Posted on December 30, 2009
00′s – “The Decade from Hell” or “The Decade of Heroes”? by Eric Bryant
I guess I hadn’t really thought of the first decade of the new millenium in such pessimistic terms, but according to Time Magazine, “the first 10 years of this century will very likely go down as the most dispiriting and disillusioning decade Americans have lived through in the post–World War II era.”
They make a compelling case: Y2K, 9/11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, and the economic collapse just to name a few. (To read the entire article, go here).
In spite of or maybe the direct result of these incredibly difficult and even tragic moments and experiences, for some people this was the decade they chose to become heroes – the firefighters in NYC, the activists that have emerged, the humanitarian efforts of the global community, the soldiers who served courageously and with integrity, and the people who have sacrificed much to help their families and to help others. Maybe we could also make a case that this was the “decade of heroes.”
Would you agree with Time’s assessment?
What are the heroic moments you have seen?
Posted on December 24, 2009
"The Adoration of the Magi" by Pieter Aertsen
“Christmas Re-Gifting” by Scot McKnight
“On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh” (Matthew 2:10-11). Christmas, the original one, had gifts.
Some are torn about giving gifts at Christmas because they protest consumerism.
Some are torn about giving gifts because they are unemployed.
Some are torn about giving gifts at Christmas because so many are poor.
But giving gifts transcends a Dickens kind of Christmas. Giving gifts, regardless of whether or not we can offer the royal gifts of gold and incense and myrrh, are natural to Christmas because God “gave” his Son to us at Christmas. Christmas is gift and our gifts mirror God’s gifts to us.
Perhaps we should see all of our gifts as “regifting.”
We give worship to God at Christmas as regifting what God has given to us.
We give gifts to others as regifting what God has given to us.
We regift to God, not because we are cheap but because all we have to offer to God is what he has given to us: our possessions, our money, our lives, our very selves. Even our worship is participation in the perichoretic worship of the Father, Son, and Spirit.
I don’t mean to sound cute with this idea that Christmas is about gifts and regifting. I mean only to say that all we have has been given to us and at Christmas all genuine gifts are participations in what God has given to us. We pass it on.
Posted on December 23, 2009
“What If?” by Jeff Ferguson
What if we left the busyness of our shopping malls, crowded stores, and overbooked holiday schedules to go back in time to the dark, damp cave where Christmas first came alive with the advent of Jesus Christ?
Chances are the Christmas music and the various smells that come with the holiday season would give way to the stench of the nativity. As we stand there in the dark among the animals and the young couple who are looking on their first born son in both wonder and confusion, I can’t help but think that our thoughts surrounding Christmas would be confronted by the harsh reality of what is before our eyes.
You see, if we were to stand at the foot of this feeding trough looking right into the eyes of this poor, helpless baby, our thoughts about our world would quickly change. We would suddenly understand the words of Philippians.
“Your attitude should be the same that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not demand and cling to his rights as God. He made himself nothing; he took the humble position of a slave and appeared in human form.”
Philippians 2:5-7 NLT
This experience would transform our worldview to the point where we would respond to the needs around us. We would no longer celebrate Christmas as usual. We would instead live it out! Coming so close to the nativity would drive us to action and out of our normal holiday routine so that our actions would reflect those of the One we celebrate.
Our attitudes would be shaped by the attitude of Christ, which would force us to look outward. We would begin to notice those without food, homes, family, and greatest of all…hope. We would not cling to our holiday traditions, instead we would respond by dropping them to serve those around us. Our agenda…our schedule would be second so that we could give ourselves to those who do not know the reason for why we celebrate Christmas. We would do what this baby came to do for us. We would invade our world and our communities so that people could experience the incarnation of Jesus Christ through us. In this way, Jesus would continue to appear in human form all around the world and in our every day lives. This would have an impact beyond what we could hope for.
What if we went back to the nativity? What if it was something more than a decoration that we pull out every year?
What if?
Posted on December 23, 2009
Comedian Jim Gaffigan compares people’s behavior during the Christmas season to that of a drunk person. We go outside and chop down a tree and put it inside to decorate it. Then we take decorations and lights and put them outside our residences. We spend billions of dollars on gifts and stuff them in socks or put them under the decorated tree. After all is said and done, we take everything down, put away the lights, and sign a two-year membership contract at the local gym because we ate too much but then only go for the last part of the month of January. This begs the question: In a society that values logic and reason, is Christmas really all that reasonable?
In college I was taught that reason is the means to arriving to truth. The problem I ran into was I couldn’t figure out whose reason I should subscribe to: Plato, Hume, Aristotle, Descartes, Freud, etc? A lot of very reasonable people arrive to many different truths. I’ve heard a lot of people give up and say, “There is no truth” or “That’s truth that works for you.” Erwin McManus in his book, Soul Cravings, points out this search for truth comes down to who we can trust. Oftentimes our issue is not with the truth but with trust. The problem with reason is that it is only as trustworthy as the person who is utilizing it. Where some can use reason that can theoretically lead to altruism, generosity, and utopia, others can use reason to justify atrocities like murder and genocide.
This is why I follow Jesus. Jesus did not try to use pure logic to explain the kingdom of heaven. In fact, Jesus often went against what many would consider reasonable when displaying what the kingdom of heaven was like. Jesus did not talk all about how we should use reason and logic to make this world a better place. Jesus talked about what we should care about. Jesus talked about values and adhering to those values. When doing so defied all sense and reason, he called it faith. When doing so cost people something, maybe even their well-being or lives, he called it love. The more I’ve trusted Jesus with my life the more I’ve been challenged to do the unreasonable. The more I’ve interacted with those who have lived unreasonably for the life Jesus called us to live through the Scriptures, the more I’ve seen them care more about humanity and practically do something about it.
