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Mark 5:42 pm on May 25, 2010 Permalink | Reply

Strawberry Revolutions

The Gospel is a strawberry plant.

Plants are generally grown from seed, or by transplant. We’ve got a nice healthy basil in our kitchen window, but it was bought full-grown at Home Depot and we started enjoying it immediately. It fills our little ceramic pot and our Italian dinners are made even more special when we simply pluck a leaf or two off to enjoy with pasta.

But strawberry plants are different.

They don’t generally grow from seed, or through transplant – though it can happen. That might be how a strawberry field begins, but it propagates naturally with “runners.”

Strawberry plant runners are like little arms of the plant that shoot out from its base, and find a nice healthy spot of soil about 6 inches away from the original plant. There may be 4-8 runners coming off of every plant. The interesting thing about these runners is that they are not extensions of the plant, or branches off the plant, but a brand new plant! Even if you were to cut off a runner, if it successfully embedded itself in some good soil, it would start a new strawberry plant and begin spreading all over the place.

Christians fear that their mission work, their sharing of the Gospel, has to be bought at a Home Depot of sorts. They spend all their resources in evangelism on getting their friends to “come to church” so that the moving church service will convince them to become a Christian too. This is like buying your basil at Home Depot. Nothing wrong with it – basil tastes great on pasta!

But basil will never cover the earth on its own…only strawberries, mustard, and maybe kudzu can.

Sharing the Gospel like a strawberry plant means putting out feelers into your local context (don’t try stretching too far at first!) and planting the full Gospel in the soil all around you. You are never too far from your mission field, and you’ve got it in you to plant not just seeds, but whole new plants in God’s garden. Where are your feelers now? Where are your church’s feelers planting themselves to make new churches?

Plant strawberries – don’t buy basil.

Rusty Wimberly 8:11 am on May 28, 2010 Permalink

very interesting! Isn’t it great how God speaks to us, declaring his purposes and plans through nature? This is a great illustration and not to mention good explanation about how to plant strawberries! I like the vine illustration Jesus uses better though….its a lot more wild, un-predictable and puts a tight grip around its everything it comes into contact with. lol

Mark 7:09 pm on December 2, 2009 Permalink | Reply
Tags: Diversity, glenn beck, Kenny-G, matthew raley, seth godin (5)
The Diversity Culture

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.
Mark, Sean Landolt, Guy Muse and one other person are discussing. Toggle Comments
- Agent B 12:27 am on December 5, 2009 Permalink
  
  I don’t think any real human listens to Kenny G
- Guy Muse 11:35 am on December 6, 2009 Permalink
  
  A lot to chew on in this post. For me it is a good way to define who the “Samaritans” are amongst us. Often we can identify our Jerusalem, Judea, and have a good idea about who the “ends of the earth” are, but few of us can clearly put a face to the Samaritans in our midst.
- Sean Landolt 6:48 pm on December 12, 2009 Permalink
  
  This is a good post and I’m interested in where you find the resources and what drew you to them. Why does inter-religious conversation catch your eye?
  
  Up in Canada I’m finding that people are very closed off from any religious conversation. Its not even a deeply personal issue its just a social taboo to talk about it. You can’t open up about it until you have developed a close friendship where you are each sharing your opinions openly. This is terribly frustrating becuase it means I have to put a lot into a person before I find out where they stand with God (on a side note though this does force you to learn how to love poeple for you they are rather than trying to change them). I’m doing a little looking around for inter-religious conversation, but I haven’t found anything yet. I think the culture up here in general is more interested in moving up in social status than in spirituality. This is probably why the culture has been seperated from Christianity sence the sixties. Once Christianity no longer held social statues people quite going to church. But I’m pritty new to the area, and people are like unions up here. Thanks for the post you got me thinkin’. And seriously how are you finding these books?
- Mark 7:15 pm on December 12, 2009 Permalink
  
  Yo Sean! I’m with the Ooze Viral Bloggers, an online Magazine that does among other things book reviews. They send me a free book as long as I do a review of it (good or bad).
  
  Hey – ya otta check out Meetup.com – its a great way to link up with people in your area. Each time a new “spirituality” meetup group starts in my neighborhood, Meetup.com sends me an email notifying me of it. Pretty cool! Some groups are wacko, others are legit. That’s how we linked up with these guys – a great resource.
Mark 12:17 pm on March 21, 2009 Permalink | Reply
Tags: loving God (2), mercury cafe (2), metaphysics
No Room in the Inn, Plenty at the Coffee Shop

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”?)

—

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.
Mark, John Bailey, and Josh Frank are discussing. Toggle Comments
- Josh Frank 10:02 pm on March 21, 2009 Permalink
  
  Sounds like a really great night and an intense conversation. So glad to hear that it is happening!
- John Bailey 4:34 pm on March 22, 2009 Permalink
  
  Great post!
- Mark 8:59 pm on March 22, 2009 Permalink
  
  Thanks guys! John, what’s your scoop? NAMB north american missions board I presume? What are you up to there?