Entries Tagged 'submergent' ↓

Q: Why does God allow pain and suffering in this world… if He truly loved us and feels the same pain that we do, why does he allow it to continue?
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Wow, that is a packed question. A question that the world has been wrestling with since forever. To look for the answer (or to find more questions), I go all the way back to Genesis - at the moment Adam and Eve chose knowledge over relationship. They had a relationship with God, a intimate friendship, based upon faith and trust until Adam and Eve were shown the wonderment of choice or as God called it “knowledge of good and evil.”

Man(kind) chose knowledge over relationship, and with this knowledge came responsibility, toil, pain, and the realization of mortality. Man was now naked and vulnerable.

Even though Man chose knowledge over relationship, God still desired a relationship. Then begins the march of the Old Testament… God makes a “Covenant” with Abraham (Israel), this covenant being that his children would be a blessing to the world, that in his seed all of mankind would be redeemed. The Old Testament is a story of God pursuing a relationship with his chosen people and their continual refusal to be in relationship with Him.

God’s covenant with Israel was two-fold, first, the promise that a Messiah will rise up to redeem the people of Israel, and then all of Man(kind). Jews first and then the Gentile. And secondly, this Messiah would put Man back in relationship with God. God now lives in our hearts, as opposed to living in the tabernacle. The new Testament is about this Atonement (God making amends with his creation).

Enter in Jesus. The Messiah that came to fulfill the promise of a redeemer and satisfy our hope of right relationship. Israel thought the Messiah would be their Redeemer in a military sense, that the Messiah would pay back the Romans for the wrongs done in Israel’s captivity. But they missed out on the whole story. Jesus did not come to deliver political freedom, rather he came to deliver freedom from sins, pain, grief and guilt. He came to bring the Kingdom here, amidst the pain and suffering, for blessed are weak for theirs is the Kingdom of God. Jesus was human and God, he felt pain and suffered much, as the Son of Man he carried the pain of this world and died for the sins of Man.

Ok, now that we have framed the story, we can look at the question of why does God allow pain and suffering. Humanity is only as beautiful as its creator, and in creating humanity God displayed his perfection. A human being has a choice each moment of each day: to create or destroy, love or hate, cry or laugh. He created beings that had to choose to love him, choose to be in relationship with him.

Pain and suffering are a byproduct of our choices, but so are love a forgiveness, peace and joy! Of course God does not want us to suffer for he is not a vindictive God, but He cannot simply take away all our pain, because it is out of pain that we learn. A child learns that fire is hot by moving her hand toward the heat of the flame until there is discomfort and pain. If your child’s hands were cold, would you (a loving parent) shield them from the warmth of the fire because of the flame’s capacity for pain? No. And neither could a loving God shield us from the capacity of this world. For in this broken world there is beauty to be seen, laughter to be heard, love to be felt, and life to be shared with our Father, who wants an intimate relationship with us, through joy and sorrow.

Question 1 - What makes church healthy?

Question 2 - Describe any experiences you’ve had at a healthy church?

Question 3 - Is Western Christianity doing its job? If yes, why? If no, what could be done?



I don’t think Western Christianity is doing its job…. I could cite book after book, survey after survey of why the Church is failing. Even in the failure, God continues to use a flawed system to do miraculous things for His Kingdom, but we mustn’t use this excuse to ignore the problem.



Right now we have 3 different era’s alive and contributing to society, the Boomers, Busters and Mosaics… In the next twenty years we are going to see a big drop in Church tithing, as the Boomer are the biggest givers (who have financed most Church growth in the last 50 years). The Buster’s and the Mosaics choose to give their tithes to other sources, namely social and environmental causes. If nothing changes, the Church will lose its funding and therefore lose its ability to present the programs it has built into the “Church Experience” we are witnessing today. Sorry, there is no citations here… but most of this is readily available in George Barna’s book “Revolution;” “The Millennium Matrix” by Rex Miller; “Irresistible Revolution” by Shane Claiborne; and “Everything Must Change” by Brian McLaren; just to name a few of the authors talking this lingo…

So, what can be done?! It seems that the biggest obstacle of the Church is to transition from program based Church to missional based church. A big challenge when faced with the gap in communication styles between the Boomers and the Mosaics. Only a few pastors I have talked to are in tune with this cultural transition, and there is major dissonance in their opinions on how Church should respond. Some chose to ditch the boomers entirely and focus on missional style church, while others can’t quit the money stream and remain focused on maintaining the status quo, even as the status quo dies off. It is a fascinating time to be in vocational ministry, that is for sure!



My prayer is that the church, in whatever form, chooses to be committed to community and finds a mission to take part in (not only to give money to, but to also get their hands dirty in). The Kingdom of God is here and now and I want to be apart of refocusing minds not on a building of stone and clay, but on proclaiming the foundation of Christ.

