Category: CHRISTianity

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Word Time Traveler & Living Faith

If you want an interesting link for wasting some time you might enjoy Time Traveler by Meriam-Webster. I first heard about this link via the podcast 99% Invisible. If you haven’t listened to 99% Invisible before I would recommend you checking into the podcast. Anyhow Time Traveler is a feature of the online version of the Meriam-Webster dictionary that lists the year of the first occurrence of various popular, and at one time popular, words. Language is a living thing and thus constantly changing. Words die, are born, and change meaning throughout time as we and our culture do also.

Time Traveler shows just a sample of words first used within certain years, but looking through the years you can see modern trends and values take shape. You can also see older trends and values that we have moved away from, both for the good and bad. We call languages that don’t change “dead languages” and in reality at least our understanding of them continue to change as we discover more concerning word meanings and how they were used. Koine Greek (the Greek with which the New Testament is written) has been a living language since around 300 AD (It was used as an official language in Byzantine for much longer but let’s not go there) but our understanding of Koine continues to grow and improve.

“Dead languages”  come from dead cultures while living languages come from living cultures. Living languages and cultures change because the circumstances and environments they are located within change. This doesn’t mean rejecting our core values, rather it means letting our core values expand into areas that we hadn’t considered at before. Our country’s Founding Fathers wrote “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal” at a time when they had a very wrong understanding of who a man was and wasn’t, and didn’t understand that it should be “that all people are created equal”. The value was already there but our understanding of it changed in a very good manner.

The same should be true with our faith. Our understanding of the core of our faith should expand and grow. That doesn’t mean the actual core of our faith changes but our understanding of that core changes. It should widen into areas that we had never considered before. This isn’t change for change’s sake. It is allowing our faith to grow. If my faith had a “time traveler” feature and I could go back and look at some of the things that I believed when I first became a follower of Jesus I know that I would laugh and possibly cry about those beliefs. I believed Jesus is Lord back then but I didn’t have as broad of an understanding of what that meant. There are changes that can lead us away from the core of our faith, but that doesn’t mean we should avoid change. Instead it means that we have to constantly be making sure that our understanding of and, more importantly, our love of Jesus enlarges into more of our lives.

Living things change. Living faith does too.

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Mushrooming Hope

Since moving my blog from the church site (sptapestry.org) to my own private site (raterrell.com) I have once again been consistently blogging. It is the last day of 2017 and therefore I should follow stereotype and blog about one of two things: 1) the past year, or 2) my hope for the coming year. I choose number 2.

Last night I began reading Rebecca Solnit‘s “Hope in the Dark” and she referenced mushrooms. Solnit wrote:

After a rain mushrooms appear on the surface of the earth as if from nowhere. Many do so from a sometimes vast underground fungus that remains invisible and largely unknown. What we call mushrooms mycologists call the fruiting body of the larger, less visible fungus.

Andy L is my local friend who hunts mushrooms. This is one of the mushrooms he found this fall.

The mushrooms sprout up from a fungus that has been doing all the work unseen underground. The fungus has formed a healthy underground foundation from which the mushroom fruits. That fruiting fits with how I understand hope.

Hope works in such a manner that it leads to behavior that encourages the hoped for outcome. Hope isn’t just day dreaming. “I hope ‘something’ happens” is not the same as “I wish ‘something’ happens”. Wishing is day dreaming. It comes out of a desire to have something happen with no cost or personal effort. Hope isn’t Pollyannaism. It isn’t optimism, which is basically just a positive version of determinism. “It doesn’t matter what I do, everything will just work out in the end.”

Nope, hope is like the fungus under the ground. It leads to action and behavior that will make sure everything is ready for when the rain comes and it is time for the mushrooms. We can’t control the rain and thus we can’t determine when, or if, our hope will ever “mushroom”, but hope leads to us “preparing the ground” for when the rain comes. Hope leads to planning, effort, and sacrifice. As I say at Tapestry every so often (I said it this morning), for the Christian hope involves us living out the future (that we believe God will bring about) in our  present. Hope leads to practice.

