Sacrificial love & a double book review November 27, 2007
Posted by Elizabeth in Missouri | 5 commentsI just finished reading two books that Zack and I were asked to review: Acts 29: Fifty Days of Prayer to Invite the Holy Spirit by Dr. Terry Teykl (Prayer Point Press, 1999) and Justice in the Burbs: Being the hands of Jesus wherever you live by Will and Lisa Samson (Baker Books, 2007). I could say a lot about both of these books that echo many of the topics Zack’s talked about on this blog: the return to early Christianity, a focus on issues of social justice, the desire to live out a “covenantal” theology. But I’m going to limit my thoughts today to the concept of “sacrificial love” which is a central concept in both of these books—as it is for the revolutionary Christian movement as a whole.
The premise of Acts 29 is that Christians should focus on bringing about redemption (defined in the book as including “radical giving”, “healing”, “astounding community life” and “compassion” for those who are “hurting, confused and unloveable”) to a city. How can a single church implement such a radical agenda? Through sacrificial love. Christians can and should learn to lay “aside personal agendas” in order to “see how the Kingdom can be advanced.” More specifically, this book outlines a 50-day prayer cycle that calls on churches to bring together groups of people to pray for practically everything in the city: local parks, schools, government officials, church leaders, streets, industrial areas, etc. The idea is that Christians should learn from the first Christian communities (described in the Book of Acts), where the disciples prayed continually so that they could have the power to heal the sick and live in radical community where everyone shared all that they had.
The focus on prayer in Acts 29 is complemented by Justice in the Burbs’ focus on action—”being the hands of Jesus wherever you live,” as the subtitle says. This book, written by an award-winning Christian novelist and her husband, who’s working on his PhD in sociology, is half fiction and half non-fiction. The fictional part of the book describes a story of a husband and wife who live in the suburbs and start feeling the need to be more connected to issues of justice. The non-fictional part follows this story line with facts and examples as to how and why the Christian couple were Biblically sound in their endeavors—and how they (and others reading the book) could do more to promote justice where they live. Here again the focus is on sacrificial love: the non-fictional characters learn about the poverty around them and start to give up a lot of what they have and wanted in life in order to care for others.
Although neither of the books talks a lot about how the concept of sacrificial love is related to Jesus, the relationships are clear. His sacrifice (death on the cross) is the guiding light for those who choose to follow Him. Christians feel that we have a duty to recreate that type of love in our lives. And “revolutionary Christians” or “covenantal Christians,” as Zack has called them here, feel that call even more deeply—and are hearing it in the pulpits and are living it out in radical ways, as these books describe.
The idea of sacrificial love is one of the main things that drew me to this movement years ago. I went on a missions trip because the marketing materials said it would give me a “radical” commitment to God. I wanted that; I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself—something that, even though I don’t always understand it, has meaning and gives hope to our lives and our world, something that started 2000 years ago. I think it’s an innate desire in humans to want this. But whether or not you agree with me, I think that’s a lot of what this movement is about—knowing that if we can love the world enough, we can be a part of a long and beautiful history that has the ability to redeem the world.
Mega-Community November 26, 2007
Posted by Zack in Ohio | 3 comments
Yesterday, we were in Columbus, Ohio, and went to one of American’s most dynamic and interesting mega-churches, Vineyard Columbus.
Vineyard Columbus is an example of the mega-church phenomenon at its best. Some say large churches allow people to avoid community because they are so easy to attend anonymously. You can go, and have a powerful experience of worship with the great musicians and preachers that large churches attract, and run home without getting wrapped up in anyone else’s life.
Vineyard Columbus, however, is a pressure cooker of community. As we walked into the sanctuary, where a band and choir were already booming, volunteers handed us a magazine called The Mix that lists literally hundreds of small groups, classes, service opportunities and social activities for adults and children. Before the sermon, two speakers urged people to get involved by tapping into a small group or other activity. All around the church, there were directories of small groups on dozens of topics—so that any individual can make direct contact with a group in their area. The pre-sermon speakers reminded small group members that there were cards in the pews for inviting anyone they met at church to their group. And new comers were asked to raise their hands to receive a special welcome packet that included more information on groups and activities, as well as information about the church and a CD of worship music produced by the church.
That may sound like a lot of hype and marketing, but it wasn’t. It was totally low key. The feeling we had was of a large church that was bursting at the seams with community, and that if we lived in Columbus it would be the easiest thing in the world to become an integral part of it.
