People all over the world today have witnessed the second coming. With joy and eagerness they stepped out of their homes and gathered in the centers of the major world cities. Each and every person was in search of what they were told had arrived and was awaiting their presence. I am referring to nothing other than arrival of the 2nd generation 3G iPhone from Apple.

Why I am I talking about Apple here? Because in our culture today no company inspires more passionate customer loyalty than the Cupertino, CA based computer giant. In fact they have often been referred to as the Cult of Apple. But why such rabid response to a device you pay up front for and monthly after that? Why are people so engrossed with and tied into the hype? The answer is twofold.

If you have ever used an Apple product they absolutely kill every other product out there when it comes to the user experience and product design. They are arguably the best people out there when it comes to understanding what their customers want and then giving it to them in a polished and slick package. The second reason is communication. If you have ever watched Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO work a stage you have witnessed one of the best communicators of our day. There is no one better and whipping a crowd into a controlled frenzy. Additionally the minimalist advertising they employ generates positive buzz. But why talk about that here? How does that apply?

You may believe I am going to say that our churches have to be more like Apple; that we have to ‘attract’ more people to our churches like Apple does. Or maybe you believe I am going to say we need better communication that whips people into a frenzy; that we need to have slick marketing that gets into the minds of those outside of the church. But actually I do not want to support any of that. I want instead to focus on our blind consumption of that paradigm as somehow applicable to the Body of Christ.

In the past we as the western evangelical church have attempted to become the big box stores of spiritual products. One stop shopping for all of your spiritual needs. We have spent millions of dollars attempting to create atmospheres in which people would want to enter into and browse our wares and solicit what the church could do for them. We looked at the success of companies like Apple and said we need to capture the essence that make their customers passionate about their products and services. We wanted to take that essence and transpose it into our churches.

What we forgot to take into account was the selfish nature of that essence, the self-interested lens with which those we ‘attracted’ would apply the gospel to their lives. Instead of watering the wheat: the spirit of exploration, sacrifice, and others-first we cultivated the weeds: self-interested fulfillment, and materialistic hunger. We have sullied our temples.

Just as Jesus turned over the money changers tables, and drove out those selling sacrificial animals from the courtyard; so today Jesus may well rally against and wish to drive out the economy of the modern evangelical church. The point being this; Christ removed the money changers and the sacrificial animal sellers because they effectively moved people away from God. They turned the experience of interacting with God into a product for materialistic consumption. It had become entirely possible to go to the temple, give your tithes, sacrifice your animals and never meet God. They had subverted the point of the temple by making the focus on the temple experience itself and not about the One who dwells there. We are laregely no different today.

In my mind Jesus would be running into every bookstore within a church and throwing the books out in the parking lot, he would run into the coffee bars destroying the latte machines with a baseball bat. The donuts would be flying through the air. The sacred memorial pews would be set on fire. Sound equipment and video equipment would be reduced to rubble. But without that how would we communicate?

Shouldn’t our communication be polished and professional, our delivery engaging and spectacular, our book insightful and empowering? I would argue that we tend to forget the spectacular nature of our message resides within the story of God, that we are but speakers connected to a source. The sparkle and polish is often meant more to impress people with our communication skills or the breadth of our budgets than to embody the narrative of the Missio Dei. This applies to our church marketing as well. Let me be clear I am not advocating sloppy approaches to articulation of faith, but rather that all of our communication as churches must be fully Gospel, Kingdom of Heaven driven. The emphasis is not on our personal desires, but on our place within the greater story of God’s Kingdom.

At the end of the day attractional ecclesiology only serves to herd sheep from one field to another. To be missional we must reject the attractional model and embrace a different model and method. We have often thought of church in this sense:

–> 0 <–

Where the 0 = the church and all are headed into it. We must instead begin to think about church like this:

                                      /——\           /——-\           /—-\             
PERSON’s STORY: ——–0——–0——–0——–0——–0——0———-000000>
THE CHURCH:       ——-/           \——/            \——/         \———/

The body of Christ is a co-existing narrative that comes alongside people where they are already at and crosses their path, influencing their story and integrating with them. In this model we remove the concepts of church as destination and commercialization, and replace it with the flowing story of the Body of Christ. This takes the focus and pressure out of selling something that attracts people, and places the importance on leaving the church building to live alongside people where they already exist.