Maybe Christmas is unreasonable. A virgin birth followed by God being born on earth to walk among us seems unreasonable to many. But maybe it’s not supposed to be about reason. Maybe it’s supposed to be about what we care about. Maybe it’s about engaging the things that seem to us, in practicality, unreasonable: love, generosity, service, sacrifice. Perhaps Christmas time is about celebrating a time when God did the unreasonable and stepped into human history to give us hope for humanity’s future. For some of us, perhaps Christmas is about interacting with God for the first time so that we can begin to see what God values and to live unreasonably for what God cares about.
Posted on December 22, 2009
“Going the Extra Mile” by Mark Batterson
This weekend I was reminded of a few lessons that have to be relearned all the time.
1) Go the extra mile
We have core value at NCC: go the extra mile. So many people made that reality this weekend. I was shocked to find one staff member shoveling in front of Ebenezers on Saturday morning. And it wasn’t in her portfolio! That is going the extra mile. So many others stepped up to help make our weekend services happen.
2) All You Can Do Is Smile
When you find yourself in a situation you cannot control, all you can do is smile. We cannot control the weather but we aren’t going to let the weather control us. For the record, we don’t cancel services. And we had some joyous services this weekend. Some of them only had acoustic worship and very pared down ministries, but it actually makes me appreciate what we pull off every weekend at NCC.
3) Do Little Things Like They Are Big Things
I’m not sure how to say this, but our band at Ebenezers played like there were thousands of people in a packed out concert venue. By they way, in case you care, I give our Ebenezers band a different name each weekend. It’s tradition. This weekend I called them Whiteout (inspired by a combination of the 80′s band, Whiteheart, and the record snowfall in DC). But I added an addendum afterward. Whiteout Rockout. So proud of the way they played and worshipped.
This weekend brought back memories of preaching to 25 people. And I can honestly say that I preached those sermons like they were the most important sermons I’d ever preach. You can’t just “show up” when there are thousands of people. You’ve got to preach your heart out when there are only a few people.
If you do little things like they are big things, God will give you big things to do.
Posted on December 17, 2009
Our previoius conference call was with Amena Brown. Amena is a writer, poet, and spoken-word performer who also serves as part of the Origins Project creative team. Her latest album can be found at cdbaby.com. We discussed mobilizing artists and reaching people through the arts.
LISTEN HERE!
Listen to previous conference calls here!
Our next LIVE, free conference call will be with Chris Seay on January 12, 2010 at 11am (PST). Chris is the author of several books including his newest release The Gospel According to Lost. He is founder and writer for the Voice, on the creative team of the Origins Project, and the pastor of Ecclesia, a progressive Christian community in Houston, Texas, recognized for exploring spiritual questions of culture and breaking new ground in art, music, and film. Sign Up Here!
Posted on December 7, 2009
She is always moved by the meaningful connections we make with non-Christians, the service projects that excavate the human potential of the disenfranchised in our neighborhood, and the innovation with which we live out the mission of Christ, but she always walks away asking me, “when are yall gonna join a denomination baby?”
What my momma is really telling me in her question is… the connection, accountability, and the support of other churches in a network adds value to the local church. The cross-pollination of ideas and people grows a church’s capacity to see farther, see more, and see sooner than they would if they were alone.
I know that this is good but I have had a hard time finding the right network. The right network cross-pollinates creativity, call, and beauty but, the wrong network contaminates church growth in ways that impair the flexibility and nimble nature of those who seek the heart of Christ and the potential of humanity in innovative ways. For this reason The Awakenings Movement has chosen to explore community and creative partnerships beyond the sphere of the Church World and Christian initiatives. We have only partnered with what some call, “secular” or “public” organizations because we work to honor the integrity of AM’s quirky core values as a Church and our nonnegotiable mission to engage folks outside the church as a movement.
Joining the Origins Project has made my momma happy and has satisfied our churches desire to connect and grow with others. This new network of imaginative churches and life artists is an adventurous new community… making momma’s happy and innovative churches grow together.
Marlon F. Hall is a photographer, missionary, anthropologist, and writer. He is the cultural architect and spiritual leader of The Awakenings Movement, a grassroots community of social visionaries and culture shapers in Houston, Detroit, and Nairobi.
Posted on December 4, 2009
“Was Moses’ Failure An Inability to Adapt?” by Eric Bryant
Recently I read The Biblical Story of Moses: Lessons in Leadership for Business by Paul J. Herskovitz and Esther E. Klein. The authors posed an interesting idea:
“Moses’ failure of leadership is the result of his failure to take into account the differences between the two generations.”
They suggested that Moses did not enter the Promised Land because he did not know how to adapt to leading a new generation.
To prove their point, the authors quoted Nathaniel Helfgot with the following:
“Moses, by hitting (the rock) rather than speaking (to the rock), responds to this current crisis in precisely the same fashion as he had responded to the problems of the generation that had left Egypt thirty-eight years before. It was not the sin and its severity that caused Moses to lose the privilege of leadership. Moses’ “desert response” to this second water-crisis revealed that he was not a leader who could address the concerns and crises of a new generation, one which would enter the Land of Israel. It was clear that he was still tied to methods and perspectives of leadership which, though proper for the needs and concerns of the generation that left Egypt, were ineffective and inappropriate in the new situation.”
We need to work hard to understand the issues we are facing AND the people involved in those issues.
I wonder, which issues are we currently mishandling because we are more focused on the issue than the people involved in the issue?
(For a summary of The Biblical Story of Moses: Lessons in Leadership for Business, send an email to me at eric@mosaic.org with “Moses Notes” as the subject. You will also receive free resources through my monthly email newsletter.)
