They are a bit too focused on the political end instead of the faith end, but it’s still cool.

I am on the coordinating team that is bringing the authors and some of their colleagues to DC to talk about the book and the topic. I hope you can come and will spread the word to your communities (publicity materials are available at http://www.jesusforpresidentindc.org/publicity)!

Friday, June 27 at 7PM
Calvary Baptist (755 8th St NW, Washington, DC)

Tickets are free, but you need to register at http://www.JesusforPresidentinDC.org.

Have no idea who Shane Claiborne is? You should definitely pick up a copy of Irresistible Revolution. I’ve personally given away over 200 copies of it. Check out the Jesus for President book reviews on the site as well http://www.JesusforPresidentinDC.org.

Please plan to come and don’t forget to spread the word to your friends. It’s going to be a great night!

While there I met some amazing college students.  We had some great conversations–needless to say, they all left with Irresistible Revolution in hand.  None of them knew what the emerging church was, so, at their request, I clumsily tried to define it.

 The neat thing was, though none of them knew the term “emerging,” our conversations revealed that the concepts spoke of most often in emerging circles were in no way foreign to them, in fact, they were givens in their conception and understanding of God.

Many people think of emerging as a movement to do something different and shift thinking in the church.  This tends to be less and less the point the younger the person is.

I didn’t have to introduce my new friends to the concepts of emerging.  I didn’t have to show them how to be emerging.  At core, they culturally are already emerging.

Last Sunday, I worked on a Children’s story using Matthew 6:25-24.  It’s about not worrying, because God will provide for us, after all, He does for the flowers and the birds and how much more does He love us. I’ve been worried a bit the last few weeks about where I would live and stay—I wanted to flexibility of not having a lease as I hope to be back in community soon, so I didn’t want to do the easiest thing and just go out and get an apartment. Luckily, there was too much to do to really spend time to work things out on my own.  Someone asked me where I was going to stay and I said that I’d know once I moved out—I just didn’t have the energy to work out things that far ahead.  Not knowing where I was going to stay has also had the added benefit of allowing me to truly mourn the loss of Culpeper House.

This morning I’m at peace.  

I believe I am to rely upon the hospitality of others during this season.  In the middle of the night Friday, Eric (one of my best friends from High School) was helping me move and he said he was offended I hadn’t asked to stay with him yet—needless to say, that’s where I am for the next few days.  I’ll be spending a couple of weeks in June at Casa Chiri and likely a few days in the Southeast House.  It has been and will continue to be practice in faith as God shows me where I will be living.  I’m reminded of the verses Matthew 8:20 and Luke 9:58 “Jesus replied, ‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.’” (Checkout http://archives.wittenburgdoor.com/jesusposter/index.html)  It will produce greater humility and faith in me to rely upon God and His provision through others instead of what I so often mistake as mine own.

This season will be an opportunity for me to minister in a similar mode to the Apostles (though more locally): traveling from community to community, household to household—learning from each and attempting to bless each as the Spirit gives grace to do so.  I am excited, trepid but truly excited.

This will also be a time of discernment as I seek what the next season will look like.  (Pray that I will fully embrace this season, however.)  Will I become a part of a current community?  Will I be part of a new community?  Something else?  It will be fun learning what God has in mind.

Greed in the Name of Green

It talks about how going green has become a new option of conspicuous consumption.  It’s something I and my friends struggle with.  One, Dawnille, also of Casa Chirilagua, is particularly interested in starting a business of fair trade clothing, but is working through how to do it successfully while not continuing the societal embrace of consumerism.

She sent me a wonderful website, the Story of Stuff.  It does an excellent job of addressing the history of consumerism in our society and the problems of our extreme resource usage.

Times of transition provide excellent opportunities to refocus.  Over the coming weeks we will be focusing on the vision that God has put on our hearts as a community and how to best structure ourselves moving forward.  This will help us better transition new people into Culpeper House as we move forward.

