Okay, I’m old. I tore my Achilles tendon playing basketball yesterday. Not total detachment, but worth an MRI for further investigation. Keep me in your prayers, not to mention my family and the rest of the Jacob’s Well staff who are inevitably inconvenienced by my lack of mobility.
Hopefully I’ll be back running and out on the court in a couple months.
Posted in Uncategorized
I blogged about this general concept before (read here). Mark Tranvik, friend of mine from long ago and a very sharp thinker, had a great piece printed on the featured page (that’s the righthand page for us STrib readers) in the op-ed section of today’s (1.7.2008) Minneapolis StarTribune. Read the article here.
Mark says good things that help clear up this messy intersection. I agree with him that, of course, we have to bring our faith into our politics. Why? Because our faith (Christian, but I bet every faith would agree on this) calls us to love our neighbors and care about creation. That is more than personal piety, it pulls us into the political realm whether we want to or not. But when we take a position on an issue or pick our candidate it is us picking the position or person, with our best judgment and understanding, it isn’t God. We need to acknowledge that. It is fine to say that we arrived at this because of our spiritual convictions, but we cannot pretend we are speaking for God.
The addition I’d make, or stress a little more, is that churches (local or denominational) do not have the job of rallying their forces for a particular stand on an issue or a particular candidate, as if it were a litmus test for being a ‘real Christian.’ Rather churches can say that issues are important, that elections are important, and can (should) provide opportunities to learn more and to be places that conversations can take place. That way churches help their people live out their faith; deciding for themselves what is the best way to participate in the political process – employing their best faith, intellect and intention. Let’s trust God’s Spirit to lead this! As a church we should promote and appreciate people doing what they believe is right, not conforming to the church’s stand, promoting divisiveness and exclusion. That hearkens back to my last blog…
Thanks Mark!
Posted in church, God, jacob's well, politics, public
The same conversation as sparked my last entry also ventured into this topic which is very key for us at Jacob’s Well. We don’t just need a new kind of church for the sake of relevance, but because the church has become so polarized here in the United States. Whole denominations decide what and how they will do things not based on their core values and theology, but in order to not be confused with churches they don’t agree with (and feel threatened by – that’s another story).
Something I think my ‘mainline’ tradition has been missing is decisiveness. That is, ‘Why follow Jesus?’ What does it matter, what difference does it make? We associate the decisiveness of faith – a core message of the Gospel, God does make a difference – with the way some very fundamentalist churches have played it out; only being concerned with ‘saving souls,’ with drawing lines of who is ‘Christian’ and who is not. We don’t want to define whom loves by excluding people (homosexuals, non-born-again’s, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, other denominations, etc) so we don’t talk about what it is that God calls us to at all. We just talk around it, we make it ‘easy’ and that is different than making it the greatest and biggest investment of our lives. We also haven’t found ways to articulate how God might be at work in other faiths and other lifestyles that are ‘foreign’ to us without gutting what is decisive about our faith. We’ve left ‘decisiveness’ to others, but it doesn’t belong to them alone, it belongs to all who seek to ‘take up their cross’ and follow Jesus.
It is time to claim decisiveness back. We can affirm the decisiveness of our faith without creating unnecessary devisiveness. We don’t have to decide whether Buddhists will go to hell or heaven, whether homosexuality is a sin or not. Face it, God hasn’t asked our opinion on these issues and God hasn’t asked us to judge each other. Rather, to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4.15), witness to what God has shown us (1 Peter 2.9) and let those seeds take root in people’s lives trusting God’s Spirit to be at work (Matthew 13). To be honest about our own need for forgiveness, redemption and transformation (1 Corinthians 15.9-10).
We can be decisive – we have the greatest news and the greatest relationship in the world that changes us whether we want it to or not – without being devisive – our job is to let people know they too are children of God, not how much God has judged them,
This is a precarious position to hold, and I’ve been taken to task for it before. What I find so compellingly Christ-like about it is that it depends of God’s power of transforming our lives and forgiving our mistakes rather than our ability to conform people to what we think they should be like to be “Christian.”