Just like community, the church is best when there is a missional focus. This missional attitude is the sticky part of community, it is the glue that holds relationships in place. Everyone needs two things in life to be fulfilled: Affirmation (love) and a sense that they are contributing to something meaningful (being an integral part of the whole). Therefore, it would make sense that a community of believers who have decided to join the work of God in this world, would choose to attach themselves to a mission of sorts whether it is the poor, the homeless, the addicted, or international students, Africa, orphans, special needs, wells for africa, the mocha club, et cetera… The healthiest, churches are ones in which their lives are centered not around themselves but around a greater need.

That is what Jesus has called us to be: Missionaries to the world, no matter where we live, sleep and eat.

Just a little preface. The following is mostly my opinion, (answers to a friend questions about the health of church) though it is based in scriptures, theological/social/biblical) commentary and experience; it is not absolute. God is moving in many different forms of Church and we can not say that there is one form of church that is perfect, (even though I may say one is better than the rest… it is far from perfection). Also, it depends on who we are ministering to, boomers (1940-1965) and early buster’s (1965-1975) prefer presentation (program based church), while late busters (1975-1985) and mosaics (1985+), prefer more of a convergent, missional church.

Also, many people are fearful of confronting the institution of Church, because they fear being called a heretic for their questioning… but as many wise people have said, it is in questioning and seeking that we find truth! Besides a heretic is only someone who questions Orthodox belief… there was a time when Galileo was a heretic for believing the earth was round (sidenote: flat-earthers still exist)

So with that preface I’ll begin answering a few questions on church health.

What makes church healthy?

A couple of definitions:

Church (capital C) - the institution of religious practice; the local congregation; the denominations; the buildings; mainline and evangelical; basically Western Churchdom.

church (small c) - the bride of Christ; the body of Christ; a community of believers; not relating to a building, sect, or denomination.

I suppose you are asking what makes the Church healthy, being the local congregation or the institution of religion we call Church. If we are looking at the Church in this way, we must first identify the hierarchy of the current system of Church, mainline or evangelical (it is mostly the same). They are formed in the likeness of a corporation, with a CEO (pastor), Board of Directors (staff, deacons and elders) and shareholders (the congregation). This hierarchical system can be a expansive and powerful machine, or a small-time, mom and pop shop. Either way the goal is the same to preach a message that is related to truth, but not too truthful as to upset the shareholders (which provide the operating budget).

This is a tricky proposition, as the CEO has two masters to appease, one of preaching Christ Crucified and the other of paying off the note on the new million dollar sanctuary.

Now I am being a little facetious… as many churches across this great nation are doing great things in the name of the Lord, with flat screen TV’s in the sanctuary, multi-million dollar facilities and smoke machines for the praise band.

It is not necessarily the form of church I prefer, but again God is using it in a mighty way.

Now, the health of these organizations is reflective of the leadership’s capacity. The leader is the lid - and no organization/ministry can grow past the capacities of it’s leader. If a leader empowers his/her people, as a true servant-leader, much can be done in the name of the Lord. But if the leader is unwilling to give up control and leads as a tyrant (yes, even some pastors lead in this way), the church can not do much good.

Now it is true that God used an Ass, but that doesn’t mean we have to be Asses.

So health of a Church is a direct reflection of the leadership. Healthy-humble leadership = healthy-usable Church.

Dispatches from the Frontier of the American Church

If Chapter 1 was an introduction to all things emergent, than Chapter two begins the description of the emergent movement. A description that will not follow a normative account of who, what, when, where, and why? As the emergent crowd is “a tough group to pin down.”¹ Tony does a formidable job in defining and shaping our framing story as he introduces the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Modern age and finally Postmodernism. A framing story that will help to shift the reader’s current paradigm from his/her T.R.E.E.² to a broader view of the forest. This dialogue will shake those who cannot see the forest for the trees.

Postmodernism - That which comes after, and in reaction to, the modern. Although the definition of the term varies widely from discipline to discipline, it often entails a revival of older styles and methods, and abandonment of sharp differences between fields of knowledge, and a flattening of former hierarchies.³

In getting us to see the bigger picture… Tony can then ascribe the problems of the church today as a mirror of the church during the Reformation. A church marred with bureaucracy, institutionalism and dogma… attributes that take away from the message of the gospel, primarily the affiliation with Christ and his teachings.

And with the church in disrepair and the added information age, many christians were confronted with radical pluralism… a condition that our parents were protected from with limited contact to other cultures and views.