Pam talks to her students all the time about “best practices“. I know this because Pam, Adam, and Noah, who are all in the same field of study, use the term in about 3/4s of their conversations (a lot of the Terrell conversations are about Speech Language Pathology – No, I’m not bitter). Anyhow, I know many fields of study focus on “best practices”.  These practices are behaviors and actions that are generally accepted as producing better results than the other comparative practices and behaviors. I believe that hope should lead to us living out “best practices” in our lives. We do the things that are most likely help us to produce the best underground foundation to be ready for the rain and the fruiting (by the way every time I say the word “fruiting” all I can think of, thanks to Pam, is Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire). Not to do best practices has more in common with wishing.

Hope and best practices go hand in hand. We hope to be closer to God, so we begin to practice what is best for spiritual growth. We hope to be closer to our families, so we learn the best marital, parenting, and family practices and begin to live those out. We hope to grow in our friendships, justice, intellect, education, peace, finances, careers, hobbies, and other things, so we learn the best practices that help in such fields and try to practice them. Thereby, we prepare for the “fruiting”.  That “fruiting” may be beyond our control, but preparing for it isn’t.

So that is my hope for myself, my family , and all my friends, that we would live out mushrooming hope in 2018. If we do we will be ready for when the rain comes and the fruiting begins.

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Christ the Mediator

Jesus is referred to as the mediator in Paul’s first letter to Timothy. “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5). Paul states that Jesus stands in between us and the Father . When the Father sees us He sees Jesus, and we see the Father through Christ.

In his classic work “The Cost of Discipleship” (or the more accurate title “Discipleship“) Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that because of His role as mediator between God and man, Jesus is also for the Christian the mediator between that person and all other people, things, and experiences.

Bonhoeffer writes:

He stands between us and God, and for that very reason he stands between us and all other men and things. He is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality. Since the whole world was created through him and unto him (John 1.3; I Cor. 8.6; Heb. 1.2), he is the sole Mediator in the world. Since his coming man has no immediate relationship of his own any more to anything, neither to God nor to the world; Christ wants to be the mediator. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship, p. 95.

In other words, the one who professes Jesus as Lord no longer has any direct access to anything. We are to always relate to the everything by viewing it through, interacting with it through, and responding to it through Jesus. Here’s my crude attempt at drawing out what this looks like.

So for me as a follower of Christ whenever I see the one who has hurt me I should be looking through Christ (i.e. mediating my experience with the one who hurt me) and respond first with my love for Christ rather than the pain of my hurt. Or whenever I see resources that I might be tempted to put my trust for security in, I should see those resources through Christ and thereby see His desire to use those resources to help those in need. As a Christian Jesus stands in between me and everything  else and thereby I should see everything and everyone through a “Jesus lens”. Followers of Christ no longer have any direct experiences because we have confessed Jesus as Lord and He mediates all our experience.

When we realize that Christ is the mediator between use and others the love we feel for Christ overflows onto the others that we see through Him. It helps us to forgive because the hurt and anger we may feel for our enemy is changed by seeing Christ first, because we realize that any “punches” we might throw at our enemy will be felt by Jesus first. Jesus is our mediator.

Still it can be difficult to realize that Jesus stands in between us and everything else. It can be an easy and convenient thing to forget. Still I try.

I’ll end with another passage from Bonhoeffer.

… the God given reality of the neighbour with whom I live is given me through Christ; if not, my relation to him is on a wholly wrong basis. All our attempts to bridge the gulf between our neighbours and ourselves by means of natural or spiritual affinities are bound to come to grief. There is an unbridgeable gulf, and “otherness” and strangeness between us. No way of his own can lead one man to another. However loving and sympathetic we try to be, however sound our psychology, however frank and open our behaviour, we cannot penetrate the incognito of the other man, for there are no direct relationships, not even between soul and soul. Christ stands between us, and we can only get into touch with our neighbours through Him. That is why intercession is the most promising way to reach our neighbours.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, p. 81.

