Catalyst West: Andy Stanley

The first speaker at Catalyst West Coast this year was Andy Stanley.  The theme of the conference was “Take Courage,” and he admitted resisting the temptation to preach a sermon encouraging us to be brave like David or Gideon or Noah.  While sermons along those lines have truth in them, it can be a challenge to relate to them when the chances of you having an army you need to whittle down to the faithful few are pretty small.  There’s also the fact that if you’ve been around church long at all, you’ve heard plenty of sermons like that.  Andy took a different route, and I’m glad he did.

Before he got into his message, though, I could tell he was bugged by the inability of this room full of alleged adults to control themselves with the little poppy things we’d been given.  You remember those little boxes from when you were a kid – they were full of little bags of powder or something that would *bang* when you threw them at the ground?  Somebody thought it would be a good idea to put one of those boxes under each seat.  So many people couldn’t help themselves and kept messing with them long beyond the time they should’ve been.  I found Stanley’s lack of amusement with them amusing.  And he was right on.  Anyway.

Here are a few of the highlights I got from his message:

The person engaging in an act of courage usually has no idea what the ramifications or impact of that decision will be.  We’re not living in movies, and the orchestra doesn’t tense up when we’re about to make a climactic choice.  We go through life and make the choices we’re presented with.  Some have big impact and others little – but we don’t know which is which. 

While our stories aren’t likely to be on the front page of the newspaper, we’ll face moments/opportunities/challenges that will require us to exercise the extraordinary courage we so often shrink from.

He then went on to describe three (he said four but ran out of time) faces of courage – times when courage may be required for us to move forward into God’s best plan for our life.

One of those situations was having the courage to ask for help when it would be easier to pretend that everything’s okay.  The secrets you have influence the way you lead.  You compensate for your secrets in ways you don’t notice but the others around you do.  He called those who needed help but didn’t get it chickens. 

We don’t ask for help because we’re afraid of what others might find out about us, or what we might discover about ourselves.  But the real thing we need to fear, according to Stanley, is waking up one day and realizing we are outside of God’s will for our lives.  If we are to lead, we need confidence that God is with us.  If I’m not confident I’m where God wants me to be, how am I going to lead with confidence?

Do I fear being out of God’s will more than poverty?  Irrelevance?  The opinions of others?

I think what stuck with me most from his talk was something he said toward the end:

One day, everything I’m going through right now will just be a story.  All the stresses, pressure, hopes, worries, doubts, fears, responsibilities – all of it will be a story.  When this chapter of my life is over, what story do I want to tell about it?

“It would’ve been easier to X, so I did.”

“I was afraid of Y, so I didn’t.”

For some reason that really resonated with me.  I can think back to so many situations and times in my life where I was consumed with one thing or another, worrying about this decision or that decision – and now they’re stories.  I wonder how many stories I missed out on because I wussed out?  I do not want to wuss out.  I want my greatest fear to be that I’m out of God’s will for my life.  I’m not sure it is.  But I want it to be, and I will be praying for God to make it so.

Sermon / Podcast Recommendation

This won’t be useful to many of you but some of you should appreciate it.  I’m always on the lookout for good podcasts to listen to while I’m driving or working out.  Many churches are now podcasting their sermons.  I wanted to recommend one particular sermon podcast to those of you who might benefit from such a thing – that of the Village Church in Texas.  Matt Chandler is their lead pastor and the guy who preaches most of the time, but I’ve heard one sermon from another guy and enjoyed what he had to say too.

They’re a Reformed church and I’m not Reformed (that means they believe in Predestination and are Calvinist) but I still greatly enjoy the preaching and think it is some of the best I’ve heard.  The focus on God’s grace, preaching the Gospel, and the lack of moralism is awesome.  It enriches me and if you’re looking for something worthwhile to listen to on your mp3 player give it a try. 

Following this link will take you to the Sermons page where you can download them individually, subscribe to the podcast, and even get study guides related to each of the sermons.  If you do a search in the iTunes store for “The Village Podcast” or “Matt Chandler The Village” you should find the podcast and be able to subscribe to it.

Read This

If you consider yourself a Christian, I really think you need to read this.  I enjoyed it and think I could stand to take the message to heart.

Some Thomas Merton

I’m reading through a book right now with selections and excerpts from various Christian writers throughout history.  It’s meant to help me focus my mind on God and be a better follower of Jesus.  One thing I always enjoy when I read the writings of others is that many of the struggles I face have been faced by people for centuries.  When I read St. Augustine writing about his struggle with the fact that part of him wants to fully devote himself to God but the other part wants to hang on – it’s comforting (for lack of a better term).  It’s also good to see that even many of these people who would be considered giants of the faith (or who have been declared Saints by the Roman Catholic Church) experience the kind of struggles that I have yet still have amazing insights into what it means to follow God.

