Have you heard one of Kid Rock's songs off his new album Rock-N-Rock Revival? It's called Amen. You can hear it on the radio or his homepage kidrock.com. Heads up: I'm not sure this is the radio version that plays on his website, so be aware of the the ears around you. Go give it a listen sometime. I find myself Amening most of the song. "Rock" is onto something. But beware you may want to shut him down right away because he's says "stop being so up tight when I get high." and he calls us "wolves in sheep-clothes pastors." I guess what I'm saying is don't prove him right. Most of the things that he mentions in this song are things that Jesus showed and told us what he thinks about. Things that Jesus wants us to do something about. He talks about Jesus too, "...so one day you'll stand hand in hand with the truth." [hello John 14:6!]

I bet some of you have a gut reaction right now that is telling you that I would condone his lifestyle, or all his music. No I won't be buying this album. Most of his songs are about getting high or drunk or sleeping around. Things that I don't live for. I'm just pointing out an issue we need to face: God is at work in people and places that are dirty and broken. [Reference to a chapter from Kester Brewin's book Signs of Emergence. I'll post on that next.] I'm calling into question how we see salvation and discipleship in the ways of Jesus. Is it a journey, or is it an event? Are people in or out, or is it about a spectrum of knowing God? These are things that we need to deal with. For a relative world you and I live in you can't tell someone they are straight up wrong in the first conversation you have with them and expect them to talk to you again. Let alone see Jesus in your life. Well maybe respectfully in not so many words. How many Christians do that? Most of the time we're know for what we're against, not what or who we're for. But I see that we have an opertunity here. We can talk about Truth in it's most real sense now. Before our culutre started to shift Truth was boxed into facts, linear reason, and data. Now we can talk about Truth as a person-Jesus. A broader, and more actuate view of the Truth in my opinion. We can talk about the whole Truth so help us God. Because knowing all the facts is different than knowing a person isn't it?

I wonder if anyone is engaging Kid Rock? Are there any Christ followers that have befriended him? I know that Rev Run is touring with Kid Rock so maybe. [Run as in Run-DMC, and more recently Run's House.] Back to questions. Do you have a Kid Rock in your life? How are you engaging people that don't follow Jesus? Lifeguards know how to swim and from time to time they have to get wet to save someone. Firefighters know the nature of fire and still go into burning buildings. The shooting doesn't stop so a medic can treat the wounded. Cops get shot at, and they still come back to work. Are you in the fray? Who are you engaging?

Labels: disciples, disciplism, migration, Truth

So I finished this book back in December, and started this post soon after that. I'd forgotten that is was there, sorry about that guys. Things have been really busy in the new year. (I've been without an assistant or an intern since then and I'm not good at handling all of it alone. Plus, when you work out of your niche it takes more time and energy than things that come natural to you.) I've meant to come back out here and respond to some comments, and post some more but I've needed deep breathing and silence more than one more thing to do.

It will be really hard for me to hone this into a small to medium size post. I underlined or bracketed large sections of the book.

Kester Brewin really got my mind going. He really has helped me get my mind around change and development as it pertains to the church. Kester brings in Fowler's Stages of Faith. Something I studied at AU, fairly reluctantly. I had a sense I would come back to Fowler. It's really ringing bells with me now. Thanks former prof Randy Litchfield. These stages are talked about throughout the book. He applies the stages to church and proposes that the Western Church overall is in stage 3 "synthetic-conventional." Loyalty to a "tribe" is key. It is often blind loyalty. I'm sure you've used the term blind faith. Brewin suggests that this is where most of us in the West are when it comes to faith and church. A large theme of the book is how a grassroots, decentralized, networked church, is a better shape for promoting growth in the flock then what we have currently. Like I said he references Flowers stages a lot.

