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.
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I woke up quite early this morning.
Around 3 I pulled myself out of bed and opened up my copy of The Message to finish reading the good news according to Mark.
As I read through it, several things crossed my mind.
Along the way a couple passages really jumped out at me and stirred my heart and soul.
In the 4th chapter of his letter, Mark writes:
With many stories like these, he presented his message to them, fitting the stories to their experience and maturity. He was never without a story when he spoke. When he was alone with his disciples, he went over everything, sorting out the tangles, untying the knots. (mark 4:33-34)
I’ve always heard and known that Jesus used stories to relate to people, but Eugene Peterson really makes the language/idea pop when he suggests that Jesus presented his stories according to each group’s experience and maturity.
The NIV translates it this way: Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand.
It seems like we could take a lesson from Jesus when we’re trying to explain Biblical principals to people. Tell it like we would a story. Don’t try to impress people with your big doctrinal words. Don’t try to overdue the theological ideas. Break it down and tell the story in a way that makes sense to your audience.
The second passage that really grabbed me was a few pages over, in chapter 6.
Jesus wasn’t able to do much of anything there—he laid hands on a few sick people and healed them, that’s all. He couldn’t get over their stubbornness. He left and made a circuit of the other villages, teaching.
That jumped out at me and really comforted me this morning. It helped me to realize that even Jesus, the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Son of God couldn’t force people to change. Their stubbornness won out sometimes – even in his hometown.
I can often get frustrated when I see a lack of change in people I may be ministering with/to. But it’s really not up to me — it’s up to the Holy Spirit to convict hearts. I’m just called to continue living the life.
What do you think? What are you reading this week? Anything you really like in Mark’s telling of the good news?
a. what does it really mean to “meditate on Scripture”?
b. do we really pray with hope?
c. Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.†– Matthew 9:35-38
d. what is meant by “the gospel of the kingdom”?
e. how do we see the multitudes or our culture as a whole?
f. how did Jesus show compassion?
g. how should we show compassion?
I know – I promised I’d go back and talk more about the security system Brian McLaren talks about in “Everything Must Change.” I will – soon (I hope). But as I read on I have to share some of these thoughts….
“The Gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social; no holiness but social holiness.” – John Wesley
Wesley was deeply sensitive to systemic justice. He was passionate about abolishing slavery yet McLaren suggests “the concept of holiness (in the modern era) did not retain the profoundly social dimension it had for Wesley, but over time shrank to a matter of personal rule keeping.”
No wonder legalism has taken such a strong hold of people.
Only a fraction of our sins are personal. By far the greater part are sins of neglect, sins of default, our social sin, our systemic sin, our economic sin. For these Christ died, and continues to die. For these sins Christ atoned, and continues to atone… As long as evangelism presents a gospel centered on the need for personal salvation, individuals will acquire a faith that focuses on maximum benefit with minimal obligations, and we will change the costly work of Christ’s atonement into the pragmatic transaction of a salvific contract… The sanctifying grace of God in Jesus Christ is not just for the sinner but also for a society beset by structural sin. – David Lowes Watson
My original thought is, “Is McLaren teaching universalism as some have suggested?” I don’t think so.
“Individualistic theology has not trained the spiritual intelligence of Christian men and women to recognize and observe spiritual entities beyond the individual” – Walter Rauschenbusch
In other words, many of our religious institutions have taught us to see no horizon for the message of Jesus beyond the soul of the individual.
“Our spirituality and the very gospel that we preach, needs to be as big and ubiquitous as sin and evil. We will falter in our spirituality and thus grieve the Spirit if ‘our struggle with evil’ does not ‘correspond to the geography of evil.'” – Eldwin Villafane
Because sin and evil are so “big and ubiquitous” and because the “geography of evil” extends far beyond the dimensions of our individual souls, we need a Gospel that is correspondingly expansive and mind blowing.
McLaren explains:
Sadly, in too many quarters we continue to reduce the scope of the Gospel to the individual soul and the nuclear family, framing it in a comfortable, personalized format – it’s all about personal devotions, personal holiness and a personal Savior. This domesticated Gospel will neither rock any boats nor step out of them into stormy waters. We have in many ways responded to the global crises of our day with an incredible, shrinking Gospel. The world has said, “No thanks.”
How big is your God and how big is your Gospel? Big enough to save your soul? Or big enough to save the world?
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.”
Josh sent me this via e-mail over the weekend. I’m assuming it was written or spoken by Rob Bell – but I can’t guarantee it was since I no longer subscribe to the magazine. Either way – love this… love it!
“We understand the Gospel to be how you are going to break yourself open and pour yourself out for the healing of the world.â€
Rob Bell, quoted in an interview with Relevant Magazine, Jan.-Feb., 2008.
I think the problem is that when people say “church,†many mean religious goods and services where you come and there’s a nice inspiring talk, good coffee in the back, snappy music and everything ends up fine. Jesus speaks of His people who are willing to suffer and die so that the world can be healed – that’s an entirely different proposition. For us [at Mars Hill], if you can resolve the sermon in the course of the church service, then the sermon has failed. If you can resolve what’s being talked about just by listening to it, then something’s seriously wrong. The only way to resolve the church service you just experienced, and specifically the sermon, is that you’re going to have to go and wrestle with it and then live it out. Our interest is not in providing goods and services that will leave you with a well-packaged religious experience. We understand the Gospel to be how you are going to break yourself open and pour yourself out for the healing of the world.
A couple of years ago somebody I love very much, somebody very close to me, was addicted to cocaine. He was wrestling with suicidal thoughts, addiction, and was in a downward spiral. He was not going to make it. A group of us who love him begged him to come to my house. He came over, and we all sat in a circle in my living room and begged him to get help. We literally pleaded for his life. One of the guys in the circle said, “I’m here. I’m going to be with you every day through this.†Another person in the circle said, “You know what? You can come live with me. I struggled with addiction, and I know what you’re going through trying to get clean. You can have the downstairs bedroom in my house, and I’ll make sure you get up every day. I’ll make sure you get to recovery meetings.†Eventually, he was able to get clean, and since then has totally turned around.
To me that is church. Church is when you are sitting in your living room with people who would give their lives for each other. So I don’t have any time or tolerance for nice services where we feel good about ourselves and give a little bit of our money to some people over here or there. To me, church is the people whom you are journeying with, and I think we are already seeing all sorts of new understanding of what that looks like. It has nothing to do with the building you’re meeting in; it has nothing to do with the name. It has nothing to do with how great your website is – it’s about the new humanity. It’s about people connecting with each other at the deepest, deepest levels of our being.
You have to challenge everything, and people should challenge Mars Hill. We have these giant services with thousands of people, and I think that public gatherings beyond 10 or 20 should be questioned.