I’ve been thinking today about the nature and character of God.  One of the staple words used to describe our Creator is “Holy” as in “Our God is Holy” or “Holy God,” or even “Holy of Holies.”

Do a little digging on the word “holy” and you’ll discover its not quite the halo-over-your-head, never-hurt-a-fly kind of holy you thought it was growing up.  Apparently, “holy” means “different, other, alien.”  So - if God is holy, than God is…”other.”  That’s true - but it isn’t exactly revealing much about who God is or what God is like.

Take a poll of most people, and they’ll tell you that God is “a white-haired, judgmental, old grandfather in the sky.”  God for most people is just more of the same - more of the fear, condemnation, and hate-filled world we live in.  A constant stream of bad news flows into our homes from the media, and horrifying acts of violence, abuse, and disrespect happen all around us…even within us.  If God is nothing more than more judgment, can he really be holy?

If this world is all about judgment, and if God is all about being holy, then God’s character must primarily be something “other” than judgment.  1 John 4:8 says that “love comes from God,” and that we as children of God ought to love, for God is love.“  John 5:22 says, “The Father (God) judges no one.  Instead, he has given the Son absolute authority to judge.”

Judgment is still in the picture; we are all to blame for the mess we’ve created on this earth.  But thankfully, the one who has the authority to judge has forgiven us and has taken those judgments upon himself.  If we have the courage to honor Jesus, his life and teachings, we’ll find that instead of participating  in the judgment of this earth, we’ll begin to participate in love.  This is true love - the kind that comes not out of a sense of obligation or moral/social survival, but because we know whose we are.

John 13:3,4 is an interesting case in point.  Here sits Jesus, pure, blameless, loving even his enemies.  He sits among his confused, fearful disciples - one of whom is his betrayer, his hit man.  But these verses say it all, “Jesus knew that the Father had given him authority over everything and that he had come from God and would return to God.  So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, and poured water into a basin.  Then he began to wash the disciples’ feet…”

Jesus loved out of a sense of intimacy and identity with the Holy God he was a part of.  This love is what makes God, and those who love God, holy.  God cannot be primarly an angry, wrathful, judgmental God; not if we consider him to be holy.  He is something wholly other than the poison on this earth - he is love.  If we choose to refuse Christ’s forgiveness, then our judgment falls back on ourselves, and we are left to our own devices.

Thoughts?

If you’re like me, you’ve been watching the news and stocks as we witness history in the making.  Yesterday, after the House defeated the bailout plan from the Senate, the DOW Jones Industrial Average fell 777 points, the largest one day fall in its history.  Economically speaking, we are in the middle of a major turning point in our country, and our world.  The days of unfettered spending and reckless, limitless greed are numbered.

The national debt hangs at about 9.3 TRILLION dollars.  I’m no economic expert, but even I understand that’s a big, hairy problem.  I can’t even type that number out on a normal calculator!  US families aren’t much better; and now that teens can hold credit cards in their name, they are graduating HIGH SCHOOL with an average of $6,000 dollars in debt.  What a way to start a life!

Trina and I left college in debt.  School loans were sold to us like a bottle of snake oil.  Trina talks about how signing her name on that first “financial aid” package was a major negative turning point in her relationship with God.  What sounded like “aid” before our college days now sounds more like “bondage” and “debt.”

Around the time I graduated in May, we had some friends point us to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University.  We listened to all the sessions during our long move from Texas to Chicago, although we had begun to learn some of the principles while in Abilene.

Ramsey describes his plan as, “Giving you the same financial advice your grandmother would, (only we keep our teeth in).”  His main goal - help people live within their means, and climb out of debt.  Through sort of a baby step process, he gives couples, churches, and businesses steps out of the insanity of credit, mortgages, car leases, and much of the monstrosity that comes from living on the thin wire of excessive debt.  He was against the $700 billion dollar bail-out, and after hearing from both sides of the issue, I side with Ramsey.  The market will course correct - we are not headed for the Great Depression Part 2.  The Government in the ’30’s developed the FDIC to secure banking deposits - there is more regulation over private banks (and doubtless there will be more in the near future because of this mess).

What is more likely to happen is that banks will not be able to sell 30 year no-money-down mortgages for families looking to buy a mansion they can’t afford.  Along with that, it will be tougher for people to be approved for credit cards or car leases that they have no business applying for in the first place.  Businesses and banks will have to reel in their liquidity rates that resemble some sense of sanity, while other banks and institutions will undoubtedly continue to fail, the wise will survive.