One of our core values at is to “Focus on the mission that unites, not details that divide – We value unity and diversity.” This holy balancing act is a good example of that value and I see it happening at Jacob’s Well.
Posted in church, church transitions, commitment, discipleship, emerging church, God, jacob's well, precarious, Why Believe?
I had a great conversation yesterday with a ‘jacob’s-well-checker-outer.’ He represents people whom I love to talk to because they are searching and critically discerning at the same time. They bring hope and skepticism to the table simultaneously. I see a lot of me reflected in such people.
One of the things we talked about is the danger of manipulation of people by religious organizations. There are certainly enough examples of it – Jonestown in Guyana comes to mind, but that is the extreme. The danger of manipulation comes from people allowing another person to tell them what to do or think. What happens at church can certainly fall into that category; people come looking for a ‘Word from God,’ and the leaders, often a pastor, offers to supply that Word.
Do I manipulate people? I want to say no, and I can confidently say that I never do it intentionally for purposes that are self serving, but that is where I have to ask just what the difference is between manipulation and inspiration. It is the church’s job to open people’s hearts, to lead them places they wouldn’t go otherwise, to touch their emotions. Is that manipulation? Is the difference between inspiration and manipulation the motivation behind it? After all, to manipulate literally means to alter something manually, with an intentional act. I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t try to create that nexus between God and people andso that something happen there.
In my message tomorrow as part of our High Definition Living series I am talking about “God’s HD Signal” (forgive the comparison…). God’s ‘signal’ or message is different from others because of how much ‘bandwidth’ it holds, that is, how comprehensive it is in addressing all aspects of our lives. I’ll mention Jesus’ Great Commandment, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind & strength.” God wants to get into every nook & cranny of us, and make us different.
I don’t want people to ever feel manipulated, but I do want people to feel moved – by God, through me, and the music, the community, the environment, everything. I guess we need to demonstrate transparency, ask people to not be passive receivers but to engage in the process, to test out what they experience at Jacob’s Well. And I need people to trust me. I know that I need to earn that trust. I don’t expect it to be given me just because I am ‘the pastor’ or the person up front. If anything, I see those things as barriers to gaining people’s trust because it removes me from their experience. I also need to ask people to risk. To be willing to be vulnerable to God’s work through our worship experiences and other places in their lives – not to turn off their brains or to live in a fantasy world, but to dare to see and experience things in a way in which they aren’t in control.
Merry Christmas everyone!
364 days of the year seem to be pretty hectic. But today I’ll be sitting around with my family doing whatever seems to come next. That is perhaps the best gift I get, although I don’t know for sure because we haven’t opened presents yet…
Thank you to all who have been part of the sweat, dreaming, planning, encouraging, supporting of Jacob’s Well. It is a great sign that Christ is born that Jacob’s Well even is.
May Christ be born in you today, and every day.
Posted in Uncategorized
Okay, so that title is a little flippant, but isn’t this whole deal? Staff writer, John Ewoldt, of the StarTribune (our local Minneapolis daily) brought this wonderful holiday gift idea to my attention in their 12/15 edition. The unbelievable notion comes from their assessment at the public’s interest in this 12-inch, $20 plastic Jesus doll that quotes Bible verses. I love the notion that these Jesus’ are “disappearing’ from shelves in Targets and Walmarts across the country. That sounds a little ‘Harry Potter-esque’ to me (do I hear an echo of ‘disapparating’?) but then what are we Americans great at except taking the best of various vaguely connected things and blending them together until we have a product with no integrity that we are all dying for? [pun intended] Even more fun is the observation that the consumer response to this version of Jesus is of ‘biblical proportions.’ Wow!
