Hope

"Real hope - the kind of hope that gives you the audacity to resist the commodification of your lives and engenders the possibility of an alternative imagination - is no human achievement; it is a divine gift." pg. 39, "Colossians Remixed"

When I think of the gospel, I'm increasingly beginning to think of things such as this. Alternative imagination as a gift of grace for the purpose of living in a different reality with a different future. It's not often we think of hope as a subversive act, but maybe it is. Maybe hope, particularly hope that God's kingdom is arriving and is already here, is the most subversive human act possible. The fact that it is a gift makes it all the more subversive. It's God's action - God moving through people to reveal his reality and helping them discover how to live "lives of creative goodness for the sake of the world."

Lord, bring hope.

Hot Apple

I left my apple in the car after lunch today so I got a temperature probe from our office toolbox. The internal temperature was 116 deg. F. Now if only I had a little vanilla ice cream......

Spaces

It seems like this has become the summer of networking. The web of people who care about the kingdom and simple/organic/missional church is slowly spreading down here. I'm really starting to see the enormous blessing the past four years have been. We as a faith community have had the chance to work through many questions and issues that are critical to this journey. People in traditional churches often don't have the forum to do this without seriously jeopardizing their relationship to others in their setting.

For this reason, I'd love to continue facilitating "spaces" for people to do this. Whether it be actual faith communities we start, or just me saying I'm going to be at such-and-such coffee shop every Tuesday at 7PM and whoever wants to come and talk about the kingdom or missional church can show up (which I might actually be doing soon). I think this is one of the most important challenges we face right now - helping people to slow down enough and getting them into an environment where they can process what in the heck God is doing. In my opinion, if a gathering we organize makes people more busy and doesn't provide for two-way communication (i.e. not primarily lecture) then it is not worth organizing.

Living the Gospel

There's been much talk about D.A. Carson lately and his book within Emergent blog circles. He seems to be emerging (pun intended) as the evangelical scholar of record to speak out critically about all things "emerging church". That's fine by me; I am not an emergent junkie or anything like that so criticism is not really troublesome to me. However, there was a quote I read recently from Carson that demonstrates the kind of tension I think many of us feel with traditional evangelical life and practice. This is from a recent PBS Religion & Ethics special on the emerging church:

"There is truth to be announced. If you start losing that, you really step outside what Christianity is. The gospel is something to be taught and to be believed. It is not something simply to be experienced."

I owe a lot to evangelicalism in its many forms. It has been the central foundation of my faith in Jesus for the past 25 years, from childhood until now. There is little that could make me disagree with the first sentence in that quote. There is much truth to be announced - about God, about his dreams for the world - it could go on and on. However, the second part of the quote is where I have tension.

I'll cut to the chase. If the gospel is something primarily to be taught and believed, then why isn't the church in America more filled with Gospel-type people? The gospel is taught, a whole bunch. People believe, trust Christ for their sins, and become good Sunday morning note-takers and Wednesday night Bible-flippers. But the harsh reality is that most of these people never move beyond a mere surface expression of Christianity. The path from "taught" to "believe" to "practice" is not as smooth as some might think.

This is what makes me uncomfortable with Carson's quote. Not because it offends any emergent ties I might have, but because in practice - in reality - the Gospel is primarily meant to be lived out, experienced. Teaching and believing are critical components to the experience, but they occur at various messy points along the way that often cannot be defined or predicted.

Jesus said, "The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit." I've been a Christian for many years. I've seen people give their lives to Jesus and I've been in community with people growing in their faith. I've heard the Bible taught and studied it for myself for a long time. Yet following Jesus still seems to be a mysterious thing. Admitting this does not make me any less of a Christian nor does it reduce my trust in Jesus as my savior, teacher, friend, and Lord. It just tempers the tendency in me to make faith in Jesus something to be studied, taught, and believed, and not intensely pursued in my real life.

Pastor Jack

This is a great article about Jack Hayford from CT magazine. Amber and I met Pastor Jack in the lobby of a hotel in Anaheim during the '99 Vineyard Pastor's Conference. Amber wanted to give him a hug...so she did. He was very gentle and sincere, kind of what you would expect. Note in the article the many references to the kingdom of God - good stuff.

Reproduction

For those who care, I've added a few months worth of family photos to the photo page. June has some underwater shots taken of the kids with Amber's dad's old camera. Pretty cool.

Hmmm...there's a lot going on and not a lot going on. I've been facinated lately watching the maturing process of these little communities of faith we've all been blogging about the past few years. Specifically, I think of folks like Alan, Jason, Chris, Kevin, Palmer, Rachelle, Tom, Hanson, Bill, Rob, and others, many others in fact. These men and women all started from nothing or helped start a small network of disciples in their area and have been slowly and quietly serving these groups without much fanfare. Somewhere along the way, each has dealt with issues of how to lead in a way that's faithful to the Way of Jesus and what unique structures are beneficial for each group to keep refocusing on the kingdom of God and living out the Gospel within their everyday lives.

What's interesting is that, if they are anything like me, they are extremely excited for the future of these groups of disciples, but also still carry around a ton of unanswered questions and second-guessing about how this is all supposed to work. Any comparison between groups is really difficult and fruitless. So often what we're left with is trying to work out localized answers to very common questions...and that can be frustrating.

One of the common questions that comes up is, "What happens when your little house church gets too big?" For us, four years later, that has finally started to happen. Fairly soon, even the Freeman's rather large family room will just be too small to handle all the adults, kids, and ruckus that goes along with everything we do when we get together. So...what next?

There are obviously a million answers to that question, but like I said, only one that our group needs to discover for our unique setting and situation. We can learn from other groups - draw from their experience and wisdom - but there is no plug and play "right thing to do", no matter how much our American brains want to believe that there is such a thing. Discovery takes hard work - slugging out the answer in community. Leadership is not giving the answer, but providing the space for the answer to emerge.

It's neat to see all these little communities dealing with these hard questions and trying to stay faithful to the values they've discovered along the way. None of this happens fast...it makes me really nervous when I come across a website that has its first 12 house churches all mapped out. Having said that, my prediction is that in the next 12-18 months, we'll start seeing some of these "reproductive" questions worked out (at least for now) and groups kicking into another gear. It'll be fun to watch.

Not That You Missed Me...

In case you were wondering if Amber and I were on a 10-year-anniversary-induced love-fest this past week, I've contracted some kind of intestinal virus thingy and have been sitting around the house being worthless. I'm actually feeling a bit better today - which means my insides don't feel like a washing machine and I'm not running to the bathroom every 5 minutes. This sickness thing is really starting to suck...it's getting to be a habit. I don't want that.