I too randomly checked the blog today after a long time. You're right. there was a lot of potential and I also feel this regret. There's hope though. That hope comes in the ability to balance our lives. We have obligations to our studies here and to organizations that we think are beneficial to others. We did a poor job of balancing ourselves. Less is more. We have to remember that idea the rest of our time at Denison. Also.. as we get closer to senior year, we can't let ourselves leave this place and go off in a direction that leads us to a comfortable life. We MUST stop each other from doing that. None of us will be happy in that sort of lifestyle. Perhaps that's why we aren't happy here. Comfort is great and it feels really good, but it doesn't make you feel alive. Wrestling a bear would make me feel alive (but only for a few minutes before I would no longer feel alive - permanently). Maybe before 2nd semester starts we should make it a mandatory goal to do something outside of our comfort zone for Christ. We can share our experiences when we come back. I love y'all too.

hmmm...

so i decided to randomly check the blog today after a 4 month break. i am ashamed. anyway, i looked at some of the old entries and they made me sad. there was so much potential and passion in our thoughts and hearts- and now all i feel is regret. regret for not providing action to the things i promised myself and shame that i wasnt more there for you guys. what is worse, i am sad that i have not been on the path that i think God wants me to be on. im going to pray about this, but can we seriously get some love going on here? love to you both.

Love Wins. Always

So, that's a quote and title from an article written by Shane that I just read. Those three words sum up all I have to see in this blog post, so I say no more. "Love wins. Always."

Fears and Worries

So, let me be the first (or second or third or hundredth because I don't know who's said what when) to say that I'm nervous about next year. I think that there is so much potential there to just explode into awsomeness, but at the same time, there is potential for none of that to happen - for stress to rule us, to eat up too much of our time, leaving behind some of the things we wanted to involve ourselves in. Also, in my case, I worry about loosing my motivation when all of the responsibilities pile up. Will I answer the call to leadership? Will I have the strength when I truly need it?
I believe these are questions that we should meditate on in the coming weeks before classes start. God has all sorts of tools in the bible for following his commands and leaning on his strength. We should try to discipline ourselves to use them. (Now, let me say that I'm basically talking to myself here, because I have the log in my eye and I'm not even sure if I see any adversly placed chunks of wood in either of your eyes, so this is written partially for my own satisfaction).
I don't know where it is in Psalms, but I've had these verses memorized:

"Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth.
Give me an undivided heart to revere your name.
I give thanks to you with my whole heart.
For great is your steadfast love for me. You have rescued me from the depths of Sheol."

These verses sum up how I want to live next year.
So as Rachel works to revitalize breakaway, Betsy works to spread her ideal picture of church, and I work to spread male leadership through DUMLA (with some overlap and countless other commitments for all of us), we are doomed to failure if we don't follow Jesus, even if he takes us down strange pathways. Right now, I feel like I'm on a different path than Jesus... It's right over there, but my weakness is so great that I just might need a push to get onto that path.
So hey - let's not be nice to each other - let's push each other around.
As the great rock singer and poet once said:
" I want to push you around... And I will.. and I will " - but seriously, let's give each other some pushes (in Love of course).

y el fin, o parte tres

I should not pretend to know Spanish. It's insulting to everyone who does. In any case, I hope y'all are ready for round 3, the end, which is much, much shorter, and ultimately the point of all of this. Thanks for bearing with me. And, just to reiterate, I don't consider this definitive, or an either/or kind of deal. I'm just making observations. Feel free to be critical of specific points, or the whole deal. But, let's discuss those differences and figure out what's preference and what's biblical. Cool

Alternative model: Basically, read the New Testament. That’s what it would look like. To put it more practically, a group of followers of Christ spend time with each other, help each other, love each other (so that the world knows they’re His disciples – John 13:35) all week, and once a week, come together and celebrate that life and talk about what God’s doing and share their struggles and their successes. Someone teaches – teaches, which implies a lot less preparation, and a lot more interaction than preaching. They pray, and fellowship (which means an openness, an honesty, an encouragement and a sharing of burdens – not a ‘fun food and fellowship’ deal), and break bread. The pastor is respected and loved as a brother, and while he spends time dealing with the church, that time is spent equipping people, discipling people so that they can do the work, so that they can build effective relationships with those around them. The pastor is a member of the community, not some alien super-spiritual mystic, and probably has some sort of ‘normal’ job. The group meets in an area that’s visible to the community, maybe a home or an office of a community member, and it costs little, if anything to meet there, so the tithe can go to ministering to those in need. Each of the people views him/herself as vitally involved in the group, engaging in the work, and spends time building up the others’ and meeting their needs, discipling and being discipled, while also making special efforts to demonstrate love beyond what the world can explain to nonbelievers.

That’s the vision, in a nutshell. Again, I refer you to the New Testament, especially John 17, and Acts-Jude. I am so sorry that this was so long, but I don’t feel like I could have tackled this complex a subject in any shorter of a space.

