WHHHaaaaaaaatttttttt?

The commercial realtor called Friday informing me that the landlord had a change of heart. He wants to rent the smaller space to someone in retail. But he will allow us to have the larger space under the same terms. Hmmmmmm.... There is much more work to be done on the larger space costing more money, but it does hold greater potential.

What is God up to on this? I guess we're going to find out. There is so much meaning to the "journey" part of "java!"

Stay tuned.

A Major Step Within Reach

I just went by and spoke to the landlord of the place we would like to lease. He has agreed to our terms. Our one-year lease will begin June 1. He has given us a month of free rent so we can make the transition in the space. This will be Java Journey (javajourney.org) under the umbrella of Living Hope Church. Thanks for you prayers - keep 'em going.

Aware that his disciples were grumbling about this...

...Jesus said to them, "Does this offend you?

I appreciate TCYK's courage to drive home a few points. I guess they've been around for a couple of years and I didn't know it.

Here's a sample link on "Attendance". Be sure to check out the other videos. They hit the proverbial nail smack dab on the head!

Jeff ("Yay - I'm not insane!")
BTW - go the their website and try to buy something at the store.

Fantastic Quote!

I'm pasting a brilliant observation by a friend of Frank Viola's - Hal Miller. BTW I googled his name and only found the actor from Sesame Street and a square dance caller in the D.C. area.

This comes from FV's review of Michael Spencer's recent article: "The Coming Evangelical Collapse" published in The Drudge Report, The Christian Science Monitor and CTI.

The last three paragraphs are 1st, 2nd & 3rd base of the homer hit by HM.

Christianity is culturally relevant when it offers a qualitatively different society. Jesus called it “the kingdom of God.” Paul saw its first outlines in the gathered disciples of Jesus, and so he called them ekklesia - we translate it “church”- a Greek word denoting citizens assembled to attend to their common project, their city.

The evangelicals missed this. Evangelicalism sought to transform people and so transform the world. They did not see that something might be missing from this vision, something their assumption of American individualism would hide from them. The true Christian vision is to transform people, transforming them into a people, and so transform the world. The evangelicals missed that middle term. They could not see the church as a foretaste of the new society; it was a club for the new individuals. The evangelicals simply dressed American individualism in Christian clothing. They ended up with new isolated individuals, but in the old society. Since their expression of Christianity did not take form as a new society, it quickly became culturally irrelevant, even though it was admirably culturally open.

To be culturally relevant, Christianity must offer an alternative. God has indeed chosen to deal with persons as individuals- in this the evangelicals were right. Yet they are not simply individuals; they become members of a social reality called ekklesia, which is the entering wedge of the new society of God’s making.

Too often, for example, we assume that evangelism involves the simple aggregation of more and more new individuals. If enough people are “born again,” the world’s problems will diminish. But the experience of the last twenty years- in which we had more and more people “born again” as well as more and more marital tragedies, more and more international tension, and more and more bondage to the demons of our age- seems a perfectly contrived counter-example to this theory.

The Christian calling requires being reconciled with God, to be sure. But it also requires being a new, reconciling society characterized by forgiveness, acceptance, and responsibility in a common task- a society qualitatively different from its culture, yet engaged with it. Little gatherings of Christians for worship and mutual help in being disciples become the seeds of God’s coming new society.

Such a new society will be culturally relevant because it springs from God’s movement among God’s people. The persons who make up this new society live their faith in the face of day-to-day problems that they share with the world around them. They face the same questions as unbelievers: finding joy and meaning in work, living at peace both personally and globally, raising responsible and compassionate children. And in facing those questions, Christian faith becomes relevant even for unbelievers.

Imagine a group of people gathering to help each other in the common task of seeing God’s kingdom incarnated in their work, in their families, in their towns, in their world, in their midst, and (rather than only) in their individual lives. This gathering is ekklesia. It will be relevant to its world because it lives the life of the kingdom in the world, not apart from it.

I have to fight off that temptation of anonymously sending these words to a few people who need to hear them - those who are blindly "caught up." But I realize that pride and lack of humility that drives such proneness. I believe God is at work among those who desire to follow him and they will eventually "get it."

Suffice it to say that it is a widespread blindness in the institutional church to (my soapbox) perpetuate the sad stewardship of sitting in a "study" or an office away from the day-to-day rigor of the world - to prepare for one event that lasts an hour or so on one day of the week at one location - in hopes that a passive mass will carry out the mission beyond the walls. This pandemic malady does not require naming names.

Afterword

THE NEXT STEP

Now we have all this information about the origins of institutional church practices. So what? Is this merely (as my good friend Tom Lindholtz puts it) "cursing about the darkness instead of lighting a candle?"

Viola and Barna brilliantly open this epilogue with the words from Acts 2:37. They use the NASB, but I will substitute the NIV as I believe the word "cut" is more accurately translated there: "When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, 'Brothers, what shall we do?'"

The critical review taken on should impact all who have been or are still "caught up" in many unbiblical practices of the institutional church. Our souls should be "pierced" (like Mary's) and our hearts should be "cut."

