Several Sports Related Items...

1. Monday Night Football is not the same on ESPN. The games have been mostly yawners and Tony Kornhauser has to be one of the most annoying color announcers on the planet. At least Dennis Miller was halfway amusing once in a while. I keep thinking you'll hear a "thump" after one of his mindless comments (he's now going on and on about Jack Del Rio's suit jacket...how it's made by Reebok and has "snaps") and Theismann has put him on the floor.

2. Sunday Night Football has better games, but NBC needs to stick to the Olympics. Madden and Michaels are, as always, the best announcing team in football. But the rest of NBC's presentation is horrible. The jacked up theme music sounds like it was written for a low-budget Nintendo game. Pink makes me want to puke. The graphics look like they hired a third grader who draws spaceships on Microsoft Paint for a summer internship in the graphics department. But the games are good.

3. I now have the answer for Division 1 college football. Let everyone play for their conference championship. Before the bowl games, run the BCS rating one time and figure out who ranks #1. Give that team the national championship trophy. As it is now, the BCS "title game" is an absolute joke. The idea that Michigan should play a rematch game with Ohio State because they are "so obviously the second best team in the country," is ridiculous. Why should Ohio State have to beat Michigan twice? Why wait until January for them to play again? How about this weekend? Make it best two out of three? Three out of five? Dumb. So who else should be deemed a worthy opponent? USC is probably the most natural choice if they win out. But as a Gator fan, if we soundly beat Arkansas in the championship game, why not us? Or visa-versa...what about Arkansas? According to the so-called experts, the Gators now have played a "weak schedule". What happened to all the talk about the SEC being the most difficult conference to play week in week out? Insanity. The arguments about who is the best one loss team are pointless. If that can't be determined on the field, then let's just go ahead and give the trophy to Ohio State.

4. Michelle Wie should not be allowed to play another PGA event until she has won something on the LPGA. It's one thing when you have an established winner like Annika Sorenstam playing a men's event here and there, but Wie hasn't proven anything. She's a sideshow, and an insult to terrific female players like Julieta Granada, who just won a cool million in Trump's tournament down here in West Palm Beach yesterday.

5. All of these things will be rendered pointless in my mind on Friday night as myself and a few buddies take in the next installment of Crash-a-Rama at Orlando Speed World.

Hard-Luck Missions Work

The last night I was in Peru, we went to a restaurant in Arequipa called "Zig-Zag". Their specialty is something called "The Trilogy", which is three small cuts of meat served on a cast-iron plate - beef, ostrich, and alpaca...



...Dang, I look goofy...(zoom in on the drawing on the bib...hilarious)



...but dang it was good...

What is Church?

While flipping through Wright's "Jesus and the Victory of God" tonight, I ran across this quote I had underlined:

"Jesus...envisaged that, scattered around Palestine, there would be small groups of people loyal to himself, who would get together to encourage one another, and would act as members of a family, sharing some sort of common life and, in particular, exercising mutual forgiveness. It was because this way of life was what it was, while reflecting the theology it did, that Jesus' whole movement was thoroughly, and dangerously, 'political'. And...the main characteristic of the cells that Jesus called into being was of course loyalty to Jesus himself."

There are several things in this quote that stand out to me. First, if you were to nail me to the wall and make me answer the question, "What is church?" right now, my answer would probably sound very similar to what Wright describes above:

- "Small groups of people loyal to himself..." Small not because small is "better" in some arbitrary way, but small as in nimble. Unencumbered. A minority. Small groups of people can live and enact change without a lot of fanfare or organization. This is important for what the rest of the quote describes.

- "...who would get together to encourage one another..." Encouragement. "One-anothering". People undergoing transition cannot survive alone. We need the proximity of others who are changing as we are changing. Attending a conference and hearing a cool speaker or meeting a few people who live hundreds of miles away is not enough. Internet / phone relationships are not enough. Transition requires flesh and blood, day in day out connection. You can argue with me all you want about online community, but sorry, it just will not substitute for the kind of relationship necessary during transition.

- "...and would act as members of a family..." Like it or not, church, the "gathered ones", constitutes a family. Families take care of one another. Families don't give up on each other when someone pulls a Ted Haggard. Families don't just work together or relate to each other because they like the same things. They are blood, and blood sticks together.

- "...sharing some kind of common life..." Notice Wright says they shared "some kind" of common life. Jesus didn't appear to be too concerned about the nuts and bolts, just that his disciples were together in whatever they did. Obviously, when Christian communities began to form after the resurrection, they didn't all look exactly the same. I think Jesus expected this, but he also expected that his followers would live in a way that challenged the status quo. Hence, the next portion of the quote...

