"Winning" Patriots shirts -- World Vision delivers

You know how they print those "2008 Super Bowl Winners - New England Patriots" shirts for the game, and then the Patriots lose? What happens to the shirts.

World Vision picks them up and delivers them to kids who need shirts.

More here.

God at Work in Turkey!

Hi everyone,

I wanted to pass along an incredible article about what God is doing in Turkey. Turkey is pretty much entirely Muslim, but God is doing incredible things for the past 20 years. Lisa went on a short-term missions trip there in '94, and I went in '95, and have been praying for it since then, but honestly, haven't seen much detailed coverage of what's been happening since that time. But praise God! He has been working in wonderful ways, and the church's rate of growth is higher than I thought it would be. I often wondered if it would be "better" if Turkey was not as free, because sometimes where there is persecution, growth is more rapid (such as we hear about from inside Iran). I am ashamed to say that sometimes in praying for Turkey I felt like I was "tossing" prayers up in the air, with little to no hope. I know that discouragement caused me to lose heart and not pray as much. Often a lot of time would go by before I prayed for Turkey again.

But after reading this, I am really encouraged! Never give up in prayer! And keep praying!

It may interest you to know I've been to Besiktas Protestant Church (mentioned in this article), sitting in the smoky foyer while a Turkish brother and ministry worker met a new convert and gave him some very important follow-up. I also have met Carlos Madrigal, the Spanish missionary mentioned in the middle of the article. One of my Turkish friends mentioned that they thought his Turkish was either "as good as" or "even better" than some Turks'! (I can't remember which.) I think I might also have met Turgay, the guy mentioned throughout this article, and Lisa probably did too.

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." (John 1:5, ESV)

Pray, pray, pray! A good day to pray for Muslim-majority countries is Friday, which is the day mosques have worship services.

Cedarville should have let Claiborne speak

Cedarville University had invited Shane Claiborne (whose book we have been interacting with in this blog) to speak, but has now un-invited him, thanks to bloggers who think this is a sanctioning of liberal theology. The story's here. My question is: isn't Cedarville a university? Universities are supposed to feature speakers (and ideas!) from everywhere on the spectrum. Claiborne makes a good point in the article when he says that his critics should be talking to him directly and cites Matthew 18.

Blogging "The Irresistible Revolution" -- Chapter 2

Continuing to put my thoughts down about this book, a book which has only begun to make its impact upon Generations X and Y -- (see the first parts below):

In Chapter 2, Shane Claiborne relates the story of St. Edward's cathedral in North Philadelphia. What happens here becomes the seminal moment for him, and apparently for other students at Eastern. The chapter is called "Resurrecting Church", and it may be more appropriate to say that it's about how the church became relevant... for him. I dont' say that disrespectfully, but rather acknowledging that there's a certain subjectivity to our relationship with God that is essentially related to what it is God is calling us to do (our vocation). Until we find that, we are restless, by design.

Here's what happens: homeless families (largely moms and children) have taken refuge in St. Edward's, an abandoned Catholic cathedral in North Philly. The archdiocese wants to evict the families. Claiborne and the rest of the student friends go to St. Ed's to see what they can do. Here's how he describes what happens next:

"Then they invited us in. And we would never be the same again... They poured out their hearts to us, their struggles and their dreams. They reminded us that we all need each other and assured us that if we all shared with one another, there would be enough for everyone." (page 57)

That last sentence essentially becomes The Message Claiborne has for us and for the world. To be fair, he understands that message to be subordinate to the lordship of Jesus Christ - that Jesus really is Lord, and that God reconciles people to Himself through Christ. But what comes next? What is the end result? Dependence on God and interdependence with one another. Indeed, this is the essence of Christian community. But were the homeless at St. Ed's first reconciled to God in Christ? We can perhaps assume so in that they have communion, hold services, identify as such... but assuming is dangerous. We must first be forgiven, and the Gospel is first and foremost one of "repentance and forgiveness of sins" (see the Great Commission as Luke, who focuses on Jesus' ministry to the poor, has it in Luke 24:46,47).

I agree that as Christians, we MUST identify with the poor, whether we have limited resources or not. How that happens will be different from Christian to Christian, and we'll talk about this later. But first we must be committed to making sure that all are reconciled to God through Christ. Then, yes, Christian action - building God's community - must come next.