(Vineyard Columbus has also become a major social service provider in Columbus. I met senior pastor Rich Nathan at Sojourners Call to Renewal earlier this year and heard about the various programs that the church is running. To do the church’s community work justice, I’d have interview church and city leaders, and unfortunately I’m not able to now.)
As you can see from the pictures, the church is enormous. We entered through the far entrance and walked through two different sections where younger and older children have their worship services. Each was packed. There were plenty of adults around, but kids seemed to be doing a lot of the work of greeting people, distributing info and getting ready for the services. It looked like a great place to be a kid. I wonder what the culture is like among kids at these big churches that are trying so hard to live as radical followers of Jesus. Do the kids still have cliques? Is there a popular group that ignores everyone else? Or do they actually live differently?
The sermon, by Steve Robbins, was exciting and fascinating. I think Vineyard is firmly in the “Kingdom Theology” camp—but I’m not sure if this is true for all Vineyard churches, or just the one’s I’ve visited or listened to online. Robbins’ sermon was all about building the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth now.
The Vineyard is not a denomination, but a family of more than 1,500 churches, that have come together or have been planted as part of the Vineyard movement with a shared culture and set of values. (Many outsiders consider them a denomination.)
Robbins’ sermon focused on the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. He said that every time someone is healed of addiction, every time that broken relationship is put back together, every time that love overcomes violence…that the Kingdom of Heaven comes closer.
And he added to that: “Every time a structural, political evil that oppresses” people is undone, the Kingdom of Heaven comes closer.
He talked about how he grew up in a “suburban, affluent, white…and racist” community, and that the first thing God called him to change when he became a Christian was his racism. The message he got from God was, (paraphrasing) “If you don’t start valuing people as I do…and stop looking down on people who look different from you…then you’re not going to be able to know me.” (When he says “God told me…” he didn’t mean that he heard a voice from God, but that he had a set of experiences, probably involving a lot of Bible study and worship, that led him to that conclusion.)
Going to church at Vineyard Columbus yesterday led me to more thinking and research on several topics: the growing influence of Charismatic Christianity on mainline and traditional Evangelical Christianity, the importance of the (hippy) Jesus Movement on the Evangelical explosion of the 80’s, 90’s and present day and “Transformationalism“. And Steve Robbin’s sermon brought up some really tough issues for me regarding international evangelism. I was on a roll here, about to pack all those topics into one post, but for your sake I’m stopping myself and will hopefully pick up those topics in posts through this week.
(Pict from Vineyard Columbus website)
In case you’ve missed it so far… November 19, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 5 comments
Some of my friends back in world of lefty politics are just realizing that I’m writing this blog and are asking, “What in the world are you doing?” So here’s a quick catch-up for those joining this blog already in progress.
First, here are my favorite posts so far, if you want to dive right in:
- Almost Speechless (w/ Audio Clips from an amazing evangelical conference)
- An Air Force cadet whose Bible caused him to drop out
- Class war in the Bible?
- Chris Seay’s video
- A tale of two movements
Elizabeth and I have been traveling the country for the past few months working on a couple of different projects. Right away, we kept bumping into these amazing communities of “progressive evangelical” Christians—that is, people who hold a lot of progressive (even radical) political views, but who believe in an almost fundamentalist theology. It’s a huge movement—possibly of up to twenty million active participants. And so I decided to start this blog as way of explaining it to my secular progressive friends and colleagues back in DC.
I have been watching this “Revolutionary Christian” scene for a couple years already. Honestly, I thought I was exaggerating its size when I was trying to get my friends excited about it. But, as it turns out, it’s far bigger than I ever imagined.
When Elizabeth and I got married, I started going to church with her. We were in North Carolina then, and explored many different non-denominational and charismatic evangelical churches. I was shocked at how radical they were when it came to social-economic issues. They all seemed to be whipped up in the beginnings of some sort of conscious mass return to the spirit of Early Christianity—of leaving your wealth behind, not just helping the poor but joining the poor, adopting kids lost in the foster system and HIV+ babies, etc….
Only small handfuls of people in the congregations were actually doing those kinds of things, but they were being held up as the ideal, while the preachers relentlessly laid down the new/ancient theology of building “the Kingdom of Heaven” here on Earth, and of a Jesus who is “the God of the poor and oppressed.”
For me, surprise turned to feverish curiosity when a mostly upper-middle class/suburban/Republican mega-church had a sermon, based on the New Testament Epistle to the Colossians, that railed against the “Empire” of Pax Americana—the empire of “might makes right” and idolatrous consumerism.