Will I be getting a Talking Jesus Doll? I won’t be buying one. (Although the truth is that I did buy a plastic action figure Jesus a few years ago. It’s on my desk. But it doesn’t talk…) Should one show up under the tree for me I’ll take it as a reminder that we followers of the one who inspired this toy need to be able to laugh at ourselves and not take ourselves too seriously. It will also be a reminder to look at my own “model” of Jesus. Have I made him in the image of something that I can handle and market, or am I allowing myself to be made me in God’s image?
I figure God has a much higher tolerance for blasphemy than many people think God has, and an even greater ability to use what we believe is unusable and to do great things with/through/despite it. Just take me for example – but that’s an entirely different story.
Merry Christmas. Jesus is coming! In more and different ways than we would ever expect.
Leading up to Christmas at Jacob’s Well we are talking about being “Behind the Miracle,” a VH1 (or JW1) sort of thing. We figure that God wasn’t just trying to knock our socks off back then with amazing miracles, but was breaking into our world to always be with us, and that the greatest miracles are still with us everyday.
Anyway, yesterday we were talking about the signs. The shepherds had angels, the wisemen had a star… what about us? How does the whole ‘signs and wonders’ thing work? While there are many reasons to be skeptical of them, it’s hard to deny that they are life changing for a lot of people? Just go ask a few people if they have ever received a sign from God (or somewhere upstairs} that determined something very significant in their life. You’ll collect some pretty amazing stories and convictions about signs. If you want to know more about this you can hear my Message on the topic which will be posted before long on our website. 
Okay, so as I came to the office this morning I realized that I have a sign from God. I mean, literally. When we launched our “what if…” campaign in September we rented a billboard on 48th & Chicago for 4 weeks to create some buzz. The picture on this page was taken today – 17 December! It has been up there for 3 1/2 months! I guess no one else has rented the billboard so we’ve still got it! What’s more, it shouldn’t have lasted! The billboard company produces two copies assuming that after about 2 weeks or so they will have to replace the sign because weather takes it’s toll on the sign. Well, it’s been 3 1/2 months and ours is still looking good.
In the meantime it is a sign from God for a lot of people! Four first time visitors have been part of Jacob’s Well in the last two weeks alone because of that billboard – that’s just people who have let us know. What if… it’s a sign from God (not us) to our neighbors. Hmmmm…
So… the question… do I think God is making our billboard stay up?
Let’s just say this; It’s still up, God is using it, and we’re thankful. May we be so blessed next time we put one up.
Posted in emerging church, God, jacob's well, Jesus, marketing, miracles, what if
It is great to be able to experiment as a church in ways that might actually make a difference to people. We like to not just talk about things, but to take at least first steps towards doing them. (That’s our PAW concept, I said I’d blog about that a couple of months ago, I’ll get to it…)
A couple Sundays ago people all signed this giant brown paper banner that said, “We are Jacob’s Well” on it, claiming that the ministry belongs to us, and that without each and everyone of us, Jacob’s Well wouldn’t exist. The next Sunday the banner was there, but we were talking about the next step, sharing our faith beyond our community. Being in mission, taking God’s love to the streets. So during the whole service a group of people took down the sign, cut it up into little pieces, folded them and put them into the well. (The well’s water this week, the life-giving stuff from God, isn’t liquid H2O but these pieces of paper… us… the gifted people God calls into the world to bring life!)
During the closing song people came up and took a piece of that paper from the well. I asked them to take it for two reasons: 1. a reminder – be God’s love in the world. I challenged each person to do some act of kindness for someone else, and to do it to the glory of God, because it is the right thing to do, what we are created for, not just to be nice or to get credit. Then 2. pass on the paper – this was the hard part for people. To not only do the act, but to tell them why they did it. It makes for an interesting conversation…
“Here, let me help you.”
“Thank you.”
“Would you take this piece of paper?” Handing them a folded piece of brown paper.
“Um, what’s that about?”
“Well, you see I go to this church where we don’t think you can just believe things, but we actually ought to do them. And this paper came from my church. It’s a long story, but it’s sort of a way of passing on who we are and who God made us.”
