All posts by Rod White

What It Takes to Have a Decent Impact

The Mission, , , , , ,

I just returned from two weeks of travelling to California—Mexico—California–Georgia. (My bags are still not back from California!)  It was wonderful to see old friends and visit new places. Now I am eager to get on with it. Circle of Hope always looks so beautiful from a distance! —  close up, too, of course, but ravishing from a distance. And the mission we share with other Christ followers seems even more pressing, given all the things I experienced.

Here are three of the things I learned, again, about our mission during my travels:

1) To have a decent impact on the world for Jesus, it takes living in a community that can get along.

It would be great if people just did what they were told, but they need to be loved, heard and included in order to get to being led.

At the BIC General Conference our community was falling apart and we spent all our efforts and passion trying to figure out whether we could hold together. Just last night I spoke to another person who attended the conference who was scratching their head, wondering at the fear-based approach we seem to practice. It seems to be an assumption that people will not get along, so don’t let them try. It seems to be a big fear that unseemly people will say things, so we don’t let anyone say anything. That doesn’t work.

People know the Lord by how we love one another, Jesus says. Working out authentic community is a top priority for the mission.

2) To have a decent impact on the world for Jesus, it takes solitude and rest.

If we are in mission with Jesus, we are in over our heads, just putting our hands to the plow. We are not superheroes (like Batman taking punches from Bane); we need to recuperate and get some resources.

Our neighborhood. Nice beach, bad internet connection.

Sitting on a beach in Mexico is a luxury for most of the world, so I understand that my resources afford me great privilege in gaining some rest. But however one can achieve it, it takes Sabbath to do good work. It takes not working to work. If we are just surviving the daily onslaught without gaining resources of personal strength, we basically have to shut down and be steely most of the time, grit our teeth and survive. We should never underestimate the power of our personal defense systems to shut us down when we are threatened. We can live perpetually threatened and never have the sense of capacity that allows us to reach out with truth and love. It takes a lot of personal time with Jesus to have our defenses eased.

People know the Lord by knowing people who know the Lord. Having enough space to develop our relationship with God and not just keep the wheels turning is crucial.

3) To have a decent impact on the world for Jesus, it takes leaving one’s family and home and coming back married to Jesus.

It is painful, but there is often a contest between those we love for who gets to direct our lives. Jesus should win or everyone loses.

At the wedding I had to note how easy it is to put up with our loved one’s self-destructive behavior, even adapt to it, rather than speaking and living grace into it. There is nothing like entering a family system and an extended friendship circle gathered for the blessed event to get a good look at how things work. Jesus was rather plain about loving his family and friends, but he also very plainly told them to get behind him, as if they were Satan, if they tried to deter his mission. How we love who we love is probably the hardest thing we ever have to learn as a co-worker of Jesus. If our small loves undermine the greatest love, it is a great loss.

People get to know the Lord by hearing and seeing the revelation clearly. There is not really a way to keep the picture totally unmuddled, but we can’t serve the muddle, nonetheless.

Lessons on leading learned and re-learned at the BIC General Conference.

Building community, ,

I loved being with the Brethren in Christ at the recent, brief conference in Ontario, CA. We are full of creativity, wisdom and energy for mission! Stories from the congregations in the United States and Canada, as well as stories from around the world from Brethren in Christ World Missions and the Mennonite Central Committee were inspiring!

I am always inspired to go home and do the best I can to serve Jesus after the conference. That alone is worth the airfare. This time I also learned a lot about leading in two ways: 1) I got to meet many new, young leaders who are hungry to do well and to do well as the BIC. They are inventive and eager. Good traits. 2) The other way I learned about leading came from being led by my General Church Leaders and Board. They were having an instructive time of it, trying to navigate their way through the mess we are in as a denomination. I will have plenty more to think and say about the actual issues at hand. For now, I have a list of things I need to reaffirm for myself, and for others who are listening, about leading the church (or your cell, family, workgroup, community garden, etc.).

Respect people.

We are all members of one body and we all count. Leaders need to act like that. No, I take that back. Leaders need to believe that we are all members of one body and we all count and then act on that from their heart. The BIC, and most local church bodies, like Circle of Hope, have mutual respect built into their structures. We shouldn’t give that fact a high five and then do what we want. For instance, the BIC General Conference is made up of pastors and delegates. The people at the meeting were most of the best players on the bi-national team. A leader should assume that experienced players can run plays with even slight facilitation. We need to demonstrate respect, not just talk about it.

Share the process.

