cairns

Today’s email announces a series of upcoming sermons on stewardship of one’s assets and one’s self.  It asserts that is what we are here for, ‘to make a difference.’  Tempting as that is to agree with, I disagree.  As stated in the Westminster confession, we are here to love God.

It hit a chord as I have been considering the need for a community, a second career, a pulpit.  Then I read Howard Baker’s the one true thing, and was reminded that what we need is God.  We are created for relationship with God, to know Him more, love Him more, and then to be transformed into the likeness of His Son by that love.  Will good works result? James leaves little doubt.  But, they are not our primary need or purpose.  God is.

I do not need silence for silence, but because it invites me out of the clutter to a fuller awareness of my ever present God.  I do not need community for community’s sake alone, but because it echoes the community in the Triune Godhead and helps to bring me more fully into His likeness.  I do not need any earthly thing.  I need more of God.

I am sure the church thinks my wife and I are financial tight wads where contributions to the local congregation are measured in dollars.  Every dime we can afford to send out, goes directly into missions and the field of service.  Only a small amount makes it into the local plate.  I suggest they apply the same verses to themselves that they do to missionaries and raise their salaries from their friends and families. OK, that was hateful, at least a little bit, but they are doing fine without my dime and the missionaries cannot always say the same.  I know that what my missionary friends and their children truly need is God as well.  So do they.  They gave me the book.  But there is something miraculous about the way God uses us to be God to each other when our focus is God alone.

The traditional tithe was ten percent, this summer the session on Islam I attended said a percent of what you have left over is enough.  I guess if the emphasis is stewardship those kind of conversations make some sort of sense.  But, raise the stakes to discipleship and the whole picture changes.  The only acceptable percentage is 100.  Nothing short of all I am seeking all of God, (realizing the origin is in God and the end is in God), will do.

peace

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Well, if that Schaeffer piece didn’t get any responses, I don’t know what will!  LOL

Talked to another teacher in Evansville this week asking when my book would be out.  He was very complimentary remembering what we developed first at Helfrich Park for the at risk kids and then at Christa during the years when we had bosses who would let us seek alternatives that truly work.  I told him the idea I previously posted here, and he said, “I want that book.”  Guess I better start writing it!

peace

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I don’t belong there.  Not with them.  They with their McCain for Jesus mentality, they with their business is godliness methodology, they with there the church can borrow but you stay out of debt to help pay for it paradox…

Still, Sunday alone is a sad as a Kris Kristopherson song.  The day of fellowship spent with Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth, and company rolling around my screen just doesn’t prepare me for the coming week.  Even working in my yard, cleaning up storm damage in awe, just does not fulfill.

I am meant to be in community somewhere.  I have to seek it out, or accept my very broken one.  I am old and no longer a lone wolf willing to prowl the world alone.

peace

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This is lifted directly from an article by Frankie on the Huffington Post.  All I can say is Amen!  If this strikes any chord at all, check out the whole article!

Conclusion
The Republican problem is a systemic disparagement of government, community, faith in our institutions, family, God’s creation and the mitigating institutions that put a check on something any party aligned with a religious movement should know all about: sin. Greed is not the only problem. Human weakness and stupidity (i.e., “sin”) is the problem! And the genius of the American system is supposedly that we have a system of checks and balances to mitigate our fallen state. You have destroyed those checks and balances.

Bush felt no guilt about promoting completely unqualified people to high posts merely on the basis of social, ideological or political connections. I’ll take that a step further: I don’t think Bush ever wanted the government to work. You Republicans hate our government as bitterly as our terrorist enemies do. You have been trying to deconstruct it. Since the government is seen as the enemy of freedom by you, if it doesn’t work so much the better!

We have met the enemy and he is us! When Islamists tried to destroy our country by flying planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Towers, we rightly called them terrorists. When the Republicans in the Congress and the White House set about destroying our country, our standing in the world, our military and our economy, but much more effectively, you called them statesmen. It is time for all Americans — including all you who are patriotic Republicans — to sweep away these putrid earth-consuming, family killing, government bashing “me” worshipping individualistic fools–that or to watch our country be swept away by them. We can’t afford eight more years of this willful ignorance. Obama in 2008!

Frank Schaeffer

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/an-open-letter-to-all-rep_b_127709.html

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Introduced my little fourth graders to the wonderful world of creating Math expressions today.  We really did have fun and they are asking me to take them into more algebra than required by the end of the year!  But, as they worked on their independent assignments, the chorus began.  “Dr. Brown, I’m having trouble with…I don’t understand number…what are they asking me for on number…Dr. Brown what about number…”  And of course the same problem numbers were repeated endlessly as each child finally got ready for that item on tehir own paper.  It didn’t matter that I had already explained that problem six times, it didn’t become important until it was their next problem.

