Bob the Barista

My friend Larry Bourgeois hooked me up with a commercial espresso machine for my home. Man, is it fun to make real cappuccinos and lattes! It’s a Rancilio Silvia, paired up with a Rancilio Rocky grinder.

After getting frustrated with quality of the drinks at Starbucks (ever since they went to the automatic machines, the drinks have been weak and tasteless), and after Larry introduced me a couple summers ago at CCO's New Staff Training to a real machine for making espresso drinks, I am now (thanks to Larry, who gave this to us as a gift!) making Linda and myself drinks at home.

I’m still working on getting the hang of it.

It takes some finesse to get just the right shot times (a combination of grind, dosing, and tamping) and also I’ve become better and better at frothing milk.

Lots of fun. Now, if you visit me at my house, I can serve you an espresso drink that will knock your socks off!

Evangelicals, Homosexuality, and Divorce

At one time, evangelicals were clear in their denouncement of divorce. Citing both Old Testament (Malachi 2:16) and New Testament teaching (1 Corinthians 7), they were adamant that divorce was an evil that plagued our society. Laws were on the books that kept divorce from being an easy option, and Christians would see divorce as a reason for church discipline.

Jesus’ teaching is pretty clear. He taught, “It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.” (Matthew 5:31-32)

When asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?” Jesus replied, “Haven’t you read that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.” (Matthew 19:3-6)

Therefore (according to JESUS!) divorce is a terrible sexual sin.

An interesting phenomenon has occurred in the past 25 years, though. According to Randall Balmer, in his controversial book, Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical's Lament, How the Religious Right Distorts the Faith and Threatens America, the Religious Right has moved the emphasis of sexual sin away from divorce and has emphasized homosexuality. It seems to be an an easier target. Why? Because it “allows evangelicals to externalize the enemy, based on the supposition that no true believer could be gay or lesbian” (p. 26). Gay marriage has become a “hill to die on” for many evangelicals (p. 28).

Balmer even asks, “What should we read into the fact that evangelical conservatives dropped their long-standing denunciations of divorce about the same time they embraced Ronald Reagan, a divorced and remarried man, as their political savior in 1980?”

It seems to Balmer, and to me, that homosexuality (and all the talk of passing a constitutional amendment banning “gay marriage”) has simply become a political maneuver, a strategy to manipulate conservative Christians to vote. It’s easy to point our fingers at “those people” who want to “destroy our way of life.” It has a lot more political weight than saying that we want to pass a constitutional amendment banning divorce (after all, many of us are divorced!).

This makes the fall of Ted Haggard, the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, all the more telling. Haggard was caught in an illicit homosexual affair—cheating on his wife and showing the hypocrisy of his public denunciations of homosexuality. When this sin is so explicitly within the house of evangelicalism, we cannot use it for our political ends.


technorati: social action, emerging church

Praying "Our Father"

Over at Jesus Creed, Scot McKnight broaches the subject as to whom, among the Trinity, are we supposed to address our prayers.

Our kids (Trey 8, Joel 6, and Kaira 6) have been praying to “Jesus” for most of their sweet lives. But now I’m trying to de-program them. Last week we had a long talk about how we are given the privilege to pray to the “Father” because of what Jesus has done for us. The “Father” is normally who we should pray to. It’s okay to pray to Jesus or the Holy Spirit, but the wonderful joy and privilege that has been granted to us by “the Way” (Jesus) is that we have access to the Father. Because of Jesus, we can now call God "our Father," he is our loving “Daddy” (Abba) - and we should now feel his loving acceptance as his children,

It occured to me that we teach little kids to pray to “Jesus” because our theology is skewed. We think that kids can relate better to their buddy Jesus more than some fearful Father. We talk so much about how Jesus loves us (especially “the little children”) that we presume that maybe the Father doesn’t love us as much or something. And so we inadvertently teach them to pray to “Jesus” rather than the “Father,” thinking that these kids already have this emotional connection with Jesus that they do not have with the Father (and that maybe they should have that closer connection with Jesus!)