Like Ronald Reagan getting away with secret, illegal arms deals, it is easy to think that what is done in secret will not eventually be shouted from the rooftops. But what some people think is better kept under wraps is crucial to building the body — the process is also elemental to the goal. Bad means can come to worse ends. During our conference we found out that the Canadian regional conference of our bi-national church had effectively “seceded from the union” long ago and we were asked to affirm that. They even changed their structure and nomenclature long before they were not part of the whole. Interesting process: the no-contest, no-communication divorce.

Offer a complete proposal; don’t just say “trust us.”

Obviously, detailed proposals cannot be engineered in a group of 500 (or five, in the case of some of our cell groups!). That’s why a proposal is detailed-out and dialogued-over long before it gets to the final decision-making. We got a proposal for major restructuring that had so many holes in it that I wonder if we can get through the next two years alive. We approved it because “they worked hard on it” and we “want to trust them.” But we have lots of structures that are designed for dialogue and for building consensus. The leaders should be masters at using them. We should have a good idea of how the Spirit is moving in the church before we test our discernment at a group meeting.

Get along for Jesus’ sake.

We still don’t know, for sure why the BIC leadership fell apart last year and why the top leaders are being sent packing. The word from the lectern was, “We messed up.” They wouldn’t really define what “messing up” means, which has been characteristic of the whole “mess up.” At one point, our Moderator spent fifteen minutes trying to waive the bylaws so two leaders could be considered in an election. The two leaders stood up and declined to be considered. That was just one instance of apparent infighting, or at least scant communication. Poor relating happens; in leaders it is even costlier.

Never isolate people by how you talk about them.

In the BIC, the leadership regularly talks about “new” people and “Spanish speaking people” as if they were not fully BIC yet. It reminds me of moving to Waynesboro PA and being told by my neighbor that I would never be a part of the town because I wasn’t born there. I’ve got a feeling that I am still “new” to the BIC, twenty-eight years after arriving! I have spent nearly twenty of those years trying to get the leaders to accept the people from South Florida and elsewhere who are not-of-the-BIC-cradle as bonafide members of the denomination. They are still singled out like they don’t yet belong at every conference. They still aren’t “us.” Back to a previous point — it appears  that being a delegate makes little difference anymore in the practical BIC process; it appears from what is often said that being a Spanish-first delegate makes even less difference.

Never ignore things that might cause conflict.

I never heard so much gratitude for being “Anabaptist” at a BIC General Conference as I heard last week! It was as if people did not get the memo that certain elements of the denomination have been fighting the oldest parts of our distinctives for a long time, so we keep them as distinctives but downplay them in practice. I think our Anabaptist stream makes us ever-more perfect for meeting the challenges of post-Christian America. Thus, we should act like we are MCC, since we are MCC (get them to change their name!). And we should practice our theology of peacemaking even if we have to dialogue with veterans.

Learning lessons is not a passive aggressive way of saying, “I want to criticize the leaders in a clever way.” I hope my criticisms are straightforward enough. I imagine most of the GC Leaders already agree with most of what I have said, anyway. I really do want to learn. I think leading is hard. Barack, Mitt and the Congress are regularly horrible, but ever-present examples of what leading is like these days — disrespectful, secretive, singular. I want to do better. I want us, as the BIC, to do better. In the next decade, as all those new leaders get their full footing in the new era that is forming, we need to help one another represent Jesus well.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen Saves the Weekend

Film/TV, Mostly the arts, , , , ,

Sometimes, being squished on a United Airlines plane — heading for a conference that promises to be discouraging, in a land broiling under a smoggy sun — can be inspirational! Take heart!

Suddenly, the screens tilted down and Ewan McGregor appeared. I quickly rummaged around and found the headphones because it was Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. I did not go to the Ritz to see this movie because I thought it had to be silly, even if Ewan was in it. Now I will need to buy a disc to add to my collection, right alongside Brother Sun,  Sister Moon.

Faith for the over-bureaucratized

I did not realize it was all about faith sneaking up on the over-bureaucratized. I did not know it was full of little epiphanies converting fear-ridden people. I did not know it was about a couple coming together over mutual faith in something that is a miracle rather than just a sensation. What a pleasure!

Even though I could barely see the piddly screen and could not see any subtitles. I got the picture. And I got the inspiration. A rich Arab tries to do something wonderful with his money. European bean-counters and petty office workers are lifted to something organic and eternal. Cultures learn about each other in a real-world scenario; bad things happen and they decide that faith is more important than  giving in to fear and hatred

I paid to see Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. (Well I guess I paid an airline ticket for Salmon Fishing….too). But I was not as well served. That one just retreaded the idea that love saves you, which looked even more unsatisfying when everyone blew up. Salmon Fishing had the same vile people doing the same vile things and the same lovers trying to make sense of it all, but they find something beyond their embrace to embrace and it makes all the difference. They did not exactly find Jesus, but Ewan starts praying — and that gives me hope.

