• Archive of "questions" Category

    Good News for Memphis

    April 15, 2009 // No Comments »

    My friend JR Woordward has put together a fun line up of people to submit brief blog posts answering the question…

    If you local city newspaper asked you to describe the Good News – what would you write?

    Here’s my submission and I encourage you to check out the other posts offered between now and Pentecost.  Feel free to offer your comments here if you like, but there are already several good ones over at JR Woodward’s site that you can add to as well.  I will be checking and responding over there too.

    The Commercial Appeal is the place where countless Memphians turn for news – some of it good, much of it, not so good.  We are a city divided by race, stricken by generational poverty, plagued by crime, and disadvantaged by socio-economic stratification.  Good news for us usually comes in the form of an absence of bad as opposed to the presence of beautiful surprises.  For those with eyes to see, these problems are far more than the result of individual human errors and failings; they also stem from firmly entrenched systems, paradigms, and powers, which create a broken culture that produces broken people.  There is a cycle at work here more insidious than we realize or could hope to finally defeat on our own.  But there’s good news.

    I’m a Christian and Christians are good news people.  In fact, a central manta of the Christian faith is, “Repent and believe the good news.”  This isn’t about saying you’re sorry to God so you can go to Heaven when you die. It’s Jesus’ invitation to, by grace and through faith, escape the consequences of our capitulation to a world gone wrong by joining him in the ways he sees and engages the world.

    See, God plans to recreate all that has been tainted and lost by evil and darkness.  The sphere in which this happens is known as the Kingdom of God.  Jesus embodied this Kingdom in his life and sealed it in his death and resurrection. That’s news, but it’s not quite good yet; cause news is only really good when it’s experienced.  This news becomes truly good for us when God’s plan for the future intersects with our present.  Ours is not good news that God will do, but good news that God is doing.

    Jesus was the bearer of good news par excellence and those of us who bear his name but fail to similarly bear good news to the world around us have a share in the guilt and misery of the city and people we are called to lovingly serve.  This is where the Church comes in.  God means for the Church to be a unique body though whom Jesus actually continues freeing people from harmful things and reconnecting them with God and others. The Christian God is one of relationship.  Therefore, God’s Good News to the people and city of Memphis is purposefully intertwined with communities of people gripped by it.

    Fellow Memphians, if you’re like me, grieved over the many sad circumstances of our city, if you are desperate for a new start, for healing and wholeness, I hope you will consider the news of God’s desire and plan for the world including the tiny metroplex of Memphis.  The news might not be the sort you’d expect, maybe not even the sort you’d prefer, but it’s good in the truest meaning of the word.

    Posted in Fuller Seminary, gospel, Jesus, kingdom, memphis, questions

    Attractional/Missional: From Pragmatics to Formation

    December 18, 2008 // 8 Comments »

    Beginning with Dan Kimball’s “Missional Misgivings,” there has been a recent flurry of discussion over the whole missional/attractional thing in the blog-o-sphere.  Responses by Hirsch here, Cole here, Fitch here.

    A good bit of what is being said in response to the topic (much by patently reformed folks) has to do with “cultural appropriateness.”  Some seem to be suggesting that the seeker-sensitive/mega-church model of the church was a culturally appropriate model within Christendom and in a modern framework.  By implication, this would then be the preferred model of church for areas which still fit this description.  There is also an addition to the discussion pertaining to models for preaching and gathering.  Again, the argument seems to be that we need to allow the culture to determine the right model.  I submit that this the wrong approach to this discussion.  It may appear to be an incarnational approach, but it is anything but.

    My friend Sam reminded me of a quote by Lesslie Newbigin recently,

    …if we begin with culture we are never taken back to gospel, if we begin with gospel, we ourselves are transformed and enter into culture to put flesh on the gospel.

    This is the way we need to understand what it means to be incarnational – gospeling a culture, not culturizing the gospel.

    The primary question church leaders need to always be asking is not, “What is the culturally appropriate way to be the church?” but “What is the most formational way to be the church?” The first question lends itself to our ingrained consumeristic tendencies and begets attractional churches; the second invites us to consider a different goal altogether and serves to cultivate missional communities.

    We ought to always do what we do as the church specifically because it helps people to become more like Jesus. Willowcreek was probably the best example ever of a church that did everything right in terms of cultural appropriateness only to announce to the world how horribly they had failed to actually help people become disciples (my thoughts on their REVEAL study here and Fitch’s here).

    I hope this makes sense.  It is not my intention to question the motives and hearts of my well-intentioned brothers and sisters, but I beleive this to be a pivotal conversation for the future of the Church in the West and when the questions we seem to be asking have more to do with cultural pragmatics than faithful formation, I get nervous.

    Let me end with a quick story.  I recently attended a church planting conference where a supposedly “missional” church planter told those in attendance,

    …the south is home to some of the greatest preachers in the world.  If you are not a great preacher or teacher, you have no business trying to plant a church in the south.

    I can’t even dream up a better illustration of what it means to so completely miss the point of everything missional is about.  For this guy, it’s the culture, not the gospel that determines what you do, how you do it, and who exactly it is that does it.  I just don’t think this is the best way forward for us.

    Posted in christendom, church, conference, consumerism, corporate worship, culture, discipleship, gospel, Jesus, missional, modernity, preaching/teaching, questions, spiritual formation, stories, western culture

    From faith (as an idea) to Faith (as a way of life)

    June 2, 2008 // 2 Comments »

    This past Sunday I had my first opportunity to address the Living Hope community. I must have had a thousand different thoughts on what to share. Ultimately, I really wanted to share some of my story and highlight something that I found relevant for where we’re at as a community of faith.

