Month: September 2012

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Prophetic Voice & Christians In Politics

I found this image at http://onlysometimesclever.wordpress.com/2012/03/28/hellfire-and-damnation/ . Not sure where it originally came from.

I have an acquaintance who regularly refers to himself as “a prophetic voice for [his] generation.” Though I don’t know him well I can say from my encounters with him that I believe him to be a nice enough guy who is trying to do his best so this post isn’t about dogging on him. However, if I were to have a conversation with him I would question his use of the word “prophetic” because from what I have seen, heard, and read in the vast majority of his “prophetic” statements. They are almost always about how those outside of the Church are screwing up. He very rarely comes down on the church’s failure and I’ve never heard him name his own church’s failures. If you read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, you will see that prophets preach to the outsiders every now and then. Jonah is a pretty good example of this. God sent Jonah to preach to the Ninevehvites who, at least as far Jonah seems to have been concerned, were about as diametrical opposite the people of God as one could get. Interestingly the prophet Jonah didn’t want to speak prophetically to the Ninevehvites but when he finally gave into God and did preach to them the people of Nineveh responded in repentance and turned from their sin.

But the prophets’ normal role in the Bible isn’t pointing out the sin of non-believers. Instead they usually focused on saying “thus saith the Lord” to the people of God.

The majority of the prophets preached prophetically to the people of God. They shouted to the people of God “You know God saved you in the past and you promised to live a certain way in response. Have you forgotten? Now change your ways.” There are tons of examples in the Bible but my personal favorite is Amos. He was probably a migrant worker (he is described as having two separate agricultural jobs), someone of little power and influence. Yet God used Him to speak prophetically to the powerful of the Northern Kingdom of Israel who called themselves His people. Amos called out the sins of other nations as well but he spent the vast majority of his preaching pointing out the sin of those who claimed to be God’s people. That’s my problem with my acquaintance’s “prophetic voice” he is always preaching in the church about how bad the rest of the world is screwing up.  Preaching to the church about how bad the world is just doesn’t seem very prophetic.

So here is my problem with how most Christians act in politics.

We tend to fight for one party to win by pointing out the failures of the other party and ignoring the failures of our own. This is true of everyone, Christian or not. I believe those of us who claim Jesus as our Lord have a much higher calling that none of the political parties follow very well. This means that while we can praise certain elements of a political party’s platform we still need to call for more. Christians within the Libertarian, Republican, Democratic, and other parties need to be be speaking prophetically to all the parties. These political parties should have a love/hate relationship with the church. They might love our votes but we should be acting in such a way that they feel like we are always asking for more changes in the areas of the party that don’t line up very well with Jesus.

To use poor political stereo types, those of us Christians who are Democrats should be constantly challenging the party on abortion and personal responsibility. Those of us Christians who are Republicans should be pushing the party concerning caring for the “least of these” (Matthew 25:31-46) and war. Those of us Christians who are Libertarian should push the party to care for people other than just ourselves. Finally, those of us who are independent in our mindset should be a royal pain in the butt to everyone. 🙂 I know these are very broad generalizations and in many ways inaccurate but hopefully they help to illustrate the point I am trying to make. We Christians need to speak prophetically to the political parties. Speaking in such a manner within the political process means we don’t let our own political parties “off the hook” just because we agree with them a little more than the other parties.

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pam's post "nothing in return"

If you don’t regularly read both of Pam’s blogs (Ept, Couth, and Comobobulated & The Secret Life of a Pastor’s Wife) then you are missing out and should reconsider your life choices. Here’s a wonderful post she wrote concerning the church doing things with the mindset of receiving nothing in return. She discusses the party we threw this past Saturday for the children of migrant workers. I love the way Pam thinks.

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sunday night setup

I say this pretty consistently during Sunday nights at Tapestry but I think setup is my favorite part of Sunday nights. This isn’t taking anything away from the actual worship gatherings because they are wonderful. It is just that I love getting to have conversations with a small group of essentially the same people each week as we work together. I generally think that most of us guys talk better when we are doing something together.

The ultimate goal with Tapestry is to split and form another church who will reach new and different people. Most church people I know don’t like the word “split” but I get super excited every time I think about us splitting. I can’t wait to see people come to know Jesus in their lives by methods and expressions that I have never even thought of.

Perhaps one such method could be setup. When we reach the size to divide we could start a church that just setups up and then tears down. Imagine how great the conversations would be. We might try this out one night in Tapestry. “Come to church tonight and we will setup and tear down together.” I like the sound of that. 🙂

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Joe the Man

IMG_2611

For those of you who weren’t at Tapestry last night you missed out on the church business meeting. Our business meetings are short and wonderful. The only business the church needed to deal with was voting on a new member of the Tapestry Leadership Team. We usually do this in November but Wesley Morris moved to Florida to learn about church planting (a pretty awesome thing) so we had a vacant spot. While all the threads miss the Morris family we are honored that Joe Hasenorhl is now the latest member of the Leadership Team. Joe will do a great job.

