here, but I have to humbly disagree with her.

With what little I know of Mandelbrot Set (M-Set) Fractals (see a totally sweet post on them here) they are a repeating rhythm based on a simple equation that ideally go on for infinity. They have infinite precision, but they are not touchable.

Arthur C. Clark (wrote 2001: A Space Oddessy) narrated a movie series on fractal geometry called “Fractals - the Colors of Infinity”. I’ve included the YouTube video (1st part) below. (A little cheezy, but you owe it to yourself to watch this…)

Fractals like this explain the motion of the planets around the sun, the shape and movement of clouds, continents, or trees, right down to DNA revolving around itself. What is so unusual about the M-Set is that is both complete and incomplete - both fully definable and fully indefinable. It is like islands of order in the sea of chaos. The M-Set is infinitely complex, organic, fluid, and yet completely definable and simple.

I believe the realities of the M-Set Fractal help us understand how parts of our universe is both revealed and concealed, both mysterious and definable. When we think about predeterminism, and free-will, no longer are we confined to choose one side or the other. Maybe through mathematics, we can understand that God allows free-will and yet knows everything. Maybe we can understand how God is both revealed and mysterious…

In my opinion, the Mandelbrot Set (nicknamed the “thumbprint of God”) offers a question to Jenna Levin, and invites deep questions into existence, consciousness, and organic reality in the universe.

(see my earlier related post here)

I just found out that there will be a sequel to the new book Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola and George Barna coming out this summer. I’m thrilled. From what I hear, it will focus on some of the topics discussed below. I’d love your feedback!

First off, Pagan Christianity is a bold book that uncovers the Greco-Roman influences of many of the origins of today’s current church practices and beliefs. The first edition of the book (2002) also called for a specific response - return to the original impulses of the early church.

The 2008 edition (as I understand from an interview with Viola here [props to Nick and Josh]) eases off the prescription, and instead asks the question, “Do these Greco-Roman influences hinder today’s church from being the Bride of Christ she truly is?” Another way to ask the question is:

“Must the church look/act exactly as it did when it first began, or does acculturation over the last 2,000 years also refine what it means to be God’s Church in the world?”

Is tradition okay? What impulses in the DNA of the Church are immutable?

Jarislov Pelikan: “Tradition is the living tradition of dead men, traditionalism is the dead religion of living men.”

The religious heritage I grew up in had a goal: ‘To restore the ancient order of the church to its original form.’ I am not naive enough to think that this is a obtainable goal. But like many in the Reformed Movement that helped seed the Restoration Movement,

“Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda: The church; reformed and always reforming.”

If I catch what Viola and Barna are tossing us in their book, it means that the church is an organic reality that has both adaptability and integrity in its structure. We are sinners that don’t truly understand God’s vision of what his people look like, and God throughout time is always revealing more of himself to us as his Church. With humility, we learn that there is a moldable, shapable quality to the church, no matter what the age. And there is also a core DNA that most purely points to God and his purposes in the world.
This is just another reminder that the Church is not the Kingdom. The Church, through the ages points to the Kingdom of God. It shapes and changes, and its influences must continually be discerned. Are we following the Spirit of God, or the spirit of the age?

I believe that Viola and Barna are asserting that there has long been dead traditionalism and pagan spirits leeching off of Christ’s Bride, and the authors are begging God’s people to open their eyes to it. Some of these influences are okay - I don’t want to “go back to the good ole days” of earliest Christianity, nor can we - but we can all agree that Easter has just as many connections with Pan as it does Christ. And that the term “laity” only keeps God’s people paralyzed. And that Church as described by Christ looked more like a family than an 2oth Century American business. And…the list goes on.

The million dollar question for Barna and Viola is this: will people change once they know the truth?

Now there’s a way to share other posts and articles I find on all your blogs. Google Reader (my rss aggregate) has a way to share items I’ve found to be extra helpful or intriguing. It’s also a chance to deepen a conversation started on a post I’ve recently written.

On my sidebar, I’ve started keeping a twitter box with two or three of my latest favoritest posts from around the blogosphere. Keep an eye out for it, you might just see your blog up there.