I don’t have anything particularly stirring to say but I did want to share a couple of quotes from Thomas Merton.  He’s a writer I’ve only marginally delved into but I have greatly enjoyed what I’ve read. From what I understand some of his writing and exploration had to do with what Christians could learn from some of the Eastern traditions.  He got some flak for that from some, of course, but from what I can tell he wasn’t trying to copy their theology but rather wanted to engage those from others traditions and learn more about them and learn from them.  Here are some of his thoughts with regard to meditation, the soul, and the search so many of us are on to find ways to get our spirituality and our life to match up.  Each quote is a distinct one, they aren’t all next to each other like this in the book, I just picked a few that stuck out to me:

“There is a “movement” to meditation, expressing the basic “paschal” rhythm of the Christian life, the passage from death to life in Christ.  Sometimes prayer, meditation, and contemplation are “death” – a kind of descent into our own nothingness, a recognition of helplessness, frustration, infidelity, confusion, ignorance.  Note how common this theme is in the Psalms (see Pss. 39, 56)…”

“We do not want to be beginners.  But let us be convinced of the fact that we will never be anything else but beginners.”

“Very often the inertia and repugnance which characterize the so-called ‘spiritual life’ of many Christians could perhaps be cured by a simple respect for the concrete realities of everyday life, for nature, for the body, for one’s work, one’s friends, one’s surroundings…”

“A false supernaturalism which imagines that ‘the supernatural’ is a kind of realm of abstract essences (as Plato imagined) that is totally apart from and opposed to the concrete world of nature offers no real support to a genuine life of meditation and prayer.  Meditation has no point unless it is firmly rooted in life.”

- Thomas Merton, excerpts from Contemplative Prayer

The Cost of Non-Discipleship

"The disciple of Jesus is not the deluxe or heavy-duty model of the Christian - especially padded, textured, streamlined, and empowered for the fast lane on the straight and narrow way.  He stands on the pages of the New Testament as the first level of basic transportation in the Kingdom of God.

"Nondiscipleship costs abiding peace, a life penetrated throughout by love, faith that sees everything in the light of God's overriding governance for good, hopefulness that stands firm in the most discouraging of circumstances, power to do what is right and withstand the forces of evil.  In short, it costs exactly that abundance of life Jesus said he came to bring (John 10:10).  The cross-shaped yoke of Christ is after all an instrument of liberation and power to those who live in it with him and learn the meekness and lowliness of heart that brings rest to the soul....  The correct perspective is to see following Christ not only as the necessity it is, but as the fulfillment of the highest human possibilities and as life on the highest plane."

   - Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines

Stop whining and climb down from your cross

"Make no mistake: if you are really going to try to meet all the demands made on the natural self, it will not have enough left over to live on. The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience will demand of you.  And your natural self, which is thus being starved and hampered and worried at every turn, will get angrier and angrier.

“In the end, you will either give up trying to be good, or else become one of those people who, as they say, "live for others" but always in a discontented, grumbling way - always wondering why others do not notice more and always making a martyr of yourself.  And once you have become that you will be a far greater pest to anyone who has to live with you than you would have been if you had remained frankly selfish.

"In a battle, or in mountain climbing, there is often one thing which it takes a lot of pluck to do; but it is also, in the long run, the safest thing to do.  If you funk it, you will find yourself, hours later, in far worse danger.  The cowardly thing is also the most dangerous thing.

“It is like that here.  The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self - all your wishes and precautions - to Christ.  But it is far easier than what we are trying to do instead.  For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good."  We are all trying to let our mind and heart go their own way - centered on money or pleasure or ambition - and hoping, in spite of this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly.

And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do."

                                             - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The first portion of this passage, referring to being a “pest,” unfortunately reminds me of myself.  In high school and the beginning of college I was the leader of the Setup Team at Crossroads.  I’d get up early on Sunday mornings and work with a few other guys (for a while only Jesse) to get everything set up for the church services.  This often meant I could not stay up or out on Saturday nights as much as I wanted to.  And boy did I let my friends hear about it.

I never realized how much I whined about it until my friend Michael brought it to my attention.  I don’t remember exactly what he said but I remember being a bit shamed when he would come to help and I as the “leader” of the team would be whining about how other people weren’t helping.  Later, when Michael led the Setup team for a different ministry venture I was the overall leader for, one of his rules was: “Do not whine about other people not helping.  Help cheerfully, or don’t help at all.”  I know he did not intend it as any sort of message to me, but I also knew he made that rule after learning from the misery of working with a whiner such as myself.

I was whining because I was serving for the wrong reasons.  I was trying to do what I was supposed to do, to do a good thing, and still hope I had some time and energy leftover to do what I really wanted.  In reality what I needed was to let God change my heart and let the Gospel inspire my service.  Instead I was serving because it was “the right thing to do” and I appreciated the pats on the back it got me.