This is seriously warped!


technorati: spiritual formation

Picture Share!

Here's some pictures from my family's party when we celebrated God's intervention to save my life a year ago.

I love my Linda!

Crazy kids!

Kaira (6), Trey (8), Joel (6)

A New Kind of EPIC - Missional Community in a Megachurch Context

I am exploring whether or not to lead a new sub-community in a megachurch that would be an attempt at missional community. We had our first meeting last Sunday as a core group, discussing the conceptual ideas I have for such a group.

I found that first meeting both frustrating and exciting. The concepts of missional community and the emerging church are foreign to most of the people in this suburban megachurch, so it will take some time for some people to "get it." The pastoral leadership at this church is split—some are very modern in their Christianity, perpetuating the attractional megachurch model for outreach. Others are more in tune with creating more incarnational communities within the church for the sake of offering the Kingdom of God to those who have not yet experienced it.

My working acronym for this new community is EPIC. I stole the idea from Leonard Sweet (in his books Post-Modern Pilgrims and The Gospel According to Starbucks). However, where Sweet has “Image-Driven” for the “I” in EPIC, I have changed that to what I feel is the central core purpose of our missional community. The "EPIC" I hope to establish will be an "Experiential, Participatory, Incarnational Community."

Here’s what I want our community to be:

Experiential

• Evangelical megachurches talk a lot about God and the Bible, but not enough effort is given to actually experiencing God.
• We will take time for experiences that connect us with God, like contemplative prayer and worshipful communion around the bread and the cup.

Participatory

• Evangelical churches talk a lot about the priesthood of all believers and the empowering of gifted people for ministry, but the pastors and missionaries are still seen as the full-time Christian ministers.
• We will encourage the people in this community to participate in the ministry, owning it for themselves and forging it with their own personal gifts and endeavors.

Incarnational

• Evangelical churches have partitioned the gospel into “personal conversion/being born again” and “care for the needy.” The first takes precedence, while the second is seen only as a route to the first.
• We will eliminate this dualistic understanding of the gospel of the Kingdom by seeking to be the incarnation of Christ to our part of the world. We will do what Christ would do, with caring, loving, compassionate concern for the holistic needs of people.

Community

• Evangelical megachurches are infamous as places where people pop in and out without anybody ever knowing each other.
• We will create a sub-community into which we can invite people so that they can experience what it means to be loved by fellow Christians.
  

technorati: emerging church, missional, missional community, spiritual formation

One Year Ago Today…

…I was going about my normal life when, all of a sudden, it felt like someone through a spear through my back. It was past 10:00 PM, and my wife Linda had already gone up to bed. I ran up the stairs, woke her up, and told her to call 911. In a matter of minutes, she was performing CPR on me.

It’s been a long ride since then:

• A 12-hour emergency surgery to replace my dissecting aorta.
• Four weeks in a medicated coma as I fought dying from Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome.
• Many complications during this four-week coma, from issues associated with my lungs to issues associated with my colon.
• Waking up from the coma extremely confused and scared, but being comforted by Linda’s standing by my bed reading scriptures every day.
• Three weeks of recovery in the hospital as I could not get up vertically after so long on my back—both due to atrophy and due to dizziness and queasiness. My children visiting me, and drawing me pictures and writing me books.
• After being home for a month, my blood pressure spiked to over 200/100. I was life-flighted to the Cleveland Clinic where they discovered yet another aneurysm at the base of the aorta.
• A summer of lethargy as the medications to keep my heart-rate and blood pressure low until I was physically ready for another operation kept me on the couch with little energy.
• Another surgery in September, to redo the emergency surgery and to repair the new aneurysm and replace my aortic valve with a mechanical one. Great fear that I would not survive and would leave my wife and children.
• Recovery from that surgery and now trying to get back on track with my life.

