tonight it’s frigid cold in Dallas. mid 30’s – 20’s I would estimate and maybe colder by early morning.
tonight Laurie and I played two rounds of miniature golf in our nice warm harm in suburbia.
tonight thousands sleep under overpasses and cardboard boxes less than 30 miles from us.
pray for them. pray that God warms their bodies and their hearts. and pray for us as a people when we drive by them and judge them with our thoughts and our stares.
Category: reflections
re: Ragamuffin thoughts
grace – dearoot
Finished chapters 3 and 4 tonight after our community group (on a side note I think I’m feeling a bit queasy after an e-mail I just received)…
Here are some more quotes I loved from Manning:
We miss Jesus’ point entirely when we use his words as weapons against others. They are to be taken personally by each of us.
The trouble with our ideals is that if we live up to all of them, we become impossible to live with.
…we don’t comprehend the love of Jesus Christ. Oh, we see a movie and resonate to what a young man and woman will endure for romantic love. We know that when the chips are down, if we love wildly enough we’ll fling life and caution to the winds for the one we love. But when it comes to God’s love in the broken, blood-drenched body of Jesus Christ, we get antsy and start to talk about theology, divine justice, God’s wrath and the heresy of universalism.
The saved sinner is prostrate in adoration, lost in wonder and praise. He knows repentance is not what we do in order to earn forgiveness; it is what we do because we have been forgiven. … the sequence of forgiveness and then repentance, rather than repentance and then forgiveness, is crucial for understanding the gospel of grace.
I LOVE THAT! How true and how often we forget. “You must repent and live up to our guidelines for membership before we’ll forgive you.” “You must repent and clean yourself up before we’ll let you into our fellowship.” “You can’t hold on to any of your bad habits if you want to be a part of our fellowship.” Oh if only each of us could understand God’s grace.
“Grace, grace. God’s grace. Grace that is greater than all my sins. Grace, grace. God’s grace. Grace that will pardon and cleanse within.”
Ragamuffin thoughts
Back in the early 90’s Franciscan priest Brennan Manning released the book, Ragamuffin Gospel.
Way back in January 2008 I finally picked up a copy and started reading it. I’m in the middle of the third chapter and loving it so far.
Manning focuses on the grace and love God gives – and we so often overlook or forget about – only giving lip service.
Here are some of my thoughts and quotes from Manning through the first few chapters…
The institutional church has become a wounder of the healers rather than a healer of the wounded.
Amy Grant ring any bells?
Though lip service is paid to the gospel of grace, many Christians live as if it is only personal discipline and self-denial that will mold the perfect me… In this curious process God is a benign old spectator in the bleachers who cheers when I show up for morning quiet time.
(Martin) Luther wrestled through the night with the core question: how could the Gospel of Christ be truly called “Good News” if God is a righteous judge rewarding the good and punishing the evil? Did Jesus really have to come to reveal that terrifying message?
Morton Kelsey wrote: “The church is not a museum for saints but a hospital for sinners.”
How often that is forgotten.
Any church that will not accept that it consists of sinful men and women, and exists for them, implicitly rejects the gospel of grace… And though it is true that the church must always dissociate itself from sin, it can never have any excuse for keeping any sinners at a distance.
We tremble before God’s majesty…and yet we grow squeamish and skittish before God’s love.
The God of the legalistic Christian, is often unpredictable, erratic, and capable of all manner of prejudices. When we view God this way, we feel compelled to engage in some sort of magic to appease Him. Sunday worship becomes a superstitious insurance policy against His whims.
If your God is an impersonal, cosmic force, your religion will be noncommittal and vague. The image of God as an omnipotent thug who brooks no human intervention creates a rigid lifestyle ruled by puritanical laws and dominated by fear.
Many folks have an extreme dislike for this idea of a post-modern/emerging/emergent church. There seems to be this idea that it’s turning people away from God’s holiness and the “fear of God.” I seem to feel that the “fear/knowledge” of God is already there but when they look at the church and look at the effect Christianity has had, they stand back and say, “a message purporting to be the best news in the world should be doing better than this.” Many of these seekers are wanting to serve a God out of love – rather than fear. They want to serve a God that’s real in every way and not a god just sitting on a cloud somewhere waiting to strike us down if we don’t live up to his expectations.
…A loving God fosters a loving people.
…Love is a far better stimulus than threat or pressure.
The Kingdom belongs to people who aren’t trying to look good or impress anybody, even themselves. They are not plotting how they can call attention to themselves, worrying about how their actions will be interpreted or wondering if they will get gold stars for their behavior.
For the disciple of Jesus “becoming like a little child” means the willingness to accept oneself as being of little account and to be regarded as unimportant.
When our inner child is not nurtured and not nourished, our minds gradually close to new ideas, unprofitable commitments, and the surprises of the Spirit. Evangelical faith is bartered for cozy, comfortable piety. A failure of nerve and an unwillingness to risk distorts God into a Bookkeeper and the gospel of grace is swapped for the security of religious bondage… If we maintain the open-mindness of children we challenged fixed ideas and established structures, including our own.
