Wayne Jacobsen

A Busy But Wonderful Season

6 Comments / Travelogue /

The last few weeks have been crazy for me and I’m hopelessly behind on everything.  I spent two weeks with the delightful couple above, Gert and Katia, who had it on their hearts for me to come to France and spend some time with their friends who are just seeing the French and Dutch versions of THE SHACK movie. They are native Belgians now living in the south of France. We had a 1200 mile odyssey as I arrived in the south of France and starting in Montpelier, we traveled together through Toulouse to Condom, north to Angers, stopped outside of Paris and finally arrived in Belgium for the end of our eleven-day trip. I went on to Holland for one day near The Hague with some friends before coming home Monday.

What a trip!  So many conversations with so many people about so many things!  Wow!  And when you travel like that, staying with people every night, there’s hardly any personal time for rest or reflection, or even trying to keep up with email. However, each day was so rewarding.  I have so many great memories of the people I spent time with, some I just met for the first time, others I’ve known from previous trips. It is always wonderful to return and see people growing in grace and love. I also had an encounter with a pastor who is not too fond of my books, or perhaps better said, how some in his family have responded to them. He said he wasn’t religious, but one of the the things religion does best is blind us to its tentacles shaping our lives. The next day we were with a young man who doesn’t know of God is real and in the midst of our talking, God’s love just overwhelmed his heart and with tears streaming down his face he got a taste of the reality he’s been seeking.

In addition, I got to stay in an old farm house (since remodeled) in the countryside of France that had been a winery, got to walk along the Angers river and talk about healing, and spent time contemplating the horrors of The Great War (World War I) in the battlefields of Belgium where cemeteries dot the countryside where the lives of 18 and 19 year old young men were cut short.  All that was so moving. We were also in the field where the poem In Flanders Fields was written. I remember it from high school. Such a moving tribute to those who lost their lives and forever connected poppies and veterans.  You can see some of my pictures below.

Then we had a showing of THE SHACK in Dutch at a congregation near Iepers and then a full day after processing some of the themes behind the theology of that story with people who were touched by it and others who had concerns about it.

Today I’m about to take a walk with Sara, my dad, our children (Andy is visiting this week from his new home in Denver), or grandchildren, and of course, the hounds! My dad is visiting this Veteran Day weekend. He is our favorite veteran. He was wounded in France in World War II.  He’s visiting for a few days along with our son who has arrived from Denver. I am also celebrating my good health on the first anniversary of my open-heart surgery. I’m so grateful for what medical science can do and am back to full form. Also, Sara continues her recovery and now walks pain-free and has a newfound hope that she will get her life back.  I’m so happy for her!

And between coming back from Europe and these festivities, I left for two days of a golf outing with old friends, who do this every year. We played 54 holes of golf in two days with some stiff competition. A lot of fun, but not so easy to leave Sara so soon and to fight the jet lag as well as the golf, but we had a great time.

So the weekend is full, including baptizing my granddaughter later today, a big family birthday party for our November birthdays, and then Monday I’m taking my dad back home to Central California and have a board meeting for Lifestream in Visalia.  So things will keep backing up until Tuesday.  These are all special days, however, and I wouldn’t miss any of it for anything.

And, yes, I know most of life isn’t lived here. Believe me Sara and I have our dark and challenging days in this broken world, which makes me appreciate seasons like this all the more. We are grateful that God is with us all the time–whether in joy or pain and learning to lean into him is the greatest joy of all. I hope you are learning that as well.

Here are some pictures from my time in Europe:

Azille, where Gert and Katia live, a small village set amidst the vineyards. Some great morning walks here through the vineyards. So lovely! I spent four nights here.

A conversation in Azille

The farmhouse with a winery in the garage in Condom, France

Dinner and dialog near Angers

Iepers, Belgium near the gate where they have been playing Taps every night since the mid 1920s at 8:00 pm to memorialize those who died in The Great War

One of the cemeteries in Belgium

World famous hotel on the beach outside of The Hague in Holland.  No I didn’t stay there.

All in all these last weeks have been exhilarating and exhausting, warmly refreshing and incredibly challenging–all of it filled with joy and wonder. My heart is overwhelmed in gratitude for all that God is and how he takes shape in our lives.

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Three Years of FINDING CHURCH

3 Comments / Finding Church /

Three years ago this month, we released Finding Church: What If There Really Is Something More? I love the way it has spread out into the world and touched so many lives, encouraging them to discover the church Jesus is building in the world. To celebrate we will be making the print version of this book available for $8.99 for the month of November at the Lifestream Store. You can also find it in e-book at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, or my reading it in audio at Audibles.com and iTunes.

If you haven’t had the chance to read it, or have but would like a refresher, here are some of the quotes that capture the themes of most chapters:

Jesus’ church is not a human creation. Rather, it is the fruit of the relationships of those who are part of a new creation—the redeemed race of humanity that relates to him as the head… It’s just that our conformity-based structures cannot produce the internal transformation necessary for the church to take shape among us.

Our way of organizing congregations in the twenty-first century has little in Scripture to commend it. We spend more time making the Scriptures fit our preconceived view of church, rather than deriving our understanding of church from the Scriptures themselves.

Our view of “church life” today has far more to do with institutional identity, meetings, rituals, ethics, and doctrines than demonstrating what a community of Godly love looks like. From that foundation, it is difficult to find our way into the reality of Christ’s church. Maybe he didn’t talk so much about the church because it was not the means to his end. What if he knew it was simply the fruit of his working and that it takes shape quite easily wherever people learn to follow him?

When that longing surfaces either as a hunger for something more real, or as a restlessness that something is wrong, it presents us with a critical moment of choice. Do I stick to the comfort of what I’ve always known or take the risk to follow my heart into a more undefined place? Unfortunately most people will encourage you to suppress your hunger. I’ve talked to hundreds of church leaders who have had similar moments of being pulled between what Scripture invited them to and what they have to do to keep their institutional position. Many have told me they would love to embrace a different reality but can’t figure out how to make it work. With sad and heavy eyes, they’ve turned to me, “I’ve decided just to make the best of what I already have.”

I did that, too, for way too many years, settling into a comfortable, though often lifeless, regimen and ignoring the deeper call of my heart. There were always enough breadcrumbs in the routine to give me enough hope that if we could just find the right alignment all would be well. For a long time I thought it was my fault, knowing how lazy I could be as well as the temptations and motivations that rumbled just beneath the surface. I kept trying harder to be a better person. As genuine as that may seem it always proved a side road back into the swamp of failed self-effort and frustration.

Can you imagine the kind of community that would be unleashed on the world if the people in it were more preoccupied with the realities of Jesus’ kingdom—faith, hope, and love—than they were with their own provision, significance, and power? It would be amazing but it is not something human effort can produce. Our response to the appetites of the flesh and our passion for his kingdom are more visceral. Healing does not come by knowing better and trying harder.