What is the principle hallmark of that community? Love. Love for God and love for people. We cannot neglect either. "Love for God" starts with believing on His name, receiving Jesus (John 1:12) and worshipping Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24).

Love for others must also happen, and let there be no doubt, LOVE is a verb. Put it into action! Intentions are useless; love in action counts (see 1 John 4). Sharing resources is one crucial aspect; is it pre-eminent though? That is perhaps the question of the book.

Claiborne and the other students then pool resources to share with the homeless families. Other resources come their way, even from the Mafia! Claiborne is disappointed that the mafia out-gives one wealthy congregation.

This is not the focus of this chapter, though, although it is important. The aspect of "love in action" that is the centerpiece of this chapter is the students' standing with the homeless in defying the archdiocese' eviction. This is civil disobedience in the name of social justice, in the name of Christ. Claiborne is honest in expressing some uncertainty, but ultimately is convinced that this is God's will:

"It felt like nothing could stop us, as if God really was on our side. I wasn't really sure how God felt about taking sides in difficult situations like this, but we had a real sense that even if we were being pursued by every department in the city, somehow the sea would split open and swallow them up (in the most loving way) in order to protect the families." (pages 61-62)

I'm inclined to agree, but we must always weigh our motives when we balance Acts 4 (our pattern for civil disobedience; Peter saying 'we must obey God rather than men') and Romans 13 (Paul: 'Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established'). What is going on? Where is God directing? Again, the New Testament gives broad principles but God's glory must be paramount.

Finally, Claiborne entitles this chapter "Resurrecting Church". Claiborne, upset that more Christians did not assist with the St. Edward's situation, and says:

"I think I've lost hope in the church," I confessed, brokenhearted, to a friend. I will never forget her response. "No, you haven't lost hope in the church. You may have lost hope in Christianity or Christendom or all the institutions, but you have not lost hope in the church. This {italics here} is the church." At that moment, we decided to stop complaining about the church we saw, and we set our hearts on becoming the church we dreamed of.
"We dreamed ancient visions of a church like the one in Acts, in which 'there were no needy persons among them' because everyone shared their possessions, not claiming anything as their own but 'sharing everything they had.' We knew we could end poverty. The early church did, and the homeless families were doing it. We thirsted for the kingdom of God, and we knew that it would come 'on earth as it is in heaven,' as Jesus said. We were not interested in a Christianity that offered these families only mansions and streets of gold in heaven when all they wanted was a bed for their kids now. And many Christians had an extra one."

That's rather unfair. It's true that the evangelical church has been unbalanced away from social action ever since the "social gospel"/fundamentalist controversies of 100 years ago. We are at the beginning of a move back toward balance. But it is very safe to say that the church has been at the forefront of social action and compassion ministries for a long time now. What this lament really reveals is Claiborne's lack of exposure (up to the St. Ed's situation) to Christian ministries of all stripe sacrificing for - AND living among -"the least of these". They are out there, there are many, and most are quiet. Granted, he will mention some of these later in the book.

One more thing: Acts is not about ending poverty. Disciples do form communities, and when those communities are Spirit-led, brothers and sisters share with each other. But their unity comes from a common purpose, and that purpose is to bring as many people into a relationship with Christ, experiencing His forgiveness, healing, and wonder-working power for living, and into a relationship with His community. Well, this is rough... but I'm feeling pressure to end this note. Needless to say, we'll revisit this in later chapters. Shane, I'm with you, I appreciate your love for the Lord and for people, and I continue to be reassured and challenged by your words. But the whole picture of what Christ's community is to be in the world, what it is to be about, may be a point of small but important differences between us. Matthew 5:14-16 IS true, amen.

Let us not conflate our mission with politics!

Of course, I'm not the only one saying this, but I still find it necessary to be clear about this. I've been saying this here and there, but I'm not very articulate. I found an excellent article at USA Today (via Yahoo!) from David Gushee that articulates it much better than I could.

It's worth a read as a thoughtful, gentle note of warning.

