"What If"s" for 2014

As I look ahead to what God has in store for 2014, I'm asking myself a lot of "What if?" questions about the future of our Diakonos Community (the missional community we are leading).  The answers give me a glimpse of what God can do through through our little, but growing community.

1. What if we created a faith community where those who serve people on the margins of society could gather with those being served to worship together and learn from each other?
2. What if we created a faith community where people in need were not simply seen as projects, but embraced as friends?
3. What if we created a faith community where people can wrestle fully with the implications of following Jesus without fear of being judge or having others offer them quick fixes that shortcut the work of the Holy Spirit?
4. What if we created a faith community where people didn't feel the need to impress one another with their spirituality, but could learn to live in an environment of God's grace and love as we spur one another on toward love and good deeds?

These are the goals I'm pursuing for 2014.

Why Last Night's Heisman Trophy Award Bothers Me

Last night the Downtown Athletic Club in New York City awarded it's annual Heisman Trophy  for the most outstanding player in college football to Jameis Winston.  In this decision the Heisman Trophy reached a new low in selecting honorees. Up until a month ago, Mr Winston was facing the possibility of rape charges for an incident that occurred in December 2012, while he was still an unknown red shirt player at the school.  Authorities claim the alleged victim ceased to cooperate with pursuing charges in February 2013, but this may have happened after she was warned of the consequences of pursuing charges against Mr. Winston in a "football crazy town" like Tallahassee.  Charges were not filed because prosecutors didn't think a conviction was possible. The way their decision was worded does not necessarily mean they thought there was not merit to the case. They just didn't think they could win. That leaves enough questions that the award voters should have taken it into consideration when voting.

Some who defend the decision to give Mr. Winston this award point to a person being innocent until proven guilty in America.  I suppose that case could be made, but "innocent until proven guilty" applies to the court of law. In that sense, yes, he is not guilty of rape. Still, it does not apply to a private association that includes the word "integrity" in it's criteria.  Something happened in which a young woman felt violated. If these were totally baseless charges, the prosecutor should have said something to that affect. Instead saying they didn't think they had a strong enough case to get a conviction should leave enough question in award voters minds that they would consider another choice.

We've had enough examples throughout the country that we give athletes extra latitude in how they treat young women. A recent case in Missouri stands out in my memory right now. This award just validates that mentality more than ever. As the father of three daughters getting close to high school age, that bothers me.  I'd like to believe we live in a culture that will help me protect them from predatory behavior by one of their future male classmates, but this decision and the people defending it leave me doubting that.

In the end whether or not Mr. Winston won the Heisman Trophy this year will not affect his potential professional career when he feels ready to enter the NFL. If he's learned that he needs to be a little more self-controlled around women, then I hope he has a great career. I believe in grace. I believe in second chances. Still, giving him the Heisman this year, when the cloud of suspicion is still there, sends the wrong message to the next generation of athletes.  It's a message that needs to change.

Every Time The Doors Are Open

Growing up in and around traditional church in the 1980's and 90's I remember people talking about those who were at church every time the doors were open.  Our family probably fit that category at that time.  It was like a badge of honor we wore.  If there was something going on at the church building and we didn't have work or school, we were there.  It was a great time.  Things were simple back then.

Reviewing my activity this past weekend had me thinking back to those days.  I can say I participated in 6 - 7 expressions of church in four days (not a typical 4-day period for me), but only two of them happened in a building that we traditionally call church.  This doesn't devalue our traditional expressions of church, but simply recognizes the need to expand our ideas of what is church activity for those who seek to follow Jesus in this contemporary culture.

