Encountering God At The High Places

Frank Viola has a series of books that I have mentioned here before. The first Pagan Christianity is an amazing deconstruction of the modern church congregation. The followup is entitled Reimagining Church which inspires the reader to find the kind of church community reflected in the New Testament. Both books put skin on tensions that I have felt for many years now. Both books are having a transformational affect on our family. Even as I read and am inspired to be a part of this kind of organic all consuming community of believers, there is another balancing pressure in me holding me back to my roots in the traditional model of doing church.

Here me correctly, I do believe the primary model of doing church in American Christianity is broken. I do believe that in many ways Christianity has "thrown out the baby and kept the bathwater¹" Even still, I have a love for her that is more than just a clinging to the familiar. Augustine is often credited with saying that, "The church is a whore, but she is still my mother." This is the level of deep emotion I have for the very entity that is the church, despite her harlotry that is so conformed to this world.

So in essence I agree that the church does not remotely live out the community God desires to create in her, and so I am left to wonder if God even desires to work through the traditional church congregation anymore. Those people who know the situation I am involved in within my own family, know how seriously and personally I am taking these considerations. This is not a theoretical exercise, but a prayer filled journey of direction seeking from God.

Last night, as I was reading in 1 Kings God revealed true north on this trek. All the good Bible school kids can tell you that God met with Solomon in a dream to grant him any desire of his heart, and Solomon chose wisdom. What I don't think we discuss in the classroom is where Solomon was, and what he was doing when this encounter with God took place.

1 Kings 3:3 Now Solomon loved the LORD, walking in the statutes of his father David, except he sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place; Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. In Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon in a dream at night; and God said, "Ask what you wish me to give you."(NASB)

When the Hebrew people entered the land of promise, God had instructed them to among other things destroy the High Places. It was never God's desire for his people to worship in the places and ways that the Pagan nations around them worship. God wanted his people to be a peculiar people, and worship him only in the way he prescribed. Yet the people did not follow God's will in this matter. The people did not destroy the High Places, and those centers of pagan worship were synchronized into their worship and became a snare to the demise of the people's relationship with their God.

So here we find Solomon, outside the will of God, worshiping not in the tabernacle, but instead on the High Places of Gibeon, a particular favorite of the people of his time. Although the place and method of his worship is harlotry with nations God had driven out before them, his heart and offering is genuine to worship the Lord. So this night, in this place, God shows up to encounter Solomon.

God wants to encounter us so badly that he will do that in spite of our failure to recognize his best will for us. Even when we build institutions that more closely resemble the High Places of the Greek and Roman world, God will still arrive with his good gifts to those who are seeking him in genuine worship. These institutions are the same snare to our relationship with God as the High Places became to people of Solomon's time, and yet God still encounters his people in them.

I must confess I have been limiting God. I have limited his desire to shower good gifts on his precious people. I have limited his ability to pass through the doors of an institution that claims his name, yet rarely reflects his character. I have doubted the hearts of many true worshipers, who are seeking God in the only places and way they have ever been shown. I believe there CAN BE rebirth in our church congregations to the abundant life of church community. I believe God desires to encounter his true worshipers. I believe God is uniting them in the places they are to the form of people they need to be.

I desire the community of the Acts church with everything in me. I do not believe we can see systemic economic racism eliminated in this country until we learn to live in God's community. I do not believe we can meaningfully impact slavery and oppression until we live out the kind of love that will get us killed by the kingdom of this world. For our family, I do not believe we can succeed in the Nsoko orphan village without an Acts model of community. I believe God wants his people to live this way, to be marked by this radical love. I believe God wants his people back in absolute community.

God did not hand me a road map to this journey, he pointed me back to true north. I still don't know what the future looks like, but I am overwhelmed and humbled to be seeking a God who seeks to encounter us.

God Gives Us People

I stole this off Scot McKnight's blog, who reported it as being written by Nancy Lewis pastor of congregational care at the Oakland Covenant Church in Oakland California.

It’s always about the people in your midst. Who is God bringing to you, giving you opportunity to shine His light for them, needing God’s presence in their lives through you? Who needs to hear a word from God that comes through your lips, who will God use to speak to you? I have found that the most valuable commodity that God gives us, beyond Himself, is time with people. While this can be the most draining and frustrating part of ministry, I truly think God wants us to focus on His people and the people He desires to woo unto Himself. God’s greatest message came in the form of His own son who came to live with and among people.

When we invest in people there is often a great perceived risk for us but there is not for God. It helps me to remember that I am only called to “plant the seeds”, He is the Lord of the harvest. When I have prayerfully been given a tough message to deliver I need to always remember that it is His message. When there is an opportunity to speak words of comfort I need to focus on His words for the person. At times no words are necessary and it is more important to just be. Practicing the presence of God with someone is a powerful thing to behold.