I know I did not give you enough plot to convince you that this is not a silly movie. But take my word for it. Put it in the queue.  It actually unleashed a couple of hours of inspiration in me on an airplane serenaded by a grumpy baby! That’s something. It keeps coming to mind while I am in the Yemen of my conference wondering if salmon will ever run again. That’s really something!

Do not be afraid

A life in the Spirit, , ,

This is my favorite Bible verse of the week. I think I will meditate on it with you again.

Therefore, this is what the Lord, the LORD Almighty, says: “My people who live in Zion, do not be afraid of the Assyrians, who beat you with a rod and lift up a club against you, as Egypt did.  — Isaiah 10:24

The whole nation of Israel was like God’s child. Israel was like a “son” to God (See Exodus 4:22 and Hosea 11:1). In this verse, Isaiah is speaking for the Lord, who is telling his children, the people of Israel, “Don’t be afraid of the Assyrians,” even though the Assyrian empire is huge and is undoubtedly going to take them over, and even though their king, Ahaz, is trying to make a deal with it instead of trusting God. Be faithful to God.

From a very fun video http://youtu.be/MyePSvvb4QQ

What moves me the most is that Isaiah, speaking for God, acknowledges the infant pain of the nation of Israel, which is now a grown-up nation facing a huge disaster. The Assyrians, who have their clubs lifted on the border are reminiscent of what the child nation experienced in Egypt. Isaiah notes that the experience of being beaten is installed in the nation’s memory, since that is what happened in Egypt when they were slaves. When they were just a child of a nation God rescued them from their abusive condition, but the fears born of having been in that condition are still real.

Pains of childhood

I love it when my psychological studies world and my faith world collide. The social scientists keep “discovering” what has been common sense for wise people throughout history. The pains of our childhood are the foundry that builds flaws into our future character as adults. The great task of a mature adult is to be conscious of our fears, among many things, and make choices to be our true selves. My understanding is that such choices are not fully possible without being reborn through the work of Jesus and having our birthright restored as a child of God. But I admire the psychologists, especially, who bravely dig into the reality that, “If I was beaten in Egypt, I will probably be afraid of being beaten again when the next oppressor raises his club.” The tripwires in our hearts are easy to set off and difficult to defuse.

When God tells his child, Israel, “Don’t be afraid,” the Lord knows they cannot just shut down their fear; it is installed deeply. He even inplants that understanding in Isaiah’s prophecy of impending doom. I find that very encouraging. Because it means that when God tells me, “Do not be afraid,” he must remember my beginnings, too. I have a story about why I am still afraid inside, even though I can act fearlessly in many ways. I have an “Egypt” in my past where I was hurt. I have huge empires bearing down on me too.

But God is with me! If I did not trust God, I would just have brilliant psychological reasoning to comfort me as I was beaten again. Or worse, I would just have an admonition to “Don’t be afraid,” when my distressing past is meeting my horrifying future.

So many Egypts!

As I was meditating on this verse, I could not help but remember many of the stories of “Egypt” I have heard lately. Several of them were stories of actual beatings! Some of us have stories we don’t even want to tell, they are so painful to recall. Some of us have stories we can’t tell because we can’t remember the traumatic experiences, we blocked them out so completely.

All of us have a story about how sin injured us. The stories were being formed when we were just a small human. There is no way God is telling us, “Don’t be afraid,” as if we were never in “Egypt!” He encourages us to not be afraid because we were in “Egypt” and we needed to be rescued. What’s more, we need help because the “Assyrians” are coming upon us.

Do not be afraid because God is with you. If you are bravely on your own in the face of the next gigantic power that is eager to consume you, God be with you. I think that kind of self-reliance is madness, but I admire your courage. Fear can generate a lot of energy. As for me, I am happy that God called me out of “Egypt” and is helping me face my “Assyrians.” God is with me.

So the Next Generation Would Know

The Mission, , , , , ,

We’re not keeping this to ourselves,
we’re passing it along to the next generation—
God’s fame and fortune,
the marvelous things he has done.