We are not moving into the Great Depression, we are entering “The Great Moderation.“  This is the time when Cash is King - pull out some envelopes and follow a budget.  Save money, don’t spend it.  Live simply, give generously.  This is a time when the whole nation may begin to heal from its drunken hubris.  Followers of Christ can learn much from their earliest brothers and sisters - “who shared their possessions, and had everything in common, and not a needy person could be found among them.” (Acts 2)

This is not the end of Capitalism, but in this age we must think about a Creative Capitalism that doesn’t only reward a few and neglect millions more.  Do what V-8 Juice is doing, giving away fresh produce to the working poor with some of the profits they make on their nutrition drinks.  Or do what Ethos Water does, putting many of their proceeds on bottled water toward water-well development in Africa.  Or do what the first century Christians did, in sharing a common purse.  Health insurance would be a lot simpler if you were paying into a pot shared by others who actually care about you and worship Christ with you on Sundays.

We as a nation are learning from our mistakes - many of them were lessons already learned during the ’30’s - we can not live beyond what God has given us.

…Give us TODAY our DAILY bread.

There is a legend in Chicago city history - the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.  It was possibly the greatest U.S. disaster of the 19th century, and only from the immediate rebuilding of the city and support from cities all over the world was Chicago able to emerge as global city and economic hub for the country.  It’s why the city is sometimes known as “the Second City” because so much burned in the fire that the rebuilding essentially created a whole new community.

Over the past week, Hurricane Ike partnered with a Pacific tropical depression dumped over 90 billion gallons of water over Chicago this past weekend, flooding sewers and rivers, and eventually streets and whole city blocks.  Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich declared Chicago and the 7 surrounding counties disaster areas.  Though Chicago is far from any coast, the combination of both storm systems actually gave the city more rain that Houston!

Over the air waves, I kept hearing stories of families whose basements had been flooded out, or others who had evacuated from their homes and were living in temporary shelters.  During an age of extreme weather, I have seen New Orleans and Indonesia and others get hit hard, and yet still felt disconnected from the disaster and did not involve myself in assisting those in need.  Usually the voices in my head say something like, “I’ll just get in the way,” or “I don’t have time to do this - I’ve got to take care of myself.”  When disaster came to us, I felt God saying, “The body of Christ helps its neighbors - you are a part of the body of Christ, and your neighbors are in need of your help.”  It was pretty obvious what I was supposed to do next.

I put on my oldest clothes, put some of my personal stuff in a ziplock bag and headed out the door.  I didn’t have any tools, and virtually no knowledge of how to safely deal with a flood, but I went with hands to serve.

The streets in Albany Park were either filled with cars trying to get out, or water pouring in.  I walked up to a water managment truck waiting in the long traffic lines and asked where to help out.  They pointed me toward St. Louis street, and I set out.

There I met a river where once was a street.  No body was out except an old man named Pete, who was fuming mad that no one in the city was listening to him.  He had worked on sewers and flooding back in Greece, and knew that all they needed to do was vaccuum the clog in the sewer system, and the water would recede.  In the meantime, he’s trying to figure out how to drain his completely flooded basement, check his foundation and turn his power back on.

More city crew began arriving at the dead end street.  Most were wearing nice shoes and weren’t getting into the water.  I hadn’t yet gotten wet either.  And when I saw some locals at the end of the street repositioning sandbags against the riverbanks (they were just sitting out in the street), I felt like I needed to join them in the filthy waters.  A city official stopped me after he saw my intentions, telling me how nasty the water was since the sewers had overflowed.  It was tempting to turn around and find some other way to help out - I’ll be honest - I’ve never been fond of tuberculosis.  I paused, waiting for the Spirit to give me some confirmation that I truly was supposed to wade into the waters.  Maybe against sound judgment, but certainly not against the model Christ gave us, I joined my neighbors in the mess.

We worked for several hours, pushing back the power of the river.  There is something deeply spiritual and worshipful in tossing sandbags.  Among the dozen or so out there were Mark and Tanya, a young couple who worked for the Chicago Symphony.  Their whole basement was floor-to-celing flooded, and their first floor was soaking too.  I can’t imagine the feeling, but I kept wondering what good it was to fight the river since everthing was submerged already.  Then I heard some talking about how the water had severely weakened their foundations.  Yeah - that would put me to work too!

Some were really angry at the city for doing so little.  While I was there, it seemed the city was doing everything it could with all the redtape it has established for this sort of thing.  It was disappointing to see neighbors in the mud and waters while city workers still had nice, dry shoes on.  One city official came over and helped us with a sandbag line, saying, “I just can’t stand back and watch - this is what I’m here for…”

It became a great mix of neighbors and city workers.  Those working for a paycheck and those working to save their home, and me, just watching the momentary community rising above the disaster.  I did not go to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, in fact, I’ve never been to a disaster area in my life.  This was a sort of baptism into serving those in crisis - just a few miles from my own home.