If you or someone you know is interested in exploring the possibility of being a part of Culpeper House, please e-mail us at info@culpeperhouse.org.

It’s an exciting time, but also a sad time as we will very much miss those who are leaving.

The Unexpected Monks

It’s funny to me that most churches today decide if you are a disciple by a “conversion” moment, baptism, a profession of faith, or agreement with a belief statement.

Being a disciple of Christ has NOTHING to do with a mental assent and everything to do with having Him as the decisionmaker in each of our lives.  The gage Christ has given us is love not law.

Too bad gaging love requires relationship instead of a few words on a form.  God forbid we waste church resources on truly getting to know people instead of building better and bigger programs and expanding our rolls.  The way of the Kingdom is always ineffecient and ineffective in the eyes of the world.

What chores would Jesus do?

It is well worth checking out!

Here’s how I tried to concisely describe what I am trying to say:

During college I experienced a lot of growth in my faith–I was surrounded by people seeking to give their whole lives to Christ, who challenged one another, lived simply, sought to love one another unconditionally, prayed and worshipped together throughout the week, met up throughout the day, shared possessions, and so fourth. When I got out of college, I discovered that, though I did all the churchy things like going to worship, being in a small group, leading the missions team, working with the homeless, and even practicing hospitality, I became more and more like the world and less and less like Christ. I was an A+ citizen of a church, but I was becoming less and less of a follower of Christ while I became more and more “American.” I continued to discover more and more how selective and myopic churches are as to scripture and the gospel. Because I wanted to be a follower of Christ (even though the cost was much more than churches let on), I sought a community of people dedicated to doing life together (much like I’d experienced in college).

I think that the Church is very specifically defined as people and, while theologically and rhetorically pretty much everyone would agree, churches structurally tell people that church is an event, a building, a club, or an institution. (Check out what I wrote about “my church” a few months ago: http://www.atthemargins.com/2007/05/04/where-do-you-go-to-church/ ).

I want to be a part of the Church that sets people free from those things that afflict them, that is powerful, that is known by it’s unconditional love for others, that radically follows Christ, that is willing to die to itself, and that, as a result of all this, sees people transformed day after day.

My friends and I are slowly, but surely learning to be that Church.

The cover story, Portrait of Exploitation is accompanied by a bunch of pictures of prostituted women taken over an extended period of time.  The images depict a demise like I have never seen before.  They are utterly shocking!

The articles in the issue include:

Portrait of Exploitation
by Laura Coulter
A compelling call for the church to follow Jesus’ example by embracing the victims behind the vice.

Sophia’s Circle
by Amy Durkee
Former prostitutes come together for a time of healing and renewal and in the process become part of a sisterhood network.

Prostitution: Pathway to Incarceration for American Females
by Lisa L. Thompson
As the female prison population increases at alarming rates, it’s time we understood prostitution’s role as gateway to the crimes that are putting women behind bars.

Traffic Stopper
Donna M. Hughes, a leading international researcher on sex trafficking, explains the relationship between sex trafficking and prostitution.

I came as Herod and shared in first person my/his perspective on himself.  Then I did a quick costume change and shared as Simeon.

I’d planned to repeat both Herod and Simeon last night, but, because of a wonderful discussion, I ended up just sharing as Herod.

I was just remarking to Israel, that the morning felt like a performance, while the evening felt like a conversation.  Perhaps it was just because I had already done it once, perhaps it was because I know the folks from Holy Grounds better.  However, I think it’s because of a difference in atmosphere.  I knew in the evening that all I had to do was spark–spark thinking, spark conversation–and we would be able to grapple with things together.  In the morning, I felt I needed to impress (ugghhh) and to do a good job–I needed to perform well. I knew that people were only going to be able to take away what I brought and what the Holy Spirit said through me, that we wouldn’t be able to process as a community.

What pressure people who preach week after week must feel!

Sure, He definitely died for us, but I’m not so sure that that was the sine quo non of His earthly mission. It seems to me the fact that He came to live as one us for 30 odd years is pretty important, not to mention the fact that He still lives now. Oh yeah, and there’s the whole ressurection thing.

