Tunisia, now Egypt - what's a Christian to do?

 The following weekly update from our friends at Shevet Achim (based in Jerusalem, with operations in Iraq, Jordan, Gaza, the West Bank, and Egypt), is another snapshot of how we can live honorably in troubled times: abroad, at home, and with our own souls. Jonathan Miles, the author, has lived for the last 20 years in Israel, Jordan and Egypt; originally as a journalist, but for many years now in this ministry.

 

Dear friends and coworkers, 

The big question behind this week's events in Egypt is whether religious extremists will come to power. My own feeling is that this is much less likely than it would have been seven years ago. 

The difference is seven years of indiscriminate bloodshed in the name of God, mostly in Iraq. What once claimed to be a righteous struggle of religious self-defense was soon enough exposed as butchery of innocent women, children, and anyone with a different theology. 

The difference also includes the events of 2009 in Iran. The religious government that started there with such high hopes after the 1979 revolution showed it would oppress its people with far more brutality than the Egyptian regime could ever muster. 

Most human beings made in the image of God cannot help but recoil in disgust from all this violence, no matter what their religious leaders are telling them. It's not easy to give voice to this sentiment in the Middle East, but I believe that large numbers of decent folks are burning out on religion. Praise God!
Stirring in me is the desire to simply and clearly speak a true word from God into this situation. Just one verse from one of John's letters, for example, cuts right to the heart: 

 If someone says, "I love God," and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?"

Would you pray with me for insight into how we can speak out this word in the Middle East, for ears that are increasingly ready to hear? 

And I'm grateful that God enables us to continue our practical work together, modeling how good it really can be when brothers do dwell together in unity ("Shevet Achim"). Eight families from northern Iraq are now with us for healing at the hands of Israeli doctors. Today we filed visa applications for the next three families that will come, including little Marwa shown here under echo in Iraq in November.

The shaking in the Middle East may rearrange things in ways that will surprise us. Let's not be afraid. The latter day vision of Isaiah 19 proclaims that Egypt in particular will be shaken as prelude to a regional revelation of the LORD. We're blessed to live in such interesting times.

Jonathan for the Shevet Achim community in Jerusalem 

Amen. John Carter, with the believers who see people's sins obscuring and confusing the beauty that God designed into them. For more on Shevet's work, see the previous blog post here, or their website here.
 

Risk your life? What for?

Forty-four years ago Gus Grissom died on the launch pad of Apollo I, killed in an oxygen fire with two other astronauts. A few weeks before the accident, he said:

"We’re in a risky business and we hope if anything happens to us, it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."

"...worth the risk of life." What's in your life that's worth risking and dying for? Whew...
 

Un-titlement

(excerpt from Between the Lines: Christianity for Misfit Christians)

"But don't you be called 'Rabbi,' for one is your Rabbi, the Messiah, and all of you are brothers. Call no man on the earth your father, for one is your Father, he who is in heaven. Neither be called masters, for one is your master, the Messiah. But he who is greatest among you will be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted."
– Matthew 23:8-12, WEB

We love titles. They're on nearly every business card you see. They're on nameplates, doors, marquees, and billboards. We love to see "M.S." or "director" or "certified" after our names or "pastor" or "president" or "doctor" in front. We proudly associate ourselves with the mighty-titled and rightly believe, based on long experience in the world around us, that titles entitle us to special treatment and honors. They confer identity and significance.

Titles are crap.

When I took the titles off my business card many years ago, a friend said, "You need to have them on there, because until people see them, they can't get past trying to figure out what you do." Absolutely true, and...

...exactly the point. I was tired of people assuming they knew who I was and what I did from the limited titles I operated under. So I jettisoned the titles; I became untitled (yes, I know that's not a privilege everyone has). I knew that it was initially anti-helpful in my marketing role to take that comfort-food title away from a customer. People actually had to watch me and think about me and my role to figure out what I did. The payback was in long-term flexibility to give the customer everything he needed. [1]

When two of his mathetai asked to be put in charge, Jesus told them that if they wanted to be great, they had to become slaves. Even he, the Rabboni, the great master and leader, didn't come to be served and honored, but to serve and be killed. [2]

There's no organization more in love with its titles than the military. Everyone expects to be called by their title ("Colonel, could I have a minute?") and everyone knows exactly where he stands in that hierarchy. Each rank has clearly delineated entitlements. For example, a Brigadier General expects a flag with a star on it, people to rise when he walks into the room, a driver, a certain-sized house and 100-2000 people who are "his." The title entitles. But a few men rise above their titles.

