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Threads: Relevance

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RELEVANCE: 1 Corinthians 9:19-23

-adaptation
-incarnational living as opposed to attractional
-understanding
-relevant to Jesus
-method changes, message remains without compromise
-communicating in the language of the culture
-others focused

Paul’s famous line: “I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.”

The idea of being relevant to culture and people is a wonderful idea. In some circles this is called, “contextualization,” the idea that we are taking the gospel and putting it into a context that the receiver will understand. I wrote an essay to get my major approved in college on that very topic.
To often though I think we use this idea of being “Relevant” as justification for fulfilling our own desires. We justify as being “Relevant” our country club membership, boat, drinking, smoking, watching certain movies, going out to eat, and many more things. I think we need to be more skeptical of “relevance” when i is beneficial or pleasurable for ourselves.

Contextualizing is considering that regardless of how direct a translation “washed white as snow” is, it is going to make no sense to someone who has never seen or heard of snow.
Relevance and Contextualization also seeks to recognize that talking to someone about your views on abortion or homosexuality is going to take something other then a “love the sinner, hate the sin,” approach. A person who never had a loving father in their life has no direct context with which to understand God as a “loving father.”

I really like the line above that says: “incarnational living as opposed to attractional,” because that acknowledges that we need to be careful not to cloak our self-gratification in a false effort to be “relevant.”

I love the idea of relevance because it really gets to the nitty gritty. It’s practical, it’s specific, it’s something we can sit and talk about and really take some action on. And I really think we need to spend more time in the church doing that. It seems we spend most of our time talking about abstract, philsophically or touchy-feely things, and then we walk out the door with no real challenge on our lives what so ever. Let’s get dirty and talk about how we can be more relevant to our culture.

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Threads: Surrender

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SURRENDER: Matthew 20:26-28- “Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

-fluid & organic with continual movement
-interdependence
-there are no sacred cows
-there’s no length we won’t go to in order to connect people with Jesus
-ain’t no mountain high, ain’t no valley low
-adapting & empowering not controlling
-we’ll put God first no matter what, anything is going to submit to that
-leave the 99 to get the one
-humble, humility, humble submission
-doesn’t mean there isn’t any structure but God is the structure
-show us the best structure that will unleash the full potential of your spirit
-both structure and spirit are always present together; one is never absent of the other

I’ll be honest this sounds more like a list of catch phrases then any deep practical thoughts on Surrender. The word “surrender” is often seen in a negative light, as it is commonly considered as “giving up” or “quitting.” In our day of constant wars the thought of idea that our troops would “surrender” seems weak and cowardly.
Interesting too that the Bible verse referenced above does not even use the word “surrender” instead it’s talking about serving. My personal thought is this idea of surrender makes no sense, unless seen in light of Love. Christ surrendered his power as God and became a human. Husbands surrender their wants and desires to their wives. Like a little child who wants their way, we must surrender our ambitions to a parent who knows what is best for us. Maybe surrender is an out dated word though?
I’ll be honest Surrender does not sound like a easy thing, and it certainly does not seem like an enjoyable thing. It really is a giving up of something.

I guess I see it as odd that a main tenent of our belief system can be this idea of “surrender” and yet we still look so similar in all that we do to our unbelieving neighbor who has no desire to surrender anything?
I know there’s that song “I surrender All” but when besides the song can one declare something like that? Can you make that statement while eating out with your church friends? Can you say you surrendered when your buying that new gadget, when your living in your comfy house, while driving in your luxury car? Can you say you’d surrendered all when enjoying the latest concert, taking a vacation cruise, or watching the game?

It’s a good song and all, but do you know anyone who is really “Surrendering All?”

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Threads: Design

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DESIGN: Romans 12:2 . Luke 2:52 . Genesis 2:7

-real & honest
-living life out of who you are
– the process of becoming that which God intends for us to be
-who you were created to be
-understanding who we are and who God is and the ever-happening transformation
-the way God intended us to live
-being formed into the image of Jesus
-accepting others in their realness
-not just for us but for others
-embracing God’s design for our lives
-restoration
-becoming truly human

