kingdom grace

From my previous post, Healing Revival:

I wonder if the people of Myanmar and China will receive a special outpouring.

This video, Least of These, asks the same question. Click link to view.
Don’t miss watching this 2-minute video. (ht Bill Kinnon, Eric Blauer)

The American view of blessing is often self-indulgent and does not take into account the degree of suffering experienced by so many of the people whom God deeply loves.

The movie’s creator said this:

After having no words to express my emotions regarding the recent revival manifestations in America, I created this video as a prayer for the deceived and the suffering…and those of us who need to help them both. - LeeElla

Isaiah 58: 2, 6-7

2 For day after day they seek me out;
they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
and seem eager for God to come near them.

6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?

7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

What do you think? Where is their outpouring? When will we flock to stadiums begging God to bless them, to touch them, to heal them?

Recently, Threads Media gave me the opportunity to review Michael Kelley’s study, Tough Sayings of Jesus II. This would be great material for group study and discussion. Follow the links for further info about the material.

As a part of an online book tour, I had the following email interview with Michael. His responses here reflect the engaging style of his writing.

Grace: Michael, while I can see that most any age group would benefit from the lessons, I wondered if you wrote the series with a particular group in mind.

MK: While the Bible study is targeted at 18-34 year olds, it’s really appealing to a certain mindset more than an age demographic. I think all over the place people are rising up across age lines with similar desires and spiritual markers - things like depth of study and experience, community with those around them, and a responsibility to leave the world different than they found it.

Grace: I enjoyed your portrayal of Jesus as more than the two-dimensional flannelgraph Jesus of our Sunday school days. Are there aspects of Jesus’ character and nature that you feel need to be emphasized?

MK: I think I’m shooting for a more holistic view of Jesus here. While we might not admit it, most Christ-followers have “niceness” as a predominant attribute of their Jesus. He’s nice to kids, sinners, and probably puppies.

I do think Jesus is nice, but as you read through the gospels, we start to see that in a lot of situations He didn’t take the nice road. He was intentionally divisive, hard-hitting, and difficult. He tried to get rid of crowds more than He tried to gather them. That flies in the face of the Jesus I am more comfortable with, but that’s what we find.

Grace: You mentioned the story of Jesus turning the tables at the temple. What are the things that you see that the church or christians do now to hinder or obstruct others in their approach to God?

MK: In many ways, I think we have created a whole Christian sub-culture that has its own lingo, stars, and candy. Maybe we like that subculture even more than we like Jesus, because the subculture was implicitly created to make us comfortable. Stuff like that I think tends to get in the way of an authentic and deep walk with Christ.

Grace: In your speaking and teaching, who have you found to be most open to and willing to embrace the idea of a “deeply uncomfortable” walk with Jesus?

MK: I think it’s been the people who have been forced into a situation where they had to wrestle with God. Cancer, car wrecks, divorce, virtually any painful situation like that brings us to a point where theology confronts reality, and sometimes seems to contradict it. It’s that kind of situation that makes people wrestle. And their walk with Christ is already a little uncomfortable.

But also, there’s a whole group of people who have grown up indoctrinated in the subculture of Christianity, and in the end, have felt some element of inauthenticity about it. They - and we - want something more. Something deeper and more real.

Grace: Do you have a favorite story or response from this series?

MK: My take on the cursing of the fig tree seems to illicit interesting responses. There’s been a few times when I have talked through that, that people have disagreed with what I think is happening there.

But maybe the most meaningful has been people’s response to the session about Lazarus. I don’t think we tend to think about the emotional life of God too much, but if we are emotional beings, and we were created in His image, then it stands to reason that He is actually more deeply emotional than we are. The thought of a God who would enter into someone’s moment of pain, even though He knows the happy ending, seems to resonate with a lot of folks. That’s been cool.

Grace: Finally, you mentioned a fondness for certain fruit-flavored candy. I was just wondering what your favorite color is?

MK: Purple. No, red. No wait - Purple. Darn my fickleness!

Grace: Purple?!! You must be kidding. I usually give away the purple ones.

Thanks Michael. I enjoyed the book and your perspective on the parables and what they show us about Jesus when we take the time to look beyond the surface of the story, and thanks for your great responses to my questions.

The nature of the trinity is at the center of the debate and discussion of a couple of topics of interest to me. It is an area of disagreement between egalitarians and complementarians. It is also the source of the controversy and claims of heresy surrounding the book, The Shack.

Admittedly I stand on the side of an egalitarian relationship among the trinity. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are our example of unity in relationships. They model perfect mutual submission and deference to one another.

As Papa said in The Shack, “Hierarchy would make no sense among us.”

In regard to the portrayal of the trinity in the book, Wayne Jacobsen said this:

One of the concerns expressed about The Shack is that it presents the Trinity outside of a hierarchy. To look at the Trinity as a relationship without the need for command and control is one of the intriguing parts of this story. If they walk in complete unity, why would a hierarchy be needed? While in the flesh Jesus did walk in obedience to the Father as our example, elsewhere Scripture speaks of their complete unity, love and glory in relating to each other.