I am deeply challenged by her insight on two levels. First she challenges us to be deeply permeated by the Spirit so that we are aware of God's ordination in every relational moment of the day. Secondly she sends a warning for us to heed, to not take responsibility for failure to these people God invites us to into relationship.

Well spoke and well warned!

lntensional Intentional Attention

It's not the divinity of Christ that I struggle with. It is his humanity. We teach that Christ was both fully God and fully human. Perhaps my problem is that I have never met anyone who was fully human.

The NIV translates John 10:10 to have life "to it's fullest." It's the experience of being fully human that I both desire and doubt. Since we have little record of Adam before the fall the lifestyle of Jesus left to us by the Gospel writers is the only play book for the fully human experience.

So approaching the Gospels with a new set of questions I will seek to learn:

What things did Jesus do?
What things did Jesus desire?

Doing and Desiring these two actions sum up the whole quantity of our time. Even the little decisions of life fall into these categories. What we desire is the philosophical backdrop for what we do. By this I mean what things I DO reveal what things I desire.

Two easy to explore examples of this from my own life are comfort and television:

I desire to be self sacrificial, yet I DO things that expose my greater desire for personal comfort. I desire to find more time for relationship both with people and with God, yet I waste time by watching television, so I expose my greater desire for amusement than for relationship.

Fully Human living requires intensional intentional attention. By this I mean our life must be intensely directed external thinking. Look at the examples of Jesus that demonstrate this. Comments by gospel writers like, "as was his custom" talking about times of prayer; actions like noticing the woman who touched his garment to receive healing; encouragements to Martha to just sit and be with him; decisions like encouraging the sinless to be the adulterous woman's judge. His attentions were CONSTANTLY turned toward intentional interactions.

I think the contrast to this is inattentiveness. Most of my day is spent on matters and issues that appeal to and consume me. This is not because of obession, but more because of laziness. I focus internally and therefore I lack the intentional effort to pay attention to the poverty around me. Jesus was zealous in his effort to constantly keep the poverty of his surroundings at immediate access. Among the poor he saw the poverty of their situation. Among the lepers he saw the poverty of their bodies. Among the tax collectors he saw the poverty of the minds. Among the pharisees he saw the poverty of the spirit. His eyes were always attentive to whatever poverty was present in the people he encountered.

I am not struggling with this as a theorem that must be solved to solidify my faith. Instead I want to look like Jesus! I want my time, and my day to be spent like his time and his day. I want to breathe out life, peace, and community like he did. I want to be healing in people's situations. Poverty is everywhere around me. I can see the starving orphan, the lonely coworker, the fearful student, the broken marriage, the ignored child, the forgotten widow, the addicted acquaintance, the suicidal teen, the ... on and on the list the list can go, right here, right around me, but I must be external.

It's not the divinity of Christ that I struggle with. It is his humanity. Then I guess, it's not so much his humanity, as much as my own humanity. I struggle if I can live out Intensional Intentional Attention. I struggle if I am willing to be Fully Human like Him.

Homecomings, Treasures, and Community

In about 2 hours from now I will leave my house to travel over to Midway to pick up my family as they return from the Spring Break travels. I can not wait for their return. I miss them terribly when they are gone. My wife, is my best friend in the world, and I feel very disconnected as she is several states aways. My oldest daughter constantly challenges my creativity. My middle daughter is my Rock - Paper - Scissors opponent and I have felt quite a hole in my life missing out on a week of competition. The Boy is an adventure as he is discovering his individuality. So although in the midst of the absence of my family my friends have fed me supper and kept me company till the late hours of the evening, I feel like I am wandering aimlessly when they are not around.

So today is our homecoming! As they were gone, I have spent time deciding about what things we will NEED in Africa. My wonderful All Clad pan set, and Le Cruset Stoneware will have to come with us. Our Furniture, Televisions, and Tivos will probably stay behind. Some of the kids toys will make the trek, while others, will be left behind. After a short time the process certainly gets you thinking about treasures.

When we were on our vision trip in Swaziland with Hopechest the team was distributing NEW SHOES that a church back in the states had collected. Although, I was not at all involved with the people handing out the shoes I was present, and made an interesting observation. The children would BAG their old shoes as they came out of the little stick built hut where members of our team were handing out the shoes. These old shoes were worn out, and is desperate need of replacement, yet to the Swazi orphans, they were a treasure that needed to be protected and returned home.