Those growing in a relationship with Jesus, however, don’t share the same angst. They realize the structures of this world cannot accomplish the work of the kingdom and that Jesus’ reality supersedes the things that are valued in this age. Trusting God for their resource, they don’t have to manipulate people for money. Resting in God’s acceptance of their lives, they don’t look for their validation by what others think or say. And, knowing that Jesus gets the last word on everything, they see no need to claim power over others.

This is his to win, not ours to find. I have been winning my granddaughter into my love for nine years now. I didn’t expect her to figure it out on her own or to trust me because I told her so. I convince her by how I treat her. It may be God’s greatest joy to win people into his affection, no less for you than a woman at a well, a greedy tax collector in a tree, or a terrified fisherman who had betrayed him. Love reaches out to the beloved and seeks to win them into a relationship. That’s what courtship is about and hopefully marriage, too. Every day presents more opportunity to win a heart, even if it takes a lifetime.

It may be what John referred to when he said, “We know and rely on the love God has for us.” (I John 4:16) Some translations draw out a deeper meaning: “We have come to know . . . ,” indicating a process. So often our confidence in his love is thwarted by our fears and doubts and circumstances we don’t understand. I love the picture of an older John rejoicing that at last he had “come to know” and “come to rely” on the love God had for him.

I am continually amazed at the places my growing confidence in Father’s love leads me. How great can it grow? I don’t know, but I look forward to each day to discover what new freedom overtakes me and how that leads to treating others differently. Three words help me recognize God’s gravity that replaces the pressures of the world: compassion, trust, and rest. As these emerge from our growing relationship with God, we’ll find it easier to cooperate with God’s working. They are the headwaters that allow us to join the flow of his church.

In the old creation, people tend to be more self-focused: trying to be loved, rather than loving. They are more preoccupied with meetings and activities than they are with sharing friendship. The relationships they do have are mostly task-based, and only last as long as they are working or meeting together. The family way, however, encourages friendships to flourish because people enjoy being together and genuinely care about one another. They share laughter even through difficult circumstances. They serve one another in times of need, and that even extends to strangers in need who cross their paths.

God never intended for us to live in such conflict and isolation. His desire has always been for a world where genuine affection and concern for others replace our selfish ambition. From the beginning it has been his purpose to bring everything that sin separated, including heaven and earth, into one glorious, new whole. He wasn’t the author of conflict or violence, but the one seeking to rescue the creation from its brokenness. His plan was to bring “everything together under Jesus himself.” (Ephesians 1:9-10) Where does that begin? Inside each and every human heart that allows him to begin to untwist the powers of self and shame so that we no longer fall victim to our insecurities. Where we trust his unfolding purpose we will no longer fight for our own, and when his desires become ours we’ll find a growing unity with others who are also living in that new creation. This is the community our hearts long for, a society that lives outside the human need to manage power.

But his temple keeps rising. Each added person only reflects his multifaceted glory with more accuracy and will confound the wisdom of the world by the power of its love and the simplicity of its life. Wherever people are learning to live in his love and love others, the temple rises. Whenever people learn to listen to him instead of the manipulative voices of religious leaders, the temple rises. However people find ways to work together by laying their lives down in kindness and generosity, the temple rises.

In fact, making attendance an obligation may already demonstrate that we’ve lost the vitality of real community and have become mired in mundane rituals, demands for conformity, or internal conflicts that alienate people. Jesus talked about his kingdom being a pearl of great price. If people saw its reality, they would give up anything to be part of it. Living in him and sharing that life with others isn’t drudgery. It fulfills the deepest longings of the human heart.

Everything good does not require a commitment to do what we dislike, but to the simple joy of embracing what we truly love. Obligation presumes that our desires are despicable and lauds those who give up their desires to choose painful tasks for God. But what if your deepest desires are Godly?   If he wants your joy to be full then he knows best how to fulfill you. What God identifies as sin are the desires that don’t really belong to us. They have been twisted to offer us immediate gratification or false security, while they lead us down a road to certain destruction— spiritually, relationally, and even physically.

The signal of church life is not easily found in large meetings of like-minded people, but in the engagements of growing friendships. Success is measured not by the size of the group but by the quality of relationships. Instead of complicating people’s time with meetings and commitments, real church life is more readily experienced with authentic friendships in informal settings that don’t require large resources to drive centralized programs.

You can’t share life with hundreds of people sitting in a managed group. You can share a cause, a task even, but relationships won’t grow for the lack of time and energy to explore them. Isn’t that why people feel so disconnected in large congregations and complain that the relationships they do have remain superficial?

A cursory view of history makes it clear that a hierarchy of human leadership does more to disfigure the church than it does to protect it. Perhaps the severest price we’ve paid for doing so is that we no longer see authority resting in Jesus but in the institutions we have created by our own hand—perhaps not so dissimilar from the idols crafted in ancient Israel to replace the God they could not see.

When people who are on a spiritual journey get near each other, the church takes expression. He had no idea what simple joy and life could come out of being together and how fruitful it would be, not only for that week but also for years to come because of the new friendships that were formed. I’ve had the joy of watching a web of relationships grow around the world and see how those connections enrich Christ’s work and allow us to see him more fully.

For that to continue, however, we all have to resist the temptation to throw a structure around it and start monthly, quarterly, or yearly meetings. By doing so we sow the seeds for a new faction in the family and seriously damage the spontaneity of his work by putting a human agenda to it. As excited as I was to be part of this Wicklow gathering a few years ago, I was thrilled that at its end no one pressed to make it a yearly event or formalize a network. There have been other gatherings in other places as people felt inspired to plan and host them, but there has been no attempt to get the same people together at the same place. In fact many on this journey have a hesitation to repeat anything only because it was wonderful the first time, given our propensity to value routine over reality. Tradition is the attempt to get God to repeat something he did once, again and again to the same results. But the breath of the Spirit is too unique for such attempts and we only end up capturing ourselves in routines long after he has moved on.

The power of the church lies in the unity they find together—men and women loving and working together wholeheartedly because they have found their life and joy in him instead of their own preferences and ideas. How could any conformity-based system produce this unity when people are following the expectations of others rather than living out of an ever-expanding heart?   Without that, real unity cannot exist. (p. 154)

Jesus didn’t pray for conformity, but a unity that can only arise out of lives transformed by his glory. The answer to this prayer fulfills God’s passion in the earth and by it the world will know that the Father loves us as much as he loves his Jesus. When people out of diverse backgrounds come to complete unity of heart, purpose, and focus, God is unveiled in a way nothing else can accomplish. (p. 155)

That’s why the term leadership is difficult to use inside the new creation. People see it as a management role instead of a gift to help others. So when Paul wrote about elders, overseers, or ministry gifts, he’s talking about those who help others mature, not those who manage institutions. And when we take the words of Hebrews to “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority,” (13:17) and apply them to old creation constructs, we get distorted views of leadership and end up seeking out the wrong people to lead. How often has this Scripture been used by so-called leaders to great harm as a divine sanction for whatever power they wanted to hold over others? Rather than demanding unquestioned submission, the writer was simply appealing to the younger ones to not make it difficult for their older brothers and sisters to help them grow.

