Community and Hollywood

I think that it is interesting to note that even through movies produced by Hollywood we can see glimpses of community that draw us in and captivate our imagination. These are the stories that touch our hearts.

I suggested two movies yesterday: "A Beautiful Mind" and "Winn Dixie" (not the grocery store chain). And someone has added to the list today. here's what she had to say:

"Gran Torino" w/Clint Eastwood....it's deep, real, and full of the challenges we face. It shows
how relationships are not just about being right or wrong, but faithful. Faithfulness that allows
us to have the courage to walk through our fear, love with loyalty, especially people who are
different."

Any other movies that give you a glimpse of community?

Movies and Community

I caught the last half of "A Beautiful Mind". Russell Crowe is really good. I was struck by the display of community in this movie.

Another movie that I thought was a great movie showing what true community looks like was "Winn Dixie."

What are some of the movies that you think show authentic community?

Kindly Rejecting...Directing My Imagination

kindly rejecting

directing my imagination

These phrases have been lingering in my consciousness the past 72 hours. David Fitch's choice of words (see March 23rd post) are quite appropriate, don't you think? Sometimes, to be honest, I reject, but not with kindness. I judge. I criticize.

"Lord, never let me direct my own imagination. Change for the sake of change is not the goal. Embracing something new is only healthy if You are inspiring me to embrace it." God directs my imagination through His Word, through community with other Jesus followers, from close friends who speak truth and re-direct my focus to Jesus, from others who are attempting to live missionally, through the process of writing down/ journaling my thoughts and receiving yours, through music that captures my attention and stirs my soul, from preparation and delivery of teaching and preaching week-by-week, from children and wife who point me continually to Jesus, from dozens of people who truly pray for my imagination.

In what specific ways does God direct your imagination?

Mission As A Way Of Life (Continued)

Here's a great response I received on facebook to yesterday's questions: In order to engage mission as a lifestyle, what do you need to kindly reject? What do you need to direct your imagination toward?

"More and more I've been kindly rejecting positions, titles, systems, committees that promote a hierarchy. Rather I have been directing my imagination towards reaching and receiving those who are marginalized or rejected based upon our own ideas of what those standards should be. Looking for Jesus in each person and circumstance...

I'm rejecting the idea that I need to fit in and imagining the possibility that I can just be me."

Let's stay with this. What are you "kindly rejecting" and "directing your imagination toward" as you seek to live missional lives?

Mission As A Way Of Life

Over the past few years I have been learning to "let go" of some things and embrace others. David Fitch in a post dated March 6th uses language like "kindly rejecting" and "directing imagination to" to describe this exchange that I have been experiencing. I believe that this is the greatest challenge for the church today if she once again wants to be engaged in mission as a way of life.

Would you add anything to his list of 9? And, personally, what do you need to kindly reject? what do you need to direct your imagination toward?

Barriers to Community

Looking at this invitation thing from a different perspective, what do you think are the main barriers that those we are trying to invite into community struggle with?

Lifestyle as Invitation

In response to my own question from yesterday's post, our lifestyle is our best invitation. We are called to be inviting, appealing, irresistible. Jesus is irresistible. True community is irresistible. As we live among people, care and receive from them, build friendships with them, the invitations will come naturally. In fact, frequently, people will invite themselves! The problem frequently is that our invitations are not to live life together, or to experience authentic biblical community. They are, if we are honest, simply an invitation to group-to a weekly meeting. Who really needs another weekly meeting on their calendar? Consider this response to yesterday's post:

"Every one's in a different place. If we say authentic biblical community is making a commitment to get together once a week, how is that any different than saying, going to church every Sunday makes you an authentic christian? It becomes an attitude we display and is transparent. We know how much we need community and we for good reason desire to share it. Relationships comes in stages. To say that someone is not in authentic christian community because they are not meeting once a week, is similar to saying, one is not pregnant simply because they haven't given birth yet."