John 1:14 says that Word of God became flesh and moved into the neighborhood.  If the powerful, pure creative power of God can become something as lowly, frail and decaying as a human, shouldn’t we be able to walk through sewer water and share in the burden of humanity with fellow neighbors?  This is a struggle for me - but it is the message of the cross.  It is, like Ghandhi and Jesus agree, how we lose ourselves to find our true self.

I’m on to some exciting projects lately.  Don’t have much time to give them the proper introduction to you all that they deserve, but nonetheless, I wanted to give you just a peak into some of the things I’ve been working on lately!

An exciting venture lately has been furthering development of my Chicago Spiritual Map into a full-blown collaborative wiki!  The goal in the near future is to help incorporate others; students, professors, churches, local missionaries, summer interns and others into a city-wide project to discover what God is up to in Chicago.  The ultimate dream is to engage followers of Christ at a ground-zero level, giving them an experience in prayer-walking, spiritual mapping, and of the great mission field of the city. You can find the baby stages of this project emerging at Pray4Chicago.

Second, I’m putting together a site that will help connect other Chicago missionaries, and organic church networks.  Since I’ve been in Chicago, I’ve met dozens of church planters and emerging church planters focused on bringing the profoundly lost into friendship with God.  Some are working with poets and artists, others are sharing the gospel with Somalian refugees, still others are focused on hispanics.  This October 31-November 2 Moody Bible Institute will be hosting Niel Cole’s Greenhouse, a conference/workshop teaching the basics in organic church planting.  This might be a good time to discuss how church planters around the city might resource one another, cross-pollinate ideas and church networks, and serve the city and see God’s shalom reign!  I’ve got the url and basic files installed, but I don’t want to post more on this one just yet.

Finally, I’ve been blessed to share my faith with several at my part time job!  These friends of mine are seriously searching, and I’m praying that God reveals himself to them in a special way as we begin to meet for our first bible study!  Also, there is a new friend of ours interested in reaching out to some of her friends in another neighborhood on the south side of Chicago.  God seems to be moving lots of things at once!

It’s fun being on this journey, and I know its what I was made to do.  God bless you this weekend!

Wow!  Trina and I have been taking a beating here the last few days!  We’ve both been fighting off sickness, the weather dropped like 35 degrees in two days, and we just got back from a FULL weekend!  Wanna see some rockin’ pics of my beautiful wife drawing at the Orchard?  Check out her site here, or see the post here and here.  Man, she’s so cool.

Today’s lunch was AWESOME!  It seriously made me question what line of work I’m in.  Really, who wouldn’t want to work at a hole-in-the-wall hot dog shop named “The Wiener…and Still Champion!”  Rockin’.  Take my advice:  Next time you’re in Chicago, look around and find one of the thousands of hot dog carts on any random street corner and find the one with the fattest guy with the greasiest shirt selling dogs.  Buy from him.  Cuz you KNOW that it’s gonna taste the best (he’s eating them too)!

I’m reading J.D. Payne’s Missional House Churches, which so far has been a more academic, statistical look at the surge of organic and emerging churches in North America.  I’ve scanned chapter 2, which gives a broad overview of the hundreds of house churches he interviewed across the continent, and as soon as I get permission from Payne, I’ll post it here or on my resources page.

One of the more interesting things I read is that in your standard-issue church in North America, it takes 86 Christians per year to bring one non-Christian to Christ.

That’s an 86:1 membership to baptism ratio.  Not so hot.

In Payne’s study, he found that the membership to baptism ratio among the house churches he interviewed ranged from 4.3:1 to 2.3:1.  WOW!  At the high end of the range, it takes about 4 Christians to bring another to Christ!  And in some churches, that ratio is more like 2 to 1!  He writes,

“The gravity of these numbers should not be passed over casually.  Ratios of this size automatically place these churches among the lowest baptismal ratios in the world.  Any traditional congregations manifesting such numbers would automatically be considered the most effective evangelistic churches in North America.” (page 75)

Thankfully, Payne is not out to get traditional churches - he attends one himself - instead he is making a plea for the whole Body of Christ to take notice of this missional strategy.  There is (sometimes for good reason) distrust of especially isolationist house churches, and yeah - they’re out there.  But there will always be a counterfiet from the Enemy when he sees the power of God at work.

The power is found in authentic relationships - a majority of these churches (67%) say the primary way they brought others to faith in Christ is through honest, serving friendships.  Christians made an intentional effort not to be a “come to us” church, but rather a “go and tell” church - living and speaking boldly among their friends/co-workers.

Maybe I’ll put some more of Payne’s findings up if its still interesting me in coming days.  Thoughts?