I’ll be the first to proclaim that the cost of discipleship is death. Followers of Christ must both figuratively die to themselves for Christ and others and be willing to, in the model of Christ, literally die for Christ and others.

Fixation with Christ’s death however only fuels the oft-quoted, but seldom contextualized, Nietzschen axiom that “God is dead.”

The Church really needs a God that is not dead. A God who is speaking and active in His people. A God that is equipping His people to “to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners” (Isaiah 61:1). A God who continues to reveal Himself to us and show us the Way. A God who is actively involved in the continual transformation and liberation of His creation.

For a long time, I interpretted 1 Peter 4:8 as my love for others covers a multitude of their sins.  While this is certainly true, a few weeks ago I realized that my love for other covers a multitude of my own sins.

The interesting thing is that a relationship of unconditional love is the only environment where we actually have the freedom to expose our sins that we may be set free from them.

Part 4: And who, now, will lead them?

Part 2: A call to serve, and to lead

Part 3: A crisis year, a Christmas comeback

My friends at Ma Siss’s Place and Quincy Street Missional Church were featured on the front page of the Boston Globe this morning.

This first in four part series will continue the next three days (I will post a link each day) and features many pictures and some other multimedia.

“From a Dorchester Chop Shop, to a Place to Pray”

The cover story ”A Return to Tradition” and “Mixing Jesus with Java: The Appeal of New Religious Communities.”

It’s kind of like my first year of college. I was pretty homesick. I longed for home day after day.

Eventually it dawned on me that I wasn’t in fact just desiring a place–home, but actually a time. The reality was that I could go back home, but doing so would do little to truly affect my homesickness as all my friends from high school were no longer there. I realized I was longing more for a season than for a place.

Given going back was not a possibility, I knew I had to embrace the new season God had given me.

Likewise, many are homesick for a church that no longer exists. No matter how much we try to keep everything physically the same, the reality is we cannot return to the season we are longing for, even if we think it was better, it has passed away.

Of course, the best way to get over homesickness is, instead of constantly seeking to return to where you were, to embrace the new place you are. Seek to know it, understand it, and live in it and eventually it will become home.

As everyone who knows me responds, “you’re going to work for a church?!?!?!” In fact, the only reason I started blogging about the Church and my faith was that I thought I’d never work for a church.  God has a funny way of busting out our visions of the future for His.

My thinking on church has not really changed. The Senior Pastor is a good friend and neighbor. She has been working hard to steer those in her care towards being the Church and I will be part of that change. I’ve been invited because of relationships and my giftings and not my institutional church qualifications. As anyone who spends any time with me quickly discovers, I am both passionate about helping people become disciples of Christ–seeking after him with reckless abandon and obeying the Holy Spirit–and building authentic Christian community (a.k.a. the Church).

God will continue to be providing my income, just through a church now and not the Rural Trust, and as such, I will continue to be ultimately responsible to Him.

I’m certainly more than a bit trepidatious, but at the same time, so excited!

At the end, she and I talked about how hard it is for her to pray out loud (something I’ve heard from many people before).  She added that I pray so well.  I told her that one of my friends has often challenged me, “do you talk to anyone in the manner that you pray out loud.”  The truth is I don’t.  I use stilted flourishes, not to mention a different voice.

For a little while in high school I sang in the church choir.  We would pray at the beginning of each rehearsal and I remember always looking forward to hearing Ms. C pray.  Unlike anyone I’d known to that point, she truly prayed to “Daddy.”  Her prayers were simple, intimate, and loving, but at the same time, there was no confusing the awe and revere she had for her Father.

When I pray religious prayers, I enforce the lie that God desires prayers that are formal and articulate rather than personal and sincere.  My actions tell people that they are unable to pray.  For shame!  When I pray formally it is certainly not for God, rather for show and the institution. I need to pray simply, intimately, lovingly, personally, and sincerely—he’s my Dad after all—so that others may know that they are able to talk with Him as well.

