Tag: faith

Interesting thoughts from Moby

Moby’s blog is always a fun read. You never know what you’ll find. Some stuff I agree with, some I disagree with (especially his gripes against Mike Huckabee :-))

Anyways, here’s some of his recent thoughts from SXSW in Austin re: an Oklahoma State Rep:

hi, i’m here in austin and enjoying the fact that it’s warm and i’m also checking the news and lo and behold i find this little gem:

AP – OKLAHOMA CITY – A Republican member of the Oklahoma Legislature, Rep. Sally Kern, stated recently that “the homosexual agenda is just destroying this nation” and poses a bigger threat to the U.S. than terrorism or Islam.

“According to God’s word that is not the right kind of lifestyle,” Rep. Sally Kern of Oklahoma City said during an appearance before a group of Republicans.

Kern says in the recorded comments. “It is not a lifestyle that is good for this nation.”

ok, where to begin…

how about this simple question: what did jesus(presumably sally kern’s god)say about homosexuality? let’s see…nothing? yup, nothing. dear sally kern: jesus never mentioned homosexuality. allow me to put it a different way, perhaps in question form…how many times did jesus mention homosexuality? oh(to be conversational), none? yup none. never. not once. zero. he did mention divorce(saying it was bad), and capitalism(ditto: bad), and judgementalism and intolerance(again: bad), and forgiveness(good). but homosexuality? never mentioned by jesus in the gospels. so why are the religious right in the u.s so utterly obsessed with homosexuality? and how is the homosexual agenda(whatever that might be)destroying the nation? i mean, if evangelicals call themselves christians shouldn’t they sort of base their evangelical agenda on the things that christ actually said?

ok, back to sxsw in sunny austin.

moby

Starbucks is closing!

From 5:30-8:30 this evening, there’s going to be trouble. Feet will tap, heads will ache and sweat will trickle down restless foreheads. Starbucks is closing.

6 weeks ago, Howard Schultz took over the reins (again) as CEO of Starbucks. Since then, he’s been on a mission to return the company to its previous form. Today, every store throughout the nation will close for three hours for “remedial espresso training.” Or in Schultz’ terms, “to teach, educate and share our love of coffee, and the art of espresso.”

Wow. What an undertaking! 5:30 – 8:30 on Tuesday nights is a very likely time we’ll be stopping by one of our local Starbucks to grab a hot drink before our community group – as do several others in our group. Might make for restless (or sleepy) meeting time tonight.

Since this news came from CMS – what if our churches closed for one weekend service to focus on staff/leadership etc? What about your place of work – think your boss would close the doors for 3 hours one week to improve your appreciation for your job?

Things Missionaries Never Say

Guys, if you’re in the Ellis County area and you’re not making it on Wednesday mornings you’re really missing out.

This week Brian shared 5 things missionaries never say:

It goes right along with everything I’m reading, hearing and discussing right now. It matches the encounter 9 discussion and the Inverted series Brian’s been bringing on Sunday mornings and I think it really goes along with The Ragamuffin Gospel and Everything Must Change.

I just have to keep reviewing the things in my life and say God > others > me.

It must be so much less me and so much more of others and God.

It (Christianity) has focused on “me” and “my soul” and “my spiritual life” and “my eternal destiny,” but it has failed to address the dominant societal and global realities of their lifetime: systemic injustice, systemic poverty, systemic ecological crisis, systemic dysfunctions of many kinds.

…those remaining in local churches and those outside of them share the same sense of doubt: a message purporting to be the best news in the world should be doing better than this. The religion’s results are not commensurate with the bold claims it makes. Truly good news, they feel, would confront systemic injustice, target significant global dysfunctions, and provide hope and resources for making a better world – along with helping individuals experience a full life.

(we find ourselves wishing for)… a vibrant form of Christian faith that is holistic, integral, and balanced – one that offers good news for both the living and the dying, that speaks of God’s grace at work both in this life and the life to come, that speaks to individuals and to societies and to the planet as a whole.

– Brian D. McLaren :: Everything Must Change

Social networking and the church

I’ve written about social networking (i.e. MySpace, Facebook, etc) here before. I’ve also written about the idea of churches getting behind these networks and putting them to use for marketing, announcements, building community, etc. etc.

I haven’t heard a lot of feedback other than on the techie side of things. I read recently about Mars Hill’s social networking strategy over at digital.leadnet.org.

Here’s an overview:

  • Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Facebook profile has 4000 friends
  • Less than 20% of these friends are from the Seattle area
  • He has apps to read in his blog, link to his books from Amazon, play videos from their Ask Anything sermon series, and read in Mars Hill RSS feeds
  • He gets 20 messages and wall posts a day
  • Mark Driscoll’s Myspace profile has 400 friends

In addition to this, Dustin told digital.leadnet about an internal project they’re working on – “Our IT department is currently developing our own social network, the City, that will be used for almost all communication within the church.” More info on their soon-to-launch social network here.

This is very cool in my book (of course Mars Hill apparently has a full IT team and their own blog). They’re building the site on Ruby on Rails. Not real familiar with that software or “programing language” but it looks cool. I’m looking at doing something with Elgg.org for now. But I’m seeing more folks using Ruby on Rails. Might be worth looking into.

So the techies are interested in all this and implementing it – but for me part of the thrill of implementing a social network for encounter or other churches is the challenge aspect of it. I wonder how enthused average users or church members would be in using it.

So I put together a quick survey over on the encounter blog. I’ve plugged it via our Twitter feed, our Facebook group, a MySpace bulletin and of course here. I’d encourage you to take a second and fill out the form, regardless of if you’re an active part of encounter or not. And I’d love for you to push the survey on your own blogs as well. The more input the better.

And yes – you can remain anonymous in filling out the form.

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?

Obama talks to Beliefnet

Presidential candidate Barack Obama recently spoke to Beliefnet about his (Christian) faith:

The Democratic presidential candidate discusses what he prays for daily and why the Golden Rule applies on the campaign trail.

You spoke at Martin Luther King’s Ebenezer Baptist Church this week and speak regularly at other churches. Is there a difference in speaking from a pulpit versus from behind a podium or at a political rally? Do you have a different set of responsibilities?

When I’m speaking behind a pulpit, I’m in church. And what that means is that it’s during a religious service. I’m there, mindful that the primary reason for being in church is to worship. And so I’m going to constrain myself in speaking on purely political issues and am more likely to broaden the theme to address broader issues—values and our ideals, how we can come together to solve the problems that we face as a nation and in the world. But I’m very sensitive to respecting the role that the church service plays and not wanting to abuse the privilege of addressing a congregation.

In writing about your experience encountering church people as an organizer in Chicago, you said you saw “their ability to make a way out of no way, I could see the Word made manifest… I was finally able to walk down the aisle of Trinity United Church of Christ one day and be baptized.” It sounds like a conversion or a born-again experience.

It wasn’t an epiphany. I didn’t “fall out,” as they say in the black church. It was an emotional and spiritual progression, as well as an intellectual one. And it didn’t happen overnight. What happened was that I felt drawn to the message of Jesus Christ and the power of the church to fortify people in their spiritual journeys. And, you know, in my heart, at least, I felt God’s spirit beckoning me. So ultimately, as I write in [“The Audacity of Hope”], I submitted myself to his will, dedicated myself to discovering his truths.

But it’s an ongoing process for all of us in making sure that we are living out our faith every day. And, you know, it’s something that I try to pray on at the beginning of every day and at the end of every day, whether I’m living my life in a way that’s consistent with my faith.

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