As a nurse in a WWII evacuation hospital, my mother saw soldiers from units all over North Africa and Italy. Troops have things to say about their officers, especially men recovering from grievous wounds and major surgeries. Seasoned troops know when they're badly led. They know when they're well led.

"I've got to get out of here! General Roosevelt needs me up at the front! Please!"

The funny thing is that organizationally, Roosevelt (the son of president Theodore Roosevelt) wasn't "the general;" he was the one-star assistant division commander. Not the two-star in charge. But the men wanted to, had to get back up to Roosevelt.

Roosevelt was the kind of man that other men wanted to follow. His uniform was usually rumpled. His memory for men, and their parents he'd known in WWI, was photographic. He spent enormous amounts of time at the front with his troops, seeing their war and sharing their food. He ultimately won a Medal of Honor for his leadership of his (and others') men through the confusion and terror of D-Day landings on Utah Beach.

His appearance was unimpressive. His health was poor, he walked with a cane even at age 50, and he died in the field shortly after D-Day of an un-heroic heart attack. But, "I've got to get back; General Roosevelt needs me!" is what my mother heard over and over across the sands of North Africa.
Perhaps he took to heart the words of a great captain from three centuries before: "You must love soldiers in order to understand them, and understand them in order to lead them."[61]

General Roosevelt had a star; he was "entitled." But he chose "un-titlement" instead of "entitlement." People know the difference.

You could say he "cleaned toilets" for his country. But in truth, he cleaned toilets for the men he loved.


Notes:
[1] At the W. L. Gore company, new associates not only choose their titles (if any; they're rare), they choose their positions by literally drifting around looking for where they think they fit. One lady whose customers kept wanting a title put a nice solution on her business cards: "Supreme Commander." Bill Gore smiled. Non-incidentally, Gore has virtually no hierarchical management.

[2] Sadly, they asked for promotions right after Jesus said, "I'm about to be killed." Where was the "Oh, my God! Oh, rabbi, please say it isn't so!" reaction? Matthew 20:20-28, Mark 10:35-45 and Luke 22:24-27 tell the whole story.

All those shoes...

A few years ago I went to Yad Vashem, "A place and a name," the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem. I'll never forget the Shoe Room: hundreds of empty shoes, all that remains of hundreds of Holocaust victims. Empty; lonely. There's the Hall of Remembrance, which is like a small, dark library with hundreds of black-bound 3-ring binders on the shelves. Each binder is filled with hundreds of pages; each page is filled with dozens of names, one per line.

It's the names. As many as have been found.

Germaine was 16 when Josef Mengele removed one of her ovaries in Block 10 of Auschwitz, the "medical experimentation" unit. As the air raid sirens wailed, he told the Jewish doctor to finish the job while he ran for cover. He made the incision, left the other ovary intact, and asked her to hide her cycle and name her firstborn after him.

She survived the war, returned to her hometown of Thessalonika, Greece, and married another survivor. Two pairs of shoes didn't go into the Shoe Room; two names didn't go in the Hall of Remembrance.

Sol(omon) Pitchon was born and named in 1946. You could say he's a survivor, too, since half of his DNA was in that camp, too. Another pair of shoes not in the Room; another name not in the Room.

They immigrated to Ohio, then moved to Clearwater, and raised their sons. Sol grew up, married, had children, became a workaholic, divorced, then met God and became a Christian in midlife. The Good News Bible became his intimate companion; he eventually remarried and came to lead New Life Solutions.

New Life has four elements:

• Prevent unmarried pregnancies through education
• Provide "I'm pregnant and single! Now what?" counsel to young women
• Help post-abortion women cope with silent grief in small support groups
• Give women a homelike birthing center with prenatal and infant/new mom support

I love the idea of having them all connected: prevent, advise, and support...for a lifetime.

I asked him why he does it. "Sol, there's a tragedy on every block. We're having a nice lunch just about a mile from a place that was just busted for human trafficking. Why you, and why this particular cause?"

"My parents survived one Holocaust. I see that we're living in the middle of another one. Florida performs 90,000 abortions every year; nationwide, it's a million a year. I wouldn't be here if a Jewish doctor hadn't risked his life for me before I was even conceived." (Author note: our national abortion rate is identical to Hitler's at its peak in 1944.)