So many of the accusations of heresy that are thrown around - scary sounding words like modalism, arianism, monarchianism, and tritheism - are all rooted in misunderstanding and differences of opinion about the trinity.

The orthodox idea of the Trinity, as established in the early councils and creeds during the fourth century, is that God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit are simultaneously three distinct beings, and all the same being, none subserviant to another, all three with complete equality and a single will.

Until recently subordinationism was also considered a heresy of the trinity. It is only within the last few decades that the idea of hierarchy within the trinity has been promoted by complementarians within evangelical circles. Their teaching “equal in being, unequal in role” states that the Son is eternally subordinate to the Father.

I attempted to explain my theology of the trinity on the earlier post about Driscoll’s Doctrine Versus The Shack:

Most of my understanding of the trinity is from John 14-17. The 3 are too distinct to not be acknowledged in being, yet too interrelated and united to be completely dissected.

The Spirit is both the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ. Jesus is the Son, yet He is the being of God in flesh. God is the Father, yet he chooses to reveal Himself in Flesh and in Spirit. It is all beyond my understanding, yet a real part of fully knowing God through my relationship with Him.

I am united with the Father and Jesus through the Spirit living in me, revealing to me the Father’s love and His will. By the Spirit, I am in Christ and He is in me, and usually, I don’t try to separate it all out.

It doesn’t seem too far off from the position of Athanasius. Maybe I’m not a heretic.

Athanasius declared that it was acceptable to refer to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as “one substance” as long as this was not understood to mean an obliteration of distinction between the three persons, and it was acceptable to speak of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as “three substances” as long as this was not understood to separate the three as three individual gods.

It is really interesting to me that conservative christians have taken the more unorthodox position on this particular issue.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

It has been a subversive week!

Thank you to my subversive friends who included me in your links to this meme.
Mak
Jamie
Pam
Rose
I am a little late in the game to continue the meme as I have seen it already pass on to second and third generation lists with many well-deserving blogs already included.

Just a reminder that I keep a current list of interesting posts that I have read in my sidebar under “Conversations to Watch.” Whenever you click through to the site, be sure to check out what has caught my attention. It changes daily.

My Favorite Post Of The Week…

This post at Once A Youth Pastor brought back memories of our first too-big garden - from the starry-eyed dreaming over the Gurney’s catalog to the endless hours of weeding and way too many encounters with icky bugs and creepy-crawly critters. The post brilliantly illustrates the point that bigger isn’t always better.

This just in…hopeful changes in the christian publishing industry?

Losing My Religious Security Blanket is an article in the April issue of Next-Wave. Thanks Editor Bob.

Greg Boyd did an intelligent and thorough review of Eckhart Tolle’s book, A New Earth. His conclusion:

Better yet, if you’re interested in a Christ-centered way of learning how to live “in the present moment” — and we all should be — forget about Tolle and read Brother Lawrence and Frank Laubach, Practicing the Presence of God and/or J. De Caussade, The Sacrament of the Present Moment. Yes, live in the now! But do it in loving relationship with God rather than believing you are God.

Putting traditional tithing teaching on trial.

Fun site, Stuff Christians Like.

Post-charismatic Stuff

Brother Maynard shared a little of the back story about the book Post-Charismatic and included a link to an interesting previous post of his describing 6 types of post-charismatics.

Cynthia shared her post-charismatic experience.

A great review by Jason Clark. It looks like there is new interest in the term charismissional. Robby said I should have copyrighted it. He emphasizes it as descriptive of a necessary movement forward for those detoxing from charismatic hype.

The links to a series of Charismissional articles are on my recommended page.

This seems like an appropriate ending…

Postman Pat and his Charismatic Cat
Postman Pat the evangelist - See how Pat tackles Rev Timms, Mrs Thompson, the knife-wielding Atheist, and Ted Glen with his nasal hair problem.

A couple of my favorite lines…

“Pat, what’s happened? You’ve been Toronto’d!”

“Oh, no, I just fell over.”

and…

“Keep praying for Mrs. Thompson.
She’s nearly a Christian.
I keep speaking to her.
She nearly knifed me today.”

Something a little lighter…

(The picture isn’t actually my daughters.)

My (little) girls happened to both have a day off of work and went to lunch together the other day. When they got home, I asked about their time together.

“It would have been fine if the waiter wasn’t hitting on us.”

“Hitting on you?! What does that mean?”

“It’s the same as flirting mom. Haven’t you heard of that?”

(Yes, I actually know what “hitting on” means, but it makes absolutely no sense in the context of my little girls!)

Aye, aye, aye! I’m going to need some deeper sand to keep my head in.

Maybe we can have a family movie night soon. I’m thinking Veggie Tales, Bob the Builder, cheerios and apple juice.

