Category Archives: off-the-map

Strange flipflop

12 Monday Nov 2007

Posted by in Brian McLaren, Jim Henderson, off-the-map

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

I just got back from Off the Map Live (Hear, Listen, Connect) and soon I’ll upload my photos of the event. Many have commented on what felt strange about seeing so many different kinds of people gathering to talk about Jesus and what following him should look like.

But that wasn’t the strangest thing to me. What has always seemed stranger to me, coming from more of a peace-church background, is the strange flip-flop across history that followers of Christ made as they flipflopped from oppressed Christians to a powerful Christianism. The Christian community in the first century was outside, and in many ways opposed to, the power-struggles and values of the society of its day — both Jewish and Roman. Yet the Christians were culturally relevant — they understood the weighty issues of the day, and respected and honored their hearers. Even the way Paul dealt with pagans and gnostics, by asking Timothy to remain there in Ephesus and engage them in clear but patient dialog, shows that the focus was not on power but on persuasive ideas.

What the early Christians offered was intensely interesting to virtually every segment of society. Kings and governors had to hear from them because so many people were violently opposed to their teachings, and the recent events in Jerusalem had gotten the notice of leaders throughout the civilized world. Christians were a pain to leaders, partly because they did not fear the only real powers the State could muster: economic sanctions or lethal force. They also acknowledged a higher order; they held the dictates of their own conscience and the heavenly realm above as being higher in authority than the secular state.

Today, the Christian community has made a strange flipflop. Yes, we still acknowledge the spiritual order and our own conscience as above the secular state. But Christianism seems to me to actually place secular issues above spiritual ones. Case in point, the strange flipflop of Pat Robertson to endorse Rudy Giuliani. Or the advocacy of a Mormon by others who claim to be guided by the Bible. Not that different, really, from the actions of most putative Christian leaders since the days of Constantine.

I think if we look at the large picture we see that what claims to be Christ’s kingdom has chosen to intertwine itself with the world system, and attempt to use money and political processes to gain access to the wheels of power. Instead of its historical, first century identification with the poor and oppressed, Christianism is today the preferred religion of many powerful, educated people.

Today the preservation of the environment is more likely to be advocated by atheists and agnostics than by Christians. The rights of oppressed people are more likely to be championed by secular or irreligious voices than by Christians. For me, the climate at Off The Map Live was a quite refreshing contrast to that trend.

Brian McLaren – Final talk on Saturday: "A Revolution in Kindness"

11 Saturday Nov 2006

Posted by in Brian McLaren, off-the-map, revolutionconference

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

,

Brian McLaren’s final speech was simply outstanding — here are my notes, expanded by my recollections a bit….

Brian: I believe the deepest question facing all Christians — the nagging question, is “is God really kind?”

The Bible helps us and also makes this more difficult for us to answer.
For example, Romans one tells us that God shows wrath toward sin. But in Romans 2 it opens with “THEREFORE you have no excuse, everyone of you who passes judgment, for in that which you judge another, you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. … But do you suppose this, O man, when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same {yourself,} that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?”

We show contempt for the riches we have been given when we condemn others.
God’s kindness is intended to lead to us to repentance.

We see another example of this — the kindness of God — in Mark 2.
In Mark’s version of the story, we read how Jesus reacted to the hard-heartedness of the scribes and Pharisees. Jesus was, as we described at the beginning of the conference, “flipping the script”. They were worried about observing the sabbath — but as the four men held up the paralytic man, with his shriveled arm above their heads, he asked them, “Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven’; or to say, ‘Get up, and pick up your pallet and walk’??
“But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”–He said to the paralytic, ‘I say to you, get up, pick up your pallet and go home.'” Mark notices that Jesus looked around at them in anger, and saw the hardness of their hearts. We’re told that from that moment the Pharisees and the Herodians went out and made a pact to kill Jesus. Now, these were sworn enemies — and yet they were so deeply opposed to Jesus that these enemies became united in violence and hatred toward Jesus.