…the open mind realizes that reality, truth and Jesus Christ are incredibly open-ended.
Quote(s) of the day
Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure.
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
The assertion that “all men are created equal” was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain and it was placed in the Declaration not for that, but for future use.
Abraham Lincoln
How do you build community?
Last week I posted some thoughts on building online community.
I didn’t get many posts here but it did spur some further discussion over on Flickr at the Church Marketing Lab.
Also last week my new blogging buddy Johnny Laird (thanks Thomas) posted some thoughts on the community group that meets at his house.
He discussed several ideas he’s looking at for future meetings at his house.
After a little questioning he shared some additional insight:
…other Groups meet at other times too – basically whenever it suits.
On top of that we have a monthly “Walking Fellowship” that meets on that same Home Group Sunday to walk together around some the rural areas outside of Croydon. This is an important group for us too.
The Sunday evening meetings are worked on a rota basis too, as follows (with some variations):
“First Sunday” A very trad Salvation Army Gospel Praise meeting, featuring music from the Band & Songsters, congregational singing, soloists & Bible teaching.
Small Groups – On the second Sunday of each month
“The Journey” A more intimate Sunday evening meeting with shared study, issue based topics for 21st Century life, often with musical interludes & guest speakers.
Youth Church/ Cafe Church – alternate months
I asked him a bit more about the Walking Fellowship. He responded:
The Walking Fellowship walk together in the countryside, and the individuals hang out & talk with other people from the Church who may not always get the chance to spend any good quality time with. Usually they will end up at someone’s house after about an hour to an hour an a half walking. They drink coffee, eat cake, share some Scripture & prayer.
There’s no particular prayer walking with this group, but we have others who do.
Today he added a bit more to his explanation.
…forgot to respond to Jonathan’s question about whether it was a typical SA initiative.
In response to that, no – it’s not especially typical.(but then again what is?) I guess the thing about The Salvation Army – in the UK and globally – is no longer a homogenous one-size-fits all denomination in terms of method, but rather it is a very diverse Church, where all kinds of different expressions of service & ministry sit along side each other.
Last month, Laurie and I saw a story on ABC News about a woman in Philadelphia that has built a community of runners in a group of homeless men. She loved running and noticed a number of homeless men just hanging out during her morning jog – so she built a community with them.
Anne Mahlum is a 27-year-old marathoner. And on her predawn runs in Philadelphia, she kept passing a group of homeless men.
“They would say, ‘Hi’ or they would say ‘Hi Anne’ or ‘There’s the crazy runner.’ ‘How many miles are you doing?'” Mahlum recalled. “And they would smile and sort of applaud and cheer for me, while I would start my day.”
But one day in May, Mahlum said, “I looked back, and I was like, ‘I am cheating these guys. Why am I just running past them and leaving them there?'”
“Running is so simple you know. You really only need a pair of shoes. You don’t need a lot of equipment. You need heart and dedication,” Mahlum said.
Anne thought to herself, “Maybe running could make these guys feel as good as it makes me feel.”
So she decided to start a running club for the homeless and started asking businesses for help.
All of this got me think about other ways we form community.
- Online
- Online gaming
- Book Clubs
- Work
- Dinner Clubs
- Sports Clubs
- etc. etc.
Laurie and I love having our Dinner Club dinners. We took the idea from our friends Tim & Amber who hold monthly cuisine nights. A cuisine/theme is picked and everyone brings their favorite dishes. We were going to their dinner club but figured with the distance we might as well start our own. Everyone seems to have a great time when we do get together for the (somewhat) monthly meals. One of the things I have fun doing is trying to get people who might not normally get to spend time together to come to the dinners together. They may be friends of mine and Laurie’s but they may not know each other much at all. So it’s fun to see our friends mix it up.
We also have our encounter community group that meets every Tuesday night. I’ve loved watching our group grow not only in numbers but also in closeness with one another and with God. You can bet Tuesday nights are reserved for our community group.
But in addition to our 6 or 7 community groups at encounter there are other groups that meet throughout the week as well. On Wednesday mornings, there’s a group of 6-10 guys that meet at the local What-a-Burger for breakfast, Bible study and discussion before heading to work. There’s a new women’s Bible study that will begin soon. There’s also a group of guys that love motorcycles and get together on Sunday mornings before church to go ride and then meet to hang out at Chick-Fil-A on Thursday nights.
The key to all these groups I believe is a shared interest and the interest in sharing life with other folks around us.
I wonder what other ways we can build community in our churches and our neighborhoods. What are you doing?
Maybe before too long we’ll have an encounter walkers group, disk golf group and or joggers group or maybe we’ll take the time to build community outside our own church walls and have a neighborhood walker’s group, disk golf group or jogger’s group. Any takers?
Redeemer
Listening to my Zune today at work reminded me of some of those awe-inspiring moments when I knew My Redeemer Lives.
I can remember several times when these songs helped me get through a rough time. But now when I hear them – they remind me not only that My Redeemer Lives but Blessed be His Name as well — because I’ve seen it first hand.