The Enyarts

In Hebrews 10:24-25, we have the only direct encouragement for people to gather: "And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another." We must realize that this was not a plea for people to get their lazy fannies out of bed, put their Sunday paper down, postpone their family trip out to the lake, put on their Sunday best, and get to church. It was an encouragement for early Christians who feared for their lives, who were hiding in dark alleys, who were seeing their friends killed, and who weren't gathering because of great persecution. It was a plea for people to defy their fears and draw together with others who were living life in the margins of society, who were on a common mission, and who were in desperate need of being encouraged by the stories of others whose lives were in peril because of the gospel. People were naturally dispersed because of mission, and the gathering was their way to hear the faithful stories of others.

p168 "The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community" (Halter & Smay; Jossey-Bass, 2008)

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God's offer to us to share his blessing with others is how we find our deepest sense of personal meaning and satisfaction. Jesus said it this way: "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and the gospel will save it" (Mark 8:35). This wasn't a call to drudgery and painful sacrifice as much as it was Jesus' way of saying, "Sir, catch a clue. If you really want to have a blast, then free up some time and money and go bring a smile to someone's face. Relieve someone's pressure. Surprise someone with a gift." Jesus mentions blessing as giving sight to the blind, captives being set free, debts being paid off, food for the hungry, friends for the lonely, meaningful employment for the discouraged and self-doubting, rest for the weary, and anything else that could be felt or touched on terra firma. The Tangible Kingdom! Blessing wasn't just nice things you said to make people forget about their problems. It was actually doing something about their problems.

p142-143, "The Tangible Kingdom: Creating Incarnational Community" (Halter & Smay; Jossey-Bass, 2008)

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…everyone starts pressing the few young couples in the church to procreate so there will be babies in the nursery.

…people want to know the plans for the new program to get the neighborhood kids “in the church.”

…when a person needs some money, you respond, “The benevolance committee isn’t here right now.”

…you’re afraid of small groups in homes because you don’t know how to collect the offering.

Continue reading "Your church might be Institutional if…" »

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I'm two chapters in to a new book, "Adventures in Missing the Point: How the Culture Controlled Church Neutered the Gospel." Editorial review: There is a stirring among churchgoers. Many are looking at how the Christian faith is being played out, wondering if somehow we’re missing the point. What if there is more to our faith than just getting our souls into heaven? What if there is a power in the gospel that’s been kept under lock and key because of our culture-controlled church? If we placed our beliefs and their origins under the microscope, what would we see?

So there’s the ancient Jewish way of missing the point (thinking salvation is only about politics in the here and now) and the modern Christian way of missing the point (thinking salvation is only about escaping hell after you die). There’s another approach: that salvation means being rescued from fruitless ways of life here and now, to share in God’s saving love for all creation, in an adventure called the kingdom of God, the point of which you definitely don’t want to miss. Plus, of course, the wonderful gift of assurance that you will not perish after this life, but will be forever with the Lord.

Continue reading "parable of the race" »

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Activists Face Legal Challenges for Feeding the Homeless

From GOD'S politics a blog by Jim Wallis & friends by Alan Clapsaddle 03-10-2009

Jim Wallis wrote a great post last week entitled “Potluck Perspective.” Unfortunately, sharing food with ‘the least of these’ is again drawing the ire of those uncomfortable looking at those dealing with homeless and poverty.

Continue reading "Prosecuting the Potluckers" »

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from Defining Missional by Alan Hirsch

The word is everywhere, but where did it come from and what does it really mean?

It has become increasingly difficult to open a ministry book or attend a church conference and not be accosted by the word missional. A quick search on Google uncovers the presence of "missional communities," "missional leaders," "missional worship," even "missional seating," and "missional coffee." Today, everyone wants to be missional. Can you think of a single pastor who is proudly anti-missional?

Continue reading "rediscovering our missional calling" »

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A few years back, Emily Sagor’s extended family got bored with the practice of drawing names from a hat and giving a token gift to that aunt or this cousin. “It was somewhat unfulfilling because you would ask what they wanted, then buy that thing,” says Emily.

The new ritual is much more popular. In September or October, nominations are collected for charities about which family members care deeply. Each person who nominates a charity explains what it does. Then the family votes and the winning charity is announced. Checks flow to Emily’s aunt, who writes one big check to the organization in the name of the whole family.

Emily says the “winning” charities have included a hospice that sent a volunteer “to help my grandmother’s last few months of life.” This new holiday gift-giving strategy has produced some unexpected rewards: “Each year, we end up not only learning about organizations that are worth our attention, but we also learn more about each other and what matters to each of us,” explains Emily.

Cox, M. (2008). New Strategy for Charitable Gifts. Whose Birthday is it, Anyway? Ideas for a Christ-Centered Holiday 2008, 25.

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from www.cpjustice.org/content/election-series-no-8

McCain, Obama, and America’s Two Exodus Stories

There are deeper currents carrying the presidential campaign toward Election Day. We aren’t necessarily conscious of them when we listen to the debates, the stump speeches, and the results of daily tracking polls, but they are there in a big way.

Continue reading "the exodus narrative(s) and the election" »

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“The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.

"I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you."

–Genesis 12:1-3 (NIV)

from http://onlywonder.com/2008/10/10/wilderness-opportunities/#comment-920

The call of Abram in the book of Genesis has always fascinated me. Here was a man who was firmly established in his world, a gentleman rancher up in the north country, with no special attributes, who is suddenly and without warming yanked from his security into a different way of being. While it is certainly possible that Abram had already been a nomadic herder, the story that we have in scripture presents him as a settler, one of those who had given up being on the move to focus on the acquisition of property. And then, Yahweh comes along and says “Your blessing isn’t in being settled, but rather being on the move.