"The concern of this book is to try to show that not only is another model possible but essential. While it is not right to force people from statge to stage, I do believe it is vital that we strongly encourage our institutions to move on from the Stage 3 in which many of them are caught. Like Fowler, I believe that if we are to impact the post-Enlightenment cultural consciousness, then we must be modeling a conjunctive faith in a conjunctive church, for it is only in such a place people for all stages can experience community and growth together. " (p33)

Part 1 comprises chapters Advent/Incarnation/Emergence. In Advent he suggest that there needs to be a pause before growth happens. That's how it happens in nature. "Shaped, not crushed; guided, not dragged."(p41) We're looking for a shaa-zam [my word] moment. In our history we have witnessed change by revolution. Kester doesn't reference this, he's English, but our country started that way. We want change and change now. He suggests that a lasting change, the kind that the church needs is by evolution not revolution. "Before the church can change, before I can change, before things change--before change, we must wait." (p45) Incarnation suggests that God himself waited, pausing still for 400ish years between the old and new testament. Only to reemerge as a baby. A new form. A new order. Not a revolutionary Messiah, a evolutionary Messiah. We like Christ must be reborn into specific times, places and cultures to be affective. (p69) Here's a great quote: "Becoming incarnate will mean the same for us as it did Christ. We will have to experience being small and defenseless, requiring nurture from our host world just as Christ needed Mary's milk. We cannot and must not remain rootless people or rootless churches. Christ needed water from the earth, food from the ground, education from his elders; yet we too often experience church as an organization that has absolutely no need for it surrounding community or area...To admit our need as a church, our dependence on our host culture, is a risk. yet like Christ we must take this risk of interdependence, this risk of being born, this risk of life." (p73-74)

Interlude: The Character of the Emergent Church. Backing up: Kester clarifies his use of emergent, emergence and Emergent. He is using it as an adjective rather than a brand name, or what we think of in the US. To his UK audience, they don't have the hang ups we have as Americans. Brewin suggest that the emerging church system is: open, learning, shared/communal information, model servant leadership, and it must be on the edge of chaos. Hirsch and Frost in The Shaping of Things to Come call this state "chaordic." Just enough scturcutre to hold it together. Hmmm, this sounds like Priddy's bell curve I learned about in the Institute for Servant Leadership (ISL). There's a great table at the end of this section that makes it all clear.

Part 2 Cites/Gift/Dirt. In Cities Brewin talks about urbanization of the world and the changes that encompasses. He also links, Cain to cities, and then to how Jesus approached the city. Cain, because of his sin began to insulate himself from nature, began commerce because he couldn't work the ground anymore. We do the same things today in our cites, we take nature, and make it into things unnatural, to insulate us from nature. [Steel, concrete, asphalt, etc, etc.] Jesus lived his life in small towns, yet he returned to "city" not to overthrow it[revolution], but change it through evolution, person to person. Networked, communal, grassroots, not top down, power broker, hierarchy. Growing cities are on the brink of chaos. Over legislated cities are dying cities. Gift is about reclaiming the art of gift. Kester points out that commodity has entered our church systems. In some places worse than others. The danger isn't when churches offer products or services to their congregations, its when they say they want nothing in return, but they get mad and brow beat when people don't give enough money or time. Dirt hit on the fact that we don't get dirty in the church much. We ask people to clean up first. There are defined lines between church people and unchurched. Have you ever heard someone say "But that's a church thing, why would I go? I'm not a church person." I don't know where I heard this first, but I've been saying for years "The church should be more like a hospital than a museum." I will amend that thought, that it should be more like a MASH tent then a hospital. Field hospitals are out there in the the mix. [Incarnate.] Jesus blurred and redefined the dirt line for us by eating and hanging out with sinners.

Here are my takeaways:
I'm getting my volume of Fowler back out that I bought and "read" in college.

I'm considering making more room in my ministry for more grassroots events to happen. I want my ministry to act and look more like a web than a line, or blocks on a calendar. Maybe something that looks more like a party, and than a youth event. Space where God can naturally use our relationships to do ministry to the broken. I am adopting the same grassroots approach for CONNECT/Small Groups and COACH/mentoring. Volunteers connect with students and they form small groups or start a mentoring relationship. In this respect I just try to play "match-maker," I don't demand or command I just suggest and pray.

You can also find more Kester at his blog: http://kester.typepad.com/signs/

[I could have blogged way more than that.]

Labels: books, change, migration

hey bloggers...

i recently found an old article on the importance of questions being more important than the answers we give [many times to questions that aren't being asked]. so i decided to blog on it, thought you may be interested.

from the ledge

edit/Randy/"we'll comment over there Nate."

Labels: answers, questions, wondering