thoughts

Friday, July 11, 2003

I will be out of an allelon office for the next weeks on a family vacation. I look forward to blogging again

peace

Todd
posted by todd 12:00 PM

Thursday, July 03, 2003

An Allelon coaching appointment I had this morning drives me to try to say something I’ve alluded to before, but I’m sure I’ve every clearly articulated it in this space.

Merely messing with models of church is not going to get us where we want to go.

Without a serious intent (For instance, check out William Law: A Serious Call to Devout and Holy Life.) to pursue spiritual transformation, our self-centered characters will overwhelm any system of church AND keep us from submitting our personal, God-given kingdoms to the Kingdom of God. I am not saying this to bash the church. On the contrary, I am wondering if the church or “how one does church” really matters or is at all to blame—within reason, of course. And of course there are some better ways than others. We are all trying to find a better one.

But, the people I most admire and respect in life are not focused on “church” as a place, event or thing. They just quietly participate in non-descript churches and submit themselves to be used by God, to be ambassadors of his Kingdom in those communities of faith…as everywhere else in there their life: no dualisms. That attitude—whole life self-surrender—is rooted in a different kind of life: life from above, eternal life. It is what we must pursue for our selves and those we serve. It will make most models work.

But again this does not mean we abandon our pursuit of better models. It means that models are second; spiritual transformation is first, in community, for the sake of the world.

For Christlikeness—life in the Kingdom will overcome:

The works of the flesh: selfishness, etc.
Paranoid fear of others, especially “leaders”
The need to get your own way
Meanness and manipulation
Doing “whatever it takes” to feel safe and secure
The routine ignoring of the Spirit
The routine ignoring of the agenda of the Kingdom
Etc.

Does this help, or do I just sound frustrated???

Your friend,

Todd

posted by todd 2:20 PM

Wednesday, July 02, 2003

Debbie and the kids left for California early this morning. The 4th of July at her parents house is one of our most consistent family traditions. Plus they all needed to get out of our tiny aprtment: since school let out, they were all going a little stir crazy. So...this means I get lots of quite/silence time the next week before I go meet them for vacation. Then we return later in July and can finally move into our new home. This will be a great relief. A big load off my back...and then on to post-grad work at George Fox. I am really looking forward to this: I love learning and being around other motivated learners. It will be especially fun since several people from Allelon will be in our cohort. Plus, I'm sure we will make some new friends as well.

Peace,

Todd
posted by todd 10:08 AM

Tuesday, July 01, 2003

I want to stay in the blog conversation, but do not have the time to write something new, so I am fudging again by posting part of an on-line dialog I had a few weeks ago with group of mainline demonational pastors.

I hope these thoughts stimulate some good discussion.

Todd

A Vision of an Eternal Kind of Life, Life in the Kingdom, Life in the Spirit

Perhaps nothing has hurt the cause of Spiritual Transformation more than the loss of our Story, the context from which and by which “words” and reductionistic slogans and bumper stickers derive their meaning. There is a “terrible” saying from systems theory that says: “Your systems are perfectly designed to yield the results you are now getting”. Lets agree with that assertion for the moment and add to it Bill’s statement that “probably only 20% of our churchgoers are Christians”. I call this systems quote “terrible” because it means that the church is not in this predicament in spite of our hard work, but precisely because of it. We are now living under the burden of decades (fifty+ years?) of constantly reducing our Story to “understandable” bits. . The problem is no one actually lives from bits of information, data or disjointed facts. We actually live from our imaginations, from a sense of story.

I’m, of course, not arguing that we should make things complex and hard to understand (though ironically, context-less theological tid-bits have done exactly that), I want to suggest that as a way to “evangelize” churchgoers, we learn to tell our Story again: ETERNAL GOD-CREATION-FALL-REDEMPTION-RENEWED COSMOS. This is a story—in the words of Stan Grenz and John Franke—“that is universal in scope, has a historical consciousness, a futurist cast, an eternal focus, and is directed to a telos [an end] of God’s choosing”. This is a Story and a context that can pull the best out of people; it has the capacity to become the organizing force for someone’s life.

This is the meaning of “storied”: a storied sports franchise (the Lakers or the Yankees), a storied corporation (Microsoft or Ford), etc. Storied refers to something that has a celebrated, interesting and important history. These storied atmospheres naturally draw out the best in people. This is what we have lost; it is the price we pay for alleged “easy to understand” Christianity. Actually, the loss of story has only made things harder.

So what are the elements that need to be regained for our Story to have a natural, compelling, organizing force in the lives of our hearers?

Jesus’ Gospel is an invitation into the Kingdom of God – the realm in which what God wants done is done. He is offering us a different kind of life. Eternal life is not spatial (out beyond the stars somewhere), nor is it chronological (out there waiting for us when we die). It is qualitative and it can begin now! When Jesus asks us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him, to lose our life in order to find it (Matthew 16:24-25), he is showing how to give up an inferior life outside the Kingdom for a superior life in it. A plant has one kind of life, an animal another and humans still another. “Born again” life is a different kind of life in this space/time, it not some sort of disembodied bliss after one dies.

Second, Christianity means belief in and interaction with the Spirit: being led by the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit, taught by the Spirit and “fruited” by the Spirit. It is Spirit from beginning to end. Because of my long history in the Vineyard (remember the Kansas City prophets and Toronto “barking”?) I know many people are confused about or scared of the Holy Spirit. But, here is the deal: it is not intellectually honest or useful to the Kingdom to sit on the sidelines and merely criticize those of us who were trying to take the Spirit serious—even if we did it way wrong (and we weren’t wrong about everything). The answer to misuse or wrong use is not “no use”, it is right use. So if one doesn’t like the way we did it they are obligated to find a way to do it better because THERE IS NO SUCH THING as Christianity without the regular manifest presence of God the Holy Spirit.

So—perhaps there is a fine three-point sermon:

1. Eternal life is a definite and different kind of life which one experiences now
2. Christianity is Life in the Kingdom as God’s cooperative friends—all by grace
3. Christianity is a Spirit-overflowing reality; a daily, on-going conversational relationship with God

Here are some ways we could interact—but please feel free to take this in any direction that is useful to you:

1. Do you resonate with my take on the power of story? Why?

2. Does my outline of the Story cause any theological re-thinking on your part?

3. How have your (or your congregation’s) experiences of the Spirit made things more difficult? How can we move forward from there…?

posted by todd 12:08 PM