It made me picture Jesus and the disciples walking along the road with similar questions repeated over and over.  That was a happy thought.  I like to think of my little charges as God seed capable of becoming great in spite of their current growing points.

Then it reminded me of the church’s explanation for a recent personnel decision, “We determined over time that there just wasn’t the correct skill set match for the position we had hired the person to do.”  I will spare everyone the tirade about what discredited part of old business theory that fits and how it allows good people to treat other human beings as disposable cogs.  But, what about Jesus and that crowd of 12?

What skill set could he possibly have used to select these guys?  Hot tempers? Dense beyond belief in the face of continuous teaching and miraculous demonstrations?  Selfish ambition and greed?  They certainly deomnstrated all of these things.  And, I just cannot picture Him sitting them down and saying, “I am so happy you left family and home to follow me, but I have determined that you just do not have the skill set appropriate for changing the world.  I am going to have to let you go.  But, please stay true to the ministry and continue to folk how wonderful we are!”

No, He knew something greater and beyond.  He knew Himself, the Father, and the Spirit.  And He saw these slow learning, competitive, friends as they would be when transformed by the effect of the divine invasion into their lives.  Skill set, no, eternal heavenly power all His and given in order to transform those He chose into the great Ones He had created them to be.

I want to teach and lead like that!  WIth all thanks to Jesus (and Blackaby), “What is the Father doing in this life?  How do I partner with that?  What is the unbelievable potential of this person beyond my obvious and temporal observations?”  Let it be and to God be the glory!

peace

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I have turned back on the function that requires people to register before they can leave comments in order to reduce spam coming in to the site.  If you know me and seem to have trouble getting it to work, just email.  Those already leaving comments should be able to continue if I understand the mechanics correctly.

peace

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According to Wes Stafford of Compassion International the US spends more annually on trash bags than almost half of the world’s countries spend on everything!

Sure hope we have enough cheap gas to get to the dump!

peace

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I have known since I was an undergrad in the 70’s that utopia is a word play on “now here” vs “no where.”  This is always true in efforts at creating community, and no place truer than in the church.  For my part, I expect more from the church.  I expect you to function on a different level than my worldly associates.  I expect you to forgive my own shortcomings more readily than my worldly associates.  So there is always a tension between what we desire to be, what we are, and what we are willing to accept in each other.

In my current decision process my pastor friend seeks to remind me that we are called to reconciliation with both God and man.  True enough.  But, that means I forgive your human frailty as I expect you to apply grace to mine.  It does not mean we are meant to stay together in the same community forever.  Some of the most influential communities in American history existed for a short time and then morphed into new forms and/or launched their members back into the general society.  Don Pitzer brilliantly calls it developmental communalism.  The church should be so lucky as to change, evolve, and allow individuals to do the same.

As I write this, I am mentally/spiritually/emotionally someplace between looking for a church, and abandoning the modern western church as having very little in common with what Jesus, or the apostles, were talking about.  But then, I am a little short on handing out grace right now.  I salute K for finding a meaningful home in the Catholic Church, B for finding a place with the deaf, Doc for rediscovering the local church after years of damage and distance, T for trying to call the next generation of leaders to totally new realities, and S for being real with me and even helping me hunt for a church while having no intention of going to one!

For the moment I can only sing Leonard Cohen,

“Even if it all goes wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my lips but Hallelujah.”

I know its “just” a love song, but that’s the point isn’t it, being able to find the hallelujah in the togetherness of our brokeness even if its time to let each other go.

peace

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and be the change we want in the world…

Would have to remember that thousands have tried to be the ones who finally “get it right” and avoid that trap.  There is no “next best thing” just ragamuffins stumbling along the way together.  Then, maybe just maybe, if we found a place to just get together in an accepting, healing, encouraging way…maybe…

peace

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Got a couple suggestions from T.  Any suggestions from anyone else?  I am looking for a place that can benefit from a mission oriented family with capacities to teach or even preach.

I am liberal according to conservative churches and conservative in a liberal setting.  I believe the evangel is about bringing people into the saving presence of Jesus Christ and allowing the miraculous love of God to work His will through Grace.  I do not believe the Republicans or the Democrats hold claim to godliness in any way that should allow one to critique anyone’s faith based on those affiliations.  I still believe in a real return of Jesus Christ to set up the completed Kingdom on Earth.  I also believe in the present Kingdom declared by Christ and often missed by Western versions of Christianity.  I believe that God calls us to participate in all parts of life — suffering and miracles, poverty and the abundant life in Him, Divine intervention and the desert of the soul.  So I also believe in a Christianity which allows each to grow, to walk, to live by the light they have been given with love and support rather than judgment and arbitrary markers of the successful Christian life.

If you know a place where such a nut can fit, clue me in.  I am looking.

peace

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