The effect of a Mormon president on the Gospel's spread

This blog deliberately stays away from politics, and we will continue to avoid public policy questions on this forum. This blog is concerned with issues of Christian faith, practice, and ethics (as well as the occasional "fun stuff"). However, one of the key directives Jesus gave us was to spread the Good News of the Kingdom (see Matthew 28:18-20, "The Great Commission"). As a Christian & Missionary Alliance church, the worldwide spread of the Gospel is a foremost concern.

Citizens of the United States are given the opportunity to popularly elect their leaders. Christians who are citizens can spend a whole lifetime reflecting on how to participate in this system. We must face a constant temptation to let politics become a distraction that robs of us our energy to love God, others, and witness. As we know, too many Christian leaders and people give in to the "siren song" of political involvement, and get way over their heads. But as someone else once said (I forget who): "When you mix faith and politics, you get politics."

So I don't want to discuss politics or policies. I want to discuss a practical implication of a vote for one of the particular candidates for this election.

Former Massachusetts governor and presidential candidate Mitt Romney is a Mormon, and a devout one who served his 2 years in missionary service as a young man and remains committed to the tenets of his sect. I realize that he gave a speech yesterday in which he said he will not be dictated to by church leaders as president. Again, I do not want to discuss policies or heirarchy. But we must consider Mormonism against the true Christian faith and the spread of the Gospel.

Mormonism is by no measure 'historic Christianity'; actually, it is quite demonstrably an invented religion that sets its own bogus writings alongside those of the Old and New Testament. Its founder, Joseph Smith, was a dynamic and forceful leader who developed a toxic cult of personality around himself. Women who caught his attention became his wives, even if they originally were married to others. Mormonism is rather conservative and orderly now; originally, it was birthed in lies, pride, lust, and violence. It is a cult that now looks respectable, but still teaches heresy regarding Jesus Christ and the idea that you too can become a God. All of this is easily demonstrable from history(I'm just not putting the links here now because I'm lazy).

I only want to speak from a pragmatic standpoint, I don't want to say anything about the personal faith, character, record, or policy ideas of Mitt Romney. They may all be fine; he could be the next Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt as far as those are concerned. My huge concern here is pragmatic - the worldwide spread of the Gospel.

Mormons are incredibly energetic when it comes to spreading their false Christianity. They are all over the world, they are sincere, and they are financially well-supported. They are listened to - because they pose as Christians. Of course, once they have a foot in the door, they then subvert true Christianity and sell their false Christ to those with very little knowledge of the true Jesus. I have heard anecdotes of how they have entered countries, gone to churches that Christian missionaries have started, and then subvert that young indigenous church with their beliefs and practices. Mormonism in Denmark is a sad story I encourage Christians to be aware of.

Now imagine the impact our misled Mormon friends will have in unreached countries in 2009 when they start talking to an Indonesian, a Tajik, a Bengali, and say, "Do you want to know more about our faith? Did you know that the American president is a member of our church?"

Consider the pragmatic implications of electing a Mormon president. Like it or not, if Romney becomes president, the Mormon cult will gain legitimacy in the eyes of many who have not heard of Jesus worldwide, and many may be tragically misled.

Let's pray for God to bring Mormons into the right understanding of God's love as revealed in Jesus Christ, and that salvation comes through faith in Him alone.

Blogging the "Irresistible Revolution": Chapter 1, "When Christianity Was Still Safe"

Continuing my series responding to Shane Claiborne's The Irresistible Revolution...

Chapter 1 chronicles Claiborne's personal discovery of Jesus at work -from jaded Southern Methodist teen to Christian college student experiencing God in the streets of Philly. This arc involves some significant 'awakenings' or turning points for Claiborne, and also sheds some light on his personality as well.

Claiborne first narrates his early teen conversion experience, which is similar to the experience of many. However, he notes that "I came to realize that preachers were telling me to lay my life at the foot fo the cross and weren't giving me anything to pick up." Unfortunately, for him as well as many, after conversion, nobody offered the young convert the path of the spiritual disciplines - just do's and don'ts. Nobody explained that communing with God and becoming like Jesus takes training and mentorship, at least not apparently.

So, then Claiborne, like all to many Christians experienced what he calls (rightly) "spiritual bulimia" - gorging on Christian material then regurgitating it all back up but not really experiencing the truths in redemptive living. His point is well-taken here, and often made these days - the Christian life is not about inputting, or even absorbing, information. It's about LIVING the life of faith in Jesus. Claiborne gets jaded - until he meets the charismatics.

