Flyover country

We sure have covered a lot of flyover country in the last few days.  I’ve sampled some excellent microbrew (Ghost Moon Scotch Ale of Butte, MT), checked into sketchy hotels in small towns, and bellied up to the trough at a “family restaurant.”  Living in a Commonwealth country such as Canada has had me living a bit of a European cosmopolitan lifestyle within North America.  As someone near to me once said, “Wow!  Canada is like a whole other country.  It’s like going to Europe!”  Now I know what they mean.

Now that I’m in my home country I hope to contribute to the rebuilding of civic life in America by being a renter, a frequenter of one coffee shop, a regular at the local tacqueria, a writer seeking to apply the great Western Christian tradition to the decaying hulk of American Civic and Church life, a wise and gentle Biblical counselor, and a fun and godly dad and husband to my family worshiping in a nearby Christian church community.

Last Day in the True North Strong and Free

The last few days have been all about “lasts”:  last box packed, last dinner with friends, last night in our place, last Tim Horton’s, last day in Canada.  Today we say goodbye to our co-workers the Ferguson’s who joined us here from Peru to do church planting.  Their call is intact and our new call is unfolding day by day.  I am adding words to my bio like:  author, counselor, Californian.  I am eager to rediscover who I am in Christ apart from being the guy who speaks for Jesus every Sunday.  To belong to Christ is the greatest gift.  To see people around me knowing Christ and bearing fruit is my greatest joy.  Where I do that is part of the great adventure. Stay tuned.

Our Plans

“Our plans were so beautifully laid out, ready to be carried to action, but with magnificent certainty God laid them aside and said ‘You have forgotten – mine?’”

17 year old Mary Flannery O’Connor on the death of her father at age 45 from lupus

In Flannery by Brad Gooch, p. 72

An Inconvenient Faith

Christianity, properly understood and practiced, is an inconvenient faith. It puts a squeeze on life as it’s currently practiced in North America. In talking with people about the Christian lifestyle employed in Acts chapter 2 of the New Testament the question is: Is this minimum church or maximum church? There’s a few ways to “skin the cat” as we seek to understand and apply what we see there:

Pragmatic argument- This Church described in this chapter clearly rocked their world and transformed their culture. The Church living and worshiping in North America is not putting a dent in the unchurched stats or the social health indices (e.g. divorce, abortion, poverty, unemployment, etc.) To steal a line of thought from former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin: You can’t have the Church Jesus wants with the participation levels that our cultural Christianity allows. Something’s gotta give.

Theological argument – The early church was the direct descendent of Jesus’ and the apostle’s teaching about the Kingdom of God. They were the recipients, as today’s Christians are, of God’s Holy Spirit who empowers his people for holiness in mission as a community that worships God through Christ making disciples of all nations. They seem privileged in that many of them had seen Jesus and experienced miraculous proofs of Christ’s rule after his ascension. In another sense we have the same privilege and responsibility as they had since we have the same Spirit and the same commission.

Psychological argument – The community formed by the Spirit that we call “early church” for short had a beautiful unity that was hugely beneficial in buffering their status as a persecuted minority within Judaism and a marvel within Greco-Roman culture. Their daily life with each other involved shared meals, shared needs, and shared joy in the rhythms of Jewish worship and daily life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer has called this “Life Together.” Many Christians are seeking the same joy and same effectiveness through “Life Separate” and wonder why it’s not happening. Their joy came through time spent and time wasted together. In our on-the-go-always-on culture we have minimized time-wasting with all our time-saving gadgets. To afford these we work ridiculous hours and drive ridiculous distances to our employment that makes this hamster wheel pace possible and necessary. Our physical burnout and spiritual overdraft prevent us from doing the “hard work” that is required by “Life Together.” This prevents us from contagious joy and community that energizes our batteries and activates our faith. When did you last have time to grab dinner with another Christian? Could one of your “veg out” nights be spent with someone else who needs you or could be an encouragement to you?