Now that I have torn down the walls, I want to tone back the rhetoric a bit. There is a place for media, for creating atmospheres for conversation and growth, for writing and being creative, for sharing what God has taught us, and for sharing food within our congregations. However we must re-orient all of it so that it is subject to the cross. Everything we do as the Bride of Christ must be done in such a way as that the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ takes prominence in all things. Unless it is telling the story of the Good News of the Kingdom of God, it is meaningless. Unless it is coming alongside people where they are at, it is meaningless. Unless it is reaching those that are not yet Christ’s followers it is meaningless. Unless it is focused on maturing those who have become Christ’s followers it is meaningless. But mostly if we are not cultivating mature Christian’s that go out to where the hurt and lost are at it is meaningless. In other words it is all about becoming part of the ongoing Mission of God. And that is a mission to grand and wondrous to be packaged, marketed, and sold.

If you use Google reader for you rss feeds you can check out the following Easter egg.

Load up Google reader and type the following familiar ‘cheat code’:

up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a

(BTW, those are the arrows up and down, etc.)

1.  I have been able to spend some great time with some close brothers in Christ lately.  Two of my closest friends have been in or through KC as they take their summer break from teaching at Korean Nazarene University.

2.  I have been able to dive into a few good books.

The Fidelity of Betrayal from Pete Rollins (I finished it about 2 weeks ago)
The Secret Message of Jesus from Brian McLaren  (currently on clearance for $3.59)
Emerging Churches from Gibbs/Bolger (If you want to understand the U.S./U.K emerging church movement from both an academic and a relatively impartial viewpoint there is no better book I have read.)

3.  I will be team-preaching Matthew 19:13-15 with Donnie August 3rd.  This passage is short but it is potent and deep in it’s hidden truth and implications on our lives as followers of Christ.  With two minds whirling on this it will be interesting to see how long it turns out and what we edit out…

It’s easy to think about forgiveness in terms of deserving it.  After all isn’t that what we do as humans?  Someone wrongs us, or we wrong them and next thing you know in order to repair that relationship we are making platitudes and peace offerings.  We are trying to show that we are a person that deserves to be forgiven through our actions.  It’s really easy to think in those terms.

Maybe another way to think about it is in terms of a doctor.  We go to the doctor not because we have first taken strides to become healthy, we go to doctors when we are at our worst.  The doctor’s only qualification for treating you is that you have something wrong, a hurt, an illness, a disease.  Doctors don’t ask you to try to get better, and then once you have done that come on in for a diagnoses.

The funny thing is that as humans we somehow have this idea that our Creator and Savior forgives like we forgive, conditionally and at a specific time.  Everyday we say to ourselves that we can’t be forgiven because we haven’t earned it yet; we haven’t gone through the platitudes and peace offerings.  In doing that we have not only shortchanged our freedom and forgiveness, we have actually done harm to the power of the Word in our lives by limiting that power to our conception of possibility.  What we need to understand is that in order to qualify for forgiveness the only requirement is that you need to be forgiven.  That’s it.  You do not have to pick yourself up, take some steps on your own to show your sincerity and maybe throw in a few self-deprecating statements in order to prove your worthiness for forgiveness.  This is because you don’t deserve forgiveness.  That sounds harsh, but it is the truth.  None of us deserve forgiveness.  What is it that we could do in the face of our Almighty to justify ourselves?  Forgiveness is not for those that deserve it, forgiveness is reserved solely for the undeserving, and the merit-less among us.