So while a local congregation in and of itself cannot fulfill all that Paul promised us about the church Jesus is building, it can be a place where people discover his reality and engage in the kinds of relationships in which his church takes expression. It’s often where people go when they first open to God, and if the teaching is sound, it can provide them with the foundation for a spiritual journey. Corporate expressions of praise and adoration can provide a place for people to engage the transcendent God and opportunities for fellowship can open a door to friendships that can last a lifetime.

However, we’d be less than honest not to wrestle with the fact that their institutional frameworks are remnants of an old creation and thus their priorities are often at odds with the priorities of the new. So while they can facilitate the writing of the creeds to define critical points of theology, an overdependence on them can easily rob people of partaking of God’s mystery as he makes himself known in the course of their daily lives.

You will find the church easiest when you stop looking for an “it,” and simply love the people God has put around you. Start with growing friendships instead of trying to find a group to join. It was no accident that the church began at Pentecost without any strategy or preconceived notion of what it would look like. They weren’t told to start Sunday services or have midweek home groups. They simply did what their new experience with the Gospel and their engagement with his Spirit led them to do. Learn to follow him and then engage others around you with the reality of his kingdom and watch how that bears fruit.

Yes, there is a vast pasture of God’s life and provision to be explored beyond the conformity of our institutions. It is a risk, to be sure, but one with incredible rewards. Perhaps the biggest change is that it forces people to move from being a passive part in someone else’s machine, to someone who actively participates in his unfolding kingdom.  You don’t get to follow someone else’s instructions anymore, but instead you have to be more intentional in all aspects of connecting with him and his church.

But those are the sheep I want to romp with in the Father’s care. What can happen out of that simple reality could set a world on fire, just like it did the first time.

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Who Is to Blame?

5 Comments / Church Life /

The quote below was written by a Jewish rabbi and theologian in 1955—thats two years after I was born.  And yet, this process has continued, not just for Judaism, but also for Western Christianity.

I hear complaints all the time about the decline of Christian influence in the societies of western culture. by Christians who blame it on increased secularism, the agenda of cultural elites, and the distortion of media for its losses, but we really need look no further than a mirror that reflects how we’ve taken the wonder of the Gospel and reduced it to another human-engineered religion.

It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion – its message becomes meaningless.

Abraham Joshua Heschel in God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism

The Gospel of Jesus Christ cannot be consigned to a creed, a discipline, or a habit; it is a real relationship with the Living God and when it loses that, it has nothing left to offer those around it.  As G.K. Chesterton wrote in 1910, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” (What’s Wrong with the World)

When I read voices from the past challenging the irrelevance of our faith so clearly, I am amazed they had no impact. These are not obscure quotes. They are very well known, but nonetheless ignored, and the wonder of the Gospel is even more obscured in our culture today, far more by the emptiness of our religious structures than anything the world has done.

What the world needs to see is not more religion, but a people won into the love of a gracious Father, learning to walk alongside him in the unfolding circumstances of life, and being so transformed over time that in word and character they are gracious and compassionate to all, with no need to manipulate those around them, forgiving when wronged, aware of the needs of others and willing to lay down their lives for the good of another.

That’s the kingdom Jesus foresaw and its one most of the people in our day have yet to see.

 

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To the Saints Scattered…

19 Comments / Phenomenon of the Dones /

By Wayne Jacobsen, the final chapter of a book he’s writing about The Phenomenon of the Dones

To the followers of Jesus scattered throughout the world, no longer attached to a specific congregation or denomination: Greetings from one of your kind and from Jesus himself. I pray this letter finds you growing in the affection of our Father, in the trust of his Son, and the wisdom and gentleness of his Spirit.

I know the way has not been easy. It never is for pioneers who move outside an established status quo in search of greater vitality and authenticity. I know most of you didn’t plan to get here; you simply followed the hunger of your heart and his drawing of your conscience until you found yourself outside the circles you used to frequent and for a while found so helpful. Some of you got pushed out for asking the wrong questions, others just stopped going wearied by the politics or how guilt and fear were used to keep people in line.

I have spent the last twenty years among those who have taken their liberty from Christianity-as-a-religion and yet continued to pursue a life in Christ as vibrant as the one he passed on to his disciples. Their journey beyond Sunday morning Christianity only confirmed their choice.  The people I admire most in this world are those that follow their spiritual hunger, even when it takes them beyond the comfort of their friends and family. Religion is built on approval needs, and when someone diverges from that conformity, they meet a host of well-intentioned, if not particularly sensitive, people trying to convince them they are wrong.

Jesus knows how painful your journey is better than anyone else. It is a road he walked as well. It is so easy to sing with great passion, “Though none go with me, still I will follow,” and far more difficult to actually do it. When you do, however, I’ve no doubt it brings great joy to him knowing the risk you took to follow him down an uncertain path. Live in that joy as you keep going even if the road is more difficult than you imagined. Your pursuit will reward you in ways you maybe can’t see yet, and fulfill the deepest hungers with his reality, his love, and his freedom.

I realize many of you need no encouragement from me. You have come to know Jesus and learned to follow him apart from the religious conventions of our culture and are finding yourselves increasingly at rest in his provision and being fruitful for him where he has placed you. You have discovered that there is still a church in the world to connect with relationally that doesn’t need the political gamesmanship or the mind-numbing routines of religion. I have met many of you around the world and have been inspired by your courage to take the road less traveled and your resilience in the face of challenge, opposition and false accusations.

Others of you are either new to the journey, or haven’t settled into it yet.  Here’s what I’ve learned this far into my journey:

 

Finding A New Trailhead

The early days of living outside our systems of religious performance can be quite painful, depending on the reason you left and if you have some supportive voices around you.  Initially, you’ll feel great relief to be out of the situation that helped you make such a difficult decision. You may have hoped others would have shared in your journey and either come with you or been sympathetic to how God was leading you.  Most people, however, find themselves outside alone where three critical challenges await, all of which also hold some great opportunities for growth.

Overcoming Guilt. For a while you’ll feel like you’ve lost your moorings, and your emotions will not be in synch with what you know to be true. You may know attendance at a congregation is not a requirement of our Lord Jesus, but you believed it for so long and may have looked down on others who didn’t come as regularly as you did that you’ll feel guilty when you’re not there and defensive if people ask you about it.

Guilt is the acquired baggage of religious obligation. While we know that there is no longer any condemnation for those in Christ, it’s amazing how much of our Christian experience has been driven by avoiding guilt and the disapproving glances of our fellow believers. It travels mostly unseen as long as you serve it, but when you stop it rears its ugly head. Now you’ll confront it head-on, almost every day and it will test what you know about God, yourself, and what it means to follow him.  This is a great time to see Jesus destroy the power guilt and fear hold over you.

You’ll be tempted to do something to sate the guilt, or attack the systems others might enjoy in order to justify your own experience. Resist those urges. This is an important time to find your way to the cross and discover the ways of thinking that create the guilt and condemnation you feel. As you lean more deeply into the Father’s love and his wisdom you’ll find over time the guilt will lessen as will your need to tear others down to feel good about his work in you.