He planted a witness in Jacob,
set his Word firmly in Israel,
Then commanded our parents
to teach it to their children
So the next generation would know,
and all the generations to come—
Know the truth and tell the stories
so their children can trust in God,

Psalm 78 (The Message paraphrase)

Family businesses tend to crash at the third generation [link to Business Week article]. This is a little unnerving for Circle of Hope. We are a family business devoted to the proposition that the body of Christ multiplies as it grows and the descendants of the original cells or congregations do not diminish in character, but reflect the DNA of their parents. We look for maturation, not deterioration.

I suppose I could take heart that we are not a mere “business,” we are an organism. And I do take heart to see how we have matured. But, to be honest, we are something like a business, too. We have plans, structures, meetings, representations like a website, a speech or a mailing, that take the kind of oversight that businesses use to keep their enterprise moving along. The leaders who follow the leaders before them need to be as astute and capable as their mentors. Will we crash someday?

Our first ever congregation “hive-off” called Northwest lasted, fitfully, for seven years (!). I think church plants should be measured in “dog years,” so seven is a long time.

But it eventually died. One of the main reasons it died was that it was never a fully-connected part of the network and did not replicate the DNA that made the original viable; until we installed Bryan Robinson, the leadership did not fully “feel” Circle of Hope. Our most recent church planting called 19G is an actual third generation congregation; BW begat FN begat 19G. They don’t seem to be in any danger of crashing, but will they be able to create and adapt, or will the network be able to keep up and adapt to what they bring? Will their new school do in our version of old school?

DNA replicating

Cells multiplying

Similar questions apply to cells. Cell multiplication is all about making it to the third generation and onward. Our whole church is about not diminishing in character as we multiply. We are always going through a process of adapting to our neighborhood changes, adapting to changes in the congregation, adapting to growth in number, and adapting to people coming into their fullness as leaders. We hope to reproduce a good replica of what God hopes as a new cell is born and goes through the process of growing and multiplying. Sometimes our oldest and should-be-wisest leaders stop adapting and just give up. Sometimes our youngest leaders don’t even bother finding out what we already know and invent something that isn’t nearly as brilliant as what we have already proven to be effective. The process can deteriorate.

Last week, I wrote a little “psalm” for the cell leaders based on Psalm 78. It is a psalm that calls us to be a “good business” that beats the odds by being God’s business. So far, we have beaten the odds magnificently. But we are always bumping up against our weaknesses, our lack of imagination and our lethargy. What’s more, the world changes so rapidly it challenges our capacity to meet people where they are at. The Church, in general, seems so messed up (and the BIC is no exception), it is doing more crashing than building, so it doesn’t help much.

I think it is an exciting time. I feel like I was born for it. I think Circle of Hope was made for it; and in our small, unique way, we are meeting the challenges. But we could crash if we don’t pay attention and don’t give our hearts to the cause. I think we could use a little Psalm 78. Here’s an attempt to bring some. Those listening in can apply their own name and listen with us:

Listen Circle of Hope;
listen to your own proverbs –
the stories of your past, distant and recent.
We have a wonder to speak.
We have wisdom to relay to the next generation.

God planted a witness in us.
We are charged, like parents loving their children,
to tell the truth we are given
to generation after generation of what God generates,
lest they be left prey to the faithlessness
that surrounds them.

What to Do with All I Want to Do

Music, The Mission, , ,

I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.  I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. — Philippians 4:12-13 (KJV)

What to do?

American Christians have always loved this verse. In general, it has been interpreted to mean, “I can do anything I put my mind to because God will back me up.” What’s more, “You should stop whining, trust God, and get out there and make it all better. It’s up to you and your faith.” That’s the R. Kelly version.

It is a nice one-liner and a good verse for beginning memorizers. But it is a heavy burden to place on someone if they don’t know that Paul is under house arrest when he writes it and probably never leaves Rome again. His lesson is, “Even though I can’t fly and my mission ambitions are on hold, I’m OK. Even though I am dependent on others and am suffering in many ways, I have learned to let that be and let God strengthen me.”

I have a strong streak of “can do” in me. Lately, it has been running up against “can’t.” So I have been looking at my three basic relationships, in Christ, and needing to learn Paul’s lesson again.

Let God be the center.

My relationship with God is top priority. Everything around me changes, but God and I have a place where we live that is eternal. I need to let that be. Right now, I am kind of preoccupied with

  • people moving,
  • marriages beginning and trying not to end,
  • children being born and growing,
  • the next leaders, next pastors, next congregations,
  • how our mission is to “greater Center City” that is now considered to be at Tasker,
  • drones, income disparity, identity politics.