So then what is true forgiveness?  In western culture we have come to accept forgiveness as a timestamp and a bartered commodity.  Jesus died on the cross: timestamp.  We were forgiven by our spouse: timestamp.  We accepted the forgiveness of Christ: timestamp.  It’s like the ink punches of a notary on a document: timestamp.  You do this to show your sincerity and I will forgive you: commodity.  Forgiveness is not a timestamp any more than true friendship is a timestamp or commodity.  Friendships are narratives within our lives, stories we weave with our words, and actions in close community with another.  Forgiveness is like that; it is not something that simply happened at one time, and that was that.  Forgiveness, like friendship is a narrative.  Forgiveness is not a milestone in our life’s story, it is a living and transforming truth to be lived out and with.  The forgiveness of our Creator and Savior travels along side us and we interact with that forgiveness and become aware of it’s closeness or distance, much in the same way our friendships tend to ebb and flow from intimacy to dormancy and back again.

As Christ’s followers we must strive each day to maintain the intimacy of our Creator and Savior’s forgiveness.  Not out of fear that we will somehow lose it, that it would be pulled away from us, (It can’t).  But in the sense that when something is so good and beneficial to our story we must strive at all costs to keep it close to our hearts.  This forgiveness pulls us closer and closer towards Christ’s heart the more we live in it’s presence.  If we choose instead to pull away from the forgiveness, it is not that we have lost our forgiveness it is that we have denied it a place in our story and as such become subject to the natural course of that choice.

None of us deserve forgiveness, but it is there for all of us.  For some of us it is close and intimate, others of us it is elusive and distant because of the distractions and presuppositions we have placed on it.  Let me let you in on a secret today my friends.  You are already forgiven.  The Cross of Jesus Christ set forward a continual and living narrative of forgiveness to be lived in.  What are you going to do with that knowledge?

There are a lot of things brewing and rumbling and rolling around in my brain these days.  So much of my thought processes have been tied up in my Day-to-Day bread winning job that while my ideas for blog content are maturing and growing they are not at the forefront of my thought processes and as such I will hold back a bit longer.

My day to day job?  I work as a "Reporting and Analysis Professional."  When I tell people my job title they often have no idea what that entails….  Let my try a short answer.  In every organization, and especially large corporations, there are vast amounts of data being produced in the day to day running of the business.  Most of the data being produced can provide a company with an overall idea of it’s performance when aggregated and organized by topic and trended over time.  That is what a chart is.  A group of similar data measured (aggregated) via criteria and then placed in a timeline to tell a story of how that particular area of the business is doing.  When a lot of these stories are pulled together and some meaning as to why a particular story is unfolding a certain way is added by an analyst it helps businesses make sense of how they are doing, what areas they are doing good, bad, or excellent in and then with those stories in mind move and change business policies and practices in such a way as to balance telling better and better stories with making a whole lot of money for investors.

This whole idea is worthwhile contingent upon the collective understanding that a number is a number, that 1 + 1 = 2.  Objective and certain truth in our story is essential to the process of ascertaining where we have been and where we are going.  I have been pushed mentally recently to do some new and exciting things for the company I work for.  I have been asked to tell them a story, whether good or ill, that they have never heard before.  Crafting this story has taken a lot of my work time, my total brain capacity, and stretched my skills, knowledge, and ability as it relates to being able to tell this story.  The danger personally I have found in these last few weeks is that this is often how I have attempted to approach the story of my faith.

In the past I have attempted to tell the story of my faith empirically.  I was A then I added B and A + B = C.  I have come to realize that faith can not be expressed in mathematical formulas, trended growth algorithms, or scientific reductions and distanced objective observations.  Faith instead must be expressed and told within it’s own language, within it’s own realm of thought.  As an author Peter Rollins notes, "we have given faith over to the academics."  Previously I wanted to create a chart for you from 1978 to today and each day would list the number of and types of sin committed.  I wanted to show you the story of a life where sin has become less and less a part of it.  However I am coming to realize that when I focus on that as my story I have reduced my faith to a number with no transcendent meaning and my God to a Descartes inspired idol.