"The other thing is, we bring Christ into this. I believe in evangelism; I was saved this way - a friend reached out to me, a secular Jew, and I got to know a little about Jesus. I learned that Jesus was Jewish! No one ever told me that before. Then after my divorce and depression, I found that I wanted God and the Bible. So, I think it's really important that God and his word be brought into every crisis we see."

Something had to be done. It's getting done because God is working night and day to bring good out of evil, death out of life. It's getting done because people are agreeing with God's word written by Moses in Deuteronomy: "This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Therefore, choose life, so that you and your children may live." Those words are written on the walls of the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.

I think about little shoes, unworn. I wonder, when we walk through the baby stores, do we remember the names? I think about women and men wearing a cloak of guilt and self-condemnation, who believe that they can't be much use to God or others. I think about my own adopted son; I wonder, is he ever haunted by the ghost of empty shoes instead of his own life, now with us for 23 years this coming Monday?

I think about those who are called to this ministry, quoted by Jesus from the prophet Isaiah: "...proclaim good news to the poor...bind up the brokenhearted...proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion - to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair."

Thank God for each one, every one, who does this. Pray for them, and peace for those they touch. And pray for the peace of Jerusalem, then and now, there and here.

Louie Giglio and Passion

He was a campus minister at Baylor, and the gatherings kept growing. He met and married Shelley. They moved to Atlanta and the Passion movement has been going and growing ever since.

If you haven't heard of these amazing gatherings for college students, you have almost certainly heard the music from them. Somehow, Louie gathered together three of the most influential worship artists in English-speaking Christendom today: Chris Tomlin, Matt Redman and David Crowder. Along with several other great talents; Nathan and Christy Nockels (formerly Watermark) and Charlie Hall, and several others.

A few of the late high-schoolers went to OneDay 2003 (music here), and couldn't stop raving for weeks. I truly believe that God showed up and changed 40,000 lives that day.

We went to Passion 06 (DVD here); it was a beautiful gathering of people and messages and worship. The event climaxed with the raising of a gigantic tapestry cube, made up of the graffiti walls we'd been marking on for the last four days. It was the greatest visual worship I've ever seen...thousands of written verses, testimonies, praises from students all over the country. Take a look at this, especially from 5:40 onwards.

Passion is all about "big," so everything goes that way. It isn't an intimate gathering. But as an exclamation point in your life, it's hard to beat. I'm so glad that Louie had a vision, and has pursued it all these years. Pray for Passion, and pray for all those who will yet be a part of this life-changing movement. And if you can make it? Go. Be ready to weep.

Be

I woke yesterday morning with two songs in my head that I hadn't heard in years, both from the soundtrack for Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1970): Be, and Lonely Looking Sky. The story and the songs are about a little seagull who loves flight for its own sake and beauty, not just as a means to get from here to there. Flight is in his heart; it's his joy. His delight isn't well received by the elders of the flock...but he persists, living out the hope in his heart. And inspiring our own along the way.

Leo Tolstoy wrote, "In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you." It's been said that we live in an age of human do-ing, not human beings. Like Tolstoy, Diamond sings that we might

Be
As a page that aches for a word
Which speaks on a theme that is timeless
While the Sun God will make for your day
Sing
As a song in search of a voice that is silent
And the one God will make for your way

And we dance
To a whispered voice
Overheard by the soul
Undertook by the heart
And you may know it
If you may know it

While the sand
Would become the stone
Which begat the spark
Turned to living bone
Holy, holy
Sanctus, sanctus

Be...


...who God says you are. For God's sake, for your sake, for our sake: stop, look, and listen.
 

Follow the Rabbi

Before we visited Israel the first time in 2001, we did a little homework so that we'd have some historical background. We used the video series, That the World May Know, by Ray van der Laan. Truly, the next best thing to being there. And the beginning of a revolution in how we see God through the words of the Bible and the cultures through which he spoke and wrote.

RVL - what his students call him - has a day job as a middle-school teacher. He's also a PhD and ordained minister in his Reformed church. But that isn't what makes him interesting. What makes him interesting is that he did his masters work at Hebrew University in Jerusalem with a classroom of about 30 other students, all of which were Israeli Orthodox Jews. (The guys with black hats, tassels, and so on.) He immersed himself in learning the history, customs and cultures of the peoples of the Bible. He learned the first day in class that everyone in there knew their scriptures far, far better than he did. And the teachings around them. Like, everyone else had memorized the entire Hebrew Bible, our Old Testament. RVL said, "I didn't know anything!"

