Author: Jonathan Blundell

I'm a husband, father of three, blogger, podcaster, author and media geek who is hoping to live a simple life and follow The Way.

re: Everything Must Change

Some more thoughts from Chp 3 of Brian McLaren’s Everything Must Change:

Trying to spur some more discussion for our book club….

In Chp 3 McLaren talks about his visit to Bujumbura in Africa. As a meeting he was scheduled to speak at began he writes that the guy who brought him to the conference says that as a son of a preacher and going to church all his life, sometimes five times a week, in all his childhood he “only heard one sermon.”

Ouch! He says that one sermon was heard over and over again every week. “You are a sinner and you are going to hell. You need to repent and believe in Jesus. Jesus might come back today, and if he does and you are not ready, you will burn in hell.”

Growing up I can’t say that this was the case for me, but then again I can’t say I remember any sermons from my childhood through probably high school.

After graduating high school I began attending Baptist churches, including on very conservative Baptist church and I would say that that was almost the case for that particular church – only mixing in sermons about the importance of tithing.

How does that compare to your life growing up? How does that compare to English and Scottish churches or churches around the rest of the world? How do messages like that help Christians grow?

Is that typical in other churches? Do our churches continue to ignore ideas like hatred, distrust between tribes/neighbors, poverty, suffering, corruption, injustice? I feel that at encounter we’re closer to addressing these issues but we could be doing more.

“They told us how to go to heaven. But they left out an important detail. They didn’t tell us how the will of God could be done on earth.”

McLaren suggests this isn’t just an African problem – and I would tend to agree. Did North American church leaders teach the early colonists to treat the Native Peoples with love and respect? Did they consistently and with one voice appose slavery? Did they express outrage over the exploitation of factory workers or the second-class status of women? Did they/do we stand up for refugees and immigrants? Did they oppose white privilege, segregation, anti-Semitism, stereotyping or Muslims and other forms of ethnic prejudice? Did they see the environment as God’s sacred creation that deserves to be cherished and conserved?

Lots of places I believe the church has failed and continues to fail…

Jesus continued to talk about “the kingdom of God.” McLaren says this idea – contrary to popular belief – was not focused on how to escape this world and its problems by going to heaven after death, but instead was focused on how God’s will could be done on earth, in history, during this life.

McLaren continues and says the Gospel is not just a message about Jesus that focuses on the afterlife – but that the Gospel is the core message of Jesus that focuses on personal, social and global transformation in this life.

What does that mean to you? Is that idea contrary to your beliefs? Does it help answer some of the questions about your faith?

Why I ride DART

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Just thought I’d play around with the numbers today and see what we save by me riding DART each month.

I estimate it’s roughly 30 miles from my house to the office. A daily round trip is 60 miles a day. Multiply that to an average month of 20 work days and you’re looking at 1200 miles a month just to get to work and back.

My truck averages between 16 and 19 miles per gallon. Not great, but we knew we’d be getting somewhere around there when we bought it. Averaging those 1200 miles at 17 mpg, it would take 70 gallons of gas to get me to and from work every month. At $2.70 a gallon (a low average/estimate) it would cost me $190 a month just to drive to work. That’s $2,280 a year.

That doesn’t include the wear and tear on my truck and the increased number of oil changes I’d need.

In addition to the fuel costs, you have to find a place to park the truck. Across the street from my office is a parking lot that charges $8 a day. There’s a parking garage that’s super small – not made for full size trucks that costs $5 a day. The lot I do use when I have to drive costs $3 a day and there’s a cheaper one across the street from it that costs $2 a day.
So at minimum, I’d pay $40 a month to park. At maximum, I’d pay $160 a month to park.

That’s $230 – $350 a month, or $2,760 – $4,200 a year, just to drive my truck to work.

The cost of a DART monthly pass is only $80 a month or $960 a year. That’s a minimal savings of $1,800 a year! If we wanted to pre-pay for the year, I could get a yearly pass for $500. Giving us an additional $460 savings per year.

Plus, there’s the added benefit of getting to read and/or sleep on the bus ride. The knowledge that you’re not adding to the poor air quality in Dallas and the shorter drive time in the morning thanks to getting to utilize the HOV lane on the daily bus ride.

Now in full disclosure I do get a parking stipend of $110 a month for working in my office but that would come whether I rode DART or parked my car nearby. But with the cost of the DART pass and the stipend I get an additional $30 a month in savings.

What other ways have you found to save money on your daily commute?

The death of Ernie Pyle

The AP recently uncovered a photograph of WWII journalist Ernie Pyle. Pyle covered WWII for many papers and wrote “The death of Capt. Waskow.”
The Belton Journal (my former employer) has run the piece from the World War II correspondent numerous times in the past about Belton’s own Capt. Henry T. Waskow.
The piece was originally run on the front pages of newspapers across the country and The Washington Daily News devoted its entire first page to the column — not even a headline, just solid text.
The paper was completely sold out that day.
Until today I overlooked the interesting connection between Waxahachie and Belton for Capt. Waskow.
Belton Journal Associate Editor Berneta Peeples writes:

There is another war now, and have been others since, and The Belton Journal continues to reprint the Waskow piece once in a while, as a tribute to Belton men and boys who have been killed in wars of this century, ranging from privates to generals.
Actually, Ernie Pyle wondered about this piece; he thought maybe he was “losing his touch.”
Henry Waskow was a 1935 graduate of Belton High School, attended grade school at Hay Branch and Wiltonville.
He attended Trinity University in Waxhachie, paying his way with his “Guard Money.”
He highwayed it back to Belton every Tuesday to make the guard drill.
Guardsmen were paid $3 for every drill they attended.
Waskow taught school two years before Co. I was mobilized in November 1940.
Belton’s Waskow High School bears his name as well as Henry T. Waskow V.F.W. #4008 Hall located at 2311 S. Pearl.