Another problem is that sometimes our invitations are delivered out of a deep need to fill our group rather than out of true love for the individual. Consider these quotes from responses to yesterday's post:

"Groups have fences, as we experience life together in community, these experiences become a foundation of trust and a vehicle for love to grow. As love grows so does our view or vison of God's intent for community and our passion to share it. The fences are biblical and necessary because they form a circle of loyalty. Yet, our passion many times can tear down instead of building up. People easily become objects of our passion, we desire to give and do not value who they are. We are not listening and receiving from them. "

"I've been sharing with a woman who work's where our church league bowls. Was going to ask her to group and realized I didn't value her because I truly don't know her. I know she's Christian, I know allot about her, but I decided to ask her for lunch first."

What do you think? Any truth to these points about invitations?

Inviting Others Into Community

Recently, one of our lifeGroup leaders shared with me that an invitation they extended to a friend was met with a litany of excuses as to why they couldn't accept. Bottom line, they just weren't interested in making a weekly commitment. It was asking too much for someone to commit to a once a week "meeting."

Through the years I have heard every excuse you could imagine. And while, in our setting, there are over 280 people making that weekly commitment to live life together, there are so many others who are missing out. Why is that?

I would like to have us think this through from two vantage points over the next couple of days.

Today, let's look at this issue from the vantage point of the invitation itself. How might our invitation to others to live in true Christian community be unappealing? Do you think there's a possibility that we could be getting in the way of authentic biblical community by the way we're inviting people? How so?

Celtic Spirituality

Happy St. Patrick's Day! In a gathering of church leaders today we had a brief presentation on Celtic Spirituality, a topic I knew very little about. And still have much to learn. We spent the bulk of our time discussing the spirituality that emerged in the 4th through 8th centuries and still remain today.

Here are two features I picked up:

1) They followed a monastic model. Somewhat distinct from the monasticism of the middle-ages that most of us think about today. These communities were more like villages. In these small communities the people lived in little huts. The village was surrounded by a wall, not to separate themselves from the rest of the world, but to keep out the wild animals, and keep in the domesticated animals. The residents were priests, monks and lay people living life together.

What can we learn from these Christians?

2) There was a strong emphasis on the spiritual journey. People had soul friends (amonchara)who journeyed with them, directing and challenging them along the journey.

Who is your soul friend?

Perhaps these two features of Celtic Spirituality impacted me today because these are things we are trying to recover today at Christ Memorial. What do you know about Celtic Spirituality that has relevance to our journey today?

Changing the Name

We are in the process of changing the name of our church to more accurately reflect our mission and our vision. Our current name is Christ Memorial. Our mission is "to connect people to life in Jesus." Our vision is described in this qualitative vision statement:
"God is leading us to see a multi-location church emerge that will transform the spiritual
landscape of Greater Madison. This church will convene in hundreds of lifeGroups with
lifeWorship Centers strategically located in geographical regions throughout the Madison
area."

You can start to see the disconnect with our name.

Put your thinking caps on and dream with me about naming this movement of God in Greater Madison. Check out our website, get a feel for what God is doing here, and suggest some creative names that would effectively communicate with our community. Or, if you have a great name that you just wish a church would adopt, send it my way.

Friends...(continued)

Yesterday we began considering what it means to call Jesus our friend by looking at what true friendship means. Here were some thoughts of mine on the topic.

Friends...

• spend time together doing things they enjoy
• spend time together doing nothing at all
• don't stress about who picks up the check; they freely give and receive
• explore possibilities
• go on adventures
• share everything
• don't hold back
• call at odd hours
• call each other when something amazing happens; they don't think twice
• enjoy getting those calls; they don't reluctantly pick it up
• listen intently to one another; they are truly interested
• give and receive courage to risk
• see the good, the bad, and the ugly, and stick around
• thrive in a safe environment
• challenge our thinking and behavior when we get off track
• receive those challenges without questioning motives
• strengthen other important relationships
• help us think things through
• help us make decisions
• ask questions to help us think more clearly
• they give advice when we ask for it

And here's what you've added so far.

Friends...

• pray for each other
• have each other’s back
• don’t envy what the other has
• recognize and accept differences in each other

Let's keep thinking about this. Friends...

Friends...

A teammate recently asked me a great question: When you think of Jesus as your friend, what images come to mind? How would you describe friendship with God?

We decided that friendship with Jesus, with God, is an amazing concept that we as Lutheran Christians have steered clear of for the most part. Savior, yes. Lord, sure. Prophet, Priest, and King, absolutely. Yet, deep down, even though we are known for singing hymns (in four-part harmony, of course) like "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" we still resonate with the truth of "What a Friend We have in Jesus."