Since then, I've heard him speak in person on three different occasions. He's a fantastic speaker, storyteller, teacher, and on and on. "Energetic" is a mild word for him. If you ever get the chance, go see him. Get a preview at his website, followtherabbi.com.

But I digress. Why should you find these videos, and the additional ones in the series, and watch them? (Lots of church libraries have them...) RVL opens his talks with two little parables.

So let's say that you and I are looking through two different windows, east and west, into the same room of a house that's for sale. I'll see my side of the furniture, rugs, and pictures on a couple of walls. I can describe the room from one vantage point. You, on the other hand, see different sides of things, different pictures on the walls. Which one of us is right? Well, both, kind of. The reality is more than either of us can fully realize.

RVL compares this to us having a Western (civilization) point of view in reading scripture: we expect it to be organized, chronological, logical, always literal, and so on like some kind of instruction book. But it was lived by and written by Eastern people: much more symbolic, storytelling, personal and context-sensitive.

His second story is comparing what you'd get if you told a Western-thinker and an Eastern-thinker to go study a frog. The Western thinker would catch a frog, take it apart to see what made it run, analyze it, document it, and bring you back a dissertation on frogs. The Eastern thinker would go to a swamp, observe frog behaviors like feeding, singing and reproduction, and also bring you back a dissertation on frogs. Both would be true and well-researched, but completely different. And believing you had the whole story from just one would be silly.

RVL opened an Eastern window on scripture that I had never seen before. Previously, all my thinking was limited to Western thinking, and it was desperately inadequate to understand God's word. To the point that I see American Christians misunderstanding and mis-teaching the Bible out of context all the time on TV, radio, pulpits, you name it. (By the way, Eastern-only thinking is also thoroughly inadequate. A semi-political illustration: look at some of the stuff going on in the Middle East; they could use a dose of Western thinking to balance their Eastern, in my opinion.) God said, "My ways are higher than your ways," and he really isn't kidding.

This guy's teaching - completely independent of any "church" program - has revolutionized the biblical understanding of many thousands of Christians. I'm so glad we decided to do some homework, back ten years ago. We're still enjoying the payoff, and wish everyone else could, too.

Good news about Family News

Rod Beck saw all sorts of small newspapers and magazines here in the Bay area. Where to party long and hard. Family mags. Alternative spirituality. Dog-of-the-month type newspapers.

In this area with four million people, there didn't seem to be a magazine or newspaper written from a Christian perspective. It bugged him; people weren't mute, or deaf, or generally illiterate, and they weren't short of good, interesting stories. Someone should do something!

He had a resume; publishing with Pensacola Christian College and another curriculum company, plus an MBA. He fussed about it to his wife (who else?) to the point that she said something like, "OK, you've complained long enough. It's time for you to do something about it. You want to; you can; you should."

He started Gulf Coast Family Magazine to give this area a publication for families - not really "about" Christians. About families. The premise is simple: families are interested in articles and advertising that will help them. And who isn't interested in some fun stuff, too? It reminds me of a segment CNN had way back in their early days, un-originally called "Good News." That's all it was: CNN recognized early on that a 24/7 drumbeat of essentially bad news, foreclosures, scandals, spills, and wars, needed some relief. Maybe they needed the relief. Maybe we all do.

Well, Rob's acquired a readership of about 70,000. Not bad for a market everyone else in the area walked away from. Maybe it didn't pay enough. I have no idea what Gulf Coast Family's finances look like. But if you count the feedback from people who've had their lives wonderfully changed by simple stories (even ads!) about living good lives, maybe it pays pretty well after all. (No, I'm not making up the drama here, the stories are for real - like the kids adopted via this medium. Go figure.)

Someone who thought that Good News was, well, good. Someone who chose to walk toward his dream, and found thousands of other "Good News" people. Bringing a little brightness into our county. Love it.

What's your dream?

Campus Crusade for Christ

I had a roommate in college who met Jesus late in our freshman year. When Mark and I set up the dorm room in Lever Hall in the fall, he was a brand-new Christian, full of Spiritual Laws with a sudden interest in music by Steve Green, Second Chapter of Acts, and Amy Grant. We got along just great, but we weren't in the same place spiritually. That would be because I was still lost, a lifelong churchgoer, but a stranger to God. But Mark was part of God's showing me who he was. I have fond memories.