“Someone somewhere along the line got the idea of putting on a ‘play’ for people and calling it church.”

Take a moment to read “What I think of Church”

In my interactions with people, I most often impart the love that Jesus has for his own people, stirring people up to love one another and to become connected in relationships with one another.  My calling is to the Church, helping people develop authentic, deep relationships of great love with God and with one another where they have freedom to seek after Him with reckless abandon, that is disciple-making.  I desire for people to come alive in their relationship with God—for Him to be the tangible and core reason for being and doing and the ultimate decision maker in their lives.  Often this requires people to leave the control, safety, success, and comfort they perceive themselves as having and simply trust what God has told/shown them to do.  This can only happen when people have a deep and abiding knowledge that they are children of God and that, as such, He loves them and desires for their best.  Having been loved and liberated by Christ, people gain freedom to reveal the sin and brokenness that afflicts them that they may be healed and set free to go and love more and more like Him—self-sacrificially.  As they love more and more like God, God uses them to make disciples and thus the Kingdom grows.

So practically, what does that look like?  For me it looks like (and I’m far from perfect at it):

• listening
• praying
• seeking to actively love all I come into contact/surrounding them with love
• sharing meals with people in groups and individually
• spending time with people one-on-one
• coming to relationships with the understanding that we both have things to teach one-another
• hearing people’s passions and connecting them with people of similar passions
• being available to people
• helping people discover/understand their spiritual gifts and helping them learn to use them
• helping people understand that they worship a God who speaks and learn to recognize and obey His voice
• helping people to allow faith to guide their actions/make God the decision-maker in their life (moving from belief in God’s existence to faith in God’s promises/identity)
• listening to the Holy Spirit and allowing Him to guide my conversations
• seeking to learn and grow each and every day
• seeking to chase after God with reckless abandon myself, making Him the decision-maker in my life
• being “discipled” myself
• living and functioning in community
• walking alongside people on their journey/getting on their sinking ships with them and helping them plug the hole instead of simply bailing out the water

Unfortunately, disciple-making is a messy, time-consuming, labor-intensive process that requires depth of relationship to be developed and, as such, is impossible to do in mass or quickly. The good news however is that, as people become disciples, the Holy Spirit will equip them and provide them opportunities to make disciples themselves… thus the Kingdom grows both exponentially and with power.

Sharing our stories is so important. 

I’ve found it the best foundation to lay for any group whether a missions team, intentional Christian community, or sunday gathering.

It enables us to love one another so much better.  Suddenly I have a glimpse into why Susan does all those things that drive me nuts and it’s not so bad any more. I’m able to sit in silence less awkwardly becaue I now know why John never speaks. Knowing how Jim grew up affords me more grace when he snaps at me.

A practical suggestion, having done this quite a few times by this point, is to have someone who is willing to be particularly vulnerable go first and set the tone.  It’s also good to encourage everyone to have a turn, sharing only what (and if) they are comfortable, taking particular care to value however much or little is shared.  It can take people a really long time to share their story, so I’ve found, if it’s a small group, taking a weekend retreat with the primary purpose of hearing everyone’s story makes it actually less arduous and forms a great foundation for authentic Christian community.

The last several weeks though, I have come into the realization that I am completely and utterly conflict adverse if the conflict has to do with interpersonal relationships or who I am.  It’s why I don’t speed when I drive.  Avoid breaking rules.  Hate getting into trouble no matter how minor it is.  And choose to ignore conflict instead of resolving it.  Real conflict exhausts me.  I don’t want to hurt or be hurt, so I pretend it doesn’t exist. 

I’m happy to change what I think–in fact I love for people to show me where I am academically wrong as it means I can be correct tomorrow.  However, I am not excited about changing who I am. I avoid conflict when it means that I might actually have to change what I do–become less selfish, love on another person’s terms, do something I find boring or banal.  Changing one’s position theologically takes mere moments and comes at little cost.  Changing how one lives takes time, long, arduous time.  It’s costly and it hurts–the Refiner’s fire is always uncomfortable.  Conflict requires me to contemplate the fact that I am not who I desire to be, that I am broken, sinful, and imperfect.  However, it is the only route to growth and holiness.