READ 1st John Now.

Part Dos

My problems with the above (I guess they’re actually below). Not that any structure is perfect. Not that people who go to church are bad people. Not at all. Please accept these as observations on how the structural model falls short of what it could be. This is long; I will put these in bullet form for clearer organization, and attempt objectivity, not including personal experiences but rather general trends.

Pastors and the clergy:

· While church staff should be facilitating the involvement of the lay person, in effect, pastors are expected to do the work. Meaning the body becomes a body of paralysis, with only one limb moving. One limb can’t move without the rest of the body.

· The above pressure burns out pastors. Pastors, I firmly believe, have some of the most stressful careers and highest burnout rates.

· Furthermore, since people aren’t involved in the church, and their main point of contact with the church is the weekly service, people view the pastors’ job as producing an event each week. When the service isn’t entertaining enough, trouble brews, and the pastor may be thrown out.

· Since pastors are professionals, leaving a church means moving, thereby uprooting your family, often with significant financial consequences.

Church building and services:

· Many of these problems arise from basic conceptualization of space. Whereas the early church met in public spaces where the world could see them, and in each other’s houses, today we meet in church buildings. Not only does this mean that a huge portion of tithes goes to building upkeep, but it generates the mentality of segmentation. We ‘do church’ in a specific place, and then we get back to our lives, whereas if meetings were, for instance in our homes, it would be an integrated, organic activity

· In auditoriums, we sit shoulder to shoulder, and look ahead and are entertained. We don’t have to interact with each other, we don’t learn from each other, we don’t share with each other, because meetings aren’t about interaction.

· I agree that music is a great way to worship, but in the Bible, there are soo many more ways to worship God. Dancing, silence, enjoying nature, etc. And yet we have “worship,” as if you can schedule it, which inevitably means three to five songs.

· These three to five songs are points of enormous contention. Rock’n’roll is from the devil, say the old folks. We’ll never reach the world with your ancient hymns, say the young ones. Neither of which are values statements, but preference statements. Repeat after me: church, meetings, life isn’t about preferences. It’s about how God can best be glorified, and I don’t think it’s by fighting over petty items like song style.

· The church “program” makes meetings/services a formula. There’s not even any room for God to move, or for people to discuss what’s going on in their lives.

· Sermons take hours and hours of preparation every week, drawing on the already-stretched time of pastors. And since they’re not interactive, and they’re so commonly perceived of as boring, they have little impact most of the time.

Use of church funds

· Dollars go to buildings and the newest technology to stay “relevant.” The only way to be relevant to people is to “Go, therefore, into all the world, baptizing and making disciples.” In other words, the only way to be relevant to today’s generation is to get into real relationships with them, thereby making Jesus real. It has very little to do with using a Powerpoint presentation.

· Tithes, rather than in Acts, going to feeding the hungry, go to... any number of other things.

Church programs

· At the heart of it, no program is inherently bad. But programs are self-perpetuating. People’s method of involvement isn’t building relationships, but fulfilling a time commitment. Then, manpower and time and funds are consumed with perpetuating an activity, often when it’s not even achieving a particular end.

· Because we have programs, we again segment our faith from the rest of our lives by ‘doing our time,’ thereby earning us the ‘right’ to do what we want with the rest of our time. Not the best attitude. Key example: outreach events inviting people in. Bringing people in isn’t bad, again, but our orders aren’t to cling together for everything we’re worth, forming a human chain to grab that next person so we can retreat back to home base. I like the football huddle model. We talk about what happened, what we’re going to do, and we support each other as we go out ‘on the field’ to accomplish our goals, then at regular intervals, we come back to build each other up again. Outreach is relational, not programmable. Yet programs somehow provide an excuse that we’re performing our duty.

· Rarely do these programs include anything with the poor, and if they do, they’re almost definitely providing material help, which is awesome, but again, I think we should look at Jesus’ methods, and he spent time with the poor, not on a schedule, but as a lifestyle.

General issues

· Since there are so many local congregations, everybody has multiple choices of where they will attend. Then, rather than working through issues, people just leave and take there problems elsewhere.

· I guess it would be efficient just to say it: the current model breeds drama. Drama, often outright conflict that is neither productive nor biblical. God condemns gossip and contention quite emphatically, yet we find ourselves in a system of preferences and power-brokering. And maybe that’s inherent to anything involving multiple humans, but maybe, since we’re not engaging each other, since we’re not being honest with each other, it’s easy to disrespect the needs of other people. Maybe if we were real like the Church in Acts, a body that relied on each other for survival, we would be a little less likely to stab each other in the back.

· Summary: the current church model discourages honesty and real relationships, replacing them with institutionally-mediated interactions that are segmented from the rest of life. We come, we smile, we sing, we listen, and we leave, and no one’s changed, and a lot of people have a lot of hurts that are left to fester.