intersections

Thanksgiving Theological Treasure

Over Thanksgiving my family and I traveled up to Mariposa and Jamestown. My aunt and uncle live in Mariposa and we ate Thanksgiving dinner at their house (see humongous table pictured at left). Then we went another hour up the road to my grandmother's house where we spent two relaxing day doing basically nothing. Well, I take that back...on Friday, Elysabeth and look at all the antique shops in Jamestown and on Saturday we went to Moaning Caverns and at lunch in the charming little town of Murphys.

My great theological discovery over Thankgiving was a wonderful quote on my aunt's refridgerator from an unlikely source - Oswald Chambers. I share it with you as my Thanksgiving blessing!

“It is easier to be an excessive fanatic than it is to be consistently faithful, because God causes an amazing humbling of our religious conceit when we are faithful to Him.”

This has sent my mind going in a dozen different directions. This is my newest favorite quote!

Reducing Sabbath to Triviality

I've been doing quite a bit of reading lately about Sabbath. Ched Myers and Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries has provided a rich resources for my research. Anyway, I got an untitled email from someone named Troy Montana. It was a link to a website called www.christiansabbath.org. At that site there are several PDF "magazines" available for download. The attachment is the first one.

First I laughed, then I cried (inside). This magazine in not about Sabbath, it is a nostalgic (at best) vision of a world that has long since passed away or most likely never existed. This is a cultural myth masquerading as theology. Don't you recognize your family in this picture?

It's amazing how far the church has come. And while this is admittedly a right-wing group who publishes this, I think it still represents a longing that has invaded our church's sense of it's own story for the majority of our members.

Gettin' em started young

Here's Sophie, completely engrossed in this story about Darfur on Democracy Now with host, Amy Goodwin.

Big Tobacco Wins Again

Well, Prop 86 went down pretty bad. As most of you know our church worked pretty hard on the campaign. My intern/assistant pastor, Johnny Ramirez, who also interns with LA Voice, did a couple of days of phone banking (the PICO network was one of the major players in the Yes on 86 campaign). One of my board members, Mireya Pena, also did phone banking for a day. I did a press conference here in LA with Jim Wallis to support Prop 86 and we did some of the initial signature gathering, as well. We had high hopes that this would provide a temporary solution for the severe health care crisis we are facing in California, with a special focus on children. Alas, it was not to be. But I am even more determined than ever to fight the real battle for health care for all California's children, even those born to undocumented workers.

Here's today's story from the LA Times documenting what we all know anyway - the person or initiative with the most money wins. Big tobacco spent $66.6 million to defeat the measure as compared to $14 spent by backers.

Biblical Reflections for an Election Week

I ran across a great article/sermon today that really helps frame this election week for those of us who call ourselves Christian. I was going to post a comparison of who is endorsing which candidates and propositions. I'll just give you a few links at the end of this post if you want to do some last minute study before you vote tomorrow. But this article, by Dan Clendenin, is what we REALLY need to remember as we go to the polls. Here is a small excerpt - a poem by renowned peace activist and Jesuit priest, Daniel Berrigan (1921-).

Guest Blogging at "Just Pastors"

My blogging friends, David, Josue, and Marty at Just Pastors invited me to do a guest blog series on the emerging church. It's a topic I don't get to talk about very much and so I was happy to do this. David is writing an intro today and then I'll have four posts, Tuesday - Friday.

I don't consider myself an expert in the emerging church but I have been around the conversations and gatherings for about 7 years. I have close friends that I have met along the journey who have changed my life. I can truly say that without the emerging church conversation - the books, articles, conferences, gatherings and most importantly, the friendships -  I would not be the person I am today. Through the year Emergent has represented to me the most hopeful way forward. I have described it to frustrated Evangelicals and Main Liners alike as a hopeful "third way" for post-Evangelicals and post-Liberals (These links are to books that are representative of post-Evangelicals and post-Liberals. They are not a definitive work).

I hope you'll tune in for these posts and share your comments.

Today I'm embarrassed to be Adventist

I hate to spread bad news. I really do! I really believe that lighting a candle is much better than cursing the darkness. But some bad news needs to be shared. At least I can say Trevan Osborn started it! You really need to click that link and read this mess. Apparently a San Francisco blogger got this mailer about a series of evangelistic meetings that tried to play off the 100 year anniversary of the great SF earthquake and, using the typical scare tactics of local TV news, get an audience. The comments from the reads of the blog were painful to read. Sometimes it's good to learn how others see us. It's part of the maturing process. Hopefully our church can continue to mature.

So, click here and read Trevan's post and, if you dare, follow the link in Trevan's post to read the original blog post from San Francisco. Next time someone asks me why we're not doing this type of evangelism all I need to do is show them these postings.

How do we talk about family?

I am the pastor of an urban church in which a large percentage (I'm tempted to say the majority, but I can't be sure) are single and the vast majority either do not have children or have children who are married and have their own children. We have very few kids in our church. This is partly the consequence of being an urban church in a context in which the conventional wisdom is that it is bad/dangerous to raise children in the city.

In contrast to this, we are part of an amazing group of families in our neighborhood who have banded together to create a charter school for our children. The diversity among this group of families is mind-blowing and it has again reminded us that one of the crying needs in our community is befriending families in the process of being a family and especially raising children.

But the minute I start thinking about how our congregation might engage the community in a conversation about children and families, I am deeply aware of how co-opted this language is in Christianity. The very fact that I am a Christian (and a pastor at that) talking about family is deeply suspect. So, my question is this:

In a culture in which the language of children and families has been coopted by the Religious Right, how can a Christian church talk with the community about raising healthy children and healthy families?

A corollary for you to think about is this: If you have children (or even if you don't but might some day), what are the top 3-5 values you would like your children to embrace?