So, what would it look like to have Jesus as a friend? In our discussion, we found it helpful to complete this statement; Friends....

Here's what we came up with:

Friends...

• spend time together doing things they enjoy
• spend time together doing nothing at all
• don't stress about who picks up the check; they freely give and receive
• explore possibilities
• go on adventures
• share everything
• don't hold back
• call at odd hours
• call each other when something amazing happens; they don't think twice
• enjoy getting those calls; they don't reluctantly pick it up
• listen intently to one another; they are truly interested
• give and receive courage to risk
• see the good, the bad, and the ugly, and stick around
• thrive in a safe environment
• challenge our thinking and behavior when we get off track
• receive those challenges without questioning motives
• strengthen other important relationships
• help us think things through
• help us make decisions
• ask questions to help us think more clearly
• they give advice when we ask for it

What would you add to the list? Go ahead, give it a shot.

Friends...

What Have You Been Reading?

I enjoy reading. It keeps me sharp, and facilitates thinking. Here are a few books that I have been reading recently:

What have you been reading?

Pro and Con

I have been asked to sit on a panel representing the "pro" side of an argument. While a brother in Christ will sit on the same panel, representing the "con" side of the argument. This "discussion" is to take place in the near future in front of other brother pastors from the South Wisconsin District of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod. The issue that we are discussing is really not the issue for me. But, just for the sake of satisfying curious minds today I'll tell you what the topic is. We are to discuss why we are either for or against the restructuring of our denomination.

We seem to take this approach with alot of things....."for" and "against"; "pro" and "con". We like the debate. We like to crush someone else in an argument. We love to show our intellectual mettle. We relish the win. Sometimes, we even play the "devil's advocate" and take the other side, even if we don't feel strongly about it, just to have.....you guessed it.......an arugment. Why?

I was very reluctant to accept the invitation when it was extended. I felt like I was being set up. I felt like it was a "lose-lose" proposition. And, if you know me very well, you know I hate to lose!

Our whole denomination seems to be set up for this kind of dance. I could get into the labels that we place on one another. We have the "conservatives" and the liberals"; the "confessional" and the "missional"; the "liturgical" and the "contemporary". And on and on we go. We feel better about ourselves when we can put someone else in a box. Part of my reason for blogging this today is to confess that I am among those who have engaged in the fight.

Yet, this assignment that I have accepted has really got me thinking. What if there was no debate; no pro, nor con, just two brothers who were willing to engage in a conversation for other people to listen in on? What if at the end of the day the whole exercise was seen as two people struggling toward the same end, on the same team, united in heart and purpose? What if we weren't "pro" and "con" but just two servants of our Master Jesus trying desperately to be effective in carrying out His mission? What would that panel discussion look like?

Who helps you let go and turn back to God?

Last Friday I wrote this:
"Return to me with all your heart! What a gracious and appealing invitation! And yet, it can
be so difficult. Why is it so hard for us to return to God with our whole heart? Why is it so
hard for us to totally surrender our past, our present, our future? Is He not trustworthy? Has
He not delivered us time and again?As you process all of these questions, here's one that
makes it much more personal: What do you need to let go of today if you are going to love
God with undivided heart? "

The Lord reminds us through the prophet Joel that this turning, this surrendering, this letting go is not done alone. I don't do it on my own.
"Blow the ram’s horn in Jerusalem! Announce a time of fasting; call the people together for a
solemn meeting. Gather all the people— the elders, the children, and even the babies. Call the
bridegroom from his quarters and the bride from her private room. Let the priests, who
minister in the Lord’s presence, stand and weep between the entry room to the Temple and
the altar. Let them pray, “Spare your people, Lord! Don’t let your special possession become
an object of mockery. Don’t let them become a joke for unbelieving foreigners who say, ‘Has
the God of Israel left them?’” Then the Lord will pity his people and jealously guard the honor
of his land. " Joel 2:15-18

What do you notice about this call to worship, this call to community? What is supposed to happen in this solemn assembly? Who's there? What do they pray?

Who is your community? Who are the people in your life who can help you turn back?