Now, if we believe that Jesus is the exact representation of the Father — that in him dwells the image of the invisible God, that if we have seen Jesus we have seen the Father; if we believe as I do, that in him dwells the fulness of deity, then we should carefully look at what made Jesus angry, because that will show us what makes the Father angry.

What makes Jesus angry — is a lack of kindness..

[Here was a paralytic, weak and deformed since birth, and these religious people didn’t care about that– they were not kind. — They were focused on their doctrine of what can be done on the sabbath.]

Kindness is a friendly, generous, warm-hearted concern for others. And the etymology is that it comes from the way we relate to those who are most like us.
God is kind to people who are different, and so the challenge of the Christian church has always been to learn to break down walls and treat as kindred, or with kindness, those who are different from us.

God is kind.

God is light.
And in God there is no darkness at all .
God doesn’t have a dark side.
I have to believe that God isn’t faking us out in Jesus — only to come back and hammer us later on.

Now, I’ve written a lot of books that are controversial, but the one book that I was sure would not be controversial at all has been the most controversial one yet: “A Generous Orthodoxy” (laughter) — Now, in there I wrote that some people’s religious tradition breeds out a sense of humor.

So I believe we need to reintegrate the idea of God’s kindness, and our own need to express and experience kindness — into our views of doctrine. We use the term orthodoxy — it means correct opinion.. It’s a good concept — having the correct idea.

We also focus on orthoproxy — having the correct practice. This is good, too.

But when we go back to the original Christian creed it was very simple — that Jesus is Lord. He is our Supreme authority — when you have a question you go to Jesus first and foremost.

I believe we need an unwillingness to separate how we think and how we act — othodoxy and orthopraxy — from our feelings — how we belong to God .

This year in my travels I visited a seminary that was started by a man who later
ran off with another woman. I met his wife — and what do you suppose she felt God wanted her to do? She had decided to pick up where her husband had left off, and she was running the seminary.

She told me about orthopathy — having the right feelings.
She focused on joy, peace, compassion. That is what God enabled her to do. what God wanted her to do.

If there is a religion well positioned for growth in the world, it is Buddhism.

Buddhism focuses on orthopathy — an internal attitude of peace and compassion toward others.
Jesus practiced orthopathy. He saw the crowd and felt compassion toward them.
He brought kindness – a revolution of kindness — and this is the Revolution I felt it in these days. —

I saw it in Sunil’s story, of how social systems that teach us we are all different, teach us not to have compassion — kindness. [Sunil had said there is no word for “kindness” in the Indian language — because the caste system teaches that all are different — and that even in the lowest caste, the Untouchables, there are 68,000 levels so that no one can have commonality with anyone else.]

Yet Sunil believes the impossible can happen, and he’s making a difference through teaching people about kindness.

We learned about domestic violence — the corruption of the best things in all of us — and learned about challenging it through the simultaneous expression of compassion and anger —

My hope is that we will go from here with a revolution that Jesus started — not merely speaking for God — but living a revolution of kindness — like Jesus, who was so sure he was really reflecting the character and image of God that he was willing to die.

I’d like to close with a new song I have writeen, based on the poem by Teresa of Avila which says that Christ has no body on earth but ours no hands and feet on earth but ours; — no way to do things on earth but through us. [We then sang this new song– it was outstanding.]

Brian McLaren’s Opening Remarks, Friday Morning

05 Sunday Nov 2006

Posted by in Brian McLaren, off-the-map, revolutionconference

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

Brian spoke for a few moments to open up the conference and I was fiddling with my computer to get ready to take notes, but I remember one really valuable thing: he said “imagine that all the people have their names written down on a sheet, and the column on the left is the good guys, and the column on the right are the bad guys. What happens next? Some of those on the left, who know they are labeled Good, immediately begin to get proud. And some of those on the right, who know they are the bad ones, immediately begin to get humble. So the result is what we call “flipping the script” — turning it sideways. The reality is that the script keeps rotating, and there’s a constant flux and flow of people from the good side to the bad side, so that we can’t be sure who is good and who is not.” (that’s the essence of what he said)

Barna first Q&A

05 Sunday Nov 2006

Posted by in barna, George Barna, off-the-map, revolutionconference

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , ,

Q from former youth pastor — What about the scriptures that say that the body has pastors, elders, leaders, etc. How do we reconcile those with the Revolution which seems to be abandoing those kinds of forms?