We live in community so that we can grow and become more like Christ.  Growth often, if not always, requires conflict. It’s why we have a committment to not only resolve conflict, but to acknowledge it when it exists.  It’s the thing I find hardest in community.  I love being surrounded by people 24-7–serving them and sharing the gospel.  I am easy-going and love sharing hospitality and bearing joy.  I enjoy listening to other’s problems and binding up their wounds.  I am made for community and so much of it comes completely and utterly naturally for me–it seldom if ever feels like a sacrifice.  And what a blessing that is!  The thing is, it means that I can so often ignore the fact that I am broken, selfish, and sinful; that I need to grow, need to learn, need to sacrifice, and need to change.  That I, too, am in need of the Spirit’s transformation.

It’s the story that is often used to instruct people to slow down and sit at the feet of God.

Rob chose a different exposition, encouraging a balance between prayer and simply time with God and with service.  Certainly a true and good teaching from the verses!

While he was speaking, I kept asking God to speak to me about the verses.

The imagery he put in my heart was about the homeless in DC.  On any given evening, you can sit in one of the parks and see church van after church van, coming by to drop off food.  Those churches are doing a wonderful thing and Jesus spoke a lot about feeding the hungry.  The problem is that there are very few Marys willing to sit at the feet of the homeless men and women and just listen.

So often I want to see the results of my work, to know that my labor is effective.  The problem is that Christ often asks us to do things which we will never see the results of.  Sometimes we are so focused on doing things that we forget to slow down to listen and love.  Love takes time.  Love takes sacrifice.  And scariest of all, loving someone else means that we will often get hurt.  Love is intangible–I can say I gave out 100 meals or built a home for a family, but it’s impossible to quantify love.  Besides telling people that you sit on a bench and talked to a homeless person all evening is a lot less glamorous than saying you fed dozens of people.  Even worse, people might think you are lazy.

For the past couple of years Grace Community Church has been sending teams to visit the Quaresma family–a brazilian couple that, after having 3 biological kids, began adopting.  Today their family is over 30 and by the grace of God they are the most functional family I have ever known.  The first year we went, we wanted to help them build their new house, instead we cleared a field and spent a lot of time with the family.  The next year, we painted their new house.  The thing is though, what the Quaresmas cared about was not the painting or the hoeing–the cost of our plane tickets alone would have paid for our labor many times over.  What they cared about was getting to know us and us them.  They would have been just as happy for us to just show up and hang out.

Our desire was to build something we could see and touch, God’s desire was to build love in our hearts.

A few months before coming to the Urban Prayer Breakfast, Momma had been on her deathbed.  She made a request from God that she not die with the anger she had in her heart.  You see, years ago, Momma’s husband had become a homeless adict.  God answered her request.  He gave her a reprive from death and sent her to lovingly cook breakfast for over hundred people every morning.  She described how he’d sent her to look into the eyes of dozens of homeless men each morning, see her husband, and choose to love and serve them anyway.  It was a daily discipline that wicked away the anger that had consumed her heart.  I love and miss Momma Charlotte so much.  Her cancer came back and she disappeared, literally without a trace.  Part of me thinks she is literally an angel.

Brother Maclean came to be chef after Momma’s departure.  Actually, he’d been the chef before Momma, but had been sick with cancer and had had a heart attack and had to spend some time recovering.  I am his adopted son and I love him so dearly.  He has taught me so much.  God wakes him up early every morning, and I mean early, usually around 4AM.  He fills the strength move out through his 76-year-old body, strength he needs each day to do the work Father has given him.

During the time Momma was there, so was Ray.  For months I just thought Ray was another volunteer.  One day I found out that he was homeless.  Ray was an incredible joy to work with in the kitchen, constantly cracking jokes and truly loving on everyone there.  After several months of workin alongside Ray, he found out he had colon cancer.  They successfully removed it, but within a month an infection had setup and he died.

