Listening to Rob Bell share some great thoughts and ideas on Tribes (taken from Phil 3).
A great thought ::
“Sometimes when some people say ‘the gospel’ they’re really talking about tribal identity masquerading as the gospel… and Jesus is bigger than any tribe.”
“Beware of dem dawgs!”
Don’t let the tribe come between you and The Gospel or Jesus.
Well not me specifically — but Dave Schmelzer’s.
I’m reading Schmelzer’s book, “Not the Religious Type.”
In it, (chp 3 I believe) he gives a great explanation of how M. Scott Peck saved his life.
I hate to steal his thunder but this explanation really hit home with me and thought it was worth sharing here. After you read it, you can go out and buy the book for yourself :-).
Peck (via Schmelzer) says our spiritual lives are a lot like our regular physical lives in development but the timelines don’t always match up.
Peck says our spiritual lives can be categorized into 4 stages.
Stage 1, the infant or the criminal stage. We do what we want when we want with no regard to others or the rules.
Stage 2, the rules-based stage corresponds with ages six or seven. In this stage we’re suddenly concerned about pleasing the parents (or God) and concerned about what the rules are (and how we can follow them and ensure other people follow them). We suddenly want to be sure we’re following the rules all the time.
Schmelzer writes, that the institutions that best serve this stage are the military and the church. Both offer discipline and boundaries — and most churches and those in them are in stage 2. (I would add that educational institutions as a whole are also very much stuck in the stage 2 mindset.)
Stage 3 is the rebellious teen years. We question everything we learned in stage 2 and thus begins the battle between stage 2 and 3. If you’re in stage 2 in a religious community everyone on the outside is either a lawbreaker (stage 1) or a rebellious libertine (stage 3).
Schmelzer also notes that the Republican party could be easily be viewed as stage 2 and the Democrats could be stage 3. Stage 2ers will heap scorn on stage 3ers by using words like “liberal” — and use it as a word that’s so shameful you don’t even have to say why it’s shameful. Stage 3ers will scorn stage 2ers by just spreading the idea that they’re all idiots for believing all that they do.
Unfortunately most people in stage 3 don’t realize there’s a stage 4, the mystical stage. Suddenly in stage 4 you realize that most of the things you learned in stage 2 are probably right, but they’re much more richer and more mysterious than you ever would have imagined.
Stage 2 says, “Ok as of 3 p.m. I believed in Jesus so I’m going to heaven no matter what.” Stage 4 however would say “I think I believe but what does ‘believe’ actually mean? Am I believing now? Do I have to continually believe? Am I saved once, or is it a continual thing?”
Stage 2 folks would then look at stage 4 folks with tons of suspicion and say, “They seem to be saying the same stuff, but every word out of their mouths is slippery. Why wont they just stand on the truth. What kind of tap-dancing cowards are these people?”
So there you go – how M. Scott Peck saved my life – or sort of. Or something like that. What does “saved my life” really mean? 🙂
Looking forward to the rest of the book.
Bono talks about the $700 billion bailout package:
“I am not qualified to comment on the interventions that have been put forth. I can assume these people know what they’re doing. But is is extraordinary to me that you can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can’t find $25 billion to save 25,000 child who die every day of preventable treatable diseases and hunger. That is mad. Bankruptcy is a serious business. And we all know people who have lost their jobs this week, I do anyway. But this is moral bankruptcy.â€
I agree with Bono on both counts: I’m not qualified to comment on the bailout yeah or nay, but I do think it’s amazing that we can shell out a ton of money for all these bailouts but we can’t spend a much smaller sum of money to save lives.
It’s much more complicated than this, but saving lives seems more important than saving the economy.
I would add this…
“Be generous. Give to the poor. Get yourselves a bank that can’t go bankrupt, a bank in heaven far from bankrobbers, safe from embezzlers, a bank you can bank on. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.” – Jesus the Christ
Granted as someone pointed out in The Ordinary Radicals (great film by the way) if everyone just gave away their possessions just because they’re a Christian then it’s rather pointless. It has to be a heart issues and a heart matter. You have to be authentic about it. Don’t just give away your stuff because someone told you Christ said to. Give it away because you really feel its what you’re called to do.
Josh and I spoke/led the discussion at encounter yesterday. Unfortunately the audio didn’t get saved so there will be no podcast this week 🙁 but they did record the audio/video stream over at ustream.tv/encounter (I hear its a bit choppy).
Either way, thought I’d share our powerpoint slides. So you can get an idea of what we discussed ::
Mike Blythe shared his latest KMZ file of Jos, Nigeria yesterday.
Going back and looking at the sites make me start thinking about my trip to Nigeria.
I went back and looked at my blog posts and realized two years ago exactly I was nearing the end of my two week stay there.
Thought this was also interesting…
Nearly two years ago today (on a Monday afternoon — Oct. 9th) I was enjoying church with a group of people who didn’t speak my language and met in a warehouse with dirt floors and wooden benches.
Yesterday we did shopping in the morning and then went to a church at the Motorpark.
The Motorpark is basically a large field where people bring their cars and wait for riders to take trips across the country.
You can probably find a ride to any part of the country if you’re willing to wait for enough other riders to make it profitable for the car owner and driver.
The church at the Motorpark meets in a large building with wooden benches and dirt floors. Their numbers are few, but they’ve doubled in size since last year.
The church was large in size years ago before fighting broke out between the Muslims and Christians. The church dispersed after that but everyday a group of women would continue to meet in the afternoon and pray for God to work.
Now their numbers have at least tripled and they are excited and on fire for God.