Dealing with Loneliness. If you were heavily involved in your local congregation you may have given it 8-10 hours per week and it gave you the illusion that you were part of something larger than yourself. Even if friendships weren’t as close as you hoped, you felt like you belonged and that masked the loneliness that comes to the fore when you find yourself more isolated. Out of sight, out of mind is how most congregations work.  People will miss your contributions more than they’ll miss you.

Now you wonder if anyone was really a friend and does anyone care about you now. That is multiplied if you suffer the sting of judgment that comes if some of your closest friends and family begin top question your salvation, or at least view you as a reclamation project to get you back on the straight and narrow.  It may even cause you to doubt you’re making the right choices.

That disappointment grows when new friendships or connections don’t happen as fast as you hoped.  Again, the temptation is to do something to fix the problem. Some seek out another congregation, try to find a house church near them or even start their own.  But the answer to your loneliness is not “out there” somewhere. It is not in a group you can find, a program you can institute, or a new guru to follow. You’re not looking for a better way to do church, but a better way to embrace his reality. You will find loneliness first satisfied in him and then it will spill into the relationships he will bring across your path.

You may not see it yet and you may even feel as if he has abandoned you, but he has not. He has not led you this far to forsake you and he has not begun a work in you that he will not complete. This is the time to let your relationship with him deepen so you won’t use others to fill the place only he can fill. This is a great season to learn how to seek him, to listen to him, and to follow him and as you do he will swallow up your loneliness in a vibrant communion with him and then you’re ready for more healthy relationships in which true community can grow.

Losing Your Anger. Departing a congregation is often laced with anger—at disappointed expectations, betrayal by people you thought loved you, or finally seeing through some of the false things you were taught to keep you loyal and contributing your time and resources. You’ll want to blame people for lying to you or about you, and strike out against organized religion in general falling prey to an us-versus-them dichotomy that will prove destructive over time.

This is all very natural to justify an extremely difficult decision you had to make and to navigate the self-doubt you will invariably experience. But you’ll want to let it bleed out as soon as you can, which may still take months. Hopefully you can find a safe person who has been down this road before you to vent your pain without it overwhelming those who don’t understand it and will only judge you for it.

In God’s heart this journey is not about fixing “the church”, but drawing you into a deeper relationship with him and letting love over time still the anger of your heart and replace it with joy in his provision and compassion for others, even those who hurt you.  This all may take years, so don’t be hard on yourself if the emotions persist. Just keep leaning into him and let his love win you out of feeling like someone else’s victim.  No, life isn’t fair and people’s failures will make your life more difficult, but he has a way to navigate you through all of that and give you the life that really is life.  And keep in mind that your failures add difficulty to others as well.

Growing in him is a journey, its vitality will ebb and flow at times and there will be seasons where you’ll get distracted, but when he makes you aware guiltlessly lean back his direction.

A real relationship with him doesn’t try to get from him what you want, but to receive what he wants to give you each day. Keep engaging him and don’t pitch a tent anywhere thinking you’ve arrived. Our destination is not in this temporal age. Avoid simply falling into the routines of life and miss how this kingdom yearns to take shape in you and through you find more space in the world.

If you have other believers around you who are on this journey, seek for their help in learning how to ignore guilt, satisfy your loneliness inside of Jesus, and to help you discover how to follow him as a real presence in your life.  As you overcome these three challenges and you will find yourself on a very different journey.

 

Settling into a Different Journey

Now you find yourself on a very different journey. Instead of meeting the expectations of the institution you belonged to, you may find yourself adrift without them.  It was so easy when your security came from regular attendance, following the rules, speaking the party line and gaining the approval from others for your diligent efforts. Without those you’ll need to give attention to your connection with God himself. You will want to learn how to recognize his fingerprints in your day, and his words in the recesses of your thoughts.

Don’t look for quick fixes here or rush the process. You cannot learn it in a book; you have to let it unfold in the reality of your circumstances. His curriculum is not in a workbook somewhere, or a university course; it is in the events, emotions, and thoughts of daily life as he comes alongside you to show you what’s real and what is an illusion as you engage with his Spirit and the Scriptures.

Here are three things I use to keep my course:

Relational. If you’re new to this journey and still disoriented by the change from performance-based Christianity, to an affectionate relationship with The Father, Jesus, and the Spirit, take all the time you need.  Learn to let the Father enjoy your presence, and for you to enjoy his.  If you need space from “religious voices” that seek to promote guilt and fear, take some distance from them.  Jesus will show you who you are free to love, and what relationships draw you out of his affection and back into performance.

Eugene Peterson called it, “the unforced rhythms of grace.” Religious obligation and activity can so easily distract us from the purity and simplicity of how Jesus expresses himself to us. God already knows you and now wants you to know him. Jesus died to grant us full and confident access to him. It is not quick and it is not easy to learn how to live in that reality. He has to reshape internally the ways you were taught to live—twisted by indulging your desires, haunted by the insecurities of not knowing you were loved, exploited by the selfishness of others, or manipulated by the lies and fears of religious obligation.

Now he will teach you how to rest in his love, how your growing trust in his desires for you and his purpose in this age will change the way you navigate the world, and how your growing dependence on the power of his Spirit living in you will draw your eyes away from what’s temporal to that which is eternal.  Everything God wants to do in you, and all he wants to do through you will grow naturally out of your engagements with him and the people he brings into your life.

If you can find them, spend time with others who stimulate awareness in your own life. Don’t be discouraged if this takes some time or if that initially happens across great distances. Social media and blogs comments might be a good place to connect as well, even if you can’t be face-to-face. Beware the cheap fix of on-line networks or getting an identity from following a popular author or teacher. That may comfort you with a false security that it will soon evaporate.

In time, you’ll begin to meet people around you on a similar trajectory.  Jesus is inviting an increasing number of people back to himself and creating a people who will follow the Lamb wherever he goes. You’ll find those faster, however, if you’re just looking for growing friendships with those already around you, not by finding or building a group of like-minded people. Keep your eyes open for a hungry seeker at work, an open-hearted neighbor, someone you meet randomly, or connect with at another gathering or mission outreach. Fellowship grows from friendships a lot easier than friendship grows from meetings.

Truth-full. Don’t just throw out the illusions without rethinking where God’s truth lies. De-constructing the false messages of religion that feed performance and destroy community is a painful process. Not everyone survives it with a passion for truth. Once you find out some of the things you were taught aren’t true, it’s easy to throw out everything or just hold on to those things that you find personally comforting. Many have taken this course into the theological weeds and gotten lost in the skepticism about God and his truth.

Truth will often disturb us before it sets us free. Scripture underlines how hungering for truth is the most important component to grasping it. Don’t seek voices who say what you want to be true, ask the Father to reveal his truth to you.  Search your heart, search the Scriptures, and interact with others in conversation and through books and articles in a way that will help you re-construct an understanding of who God truly is and his purpose in the world. God didn’t bring you out of religious performance to leave you drifting on the winds of circumstance, but to draw you into a relationship that is not only intimate but transforming.