    What I decided on was the way in which God used grad school to change me from someone who placed their faith primarily in a system of belief, to someone who tried to practice faith as a way of life and to put my trust in God as one who could never be contained or exhausted by my ideas or beliefs.

    We looked at the Exodus story and the way in which even after being rescued and redeemed by God, the people of Israel wanted to relate to God from a distance, wanted to avoid the fear and unknown of continuing to follow God, and opted to worship a idol created by their own hands rather than worship the living God by living in the way he had directed them.

    These were all reactions I was tempted to embrace during some of the tumultuous times of grad school and more importantly, reactions which I often fear the average church in the United States facilitates.  To be a church which refuses to allow for a two-tiered model of discipleship (leaders and the rest of us), which constantly asks, “what’s the next fearful and risky adventure God is calling us into,” and is more concerned with passing on a way of life than a system of belief, doesn’t exactly lend itself to our individualistic, consumer-driven, instant-gratification-seeking, culture.  Yet, this exactly the sort of future I hope for our community.

    Over and above merely having the opportunity to share my story and what was on my heart and mind, I also enjoyed being able to invite some friends to participate in the service along with me.  Liz led a responsive reading, and Mike and Zach led the congregation into the Exodus story, by reading Scripture.  I shared an excellent quote from Martin Luther King Jr. that my friend Eric reminded me of, and offered our community some questions to stew on as we concluded.

    Anywho, it was a great time.  Thanks Living Hope for being awesome.

    Posted in Fuller Seminary, living hope, preaching/teaching, questions, quotes, sermon, stories

    New Questions

    April 25, 2008 // 1 Comment »

    I love questions – they have the potential to open up new worlds of possibilities every time they are asked.  Even more, I love supplanting the questions we almost mindlessly often ask with fresh, thought provoking ones.

    I was reading today and came across this quote…

    Instead of asking young people, ‘What are you going to do when you grow up?’ ask them, ‘Who are you becoming?’

    Then, I came across this video which artfully points out what the difference in asking these questions might be.

    For those who follow Jesus, we need to be incredibly intentional and subversive about the questions we are asking ourselves – much hangs in the balance.

    Posted in art, questions, quotes, video

    Welcome to Memphis

    March 24, 2008 // 6 Comments »

    I haven’t had time yet to take my own shots, but here’s a great one of downtown Memphis that I found.

    (ht: piwojasne)

    I made it down to Memphis this past Thursday and my stuff followed closely behind me on Friday morning. Most of it is experiencing the lonely existence that is a storage unit.

    This past Sunday, Easter, was officially my first day with Living Hope. It’s been about 4 years since I worshiped regularly with more than 10-15 people, so it was quite the (re)experience. Everyone I met was tremendously friendly and the services were a refreshing celebration of the new that comes in Christ.

    I have had some time to tour the city. While Living Hope is a church community primarily situated in the suburbs of Memphis, it is also close to a lot of interesting segments of the city like Cooper-Young, Binghampton, Midtown, etc. I am currently staying with Greg, the student pastor at Living Hope and his roommate Russell and am trying to figure out where I might want to be on a more permanent basis. But, between trying to factor in where the majority of the congregation seems to be (Germantown/Collierville area), where the folks in whatever small group I end up being a part of are at, where young adults seem to spend their time, what I’ll be able to afford, what section of town I personally might enjoy most, and the fact that I would love to try and putt off some sort of intentional community sort of situation, it’s seems to be quite the task.

    I am tremendously excited to start connecting with the young adults of Living Hope and asking together what it is that God may want to do in and amongst us. This promises to be an interesting task for a few reasons.

    First, Living Hope is not really a programmatic community. That is to say, we have no real desire to offer every program under the sun to in order to appeal to everyone’s various felt needs and desires. As a result, we really emphasize a life lived in community which worships and serves together. Anything else that happens really flows out of that.

    Second, Living Hope is vitally concerned about making disciples and not merely Christians. This was one of the most attractive things about the church to me. For our community, everything hinges on whether or not people are actually becoming more like Christ. All our discussions, plans, and prayers as a staff revolve around this.

    I say that these reasons make for an interesting task regarding young adult ministry because most young adult ministries are primarily predicated on programs specific to young adults and doing those things which attract young adults.

    So, if I had been doing this job some years ago, the main question I would have been asking myself would have been, “What sorts of programs do we need to offer to get young adults involved in the church?” And I feel like I could have answered and executed that pretty well.

    But now what I am asking is more like, “What will it mean and look like for young adults to participate in the life of this community aimed at serving the world?” That is a very different question and one that I don’t feel like I have quite so easy answers for – which is why I’m so thrilled to be asking it!

    Posted in living hope, questions, young adults

    Tasered Student

    September 19, 2007 // 5 Comments »

    OK, I know that I have been absent here for a long time and trust me, I have like a thousand things to update everyone on, but I just had to post this clip from a story I heard about this morning.  A student was arrested and tasered by police at a speech that John Kerry was giving simply for asking good questions.  If this is what is allowed to happed to people who are asking good political questions can you imagine what might happen if the church actually started taking stands against rampant national injustice, violence, and evil??  On so many levels, this should make us all very, very nervous (not to mention outraged).

    Posted in justice, politics, questions, video

    « Previous Entries
    Next Entries »