• Thursday afternoon a group of us served our neighbors through volunteering at the local school's food pantry.  The people we serve were not merely clients, but many have become friends has we seek to show the love of Christ through our actions.  This was an expression of church.
• After we were finished at the pantry, a number of the volunteers and other people connected with our missional community gathered on our back deck for a cookout.  We laughed together.  We talked about life.  Near the end, a few of us talked about more spiritual issues and ended with a time of prayer.  This was an expression of church.
• Friday evening I gathered with others at our home church's building to listen to a young man speak on his own life experience and how it has given him insight into one of the major challenges faced by many in the church today.  His presentation applied to so many areas of life.  It also reaffirmed the need to think outside the walls when seeking to bring Jesus to many in our world today.  This was an expression of church.
• Before and after that meeting Tina and I individually stopped in to check on our neighbor who had been the victim of a violent crime the previous day.  We listened to them talk about their feelings.  We prayed for peace and protection to reign over their home.  Tina arranged to bring them dinner the next evening.  This was an expression of church.
• Saturday morning I went for a bike ride with four other men from our home church.  Conversations happened along the trail and over coffee at the turn-around point.  Some were light.  Some were more serious in nature.  One group member expressed how the bike ride was not what made this time important.  It was the relationships being built.  This was an expression of church.
• Sunday morning we attended our regular worship service at of our home church.  We worshipped together.  We read scripture together.  We prayed together.  Many listened to the teaching upstairs while our family helped with the children's ministry downstairs.  This, of course, was an expression of church.
• That afternoon I went along with four friends to partner with a new ministry that brings food and other necessities to several of the tent cities near downtown.  We assisted with their physical needs.  We listened to their stories.  We listened for opportunities to help them take small steps out of their current situations.  In those we served I could see the face of Jesus as we helped some of the people he cares about most: "the least of these."  We prayed for their needs.  We had great conversation about mission in the van between camps and on our way back home.  This was an expression of church.

In some ways, all these various ways to think about how we experience "church" are not really new.  They're grounded in some of the earliest experiences of the followers of Jesus.  The end of Acts 2 gives a picture of what church life was like for the first century believers and it parallels much of what I experienced over this 4-day period:

"And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved." Acts 2:42 - 47 (ESV)

Perhaps it's time to expand our thinking about our idea of what it means for the doors of the church to be open.  If we listen to the Spirit and open our eyes to the places He may lead us, we may find that He is opening many more doors than we originally expected and we have the opportunity worship and serve Jesus in settings we may never have thought of before.

Jesus and Bad Religion

Last week, one of the students I work with at our local high school wore a t-shirt for the punk band Bad Religion to school.  I didn't think much of it until one of the other staff members brought it to my attention.  The logo on this shirt featured a skeleton dressed in a nun's habit with an upside down cross hanging around it's neck.  Though I could see how the logo would have been offensive to some, especially Catholics, there was something in the design that resonated with how Jesus viewed shallow religion without substance.

The more I thought about the symbolism of the shirt, the more it reminded me of the words of Jesus to the religious leaders of His day:
“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity.  Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness."  Matthew 23:27, 28 (NLT)
Jesus isn't interested in outward religious appearances.  He cares about what is going on inside.  If we engage in a bunch outward religious activity without letting it transform our hearts, we are like a skeleton wearing religious garments.  All we have, then, is dead religion.

I doubt I'd ever be able to totally embrace the punk and death metal my young friend listens to, but his desire for something authentic is what I've come to appreciate about him.  When he talks about his favorite bands and the things he cares about, you can hear in his words a desire for something that goes beyond the shallow, superficial life many in our culture settle for.  My hope is that one day he'll have a real encounter with the One who came to give us real life, not dead religion.  I also hope that he will inspire others on a similar quest.

Bi-Vocational or Co-Vocational?

This past week, the Leadership Journal e-newsletter included an article with a new take on bi-vocational ministry or missions.  The majority of the article was about a friend of mine who planted a church in Minneapolis.  A key component of his strategy was to buy a coffee shop in the community he planned to plant the church and create a for-profit revenue stream for funding the ministry of the church.  It also has given his church a presence in the community the six days of the week when they are not meeting for their worship gatherings.

The point of the article is that we need to think differently about what it means to be a bi-vocational minister.  We need to get beyond the stereotype notion of a minister who can't make a living doing their ministry, so they get a second job to pay the bills and support their "ministry habit."  We need to get to a place where we see a second vocation as a compliment to the mission a minister seeks to fulfill in their community.

In my own ministry, I'm glad to be working with an organization that has embraced the value bi-vocational ministry as a legitimate part of fulfilling it's mission in the world.  I enjoy meeting people who have found creative ways to engage their community and establish a presence as they seek to launch a new faith community among people who have not connected with traditional church.  This requires a willingness to think outside the box in how we define our call.

I wonder if we need a new word to describe this approach to ministry, though.  When people speak of "bi-vocational" careers there is generally a connotation that they are two unrelated vocations with little connection to one another.  Perhaps "co-vocational" would better convey the idea that a person can have two vocations that compliment each other.