Some googling turned up a whole web of explicit anti-Imperialist and even anti-Capitalist thinking at evangelical Churches all over the country. I wrote an article about some of the key players for In These Times magazine. But still, I admit that I thought the movement was limited to a handful of churches in college towns and a few Northern cities.
But then, a few months ago, when we hit the road, first in Georgia and South Carolina and then Iowa—we realized these people were everywhere, all around us. I mean literally: out here, I look around any coffee shop and half the time can find someone reading one of the books of this movement (usually with their Bible and highlighter handy) or holding a discussion or Bible study, punctuated at the start and end by hands joined and heads bowed in prayer. They are sitting next to us on planes. They are taking over in half of the little, Bible-banging churches we wander into on Sundays wherever we are.
Therefore, this blog. Last month we went to a few big Christian conferences that totally blew me away. Check out the posts from the Catalyst conference—especially this one.
So—now you’re all caught up. I’ll keep reporting here from around the country as we go.
If you have suggestions for any particular churches or communities to write about, please email us at info@revolutioninjesusland.com.
“Covenantal Christians” November 18, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 11 commentsI know this sounds bad, but yesterday I listened in on the whole beginning of a first date between two young Christians. I was sitting in a coffee shop, staring at my laptop, hoping for inspiration for a blog post, and then the post sat right down at the table next to me.
Their conversation answered a question I’ve been walking around with for a long time: What is the essential difference between these progressive “evangelicals” (who are new to me and who I’ve been writing about on this blog) and liberal Christians (who I’ve known all my life)?
One would think the difference is theological—e.g. Bible as inerrant/inspired Word of God vs. Bible as literature to be taken with a grain of salt.
But that can’t be the essential difference because so many of the people we meet in churches differ in their personal beliefs from the official line of their church. So, what is attracting so many theological liberals, who believe the Bible is just some darn good literature, to churches that believe Jesus is coming back on a cloud with a sword coming out of him mouth?
At the table next to me in the coffee shop, a long round of small talk got me up to speed on where the two young Christians stood theologically and political. The man is a pastor (maybe a youth pastor) at a liberal mainline church. The woman attends a “theologically conservative” Emergent church. But actually, the woman was even more liberal theologically than the liberal pastor: for example, believes that everyone around the world is worshiping the same God in their own way. Mark Driscoll would have blown a gasket!
The liberal mainline pastor said he had visited her church once and was turned off a little by the preacher’s informal outfit of jeans and sandals over socks. But, worse, he was frustrated that the preacher delivered a sermon about marriage without giving a position on gay marriage. The man was pro-gay rights, and thought the preacher should have either come out for or against considering all the controversy. The woman, who I think said she also supported gay rights, seemed not to agree, perhaps thinking that church unity is more important.
The woman said she supports Hillary for president, saying, “I know it’s awful, but I support her because she’s a woman.” The guy was still weighing the candidates and it sounded like Obama had a good chance with him.
The woman talked about her sister, who is moving to what sounded like a Christian intentional community in a poor area of Kansas City (the kind I’ve been writing about recently).
OK. And then the big difference emerged. They started talking about a movie they both saw recently called Once. I’ve seen the movie—it’s awesome. It’s a tale of two people who fall in love, but don’t do anything about it because one of them is married (unhappily).
The first thing the woman said about the movie was, “I loved that they didn’t get together in the end.”
“Really?” the man said incredulously, “That’s so interesting that you feel that way…they were in love, and she was unhappy in her marriage!”
Now, this woman seemed really nice, and I shook my head with pity for this poor guy as he ploughed ahead, ruining any chance he had with her. But at least he was being honest.
“She was married!” said the woman.
“But she was in love with the other guy,” the man said, “Her heart was with him… Would you want to be married with someone who’s heart was with someone else?”
The last scene in that beautiful movie is the woman looking out her window, longingly, thinking of the life she could have had with the other guy (playing a piano the guy had given her). But there was more to it: her husband, apparently a bit reformed, was inside playing with their kid. She wasn’t exactly remorseful, she was going to make the best of her situation.
The woman said, “She didn’t leave her husband because she had made a commitment.”
“But she wasn’t happy,” said the guy.
The woman answered, “When you’re dating, and you’re not happy, then you just move on. But marriage is when you make a decision to be with someone no matter what. You make it work. You don’t change you mind on that kind of commitment.”