[Kindig: my notes are sketchy here someone, either George or the questioner, talks about how a Wolfgang Simpson book, Houses that changed the world, changed his life. I think it was George who said this, and mentioned the 15 theses of the book, which you can read here:

Barna’s A: Submitting to elders — God has called people to play different roles — even in small relational groups, some emerge as leaders — it’s normative in small groups to have an individiual who leads.
This does not need to be heavy handed — but there is a gift of leadership — and the group must learn to recognize that.

Q — How do you find these people? How do you do your research?
Barna’s A: We get random samples — used to be, we worked in and got some of our samples in churches. Now, not much work in churches. Mostly we look at the culture at large — ask batteries of questions not just straight up questions about what they claim to believe and do, but look at all their beliefs and lifestyle decisions, and from their statements of belief sort by whether they are nominals , atheists, other faith groups, evangelicals, etc.
Typical samples are considered large in this kind of work — at least 1000 from acrosss the country. We have done special samplings of groups as large as 22,000.

Recently we’ve done a lot of research on what other forms of church have emerged — house, marketplace, ministries, cyberchurches, intentional — we’ve found them to be organic, growing slowly and spreading.

Q — What do you do if you’re a pastor but you feel like a revolutionary?

Barna’s A: The starting point is understanding what it is we’re trying to facilitate — look at issue of ongoing transformations — becoming more Christlike. This has nothing to do with activities,
more to do with relationships, personal passion, growth.

The pastor must think outside the “box” — the church building — and look at what takes place outside of the institutional church — the relational communities — and ask, “How can I facilitate these communities?”

[It’s very hard to break out of the standard ] “set in cement” ideas: show up, put money in plate, hire staff, be more efficient, create new programs, etc. — none of which Jesus died on the cross for.

Paradoxically, one of the elements that facilitates the Revolution…. is inefficiency!

Being out of control helps somehow to create opportunities for transformation to take place.

Barna Friday: Revolution Defined

03 Friday Nov 2006

Posted by in barna, Christian trends, George Barna, off-the-map, revolution, revolutionconference

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Here at the RevCon the first speaker was George Barna.

Here are my notes of his content, unnedited with my take…..>>>>>

Most Americans have always viewed the goal of life as ongoing shared experiences
We work to enjoy comfort and options and control in all facets of our lifee — including church.

Yes, there’s a revolution of faith — but it’s triggered by many other revolutions
[He enumerated several which are mostly obvious to all of us.]
Websters definition of Revolution: the repudiation and thorough replacement of an established system.
Or: A radical and persuasive change in society or social structures, systems, routines, or rules.

There are millions of devout followers of Christ who are repudiating the systems, routines, and rules of the institutional Christian church.

20 million people are involved in this revolution today.

For these “revolutionaries”:

1. God is their top priority
Many claim this, but the question is,
What are you REALLY committted to?

2. They want more of God in their lives, but are willing to do whatever it takes to get that.

3. They want to live their faith, not just understand and talk about it.

4. Their ultimate goal is not selfish, but having more of God in their lives.

In a nutshell, they are God Crazy.

Who are they?

a. Some have tried literally everything else in life — and come back to God via futility.

b. Some were pursuing God, had a profound experience, and couldn’t settle for anything less

c. Some had dormant faith, many churches, groups, activities, programs, and eventually found it meaningless … then came back and found God in more significant way

CRs (Christian Revolutionaries) have:

*No use whatsoever for churches that play political or religious games
*No use for churches that provide entertaining events rather than transformational whole-life experiences
*No use for church stewardship campaigns — which serve their own institutional building needs or salaries or power
*No use for churches that soft-sell sin to expand their institutional turf
*No use for pastors more concerned about their own popularity instead of truth
— who measure success by numbers of people, square footage, number on staff, money raised
*Decided that no longer should the church be expected raise their family spiritually
*Made a decision to not enroll children in spiritual babysitting instead of preparing for spiritual war
*Choose to leave places that promise Christian love but exemplify lifestyles that are indistinguishable from the world system.