IMG_2608Actually it was a pretty great night overall. 1st there is Joe. Joe really is a cool story (actually Kaylin, his wife, is too). Joe went from a new believer to someone mature enough in his faith that all the threads trust him enough to want him to be a part of the leadership of the church. 2nd there were all the stories of Saturday concerning the block party we did for the children of migrant workers in Junction City. 3rd we had chicken fajitas from El Mezcal which is awesome. The fajitas were left over from the party the day before and we had more than enough for everyone. Finally, just because we still have it until Thursday we setup one of the bouncy castles that we used yesterday and I walked outside to find random kids playing in it. Awesome.

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The Caps Will Begin

i started this blog nine years ago and for some reason when i started it i decided not to use caps other than for the LORD’s name. i didn’t really have a reason for it. i just thought it would be fun. it has driven some people i know and love crazy (e.g. my parents) but i continued. i did the same thing on facebook and twitter. these two social networks have been causing me problems over the past year because while i have enjoyed going “cap-less” i don’t like the way my statuses look when i place links in them or tag people (which often include caps which i can’t do anything about).  i’ve been frustrated by this for about a year now.

well last night while i was talking to some thread college students at IV’s monday night large group a couple of them told me out of the blue that they found my blog interesting but didn’t read it consistently because they found it difficult to read due to the lack of caps. that is a good enough reason for me to change.

The blog will now use capital letters in normal sentence structure. The world may never be the same.

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college is paying off

https://twitter.com/AdamTerrell/status/244244336974389248

i have no idea why adam milked a goat but i am already thankful for the new things he will learn and experience in college. talking with him the other day i decided that i am going to try to read one of the books from one of his classes each semester. he is going to recommend one next week after he has a better feel of which class he is connecting with best. i figure this way i’ll know a little of what is floating his boat in school.

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exclusion and embrace

 

thanks to perry polnaszek i am presently reading miroslav volf’s “exclusion and embrace.” in the book volf basically works through the question of how we can follow JESUS’s command to love our enemies. really how do you love someone who might have done amazing evil to and against you? to use the old CHRISTian cliché, how do we love the sinner and hate the sin? it has been very challenging for me in several areas.

loving the sinner while hating the sin involve me “embracing” that person. that “embrace” makes it difficult to “exclude” the person while still not approving of the sin. for example, i love my kids and there is nothing they could do that would change that fact.  there are, however, actions they could do that i would find HIGHLY disagreeable. since i love them i wouldn’t view them by their sin. instead i view them as people who i love who have done something terrible. on the other hand, that “embrace” hasn’t happened with people i don’t know and so it is more difficult not merely view them from the view of “exclusion.” there are actions that are so evil that we morally must respond to with “exclusion” but  that doesn’t mean we ignore the “embrace” of the individual who committed them.

i’ll share a none sin relate example. it is political season and so in our social media world this means i daily run into a large number of people expressing their political beliefs and some whose main goal seems to be just belittling other people’s political beliefs. there are people i love who disagree with me but i would never ignore them because i know them as loved ones rather than just people i disagree with politically. on the ohter hand, two nights ago i mistakenly got into a political debate with an anonymous person on twitter (it’s a long story that i won’t get into). the conversation was very frustrating because the guy was combative. i didn’t even really mean to get into a conversation with him. i responded to a former youth’s tweet and this guy jumped in and started criticizing me and tapestry even though he doesn’t know ether of us. he would say something and i would try to respond.  i quickly reached a point where i was starting to really not like someone that i didn’t even know. that is when i thought of “exclusion and embrace” and i decided i should get to know him. i figured finding out his name would be a good start. it didn’t work out so well because he wasn’t interested in anything more than telling me how wrong i was. at that point the conversation ended because i realized i couldn’t debate a person whose name i didn’t even know. nothing good would come of the twitter conversation until we both new a little about each other.

still it was a good lesson for me.

in the midst of disagreement or worse i am going to try to respond to people with “embrace” even if i am rightly reacting to their actions or beliefs with “exclusion.”

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bam! the bride of CHRIST

so a quick story.

tonight during my message at tapestry a “thread” brought up that she had some new neighbors that didn’t have enough beds for all of their kids (10 members in the family) and she is looking to find beds for them. well the story actually goes a little deeper than just that. i found most of this out from pam after church because the “thread” had told her a little more while we were tearing down the sunday night setup at washington elementary.

she had new neighbors move in to around her who are hmong. trying to be a good neighbor she went to meet them. unfortunately her neighbors don’t speak a lot of english and she doesn’t speak much hmong. most people would figure that was enough and decide they had done what CHRIST wanted. not her. she tracked down a translator to help her communicate as a good neighbor would. that’s how she found out about the need for the beds.

so she mentioned the need during our worship gathering tonight. she said the family needed bedding for 4 more. by the time we had torn down our equipment beds for 3 of the 4 had been arranged. we left figuring we would work on the remaining bed this week. some of the college kids loaded into pam’s minivan and they started back to school. that is when one of them texted a “thread” who wasn’t there tonight and suddenly another free bed found. that’s when one of the college students shouted “bam! the bride of CHRIST!” 

seemed appropriate. need announced and 25 minutes later we knew how the need was going to be met. like the college student said “bam! the bride of CHRIST!”