wading into God's new creative work

"don't outsource your conception of what church communities ought to be to any other time.
this is not something to outsource. you were invited to be people who form communities of hopeful, optimistic Christianity. and you are called into that endeavor completely, theologically and ecclesiologically........ You need to be fully engaged in the formation of what it means to be people who live as a church in Christian community without having to outsource it to any other period of time, because the time that we live in is as good a time for the gospel, as good a time for theology, and is as good a time for creating church community as any period of time......we have the opportunity to do wonderful things in collaboration with God's continuous plans for this world"

Doug Pagitt at North Park

plateau or pruning

i feel like I've plateaued in my spiritual life and personal growth, they tend to go hand in hand.

what is going to bring transformation? seeking God no doubt, but will he reveal that key to transformation or does he have me in the middle of a long slow process that I can't see unfolding because I'm inside of it? for one of the first times in my life I feel inadequate. I suppose thats a start to transformation, total brokenness. this lent has been all about pruning so far. maybe that means change is on its way. I hope so. Come on God's Word, be true.

I don't feel like I'm living out my call any more. The things that used to get me excited and reignite me don't anymore. Where is God taking me? Is there sin in the way? Is it how I spend my time? Do I need to return to things of the past or press onto new practices in the future? These are all questions I am asking right now.

All I know is that I didn't feel this way a year ago when I got back from Europe. Or for that matter, Today, 6 years ago as Cisco and I began our drive to Orlando to attend GCM's support training to learn how to raise money to move out here. Today, 6 years later I completed my resume to start hunting for a job outside of ministry. Not quite the way I pictured this going.

I understand that God's divine hand is in this and that in time, hopefully soon, I'll get why he is taking me down this trail, and truly see that it is him and not just my own deficiencies or other human's choices that are determining this.

I truly want to be partnering with God in his new creative work he is doing in the world right now. It is exciting to see the way he is moving within neighborhoods, cities, states, and countries. I know I will play a key role in bringing Jesus' new creative efforts to the city, but where, when, how, and with who are all so up in the air.

patience, thats what I need - this reminds me of a little something, something Axel Rose penned.

...little patience, mm yeah, ooh yeah,
Need a little patience, yeah
Just a little patience, yeah
Some more pati... (ence, yeah)
I've been walking these streets at night
Just trying to get it right (Need some patience, yeah)
It's hard to see with so many around
You know I don't like being stuck in a crowd (Could use some patience, yeah)
And the streets don't change but maybe the name
I ain't got time for the game

an intriguing director

The director of Pan's Labyrinth was interviewed by Tavis Smiley last month. I really liked some of his thoughts including his perspective on the parables here. I feel like the perspective he has in developing his story could apply to preaching as well.

del Toro: I tried to create, like, a fable or a parable about something. “Cronos,” and this one, to an extent, is about a choice, disobedience, immortality. Our dealing with mortality, which is a much better subject.
And I try to layer them very carefully, very densely. And then if people watching them like a Saturday night movie, that’s fine by me. If they wanna study them a little more, I put things in there that they’ll find.

Tavis: Yeah. To your point now, are there messages here that you are trying to deliver? Because you could obviously do a film that is just entertaining, or to your point now about choices and about morals and about mortality versus immortality. You trying to send a message through “Pan's Labyrinth?” Messages?

del Toro: Well, I think that when I was a kid, I'm an ex-Catholic. And when I was a kid, I would go Sunday church, and I would be mostly interested in the parables of the bible. They really took me. And it’s not so much disclosing a parable as it is bringing it forth as a point of discussion. I don't have a point that I need to drive in, but I do show the different destinies of characters that are confronted with a choice in the movie. And those that choose to obey, and those that choose to disobey. And contrary to the classical fairytale, I'm in favor of disobedience.

Reconciling Prophecy and Humility

"Humility is difficult for people who think they are, or want to be, 'radical Christians.'

Humility is difficult when you're always calling other people – the church, the nation, and the world – to stop doing the things you think are wrong and start doing the things you think are right.

Humility is difficult for the bearers of radical messages.

When we're always calling other people to repent and change, it's not always easy to hear that message for ourselves.

I want to suggest that there is a real and very deep tension between humility and the prophetic vocation."

Jim Wallis

Wise words from Jim that anyone with a prophetic voice should cling onto. Moving into urban ministry I've run across a lot of community development folks that have an "our way is the only legitimate way," mentality and can invalidate anyone who practices differently. Usually these community developers have great things to say, but they alienate themselves from the people who desperately need to hear from them because of their arrogant and tactless stance. The funny thing is that so many people doing quality community development work got there by first doing mercy work, the very work community developers now decry. (Mercy work is the gateway drug to community development) I wonder if having a humble prophetic voice in this arena wouldn't sound more like an invitation than a declaration.

PS: a quick differentiation between mercy work and community development sounds like this.

mercy = Doing for. IE: A Soup Kitchen or a Clothing Pantry. (Valuable ministries that are needed for people to survive - especially relevant among the homeless -, yet do nothing in terms of transformation and in many cases enable people or cause them to build a dependence on a service)

community development = Doing With. IE: Opening a thrift shop that is cooperatively owned by neighborhood residents and employs them -- Recruiting benevolent landlords to invest in property and rent them out near cost to allow folks to save to purchase their own homes.

New York, New York

Over the great bridge, with the sunlight through the girders making a constant flicker upon the moving cars, with the city rising up across the river in white heaps and sugar lumps all built with a wish out of non-olfactory money. The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.

F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby

"the Office" quotes of the week

"poop is raining from the ceiling, poop." - angela

"your welcome." dwight

So True

Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears [their] grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate. But if you do not clear a decent shelter for your sorrow, and instead reserve most of the space inside you for hatred and thoughts of revenge - from which new sorrorws will be born for others - then sorrow will never cease in this world and will multiply.

- Etty Hillesumquoted in Marc Ellis, "Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation"