Off to Alabama

I know I haven’t written much for the past week as I’ve been busily trying to prepare for this trip.

And now I go…

Risk Taking Missions

Bishop Robert Schnase, a name even harder to say than “Doepken,” talks about the importance of “Risk-taking mission and service” in his book, Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations.  We head out on a mission trip to Alabama on Friday.

Risk-Taking Mission and Service includes the projects, the efforts, and work people do to make a positive difference in the lives of others for the purposes of Christ, whether or not they will ever be part of the community of faith.  Some churches practice Risk-Taking Mission and Service by sending work teams to Mozambique, Russia, Mexico, or Honduras, or they assist closer to home in clean up and reconstruction after hurricanes or tornadoes.  Other churches focus on projects within their own community, such as after-school programs for at-risk children, food banks and soup kitchens, and ministries or witness aimed at forming public policy.  Others get involved in ministries to senior adults in retirement centers, regular services for the incarcerated, and efforts to challenge and change unjust or inhumane systems that affect the poor.

Risk-Taking Mission and Service is one of the fundamental activities of church life that is so critical to practice it in some form results in a deterioration of the church’s vitality and ability to make disciples of Jesus Christ.  When churches turn inward, using all resources for their own survival and caring only for their own people, then spiritual vitality wanes….

The word mission turns church service outward.  Mission reminds congregations that Christ’s compassion, grace, mercy, and love extend to the entire world, and these fruits are cultivated not only within the walls of the church or among the people of the Body of Christ who are regularly seen and already known.  Mission refers to the positive difference made in the lives of people beyond the inner circle of the church.  Mission spreads the faith by exemplifying the compassion, mercy, and justice of Christ in the world.  (pp. 83-85)

Another pic of Jacob Wrestling

Thou Shalt Not Kill

Just killed a shrew.  I was sure I’d heard something downstairs in our house a couple of days ago. I was at the computer.  I got real quiet.  I tried to listen.  Couldn’t pinpoint anything.  I gave up.  Today I heard what I was sure was some scratching noise.  I stopped everything.  I dug around some papers.  I gave up and sat and listened some more.  Then I saw the little gray creature between my desk and file cabinet.  I started digging around (It’s a mess, OK!) then I saw him and grabbed a book that was sitting next to me.  I stunned it with the first smack and killed it with the second.

It was at that time that I looked at the book I had killed it with.  It was a Bible.  It was a paperback Bible that was given to me and I’ve never used.  But, still it was a Bible.  I feel bad that the shrew is dead.  I also feel bad that it was a Bible I used to kill it.  That seems very wrong for probably several reasons.

Anyway, the shrew is outside now.

Resonating with Adam Hamilton

As I’ve reflected on my time at General Conference ‘08, I’ve been looking around at other blogs. I’ve been trying to see if there are others who may have had some of the struggles I’ve been having. I’ve wanted to see there are some others out there in the Methodist Middle — those of us who find themselves trying to be Evangelicals yet trying to distance themselves from some of the politics and theological/biblical constructs of the “right.” As I’ve said below, I feel like those on the stereotypical “right” think I lean to the left and those on the stereotypical “left” think I lean to the right. All I’m trying to do is be orthodox, faithful, honest, and the best Christian that I can be. And I feel I have a hard time doing so out of some amount of fear that I’ll be perceived as being not compassionate or biblically wrong.

Therefore, I have appreciated some of the comments on the blog by Adam Hamilton, pastor at the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in Kansas City. He’s written a book called Seeing Gray that addresses some of these issues. And I like a post I found over on his blog today where he addresses a pastor who had questions about his book. You can read the whole post over here. Here are some excerpts:

1. As I’ve noted in Seeing Gray – “left leaning” is in the eye of the beholder. Most of my liberal friends still think I’m “right leaning.” I’d call myself a liberal evangelical or an evangelical liberal depending on the day of the week and the issue being discussed. Since my views seem “left leaning” to you I’m guessing you must be more “right leaning” than I am. : )

2. Regarding John 14:6 being an example of prophetic hyperbole – I believe it is, as is much of what Jesus says. That doesn’t make it untrue, but I think you’ve got to understand that this is how Jesus speaks. Particularly in John he is usually speaking in metaphors and these metaphors break down if pushed too far or taken out of context. In the synoptics Jesus deploys far less metaphor, but his words are even more sharply and clearly hyperbolic and prophetic. When you understand this about Jesus you begin to appreciate his words without worrying about cutting off your hands or gouging out your eyes. Having said that, I do believe that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life and that no one comes to the Father but by him. I would encourage you to re-read the arguments on this from the inclusivist perspective in Seeing Gray.

4. Regarding the Bible being fraught with inconsistencies and errors – I suppose it depends on what you mean by “fraught” and what you mean by “errors.” Yet I don’t know how you can have studied it, honestly and openly, and not reached the conclusion that there are many inconsistencies and some things that cannot be correct. I don’t know if you read the footnotes for that chapter in Seeing Gray – you might take a look at the notes. One of the most important doctrines of the Christian faith, and one I absolutely believe in, is the resurrection of Christ. Yet take a sheet of paper out and map out the four different accounts of the resurrection in the gospels. I think you’ll find the details are, at points, very difficult to reconcile without doing damage to each of the accounts. And if we find this with one of the most important events in the entire Bible, we also find a host of other such inconsistencies. This does not diminish the Bible for me. In fact it makes me appreciate it all the more. And these inconcistencies point to the Bible’s humanity. The way it speaks to us, and bears witness to God points to its divinity. It is in appreciating and appropriately balancing these two (the Bible’s humanity and its divinity) that we come to what I believe is the clearest understanding of what the Bible is, and how it functions in our lives. The unfortunate dogma of inerrancy is unhelpful, misleading and dishonest. [By the way, I would accept all of the original “fundamentals” of the fundamentalist movement as true with the exception of inerrancy - most liberals would say that makes me pretty “right leaning.”]

There’s a lot more here.  But Rev. Hamilton has given me some framework in which to put my own developing sense of self and faith and Scripture.

31′ x 31′

That’s how big our present chapel is…31′ x 31′. I like to say that it’s often quite quaint…but that sometimes “quaint” really means “small.” We’ve worshiped in this space for some 40 years or so. We’ve had up to 118 crammed into this 900 square foot building, with the back taken up by a closet space. It’s funny that we started a 2nd worship service in 2000 because we were getting too cramped in our space with just one worship — we were beginning to average over 50 or so in attendance at that time. The switch to two services wasn’t very effective because most people come to the 2nd service. At the early service, we average under 10. At the 2nd service, we now average over 60 or so.

And so, we keep looking to the larger facility we’re building and ask “How long O Lord?”

Getting a Blogroll up and “rolling”

Sorry if it looks like some of the stuff is trivial.  That’s because I like trivial stuff…particularly the sports.  Man I loves da sports.  I’ll eat up all I can about Duke Basketball.  But I’ll read about almost any sport.  I also included some of the folks who shaped my theology and understanding of the world — my teachers.