One day I was driving away from the Breakfast when I saw Momma Smith, a woman in her late 80s who lived in the neighborhood and would often play the piano for us after she ate, pushing her cart along the sidewalk as was her custom.  I asked her where she was going and if I could give her a ride.  She said in a barely comprehensible voice that she was only going a few more feet to the bus stop where she was going to study the scriptures until it was time for the noon bible study at a nearby church building.  She then began to speak of a specific passage of scripture and how it applied to me that day.  From then on, I would seek to sneak a moment talking with Momma.  Only able to understand every few words, I would labor to understand what she had to teach me that day.  A few months ago, quite to her dismay, Momma went to an assisted living facility.

I haven’t seen Sister Lyles for a few months, but she is a woman who seeks after God with incredible, quiet, humility.  She’s an older woman who always wore a big red fleece sweetshirt, that is except for the couple of months she wore sack-cloth near the time I first came to the breakfast–I assume she was mourning, but I regret never asking her why.  Woman are served first at the Urban Prayer Breakfast, however Sister Lyles would often go at the very last, after all the men.  Like the widow, every morning she would bring her offering–a few coins, sometimes a dollar bill–but it constituted much, if not all of what she had.  What a testimony! 

One time I was at Union Station for a meeting and I saw Sister Lyles outside.  I stopped and we spoke for a little while.  At one point during the conversation God told me to give her the money in my wallet.  I grabbed the 20 dollar bill and gave it to her.  “Oh no.” She responded.  “I can’t take that… that much money is dangerous.”  Jesus had a lot to say about money and it was pretty much never good.  Money is dangerous.  So often I go through life with little thought to the 20 dollars I spend here and there.  What an important reminder from Sister Lyles!

My time at the Urban Prayer Breakfast has been an incredible blessing and I am so thankful God put me there.  What a blessing!

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

It was exhilerating!  Not to mention we came back with a ton of bread and bagels, banannas, bell peppers, some flowers, some cheese, and some carrot juice, just to name a few highlights.

 So why is it salvation food?  When Jesus referred to hell, it was actually a specific place, a burning dump heap on the outskirts of town.  When we take food from the trashcan, we save it from hell, allowing it to be used for what it was intended.

Thousands of people die each day from starvation, while Americans throw away tons of food that doesn’t meet our quality standards.  Sure, the bannanas were bruised and the peppers were scarred, but they still tasted great. 

The longterm desire is that such actions will free up resources so that others may eat.  We will see.  I’m just happy to no longer be a dumpster diving virgin.

Advent Conspiracy

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.

Let me know what you think…

This morning, a 7-alarm fire consumed an abandoned warehouse in our Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia. The Simple Way Community Center at 3200 Potter Street was destroyed as well as at least eight of our neighbors’ homes. Over 100 people were evacuated from their homes, and 400 families are currently without power. Despite this developing tragedy, we are incredibly thankful to share that all of our community members and every one of our neighbors is safely out of harm’s way.

Please be in prayer for the people of Potter Street who have been affected by this tragedy and consider donating to help with the loss.

Learn more at http://www.thesimpleway.org/

The New Monastics

Download | Link

Artist: Speaking of Faith

Duration: Appx 58 min

Created: Thu, 10 May 2007

Category: Speech

Subject: Shane Claiborne

Interviewer: Krista Tippett

NPR’s show Speaking of Faith this week explores New Monasticism in an interview with Shane Claiborne.

So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore

Rating: 4 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.

Unfortunately, I’ve often heard these verses misappropriated as a carte blanche for someone to do anything they want. “As long as I do it to the glory of God, I can do whatever I want.” Far from it. At times, doing something to the “glory of God” means not doing it.