All of this kind of meshed together in my brain this morning, as I was cleaning and preparing for the family to come home. In Revelation 21:4 Jesus promises all things are being made new. HE at the center of EVERYTHING become renewal. In the New Heavens and Earth, our final homecoming where all the community of God's People will be at rest all these treasures whether a stainless steal pan, or a worn out shoe will appear just a futile. In light of the true homecoming of being restored to the greatest treasure of all our aimless meandering, and useless hoarding will melt into the eternal community of life.

Repentance, I don't mean the silly telling God I want to behave better than I have in the past. True Repentance, the kind that is traitorous to our previous allegiances, treasures, and communities; calls us out celebrate that homecoming now. I am PRESENT in the NEW HEAVENS and EARTH with Christ when I am GATHERED in HIS COMMUNITY to RESTORE HIS TREASURES to the broken places of this old earth. I celebrate the peace of homecoming when I am working in community to break bondages, and proclaim life!

This is a resolution! I resolve to live in the REAL PRESENCE of the NEW KINGDOM, NOW by treasuring the broken, by restoring the lonely to community, and by working alongside Christ to bring to reality when all things are made new.

Tom Davis' New Book

Tom Davis, whose first book "Fields of the Fatherless" changed my life, has released a new book which is available from Amazon today. It's title is Red Letters: Living a Faith That Bleeds and I am so very excited for my copy to arrive. Please, if you have not read, Fields of the Fatherless, buy it and read it. If you can not afford it, contact me and I will buy it for you. I am sure that this book will be equally as exciting.

In light of the email from CHC announcing Tom's new book, I visited Tom's blog and from there add him as a friend on Facebook. After adding him as a friend I saw he had received a comment from Mike Todd of Waving or Drowning which I am an occasional reader of already. Once one Mike's site I saw a reference to Pernell Goodyear, who spoke at Up/Rooted a few months back. So I surfed over and read down his blog. On his blog he had a reference to some research on community conducted by M. Scott Peck that I found very relevant to the issues of apathy and disengagement that I think plagues the church I attend.

First, read the 4 stages of community:

1. Pseudo-community - An initial state of "being nice". Pseudo-community is characterized by politeness, conflict avoidance, and denial of individual differences. Let's be honest - most of us can't keep this up for long. Eventually someone is going to speak up, speak out, and the dam breaks.
2. Chaos - In the stage of chaos, individual differences are aired, and the group tries to overcome them through misguided attempts to heal or to convert. Listening suffers, and emotions and frustration tend to run high. There are only two ways out of chaos: retreat into pseudo-community [often through organization], or forward, through emptiness.
3. Emptiness - Emptiness refers to the process of recognizing and releasing the barriers [expectations, prejudices, the need to control] that hold us back from authentic communication with others, from being emotionally available to hear the voices of those around us. This is a period of going within, of searching ourselves and sharing our truths with the group. This process of "dying to the self" can make way for something remarkable to emerge.
4. Community - "In my defenselessness, my safety lies." In this stage, individuals accept others as they are, and are themselves accepted. Differences are no longer feared or ignored, but rather are celebrated. A deep sense of peace and joy characterizes the group.

Based on the communities I have been a part of in my life, these stages are perfectly categorized. A lot of communities, never move past a see-saw of Pseudo-community and Chaos. When the pain from emptiness begins to ware into the group the choice is to retreat back to the appearance of pseudo-community.

Since this stalemate between pseudo-community and emptiness settles in a longterm lodging within chaos a new category emerges that sits outside, yet alongside the progress which is the disengagement. The members divorce themselves from any sort of dependence on the community, and instead of being forced to fledge for the growth of the community, their belonging a apparition, since they are present only in body.

This ties into our lack of focus on the authentic mission of the Kingdom of God, since one can not be deeply involved in the sacrifice it takes to follows Jesus' lifestyle as an island. The dependence that is necessary to force forward the nurture of the community is the weakness one realizes when they have over expended their personal physical, emotional, and spiritual resources in serving the least of these.

The challenge to leadership is to find ways to compel membership to "fish or cut bait" by enlightening them to the destitution their independence has led them to.

Gospel According To Starbucks - A Review

Lenoard Sweet in his newest offering "The Gospel Accoring to Starbucks" challenges the church to rethink it's "brand image" in light of a post modern culture. His book indicts not nly the IC bust also the Emergents for their failure to practice what he calls the EPIC life.

E - Experiential
P- Participatory
I- Image Rich
C- Connective

I found his work to be brilliant. The work came off as a heart felt conversation with a pastor rather than a preachy dissertation by a scholar. Though he showed no embarrassment to flex his scholarly credentials this was always done in such a way to accent his shepherding nudge. I was blessed by the ideas he presented and the medium he chose to communicate the ideas through.