It is important to remember that God is not an academic science, but the transcendent author of science itself.

I do not have an answer today, but how do I begin to frame a story of faith in it’s own language?

If you click on it it will show you a larger scale version.

Very cool site.

I think the western church has completely missed the point when it comes to the Kingdom of Heaven.  We have pretty much fallen off the tracks when it comes to our interpretation of the Kingdom language of Jesus Christ and it’s implications on the here and now.   The problem is two-fold: we push all the work back on Jesus, and we have a past/future complex.

I say we have a past/future complex in that we are so focused on the historical Jesus and the apocalyptic/returning Jesus.  There is a corporate temptation among Christians to downplay our place in the history of God’s Kingdom because Jesus doesn’t happen to be walking physically amongst us.  There are way too many Christians hanging out at the glory airplane gate waiting for a ticket punch.  The Bible isn’t all there was, is and is to come.  I am not saying that in a ‘Latter Day Saint’s’ way.  I am saying that in a Great Commission way.  This thing we are doing together, this life, these relationships we have are all as paramount to the story of God’s work in this world as the missionary travels of Paul, or the parting of the Red Sea.  We are all on Holy ground and living in a holy time of God’s renewal of all of creation.

I say we push the work back on Jesus because when it comes to bringing people into relationship with God we would rather get them to say a ’sinners prayer’ then take the time it actually takes to get to know and do life with someone, growing closer to God together.  These wam-bam-thank-you-mam ‘conversions’ in which a Christian proselytizer sweeps in at a time of emotional weakness and then up and leaves a person high and dry afterwards while making another tick in their Bible is nothing more than spiritual abuse.  We have created a collective Christian mind-set that all problems for all people are instantaneously healed in the name of Jesus with no effort of the individual or community for sustainable spiritual growth.  To top that off when people aren’t instantly healed or released we unwittingly lump guilt and sorrow on them for having a weak faith.  That my friends is not the Kingdom of Heaven at work.

All that to say this my friends.   What does this time of holy faith journey mean for you?  How are you participating in and taking ownership and partnership in the Kingdom that is being revealed even now?

ESV:
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope, 2 To Timothy, my true child in the faith: Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

NASB:
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus according to the commandment of God our Savior, and of Christ Jesus, who is our hope, 2 To Timothy, my true child in the faith: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.

NLT:
1 This letter is from Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, appointed by the command of God our Savior and Christ Jesus, who gives us hope. 2 I am writing to Timothy, my true son in the faith. May God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord give you grace, mercy, and peace.

~

Language observations:
This letter strikes a balance between the personal and familiar tone of friends with a more formal tone stressing the importance of the content to be revealed.

Historical/Cultural observations:
While Paul did not have any of his own children, he saw Timothy as his spiritual child. (Perhaps spiritual heir as well?) This seems natural, Timothy having been a convert of Paul’s and traveling companion, student, and ministry compatriot.

Contextual Observations:
This is the greeting and introduction to a letter in which Paul advocates some pastoral housekeeping and general encouragement of Timothy who now leads the church in Ephesus. The end of the second verse highlights some of the leadership qualities (grace, mercy, peace) most needed to do the work Paul lays out for Timothy in the rest of the letter.

Theological Observations:
Paul has thoroughly embraced his calling as an apostle of Christ Jesus, attributing it to the command of God. We are to operate as agents at the behest and calling of God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. Paul affirms the Jesus Christ is our hope; this applies to everyone. God is the source of grace, mercy and peace.

What do a white evangelical, a black man that has faith in God but a lot of questions and mistrust, and a Mormon of Asian descent have in common?  The answer is a neighborhood in Gardner Kansas.  Tonight the Kingdom of Heaven took the form of a beautiful conversation and time spent together in community.  The wife and son were at a friends house, so I took advantage and got out of the house and into the back yard I share with my neighbor.

Sitting on my neighbors back porch as he grilled some chops and a steak we talked about our backgrounds and stories, we shared space and conversation together.  We built community and netted together a few more of the strands of trust that strengthen us all here on the outskirts of KC.