Dispatch 3 - The gospel is like lava: no matter how much crust has formed over it, it will always find a weak point and burst through.⁴

A protection that the Internet has torn through and flooded our current social context, with the onset of globalization, postmodernity, and the beginnings of a very pluralistic society. Tony gives three choices for humanity: secularization, fundamentalism/ethnocentrism, and postmodernism.

Very cool thoughts, and more than I want to write about here… but suffice to say it brings to mind and explains a lot of our dissonance in our society, of fundamentalist christians, postmodern thinkers, and the constant flux of those who call themselves emergent.

Dispatch 4 - The emergent phenomenon began in the late 1990s when a group of Christian leaders began a conversation about how postmodernism was affecting the faith.⁵

My thoughts:
It is always good to contextualize the history of the postmodern/emergent movement, as I have been apprehensive to label myself as an “emergent blogger” for fear of aligning myself with heresy… but the more I become aware of the ideas and frustrations of those in the emergent movement the more I realize my heresy and my alignment with the movement. Much like Professor Scot McKnight of Jesus Creed, who never intentionally became an emergent spokesperson, but through his blogs about what he was teaching and thinking through, became a leader in the underground revolution. Tony notes the book, “A New Kind of Christian” by Brian McLaren was a rallying cry to many disenchanted or disillusioned evangelicals… and I can attest this is entirely true.

When I read the book in late 2003, it began a spiritual journey that carried me away from a stagnant ministry and a stale spirituality, into a more full relationship with God and others. It was, to me, a saving rope in a pit of despair, depression and despondency. In 2003, I was working a ministry that I could no longer stand, being measured in number of conversions and re-dedications, rather than in conversations and encouragements… I was speaking 3-4 times a week, to kids across Northeast Oklahoma, who didn’t “get it” and were filling their time with sports, alcohol, sex, and church. Saying a prayer whenever the speaker made them feel guilty, or saving their outward rebellion until their freshman year at University… where they could escape the judgmental glares of their youthworkers, teachers and parents.

For me it wasn’t working. And this book, allowed a spark of hope to bring me out of near agnosticism, into a a new world of intellectual thought, revolutionary action and a community of love. And now five years later, I sit, very much blessed and challenged to help a new generation move into a new christian movement, characterized not by church affiliation, but by community transformation.

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1. The New Christians by Tony Jones, p. 35
2. T.R.E.E. - your personal Tradition, Reason, Experience and Emotion, that dictates how you act, live, think and respond to life around you, especially in the context of religion/doctrine/theology
3. The New Christians by Tony Jones, p. 35
4. Ibid, p. 36.
5. Ibid, p. 41.

I just received, The New Christians, Dispatches from the Emergent Frontier a new book by Tony Jones. I am anxious to see where Tony takes us in his new book. I am sure of two things:

1. He will use a lot of big words, which means I will have to have my dashboard dictionary widget up and running.

2. He will be provocative (and probably heretical… but remember heresy is just contrary thinking to Orthodox belief… Galileo was a heretic until Orthodox belief changed it’s stance).

As many of you may know, this subject is of special interest to me because of my stance on the normal Sunday church experience, of which I usually skip out on and instead opt for a long bike ride, a camping trip, a fly-fishing trip, or just a relaxing (lazy) Sunday morning.

Adam Martin (a great friend of mine, who was not the originator of this quote) says that, “He would rather be fishing and thinking about God than sitting in a pew, thinking about fishing.” This from a Wrangler wearing Catholic who loves Jesus.

So in my anticipation, I have a few thoughts.

1. Yes, God works in all sorts of ways, using all sorts of people, circumstances, and things… but did he really intend for us to wake up on Sunday mornings, drive to a building, sing songs, greet one another, sit, listen, pray, and leave? I am not trying to be divisive, but kind of… Have we mistaken an emotional response to a church program as a “movement of God” in our lives?

2. If it is a movement of God, why the dissonance in attitudes and the apathy in response? As soon as the car exits the parking lot, the good feeling begins to wane and we are left with something much like an addicts response… when can I get that feeling again?

3. Why isn’t emotionally driven religion fulfilling? Why do I have to keep going back to church to bask in the presence of God? Why can’t God be with me all day, refilling my cup, guiding my steps and driving me to joy?

4. Re-reading the above is a bit depressing, as I don’t want to sound like Debby Downer… who constantly chides the church for being something it isn’t. Namely God. But I say all this because I have been part of a community that is the church, without the label of church. I’ve seen a body of believers rally around a cause, love people and affect change. I’ve witnessed the balance of the body of Christ, where one is weak another is strong. And the reason I get so damned incensed is because I know what many are missing out on… True fellowship is not potluck Sunday, but rather River Clean-up Saturday… that true fellowship happens around an action of love.

Ok, enough. Tony may not even delve into any of the topics I just ranted on… but the thoughts still ping-pong through my mind… I do not think I am bitter at the Church, though some have accused me of such. I am more frustrated than bitter… And I long for a change from the self-serving program to the self-sacrificing service.