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Bonhoeffer Quote – Advent Is Like A Mine Rescue

From the Advent devotional I am presently reading.

You know what a mine disaster is. In recent weeks we have had to read about one in the newspapers.

The moment even the most courageous miner has dreaded his whole life long is here. It is no use running into the walls; the silence all around him remains…. The way out for him is blocked. He knows the people up there are working feverishly to reach the miners who are buried alive. Perhaps someone will be rescued, but here in the last shaft? An agonizing period of waiting and dying is all that remains.

But suddenly a noise that sounds like tapping and breaking in the rock can be heard. Unexpectedly, voices cry out, “Where are you, help is on the way!” Then the disheartened miner picks himself up, his heart leaps, he shouts, “Here I am, come on through and help me! I’ll hold out until you come! Just come soon!” A final, desperate hammer blow to his ear, now the rescue is near, just one more step and he is free.

We have spoken of Advent itself. That is how it is with the coming of Christ: “Look up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God in the Manger, p. 41, from Bonhoeffer’s Advent message in a London church December 3, 1933.

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Advent = Waiting, Waiting = Preparation

Advent is about waiting. We get our English word “advent” from the Latin “adventus” which means “arrival”. Because of the focus on arrival the waiting of Advent isn’t the type of waiting that produces laziness. This waiting isn’t about wasting time and naps (though naps during the Advent season might be excellent preparation for celebrating Christmas when they come from a mindset of trust that we can depend upon God). Instead it is the type of waiting that leads to preparation. Expectant parents know that anticipating an arrival leads to preparation during the time of waiting.

My dog knows this too.

Ehem! We’re waiting!

Clive may be Pam and my newest dog but he can already pick up on certain preparations and non-verbal cues leading to things he likes. If I walk in a certain manner he expects that I will be heading to a vehicle and therefore starts his “happy dance” while waiting for me to get his leash and my keys. Clive’s predecessors, Montana and Roux, had figured out that certain cooking preparatory actions meant that I would be cooking jambalaya, and me cooking jambalaya would mean lots of scraps for them. They got SUPER excited anytime I started preparing to cut celery (one of the three ingredients of the cajun trinity). They hated celery but that loved what it led to. The preparation pointed to what was coming and the dogs got very excited while waiting for the jambalaya’s arrival.

The waiting of Advent should lead to preparation out of excitement, which is why the message of John the Baptist opens the Gospel According to Mark. “Prepare the way of the Lord” (Mark 1:3) for we expect the arrival of the One we have hoped for.

Bonhoeffer reminds us that the Advent of the Jesus is something we should constantly prepare for.

The Advent season is a season of waiting, but our whole life is an Advent season, that is, a season of waiting for the last Advent, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “God Is In the Manger“, p. 2.

We prepare to celebrate the yearly remembrance of Advent as a way of reminding ourselves to constantly prepare for the last Advent, when the kingdom of God is finalized and all will be right.  That is why it is so important that we celebrate Christmas in a manner that glorifies Jesus. When we celebrate Advent yearly in a way that glorifies Jesus we prepare ourselves for the last Advent.

I, Nicholas – AKA Santa, am making a list and checking it twice of who is waiting expectantly.

The problem is that often we wait in a manner that doesn’t actually prepare us for the anticipated arrival. We might actually even do wrong things in preparation, things that don’t help and may actually hurt our preparation. Kind of like expecting company to come over to your home and needing to get things ready, but choosing then to change do your taxes or change the oil in your car. That type of work isn’t actually preparation for the expected arrival and probably hurts the expectation and preparation. I believe a lot of the stuff done to “celebrate” Christmas is like this. Wrong use of our expectant waiting and and thus it hurts our preparation.

In Tapestry we join thousands of other churches in using Advent Conspiracy to remind us to:

  • Worship Fully
  • Spend Less
  • Give More
  • Love All

We believe focusing on these four things help us to wait in a preparatory manner far better than Christmas is often celebrated. I like what Walter Brueggermann writes about the Advent as preparation.

