Emergent Brethren

We all run across quotes by others that get our attention. Here’s one that struck me today:

“the moment you hand power over to other people, you get an explosion of curiosity, innovation, and effort.”

This comes from the book, The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us And What We Can Do About It, by Joshua Cooper Ramo.

I was taught by my parents that if something is going to be done right, you have to do it yourself. Were any of you taught to think in this way? Yet, in some of the committees I’ve served on, I’m amazed at the creativity that develops when we let go of ego and just focus on creating the best thing possible. The results can be amazing sometimes, and the event/thing can turn out far better than if I had done it by myself.

Can you resonate with this?

What quotes have stimulated you recently?

I love stories of people coming to faith in Christ and entering the community of a church! This week, the Modesto Church of the Brethren published this story in their newsletter, The Chimes. With permission, I share it here.

“During a recent Sunday service we welcomed two new members into the Modesto congregation! Chelsea Fenney, by letter of transfer and Dana Roy, by baptism. As usual, we invited our newest members, if they wished, to share thoughts on why they chose to join the church or what they appreciate about this church.

Here are some thoughts from Dana Roy:

I had never attended one church regularly, much less “belonged” to any faith community. After attending a memorial service for a dear friend’s parents at Modesto Church of the Brethren, my family and I decided to attend a Sunday worship service. This led to another Sunday worship, a Christmas musical, meeting church members, more Sunday services, cooking for 9th and D, National Junior High Conference, building relationships…. Before long I was waking up every Sunday wanting to go to church. It wasn’t just the activities; it appeared I had found a place that spoke my spiritual language. So many times I felt like Erin and Russ’ sermons spoke straight to my heart, allowing me to truly feel the Holy Spirit. Beyond this, I had found a faith community that was filled with so many welcoming and genuine people. My journey to Modesto Church of the Brethren has been more meaningful than I can possibly explain in one or two paragraphs. I am grateful beyond words for being a part of the MODCOB family.”

I love stories like this which illustrate a postmodern concept that belonging to a group leads to believing. Getting people involved in your church, a small group, a potluck, or even attending a memorial service can be the first step of evangelism. How many of you think that someone coming to a memorial service at your church might eventually come to faith because of this event? Yes, it is possible! Dana illustrates how the moving of the Spirit created a hunger in her life to want more of the good things of God. So, I encourage you to pray for those visitors that come to your activities and events. Maybe someone like Dana is attending, someone in who’s life the Spirit is moving.

Blessings to you,
Jeff

A few weeks ago I got an e-mail from Mike Morrell, who runs the Speak Easy blog program that I am a part of. This e-mail was letting me know that Speak Easy had a book that I could review. The book? Sacrilege: Finding Life in the Unorthodox Ways of Jesus by Hugh Halter. As soon as I read the e-mail I went right to the form and filled it out hoping that I wasn’t too late. I hit submit, held my breath, and waited for the confirmation that I indeed got a copy to review for Speak Easy. Seconds later I received that confirmation that i was hoping for, a chance to read the newest book by Hugh.

You see Hugh and his normal writing and ministry partner Matt Smay have influenced me in profound ways in their books The Tangible Kingdom and AND:The Gathered and Scattered Church. And Veritas has used their Tangible Kingdom Primer in developing missional communities (and plan to do so again in the coming year). So I was excited to see what Hugh had to say about following Jesus. And of course the title Sacrilege, which normally is seen as a bad thing in Christian circles, grabbed my attention right away.

The first thing that Halter does in the book’s first chapter is to define what he means by the word sacrilege. He says, “To commit sacrilege is to de-sacredize what is deemed to be sacred….In the Christian sense, to commit sacrilege means to disregard, disrespect, or be irreverent toward those things that have traditionally been considered holy, venerated, or dedicated as sacred. It’s tipping holy cows” At first reading how can sacrilege be a good thing, according to Halter. Just about the time when you are wondering if Halter is trying to just be controversial or provocative, we says this, which sums up what the book is all about, “In actuality, as I’ll show, de-sacredizing what should be de-sacredized is not only good, it begins to move us toward the undercurrent of the real person and Good News of Jesus. Sacrilege is about removing religion from our faith. It’s about securing the integrity of what is most important. It’s about chipping away at people’s false assumptions about who Jesus is and what following him is all about.”

As an Anabaptist I was totally on board where Halter went to show his readers the sacrilegious nature of Jesus, right to the Sermon on the Mount, and more specifically the beatitudes. Halter takes the remainder of the book unpacking the beatitudes and how they flip everything upside down and how following Jesus and living out the beatitudes will fulfill what Jesus wants of his disciples (or apprentices as Halter wants to call those who live for Jesus). Halter says that Jesus, “wanted people to become like him; sacrilegious, incarnational people who lived a contagiously countercultural, kingdom-centered life. (I believe Jesus wanted that when he walked the face of this earth and he also wants that now as well.)

I appreciated the book and what Halter was seeking to do, unpacking Jesus from the religious confines that He has been wrapped up in for 2,000 years and to truly see Jesus as “the ultimate sacrilegious leader.” I resonated with his use of the beatitudes to show the sacrilegious nature of Jesus and how if we follow Jesus, by living out the beatitudes, we’ll be committing sacrilege as well and becoming sacrilegious apprentices.

