Stop for just a moment and think.  Clear your mind and take a breath.  Consider your worldview – your perspectives, points of view, political leanings, religious beliefs…the very lens through which you see your world.  Now, think carefully – who is the person that represents the most complete opposite end of the spectrum?  Generally, humans reserve trust and friendship with people they believe are most like them – and tend to demonize and stereotype those most different from them.

For many in America today, conservative Christians and the liberal secularists are on opposite ends of the spectrum.  One tends to hang out on Sunday mornings, the other on Saturday nights.  One votes for the Democrat, the other votes for the Republican.   The worst evil for one is social deviance, whereas the other shuns bigotry.  One is urban, one is suburban.  One wears suits, the other has dreadlocks.    One is PC one is Mac.  You get the picture.

Both live in worlds in which the other has no place.  Both exist in tight bubbles that exclude others.  In these secluded tribes, they can lob ideological grenades at other tribes and receive comfort from their peers.  All the while the chasm between people and Truth grows wider.

I had never heard of Matthew Raley when I picked up The Diversity Culture: Creating Conversations of Faith with Buddhist Baristas, Agnostic Students, Aging Hippies, Political Activists, and Everyone in Between. He speaks to this reality of ideological tribalism with humility and truth.  He draws on the story of Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the well, [youversion]John 4:1-26[/youversion], as a prime example of how Jesus engaged the “other” not as a propped-up caricature, but as a unique individual.  Samaritans and Jews distrusted each other politically, religiously, and even the other tribe’s very right to exist. Sounds familiar even today, doesn’t it?

Jesus sat down next to the well, and began to cross barriers – claiming that mistakes had been made in both Jewish and Samaritan tribes in the identity of the other – both groups had inherited from their tribesmen lies about the other group.  When she showed signs that she was willing to take people (and life) case by case (rather than broad brushing stereotypes) he was able to work with her – and introduce her to the Living Water.

But herein lies the rub – do people make life-changing decisions about faith and worldview as a group, or as individuals?  Raley says its about “crowbar-ing people away from their groupthink” (whether Christian or secular or whatever) and asking them to think critically about what they personally believe to be true.  It is at this point that I think I differ from Raley.

I agree that to really help someone think critically about an issue, sometimes you have to remove their normal filters and lenses their culture gives them and let them try their best to think for themselves.  Other times there’s just not enough will-power in the person to do that, and if done properly, “salvation can come to the whole household,” as it does all over Acts.  Sometimes people come to Christ as individuals, extricated from their culture (Ethiopian eunuch, Samaritan woman at the well), and sometimes its through their community (Philippian jailer’s family, Cornelius’ household, etc.).

He admits that most people in the “Diversity Culture” as he coins it, grow up with a “street postmodernism” – and are not really sure why they hold such pluralistic views – they know perfectly well that right and wrong exist, but “what they don’t necessarily know is how to integrate unchanging principles into lives that are full of change.” (Raley, 50) Christians too believe things without knowing exactly why – and they still are distrustful of those with different views.  What ends up happening is a world full of people who hate each other for reasons they can’t explain.  Back to stereotypes.

Remember that archetypal person who you distrust the most, and put an actual face on them – someone you know at work, etc.  Find their uniqueness – something that shatters the stereotype you have of them.  Maybe its a hipster who listens to Kenny-G, or a liberal who secretly watches reruns of Glenn Beck.  You might just find yourself like the Samaritan woman at the well did, face to face with a the most important relationship of your life that you never saw coming.

Earlier this week, Katrina, Alan and I met up with a Metaphysics discussion group at the Mercury Cafe on Chicago Ave.  It’s an amazing cafe, but even more amazing was the discussion!  The evening’s topic was “What is God?”  About 12 people were present, and each of these strangers had met online to discuss metaphysics – and the sparks began to fly immediately!

The conversation was wildly diverse, there were spiritualists, neo-pagans, Polish Catholics, agnostics, atheists, and more.  I was so moved by the lives of pain many of these people overtly expressed in their pursuit of God (or fleeing from God).  We questioned assumptions some brought (is God male, and singular?  Is he imaginary?  How does one experience God? Where did religion come from?)  Some became offended at the assumptions others made.  Still others were quiet and pensive.

It was a strange sensation.  The discussion on God was not like most I have of him.  Most of my life God was never brought up outside of family discussion or Sunday School.  Now I was in the midst of the urban matrix and having to upend my framework and typical language for God in order to speak about who God is and how God pervasively impacts my life.

Someone brought up the deist idea that God sees us as his ant farm, who is at least marginally interested in the creation as a whole, but otherwise does not care about you and me.  I found out later that her dad had kicked her out of the house and forced her to leave Canada.  I talked about an infinite being that could keep track of the infinite “ants” and know each spot on the back of each ant, know their dreams, their personalities…people couldn’t do this, but for God this is possible.  Many resonated with this idea.

An atheist who had grown up Hindu was perplexed that we did not talk more in terms of science and instead we had focused on intuition and sociology.  Someone else concluded that God exists outside of space and time and therefore lives outside the language of science, yet he is also holistically integrated into our world and so completely related to science that we couldn’t not speak of God when contemplating science.  He is no where, he is now here.  (Is this why God nicknamed himself YHWH “I AM”?)

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The conversation at the cafe got me thinking.  The vast majority of people in this city feel left out of the conversations about God.  They feel the church has rejected them.  Their tatoos or alternative lifestyles or responses to their pain have exiled them from the the forum of spirituality, and therefore many have resigned their lives to meaninglessness, or have left their search for God and placed it with a search for knowledge in science.

They have been told by the church, “There is no room left in the inn.”  For my new friends at the Metaphysics discussion group, they might feel a bit like Mary and Joseph, left out in the cold and in crisis.

Pregnant with God, but no where to go – that is the reality of millions in Chicago and all across this world.  But the stinking stable in the midst of such a crisis is where God finds you.  That is where God has been all along.  Waiting for them in the stable.  The nurses and doctors for Mary and Joseph should have been the best in the world fit for the King of the Universe, but instead they got donkeys.  Instead of a royal blessing, the young couple received from Herod an attempt on their baby’s life.

The places of power hold for society the conversations of meaning – Main St Churches, City Halls, etc.  This is where God’s character is voted on, and dogma is standardized.  But God is outside the forum’s of man’s best theological guesses.  He is helping Mary and Joseph in the freezing cold.  God is patiently whispering into the ears of the millions who have been marginalized by the church, hoping to awaken them to who God is.

Are followers of Christ willing to be the donkey, or the sheep, waiting next to a scared Mary as she lives completely shunned by an embarrassed family, and suspicious religion elite?  It begins by listening humbly to the hearts of those who do not have a place in the official forums, and honoring them for their “birth-pains” as God is birthed within them.

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?