Good thing I’m not like that anymore, ever, with anything.

My (unexpected) take on Prop 8 – Part Two

Here’s the conclusion of my take on Prop 8.  Read the first post for context, or else this post won’t make much sense to you.

Despite all I’ve written so far, I'm voting No on Prop 8.  I'm not happy with where the situation is as a whole, and I would prefer "marriage" be a term reserved for what it has historically/traditionally been - a relationship between a man and a woman.  I don't think it should be changed.  A gay couple is not the same as a heterosexual couple.  They are of the same value, they are no less human, they are equal.  It is not discrimination to recognize that the relationships are of a different type.  But as long as the government is in the "marriage" business and that word is an important part of guaranteeing the equal rights gays deserve, then I think gay marriage should be legalized.  This is a problem Christians created for themselves by trying to make America into a "Christian nation" and trying to use the system to legitimize their way of living.  Christians made this bed and now they need to sleep in it.  By making marriage an issue of the state in a state governed by the Constitution, which guarantees equal rights for all, Christians have made marriage subject to the Constitution.  There are lots of things bound up legally with “marriage” and it doesn’t appear that simply having “civil unions” will guarantee the exact same rights for gays, and that’s not right.

I think Constantine's declaration of Christianity as legitimate/official was one of the biggest blows to the message and movement of Jesus.  Instead of continuing Jesus' radical anti-establishment movement of love, Christians fell in love with becoming the dominant power and abused that power.  Today Christians are largely more concerned, I think, with maintaining power and making Christian culture the same as American culture - and that's a problem.  Instead of being seen as people radically in favor of love and acceptance and the gospel, Christians are seen as agents of the old, agents of hatred and discrimination.  It should not be this way.  If years ago Christians had tried to find another way to secure equal rights for gays rather than criticize and hate on them, things might be different.   But that's a fantasy land.  I think Christians have sort of made their own beds on this one and it's time to sleep in it.  By making marriage an issue of the state in a state governed by the Constitution I don't think we have any choice at this point but to allow gay marriage.

I hope I've explained and nuanced my view enough.  This started as a post explaining why I was voting Yes on Prop 8 but as I thought about it and worked through my view I changed my mind.  My guess is this will upset many of you on both sides - those of you who are strongly "Yes" will consider me a prodigal, and those who are strongly "No" will consider me only slightly better than a segregationist.  But still, it's where I am.

My (unexpected) take on Prop 8 – Part One

This post started out as something else and evolved as I thought through it.  I’m still a little surprised at my conclusion but I think it’s the right one.  This is long so I’ve split it into two posts.  The second post will have my conclusion and what I’m planning on voting. 

As someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about and figuring out how to communicate, I think words are important.  Words are symbols that communicate commonly shared meaning and ideas.  Words mean what they mean because we agree they do, and they carry certain connotations/things with them. This is why some words are considered inappropriate to say, like the n-word.  Words are powerful.  When it comes to marriage, I think the word should be reserved for what marriage has historically been - a relationship between a man and a woman.

This isn't based in religion or bigotry.  In fact I believe the insistence on using the term "marriage" for gay marriage is an example of cultural intolerance and insensitivity, which are generally considered cardinal sins by those who call themselves progressive.  Let me see if I can explain it this way with a hypothetical scenario.  Given the time and energy I have this is the best I could do, as inadequate as it is.

Let's say there's a group of people who do this particular dance.  The dance requires three people, and it involves certain steps.  This dance is a big part of their culture and it tells the story of their people.  Children are taught about the dance from a young age, and most children take it up when they grow older.  Sometimes the people mess up the steps, sometimes they screw up the dance and quit in the middle of it - but it always has three people.  That's what the dance is.   A new group of people come in and they hear about the dance.  They like the dance and think it's cool, but instead of 3 people they want to do the dance with two.  This means some of the steps change, and the story that's communicated by the dance changes - but the new group likes to do the dance and thinks it's fun.  They're not really doing the same dance - but they're doing a dance that sort of looks like the other dance, but it's different and communicates something different.

The original group of people have always called their dance "Jaje."  To them, "Jaje" carries with it meaning and it's something that has been a cornerstone of their culture for a long time.  They would admit they haven't always done it right and sometimes they mess up, but they still value it and the story it tells.  The new group wants to call their dance by the same name.  They like the fact that Jaje is a respected and honored tradition - and while they don't want to dance the Jaje, they want to do a dance and they want everyone else to call it Jaje.  This new dance is different from the historic, traditional Jaje but the new group still thinks they should have the right to be considered equal even if their dance is different.  The original group suggests the new group call their dance something else, but the new group says that's hate and discrimination.  The old group says they are trying to hold on to their traditions and culture, and "Jaje" is part of that.  The new group says that times have changed, and Jaje doesn't mean that anymore; besides, if the original group cared about Jaje so much they'd never mess the steps up or quit dancing in the middle of it.