Linda and I are amazed at what we have learned about the body of Christ through this. It is a testimony to his glory that you have interceded for us, sent loving words of encouragement to us, and practically helped in so many ways.

Thanks to everyone, both local and worldwide, for being the incarnation of Christ to us.

And thanks to God. Who would not let the evil one triumph over the needs of my three young children. It is a joy to love on them each and every day.

Does God “Spank” His Children?

In his book, How Long, O Lord?: Reflections on Suffering and Evil, D.A. Carson offers the classic Calvinist viewpoint on the subject. It is an excellent book, well worth the read. Carson’s skill is in his ability to exegete the Scriptures, albeit from his specific theological vantage point.

In the fifth chapter, he dives into the peculiar ways that the People of God suffer, the first being “discipline.” The text he looks at is Hebrews 12:4-13.

He writes,

“In reality, we never escape God’s sovereignty. Part of learning to live as faithful children of the sovereign God is therefore tied to trusting him when he can at best be only dimly discerned behind events and circumstances that the Bible itself is quick to label evil…it is important to see that at least some of God’s means of discipline, all designed for our good, can simultaneously be viewed as calamitous evil…
“…The author (of Hebrews) frankly acknowledges that ‘no discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful’ (v. 11)…Like a boy who is getting a spanking for breaking his sister’s Alice-band in a fit of rage, so the discipline God metes out hurts, and causes us to wail. But if the boy’s Daddy is good, loving, and even-handed, the boy himself is made secure by the expression of love in discipline, and ultimately grows to appreciate his father’s wisdom; and so we too learn to trust our heavenly father and rely on his wisdom to take us through paths we never would have chosen for ourselves.”

At first blush, I think I would usually agree with such an interpretation of Hebrews 12. But I’m troubled by this: The “discipline” is never identified in the text. Nowhere does the author of Hebrews tell us that God will cause evil for our ultimate good. The “pain” of the discipline is not identified as anything that might be viewed as “calamitous evil” (as Carson states), just that it is not “pleasant” but rather “painful” for the person experiencing it.

Not all pain, suffering, or distress needs to be evil. It may seem to be to the person on the receiving end of a loving action that they would rather not have done, but it does not need to be identified as an evil. If I discipline my child, it is not evil…unless I do so in a way that actually hurts him. My kids might find it "unpleasant" and experience it with sorrow, but that is only a function of their not wanting it to be done to them. However, if I do violence against my child, I am not disciplining any more, I am showing my fallenness. They would rightly identify my discipline as an evil act. This is why I don’t punish my kids when I am angry. I am unlike God—when I get angry, I cannot discipline without doing harm.

But God can discipline his children without doing harm, for all his discipline is in love. He is not angry with us, ever. The wrath has been dealt with on the cross. So, it seems to me that his "discipline" must never amount to “calamitous evil.” If it does, then God is not good.

So, what do you think? Does God “spank” his children?


technorati: spiritual formation

How is God in Control When Terrible Things Happen?

That’s the question that many who face life-and-death situations ask.

It’s only a hypothetical question for many of us. That is, unless you have nearly lost your life or you have lost a loved-one in some tragedy. It’s the question my friend Todd asks after the loss of his young boy. It’s the question that those who lost loved-ones on 9/11 ask. It’s the question I ask (and my wife asks) in light of the awful year we just experienced.

A year ago (February 2 is the one-year anniversary!), I nearly lost my life to an aortic dissection. Worse yet, my wife and kids nearly lost their husband and daddy. It was a horrific ordeal for Linda because after the initial surgery I developed respiratory complications that, again, threatened my life on a daily basis. I was in a medicated coma for four weeks.

Most would like to look at the positive of this and say, “Wow, God was so good to you for saving your life like that! He spared your family from such heartache!”