At that point, I almost stood up and shouted, “Eureka!” On display within this doomed first date was the essential difference between liberals and…this other kind of Christian: The difference is in the attitude toward selfless commitment to principals and traditions that could be considered by some to be arbitrary (and principals and traditions which happen to be spelled out in the Bible).
As I thought about it, I realized that every sermon I’ve ever heard at one of these Bible-based churches were about a sacrifice that you have to make for God. They’re about sacrificing for your kids, your spouse, your community, the poor…and to God. All those various sacrifices are all sacrifices you’re making to God, because, for example, by sacrificing for the poor, you’re obeying God’s commands.
It is that sacrificial attitude that unites all the Christians who might fall under these various overlapping labels: Emergent, Red-Letter, Evangelical, Born Again and even maybe Fundamentalist.
If you add up all those groups, they are massively diverse in their theological and political belief systems, but they pretty much all have one thing in common: they believe that a God who is actively engaged in humanity is inviting us into a new covenant with him—one aiming at peace and justice—and they are desperately trying to live up to this new covenant.
So from now on, I’m going to call these Christians “Covenantal Christians.” It’s a big relief to finally have a term that might describe everyone I’m writing about on this blog from extremely progressive Emergent or Red Letter Christians to very conservative Evangelical, Born Again or Fundamentalist Christians.
So…”Covenantal Christians.” Any reactions? I realize that a lot of the liberal churches that I’m leaving out of this label officially subscribe to “Covenantal Theology.” But I’m using this term to describe not official written-down doctrine of a church, but rather the stance in which people are striving to live today, in their own lives towards other people and towards God.
____
PS: If this blog post somehow makes it to one of those people I overheard…I’m sorry! But at least I’m not doing anything that hasn’t also happened to me…
Rick Warren making sense November 13, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 2 commentsThis is from a couple weeks ago, but I just saw it. This is a really interesting watch. It makes me wonder—what would happen if Obama went all out for the Evangelical vote, not by changing any of his positions, but by speaking to them on the issues he shares with them: U.S. and global poverty, HIV/AIDS, health care, fixing education…
Jacob’s Well, Kansas City November 12, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 4 comments
After months on the road, we set up a home base in Kansas City. We’ve been here for most of the last two weeks and I really love it.
Just in our neighborhood, I think there are at least four old church buildings that were built way back by mainline denominations, but are now inhabited by non-denominational churches.
Jacob’s Well is just a few blocks away. It began in 1998, and now fills its large, classic, Presbyterian-built sanctuary three times every Sunday.
Elizabeth and I attended the evening service last night. These people are HIP. Really, I was intimidated. Such cool clothes, hair, tattoos and attitudes. But these are Christian hipsters, and so they were really nice and welcoming.
The founding pastor of Jabob’s Well is Tim Keel, who is also one of the leaders of the Emerging Church movement. He’s been teaching the book of James for twelve weeks. Last night, we caught the closing sermon in the series, which focused on James 5:1-6:
Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you.
You could hear a pin drop after he read the passage. He asked the congregation for reactions. Several hands went up. Tim seems to be on a first name basis with his entire church, and called on folks one by one. Reactions varied:
“I don’t like it.”
“It makes me angry.”
“It’s so mean.”
“I think James has a tunnel that he’s writing through to our time.”
It is in these sermons, on the most difficult parts of the Bible, where I see God. Because how else can you explain why relatively affluent churches would find themselves struggling with—and applying to their own lives—the words of ancient revolutionary Prophets and defenders of the poor and oppressed? I’m serious. Try to come up with a good explanation that doesn’t involve supernatural forces for that. I’d like to hear it.
Tim was gentle in how he introduced James’ hard questions for those with wealth, but he allowed no escape. He said that James was speaking here not to rich people, but about rich people to poor people. He was speaking about land owners who exploited the community who he was speaking to. So what’s the message for you if you have wealth? You need to use that wealth in service of the poor, in service of justice, in service of building a better world.
So what are the implications for us middle-class Americans who live in the top few percent of worlds income earners?
Tim focused on consumer choices—who is making our stuff? Workers in poor countries. Are they being exploited? Yes, extremely. What do we do about it? Make different choices.
He introduced Advent Conspiracy, that the church will be participating in. It’s a national program for churches to change the way Christmas is done—refocusing it away from giving junk that will break to giving funds for essential infrastructure to people living in extreme poverty. Advent Conspiracy deserves a post of it’s own here—coming soon. I don’t know who started it. Could have been Tim, now that I think of it. Typically, the web site offers no clues. Wouldn’t want to TAKE CREDIT for something, that wouldn’t be Christlike.