That aside, I find it really exciting to ask what it means to do each thing I do to the glory of God…

What does it mean to eat to the glory of God? Perhaps, as John Wesley argued, not meat, since it is resource intense? Perhaps it means not over-eating (or under-eating for that matter)? Perhaps it means buying local?

What does it mean to work to the glory of God?

What does it mean to shop to the glory of God?

What does it mean to drive to the glory of God?

What does it mean to shower to the glory of God?

What does it mean to vote to the glory of God?

What does it mean to watch TV to the glory of God?

While these questions may seam simple to begin with, they are in fact quite difficult to answer. They even might vary from season of life to season of life. Praise God we have a lifetime to try to understand them and grace to fail.

I mean, Church is not a destination or a club, it’s not something that is even geographical. It is much more organic than that. I believe that I am not only called to be a follower of Christ all the time, but to be the Church all the time. This simply is impossible if I define Church by an organization or building. Not to mention unhealthy. Christ spent much of His time in the world. We have created churches that are clubs, places that shelter us from the world rather than equipping us to love those of the world.

For me, Church is and happens whenever 2 or more followers of Christ gather for the purpose of seeking after Him (the above diagram is far from exhaustive). Sure, it’s something that happens on Sunday mornings, but it’s also something that happens many times a day in my community. We can be the Church when we are having dinner with friends, during late night conversations, during Bible Studies. I’m having Church when I spend time with the homeless downtown. I’m having Church when I spend time with His Gathering in Ft. Myers, Florida and when I’m eating breakfast with Stu. In fact, I’m having Church when I’m praying alone, as the Holy Spirit dwells in me.

I recently read a great book about being the Church, So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore by Jake Colsen. It’s available in print, but you can also download it online at http://www.jakecolsen.com/JakeStory.pdf. It’s not Shakespeare, but it was really interesting to me—it’s not social justice at all, but presents a view of the Church that is incredibly different and to which I’ve only recently begun to be exposed. It’s a very worthwhile read and, if you read it, I would love to hear what you think.

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.

My community, now named the Culpeper House, has a website at http://www.culpeperhouse.org.

Also, I have just put together a list of DC Area new monastic/intentional Christian communities, http://www.dc.newmonastics.org. I’m sure I’ve missed places, so if anyone knows of more, let me know.

If the time comes when despair sees violence as the only possible way, it is because Christians were not what they should have been. If violence is unleashed anywhere at all, the Christians are always to blame. This is the criterion, as it were, of the confession of sin. Always, it is because Christians have not been concerned for the poor, have not defended the cause of the poor before the powerful, have not unswervingly fought the fight for justice, that violence breaks out.

A friend sent me an e-mail with the Alternative Allegiance Version of the Christian PEACE Witness for Iraq document. I think it does a much better job of expressing the point that we as Christians must first take responsibility instead of blaming the American government. The first 4 pages are the revised version and the next 2 are the original. I posted it on my webspace at http://www.mattpritchard.com/CPWalt.pdf.

What do you all think?

I’m even more disturbed because it is a view shared by many folks in churches across America. I struggle to find anything more offensive than my God crucified on a cross by His creation. To Christians, the cross must be simultaneously offensive and comforting.

As Derek Webb says, “the gospel is inherently offensive.” In Luke, Jesus, in reference to the gospel, states:

They shall be divided, father against son, and son against father; mother against daughter, and daughter against her mother; mother in law against her daughter in law, and daughter in law against her mother in law.

It bothers me that the American church by-in-large has forgotten that the message of Christ is literally earth-shattering, perhaps that is because the American gospel is easy, say these magic words and you will go to heaven. There is no committment, there is no cost.

The message of Christ is for people to die to themselves and follow Him. The cross is an enduring symbol of that. Of course it is offensive. Praise our God that it is!

Zion Project

Category: Organization Website

January 27, 2006 11:00 AM
in First Baptist Church of Ballston
1031 N. Vermont Street
Arlington, VA 22201

More information is available at http://www.ordinaryradical.org (which I hope, will eventually become an online community allowing Ordinary Radicals across the globe to connect).