I just read The Church and the Incubator, a wonderful article on Wrecked for the Ordinary by Adrienne Ashby. Adrienne talks about a midwife in South Africa that has mothers of premature babies keep skin-to-skin contact with them instead of placing them in a mechanical, lonely, incubator. She then goes on to speak of Western churches as giant incubators and the need for human-to-human contact.
This morning I read a short blog post on Common Grounds entitled, “What does authentic Christian community look like?”
In it, Meghan Gouldin asks us to finish the sentence: “Authentic Christian community____________________.”
It’s what each of us living in community grapples with daily. At least I hope we do.
Read her post and respond at
http://commongroundsonline.typepad.com/common_grounds_online/2007/07/meghan-gouldin-.html
Category: General
I just read about the Advent Conspiracy in the ePistle from Evangelicals for Social Action. It’s a program to help churches challenge their congregants to rethink the consumeristic celebration of Christmas by focusing on the worship of Christ and obedience to his message to the poor.
I recently saw God Grew Tired of Us with a friend. It’s a wonderful film about Sudanese lost boys who become U.S. refugees. During their first Christmas in the United States, one of the boys asks (forgive me, because I don’t remember the exact quote), What is this tree? Who is Santa Clause? They aren’t in the Bible. He goes on to remark, Christmas is different in Sudan. I don’t know what all this stuff is for, in Sudan we just celebrate Jesus on Christmas.
Christmas is one of my favorite times of the year—mostly because it’s an opportunity to have wonderful parties with friends and sing Christmas music all day long. My housemate and I have been talking this morning about how to rethink what we do at Christmas. Perhaps instead of a traditional party, we go spend the evening with friends in a barn full of animals, singing together, praying together, and talking about this baby called Jesus who was born in a similar barn a couple of thousand years ago and who created the world.
Rating: out of 5
Author: Jake Colsen
Year: 2006
Publisher: Bodylife Publications
ISBN: 0964729229
The writing in this book is frankly quite bad, however the content is amazing and inspired. It offers a strong challenge to the institutional church and paints a radical transforming picture of the Church. Even better, you don’t have to by it. It’s available for free download.
A new friend, Julie Foley, sent me an interview of Aaron Weiss of mewithoutYou that appeared in Busted Halo.
In it, Aaron provides a wonderful description of community:
BH: From what I’ve read about you, you’ve said that one of the turning points in your life is when you went to live in community with other people in Philadelphia.
AW: Yeah.
BH: How exactly does that work?
AW: Well, people who think that when Jesus said to love your neighbor as yourself and love God—these are central teachings and central focuses of our life as Christians—not a belief in a doctrine of Christianity or an acceptance of a religious form but a life lived of love. And that’s going to play out as community. If you have a problem, and I love you, that’s my problem. If you have a joy, and I love you, that’s going to bring me joy. And we share it. We share everything. We share our struggles and our triumphs and our money and possessions. We share our faith and our hopes and our fears and struggle together and try to help other people around us who maybe don’t agree with us or have anything to offer us in return. Just living a life of service—that’s what I got out of the communal life that I tasted there. It’s just a simple life of love that I believe everyone is called to. It’s going to look different ways, but for me that was the realization that Jesus didn’t call me to a belief more abundant or a doctrine more precise. He called me to a life more abundant. He called me to a life where there’s fruit that you can taste and see and touch and smell and feel—tangible reality. “The kingdom come on Earth as it is in Heaven.” That was something where I’d read the words before, but it had never penetrated my heart before that the Gospel has social implications and an immediate relevance. That was tremendously liberating from this obsession with the purely spiritualized version of Christianity. When it talks about setting free the captives, that’s spiritual. When it talks about “blessed are the hungry and the poor,” that’s spiritual. Spiritually hungry and spiritually poor—that’s in there. But so is the tangible stuff. People need food and they need shelter and they need freedom, both economically and politically.
BH: Was it difficult, having grown up in this culture, to start
living that way?AW: Ah…I wouldn’t say so, because it’s so bankrupt, the notion of just living for your own desires and pursuing your every whim and trying to ensure financial security. To store up money so that one day you can retire and have 15 years of relaxing until you die – has that worked for anybody? Has that given anybody eternal peace? Has that given anybody that sense of “I know why I’m here. I know the purpose of my life”? I look around and I see the failed American dream. People that are trying to claw their way to the top of the corporate ladder or some social group, and you realize that there’s no real contentment at the top. Whatever little ways that I’ve tried with the band—like, “Oh, we need to get on this label” —you end up wanting something else. Then you get on this radio station, and you want something else. You get in this magazine, and then you want something else. You get on this television station, and then what else? What else? What else? It’s never enough. Jesus calls us to less and less. He calls us to a simpler and humbler and more broken and emptied out lifestyle of service. To me, the moment that I realized that, it all made sense. It was perfectly clear. Everyone is called to that, and there’s room down there for everybody. But there’s only room at the top for one person. That would be a sad world, if our only purpose was to be the most successful or the world champion or the richest man alive.
Author: Shane Claiborne
Year: 2006
Publisher: Zondervan
ISBN: 0310266300
Category: Organization Website
Authors: Peta Owens-Liston
Journal: Time Magazine
Publish Date: Dec. 26, 2006
I just finished reading a TIME article about restaurants that ask people to “pay what you can.” It seems to me an intersting model of voluntary redistribution.
Authors: William Booth
Journal: Washington Post
Publish Date: December 18, 2006
My friend Laura Gillaspy just sent me a wonderful article from the Washington Post. I’ve heard of folks doing this before.
For those who don’t want to read the article, I’ll give you the gist. There’s a green-minded group of people in San Francisco who, last year, made a vow not to buy any new things for a year (save for a few essentials).
I think it would be fun and hard. How do you move away from legalism too? I think it’s hilarious how people are militantly opposed to what these folks are doing, which honestly makes me want to do it even more.
I’m not a green by any stretch, though it’s something I should probably think about more. However, I am a strong proponent of using God’s resources well–most specifically money and time, so giving up new items for a time period is something I’d be very interested in doing. It’s not something that I think should be imposed on people, but certainly a good option for Christians. Similarly, I like the timeframe aspect–it’s sort of akin to a nazerite or lentin vow. Also, many of you know I have a book problem and as of late new books have been cheaper than used, I think that means no books.
Still a lot of details to figure out, but anyone in with me?