Continue reading "Wilderness Opportunities" »

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too many of us have our identities wrapped up in the measurable outcomes of our work rather than in the life-giving love of the Christ we proclaim

Continue reading "great is thy effectiveness?" »

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from: http://www.cjcphoto.com/can/

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars—all in the same day.

Continue reading "can" »

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I stumbled upon this article last week and Sunday had the opportunity to hear the author speak.

The primary focus of the magazine article is "Worship As Evangelism," however it veers off into the unchurched and current trends in the American church.

Some of the pieces that resonated with me were:
• what churches need to have is a strong consistent presence in the community, rather than a culture of “it’s all about us”
• churches distracting their members from the world outside (rather than connecting to it)
• churches being “for the perfect. The already arrived. The good-looking, inoffensive, and nice. No wonder the unchurched aren’t interested.”
• let our deepened, honest worship be the overflow of what God does through us beyond our walls
• some newfangled worship service isn’t going to save the church, and it isn’t going to build God’s kingdom
• convinced that the primary meeting place with our unchurched friends is now outside the church building
• transform our congregations from destinations to conversations, from services to service, and from organizations to organisms
• can the W-word [worship] be saved? Saved from the definition that it’s just what goes on inside the tent? From the lie that worship is a place you go, not what you do or who you are?
• Jesus did not make the building—or corporate worship—the destination. His destination was the people God wanted to touch, and those were, with few exceptions, people who wouldn’t have spent much time in holy places

Continue reading "thoughts on church" »

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A missional church is incarnational: Rather than creating holy places inside the church building it penetrates people where they already are. Rather than invite people in, a missional church goes out.

Continue reading "experiencing the gospel" »

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We like things boxed. Cereal, candy, soap, gifts, and corpses. They seem safe when boxed, as are we. As is God and other potential dangers. So we sleep in a box, awake in a box, shower in a box, refrigerate food, store knives, drive to work, work for hours, where we stare each day at boxes, in boxed lives. Boxed-in we live. Through boxed windows we look out, in. God, once boxed, broke out, broke free. But we keep pushing God back, our Jack, popping out on cue, to music, though it’s not fair. Nests have birds. Dens have foxes. God will have none of our small boxes. God is free, and we are too.

From: The Last Word and the Word after That: A Tale of Faith, Doubt, and a New Kind of Christianity, Brian D. McLaren, 2005

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Mystery. Paradox. Wonder. Awe. Call it what you want, but it is missing from most of our teaching and congregations.

Continue reading "mystery and paradox" »

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It is such a letdown to rise from the dead and have your friends not recognize you.

Continue reading "the principle of first mention" »

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To grab a few lines of Jesus and drop them down on someone 2,000 years later without first entering into the world in which they first appeared is lethal to the life and vitality and truth of the Bible.

Real people, in real places, at real times, writing and telling stories about their experiences and their growing understanding of who they are. This does not in any way discount the power of reading the Bible with no background knowledge at all, which is why these words are so powerful. We can enter into them at any level and they speak to us. Whether we are reading the Bible for the first time or standing in a field in Israel next to a historian and an archaeologist and a scholar, the Bible meets us where we are. That is what truth does.

Continue reading "the bible meets us where we are" »

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In the mid-1980s a missionary family serving overseas came home on furlough, needing a little R&R. Through the graciousness of friends, they’d been provided with the use of a summer home on a beautiful lake. For these tired, front-line warriors, it was like a piece of Eden.

One bright summer morning, Mom was in the kitchen fussing with the baby and preparing a lunch for the family. Dad was in the boathouse puttering with something that needed some puttering. And the three children present were out on the lawn between the home and the edge of the lake. Three-year-old “little Billy” was under the care of a five-year-old sister and a twelve-year-old cousin.

When Sister and Cousin became distracted with some mutual interest, little Billy decided it would be an opportune time to wander down to the water and check out that shiny little aluminum boat that had been bobbing so temptingly beside the dock. The trouble is, three-year-olds have limited experience in getting from a stable dock to a bobbing boat. With one foot on the dock and the other stretching toward the boat, Little Billy lost his balance and fell into five or six feet of water beside the dock.

Continue reading "just waitin’ for you, dad" »

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[lit-er-jee]
-noun, plural -gies
1. a form of public worship; ritual.
2. a collection of formularies for public worship.
3. a particular arrangement of services.

The word liturgy means something like the work of the saints. Every church is liturgical. Even if it is totally free flowing. Every church has its own kind of customs and traditions.

Continue reading "lit - ur - gy" »

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How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Continue reading "ben stein's last column..." »

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It was a crisp October day in 1555, a day that dawned like a thousand October mornings before, but a day destined to stand out among the thousands. Two men, refusing to recant their personal faith in Jesus Christ would die a terrible death that morning. They would be burned at the stake.
What crossed their minds, that fine autumn day, as these two men walked out the doors of dreary Bocardo Prison and into the sunlight of their last moments on earth? We can't know all their thoughts, yet we have more than stones in the pavement to mark their passing.
We have a few words as well.
We know that as they approached the stake, Hugh Latimer turned to Nicholas Ridley and said, "Be of good cheer, Ridley. Play the man! We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace...as I trust shall never be put out."

Continue reading "latimer's last stand" »

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