The Revolution is about Transformational Christianity.

CRs are NOT rebels, but revolutionaries — an important distinction. CRs major on those elements that matter most to God. In taking a stand, they are simply choosing to honor God — to honor Him, not human institutions.

Church — little c institutional church — is what people made up to control processes.
As humans we’ve made that processs “holy” while losing the sense of what is truly sacred.

So they say, “let’s go back…”

Instead of thinking of worship as an event each week, choose to learn how to engage in worship every day

Learn that work, family, neighborhood contains daily opportunitites provided by God for each of us — to live out our lives as an act of worship

God made us to worship him, not manipulate people into salvation

God called us not so much to preach Jesus but to be Christ to the culture

It is more about caring than competing

More about being vulnerable and real in conversation than being right

CRs are embracing their own personal responsibility for growing — acknowledging that when they appear before God, they won’t be able to say, “but my church let me down…”

CRs do not worry about tithing — money…. they don’t really own anything — everything was given them by God
CRs are portfolio managers for the kingdom of God, so to speak

CRs dont’ think about voluntaring some of their free time for “the Lord’s work”.

Instead, they are sensitive to the opportunities that God gives us every moment of every day

Not merely content to be a “member”…. but a participant in genuine community — even though smaller — they seek to love, care, support, accept … and experience a true sense of community

CRs recognize that it’s not a chruches job to raise up their children. Friends, families, faith can help — but ultimately its our job

DIFFERENT LIFE

The journey of a CR [is unique?] each leads different life.
[Common thread?] a growing sense of dissatisfaction;
… a search for greater authenticity…insight…. leads each one to the foot of the Cross.

They find it,
they get excited,
they go back to their conventional church and explain to their leaders what excitement they’ve found —
and the leaders typically patted them on the back and and said, “get plugged in”
“we are the professionals — fit yourself into our structure” —

DIFFERENT MODELS

But now, being transformed people, they can’t sustain their engagement in that system any longer.
So they extricate themselves — sometimes from anger — which becomes a spiritual issue they must deal with.
But in [working through] their isolation, frustration, irritation, eventually they lead completely different lives.

Now, their moral perspectives are different.
The way they view money is different.
Their belief system is different.

When you look at the many denominations of the institutional church, there are few actual differences [in belief or personal character traits] across denominations.

With CRs, there are significant differences:
During the time of their Investigation and initiating of spiritual transformation, they got involved in something in a more meaningful way.
Often, they tested new forms or structures.
Frequently when they made those connections, they joined spiritual minimovements:
homeschooling, spiritual discussions or study groups, parenting groups, parachurch ministries, prayer groups, networks… Each was a shared affinity anchored around their faith.

It was through that web that they began to be transformed —

Many of those individual connections are morphing into new forms of the church.

In the Bible — “church” is a called out people — who came together to love each other.

New forms, that ignore the non-biblical traditions: cyberchurches, intentional,
3rd place, marketplace ministries, house churches.

DIFFERENT IMPACT

These different forms have a different impact on culture.

Reshaping contours — In Year 2000, 65% – 75% have their spiritual main point of contact through conventional church

by 2025 — only 30-35% will rely on conventional church.
Where will the rest be? in the alternatives now springing up: house churches, cyber churches, independent worship, marketplace and parachurch ministries, etc.

People are taking their faith out of sanctuaries and into the world.

The essence is not about changing methodologies — style of music, titles of people who run, methods of teaching or preaching…
that’s not what revolution is about
Nor is it about allowing greater freedom.

It’s not even about allowing emerging generations to develop their own styles, or new leaders, or new places/venues to meet.

The Revolution IS about facilitating transformation through an intimate relationship with God —
a holistic approach — the top priority in life — not about going to church, but about BEING the church — because that’s what we’re called to be.

I don’t really have the authority to do this but… anyway…. I’d like to invite you to be part of this Revolution!

>>> End of George Barna’s morning message notes