Here is a cool thing… this company is adding members and when the membership gets big enough [20,000] they will begin production and become a bonafide sustainable clothing company… check it out here:

[WARNING: Too many uses of the root word "blog" in the following]

Over the next few months I will be blogging on a few blogs, one of which is blogging through “Everything Must Change” a book by Brian McLaren. It can be found here:

I am working on a follow-up article to “What is Truth?” on:

I think I will also be adding in on submergent.org but it will be a link from blogs already posted on my site, you can find those and other articles here:

In other news I am reading, “A Letter to America” by current University of Oklahoma President David Boren, he tackles issues relating to the upcoming Presidential election, as well as the political apathy found in a majority of young Americans. It was a quick read and he had a lot of good things to say on Campaign Finance Reform, Education, and the War. He was not only critical but offered suggestions and solutions to the problems of today. I am probably going to go to his book signing and discussion at Full Circle Book Store on February 29th and see if I can pick his brain on a couple of issues.Also, I’m going to NYC this weekend. Should be fun, as it will be my first time in the Big Apple, I’m mos def gonna wear my cowboy boots. Cool.

What does Truth?

In a conversation with a man I respect and have sat under as a learner, a subject was broached that continues to bother me. Not in a he’s wrong, I’m right sort of way, but in an unsettled dissonance. We had this conversation in graduate school when my class was studying (more like being lectured on… there was no discussion) Dispensationalism, an eschatology [study of the end times] that uses segments of time [dispensations of time] to determine the outcome of the end of the world.

He said,

“Yes, there are other interpretations [read: opinions] of the end times but the reason I ascribed to dispensationalism is because dispensational eschatology determines the ecclesiology [doctrine of the church] I practice.”

I was at first stricken with an, “Ok, I can agree with that,” sentiment… but as I chewed on the statement I became increasingly unsettled. Questions began to arise in my mind… Questions like:

Does my lack of an certain eschatological view influence how I do church? And should that matter…?

What are the different views of end-times? And what church doctrine follows these different/competing views?

Have we founded our practice of church [our ecclesiology] on pillars of opinion, rather than on Jesus?

These questions have fueled a vicious appetite for knowledge on eschatology, on doctrine, and on Jesus… After a heavy dose of Dispensationalism in grad school, I skimmed around some Post-Millennialism and Amillennialism doctrine, and after this confusing foray I decided to balance the scales and dig into the Gospels, reading and re-reading in different formats, translations, and paraphrases what Jesus had to say on the “end of the world.” In the search I hung on Jesus’ commentary on the Kingdom of God, of which Scot McKnight of Jesus Creed has been hovering over for the last few months. And Brian McLaren seems to come back to in all his articles and books [see his article, “A Reading of John 14:6” and his book, “The Secret Message of Jesus”]. It seems this topic is central to the dissonance found in the eschatological debate.

The Kingdom of God, which most Dispensationalist offer as the ‘coming Kingdom,’ seems to be more than we have been brought up to know.

We being most Westernized Protestant Christians.

In dispensationalism the ‘coming King’ is central to the story of tribulation, doomsday economics (wars, famine, one-world government, et cetera) and the final judgment. Of which the ‘coming King’ rides in on a white stallion with a sword of truth cutting down the enemies of truth… staining the ground with blood and covering his robe with the evidence of disobedience.

If this interpretation is true, Jesus is a dichotomist in his ways. How can he die on a cross for us (the sinner) taking with him the burden of sin, only to come back and murder all who have not spoken his name in a prayer. He comes first to love the prostitute, the tax collector and the sinner and second to kill them…? It just doesn’t fit.

I have struggled with this duality for some time and may not be any closer to an answer, but I can tell you that my ecclesiology will not be influenced by a “death threat theology.”

It seems that we have shrunken our view of Jesus, and bloated our view on ourselves.

This bloating has created with it a very self-centered gospel message, focusing on the eternal fate of our soul rather than the present state of our neighbor. In this vein it is easy to ignore the social, environmental and political atrocities that are happening around the world an even in our suburban backyards. This ignorance drives Duane Clinker to realize that,

“specific evil action is not required to wipe out vast sections of humanity, but simple apathy.”¹

It is easy and self-serving to go to church every Sunday, sing feel good songs and listen to a program on “life to the full!” It is hard and self-sacrificing to go to a homeless shelter, a prison, an orphanage, or a neighbor and share with them the love of God; loving hands of service, loving words of encouragement, loving loaves of bread, and loving clothes for the head.

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1. Duane Clinker, Social Holiness; unpublished manuscript, found in “Everything Must Change” by Brian McLaren, pg. 244.