Asking these questions of ourselves and our unquestioned routines could be the avenue into “an inconvenient faith” that becomes a rich “life together” that is beautiful and powerful for the cause of Christ’s Kingdom of transforming mercy and grace.

Resources for thinking through our lifestyle:
Making Room for Life by Randy Frazee
Open Heart, Open Home by Karen Burton Maines
The Mustard Seed Conspiracy by Tom Sine (or anything by him)
Real Love, Real Life by Andi Ashworth
The Tangible Kingdom by Hugh Halter
Total Church by Tim Chester and Steve Timmis
Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Any of Jean Vanier’s works on Community

A Working Truce

After 20 years of ministry in conservative Bible teaching/practicing churches I have stumbled upon an alarming discovery that I’ve dubbed “A Working Truce.” This truce is an unspoken agreement between people and leaders that allows preachers to preach their conscience and people to keep their patterns of living culturally comfortable. It goes something like this: “We’ll let you preach with veins bulging, weeping, spitting, and sweating telling us of God’s grace and how it has come to transform our believing, wanting, thinking and doing. What you must allow us to do is to keep our schedules centered around work, sports, and pursuit of the suburban dream and have Jesus on Sunday as the cherry on top.”

I have been given this freedom described in the “truce.” But the terms of the truce on the sheep side mean that I’m allowing them to be increasingly deadened to the joys and fruits of the reorientation of grace from self to Christ. If Jesus is most at home in the pastor’s weekly rant but not at home in between hockey practice, trips to the mall, driving to work, etc then we are not seeing “Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” I am called to preach, live, and work to see Jesus’ vision accomplished in Suburbia. This is the call that I am pursuing as we relocate our family to begin missional living from the ground up.

Any thoughts? I’ll address more along these lines in my next post entitled “An Inconvenient Faith”.

Abraham, Inc.

Me and mine

Moving at the speed of faith

Like Father Abe and sons

Linked and Inc’ed

Going out into the nowhere

That is somewhere because God is there

Working, promising, weaving a story of grace

Punctuated by tentpegs, driven and removed, kilometers of packing tape

A closing of one chapter means the promise of one to come

Where characters develop, the villain is vanquished, the curse reversed, Gospel bearing fruit

To bless the ends of the earth.

Me and mine, we work and live by faith, by the grace that is given to Abraham, Inc.

The 77′s "God Sends Quails"

This is one of the most poetic and biblical Christian songs I’ve run accross in a long time. This song is circa 1990 from the studio outtakes album, Sticks and Stones. What galls me most is my dear wife has seen these guys multiple times, and though they are one of my favourite bands, I have never seen them live!! AAAARGH!

Their 1988 self-titled album on Island/Exit was panned by Rolling Stone magazine as the Best Guitar Album of the year. If you love Rickenbacker 12 String a la The Byrds and smoking blues numbers The 77′s are for you.

They came out of the same Sacramento scene as Charlie Peacock and Jimmy Abegg. Jimmy and the 77′s drummer, Aaron Smith went on to form the Ragamuffin Band with Rich Mullins before his passing. Jimmy was also in a band called Vector that has touches of Peter Gabriel. Jimmy A’s solo album Secrets remains one of my all time favourites. His first solo album which I have lost surpasses even that one in guitar virtuosity.

Enjoy these lyrics and enjoy the song if you can find it.

You fail
You try half-hearted and fail
One foot drags behind you
One foot tripping in front of you

You fail
You spit out manna, God sends quails
Dry bones pile up behind you
One more mirage right in front of you

You can’t go back
You can’t go back

You failed
You sunk like Jonah to the whale
Big mouths follow behind you
Still small voice swallowed up by you

You failed
You picked the right time to fail
Got your past behind you
Got your future in front of you

You can’t go back
You can go on

You failed
You picked the right time to fail

Got your past behind you
Got your future in front of you

You can’t go back
You can go on

You can’t go back
You can go on

You can’t go back
You can go on