It sounds good to say that, and at many times I definitely agree with that sentiment. But then there are other issues that are raised in my heart-of-hearts:

• If God is in such wonderful control of everything, then why did this happen in the first place?
• If God was so good to us, then why did he put my wife through four weeks of absolute stress, not knowing if I would survive another day?
• If God has a good plan for his children, then why was I in the hospital for seven weeks and then basically home-bound for the entire year while they awaited my ability to have a second surgery to re-do (!) the emergency surgery and to repair another aneurysm and to replace a faulty heart valve?
• If God is soveriegn, then why is it that my ministry was placed at a stand-still for a year, right when it was starting to launch?

These are the issues that I want to face square-on.

Watch for more ruminations here at the blog.

technorati: spiritual formation

Five Streams of the Emerging Church

Scot McKnight has offered readers of Christianity Today his clear and informative description of the "Emerging Church." This is drawn from his earlier lecture at Westminster Theological Seminary entitled, What is the Emerging Church?

In the CT article, he identifies five "key elements of the most controversial and misunderstood movement in the church today:"

• Prophetic (or at least provocative)
• Postmodern
• Praxis-oriented
• Post-evangelical
• Political

technorati: emerging church

I’ve been “Tagged…”

…by both Michael Kruse and Scot McKnight.

When you’ve been tagged, you’re required to answer the questions posed to you. This tag requires me to say five personal things about themselves that my readers may not know.

1. My wife Linda and I went to the same High School (she was a year behind me). Whereas she was valedictorian of her class, I was…ummmm…not. We hung around in different circles, and thus did not know each other. We met seven years after high school at church. She was leading the single womens’ Bible study and I was leading the single mens’ Bible study.

2. While Linda was valedictorian of her class; I was the class clown of mine (I didn’t actually win the official title, I was first runner-up). Like I said, we hung around in different circles.

3. I used to have flaming red hair in my youth – and lots of it. Most of my readers wouldn’t know this, since I…don’t have lots of any hair now. My son is a spitting image of his dad at his age. Pray that he can keep that beautiful hair!

4. From the age of five to the age of thirteen, I was in-an-out of the Cleveland Clinic hospital for kidney reconstructive surgeries. I averaged a surgery each year of my youth to repair congenital defects. Interesting that last year I had my aorta surgery at this same hospital. It brought back many memories.

5. Now that I’ve had surgery to replace my aortic valve with a mechanical one, I can never sneak up on you and I can never play poker. With every heart-beat, I click. It’s like wearing a bad watch—click, click, click. It’s hard to fall asleep sometimes, when, in a quiet room, all I hear is the click, click, click of my own heart (You're not supposed to notice when you breath or when your heart beats!) Linda says she has trouble falling asleep too, because she listens to it and wonders, “Why is his heart beating at that rate? Did I hear him miss a beat?” Its very odd. I think the surgeon accidentally dropped his watch in my chest and won’t admit it.

We Still Have a Dream

Here is a 3 minute excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963.



It was the culmination of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

The march made specific demands (according to Wikipedia): “an end to racial segregation in public school; meaningful civil rights legislation, including a law prohibiting racial discrimination in employment; protection of civil rights workers from police brutality; a $2 minimum wage for all workers; and self-government for the District of Columbia, then governed by congressional committee.”

“More than a quarter of a million people of diverse ethnicities attended the event, sprawling from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial onto the National Mall and around the reflecting pool. At the time, it was the largest gathering of protesters in Washington's history. King's I Have a Dream speech electrified the crowd. It is regarded, along with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, as one of the finest speeches in the history of American oratory. President Kennedy, himself opposed to the march, met King afterwards with enthusiasm - repeating King's line back to him; "I have a dream", while nodding with approval.”

Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith wrote the must read book on racism in our contemporary world (Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America). It shows how evangelical Christians have failed miserably to move our nation away from racialization.

You can read an excerpt of the book here. This short article is required reeading for the students in my Ethics class.


technorati: spiritual formation, social action

Christian Community and Harley-Davidson

In their book, Living On Purpose: Finding God’s Best for Your Life, Christine and Tom Sine offer an excellent chapter entitled, “Seeking First the Kingdom in Community.”