You won’t have all the answers and you’ll lose your need to convince others that you see it better than they do. You’ll learn to walk with him in the truth that is sometimes challenging and painful, but it will always draws your heart more closely to him.  Don’t expect this truth to be as much measured by principles you can follow, but in learning to discern in your unfolding day which decisions leads to life and which leads to death.  This is where he always wanted to write his will, not in precepts to follow, but learning to sense the pleasure of the Spirit in the direction he desires for us and the restlessness of Spirit when he’s drawing us away from our own selfishness. That’s how you learn to walk with him.

Purposeful. When you are part of a religious program everything is provided for you.  You have fellowship because you sit in a congregation, worship because you sing, and engage spread the kingdom because your congregation gives to overseas missions.  But those are simply shadows of a greater reality. To embrace those realities now you will need to make some intentional choices to follow his leadings, embrace his purpose in circumstances around you, and to live focused more on others than yourself.

It is easy for all of us to drift into complacency regarding spiritual realities. Life takes so much out of us just to complete our job responsibilities and care for our families. It also distracts us with too many entertainment options that it’s easy to end up coasting spiritually into emptiness. Growing in him and flowing with his purpose won’t happen by accident, but it also won’t happen by human ingenuity.  I realize that sounds like a contradiction. What you will want to do is to learn to live in the moment, with a growing trust in Spirit’s ability to lead and guide you. Being intentional is not doing what we prefer or even think best, but to see where love leads us and where his Spirit nudges us.

When you stop serving someone else’s vision it will be easier to recognize his leading. Let him grow your capacity to love so that you’ll have a heart of compassion for the broken, and be a champion of justice for the oppressed. Confront evil where it exploits the innocent, quickly repair broken relationships where possible with forgiveness and honesty, and treat others the way you want them to treat you.

Walking by the Spirit comes with a suspicious eye toward our own human effort, but an intentional eye on the Father and flowing with his activity in the world.

 

Helping Others Find Their Journey

The time is coming when all that you’ve discovered will not just be valuable for you, but will overflow from you to so many others who are hungering for the same realities that lie beyond the walls of their own experience. Jesus designed his kingdom to work that way. As freely as you receive, you look for ways to freely give to others. As you find more relaxed footing in your relationship with him look for ways to be a blessing to others.

I’m convinced this is what it means to pastor the flock of God. It doesn’t require a degree or a job managing an institution; it is simply the ability and desire to help others connect with Jesus and encourage them as they learn to follow him. God works through the simplest people who have sincere hearts, not the highly talented or those who seek influence. Sharing your life freely is not a task you have to do, but one that will flow out of your heart naturally as you make yourself available to him:

Live lovingly. What I enjoy most about this journey is that all the obligations and expectations I lived under were replaced with a sense of endearment. I don’t follow God because I’m afraid of him, but because I want what he wants for me. I don’t do what I do in fear that he will punish me but because I want to share in the work he is doing around me. Obligation was replaced with joy and though I can’t stop and love everyone I pass on a given day, I’ve always got an eye out for the person God wants me to engage or to serve in some way.

Live freely.  There will be no end of well-meaning people who will want to push their preferences and expectations on you. You can be gracious as you politely say, “No, thank you.”  Embrace what God gives you, and turn from those things others want to force on you. Life is too short to let people manipulate you even with the best of their religious intentions. You are to live to him, free from the tyranny of your own spiritual ambitions, and free from others’ as well.

Live generously. Keep an eye out for the needs and welfare of others, sharing whatever you might have to be a blessing in someone else’s life. Build friendships and share those friendships with others by connecting people who will be blessed to know each other. This is how his church grows in the world. Don’t just love those who can love you back, but take time with people who do not yet have any capacity for love, so that they can see him in you.

Live genuinely. No one needs you to pretend to be someone you’re not or further down the road than you are. We best help people when we let them look into the reality of our lives to see both where God has shaped his life in us and where we still struggle. Impress people with your honesty not by pretending to be further down the road than you really are. Sharing your own doubts and failures are as important as telling others how God makes himself known to you. None of us has it all together and authenticity laced with humility creates the vulnerable environment where the best conversations happen. It will free you to love and to honesty without the need to fix others or make them part of your agenda.

Live justly. Life is inherently unfair and it is somehow in the nature of powerful people to exploit others for their own gain and notoriety. The kingdom comes to bind up the brokenhearted, to free the oppressed, and to help the poor and downtrodden. Keep an eye out for those whom the culture exploits and be a champion for compassion and justice. Don’t make conformity the currency of relationship, but care and concern. You cannot love all the people in the world, so love well those God puts before you each day.

 

In Christ Alone

Jesus is doing an amazing thing in our day; he is taking his church back. He’s calling people from every corner of this world to find him as their sole allegiance.  Some of those are inside traditional congregations, and many others he is inviting outside to teach them another way to live and grow.

The truth be told, we are all part of the saints scattered, even those who regularly attended a local congregation. The saints have been scattered for a long time, divided by institutions, doctrines, leaders, and programs each believing their way is the best. For those of us who have moved beyond Sunday gatherings as the focus of our faith, we need to take care that we guard our hearts to explore the wonder of the whole body of Christ as she is in the world. Almost every group that has splintered off of Christian institutions in the past have gone on to create their own, looking down on those who didn’t live it the same way they did.

It would seem the courage it takes to leave religious obligation easily bends toward pride and an air of superiority if we’re not careful. Yes, our institutional systems can be deeply flawed as they try to express God’s reality in the world, but that doesn’t mean we need to condemn them or think less of those who attend them.  Our world is touched for the better by many of those congregations. Though it may not be the best way for your hungers to be met, resist the desire to reject others who see it differently. Don’t think your path is their path or that those not on it can’t know and follow the God you’re growing to know. He has many sheep and he does not lead all on the same path.

Always keep in mind that it is Jesus’ desire to reconcile all things to himself, and thus all of us to each other. This is the unity he prayed for with such passion. That we would all be one, as he and the Father are one. We have too long looked for that to come from our institutions or our agreed-upon doctrines, but that approach has failed us spectacularly. The unity Jesus prayed for can only come through transformed lives as we let God’s kind of love permeate our own hearts and free us to live with increasing selflessness and generosity in a world that knows too little of either.

Give yourself to what leads to authentic unity. Remember this is his work not yours, so be patient and don’t think you will have to compromise his work in you to love others who are on a different journey. Don’t be afraid to follow your heart, and encourage others to follow theirs as well.  While you will often be judged maliciously, don’t resolve your pain by judging back. Bring those accusations to God and leave them there. If he is not asking you to change, don’t let others press you towards it.

Let all kinds of people into your life to see what loving them might do. Those who criticize how you live your life, may not be against the Jesus we love and seek to follow. Don’t exalt yourself because God has given you more to see, use it as a way to serve others so that they will have a chance to see it, too.