Here are some quotes from the book that I found helpful or that resonated with me:

“Jesus and the early faith communities lived an intentionally countercultural life without any sense of consumer-oriented fluff- and people still chose to take the leap!” (This is my desire for not only Veritas but for my life as well)

“Biblical apprenticeship is about three things: 1. Becoming just like Jesus. 2. Doing what Jesus did, and 3. doing the above with the types of people Jesus liked spending time with.”

“Jesus messed with people’s paradigms.”

“Jesus utterly jacked up everything people thought about religion and God. And he’s still at it.”

“Jesus loved the Scriptures as they witnessed to him, but his biggest fights were with those who knew the most Scripture.”

“Jesus really doesn’t care how much we know if our knowledge amounts to no change in our lifestyle.”

“Jesus, however, is trying to take people from a small box of religion to the place where they can open up their lives to a huge new world called the kingdom.”

“Although Westernized Christianity pulls us away from risk, confrontation, and getting gritty with real issues, Christ is going to lead us into places that will capture our emotions and reorient our entire perspective about life and why we live it.”

“Being a Christian is about being like Jesus, and sometimes that means taking risks to reach out.”

“Jesus came to expand your life, not keep it the same. His life is fuller than the American Dream, but it’s not as safe.”

“The wall of assumptions will only come down as entire communities band together in unity to live like Christ before the world. This may mean turning from idols of materialism, individualism, consumerism, and religion.”

I’m sure I could go on with various thoughts and quotes that stuck out to me and resonated with me and our journey in planting Veritas as a missional community. But I thought I’d end this blog with a final thought from Hugh that is a deep hope and longing of mine for our community. Hugh says, “Jesus never called people to follow him by themselves. He knew that life in the Kingdom was and still is only available for those committed to community with other apprentices.”

I’m thankful for Mike Morrell and Speak Easy for the opportunity to read and review Sacrilege. Hopefully reading this book can help and remind me to flip some tables and follow the subversive, countercultural, and sacrilegious leader Jesus of Nazareth.

That’s Happy New Year, in Hawaiian. As 2011 rapidly winds down, I do pray that each of you can look back and see numerous times where God’s hand has guided you. I’m about to preach tomorrow another sermon about Mary and Joseph, focusing on the time just before they flee to Egypt. They had their plans to marry, live near family in Nazareth, and lead a “normal” life. But their plans were turned upside down by an angel announcing the birth of Jesus, a forced trip to Bethlehem to register, and another forced trip to Egypt to save Jesus’ life.

Our plans may never be messed-up that much, but still it can be frustrating to see our plans or dreams get blocked. My prayer for the New Year is to have eyes to see God’s hand in everything that happens in 2012. That’s a simple request that will require a lot of faith to see it happen.

What’s your prayer or desire for the New Year?

Blessings to you,
Jeff

P.S. I heard a sermon this past Sunday that used 1 Kings 3:5-14 as its scripture. I thought this is a very appropriate one for my thoughts above.

At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”

6 Solomon answered, “You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.

7 “Now, LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. 8 Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. 9 So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”

10 The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. 11 So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, 12 I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. 13 Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. 14 And if you walk in obedience to me and keep my decrees and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.”

Ryan Braught sent the following as a Christmas card to those following his church plant. I was so impressed by it that I want to share it with the world:

In 9 BC the following inscription was written on a stone in the area of Priene …

The providence, which has ordered the whole of our life, showing concern and zeal, has ordained the most perfect consummation for human life by giving to it Augustus, by filling him with virtue for doing the work of a benefactor among men, and by sending him, as it were, a savior for us and those who come after us, to make war to cease, to create order everywhere. The birthday of the GOD AUGUSUTS – was the beginning of the good news of glad tidings that have come to men through him.

Just a few years later, a group of shepherds received this message on one particular illuminating night …

Do not be afraid, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For today in the city of David, there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign for you. You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly, there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “glory to God in the highest and on earth peace with men of good will”.

It’s impossible for me to read these two statements, and walk away without a clear sense that from it’s beginning, the announcement of the good news of the coming of God in Christ, subverted the perceived gods of the world. Caesar was in charge – it was his world – and though the wrong seemed oft so strong – he was the ruler yet. And in Caesar they had hope. Yet, the good news of Jesus proclaimed tidings of joy for all people in a way that Caesar’s never could. Today, we still proclaim Christ’s tiding in this Advent Season … the world thinks of Caesar very little.

But Caesar is not gone.

As I think about Advent I wonder “what is the challenge of Christ’s news today?” There are still plenty of things (and also perhaps people) that promise salvation. We place our hopes at their feet. Some of them speak to us through the walkways of the local Shopping Center … others call out to us from a podium in front of a White House. The work that we do (especially the work of ministry) has a sneaky way of disguising its Caesar-like identity. I know it has captured me more than once.

But, Jesus is still here too – and still challenging and subverting Caesar.

Our Advent faith is an Easter faith. It is grounded in the reality of a moment where the powers of sin, death, and evil all ganged up together and still met their match. Jesus stands over and above all Caesar’s … it is to Him we look … it is in Him we place our hope and trust..

All Hail King Jesus!!!

(Thanks to Chris Backert and the Ecclesia Network for the bulk of the above text)

(Thanks to Chris Backert and the Ecclesia Network for the bulk of the above text)