Mark got saved through the ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC). Thirty years on, they're still sharing Jesus on campuses across the country. I sat down last week with John Schneider, the local CCC guy, with his wife Kerri, at the University of South Florida (USF).

I had no idea there were about 120,000 college students in the Tampa Bay area - USF, large as it is, only accounts for about 36,000 of them in campus classes.

(Pause here - I called Mark up last night and we talked for the first time in 25 years. Blink your eyes, and your kids are all grown up. Funny thing, he just last week was seriously thinking about contacting me and catching up. The same week I went to see John. Imagine that. Call it a kiss from God, to both of us. Good times.)

John and others in the CCC ministries live surrounded by people who are just about to be sent to places all around the world. (I hadn't quite thought of college as such, but it's a great image - this Old Faithful geyser that spews graduates everywhere on regular intervals.) So, "sending" is kind of a given in the whole ministry; give people the grounding in Christ and desire for more of Him that will carry them on into the multitude of places, careers and ministries before them.

I asked him why he and his wife, now in their twelfth year at USF, keep doing this. "The effect of Jesus on my life when I was in college was revolutionary...[and] God'll use these students to change the world."

I mentioned my friend Perry at Auburn Christian Fellowship (ACF), who says goodbye to a fourth of his friends every spring. (Campus ministry is really rewarding, but parts of it are really hard...) What's the hardest thing for John and Kerri? "Seeing all that potential in students, and sometimes it isn't surrendered to God. Really sad." Sometimes a student will meet Jesus, have a life-changing experience and then just...drift. It must feel like unfinished work, because CCC's whole idea is to help students encounter God, experience Him in relationship, and express their God-given gifts and passions the rest of their lives.

And the best part? Same thing, but the happy endings. They stay in touch with former students, who are all over the world now: married, single, in careers, parenting, in all sorts of walks and ministries.

What really makes my heart sing is seeing people living out their God-given dreams. Irenaeus said, "The glory of God is man fully alive." And when He leads people into and beyond their dreams, further than any of us ever foresaw...well, it's amazing.

Who would think that CCC, through Mark, would be part of my story 30 years ago, and then come back into it last week? That we would have come so far, and yet not grown further apart? Not me. I keep being surprised at God, which is a little silly. It's kinda what he does. What a treat when it happens, over and over again through the years

Pray for John, for Perry, for all the campus ministers. They need the prayer. We need the practice.

Versus human trafficking in the Bay area

Just last month, several people were busted for human trafficking at a restaurant we USED to go to. This one was labor trafficking, which is rampant in this area. (So is sex trafficking; vacation spot, etc.) Y’know, I’ve had a bad feeling about the working and living conditions for people in those Chinese buffets for a while, but hadn’t changed where I eat. Till now.

Only a few crazies would suggest that buying and selling human flesh is good. Most of us would agree that it's bad.  God's clear about honoring "the least, the last and the lost" among us, not exploiting them. But maybe we can move beyond crime-story and theological detachment on this topic, to the heart-conviction that it's truly evil. And worth our action and involvement.

First, a definition from urbanministry.org: "the sale, transport and profit from human beings who are forced to work for others -- is the modern equivalent of slavery. Against their will, millions of people around the world are forced to work for the profit of others, for example by begging, prostitution, involuntary servitude, working in sweatshops - even becoming child soldiers."

In May of 2009, Pinellas County Deputy Jeremy Lewis was one of several local law enforcement officers to catch the slavers in the act. He got the call in part because he could be a non-intimidating listener, which was what the terrified rape and slavery victim needed. She was a local girl, down on her luck, and picked up by someone who offered her a better life. Didn't work out that way.

So happened he had just taken a continuing-education course on trafficking, and could recognize what he was seeing, instead of just writing her off as another "willing prostitute." (Don't throw stuff at me - people say that kind of thing.) Good thing he took that course.

The reality was that she was raped, beaten, threatened with death, coerced into stripping and prostitution, and convinced that she had to maintain a "normal" mask in order to survive. The slavers also convinced her that they would kill her local-area family if she exposed their crimes. The first victory for authorities was to recognize that something wasn't right; the second was for her to lower the mask and reveal the terrified soul beneath.

Jeremy had worked his previous ten years in homicide, burglary and even a tour in the marine unit. He liked his job. But this one...this one was an “I was made for this” moment, where all his professional dreams and experience came together. In a funny way, this was work that made his heart sing. It still does.