This is the trajectory he invites all his children on and if it has taken you outside the walls of institutionalism it was not to separate you from his people, but to draw you more deeply into the life that truly is life and to free you to share that love without any borders. His purpose was not to leave you isolated and scattered in the world, but increasingly transformed by love so that he can knit you into the fabric of his church as she is taking shape around the world today.

And she is taking shape in ways most people miss. Wherever I travel in the world I meet people who are really learning to live a journey in Christ that is transforming them from the need to serve themselves and to a more generous heart for others. These are the stories that thrill my soul and give me hope. They are being led by Jesus often in direct contradiction to their own self-interest. Soon they will be knit together by his Spirit in ways we cannot yet conceive, but will speak of his glory far more than our own ingenuity.

Let’s take care that we do not exalt anything above Christ and Christ alone, the hope of glory for every individual.  Don’t give people a reason to be distracted by your pet doctrines, cute terminology, a specific program that may have been useful for you but may not be for them. Focus on him and his reality and watch him reveal himself in almost every relationship you have. Don’t fragment his family because you want to make a name for yourself, to brand an identity, or to carve off a market share for your ministry.

Share freely as God cares for you. Yearn for the day when we will be truly one flock with one Shepherd. As long as we have other humans between us and our compassionate High Priest, we will continue to live splintered into discordant factions. The world is not surprised by such

But imagine what it would think if they really saw the followers of Christ loving each other deeply, from the heart. There he will be revealed in ways that will draw the most calloused sinner to recognize who he is. And then we won’t be scattered anymore, but one body permeating every corner of our world with the life and love of Jesus.

__________________

This is the final chapter in a series called The Phenomenon of the Dones by Wayne Jacobsen who is the author of Finding Church and host of a podcast at TheGodJourney.com.  You can read the first half here and subsequent parts below. It will eventually be made into a book for people to read more easily.

These chapters will be combined into an  e-book for future reference in the near future.

To the Saints Scattered… Read More »

Kenya: Expanding Irrigation to a New Village

4 Comments / Kenya /

As I get ready to leave for Europe today, I want to catch you up to speed on our activities in Kenya. The firstfruits of harvest at Ngetut Farm can be seen above. This is the fruit of a lot of work and generous donations from many of you. They are so happy now to have a way to grow their own food in a parched land using the well we drilled three years ago and the new irrigation system we helped them install three months ago. blessed at their joy.

These people have been staving for years with incredibly limited resource. Can you imagine what it must mean to look at the growing plants and know this is from God’s generosity as well as their hard work. They prepped the land, planted the seeds, and are now enjoying their first harvest.

This is their report:

Irrigation in North Pokot {Ngetu Farm} is going on well, the crops are also growing very well, brother Joram the farm worker is teaching the community and involving the committee for coaching in agriculture.

As I was there, the elders from the village where we built the school, sent the delegation of elders just walking, guided by the committee, they came in Ngetut irrigation project purposely of requesting us if we can help them to do the same. (See picture t right) I listened to everybody share about the Almighty God. It is a great evangelism to this work. I interacted with them and I was so happy after hearing that many of them were involved to help the Ngetut people for digging and clearing the bush.

As you know brother Wayne, these people understanding is very low , they were thinking that after clearing there bush we would come immediately and fix the irrigation.  They cleared the bush last month but we talk with them that irrigation project needs a process of communication and planning as well as getting the feedback from you. It is not a matter where we start in our own idea. What touched me so much is about the matters of the school nutritional value but I told them to pray and believe almighty God to provide.

This is the first achievement we have seen in the side of vegetables, but for the sweet potatoes and other crops we will updates you when time come. What was your suggestion concerning this? We believe strongly that irrigation progress it only the way which will give out long-term solution to this people.

About Forkland school, renovation and repair is going on I will update you soon, thank you very much for the great help. You can go through the below picture

Vegetables from this plot of land are not only going too feed their community, but the surplus is being sold to a school to help generate further income. We feel like we have enough track record here now to be able to move ahead on the second irrigation project for the people of Chemnyon Village, who helped so much in the preparing of the land with the Ngetut people.  We are sending money this week. We also support the Forkland School near Bungoma, a place where orphan children are being educated. They had a major flood that wiped out housing for some of the kids who live there and it had to be rebuilt. That’s what Thomas is referring to above.

Our coaches in Pokot have told us that these farming operations are essential to these tribes becoming self-sustaining and not reliant on outside resource. So as we commit another $33,000 to help build a second irrigation project, your gifts and prayers will be welcomed again.  If there ever was a time you wanted to genuinely help poor people, without anyone else siphoning off money for administrative fees or other benefit, this is it. All contributions are tax-deductible in the US.  And as always, every dollar you send goes to the need in Kenya.  We do not (nor do they) take out any administrative or money transfer fees. Please see our Sharing With the World page at Lifestream. You can either donate with a credit card there, or you can mail a check to Lifestream Ministries • 1560 Newbury Rd Ste 1  •  Newbury Park, CA 91320. Or if you prefer, we can take your donation over the phone at (805) 498-7774.

Thank you on behalf of the people of Pokot for your gifts and prayers on their behalf.

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The Arrogance That Blinds Us

4 Comments / Culture Watch /

During Sara’s recovery, which is going fantastically by the way, we found ourselves watching two different TV series. The first was Turn, the true story of spies for General George Washington during the Revolutionary War. I’ll warn you it is a bit risqué in places, but we loved this series with an engaging story based in actual events, beautiful cinematography and wonderful actors. We were drawn into the story and marveled at the risk people had to take if this country was going to find it’s way to freedom from the Crown in England and have a chance to be it’s own country. And the conflict those suffered who were in America but didn’t want to forsake England. Who then is really the patriot, and who is committing treason? When you see the mistakes that were made on both sides,  you realize wars like this often turn on seemingly very small events.

Then we got hooked on The Vietnam War by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. This is our war. Sara and I were in high school and college during these times and it was our classmates that fought and died in Vietnam. The soundtrack contains the songs we grew up on. Forty-five years later looking back at this powerful documentary we are having a very different perspective and set of emotions than we had living through them.  Of course this documentary has its own bias that some will disagree with, but it does bring out facts that are unmistakable. It caused me look back at events I lived through with a very different perspective and a unfamiliar set of emotions.

Being children of the World War II generation my family was full on for God and country. The U.S. could do no wrong and of course the President of the United States would not go on TV and tell baldfaced lies to the American people. The kids in Vietnam were standing against the rising tide of communism in Southeast Asia, and the protestors were cowards who wouldn’t go to war. All that gets blown up in this ten-part series.  I’ll warn you this one is hard to watch. Sara and I watch it in small bits until we get overwhelmed with the lies and the bloodshed. But in watching it we found out how John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon lied repeatedly to the American public about the war. Knowing it was unwinable they continued to trade our blood and treasure simply to keep their political aspirations on track.  Can you imagine how bankrupt you have to be to send eighteen year-olds to their death and dismemberment just so you have a chance for re-election? And you hear this stuff in their own words on recordings they made in the White House. I’ll never look at these presidents the same way again. They betrayed the people of my generation.