PS: Read Tim Keel’s new book…
Intuitive Leadership: Embracing a Paradigm of Narrative, Metaphor, and Chaos
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Tags: Jacobs Well, Tim KeelHeartland Innovators update November 12, 2007
Posted by Zack in Off Topic | write a comment
I want to enlist the help of everyone reading this blog for a project that Elizabeth and I have been working on, called Heartland Innovators. It’s a little hard to explain—but basically its an experiment in raising the profile of local successful leaders who are actually solving America’s biggest problems.
If you can suggest anyone who fits that description, please email us at info@heartlandinnovators.org
For example, American education is broken and neither politicians nor policy experts seem to know how to fix it. However, there are people in every community—teachers, principals, school staff, parents and students—who are fixing schools or at least classrooms, or building programs to educate children outside of broken schools.
So the idea of the Heartland Innovators project is to create a high-profile forum where those fixers can write about their success, and write their based-in-experience analysis of the failures of the system.
The hope is that such a forum would eventually begin to compete with the chattering nonsense (Elizabeth will probably make me take that out) of the policy establishment—and begin to inform and influence sincere politicians.
As for the INsincere politicians who don’t really care about fixing problems—the hope is that this process would eventually identify Heartland Innovators who could run for office and replace them.
(There is precedent for this. In a certain corner of the political world, a broad community of progressive activists have been having a huge influence on the Democratic party and elections over the last few cycles—and their power is founded on public forums (blogs) where they have successfully competed with the Democratic party establishment and mainstream political journalists.)
We started this project in September. For two months, in between our other work, we experimented with various ways of locating those local, successful leaders. It’s hard, because a teacher who is saving her students and holding back the tide of violence and apathy all around them—she doesn’t a have PR person, no newspaper has written about her success, she doesn’t have a website where she documents her work (but she should, and that’s the point of this project!). So we experimented and found various ways of drilling down into communities and finding these folks.
Now, moving in to phase two, we’re announcing the Heartland Innovators community policy blog. This is where the teacher gets a space to document her work. It will launch April 8, 2008. We’re inviting many of the leaders we’ve met over the last two months, but we’re going to have to find a lot more over the next five months for the blog to succeed. It may be that we decide to focus on one policy area to start (e.g. education) if that’s where most of our good submissions are coming from.
Here’s more detail on the community blog idea from the Heartland Innovators site.
And here’s the first sample post, from one of the first local leaders we met on our trip in September. I think Rev. King’s post is just the perfect example of a voice that needs to be heard by the policy establishment in her field.
Tag: Heartland InnovatorsEven the praise-the-Lord evangelical types! November 9, 2007
Posted by Zack in Connecticut | 1 commentHere’s a little bit more evidence of the progress of the revolution. Conservative columnist Laurence Cohen, in the Hartford Courant today, is despairing because “Even some of the more praise-the-Lord evangelical types have” have joined with those crazy Quakers and bleeding heart liberal mainliners and “begun to scratch the itch to become ‘environmentalists.’ ”
Many of the mainstream Protestant faiths have been led astray by denominational staff that has grown bored with transcendence and prefers to probe the mysteries of air pollution and property tax reform. Even some of the more praise-the-Lord evangelical types have begun to scratch the itch to become “environmentalists.” Which coal-scrubbing technology would Jesus recommend? Apparently, you don’t learn that in chemical engineering class; you learn it at seminary.
In these here parts, the Greater Hartford Coalition for Equity and Justice, for instance, is a church-fueled advocacy group indistinguishable from the lefty fringes of the Democratic Party and irrelevant labor unions. In a sermon in 2003 at the Washington National Cathedral, the executive director of the Christian Conference of Connecticut used the occasion to spew anti-Bush rhetoric that even many Democrats found embarrassing.
Thanks to my Dad for the link.
Radical followers of Jesus, deep in the heart of Texas November 8, 2007
Posted by Zack in Texas | write a commentIn my last post, I asked for more stories about middle & upper middle class Christians moving into poverty stricken areas to follow Jesus. I received a number of stories, which I’ll start posting as I get permission. Most of these folks want to remain anonymous for two reasons. First, they cite Matthew 6:1-4:
[Jesus said:] “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.
“So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Second, they just don’t want to have their work and their lives interfered with by counterproductive attention.