Reading this book takes courage. Such courage is required not because of what the book says, but because of what you, as a follower of Christ, should do in response to what you have read.

...Having read this book, you must make a decision" Will you act upon what you have read, or will you simply be informed by it?

It's a prudent urging by Viola and Barna for those who want to earnestly fall in line with God's intentions for the Body. This is a plea to indeed light a candle in the darkness rather than cursing it.

The organized church has moved down a crooked path over the past two thousand years. The only way to get it back on track is for each of us to begin prayerfully exploring the original plan that God had for His people and then be willing to respond faithfully to that plan. In this way, the Revolution that has begun to take root in our day will spread far and wide. And God will get what He has always been after.

Pagan Christianity - Chapter 12

A SECOND GLANCE AT THE SAVIOR: JESUS THE REVOLUTIONARY

Last year at about this time, I was devouring the book of Luke. As I got to the last 1/3 of the book, I started to ponder deeply about how Jesus' principles would correspond today. I was somewhat shocked by some of the conclusions I was reaching - yet I could not shake them. Every time I thought "This can't be what it means today" the words reinforced what I was trying to deny. It is my current belief that Jesus would be directing some of his harshest words and even some condemnation toward the institutional church. Pharisaism lives!

Jesus warned that he came to bring "fire" and "division" with his purpose (12:49-53). He also stated (to those who considered themselves as spiritually upright) that many will attempt to enter the "narrow door...and will not be able to." He told them that "people will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last." (13:29 & 30). He proclaimed earlier (chapter 11 in reference to the Ninevites and the Queen of Sheba) that those deemed as outside the fold would be in on the final judgment of all humanity.

I've said many times and it applies: "You can't read the words of Jesus as if you were reading Shakespeare!" It's not mere poetry and prose. They must (as Simeon prophesied to Mary and Joseph) reveal our hearts and pierce our souls.

Jesus Christ is not only the Savior, the Messiah, the Prophet, the Priest, and the King. He is also the Revolutionary. Yet few Christians know Him as such.

...In Jesus, we have a man who refused to bow to the pressures of religious conformity. A man who preached a revolution. A man who would not tolerate hypocrisy. A man who was not afraid to provoke those who suppressed the liberating gospel He brought to set men free.

...For most Christians, this is a side of Jesus Christ they have never known before. Yet we believe it explains why exposing what is wrong with the contemporary church so that Christ's body can fulfill God's ultimate intention is so critical. It is simply an expression of our Lord's revolutionary nature. The dominating aim of that nature is to put you and me at the center of the beating heart for God.

"Intention" is the banner over this whole book. I trust the authors' sincere concern and passion that the Body of Christ will function as God intended. The present form does very little to model revolutionary intention.

We believe this is God's vision for every church. In fact, we have written this book for one reason: to make room for the absolute centrality, supremacy, and headship of Christ in His church. Fortunately, more and more Revolutionaries today are catching that vision. They recognize that what is needed is a revolution within the Christian faith - a complete upheaval of those Christian practices that are contrary to biblical principle. We must begin all over again, on the right foundation. Anything less will prove defective.

Pagan Christianity - Chapter 11

REAPPROACHING THE NEW TESTAMENT: THE BIBLE IS NOT A JIGSAW PUZZLE

Barna and Viola know how to live dangerously. There are those (as I demonstrated with my review of chapter 10) who are willing to bend and flex on other ecclesiastical discussions, but "don't you dare mess with the bible."

I'm certain that the analysis offered in chapter 11 will draw the ire of many a critic, but the information presented is factual and objective.

Somehow the inspiration/canonization arguments throughout history shrouded the overall context of the early writer(s) and reader(s). So much so, that the institutional church has treated God's truth as a buffet table. "I'll take a little of 'women are not allowed to teach' and I'll pass on the 'slaves, obey your masters' because the last one is contextual."

The problem is not what the New Testament says. The problem is in how we approach it.

The approach most commonly used among contemporary Christians when studying the Bible is called "proof texting." The origin of proof goes back to the late 1590s. A group of men called Protestant scholastics took the teachings of the Reformers and systematized them according to the rules of Aristotelian logic.

The Protestant scholastics held that not only is the Scripture the Word of God, but every part of it is the Word of God in and of itself - irrespective of context. This set the stage for the idea that if we lift a verse out of the Bible, it is true in its own right and can be used to prove a doctrine or a practice.

How often I have heard "You will know them by their fruits", "You reap what you sew", "Wives, submit to your husbands", "Do not throw your pearls to pigs" - - - many more - spurted out without reference to the context in which these words were written. It's true that they can be used as self-righteous buck-shot.

Because of the proof-texting method, a vast wasteland of Christianity behaves as if the mere citation of some random, decontextualized verse of Scripture ends all discussion on virtually any subject.

I highly recommend you read this chapter (as well as the entire book) to learn about how the New Testament was ordered and about the emphasis on the narrative story approach - rather than passage memorization.