Advent is not the kind of “preparation” that involves shopping and parties and cards. Such illusions of abundance disguise the true cravings of our weary souls. Advent is preparation for the demands of newness that will break the tired patterns of fear in our lives.

Walter Brueggemann, “Celebrating Abundance: Devotions for Advent“, p. 5.

Wait in a manner that actually prepares for His arrival. Celebrate Christmas in a manner that prepares for His arrival. Otherwise, our waiting is wasted.

SIDE NOTE – a great way to wait in a manner of preparation during Advent is to use a devotional designed to be used during Advent. I quoted above from two that I like, but there are tons of others. Find one that is works for you. I know Advent started Sunday and you might not have thought of it till now, but don’t worry about that. Use the days you have to prepare and forget about the days you didn’t. The books I referenced are:

SIDE SIDE NOTE – if you want more info concerning Advent Conspiracy visit their webpage. It is simple and wonderful. The video below is a nice summary of what Advent Conspiracy is all about.

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Practical Community

I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately because I’ve been asked several times recently why Tapestry is named Tapestry. Since, I have mentioned it I should probably explain here why Tapestry is named Tapestry.

  • A tapestry is woven together. To separate it is to destroy it – kind of like what I hope (and believe) the community of Tapestry is like.
  • A tapestry is beautiful when seen from above but a mess of tangles when seen from below – kind of like what I hope (and believe) the community of Tapestry is like.
  • Karl Barth described the imago dei as coming from the fact that humanity is male and female (i.e. we are the image of GOD in community and to separate us is to deny that image). As a tapestry we best display GOD’s image together – kind of like what I hope (and believe) the community of Tapestry is like.

So, community is why Tapestry is called Tapestry.

Then while thinking about community I was talked with Adam (my favorite eldest son) about something he liked that his pastor in Eau Claire said. Both Adam and Noah (my favorite youngest son) go to a church named ekklesia in Eau Claire. His pastor was talking about community and offered the following practical suggestion “come to ekklesia early and stay late”. Very practical advice for developing strong relationships with the people in your church. i like practical advice.

So I thought I would throw out a few of my own thoughts on practical ways to develop strong community around you.

  • This month have someone over to your abode for a meal, dessert, and/or coffee.
  • This month go to someone’s abode (it is important to let other people host you as you host them).
  • When you hear a conversation around you that you find interesting jump into it (Just make sure you aren’t taking the conversation over – jump into it as a participant not a dominator). Most importantly ask a lot of questions and show a great deal of interest.
  • Begin to ask people about the things that they are excited about right now and share what you are excited about (personally I like to ask people what is floating their boats at the moment).
  • Find out something that is going on in the lives of your neighbors and begin to pray for them regularly.
  • Ask a few people to craft with you.
  • Yes, this is my favorite game and I would gladly play it with you (though it doesn’t have a multiplayer mode).

    Ask a few people to play your favorite video game and discuss why it is your favorite video game (mine is Bioshock and I love it because it confronts the messed up thought of Ayn Rand while also allowing me to shoot creatures).

  • Ask someone you don’t know as well in the church to go to Emy J’s, Zest, or the Mission and play a board game together.
  • Show up for your church and stay late (if it is good then why reinvent it?)

If you have some wonderful practical suggestions please share them. i would love to hear them. Also I believe the most important thing is just that you do something purposeful. Just do something. I feel that often it doesn’t matter so much what we do but that we do something. Developing community is like that. Regularly makes yourself vulnerable and do something with people and community will often just develop on its own.

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Discipleship

I don’t know when discussions of how to disciple someone (lead them in growing closer to Jesus) began, but I know it started long before (as in millennia before) I began studying to be a minister. People have written really good books on the subject, preached amazing sermons, and developed grand traditions that were meant to help people grow as follower/learners of Jesus.

Many of them are very good and you should probably go read one of them right now. I’m a big fan of Brother Lawrence’s “Practice of the Presence of God” (a wonderful little read that focusing on seeing the work of God around us) and Richard Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline” (a wonderful book on disciplines that are meant to point us to God). I’ll add a new work I like, John Ortberg’s “The Life You Always Wanted” which has a cheesy Oprah Winfrey cover and title but solid content on spiritual disciplines, though Foster’s work is still my first choice.