And nothing about this diminishes my respect for those young men and women who were in the service at that time. As one officer said in the documentary, these young men and women were doing the same thing on behalf of their country that what has been called the Greatest Generation did for theirs. Only World War II was a more just cause and they came back heroes, whereas many Vietnam vets came back conflicted about their involvement and then despised by their country. I still stand with all Vietnam Vets who were extraordinarily courageous in the face of a political-military establishment that used them in the wrong war for the wrong reasons to support increasingly corrupt regimes in South Vietnam. But that does not take away from their bravery and service to go when called upon and risk themselves for the good of others.

As sad as this series made me, I’m grateful to look back at it all very differently, even to see the protestors and those who leaked top secret documents to show the deceit of the U.S. Government on its citizenry. They, too, risked so much to expose the lies and end the war. And I’m just shocked that I could live through such a time as a young man and been so completely blind to what was really going on. I would have shouted, “America, love it or leave it,” to the anti-war demonstrators. I would have blindly backed the President, confident none would stay in this war only for their own political gain.

Arrogance blinds us, and the problem with arrogance no one actually knows they are afflicted with it. At the time, being arrogant feels like being right. One of the quote from this documentary that really stood out to me was this:

“We are prisoners of our own experience. Many of the things we learned that worked in WWIII were not applicable in Vietnam.  Combined with our over-confidence that caused us to be arrogant. It is very difficult to dispel ignorance if you retain arrogance.”  –Sam Wilson, Army officer

That last sentence can apply to almost every arena of your life. There’s an ungodly symbiosis between ignorance and arrogance, each feeding the other. Few of us would claim to know everything, but when we’re blindly confident that our own experience has given us all the information we need to determine what’s true around us, we have fallen into the trap. That’s applicable not just to this war, but almost anything else in our life—our thoughts about church, politics, morality, We are all ignorant of so much. I guess the best we can do is try not to mix it with arrogance, stay open to the fact that I may be wrong even about things in which I’m extremely confident, and keep looking for information that’s true, not just that which supports my preconceptions.

As Jesus said, to the Pharisees, “If the light that is in you (is really) darkness, how great is that darkness?”

How great indeed! When we call what’s dark, light we are truly lost. Humility and truth-hunting go hand-in-hand, and it would lead to better conversations with each other if we didn’t act like we already have the only facts that matter.

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Off to Europe at the End of the Month

Travelogue /

This trip has been in the works for some time, but we wanted to make sure Sara was recovered from her surgery and able to safely handle things around here. Fortunately her recovery continues well and we sense it is time for me to take this trip to Europe. So from October 24 – November 6, I’m going to start in the south of France, work my way up the west side through Paris and into Belgium before a brief stop in The Netherlands before I head home.  I’ll be with some good friends who will be driving me and we will cover over 1200 miles in 13 days. Can anyone say Road Trip?

The movie of The Shack was recently released in French, so we’ll be spending some of this time exploring themes from the book and the movie, but more importantly we’ll be talking about our own journeys and how we can live more at rest in the Father’s love and by doing so be more transformed so that we can live free and full in the world.  It will also give an opportunity for people to meet others near them on a similar journey.

There is still some flexibility in this schedule if there’s anything else God might have in mind. We are especially looking for a place to gather around Paris on November 1, if anyone has some space.  Please write me if you have some ideas.

You can see all the details and get contact information on my Travel Page.  Just click the site you’re interested in to get the information you need.

For those not in our target area, you’re welcome to keep both Sara, me, and this trip in your prayers if you have from.

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Revisiting The Nashville Statement

24 Comments / Culture Watch /

A few of weeks ago I posted a blog about The Nashville Statement, and got a host of feedback from people, both those who loved what I wrote and those who thought I’d committed the unpardonable sin. It sad how angry Christians can get just by reading a different point of view. Here’s some of what I learned in the ensuing conversation on that blog, by email and on my Facebook Page:

1. Most people really get it, at least those on my blog and Facebook feeds. There’s a growing number of people who are accepting the fact that we are living in a post-Christian culture and we will not impact it by trying to force our morality on people who don’t know the God we know. Attempting to do so in a pluralistic society only makes you look arrogant and weakens your voice. This is why even people who agree with your moral stands grow weary of your need to tell everyone else how to live their lives. We are looking for better language and approaches to help people discover who God is so that they will want to follow his ways.

2. Those who put morals first have little appreciation how arrogant their tactics appear and how that destroys any opportunity to impact the culture. Most of them think as long as you’re speaking truth you cannot be guilty of arrogance. However, Merriam Webster defines arrogance as, “an attitude of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner.” I don’t know a better definition of what I read in The Statement and what I hear from many of the so-called Bible teachers behind it. Their air of superiority makes me cringe, even though I’m in agreement with much of what they believe.

Truth can be spoken with gentleness and humility that opens doors, or with superiority that closes them. That’s why the more truth you think you know, the more humility you will need to let Jesus cultivate in your heart. There is more written in Scripture against arrogance than there are sexual sins, and that arrogance is a major deterrent to effective communication. Though Jesus had all truth he was never accused of arrogance, because humility and compassion set his course as he engaged people. And it probably helped that he didn’t write columns for the Jerusalem Post or Lifestream for that matter.

3. There is a great divide in evangelicalism between those who think we need more Law to bring people to repentance, and those think Jesus superseded that approach in his Incarnation. Is it by guilt or by goodness that the Spirit leads the lost to repentance? The problem is so many of them were won by guilt, but that only worked because they had a religious upbringing. Those without it won’t find guilt a helpful course to finding God.

They are also divided on whether human effort can conform to God’s standards, or whether God does the transforming as we invite him to live in us. I know those behind the Nashville Statement would claim only God has the power to change hearts, but their demands for other people’s compliance with their morality would suggest otherwise.

4. People really hate being within 500 feet of the ‘P’ word. And yet so much of the public perception of Christianity is more analogous to how Jesus saw the Pharisees rather than how the crowds saw Jesus. I see much of that in me in my first forty years and have even joked about needing a Pharisectomy because I was more concerned about people following the rules than knowing him.

Some even accused me of name-calling those they consider to be great theologians. I wrote (very carefully I might add) that “it seems that the Pharisees met….” I admit it’s a small distinction but nonetheless a critical one. I don’t know how these people treat others around them, but many are known beyond their borders as those who care more about rules than people. Being a Pharisee in the first century wasn’t a pejorative, except to Jesus. They were the best-read theologians of the day, the rule makers and the busybodies who made sure others followed them as well under penalty of death. They were proud of their station and even young Saul aspired to be a “Pharisee of Pharisees.” What I meant by correlating their actions to those of the Pharisees was that they seem to demonstrate more concern for sexual rules than they do for love and compassion of those Jesus saw as “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

5. For too many the Statement has already become what I said it would—a litmus test. If you’re not wearing the “Nashville” pin on your lapel, some will accuse you of being soft on morality. They seem incapable of understanding that you can be committed to the moral claims of Scripture and at the same time not want to use civic law to discriminate against those who do not yet know the God we know.