My brothers and sisters, we are all flesh and blood.  There is so much money and time spent on proving who is right and owns capital T truth to the damnation of charity.  So much hate is bread in the guise of truth and love.  Hate that prevents and burns the bridges that all of us so desperately need to be building and strengthening.  Who is going to save our souls my brothers and sisters?  Who will save us when we have taken the ‘Good News’ and built walls of scorn and hedges of mistrust with it?  Lord have mercy on us.  Who will be the missionaries to a misguided church that runs roughshod over the lives of those whose faith is small, and fragile?

Tonight three men with totally different experiences, and paradigms found truth and agreement not in logical arguments and apologetics, but instead through man to man and brother to brother openness.  If that isn’t the Kingdom of Heaven emerging what else could it have been?

~Preface

This will be the first entry in a series centered around Timothy.  I am speaking of 1st and 2nd Timothy of the New Testament.  I want to explore the relationship between Timothy and the author of the letters, Paul.  I will also wrestle with the themes presented within the text.  I have no clear direction or goal, other than to go where the text takes me.

~Who was Timothy?

Who was Timothy and what was the context in which he lived?  At the time the letters were written to Timothy he was a pastor/evangelist of the Christian church in Ephesus.  Ephesus was a regional capital of the Roman empire.  It was located in the western part of modern day Turkey.  The Roman governor stationed there oversaw the western part of Asia Minor.  The population of Ephesus ranged between 400,000 and 500,000 inhabitants by the year 100, which was a few decades after which scholars estimate the letters had been written to Timothy.  At or near it’s peak of prosperity, Ephesus was a great city of the Roman world in the time of Timothy.  Ephesus was famous for the Temple of Artemis (one of the seven wonders of the ancient world).   The cult of Artemis was a very vocal group within the city.  In one account from the book of Acts the metalworkers around the temple of Artemis rioted because they felt threatened by the preaching of Paul during his two to three year long stay in the city.  Ephesus was also home to a Jewish community, whom Paul originally taught upon arrival in the city.  It is against this backdrop that the Christians of Ephesus lived.

Timothy was the son of a Jewish mother Eunice and Greek father.  Historically not much else is known of Timothy, other than he was most likely a convert of Paul’s and they formed a fast mentorship/friendship/father and son bond.  Together with Paul, Timothy helped plant churches and journeyed with Paul.  It is also of note that in order to be a better witness to the Jews he had himself circumcised.  Church tradition hold’s that he stayed and worked in Ephesus until he was martyred.

The letters to Timothy discuss church leadership roles, perseverance in faith,  boldness of spirit.  Paul is hoping to encourage and lift up Timothy as he ministers.  First Timothy covers some contentious topics as it relates to the role of women in the leadership of the church.

[1] Wikipedia - 1 Timothy
[2] Wikipedia - Ephesus#Roman Period

If you have read Scot McKnight’s A Community Called Atonement he asserts that it is both okay and realistic to use a wide array of atonement theories depending on context and application; whether ransom, substitutionary, Christus Victor, etc.

I have been mulling these last days and weeks about the implications of this approach to hermeneutics. I think as a church we have tended to limit our approaches metaphorically when it comes to hermeneutic approach. We tend to favor certain clubs or a club to the aversion of other approaches. I am not quite sure about the un-wavering authority of these approaches. I think it is important that we also begin to develop and explore new and challenging metaphors that speak to us today and to future generations.

As a bit of background on the evolution of hermeneutics I wanted to lay out some of those methods by which past generations have sought to interpret and understand scripture. The church has progressed through the years and we have travelled through various hermeneutical ages: (gleaned from Wikipedia)

• Apostolic and Sub-apostolic hermeneutics: Focuses on Messianic prophecy fulfillment.

• Alexandrian: Focuses on Allegorical meaning.

• Antiochine: Focuses on Literal and Historical meaning.