Still I struggle with programs that are designed to disciple a follower of Jesus. My struggle is that I believe they can be very helpful while also being very detrimental. It seems to me that Jesus very clearly defined what one of His disciples is supposed to be about when he described the great commandments 1a and 1b. We are to 1a” “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37), and 1b: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39). That’s what disciples of Christ are supposed to be about: loving God and loving others. So if certain actions help with 1a and 1b then they are good for helping in discipleship.

The problem is that I believe often the things that are meant to be means to help us reach our ends (1a & 1b) regularly become ends in and of themselves.  We become more focused on the actions of the program, rather than loving God and others as the program is supposed to help us do. Means are not meant to be ends. When our means become ends we usually call such situations legalism, because the actions have become more important that the actions are meant to help us achieve. This is part of my struggle with such programs.

The other part is that the opposite of using such programs is to simply throw a new believer in Jesus Christ into “deep water and hope they can swim”. That’s not cool.

So here are my simple suggestions for growing as a disciple of Jesus. i.e. here’s my recommended list of means for growing in the ends that Christ set up for us, 1a & 1b.

  • Try to notice something for which you are thankful to God for this week and thank God for it/them. (gratitude)
  • Ask Jesus for something you need this week (dependence & prayer).
  • Try to forgive someone this week because of Jesus forgiving you.
  • Try to help someone this week because of Jesus helping you.
  • Read/listen to the Bible or someone talking about scripture for 10 minutes this week.
  • Try to tell someone something Jesus has done for you.

If these help you follow Jesus better then great. If they don’t then skip them. There is nothing sacred about my recommendations. They are just means and means that don’t help us reach our ends should be dropped. The only things that matter are our ends. In this case those ends are 1a love God and 1b love others.

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Doxology

I made one of the best decisions concerning worship in all my years of ministry this year. In January Tapestry began dismissing from our worship gatherings with all the “threads” singing the doxology.

I can’t believe that I wasn’t ending every gathering with the Doxology in every ministry situation I ever led. To all the youth and churches I have helped lead through the years I apologize. We should have been ending every meeting and gathering by signing the doxology.

Why?

Because it serves as a reminder that all creation does praise God and that we should live out lives that praise God.

Pamela made this wonderful typography for our house.

ALL DOES PRAISE GOD

Ending the gathering with the doxology reinforces that the creation that surrounds us and the people and events we interact with during our days praise God. In the end, even our evil acts will not have have the last word but will speak of the mercy, grace, and love of God. All things will praise God. When we remember this we look with eyes that are focused on seeing the work of God surrounding us. We can’t help but see His blessings flowing because we have been reminded that they are all around us, even to be found in the valley of the shadow of death. The Doxology serves as a focus reminder – hey you’re leaving the worship gathering, now continue to look for how God is praised around you.

WE SHOULD PRAISE GOD

While all things, events, and people will praise God the Doxology also reminds us that we should choose to praise God through positive action, not just praise God through proving that His love will win out. We have a choice. He has commanded those who follow Him to live in manners that praise Him and therefore we should and can choose to do that which proclaims His worthiness. We want to be among those that praise God by doing that which brings joy to His face. The Doxology serves as an exit command – hey you’re leaving the worship gathering, now go and praise God.

I’m not saying that every church should dismiss itself with the Doxology, rather that I am glad that we at Tapestry do now and that I wish I had been doing it all the years that I have led ministry. I should have started it when we started Tapestry … if not long before. It is such a great reminder before I walk out the doors.

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Don't be a Sucker

The U.S. War Department thought it was pretty important in 1943 for U.S. Citizens to be able to spot fascism when they saw it. So they created this film to remind people not to be a sucker. Seems pertinent today.

We human beings are not born with prejudices. Always they are made for us. Made by someone who wants something. Remember that when you hear this kind of talk. Somebody is going to get something out of it. And it isn’t going to be you.

Don’t be a sucker.