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world” seems to me to be an extremely direct statement on radical living. If anything those words cause me to question everything. It’s my desire not to conform to the world that causes me to ask about the ethics of buying a house, I mean people give me weird looks when I say there are ethics to consider.
We are designed in God’s image. Our Creator has an intended purpose and design for how we are to live. That’s why this life of following Jesus is to be much more wholistic and encompassing then whether we’ve read our Bible in the morning and said our prayers before bed.
God has designed you and created you to live a certain way, not necessarily in the pattern that the world lives. That’s why we shouldn’t assume we should eat like the world does or sleep like the world does. I mean that in the most literal sense: Just because those in our world eat out a lot, or eat a lot of fatty foods, or eat free-trade (cheap due to unjust wages) food, does not mean we are okay to participate as well. Just because many in the world sleep through their education, stay up all hours of the night, or sleep half their day away does not mean each of those things are how we are designed.

And let me remind you God did not intend for our design to be a miserable one. We were created to Glorify God, and God is most glorified when we are most satisfied. We were created to experience joy and pleasure.
If you saw someone with a pogostick in their hand and they where playing with it by tossing it up in the air and catching it again, you’d probably look at them funny and try to explain to them, “That’s not what it’s designed for.”

C.S. Lewis once said:
“If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

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Threads: Love

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LOVE: Acts 4:32-34 . John 13:35 . Mark 12:29-31

-love God, love others
-not easy, but real
-service, sacrifice, selfless, unwavering
-everyday, exist for other
-forbearance
-breaking down walls
-respect
-community (with a cause)
-unnatural/supernatural/unique
-bigger than us
-messy

“Love one Another” is probably one of the most repeated phrases in the New Testament (particularly by this John fellow). And then you got that Love God, Love others stuff Jesus talks about. I start to get the impression that when you boil it all down, if you had to summarize this whole gospel thing, God thing into one word it would have to be “Love.”
My friend gave me a sticker it says: “Love Wins.” Probably already my favorite sticker of all time. Because it seems that’s the truth. In the end, the end of ends, Love Wins. And Love is not a confusing concept, it can be much more clear then we sometimes make faith and action decisions out to be.
When Christ says, “Love your enemies,” I think it’s obvious he means with a deep love, the same love as “love your neighbor as yourself,” the same as loving your own child. It’s true love can be messy, but it’s also a powerful force beyond measure.
Love means loving your great grandchildren and loving creation. Love means loving your neighbors kids and not just your own. Love means loving the man on the corner and not just yourself. Love means loving the starving child and the AIDS stricken villages.
And that Love calls us to some sort of action. That love calls us to recycle and waste less gas and other resources. The love calls us to care about public schools and the education of children. That love calls us to buy less car, less entertainment, less material possessions.

Love is a verb.

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Threads: Mission

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MISSION: John 17:18

-sacrifice.choice.destiny
-to change/impact the world
-connecting people to the living God
-real time, being real, living for others
-being Jesus among people, serving people
-allowing God to work through us, uniquely
-being out/visible
-movement
-our story

In the book of John, Jesus prays this: “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.” Many point to the last word’s of Jesus recorded in Matthew as the central point for what “Mission” is all about, but I think this might be a better place to start. Jesus says “As…” God has sent him, in other words, “In the same way.” This is a clear indicator that we should be looking at the way Jesus lived in the world and shape our lives to live in a similar way.
And Jesus makes it clear that we are a continuation of what he was doing, we are part of that story. I like some of the words they choose to describe this mission mindset: Sacrifice, Choice, Serving, visible, Movement, being real.

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Threads (It’s a “Mosaic” thing)

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My wife and I have been hanging around these folks from the Mosaic Community on Sundays since we’ve been in Nashville. Mostly, we’ve just been chillin’ with some cool people and talking about things that interest us (and listen to others talk about things too). Oh, and Mindy sings a bit.

A little bit ago they did a series of talks about “Threads.” This is how they introduced it:

threads: the values from the ancient scriptures that are at the core of God’s story and at the core of who Mosaic desires to be as a community of Jesus followers.
these are the essentials that are woven into all we are and all we are becoming ? both as individuals and as a whole. They shape us as followers of Jesus, defining our role in the movement of God. This is who we are. These are non-negotiables that we hold to, that we strive for. They become the rhythms that we live by.
Mission. Love. Design. Relevance. Surrender.

I found the piece of paper that listed out the different threads and gave some verses concerning each thread. I figure I’d try and take one each day this week and just sort of think outloud about each of them. So, you’ve got the intro, now enjoy the individual posts…