CS Lewis on Joy

In speaking of this desire for our own far-off country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that has never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name. Our commonest expedient is to call it beauty and behave as if that had settled the matter.

Spiritual, not Religious

CS Lewis in Mere Christianity attacked the habit of understanding Christianity to basically mean "nice". His attack hasn't stopped the migration of "spirituality" from the ultimate to the realm of "whimsy". Take for example the current culture war which is really all about fundamentalisms. Islamic fundamentalism as well as Christian fundamentalism. Men drive planes into buildings for "spiritual" reasons? No, we would edit the statement to say they did so for "religious" reasons. Why? Because "spiritual" is about being nice. "Religious" is about being unreasonable, intolerant and out of date. When someone wants to say they are "spiritual, not religious" what they really want to say is that they are going to do their best to be inoffensive. Whatever you say, they won't challenge. Whatever you do, they'll try their best to not pinch your feelings.

A bit more on leadership from Matthew 18

Let’s do a bit of review on chapter 18.
In verses 1-4 we see Jesus espousing something that seems to make no sense at all to anyone listening to him. He takes a child, possibly one waiting on them, one who was not paid for his service but was simply pressed into doing for big people what they were too busy or too important to do. Who is the greatest in the kingdom? This child, the servant with no options.

Good article on Leadership in the Post-Modern Era

Here is the link: http://www.christianity.ca/church/leadership/2005/05.000.html 

Just finished reading the whole things. Great article (except for the quote about pastors being the ones resisting change because they don't want to lose their jobs. In my experience many pastors are willing to try new things, often more than the people in their churches, and the really never got the job for the money, they want to see the kingdom flourish). It nicely encapsulates the POMO movement and agenda. Lots of good stuff in it. It resonated with me on a number of levels.

Things are changing fast and this will be especially difficult on institutions. Institutions are developed and designed to bring focus, stability and predictability to this changing and diffused world. It used to be that we expected businesses to have to re-organize every two or three years to adjust to changes in their environments. Change is accelerating and it is frightfully chaotic. GM, Ford, Boeing, all symbols of institutional power can quickly look shaky and weak. Institutions are bulwarks against change, dams if you will. The problem with dams are that they do in fact alter the landscape and the water they contain in the lake above represents a tremendous amount of potential energy. If the dam fails and all of that potential energy gets actualized fast, there can be major devastation, crisis and loss.

On the other hand...

Steve Job's Commencement address

Here is a link to the text: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505

A few things strike me in reading the address. The culture or mythology conveyed by this address is thoroughly American. This is the stuff movies are made of. There is a hand of destiny, providence or karma. Life has meaning (contra consistent secular materialists) and the meaning and purpose is mysteriously revealed as the traveler makes his journey. Looking back he can see that something has been guiding him but he is fashionably vague or agnostic regarding that hand. Even the misfortunes he suffers, adoption away from his mother, rejected by an adoptive family, working class poverty, losing his company all fall into line with his destiny/fate/providence/karma and are woven into a wonderful story. Even as he looks in the mirror and faces his mortality he is both the recipient of this benevolent hand while simultaneously being the captain of his soul. His cancer was treatable.

Eugene Peterson on being a subversive

One of my favorites from Eugene Peterson:

Christ and Culture

Always a key, difficult, and controversial issue. Found some interesting studies about Christ and culture in Islamic countries:

http://bgc.gospelcom.net/emis/1998/danger.html

http://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/17_1_PDFs/Followers_of_Isa.pdf

Fixers

It strikes me that we want to be fixers. We want to fix churches, we want to fix marriages, we want to fix worldviews, we want to fix people. At first thought I was a bit sore at Jesus and the Apostles for their miracles. I thought "why did God let them be fixers and not me. If God would only answer my prayers for fixing and healing like he did theirs then I could be a fixer too instead of a frustrated pastor holding the hands of people's whose lives I seem so often powerless to fix."

"Experiencing God"

In The Shaping of Things to Come the others note that in the "attractional" church "Evangelism therefore is primarily about mobilizing church members to attract unbelievers into church where they can experience God." (p. 41) This is an important insight and cuts deeply into how we as Christians within the culture, and how the larger culture preceives various elements of reality. Church in North America today (and in more places I'm sure) increasingly becomes a place whose primary goal is to induce a particular religious or "spiritual" experience for those who come to watch. People rate there satisfaction based upon how well and predictably the church achieves its goal.

If you listen to voices in the broader culture who want to talk about "spirituality" you hear very similar things. "Spirituality" is not primarily about morality or behavior. Spirituality is about experiencing a state of peace, euphoria, transcendence, or satisfaction. I remember an interesting piece on ABC News about a group of brain researchers using electrical stimulation to induce "religious experience". With the brain mapping technology they were able to map the portions of the brain where there was activity when people were praying or thinking religious thoughts. Now I'm sure some Christians would balk at all of this, but there is no conflict between this and Christianity. God provided us with the parts to do the jobs we are called to do, including relating to Him.

Why God keeps "failing" churches alive

Pastors who are on mailing lists, or who go to seminars, or who read books in the "pastor help" section of your local Christian bookstore all know what a successful church looks like. We receive the airbrushed, glossy promotional material in the mail nearly every day. The church that is adding members, the church "drawing a crowd", the church with the never ending building program because they just can't provide enough seats. These are the "successful" churches. They are also what a small group of church planters that I fellowship with call "lottery winners", not out of some strange Calvinist revulsion to "chance", but rather their relative rarity. What is the norm? Churches wobbling, struggling, flaking, failing, muddling. Why would God have 95% of his churches (in North America) be in this wobbly category and only 5% be doing what 95% of pastors and pew sitters think should rightly be deemed "success"?

Planting and Renewal

Bill Van Gronigen is a Christian thinking I respect. I'm eagerly awaiting the day he decides to blog and share his wisdom in the web, but until that day I am satisfied reading the things he sends on his "interesting stuff" memos. He often includes copies of articles he finds helpful. I do a little dance each time I get one from him. This latest one he talked about the need for churches to not just be planting new churches, but also to be always at work in renewal. Yeah. He's right on. Most of the recently planted churches I see wind up doing some significant efforts at church renewal within their first 3 or 4 years just after birth. In most cases, they have to or they would die. Like with people, the very young often have less fat to coast on and have to keep working at health otherwise they will perish.