There are many groups out there working to help the victims and prosecute the slavers. [1] Unfortunately, they don't always connect all that well. In a large metropolitan area like this one, a single case might have pieces in a dozen law-enforcement, victim-support and other non-governmental organizations. Gaps develop between jurisdictions, or priorities, or just plain "gee, I didn't know they could've done that."

By the way, the more slavers can complicate justice by moving people around and confusing things...you get it.  It's good business for them.

The International Association of Human Trafficking Investigators (IAHTI) was formed by Jeremy and another investigator, James McBride, to help bridge that information gap. They keep a who's-who database of people involved in fighting this evil. They also go around educating people about trafficking and how to fight it, prevent it and help its victims. Several area churches, to their great credit, have really gotten onboard with the anti-trafficking movement.

Here's a secular organization, IAHTI, partnering with Christians and non-Christians to fight this injustice. Beautiful. More power to 'em.

God is quite clear about how he loves justice, and even more clear about what worshiping him looks like. "For I the Lord love justice; I hate robbery and wrongdoing." (see Isaiah 58 & 61 for far more detail)

"Gentle Jesus" shreds the uber-churchy people: "I've had it with you! [...you give one-tenth of] every nickel and dime you get, but manage to find loopholes for getting around basic matters of justice and God's love. Careful bookkeeping is commendable, but the basics are required." (Luke 11:42, The Message translation)

If we want God’s light to shine, his fire to burn in the hearts of men and women, we have to carry that flame and light into the very darkest places. How else will they be lit? Why shine a flashlight in broad daylight?

The Christmas cards often say, “Wise men still seek him.” How Godlike; that he would call wise people from various places and many declarations of faith to carry out his intention to purchase and slowly repair every broken vessel. And carry out justice in the land, that we might live well in it.


[1] For example, three Christian groups doing anti-trafficking and victim recovery work are NightLight Atlanta, TraffickFree.org, and NotForSale.

Print version of book is now available on Amazon

Print version of my book is now online at Amazon! Kindle and other ebook versions in work...making progress, finally. I'm starting to think ebooks are cool after all...you can easily vary the text size, which is a wonderful feature for people with vision problems.

If you've read the downloadable version and want to comment, the Amazon site is open for business. Share your thoughts!

Lines everywhere. Any lines to see Jesus?

"Signs and lines" is the phrase I woke up with this morning. They kind of go together; the sign says you should go this way, join the queue, and the sign-makers will do something with you. I wrote about the "signs" part in the previous post here; now for the "lines" part.

The whole book title came to me a few months ago the same way; I woke with this vision of long lines of lookalike people at the doors of churches. They were doing the same thing, the same way, the same place - joylessly. Nothing wrong with routine, but joyless routine? That's what bugs me.

Y'see, there isn't anything joyless about life with Jesus except what people make up.  He's still our king, he's still God, he's still holy and hates our sins...none of which makes life with him a miserable drudge or a fearful cringe. He's all that, but Jesus is also the good brother, the good friend, the good Samaritan, the good God. (Look it up; it's all there in his gospels. Try starting here in John chapter 15.)

So I was thunderstruck yesterday when our friend Eliza sent us a video/song I'd never heard before. Have I been under a rock? I don't think so. It's a simple song about who and what we line up for. That's the line I want to be in. Except...it isn't even a line; he's right in front of each one of us. No waiting. Just one sign, with some really good news on it.

(Where's the line to see Jesus? by Becky Kelley)

(www.wheresthelinetoseejesus.com)

Christmas time was approaching

Snow was starting to fall

Shoppers choosing their presents

People filling the mall

Children waiting for Santa

With excitement and glee

A little boy tugged my sweater

Looked up and asked me

Where's the line to see Jesus?

Is He here at the store?

If Christmas time is His birthday

Why don't we see Him more?

As I stood in amazement

At this message profound

I looked down to thank him

He was no where around

The little boy at the mall

Might as well have had wings

As the tears filled my eyes

Thought I heard him sing

Where's the line to see Jesus?

Is He here at the store?

If Christmas time is His birthday

Why don't we see Him more?

Where's the line to see Jesus?

He was born for me

Santa Claus brought me presents

But Christ gave His life for me

In the blink of an eye

At the sound of His trump

We'll all stand in line at His throne

Every knee shall bow down

Every tongue will confess

That Jesus Christ is Lord

(Repeat Chorus)

Where's the line?

Where's the line?

Where's the line for the Lord?

Signs

(excerpted/edited from Between the Lines: Christianity for Misfit Christians)

And the sign said long haired freaky people need not apply...

And the sign said anybody caught trespassing would be shot on sight...

And the sign said everybody welcome, come in, kneel down and pray...

– Signs, Five Man Electrical Band, 1970

"…Messiah also is the head of the assembly, being himself the savior of the body."  – Ephesians 5:23b 

The word translated “church” 77 times in the Bible is the Greek word ekklesia (ek-lay-SEE-ah), which is ek (out) compounded with kaleo (call).  (Remember kaleo; he’ll be back later.)  Agora and paneguris as well as heorte, koinon, thiasos, sunagoge and sunago all mean groups of people.  What’s so special about ekklesia? 

Ekklesia meant a gathering of people.  When the people found their government officials to be crooken or misguided or just misrepresentative, they would literally meet outside the city boundaries to collectively talk things over.  If enough people came out and decided that a change of management was needed, they would return and effect that change.[i]  An ekklesia was what we might call a town hall meeting, but with a lot more bite than our usual Q&A sessions with elected leaders.

We who are Christians are called out from every thing to be part of some thing else.  Really, we are called to be part of some One else, a relationship. We are “called out” from where we are, “called together” to discover and strengthen our new relationships with God and each other, and “called back” (still together) to the world we came from.  “Called” from Ordinary lives to become an Extra-ordinary Body[ii] of Christ.

Who is “we?”  “We” are the ones who show up on a given moment for worship, for lunch, for coffee and bagels, for a sales meeting.  “We” are the subset in any given group, sacred or secular, who are his, lighted by him.  And “our” sign doesn’t really “belong” to us, but it really does say, “everybody welcome, come in, kneel down, and pray...” regardless of hair, trespass or membership.

 

 Signs (cover by Tesla)

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[i] See A Greek-English Lexicon, by R. Scott, and H.G. Liddell, p. 206; A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, by J. H. Thayer, , p. 196]; Synonyms of the New Testament, by R.C. Trench, 7th ed., pp. 1-2; and A Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, by Oskar Seyffert, , pp. 202-203.  http://www.hisholychurch.net/ekklesia.html

[ii] Romans 12:5, 1 Corinthians 12 (all).

Churches working together? Yep.

The Baptists do stuff together. (Really well, like in disaster relief.) The Catholics, ditto. The Methodists are perhaps famously ecumenical, reaching across all sorts of denominational and organizational lines. How about all the rest? Well...

I asked my friend Jeff, who's lived here for much of his life (and most of the rest in Central America), who was doing cool parachurch things in the Tampa Bay area. He mentioned Somebody Cares Tampa Bay, among others.

"Well, I've seen people try to draw churches together to do stuff my whole life, and generally it doesn't work. But some years ago, this guy Dan Bernard came in from 10 years on the mission field, which gave him a certain amount of street cred. Somehow, he got it to work."

So over lunch, my first question to Dan was, "How'd you do it?"

"Hard work and the Lord's favor."

I believe it.  Someone asked former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker what it was like to have his job. He replied, "Herding cats." (Sidebar:  fun cat herding video.) I've noticed that most things that cross organizational lines resemble herding cats. Especially where those lines include deep religious convictions. But you'll have a better shot at gathering a lot of cats if you plant some catnip. Or in this case, a word from the Lord and the Holy Spirit that moves Christians in all places and all times.

Dan, fresh off the mission field of Nigeria, heard the name "Ehud," from the Hebrew word for "Unity." It was his next assignment.

He started cold-calling pastors in the Clearwater area, finding those who would like to gather and pray together. A few became more, and after a while there were groups in St. Pete and Tampa, and a Unity Covenant, and cooperative work projects, and...you get the idea.

It looks like Dan went looking for common ground, and found it. The common ground tended to be serving others, which Jesus was pretty clear was a big deal. (Actually, the whole Bible is filled with that kind of thing.) God showed the people at SCTB how they could help churches do what they already wanted to do. He showed them opportunities to bring economies of scale to what had formerly been small, separate resource-buying endeavors by individual churches.

He mentioned that smaller churches often partner with others simply because they don't have the extensive resources of big churches.  They're motivated to practice interdependence. That's a good thing - and not just for churches, but for us individually.