I think any anthropologist looking at this scenario would see the new group as overtaking the culture of the old group.  The old group would necessarily feel threatened, and while they can still do their Jaje dance, it seems like a bit of a jerk move by the new group to insist their new, different, inspired-by-the-original-Jaje dance be called the same thing even though it isn't the same thing.  I'm sure if Americans went over to some other country and started co-opting their cultural traditions we'd be considered "ugly Americans."  I obviously use this as an analogue to the gay marriage movement of today.

I think gays should enjoy all the same rights as heterosexual couples.  The government should not discriminate based on sexual orientation when it comes to the benefits of domestic partnerships.  Truth be told, I would be happiest with the government getting out of the "marriage" business in the first place.  I wish the government could just have "domestic partnerships" that bestow the legal benefits of marriage, and both hetero and gay couples would apply for them.  The government should not be in the marriage business at all.  This is where the complexity comes in.  More on this with my next post, which will complete my thoughts on Prop 8 and tell you my vote.

Thought for today

Too often in my life and heart God is an idea, a concept, a belief, an argument, a system of thought, a set of rules, a religion - too seldom is He God.  I would be nowhere without grace.

Pray at the Pump

I don’t have much time to post this since Belle is clamoring for another round of “Farm Animal Friends” so my commentary will be left to a minimum.  We all know gas prices are high right now and it’s hit some of us more than others.  We’re reacting in different ways – some of us by cutting down on “unnecessary” driving (because all our driving is so necessary) or riding bikes more or whatever else.  Apparently one group is responding through prayer.  I encourage you to go read the post from Jesus Shaped Spirituality (a blog I am greatly enjoying), but here’s a taste:

“For example, one evangelical has taken his particular view of rising gas prices and started a movement called “Pray at the Pump.” Somehow, the rise of gas prices is a sign of the end times and praying at the pump for God to lower prices will apparently prove that he’s in charge.

Of course, one wonders if it ever occurred to anyone that the inconvenience to the American lifestyle of mobility and affluence isn’t really something that God would respond to as an act of mercy…So somewhere a homeless man or a family struggling to put food on the table will see a group of middle class suburban Christians gathered around a gas pump, praying that God will have mercy and get things back to where we can all go on about our business. 

I don’t have to spend much time asking if Jesus would join such a prayer meeting.”

C.S. Lewis on Faith

I love this quote from Mere Christianity.  I'd add some sort of commentary but really believe it speaks for itself:

Faith seems to be used by Christians in two sense or on two levels....In the first sense it means simply Believe - accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity.  That is fairly simple.  But what does puzzle people - at least it used to puzzle me - is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue.  I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue - what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements?...What I did not see then - and a good many people do not see still - was this.  I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a things as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up.  In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason.  But that is not so....

Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods.  For moods will change, whatever view your reason takes.  I know that by experience.  Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which Christianity looks very improbably; but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable.  This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway.  That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue:  unless you teach your moods "where they get off," you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion.  Consequently one must train the habit of Faith.

Jesus' Tomb Found: Christianity False!

According to James Cameron (yes, of Terminator fame) the tomb of Jesus has been found. The Discovery Channel will have a special giving us all the info on it. Apparently this tomb in question was discovered around 1980 - and in it there are ossuaries with names like Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. They've also done DNA tests to prove they've actually found the Jesus' remains! (Don't ask how that works.)

Here are a couple things you might want to read on this topic, which I think will get some buzz in the coming months:

The Discovery Channel Site

The Internet Monk's post on this - he keeps updating it and adding resources. Go there.

A Jerusalem Post story with the following quote:

But Bar-Ilan University Prof. Amos Kloner, the Jerusalem District archeologist who officially oversaw the work at the tomb in 1980 and has published detailed findings on its contents, on Saturday night dismissed the claims. “It makes a great story for a TV film,” he told The Jerusalem Post. “But it’s impossible. It’s nonsense.”

Kloner, who said he was interviewed for the new film but has not seen it, said the names found on the ossuaries were common, and the fact that such apparently resonant names had been found together was of no significance. He added that “Jesus son of Joseph” inscriptions had been found on several other ossuaries over the years.

“There is no likelihood that Jesus and his relatives had a family tomb,” Kloner said. “They were a Galilee family with no ties in Jerusalem. The Talpiot tomb belonged to a middle-class family from the 1st century CE.”

An NT Wright page on evidence for the resurrection. He doesn't claim it's enough to convince every skeptic that the resurrection must have occurred. But he does make a good, effective, historical case for the essential portions of the resurrection account. Worth looking at.

HT: imonk, BHT