Christians Gone Wild (in cities)

Tim Keller, of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC, gets it.

What the Gospel is, what it means and how we are to live it. This article (A New Kind of Urban Christian) is part of the Christian Vision Project: An attempt to reenvision the Christian faith for our day and time.

Read it.

Church: The point

I like it simple. Not simplistic, simple.

I ran across this quote by Rob Bell that for me put the whole church-and-why-I-am-here-on-the-planet-thing in perspective. This was from an interview in a Houston paper about his everything is spiritual tour wrapping up this month.

"We are passionate about people being healed on the inside,
and we are passionate about society being healed on the outside," Bell said.
"We would call that the whole Gospel."

John Wesley Rides Again, Part 1 of ?

John Wesley has got to be one of the great figures in the history of the people who follow Jesus. Among other things:

• He is credited with keeping England from a civil war (as happened "across the pond").
  
• His life, thought, preaching and ministry was seminal in helping England abolish slavery without said civil war.
  
• He understood that the message of Jesus meant physical ramifications for people or it wasn't the message of Jesus. His message: "there is no holiness apart from social holiness."
• He wasn't afraid to throw-down with the big boys. The churched gentry (the power-brokers in English society) would have nothing to do with the coal miners or any other group who couldn't appropriately find their way into a church building. As a result, there was an ever widening gap between rich and poor, upper and lower class--all in the name of God, culture and social acceptability.
  
• In contrast, he preached (against his own preferences) outdoors to the coal miners. He had no idea he was getting through until he saw tears coming down their blackened faces.
  
• He made increasing amounts of money each year, but continued to live on the same amount, giving the rest away. He died with no substantial financial assets to speak of.
  
• He exercised regularly and was in excellent physical health into his 70's.
  
• He was fluent in Greek, Hebrew and Latin and required that all who served with him be the same.
  
• His letter writing to people needing spiritual counsel was nothing short of remarkable in its scope and breadth.
  

Single Again...for a little while

My wife if leaving me for six weeks.
It's a work thing that has great possibilities for the future. Hudson is going with her.
When she's gone, I feel like a lost puppy. And I think about the fact that many, many people live with that kind of loneliness all the time. Mother Theresa was right: loneliness is a cancer. A great chance for me to do a ridiculous amount of work though...

The (uninterpreted) Parable

We're getting ready to do a 6-week series at our church on the revolution of God.
For it, I'm putting together brief sermon recap videos for use in our Small Groups, and I;m thinking of using this parable in one of them.
It's one of my favorites from Soren Kierkegaard.

When I searched for the exact wording of it on Google, I found the parable explained away ad nauseum. I'll spare you that silliness. Which leads to a ministry take-away for me: Don't ruin something profound by your explanation of it.

There was a little town of Ducks. Every Sunday the ducks waddled out of their houses and down Main Street to their church. They waddled into the sanctuary and squatted in their proper pews. The duck choir waddled in and takes it place, then the duck minister came forward to preach.
"Ducks! God has given you wings! With wings you can fly! With wings you can mount up and soar like eagles. No walls can confine you! No fences can hold you! You have wings. God has given you wings and you can fly like birds!" All the ducks quacked their amens.

Then the ducks walked home.