They report that the West has moved away from connectedness and community toward isolation and individualism. Not only that,

“As we have seen, there has also been a growing emphasis on seeing ourselves as individual consumers whose primary task is to keep the economy booming. This may be great for the economy, but it doesn’t seem to be doing us much good as persons.”

It’s sad, really: Even Christians have been trained to meet our needs for intimacy through the things we buy. We identify who we are by what we consume. And this is now shaping the way we view church.

“Far from challenging the growing individualism and consumerism of modern culture, many churches have bought into it…[and] settled for a view of the church that is barely different from a consumer mall…The church is reduced to a place we go once a week to have our individual ‘consumer’ needs met. If the church can’t meet our needs, then we will ‘shop around’ until we find one that does.”

Interestingly, while the church is adopting the marketing techniques that appeal to consumers, the marketers are now figuring out that individualism may not sell as well as community.

Take, for example, Harley-Davidson. The Sines report that,

“Harley-Davidson brought itself from the brink of extinction by forming owner groups and getting them together to build community around their common passion. ‘To really experience the full value of a product community is the best way to do it…it can be a transforming experience.’”

Hmmm…
Harley-Davidson is saying that community is a “transforming experience.”
The Church is missing the fact that community is her central reason for existence.

This is a frightening revelation. Maybe I’d better buy a hog and start riding it on Sunday mornings.

technorati: emerging church, missional, missional community, spiritual formation

Praying Community Prayers vs. Just Individual Prayers

This, then, is how you should pray: “Our Father in heaven…”

Interesting how one pronoun changes everything. For years, I’ve prayed through the Lord’s Prayer, knowing those lines, and yet I rarely prayed it literally. Funny since, being an evangelical, I’ve been trained to read the Bible “literally.” But though we evangelicals often say that is our way of interpreting Scripture, when it comes to certain passages our sub-cultural traditions take precedence (for instance, in your next Bible study, try asking evangelicals if Jesus really meant the poor when he said, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor” in Luke 4, or, “Blessed are you who are poor,” in Luke 6).

So, here we were in our Oasis gathering Sunday night when my friend Miche brings up the fact that when he prays “we” prayers instead of “me” prayers, it radically changes the meaning of his prayers and gives them deeper context, meaning, and practicality.

As evangelicals, in our zeal to promote each individual’s “personal relationship with God,” we have shifted the balance of our prayers toward the “me and God” kind. And then we pat ourselves on the back that we’ve taken the Lord’s Prayer and “personalized it” so that it has more significant meaning.

But then the prayer of the evangelical gets truncated to this:
My Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give me today my daily bread.
And forgive me my debts,
as I also have forgiven my debtors.
And lead me not into temptation,
but deliver me from evil.

I need to remember that The Lord’s Prayer starts out with, “Our Father in heaven.”
Not, “My Father in heaven.”

What would happen to our prayers if we intentionally prayed for “us?” What would happen to our prayers if our “me” prayers were shifted from individualism toward interdependence - my living in the context of “community?” If being human means being relational, then everything we do as Christians is to be done in the context of redeeming all our relationships (with God, with others, and with the Creation).

What would happen if we read the Lord’s Prayer literally?

technorati: emerging church, spiritual formation, missional

Back to Blogging!

After a "holiday break," I'm getting back to blogging this week.

Subjects for upcoming posts:

• Suffering and Evil. In the wake of my near-death experience, I'm going to explore why bad things happen and how God relates with us through those experiences.
• The Religious Right. I'm reading Randall Balmer's provocative book, Thy Kingdom Come, and will have reflections.
• Missional Community. I've been asked to start a new missional community within the context of a local megachurch. I will be exploring what missional community means and how that can practically be implemented in my situation.

Looking forward to a new year of blogging!