intersections

God as enhancement

I ran across this amazing quote today from a book I don't have and haven't read. The book is Eat This Book, by Eugene Peterson. I found the quote in PRISM ePistle (a bi-weekly ezine of PRISM magazine and Evangelicals for Social Action. Enjoy!

One of the many welcome consequences in learning to “read” our lives in the lives of Abraham and Sarah, Moses and Miriam, Hannah and Samuel, Ruth and David, Isaiah and Esther, Mary and Martha, Peter and Paul is a sense of affirmation and freedom: We don’t have to fit into prefabricated moral or mental or religious boxes before we are admitted into the company of God; we are taken seriously just as we are and given a place in his story, for it is, after all, HIS story; none of us is the leading character in the story of our life.

Spiritual theology, using Scripture as text, does not present us with a moral code and tell us “Live up to this”; nor does it set out a system of doctrine and say, “Think like this and you will live well.” The biblical way is to tell a story and in the telling invite: “Live INTO this – this is what it looks like to be human in this God-made and God-ruled world; this is what is involved in becoming and maturing as a human being.”  We do violence to the biblical revelation when we “use” it for what we can get out of it or what we think will provide color and spice to our otherwise bland lives. That always results in a kind of “decorator spirituality” – God as enhancement.  Christians are not interested in that; we are after something far bigger. When we submit our lives to what we read in Scripture, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but our stories in God.  God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.

From EAT THIS BOOK (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2006)

This is why people live in California

You always here people say that in Los Angeles you can hike or ski in the mountains in the morning and lay out on the beach in the afternoon. Well, yeterday we did it. In the morning my dad, brother, nephew and I hiked up Mt. Hollywood. From the top you look down onto Griffith Observatory (which is currently closed for renovations and scheduled to reopen in late Fall this year). Below the observatory you can see part of Hollywood and Koreatown. The tall buildings in the distance is Mid-Wilshire, I think.

In the afternoon, my dad and my wife and kids and I went to the beach. We ended up in Venice Beach. The water was unusually warm and the kids had a great time. This is a picture of Sophie flying a kite with the Venice Beach street vendors in the distance.

ePolicing

I just heard today about a new service from LAPD called ePolicing. You can read all about it and sign up here.  You can get up-to-date City wide crime maps, and sign up for e-policing (a program designed to keep you informed via email on issues that concern your community).

Other cities may have a similar service for for those of you in the City of Los Angeles, this is a very valuable way to stay connected to and invovled with what is happening in your neighborhood. An aware community is a safe community.

Playing to America's Fears

If you thought the courageous actions of Greg Boyd that I wrote about here, and that set the blogosphere ablaze, meant that the marriage between Evangelicals and the Republican Right was on the rocks, think again. This story in yesterday's Times (the LA Times of course!) tells of a bold new effort, let by Dobson's Focus on the Family, to place voter information in church bulletins and set up voter registration booths outside worship services.

If All Saints in Pasadena can provoke and IRS audit for being critical of the war, what, pray tell, will the IRS say about passing out voter cards in church and registering voters in the church lobby? In truth, churches and faith groups have always been active in registering voters, to promote civic involvement. It's not a question of whether the church should be involved in civic matters (though, under most circumstances I would be uncomfortable with having voter registration taking place in my church lobby after services). The issue for me is how selective the Religious Right is in choosing what to mobilize people about. They continue to blatently play to the basest fears of the American people - the fear of the other. Homophobia, some narrowly defined definition of "life", and other pet subjects are little more than a cover for getting their guy into office. Meanwhile, the entire tenor of the Bible, and especially of Jesus, the NT's protagonist, is God's love and concern for the poor and marginalized.

Remembering 9/11

I just got home a few minutes ago from seeing the new Oliver Stone film, World Trade Center. Words fail me. It was truly a powerful and moving story. All the reviews have said that Stone showed remarkable restraint and I agree completely. We have all see the actual footage of the second plane hitting Tower 2 a hundred times. Stone spared us seeing it one more time. But the pain of the real people was almost too much to watch. I felt physically sick as the tension built for over two hours.