A Brilliant Homeschooling Moment

My daughters are in the midst of writing term papers. One of them is writing about slavery and abolition.

This daughter explaining the underground railroad to her dad:

“Well, like it wasn’t really underground…

and it wasn’t really a railroad.”

Vanity…

My girls primped for an hour before going in for driver’s license pictures!

Or not…

My son tolerated me combing his hair before going to the studio to have his senior pictures taken.

I thought that some of you missional mavericks would appreciate this quote from Floyd McClung’s new book, You See Bones, I See An Army: Changing The Way We Do Church:

Hierarchical leaders focus on control, order and nostalgia. Apostolic leadership yearns for the ‘not yet’. Dreaming, faith, imagination, risk taking, pioneering and future goals characterize apostolic leadership. Administration, bureaucracy, reminiscence and impersonal systems and structures characterize hierarchical leadership. Apostolic leaders encourage holy dissatisfaction, risk taking, questioning and experimenting.

Paul was an apostle, and as such, functioned as a visionary leader. He held to independent views and refused to conform to the religious structures of his day. He was a maverick. We need to make space for apostolic mavericks like Paul in the church today. It is the visionary mavericks that play a vital role in questioning the status quo. They propose mind-blowing alternatives to how things have always been done. Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch make this profound statement about the role of biblical mavericks: “In a real sense, a true biblical maverick acts in a prophetic manner by exposing the lies that the dominant group tells itself in order to sustain its shared illusions…”

(ht Bill Lollar, thanks Bill)

Well, either this or move to Medicine Hat.

Another post that I have been hesitant to put up. Perhaps April 1 is an appropriate day to post this. Consider this a work of fiction, kind of.

It all started a few months ago while glancing through the local real estate ads. Or maybe it started earlier with snippets of ideas accumulated over a period of time. I am not sure exactly, and now it doesn’t matter.

There it was, a little church for sale. It reignited earlier thoughts of a building that could serve as a chapel.

I’m not sure why this particular building captured my imagination.

(more…)

What we’ve done to make sure that discipleship is taken seriously is embed within the covenant of each group a certain set of practices. The problem with most communities of faith is that they are confessional—they’re saying the right things, but they don’t address behavior.

So what we did is develop a set of practices designed to produce embodied values in the lives of our group members. And we called those practices TEMPT—

• Together we follow
• Engagement with Scripture
• Mission
• Passion for Jesus
• Transformation

They have to move from being Bible studies and prayer groups to being mission agencies. And they need to take seriously the idea of a common set of disciplines that begin to form them and shape their culture.

But the main thing is for people to just get out—and I say this with all love and respect—just get out of the house. It’s too safe in our houses. We need to start inhabiting the places where other people inhabit. If you can pull off “church” in a third place, in a place where people go to spend their spare time, you will be forced to contextualize your message and get away from the bad three-chord choruses and stuff like that.

(Alan Hirsch)

I am re-imagining simple church that places a whole-life, missional, counter-cultural, Jesus-following ethos at the very center of its gathering and intentional discipleship processes.

(Roger Thoman)

The other night, my husband and I had a conversation about intimacy.

Sarah’s post left me thinking about the felt presence of God. I realize that I have allowed my relationship with God to slip to a functional, practical level. I drifted away from intimacy.

I am not sure how to describe what I am saying without using the words felt and touched. I will try to avoid getting too creepy or sappy in my descriptions, and hopefully I won’t leave you thinking we’re freaks.

So I asked my husband, “Do you still feel God?”

“Yeah, all the time.”

“No, I don’t mean the general awareness of Him, I mean the touch-your-soul sort of feeling.”

“Oh, the electric fence.”

“Yeah, the electric fence.”

“Not so much lately.”

“So do you go looking for the feeling, or do you just wait for the moment?”

When distance develops, who initiates?

I don’t want to settle into a relationship that lacks connecting with God at an intimate level where my heart is touched by His presence.

In the past, we had wonderful, sometimes overwhelming, experiences of the felt presence of God. It only takes a time or two of that to become like an addict, dependent on feeling Him, yearning for the next encounter.

We know that there are spiritual seasons and that His presence is a reality in spite of our feelings at the moment. Even in the midst of a dry or desert season though, it is important to find a way to connect.

But how? We go back to the things that we know, the places where we met before, where we felt His presence. We make time, we wait expectantly, we draw near, and we respond.

I notice this among the people from our former church who are displaced charismatics. No matter what they pursue, everyone is ultimately looking for that place of connection and intimacy. And I think we are looking for situations that inspire and encourage us in making and keeping that intimate connection.

Some of our friends are chasing conferences, others are spending time soaking (listening to worship music together), others are trying to “get plugged in” at a church, others hope the answer is in creating a worship experience or a new way of gathering.

The bottom line is that I think we all want intimacy with God and out of that a sense of intimacy with one another.

What are your thoughts about the felt presence of God?

(I’m going to be away for a few days. Feel free to comment, but I won’t be responding until the weekend.)