“Oh, I see.” [lying] “And what am I supposed to do with it?”
“Um, I don’t know… It’s up to you. I guess you can do whatever you want, but maybe you could do the same thing… I mean give it to someone else.”
May the story go on and on. May we all share God’s love with all our heart, soul, strength and mind.
Posted in Uncategorized
Faith & Life. What’s the difference? We were talking in the office the other day and the conversation rolled around to helping people “grow in their faith” and one of my colleagues exclaimed, “Grow in faith!? I don’t want to ‘grow in faith’ I want to grow in life. I want someone to help me grow in my life.”
Why divide faith from life? This is like the secular/sacred split. Our protective desire to keep God ‘clean’ of the things of this world by creating the two categories (doesn’t seem biblically sound when you talk about it that way, does it?) has also kept God in church and out of the world and confined faith to Sunday mornings. My colleague isn’t saying that there isn’t a difference between a life with and without faith – of course there is, and one of our jobs is to help people to see that. But once we know that life is only life with God in it, why keep separating them? We aren’t teaching something that has to do with one part of our life experience, but that is our life experience. Why give people language that inclines them to categorize and seclude God’s work and presence in their lives.
I’m going to try to change the way I speak and see how it works. When do I want to talk about people’s faith, and when do I just want to talk about life? Life – that is what God is interested in.
Posted in church, discipleship, emerging church, God, jacob's well
Okay, so it isn’t the “real” thing, but it is something we can all start with. Yesterday at Jacob’s Well I talked about the non-negotiable dimension of faith that we call ‘grow’; it’s learning, discipleship, education, doing the stuff you need to do to mature in your spiritual life. We always have what our creative team calls a PAW in our services, that is a ‘personal act of worship.’ A PAW is something that people are encouraged to do that takes the good intentions that people may have in the service and has them make some sort of first step towards actually doing it. (I’ll have to blog about this PAW concept later – I think it is extremely important.)
The PAW this week was to ask people to be in one of the Groups here at Jacob’s Well or elsewhere, (but I’m not writing about Groups here) and to join me in the 10.10.10 – that is committing 10 minutes to reading the Bible, 10 minutes to prayer and 10 minutes to quiet every day. You can hear the message on our website, but I don’t think it is up yet. When available this LINK will take you to it.
Now I know that millions of people have resolved to reading their Bible and crashed and burned because they couldn’t make heads or tails of what they read. And I know that this simplistic 10.10.10 formula isn’t a magic recipe for enlightenment, but we need something tangible, somewhere to start. This little dip in these three spiritual disciplines (very close to lectio divina actually, another blog that needs to be written…) reinforced by the Group Life available here at jacob’s well, and some encouragement and energy from the church as a whole, can make this simple formula have real staying power. Also, like I said yesterday, these 3 components of faith, with the right support, can take on a life of their own in people who test drive them.
At the morning service I asked people to do it, but forgot (argh…) to ask them to let us know they were going to do so by indicating it on their Communication Card (one downside of preaching without a script…) so I have no idea how many people meant to try it. But in the evening I did remember and nearly everyone wrote the 10.10.10 on their card. I can’t believe it. Oops, of course I can, that’s a God thing… I just know I can’t be that convincing.
What did I learn? 1. don’t be afraid to ask people for meaningful commitment around things that make a difference in the lives they see God calling them to. 2. People are hungry for spiritual growth and want to know what to do next. 3. We have a big job ahead of us keeping people focused on this and helping them sustain the practice until it becomes a natural (not a simplistic formulaic) part of their walk with Jesus.
Want to join me on the 10.10.10? Comment here and let me know. We’ll try to support you. Got other good ideas or stories about how this has worked (or not worked) for you? I want to hear them!
Want to know more about the 10.10.10? Check out THIS ENTRY on our website and watch for updates on what to read and how to live out this piece of your spiritual growth.
Posted in bible, church, commitment, discipleship, jacob's well, prayer, preaching, worship
Precarious Pastor 