6. People who categorically state the Bible teaches anything about being transgendered aren’t being honest with the fact that it never mentions it. There’s one verse about not wearing clothing of the opposite gender in Deuteronomy, but that is a very different application and one that is alongside other instructions God gave Israel that we don’t follow today. I realize many prefer a simpler world where everyone falls in line with what makes them comfortable, but it ignores the deep struggle and suffering that goes on in the transgendered soul. The conclusions made in The Statement are at best an extrapolation of Scripture and must be held suspect while showing compassion for those who for whatever reason in deep conflict with their anatomical gender.

7. Where is the compassion among evangelicals for people who, through no fault of their own, struggle with affections and desires outside of Scripture’s moral window. If the New Testament is true, none of us have the power to change ourselves without the redemptive power of Jesus at work in us. It’s the love and goodness of God that begins to make inroads into our hearts so that we begin to care about his will and his power to change our rebel hearts. People will beat a path to your door when you show them you care. If you treat people with contempt you become an impediment to the Gospel finding its way to them.

8. The best comment I received about this wondered if the reason conservative Protestants are so enamored with civic law, is because they refused to write a book of common order to spell out their view of morality as previous groups had done. Instead, they substituted civic law as their vehicle of morality and have had a painful time adjusting to their loss of influence as societies became more secular. They see civic law as their moral code and are frustrated when it no longer reflects their preferences in matters of sexuality and gender identity. They seem unable to understand that when you enforce theological views with the penalty of the state you become an oppressor and an advocate for discrimination.

That’s how Christianity lost its hold on the public debate as the wider culture concluded that freedom of conscience took precedence over theological demands, especially if those violating those demands weren’t a detriment to society and weren’t otherwise infringing on the rights of others. Thus, gay marriage and transgendered issues are being resolved as a freedom of conscience issue by the culture rather than a theological one, as they should by a secular state. Christianity always loses its vitality when it is enforced under the penalty of law. The life of God is freely given and can only be freely received.

9. Some have suggested that The Nashville Statement was not intended as a volley in the culture wars, but to draw a line of theological purity to exclude those pastors, authors, and denominations that advocate for the theological acceptance of homosexuality. That may be true, but the way they released it in the secular press would argue otherwise, and the fact that they did not host a wider conversation but stuck to a very narrow segment of evangelicalism would undermine that hope. The controversy it caused, as much by its process as its conclusions, shows that no one can in selective isolation compose an edict and have any hope that it will clear the air or bring the church together. The age of presumed gatekeepers has long since vanished.

10. As a culture we are losing our appreciation for nuance and assume that people can fit into one of two pre-determined camps. In our last election, we could either vote for the party who wanted to give amnesty to all undocumented aliens, or to the one who wanted to deport them all. No one was willing to negotiate the difficult space between those two extremes and find a more nuanced and just solution tailored to the circumstances of different people. The same is true of sexuality. You have to push biblical morality on everyone or the authenticity of your faith is suspect. Conversely people think your fidelity to Scripture will make it impossible for you to love those who don’t believe it. I reject both extremes. It is possible to disagree on moral issues and still be able to treat each other with compassion and respect, by protect the freedom of everyone’s right of conscience.

I hope we find a different conversation, both within Christianity about matters of morality and with the world in a way that opens the door for people to discover the Gospel, not slams it shut in their face before they ever have a chance to know how deeply loved they are by God.

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Heading Back to Europe

3 Comments / Uncategorized /

Sara’s recovery is still going well, and she looks to be pretty functional in another couple of weeks. I’ve been holding off confirming a trip to Europe this fall until we knew that she was recovered. For those in France and Belgium interested in hanging out with others on this journey, I want to let you know that it looks like things have come together for me to be there in late October.

The plan now is to arrive in the south of France around October 23 and then make my way north through Angers and up into Belgium November 2-4. We will post details on my Travel Page as soon as we confirm everything, but wanted to give you a heads up in case you want to take advantage of this trip into Europe.

As always if you’d like to be notified when I’m coming to your area you can sign up on our email list and include your address . That goes for everyone, not just those in Belgium or France.

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Symbol over Substance

37 Comments / Culture Watch /

I wonder how it feels to have your protest stolen.

To be honest, I’ve never been a 49er or a Colin Kaepernick fan. When he sat down for the national anthem to draw attention to the inequities that still exists in our culture for people of color, I thought him disrespectful of our country.

But then he, and others, decided to kneel instead, not wanting people to mistake their protest as disrespect for flag, country, or its men and women in uniform. They just wanted our society to confront the fact that racial inequality still exists in our society. It does you know. You’d be a fool to think otherwise.

But most white people it seems would rather ignore that fact, thinking it was fixed fifty years ago when we passed civil rights legislation. While we do have equality under the law, we don’t yet have an equitable society given the great economic disadvantages that hold over from slavery and segregation. The escalating fear between police and the black community has led at times to innocent people being shot, and white America for the most part ignores it. It’s a problem for the ‘hood, or so they want to think.

What these athletes were hoping is that the majority white audience of the NFL would be confronted with a problem that is as yet unresolved in our culture and stand the powerless who live in neighborhoods most people wouldn’t choose to live in, who are incarcerated at disproportionate rates with disproportionate terms, and who lack the opportunities to better their lives that others have.

Why are we in white America so uncomfortable that we don’t want to take a look at the problem? Yes, it’s huge. No we don’t have enough governmental funds to throw at it, but the first step to change isn’t a new program, but compassion for people who weren’t born with the same advantages you were. You don’t have to be a racist to ignore it; you just have to be uncaring for humanity and too content with your own advantage.

To ignore the deeper issue others twisted it to make it about patriotism, the very thing these athletes were bending over backward to make sure we couldn’t do. Even President Trump has decided that to make America great again we have to despise those people who want to confront us with the truth that the ideals of this great nation don’t yet apply to all of us. I’m weary of those who want to defend his denigration of fellow American citizens expressing free speech as “sons of b*****s” and demand they be fired rather than take their concerns seriously. His actions simply underscore what began the protest in the first place and it is disappointing that he doesn’t see it as his responsibility as President to bring us together on these issues, rather than polarize us for the popularity he craves with his base.

Even the NFL teams who are linking arms, or staying in locker rooms are subverting the original issue by making it about free speech or team unity, rather then the inequities of race still inherent in our culture.

I wonder how it feels to have your protest stolen, to watch people care more about a flag than they do the lives of those living under it. Our soldiers fight for freedom overseas, but their work is not done if we’re not willing to fight for it at home—-for every American. Black lives suffering under oppression, fear and poverty do matter and their plight needs to move us all.

We need a better conversation about race in our culture and finding ways to nurture greater opportunities for those who are disadvantaged, not by our intent perhaps but by ignoring a history that didn’t treat us all fairly. We need reasonable men and women to come to the table and take up the task of making our society safer, fairer, and more equitable for all.

Nelson Mandela fought against bitterness for peace in post-apartheid South Africa by believing none of us are free until we all are free.

He was right. It’s not the symbol of liberty that’s at risk here, but liberty itself!

Symbol over Substance Read More »

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