• Medieval: A Four-fold approach that allowed for multi-layered study.
  • Literal: What the text states or reports directly.
  • Allegorical: Exploring the symbolic meaning as it relates to doctrine.
  • Sensus Moralis: The moral application of the text to the reader/hearer.
  • Sensus Anagogicus: The secret or metaphysical and eschatological knowledge.
  • Renaissance & Enlightenment: Secular and humanist in tone, also historical and critical in approach. This era also sought to interpret the bible as a response to broader historical and social forces.
• Modern Approaches:
  • Lexical-syntactical: A grammatical approach to understanding the meaning of a passage.
  • Historical/cultural: Understanding the history and the culture of the authors.
  • Contextual: Using a verse within it’s broader passage.
  • Theological: Using all of the contexts in which a topic is spoken about for a broader understanding.
  • Special Literary: Each genre of Scripture has a different set of rules that apply to it.
• Roman Catholic:
  • Historico-grammatical: Understanding scripture through knowledge of the language, customs, culture, and context of the passage.
  • Catholic: The Catholic church is the supreme guide of interpretation. No teaching can be in variance with official catholic doctrine.
  • Inerrancy: Scripture can contain no error, no self-contradiction, nothing contrary to science or history.
  • Patristics: The Holy Fathers are of supreme authority when they all interpret scripture in unanimity.
• Trajectory: Parts of the Bible can have progressive, different meanings as a culture unfolds, advances, and matures.

I believe trajectory hermeneutics can be beneficial in some interpretations, specifically as it relates to our current understanding about the treatment of minorities, and women. But I think maybe we could all agree it’s not the best ‘club’ for all situations.  However thinking even beyond trajectory hermeneutics what are the other contexts and metaphors that will be developed as our cultures and societies change and morph in this age of transition? What golf-clubs are we not playing with from the past we should reconsider? What golf-clubs haven’t been invented yet, or are hidden deep in a research and development facility? Will our understanding and skills for Biblical interpretation stagnate or evolve?

I am not a fast reader…  Right now I have about 9 books I have started, and I read a bit at a time, but it’s so stinking hard to finish one.  I do tend to use the chapter headings and read what I think I will find most interesting.

How do you approach books?  Is it one book at a time start to finish?  Is it like me with a bunch of books a little at a time?  How do you read, and further learn from what you are reading?  What works for you?

Too much input means It’s hard to focus on the stuff you want to on the internet.  So…..

I snipped 10 podcasts out of iTunes.

I trimmed about 20 blogs out of Google reader (Down to 23 now)

Like Bono I still haven’t found what I’m looking for (when it comes to the Internet that is).  I want something that will keep tabs on all of the web but filter via very specific criteria.  I want to be able to get an entire days worth of content from the Internet condensed into a 30 minute power session each day, no more than that.

So here are my podcasts in no particular order:

• Forefront Church
• The Guild
• MacBreak Weekly
• Mahalo Daily
• Mars Hill Bible Church
• MidAmerica Nazarene University Chapel
• Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me.
• Scam School
• Tekzilla
• This American Life
• This Week in Tech

And My Blogs, in alphabet soup order:

• A Place for the God-Hungry
• Chris Rice
• Derin Beechner
• Elena Willey
• Emergent Nazarenes
• Emergent Village
• Faith Dance
• Fides Quaerens Intellectum
• Holiness Reeducation
• Humble Future
• Indigenous Stranger
• Jesus Creed
• Kruse Kronicle
• LonnieMack
• One Church Planter’s Journey
• The Ooze
• Peter Rollins
• Random Reflections - Greg Boyd
• Reclaiming the Mission
• Tall Skinny Kiwi
• Urban Monk

Still a long list….  but this will save me probably a good 15 minutes a day and sometimes more.  If anyone knows of a really good web-based utility for narrowing down to and only showing specified web-content this would be a life-saver for me.  If only Google Reader had saved searches with a backend setup like technorati’s blog database and search system (google blog search is horrible.)