God wants all of us, and each of us. How about those doctrinal divisions?  Dan (and I) quote St. Augustine: "In the essentials, unity. In non-essentials, liberty.  In all, love." Not everyone will agree to joining with other churches, much less various secular organizations.  But as for me...if God is reassembling the pieces of this broken world using some people different from me, well, he's the boss.  And I want to labor in his way and his favor.

Dan sets great store by the idea of "transference," which is the release of newly-empowered people to keep on doing great stuff without additional oversight.  So do I, which was a big part of my previous career in technology transition from lab demonstrations to end-products. More importantly, so did Jesus, not just in commissioning his disciples, but in how he constantly put them in the front lines of ministry.  That's the key to sustainable ministry that can outlive us all.

Sunday I wrote about Shevet Achim, whose inspiration comes from Psalms 133: "How good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity!  It's like the costly anointing oil flowing down Aaron's beard..." Not surprisingly, Dan cites the same verse in his work.

May we seek the essentials, let the nonessentials rest, and experience the good and pleasant shalom of God flowing through our lives together.

Look...and See

I’m re-reading Mike Yaconelli’s book Messy Spirituality. I’ve mentioned Mike before, as the guy who said, “I think the Christians will be known as the people who have time for you: 'Wanna talk?  Sure. How long you got? Long as you need.'" For me, Messy Spirituality was like air to a drowning diver. It was a huge relief to see such simple “heresy” in print. I wasn’t the only person in the world who saw confusion where the preachers claimed order.

If you think “Misfit Christians” sounds a lot like it, well, that’s because his little book articulated a lot of things that were stirring me up about 7 years ago. We were seeing up close the enormous gap between real teens, real people and the attentive little rows in “big church.”  (Among other gaps.)  Those gaps are still stirring me up.  When I get to heaven, I’d like to give Mike a big hug. 

Here’s an excerpt from one segment called “Unpretending”:

Practically, pretending is efficient, uncomplicated and quick. Answering “fine” to the question “How are you doing?” is much easier and quicker than saying, “Not very well, thank you; my back is bothering me, my teenage children are disappointing me, I’m unhappy with my body, my husband never speaks to me, and I’m wondering if Christianity is true.”

Honesty requires a huge investment of time and energy from the person asking the question (who would then wish they had never asked).

Pretending is the grease of modern non-relationships. Pretending perpetuates the illusion of relationships by connecting us on the basis of who we aren’t. People who pretend have pretend relationships. But being real is a synonym for messy spirituality, because when we are real, our messiness is there for everyone to see.

Pretending is the grease of modern non-relationships. Pretending perpetuates the illusion of relationships by connecting us on the basis of who we aren’t.

That is exactly what I was seeing, and am still seeing way, way too often.  We have whole churches based on the shock and awe of an amazing worship program, or aggressive missions, or a gifted preacher.  Of course those things are good.  But they aren’t God himself, and they aren’t each other.  The greatest and second-greatest commandments don’t mention advertising or organization or charismatic leaders.  Love God, love others.  The rest is details.

When we cling to those illusions they bind our future; it’s part of why we so often choose the status quo instead of change. What if we could distinguish the reality from the illusion, the wheat from the chaff? Would we would live different lives? I say, “yes.” We need to See, not just “see.”

But Seeing begins with Looking:  looking attentively, looking with prayer, dwelling on signs of life and finding the discriminators between interactive caring and casual habit. (I could go on about how living things move and dead things don’t, and how that’s like radar...but I digress.) Looking is hard and expensive and uncomfortable first because it’s active, not passive. It’s interrogative, questioning, probing.

But second, Looking is hard because we’re afraid that we really will See, that we will find no relationships at all among the non-relationships, that we will be left alone without even the illusion of relationships for comfort in the cold.

We won’t fill a gap we choose not to See.  But if we choose Sight for the blind (us), and freedom for the captive (us again), then we open our broken hearts to the God who desperately wants to fill them. It’ll take time, but we’ll find the real and bypass the pretend.

I’m still getting the hang of this. Maybe you are, too. Mike never got it all right; as he said only a year before he died, “My life is a mess.” But the same God who created Earth out of chaos is busy creating us out of mess. Like taking a lump of coal and forming it into the diamond he intended us to be all along.

And by the way (not really “by the way” actually), isn’t it just as amazing to watch a craftsman at work as to see the end product?  (Think Dirty Jobs, New Yankee Workshop, How It’s Made, etc.)