He calls this the "Jesus Freak" period, and it's a turn for the better, but unfortunately, going deeper into the faith in this context meant that he became a salesman-style evangelist (eh, not so good) and a stauncher Republican partisan (not good). He says, "Sometimes when we evangelized, I felt like I was selling Jesus like a used-car salesman, like people's salvation depended on how well I articulated thaings. And that's a lot of pressure... But I wasn't sure I was selling them the real thing." Well, no, the Gospel is so much more. It is not only the individual receiving forgiveness of sins, it's transformation with societal impact, it must result in a community of God living out His love. Claiborne's book rests on this (or a similar) premise; we can agree on this. But it still does start with awareness of sin, repentance, and trust in Jesus - remember what Jesus' first words (called the Gospel) in Mark are: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe..." (Mark 1:15, ESV). My question to Claiborne is this: can we agree that it does start there? (Or rather with God's initative - Rom. 5:8.)

Claiborne goes to Eastern College and, getting involved with everything, finds that he is experiecning the reality of God's love and power among the homeless and destitute of Philadelphia. His point (or rather his professor's point) that we don't experience miracles because "we no longer live with such reckless faith that we need them" is well-taken, and a good word to anyone who wants to follow Jesus. Finally, he sees humans giving grace to each other, even when they have little, and he understands Mother Teresa to be true when she says, "In the poor we meet Jesus in his most distressing disguises." The arc is essenitally complete; now Claiborne is truly awake (perhaps now truly "born again"?).

I think about two things: 1) Claiborne definitely is a 'cutting edge' guy... he's not just extremely smart but he also has a drive to be on the very edge. When he does something, he's "all in." I admire people who can live like that; I'm more cautious by nature. However, this tendency can manifest itself in a bit of "I'm the farthest the fastest": he had a drive to be cool, then to be successful financially, then to be a zealous soul-winner, and now he's driven to be radical, totally "on the edge". No doubt this drive is now tempered by wisdom, understanding, compassion, and humility -- that really is apparent as we keep reading. However, it puts me at a distance; I'm slower-paced by nature and have a hard time relating to "grab the bull by the horns" types (but with God's help, I can take the risks he' calling me to take, I hope).

2) The other thing I think about is this: what if Claiborne had grown up in central New Hampshire, like I did - in a climate where it was NOT cool to be a Christian and to go to church, where simply holding on to the faith could not be taken for granted? It's true that believing churches in such a climate tend to get insular, but it's still not necessarily "safe". How would that experience have shaped him? Granted, our churches still were not trained in disciple-making, but the Campus Cruade movement at UNH (my alma mater) was. Christianity was most certainly not safe there. My guess is he would have ended up in the same place, doing the same thing, but it might have taken longer, as us "Yankee" secular-environment Christians have to fight upstream a lot. (And he acknowledges us that we are different, that we mess with Southerner minds, but that maybe that's a good thing.)

Blogging "The Irresistible Revolution": Author's Note

Claiborne announces his purpose simply and directly in his author's note, but first he says that writing a book was not easy given "the tension between living authentically small and evangelically large." This is a bit of a false dichotomy, as I think can be demonstrated later, but on his point I will say that living small is practically always the right choice. It is the apostles' counsel to Christians (1 Thess 4:11), and I think God only calls a very few to a life and ministry of notoriety (of the apostles, only Peter, John, Paul, and James had any fame).

He then says that that his point "is not to give you all of the answers but to stir up some of the right questions." We will see if he is more inquisitive or provocative rather than didactic. He states his goal "is to speak the truth in love." From what I've read so far, the tone is irenic (with a side of sardonic). He makes some other important notes but closes his note by noting that he's giving away all of the proceeds from the book "as the only thing that makes sense to me." Given some of what I've read later in the book, I am positive he is telling the truth. He says he mentions this "for the sake of transparency." He then says, "This book has emerged from a movement of communities of faith and struggle, inspired by local revolutions and ordinary radicals, anchored in life among the poor and marginalized. So it is not only a responsibility but a joy and honor to share the profits with all of them." The first sentence is particularly valuable; it provides the context of the book.

Let us carry on then with the book, and hopefully I will be regular in posting.