I’ve got to do something! I can. But not unless God gives me strength. And when I can’t, my despair could be overwhelming unless God gives me strength. I need to rest in that central place where God and I live, which I carry with me as I encounter a challenging world.

Let the body of Christ work.

My second main relationship is with others in the body of Christ. I am part of it. It is good to know that all I am called to do is not dependent on my one, limited body doing them all. Jesus has a body and it is all of us.

Rachel and I were excited about doing the Midsummer Night party that happened last night and about getting our new “living room” together as part of that. We were worried that no one was coming. We had to just let it be. The body is going to do what it decides to do. People have faith; they will express what they are given. I can encourage and catalyze that expression, but I can’t make it happen. It is a miracle that faith, hope and love happen at all! I need to appreciate what is, not feel responsible for what isn’t mine to do on my own.

Let God go before us.

It seems strange that I would try to butt in front of God and lead him around in my mission to the world. But I do that. I get excited about my relationships with the faithless and needy of the world and sometimes seem to think I am the Creator. I always need to remember that God is already present wherever I think to show up.

I think about showing up every day!

  • I want to help create new businesses to create jobs.
  • I want to have a bank to free us from financial predators.
  • I want to connect with atomized people walking by in headphones.
  • I want a peacemaking community to undermine the war machine.
  • I want a thriving counseling center, new missionaries, further relief workers, school reformers, racial reconcilers.

There is a lot to do! And that is just the beginning. If I am in charge of all that, the gospel is in trouble. But God is obviously at work in so many ways! Good is done. Jesus is honored even in a society in which the elites have kicked God out of their prevailing philosophy.

In each of my three basic Christian relationships – with God, with the body of Christ and with the hungry world, I need to let God be the one who is and was and is to come. As a result, I can do all those things I am compelled to do, as who I am given to be, with the strength I have been given to act. What to do? That’s what to do.

I can do all I have been given through Christ, who strengthens me, as part of the body, as one who delights in seeing God going before me in every place I stick my toe into his ocean of grace.

Resist the lies: Jesus is trans-everything

The Mission, , , , ,

Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of the Creator. Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Colossians 3:9-11.

A clause of one of our proverbs says that “God is transnational, transcultural, even transhistorical.” I think we half-believe it. The other half of us is stuck in the world’s definitions of people’s identities. We’re locked behind languages and nations, even though God is represented in all nations, and even though borders are facts of ideology and power, not facts of life in Christ. We are fascinated by race and whether we can show ourselves as multicultural in our PMs, but race has no biological basis and is a fiction, apart from the evil social fact of it. Most Americans think the present and future are better than the past, even though much of what was invented lately is likely to ruin us; for instance: video games, porn and whatever Rio+20 suffers over next week.

Divisions and labels are mostly just lies

In the few lines from the letter to the Colossians above, Paul gives a laundry list of the differences that divided up his congregations. For hundreds of years before the Roman Empire, Israel and the western Middle East had been dominated by the Greek dynasties that followed Alexander the Great. The “Jews” bitterly resented the “Greeks” and maintained a distinction from them, summed up in their mark of authenticity: male circumcision. A “barbarian” was anyone who was not educated in Roman ways. “Scythians” were a great Iranian-language group that dominated the plains from Siberia to the Crimea; they were the ultimate barbarians. 20-30% of the population of the Roman Empire were “slaves.” So Paul is saying: from the most local issues in the church between Greeks and Jews to the most far-flung and prevalent divisions in the world, Christ is the unifier. He delivers this revelation to the followers of Jesus: Christ is all and is in all.

The divisions are lies. We should not lie to each other, since we have taken off our old selves with their practices and have put on new selves, which are being renewed in knowledge in the image of the Creator. New selves renewed in their knowledge of their creator no longer live under the lies of the old order that is now passing away.

But the fact that the old order is passing away does not stop people from coming into the church and asking us (and churches all over the world) to conform to the lies.

  • There is a “Russian” orthodox church that is the soul of Russian nationalism. The BIC are prospectively making a new division between Canadian and United States churches. It is not unusual for churches to feel obligated to bless the wars and other evils of their nation. The nations are lies.
  • The ways people organize into cultures is organic and often beautiful. One does not need to leave their culture or family to be a Christian. But people often think that their culture forms their identity, not the kingdom of God.  They do not feel at home in the church unless their culture is represented. We should not lie to one another.
  • The church is often late in doing so, but it often adopts the latest hubris of the latest “discoveries” from the science and philosophy of the day. These days we are fighting about “identity” and adopting the prevailing habits and new sentiments of postmodernism. Jesus is the Alpha and Omega; we don’t need to adapt to the latest lie.