Here’s one email I got from someone who writes as “Agent B” on this blog. (A good post to start with, a reaction to Joel Olsteen and other “Prosperity Preachers” is here.) After Agent B’s initial email, I asked for a fuller explanation of how he came to move into a poor area and get involved in the local community. Here’s the response (Wikipedia links are my addition):
Background: I grew up in the church culture since age 3 (in the Church of Christ). I moved to Abilene TX to attend college at Abilene Christian University, earned a music degree in 1994, worked various jobs locally and married a missions student from Canada in 1998.
We stumbled into our life calling about 4 months into our marriage: befriend, walk with, minister to and be ministered BY the poor. This started by volunteering in a local charismatic church food pantry ministry. Eventually, we quit our jobs and joined the ministry staff by faith.
Over 3 years, the ministry involved not only a food pantry, but clothing, cafe lunch, once-a-week shelter, and being immersed in the poverty culture to better relate to our new friends.
The closer we got to the poverty culture, the farther away we got from the church culture. And the church pastor/staff didn’t like that. After various political struggles, etc, the church kicked the poverty ministry out of the building and church.
At the same time, my wife and I bought a house in this transitional neighborhood…and the ministry of sorts continued in different and exciting ways. We no longer went to a building to serve people. We now lived with them.
We are no longer part of the ministry that was kicked out. We have not been part of any church for 5 years. We are a single family wandering through this desert period of our lives while dreaming about future possibilities.
Through the internet, we have met several individuals and families (some local) that we have befriended and connected with. We are all actively seeking what it really means to “seek the kingdom first, and everything will be added unto you”, etc.
There is no established “ministry”, name, non-prof #, etc. Just a ragtag group of weird people trying to live it out. I have not had any “real employment” for 5 years. But the lord has provided: there’s way too many testimonies to share here.
Hope this helps. I don’t know if we’re the kind of “community” you are looking for to write on. Let me know if you have more questions.
Do you know a story like this? November 1, 2007
Posted by Zack in Missouri | 12 commentsI can no longer keep track of how many white, middle class or affluent Christians I’ve met who have moved to poverty-stricken, crime-ridden city blocks as part of locally organized attempts to redeem neighborhoods. If you are doing that, or know some folks who are, can you please email me and tell me about it? I would love to start visiting some of these communities and getting permission to write about them.
Email me at: info@RevolutionInJesusland.com
Whatever your suspicions are toward these folks, you have to admit that this is a fascinating phenomenon. They are going against every single instinct that is bred into us white yuppies from day one. I’m happy to say that my parents were people who resisted those instincts—but I still got it from everywhere else: media, friends & school, neighbors, etc… In other words, this stuff couldn’t be piled higher on top us us. If you’re one of us, you know what I’m talking about. Lock that door. Take the highway instead of Broadway. Don’t stop at THAT gas station, go a little further on. Yet these people are not only getting out of their cars in the roughest of neighborhoods, but are moving into former crack houses for Christ.
I grew up thinking that church was another institution that reinforced those instincts. And I’m sure it is in general. But now, some number of churches are preaching an alternate set of instincts—instincts based on the story of Jesus, a guy who was attracted to—not repulsed by—people and places stuck in dire straights.
What prompted this post is that I just got an email telling me about yet another community like this in a very small Midwestern city. It’s one of those small (50K people) towns that is the “Big City” for fifty miles in any direction. (Overwhelmingly Republican, by the way.) Doing some Googling, I found some blogs by people living in the community. FASCINATING, HEART WRENCHING STUFF! But I’m going to have to leave you in suspense until they give me permission to link to them. They are just so personal, and I don’t think they ever imagined anyone but their close friends would be reading them.
I also hesitate to link to them because the language they use is just soooo different from anything that people outside of the church is used to. I almost feel like it would have to be translated. I remember what that language looked like to me just a year ago. I remember thinking, “These people are insane.” But then I met them and found that they are actually FRIGHTENINGLY sane—like, *miraculously* well-adjusted.
And when I learned the actual, practical, operational meanings of the phrases they use—I saw that most are, in practice, near equivalents of phrases that secular folks use too. One simple example is when they say “God told me to…”. Yes, they do believe that God has a desire that they may be able to feel. But they realize they might be misinterpreting or mis-attributing those feelings to God, and most aren’t thinking of God as a person up there who has nothing better to do than whisper into their ears.
In other words, “God told me to…” may mean something as “normal” (from a secular point of view) as reading a passage of the Bible and having it shed new light on a decision you’re trying to make.
Anyways, know some Christian (or non-Christian for that matter) yuppies who are moving into an economically devastated neighborhood? Please connect me to them: info@RevolutionInJesusland.com