- "...in particular, exercising mutual forgiveness." Forgiveness, along with friendship, are probably two of the most underappreciated and dismissed practices in our culture. Yet, for the apprentice of Jesus, they are in some cases the only real weapons we have in destroying evil. We challenge our children to forgive when a bully at school makes fun of them, but when another adult challenges our autonomy, we strike back with violence. Imagine if we saw and practiced forgiveness for what it really is in the kingdom - a subversive battle axe of the Spirit.

- "...and the main characteristic...was loyalty to Jesus himself." We love each other as family, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, but our loyalty belongs to Jesus. We relate to one another on that basis alone. If our loyalties lie in institutions or with leaders, what happens when those institutions or leaders fail us or hurt us? If our loyalty is with Jesus, we are free to forgive those that harm us and then move forward with what God is doing.

Wright mentions how this vision of Jesus was "dangerously political". In light of the politics of our time, I think the same could be true of groups of people who strive to follow this vision now. The kingdom of God is fundamentally about God's will and authority. Those who have given themselves over to that authority run the risk of challenging the other "authorities" present in this world. All the more reason, that if you aim to live as an apprentice of the Master, you better do it with some others who are doing the same.

Power

"Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed, and he healed them. Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him." Matthew 4:23-25

A few years ago, a friend of mine Eric Keck wrote a post on his blog where he asked a fairly simple question that went something like this: How can we address deep questions about what it means to be church and following Jesus without the power of the Spirit being part of the equation? At the time, I was a Vineyard person trying to make sense of my heritage and all of these questions at the same time. It was just too much to handle. I was so intellectually challenged during that period, it was difficult to grapple with how the power of the Spirit - revealed in healing, deliverance, the prophetic, etc. - would fit in with my new understanding of Christian community and discipleship. I had quite a bit of experience with praying for healing, the prophetic, and even a few instances deliverance of demonic spirits. But frankly, my experience with those things was primarily, if not exclusively, within a church context. What I mean is, I prayed for the sick during "ministry time" after church on Sundays. I gave and received prophetic words during small groups or other meetings. You get the picture. These things almost never happened outside the "four walls", at work or on the street, or in a way that was different than the expected practice.

While in Peru, I was reminded of the absolute necessity of God's power when it comes to the proclamation of the Kingdom in the world. The local pastors and leaders attending the conference had a million questions about the implications of the kingdom message on their churches and ministries. For example, the South American church is particularly tribal in nature. You hang with your denominational buddies, or in some cases, with those from your local church, and everyone else is held in suspicion. This is true in the North American church as well, but the dividing lines are much sharper in Peru. One of the messages God wanted to bring during the conference was that we are part of God's family, and therefore our denominational affiliations and local church connections take a back seat to the reality of our brotherhood and sisterhood. This message was preached several times, but the second night of the conference it was lived. During worship, God began drawing everyone together in a way that could only come from him. It was not a hyped up emotional thing, people yelling, screaming and giving high-fives or crap like that. It was gentle, like a blanket that covered everyone in attendance. Pretty soon, everyone was at the front of the room, worshipping, crying, praying for each other. I've been in meetings where the emotional high whipped everyone into a frenzy. This was different. God was doing something hidden and deep, repairing breaches in some walls and destroying others. I was happy just to be there witnessing it all.

Somewhere along the line, we've believed that true change occurs through the sharing of stories, the free exchange of ideas, and respectful debate. I've worked very hard in our local community and on this blog to maintain an environment where those things are possible. Yet, in the Kingdom, at some point we are left in a position where transformation can go no further without God's direct, supernatural intervention. If the Kingdom of God is the reign of God, where his will is done perfectly, then there are arenas where healthy debate is just not going to cut the mustard. Sometimes, we need the King to show up and set things straight.

We equate God's power with the spectacular, but most of the time his action is hidden and quiet. "Showing up to set things straight" might mean giving you the ability to love an enemy in a difficult situation, not just healing a blind eye or casting out a demon. But regardless, the Spirit's power makes the world take notice. The Kingdom is real whether we like to admit it or not. In this way, I believe it is absolutely essential to recognize God's work among us and with us as we interact with the world. "Practicing" while we get together is a good start - praying for each other, giving prophetic words, etc. But Jesus wasn't satisfied with his disciples just ministering to each other. He sent them out. How he sent them is fodder for another post. But for now, what's important is that he sent them - with his power and authority - to proclaim the Kingdom.