What we should do is put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of the Creator. The Message paraphrase says it well:

“Don’t lie to one another. You’re done with that old life. It’s like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you’ve stripped off and put in the fire.

Now you’re dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete.

Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.”

Jesus Has Other People Not of Your Fold

The Mission,

So much to do, so few Memorial Day parties at which to do it! That’s what I’ve come to think after hearing what happened at some of the recent BBQs. Maybe we should skip however else we do things and move exclusively to a couple of BBQs a week as soon as June hits.

BBQ love

At one gathering an unconnected neighbor was questioning how Circle of Hope operates. The host was introducing her neighbor to a couple of ex-cell mates from Circle of Hope. She explained how her cell had recently multiplied and how these people were formerly part of her cell.  The neighbor looked at the former cell mates and said, “Isn’t it painful to break up your small group?” The pair immediately said, in unison, “Yes!” It was like they had some unexpressed emotion that needed to get out and the neighbor had untied their balloon.

The host was still a bit flabbergasted when she was telling me about this. I think she would have told her neighbor, “Get thee behind me Satan!” if she hadn’t thought it would spoil the party. In her multiplication, she had successfully engineered a radical, missional action. She had catalyzed a small expansion of the kingdom, elevated a new leader and increased the amount of entries a person might stumble upon to get into the church. She had resisted the natural inertia of social groups and moved with what the Spirit was doing next. It wasn’t that easy! Now her neighbor was encouraging everything she was trying to overcome!

Her neighbor was unintentionally reinforcing attitudes that work against what Jesus is trying to do. Marketers have been helping to keep people static by customizing their offerings to customers’ individual tastes. For instance, we don’t buy as much yogurt in large containers anymore, as if we were going to be sitting down with someone and sharing. We get an individual serving in the flavor we like best. Appealing to individual preference is not always the best strategy, since people make choices on group preference, as well. But especially in the United States, the marketers push personalization more and more, since it fits the prevailing philosophies. So you can even get your seaweed soup in a packet. I think this mentality gets extended to our cell groups after they have reached some kind of homeostasis. They begin to have a group identity that tends to want its personalized container of yogurt. And they don’t really think of sharing a big container of yogurt with others.

Open door to the fold

Meanwhile, Jesus is moving on a steady course toward reaching everyone who will listen to his voice and including them in the “fold.” He says,

“I have other sheep that are not of this sheep pen. I must bring them also. They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd” (John 10:16 TNIV).

My friend the BBQ host was having the regular frustration we have when we follow Jesus. Among other things that are life-changing about knowing Him, we are called to imagine more people in the fold. The marketers will talk us out of being in a fold, at all. The Lord is talking us into being in a fold of all. If we go with Jesus, we end up convincing people to not be singular and to be in a cell. Then we persuade them to multiply the cell and form a congregation. Then we talk them into multiplying the congregation and becoming a network. Then we talk them out of just being an isolated network and being part of a denomination. Then we talk them out of just being their denomination and being part of the church in Philly and around the world. It is all with the goal that “there shall be one flock and one shepherd.”

The crucial place of reorientation happens when a person who has been drawn out of their isolation and into a cell can imagine the Lord building another one. Post 9-11 it is even harder for people to imagine being in community — and they certainly don’t want to be talked into anything! The frightening expansion of the corporations and the police state in the last decade have people running for their individualized servings in a vain attempt to not be dominated by big things. The church can get tagged as another one of those big things. Circle of Hope was once merely small. Now that we have flowered into a network, we can get tagged as dominating. The multiplying cell is the constant place where we get a chance to be small and to expand, to go with Jesus

  • for oneness, not singularity,
  • for mutual dependence, not independence,
  • for a vision larger than our own personal needs, not mere consumerism,
  • for a growing organism, not a disposable personal experience.

It is hard to make a new cell when you love the one you have. I hope we never love so weakly that it doesn’t hurt to get bigger and let further people in to disrupt our lovely relationships. To expand the fold with people we love and to be loved by them is a pleasant way we fill up what is lacking in regard to the Good Shepherd’s afflictions (Col. 1:24).

Pentecost and the Deepest Magic

Doing Theology, Film/TV, , , ,

Pentecost is one of the main inspirations for my faith. I wish it were more “popular” as a holiday. At Pentecost, the truth, the law, the principles of faith are not just “out there,” in a building or in a book; they are all in me. The faith is not settled and static, it is living and everything is on the road, moving, changing and us with it. On Pentecost faith is real, risen and participative.  I see it as the first day of the new creation, the big bang in the little universe of Earth.