See the picture/cutline on Ernie Pyle or via Wikipedia
Read “The death of Capt. Waskow”

The need for fellowship

A good friend of mine e-mailed me a question about fellowship in the church yesterday.

I wanted to ask you a question about church and Fellowship.

Is there debate about people who don’t attend or belong to a church,
but conduct Fellowship (by that I mean prayer and study) in their
home with other people, but without a reverend or priest or some sort
of Church leader present?

Some people go to Fellowship during the week with like minds and then
go to church on Sunday. But is it rare for Christians to not go to
church at all and just have Fellowship throughout the week?
Basically, what’s the role of Fellowship?

Here are my thoughts:

Not sure if by Fellowship you mean a specific program of some sort or not. My circle of friends refer to “fellowship” in a number of terms/ways/definitions but it mainly just simply means to “hang out together.” If we sit around at a coffee shop we’re fellowshipping. If we eat a meal with family or friends we’re fellowshipping. If we attend church together we’re fellowshipping.

There are those who are adamant that Christians be a part of a local church body. That definition can vary depending on who you talk to. Some may say being a part of a community group/small group meets the “requirement.” Some say a home church would work. While others think you must be a part of a particular church body that meets in a church building and you must be there every time the doors are open.

For me personally, I believe a person can be just as strong of a Christian by simply studying Scripture in their home alone as they can be by being a member of a mega-church like Prestonwood Baptist, or a small local church like Sardis Methodist.

But I do believe Jesus talked strongly about community and our need for community. I believe we are created to yearn for community, both with God and with our fellow man. I think that community is important on many levels. For one it helps encourage one another and two it gives us an opportunity to “work out our faith” (Philippians 2:12) with others. In other words by meeting with others in fellowship or community it helps us understand and “work out” what Scripture means when it talks about things like “going to church” or “tithing” or “sharing love” or “loving our neighbor as ourselves.”

Our church has a strong push towards community groups that meet throughout the week (full disclosure – I oversee them). Our leadership team has talked many times about the people involved in the groups.

Some see our community groups as an extension of the church – people come to the Sunday morning service, want to get more involved and know more people, so they go to a community group and build relationships there. Others see community groups as the entry point for people outside our church – i.e. people who aren’t coming on Sunday mornings, who aren’t involved in a church are invited by their friends to come and enjoy community/fellowship/Bible study at someone’s house, rather than feeling pressured to attend a large church service.

I think both views are vital and I’m thrilled to see both happening. I can think of 3 or 4 people/couples that are involved in a community group during the week and have never attended a Sunday morning service. That’s awesome to me! I’m glad they’ve found a place where they feel comfortable to share their thoughts on God and life.

I’m also thrilled to see those involved in church finding ways to share God’s love with those around them – whether they attend our church or not.

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Any additions, subtractions or disagreements? What are your thoughts on fellowship and church attendance?

The end is near

While uploading the encounter podcast tonight – yeah I really got behind this week – I got back into “Everything Must Change” by Brian McLaren. I’ve been itching to read it lately but have set it aside while I wait for others in our book club to “catch up.”

Reading Chapter 10, McLaren talks about some of the differences between the conventional view of Jesus and the Gospel and the emerging view’s. He gives four comparisons and then suggests six unintended negative consequences of the conventional views of Christ.

Simply put, the conventional view of Jesus poses little or no significant challenge to the dominant framing story that currently directs our societal machinery in its suicidal trajectory. It only fails to confront and correct the current dysfunctions of our societal machinery, but energetically aids and abets its suicidal tendencies in at least six unintended but nevertheless harmful ways.

The conventional view:

  • relegates Jesus to practical irrelevance in relation to human social problems in history; His message is about the soul, its guilt before God, and it’s afterlife and not about our world and its current crises
  • offers relatively little hope for history but anticipates the complete destruction of the world; easily becomes an “opiate of the masses” pacifying people with dreams of a better afterlife rather than motivating and mobilizing them to transform the world here and now
  • tends to be dualistic, with human souls and other “spiritual things” in one category and human bodies and other “secular” things in another; it tends to keep faith private and personal so believers are seen as “just passing through” and steering away from “worldly” social engagements beyond their personal, family and church-related concerns
  • may view blessings as God’s blessings to an elect group and little or nothing else (except condemnation) to everyone else
  • sees God’s essential attitude toward the world as one of wrath and believers are discouraged from seeing God as an ally in the world’s transformation
  • by postponing the essence of salvation to the afterlife, and by assuming that God plans to destroy the earth, the conventional view leads us to assume that the world will get worse and worse and that this deterioration is in fact God’s will or plan. This assumption tends to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Not only that, but in some versions of the conventional view, the worse the world gets, the better we should feel since salvation – meaning post-mortem salvation after the world is destroyed – is approaching.

McLaren suggests there are many lines between the conventional and emerging viewpoints that people may agree with or disagree with. Some may take the conventional view as their “contract” and portions of the emerging view as the fine print or vice versa.

But this really got me, when he suggest that our “framing story” in our modern Western culture has resulted in a “Gospel about Jesus” and not the “Gospel of Jesus.”

Share your thoughts. Comment away – and yes – you can do it anonymously.