Called Unto Ourselves?

Someone said that 'the value of any religion can be determined by how it serves it's non-adherents.' I'm concerned that the church in America is growing increasingly insular as mainstream culture becomes increasingly secular. Ironically, it's exactly this isolation from those outside of faith that is creating the cultural backlash and impression that the church is self-absorbed.

When my kids were younger, we would occasionally walk over to a church playground near our house. I noticed a few months ago that the church had put up an iron fence around their property with padlocks on the gates. I'm guessing this wasn't enough to keep the community out of their playground because they recently added a big fat red sign ...."No Trespassing. For the use by Holy Spirit Community only..." I was grieved for the church when I saw this new sign.

Ok. I know what you are thinking. 'With the litigious society, they are simply protecting themselves from potential liability.' I suppose that argument can be used to avoid almost any activity that involves people outside of the congregation (or for that matter, those inside). I know a few attorneys and I've asked them about this. No one seems to able to point to a precedent-setting case where a church was found liable for the playground accidents of its non-adherents.

This is all a symptom of an illness that is plaguing the church in America. Pastors are trying to keep their members happy because their livelihood depends on it. Their members are often more focused on protecting the institution than fueling the mission. It's a dilemma that leads to an isolated and self-protecting congregation.

All this makes me more committed to our cause - "joining God in bringing reconciliation to a broken and needy world." The heart of our mission is serving and loving the non-adherents. My belief and experience is that this external-focus will always make the adherents more content as well. So join me in welcoming all trespassers at the FOM.

Fly Turtles and Overloaded Life Rafts

“The flower said I wish I was a tree, the tree said I wish I could be a different kind of tree. The cat wished that it was a bee, the turtle wished that it could fly really high into the sky, over roof tops and then dive deep into the sea. And in the sea there is a fish, a fish that has a secret wish, a wish to be a big cactus with a pink flower on it.”

So tonight I was laying in bed listening to music (with my head phones on so as not to disturb my sleeping wife) and I was struck by the lyrics of this song. They seemed to blend together with some things that have been hanging around my heart, but never really become clear enough to put to words. So I am going to take a rambling and likely ill-fated stab at it…

A lot of what has been hanging around my heart has to do with life rafts. I’ve been reading a book by Donald Miller and he talks about our need to draw our understanding of who we are from outside ourselves. That we are created in such a way that our identity is intended to be drawn from God, but most of us, being in various states of self- imposed distance from God, have turned to drawing our identity from the people around us. The result is we live our life like we are on an overcrowded life raft, always comparing ourselves to the people around us, never wanting to be at the bottom of the totem pole, because that person gets thrown overboard. We are constantly basing our self-worth on acceptance from and comparison to other people.

Great, so what does that have to do with flowers, and trees, and fish that want to be cacti? Good question. I’m not sure I have a good answer. But it may have something to do with the fact that I am realizing more and more that this desire to be cool, to be accepted, to be in a firm position in the life raft pecking order, keeps me in an odd state of dissatisfaction with who I am, where I am, and what I am doing with my life. It feels like every day I look around me and see people who are so creative and talented and brilliant and I think, “What am I doing here?! I am not even in the same stratosphere as these people. How long before they figure that out?” And then I talk to friends about all the amazing places God is taking them and experiences he is putting them through and I long for those to be my experiences. I think to myself, “What am I doing wrong that all of these things are someone else’s life, not mine.” In it all I feel myself being pulled toward the edge of the life raft because I don’t think I am a dynamic and exciting personality, and I am not on the front lines of global justice issues, and a hundred other reasons why I don’t measure up to the people I know and the other people they know. My move to the edge of the life raft sets off this dialogue in my head that takes me places like…if you could just learn to interject more esoteric wit into your conversations, or find the right counter culture authors (or song lyrics) to quote, or learn to play the accordion, then you would be who you want to be.

Here’s the thing, I know God wants me to be changing. And I think that some of my dissatisfaction with who and where I am is because I am not all of who God created me to be. How could I be if I am looking around the life raft for my identity? I am a flower that wants to be a tree, not knowing that there is a fish somewhere that wants to be a flower. So instead of letting God reform me into who he wants me to be, I put all of my effort into trying to become who he wants someone else to be. All that effort to be someone else seems ridiculous to me. I just wish that it didn’t feel like anything else would send me swimming.

2008-The Year of New Beginnings?

What does that mean, actually: "the year of new beginnings"?
My charismatic friend tells me that the number 8 symbolizes renewal, but my channels must be tuned all wrong--I still don't get it. I check my Bible and I see references to days to circumcision, and numbers of sons born, how many oxen needed for 4 carts... what am I missing? Is there some gnostic pill I should take at communion that will give me this 'Epiginosko'? Sometimes I feel like such a clod!
Or like when the Prayer of Jabez thing came out, and book stores and trinket sellers made a small fortune, and everybody was looking to enlarge their boundaries, and I'm trying to figure out why I was never taught about Jabez in seminary, or why I can't really remember reading about him each year in my OYB. I find this very confusing, and disheartening, like being assigned to the "slow readers" circle in primary school, except now it's spiritual.
Perhaps I am so jaded that I am blinded by my cynicism; perhaps my shortcomings have caught up to me and locked me into the honorable mention section of the balcony, you know, that little ribbon you get at the end of the competition, because "nobody's a loser", but you know for fact that you didn't get first, second or third most favored?
What makes it even worse is when I read the gospels, and Jesus is saying things like, "Don't be impressed with buildings--those stones are gonna topple," or things like, "I don't own squat on this planet-- come follow me," what do you do with THAT? Sheessh-- talk about confusing.
Maybe the best I can do is get up again tomorrow, bake my little roll of biscuits, sip my coffee and read another day of the OYB as the sun rises... hey, I'm three for three this year as of this morning! I've even had time to pray for friends before riding to work.
Not bad; it's no Prayer-of-Jabez, but maybe it's my 2008.

*OYB--One Year Bible