Pentecost is still a harvest festival

For the Jews of Jesus’ time Pentecost was more than just the first fruits of summer harvest festival because it was connected to the Exodus. Fifty days after the Passover and the deliverance from Egypt the people were offered to God as “first fruits;” at Sinai their consecration to the Lord as a nation was completed. So the celebration was also tied to the Ten Commandments and the “giving of the Law.” Jews believe that the law was given after exactly fifty days in the wilderness.

Paul says in Colossians 2:16-17 that the Jewish feasts and celebrations (like Shavuot) were a shadow of the things to come through Jesus Christ. A Christian’s celebration of Pentecost is about the reality that followed the promise of Jesus to his disciples that they would be filled with new life and new purpose.

My celebration is about how the prophecy of Jeremiah was fulfilled. I suppose it is no surprise that the new covenant gets activated with fire on the mountain of Jerusalem like it is a new Sinai. Jeremiah prophesied that a new covenant (or “testament”) was coming. The old covenant was broken. God was planning a new one. See Jeremiah 31.

Pentecost celebrates a great new harvest. The holiday is still a harvest feast. But it is a harvest of people. It celebrates how the law is written on our hearts. It is still a festival about receiving the law. But the laws aren’t written in stone or in a book, they are written on hearts. The stone and book still count, but they are shadows of what the Spirit is making real.

Pentecost is a hard holiday to sell

These days Pentecost is a hard holiday to sell. Especially when it falls on Memorial Day weekend! It is a holy day with no special candy or music associated. There are no notable costumes to wear and people rarely put on plays about it. There is no way to make it cute or sentimental. It is very personal and very practical and spiritual.

The basic material is: the disciples have this great experience, and immediately are sent on mission, and almost as immediately are in trouble with the authorities after 3000 people are received into the church. And we are to follow in their way. That’s so Christian, Christians can hardly stand it!

CS Lewis had a realistic view of the difficulty of getting people to understand the new covenant. He started by acknowledging a body of law that all humankind shares: everyone seems to agree that fair play, unselfishness, courage, good faith, honesty and truthfulness are good. All the religions have some kind of version of this law. This law obliges us to do the right thing regardless of the pain, danger or difficulty involved. It is a hard law — “as hard as nails” But it is a shadow of the love Jesus is revealing. And the “law” of Jesus is even harder. In a poem Lewis wrote:

Love’s as hard as nails,
Love is nails:
Blunt, thick, hammered through
The medial nerves of One
Who, having made us, knew
The thing He had done,
Seeing (what all that is)
Our cross, and His.

In Lewis’s first Chronicle of Narnia, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), the lion Aslan predicts this hardness of God’s love by promising to save Edmund from the results of treachery. He says: “All shall be done. But it may be harder than you think.” When Aslan and the wicked White Witch discuss her claim on Edmund’s life, she refers to the law of that world as the Deep Magic. Aslan would never consider going against the Deep Magic; instead, he gives himself to die in Edmund’s place, and the next morning comes back to life. Aslan explains to Susan that though the Witch knows the Deep Magic, there is a far deeper magic that she does not know. This deeper magic says that when a willing victim is killed in place of a traitor, death itself begins working backwards. The deepest magic works toward life and goodness.

Stone Table by Henrik Tamm

Pentecost is about the deepest magic working toward life and goodness. We dare not get stuck practicing the “deep magic” that any person can know. As we see, Jesus says, “All shall be done. But it may be harder than you think.” As we immediately see from the history in Acts, it is harder than one might think to be alive with the Spirit in a dying world:

  • to be the presence of the future,
  • to have one’s own love that is hard as nails,
  • to be personally responsible for carrying life and not just let the priest or church take care of it,
  • to have a living faith and not just live a legacy of being a Christian as part of your culture or family.

Pentecost is more than the deep  magic

Most religion is just natural law — love the baby in the manger, justify yourself as not guilty by doing what others think is right. I think the world can sell all sorts of religion based on the “deep magic” that everyone already has an inkling of and that cultures preserve in their laws. But that law is not being the baby, or receiving forgiveness, or speaking out love and forgiveness. It is not receiving the power to work the deepest magic like Jesus.

I like Pentecost because I want to follow Jesus. I don’t want to profess to follow Jesus unless I am working with more than the “deep magic.”

I need the law written on my heart. Being a good person is not enough. I need to be forgiven, to be written on. I need God to write my itinerary and determine my value.