For the past three and a half years I have worn two vocational hats.  The first hat is as a community missionary seeking to do missional outreach on the southeast side of Indianapolis.  I also have been involved with the special education department at our local high school, either as a volunteer or paid staff.  More and more I have come to see this second vocation as complementary to my primary call and mission.  It allows me to be involved in the lives of those on a margins of our community in areas of their lives I would not be able to if my only vocation was as a missionary.  It also informs the vision of the missional community we are planting in such a way that it becomes part of my identity as a minister.  I choose my second vocation on the basis of how it ties to God's mission in my life and not the income it provides so I can do ministry. The two become compatible to each other: co-vocations.

Perhaps it is time for new language and new thinking in how we view vocation and calling in the church in America.

What Kind Of Friend?

Lately I've been a short book titled The Cure by John Lynch, Bruce McNicol, and Bill Thrall.  Using a combination of story and prose, they build an interesting picture of how to live in grace versus a life of religious self-effort.  The authors use the image of two rooms to describe the choice we have in how we live life: The Room of Grace and The Room of Good Intentions.

One of the later chapters contrasts the type of friendships that can be found in each of these rooms.  Relationship formed in The Room of Grace are positive influencers, while relationships formed in the room of good intentions are negative influencers.  They give an excellent description of how these two types of relationships compare to each other.

1. Negative influencers will demand your trust of them, as a condition of their support. But it is a trust for their benefit, not yours.
2. Positive influencers ask permission to earn your trust.  They will wait for permission to be let in.  They put the onus on themselves, not you.
3. Negative influencers will see you as a sinner who needs help becoming a saint.  Their goal is fixing your issues.
4. Positive influencers will see you as a saint who still fails.  Their goal will be to foster an environment where nothing stays hidden.
5. Negative influencers will measure your righteousness by how little you sin.
6. Positive influencers are convinced you are righteous, so they're interested in how you're receiving and giving love.  They know that striving to sin less will not mean you love more, but that living in love will mean you are sinning less. (p 87)

This is a challenging list.  I hope to be the type of friend who is a positive influencer.  I desire that the missional communities we build would be communities marked by relationship built on grace.

Out of the Mouth of a Child

At our Diakonos Community Gathering last night, we were discussing the stories of Jesus' encounters with Nicodemus (John 3) and the Samaritan woman at the well (John 4).  All of us grown-ups were trying to sound so sophisticated with our comments as we delved into the "mysteries of God."  Elaina, our second child, sat quietly next to Tina and listened to our conversation for a while.  She had a quizzical look on her face, so I kept an eye toward her to see if she would have a comment to add to the discussion.

In a quite moment, she bravely spoke up, "Dad, I have a question?"

"Yes."

"When Jesus asked her (the Samaritan woman) to bring her husband, how did she feel?"

Giving her a chance to formulate her thoughts, I asked, "What do you think?"

"I think she was embarrassed." (Proud smile on dad's face)

In the midst of all our discussion last night, that was truly the Gospel moment.  It captured one of the key truths about what can happens when our lives are encountered by the presence of God.  Jesus will sometimes draw our attention to things that embarrass us, but he doesn't leave us in our embarrassment.  The woman Jesus was speaking to did not only feel embarrassment, she felt acceptance in spite of her frailty.  It is the combination of the two that brought her to a place of faith in Jesus.  The same thing can be true in our lives, too.

Two Sides of the Tracks

In our Diakonos Community Gathering this Thursday night we'll be continuing the first segment of the Journey to Jesus process developed by Robert E Webber.  This week we'll be looking at Jesus' encounter with two different people in John chapters 3 and 4.

As I prepare for this discussion, I can't help but notice how these two people stood on opposite ends of the social spectrum of their day.  One was an elder member of the religious in-crowd of his day, yet he saw in Jesus something that he never found in all his years of religious quest.  The other was a women with a checkered history and part of a culture that had been marginalized.  She found herself constantly thirsting for something to fill her deeper longing.

Two people from opposite sides of the tacks.  Each had his/her own set of obstacles to overcome if they were to find life in Christ.  Yet Jesus met them at their own level and shared life with them in a way that each could understand.

I like this about Jesus.  He cared for people no matter what their background.  He met them where they were at.  It's a trait I hope is growing in my life.