Many of you know that I lived in Philadelphia on that fateful day. One of my dearest friends, Samir Selmanovic, was then pastor of Church of the Advent Hope on Manhattan's Upper East Side. I had visited him several times before 9/11 and stayed in his little parsonage apartment. I absolutely love New York and I was eager to spend time there with my family. So we planned a trip. We debated whether we should leave late in the day Monday, September 10 or just take off early on Tuesday morning. We opted for Tuesday morning. We were making the transition from the PA Turnpike to the NJ Turnpike when Samir called my cell to say that a plane had hit one of the WTC Towers. At that point many people thought it was a small private plane. Our main concern was traffic around Battery Park and so Samir advised we take the George Washington Bridge instead. With our revised travel plan in hand we continued up the NJ Turnpike.

It wasn't more than 30 minutes later that Samir called again. The news was grave. A second plane. The second tower. Large commercial planes, not small Cesnas. All tunnels and bridges in and out of Manhattan closed. Turn around immediately.

As we drove home we listened to the radio as the the towers fell...one...then two. By the time we got home our neighborhood looked like a ghost town. We then heard of a third plane down just a couple hours West of us in Pennsylvania and the Pentagon hit just three hours south. With NYC just two hours to our north we knew we were in the eye of a storm. That day lives in my memory and tonight it all came back again as we are on the eve of the 5th anniversary.

Sadly, thousands more lives have been lost since 9/11/01. American service men and women, Iraqi soldiers and police and civilians. The death has not stopped in these five years. Fear still grips the hearts of women, children and men around the world. The closing words of the World Trade Center were hopeful. "On that day we learned what human beings were capable of. Evil, yes...but (and now my memory fails me) the good that is in the heart of people." On that day we were one human family.

Let's Go, Dodgers!

On Thursday, my dad and I went to the Dodger game. The cool thing is that I could almost walk to the stadium from my house. In fact, on my Sunday morning bike rides I start out by riding up to the stadium. It's less than 5 miles, if I remember correctly.

Anyway, it was a great game except for one thing...they LOST. Which, at any other time might not be that remarkable, but on that night the Dodgers had an 11 game win streak going. As of last night, they have won 13 out of 14, which means my dad and I caught the only losing game in two weeks.

What's even more remarkable is that just before starting this winning streak they were on a record setting losing streak, losing 13 out of 14. So, here in L.A. we like the winning trend better. Let's go, Dodgers!!

Opening Up Space

In this post I shared the “big picture” concept, that the locus of God’s activity is our neighborhood - the local and particular places where we and our neighbors live our lives. This is a faith conviction, that believes God’s reign is taking shape in…yes, Hollywood. I recently saw a book entitled, From Hollywood to Heaven. It is described on the cover as “A riveting story of one man’s journey from darkness into light.” I haven’t read the book and I’m sure this man’s story is, indeed, a journey from the darkness of Hollywood to the light of heaven. But what the Missional Church affirms is that Hollywood is the place of heaven’s light. It’s not unequivocal. There is plenty of darkness here as well. And many of God’s wonderful people are caught in that darkness. But the question that faces us is, “How can be begin to see Hollywood as the place of God’s reign?”

MereMission Test Post

This is a test of the category specific RSS feed from Typepad to MereMission. If this were an actual post an incredibly insightful comment about Missional Church would follow.

This is a test. It is only a test!

To learn more about MereMission, click here.

The church and the Kingdom

For the past few weeks I've been writing a series of short columns about Missional Church in my weekly e-letter to my church. Today I include the latest one on the church and the kingdom. To read past installments click here.

For the past several weeks we've been looking at some key aspects of "the missional church." Today I want to share something that for me was a breakthrough in my understanding of what is so different about the missional way of understanding church. It can be summarized like this: the kingdom of God is bigger than the church.

re-church finally has a website

We finally have a website for re-church that's up to date and functional. It's in a blog format so we can add posts and new information all the time. Go check it out at www.re-church.org!