I need to harvest. Attending holy day meetings is not enough. I need to praise God in public like those enthused disciples. I need to form community and include people in it like the first church. I need to come up against the “powers that be” equipped with the truth about Jesus and little more. That’s what happened at Pentecost and what happens still.

Doing Something About It

Building community

I have a bug in my computer. I am slowly finding my way to a clean it out. I used my old malware program and it found a couple of things to fix. But it did not get to the one that is bothering me. So I have to do something about it. I am.

Of course this made me think about my relational system and the “bugs” that are infecting my friends and how sometimes, even they become “infections” in our body. The “malware program” in our body of Christ is probably the cell leaders. They do things about things.

I had a couple of small connections with cell leaders recently that made me glad that we have downloaded some good software to protect us. By exploring the boundaries of life in Christ and of our life together they are doing something about what might diminish community.

Doing something about illness

For instance, one of them is wondering how to care for a member of the cell who hasn’t been feeling well for quite a while. The person needs to make a realtionship with a therapist — it is not unusual to be depressed and therapy is good for the long-term depressed. But most people resist making a commitment to therapy, often for the same reasons they need therapy — so we need to be careful and gracious with each other as we walk with our friends in the direction of the counseling office. But a cell leader, or any caring friend, will need to do something. We don’t need to leave everyone alone, as if that is loving them, or as if we will be invading the sanctity of their individuality if we are concerned. Or worse, we don’t need to leave them alone because we don’t want to take responsibility for someone and steal their freedom — or even worse, because we fear we aren’t supposed to think we can actually influence someone for good.

It remains to be seen what this cell leader can accomplish. But it makes the world a better place when people try. It makes the body better when we try to catalyze change for the better — like the change we are promised in Christ.

Doing something about motivation

Megan said a couple of things in the meeting last night that made me glad for cell leaders and for women leaders, in particular. For one thing, she talked about what she was learning from Circle of Hope Daily Prayer about doing the word. She got people to raise their hands if they were using it. That kind of honest curiosity could be considered kind of pushy. But it is what leaders do. They don’t violate our boundaries to dominate us (if they are leading with Jesus, at least), but they don’t assume: 1) we are hiding or 2) that we need to be protected or 3) that we are not available to be ourselves and tell the truth. Assuming we are present, open, and willing to participate is good for us. Sometimes it even changes our minds about what we are capable of doing.

It remains to be seen if anyone further avails themselves of our daily discipline tool because she talked about it. But it makes the atmosphere of our church more authentic to know that some people think that daily prayer is crucial and that doing the word with the others who are using our daily prayer guide is important.

Doing something about hospitality

Another Cell Leader brought a neighbor to the PM ast night. This is not the most unusual thing that ever happened, but it takes quite a bit of effort every time it happens. I know she had to cross some human boundaries to get into a relationship with her neighbor; she needed to make time to include a new friend in her life, which always sounds easy until you do it. She had to make it known that she was deeply involved in her church, which might have seemed scary. Then she had to extend an invitation to the meeting, make the logistics doable and then usher her friend into the room. This seems like a theoretically small thing to do – it is perfectly natural to include someone socially. But it only seems natural until you try to do it again. Most of us don’t do it.

It remains to be seen if her new friend becomes a comfortable, then reproducing, member of the church. But it generates life when a leader, or anyone, goes out of their typical way to make a new relationship.

Boundary pushing, not breaking

There was some boundary-pushing, not breaking, going on with these cell leaders. They were doing something about it. One was probing the possibilities of deeper spiritual and psychological health. One was stepping over the edge of the safest parameters of our typical dialogue. One was moving off her normal track and making a new relationship. It all took the courage to take a step that seemed a bit ahead of the rest of us. It was daring to push the boundaries out a little, to include a person in possibilities for psychological health, in mutual spiritual discipline, or in community.

Walking ahead or beside someone into new territory and establishing new boundaries might be the essence of leading. My example of the malware program is too static to be fully applicable to the organism we are. Isn’t a malware sweeper just trying to keep one’s system free from something that disrupts it or takes it in a direction we don’t want it to go? Our Cell Leaders might detect what “bugs” others, but their technique is more about opening up the system to the greater possibilities of life in Christ, not just eradicating bothersome stuff.

It remains to be seen what will result from the work of these good people. But it also remains to be seen whether what Jesus did will result in what we hope it will. Jesus is certainly probing, moving us toward the edge of what is better and consistently holding out his arms to receive a new friend. He’s always doing something about it. So far, his efforts have made a miraculous impact. We don’t know what’s next, for sure, but I think we could expect more of the same. Our Cell Leaders, for sure, are doing something about it.