One of the most convincing proofs of the resurrection is where the early church started.

It started in Jerusalem. Now if the resurrection did not happen, the inhabitants could have easily walked over to the tomb, saw that was still occupied, and promptly returned to laugh in the disciples face.

But the fact is, they didn’t. They got angry with them, they threw them in jail, they made up reasons why the tomb was empty – but they never disputed that the tomb itself – was empty.

If the tomb was full, why not go off to Athens or Rome or Babylon to preach that Jesus Christ raised from the dead? The fact they started in Jerusalem, the very place the resurrection happened – points to the fact they were not afraid of people verifying their story.

So the next time you wonder if the resurrection was real, remember, the disciples had no trouble putting their faith to the test. They knew Jesus was alive and they had an empty tomb to prove it.

The post Proof of the Resurrection: Jerusalem appeared first on Glass House Theology.com.

“‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.”
Ephesians 5:31-32

Intimacy – it is the point of all creation. We were meant to love and be loved. We were meant to trust and depend and be dependable. We were meant to be agents of beauty, creativity, stewardship, and caring.

But we must learn to be those things. They do not come automatically. They must be gained with experience. The blunder in the garden set us all down a path that we must recover from. And since that original blunder, it has been a long journey for us. One misstep after another. But the Passion of our Christ – our Savior – means that the path is not walked alone.

He comes along side, washing us of our guilt and past. He speaks words of counsel, like a chiropractor re-aligning our misshapen soul. He trains us to live as we were meant to live – in intimacy.

We were not meant to live alone. We were meant to live with loving relationships. We were meant to live with a Lover. But our wet cement years taught us many bad lessons. We were taught to take and grab, defend and push. We were taught to define “us” verses “them.” In the end, we had a string of bad teachers.

Not that we can blame any of them, really. They had bad teachers, too, you know. And if you trace the bad lessons all the way back to the beginning, you will find Satan standing there, whispering into the ears of the the First People.

So maybe it is time we stop listening to that first lie that was whispered all those years ago. Maybe we should give up trying to push away, isolate ourselves, and be self-sufficient. Maybe it is time to lean into the embrace of our loved ones, our neighbors, our Creator. Maybe it is time to find peace, intimacy, and joy.

The point of the cross was not sacrifice – although it certainly involved that. The point of the cross was bridge making, stain removal, and eternal relationship. It was about gain, not loss. It was about growing in love and inclusion.

If you have not accepted this love, do so. Be welcomed into the family of the Broken-But-Still-Loved. Be welcomed into His arms.

The post Intimacy: The Point of Easter appeared first on Glass House Theology.com.

Coontz is on record as owning multiple luxury cars that are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Coupled with his condo and many vacations, we can see were most of the ministry dollars are spent.  Sad, just sad.  He says that these items were paid for by his book sales – but since his ministry headquarters is a little office in a strip mall that no one goes in or out of – I dare say his “ministry” has little else to pay for than his salary.

In a world where the Good News, in its pure form, is needed now more than ever, how these people are allowed to continue is beyond me.  We need ministers who are devoted to the poor, the dysfunctional, and their Christ – rather than their comfort and pocket books.  If God called televangelists to live in opulence while their flock lived in misery – I have been talking to the wrong God all these years.

Why the Prosperity Gospel and Todd Coontz are wrong:

Here is the basic logic, as I see it, of the world that God set up.  This is a training ground.  It is designed to prepare us for an eternity of administering the Kingdom of Light.  This world is not our home.  It is a temporary environment suitable for preparing us.

Why?  It puts a veil between us and the stable, eternal world.  It gives us the ability to fail, faulter, and learn from our mistakes.  This world is the crayon and papers of a child’s art room as we learn how to eventually paint masterpieces.

But what if God just handed us everything we needed without effort, failing, trying, and loosing?  What if all of our material needs were provided for by simply handing over $273?  Sure, we have to overcome the anxiety of giving up a couple hundred dollars, but with the reward of thousands looming large, who, in their right mind, wouldn’t give up that amount?

The truth is, the Proserity Gospel just doesn’t make sense in the world that God created.  Yes, God, in the Old Testament, ties His blessing to the conditions of the Covenanent.  But He promises “to bless … the work of your hands” (Deuteronomy 28:12), not to give willy nilly just because you fork over some cash.

The conditional blessing of the Old Covenant was meant to reinforce why this world was built: as a nursery, a school, a training ground. It was meant for us to work hard, build loving relationships, and keep our desires in bounds – and be rewarded for it.  The opposite would incur punishment and thus we learn the laws of the eternal world by the fail/succeed system of this world.

To teach or proport anything else is to go against the laws and reasoning of God Himself. If God has established the rules of our upbringing – who are we to teach otherwise?

What to do with the Prosperity Gospel preachers and Todd Coontz:

So what do we do with these televangelists?  What do we do… turn them off.  Refuse them access into our homes and minds.  Encourage others to turn them off.  People need to understand that God wants more that to be our Sugar Daddy – He wants to be our Father and Friend.  He wants to shape us into the image of His Son.  He will use both prosperity and famine to do so.  So “Boo” to those that teach cheap blessing.  “Boo” to those that flaunt the wealth of others as their own.

God has given me this world to mold me, shape me, prepare me for an eternity of reigning, worshipping, and communion.  I choose that over cheap rewards.  He has given me this blue spinning terrestrial marble to teach me that what is real, solid, and lasting has nothing to do with a buck, but has everything to do character, skill, relationship, and the bonds of love.

Comment below are talk to me via Facebook or Twitter…

The post Prosperity Gospel: Prophetic Promise or Fleecing the Flock appeared first on Glass House Theology.com.

The new campus will have a new 3,000-seat sanctuary, which includes a 150-foot-wide viewing screen, which stretches nearly two-thirds across the room and consists of seven high-definition projectors blended together.  Also, featured in the rebuild is a glass sky bridge, new children’s and youth classrooms, a gymnasium and three indoor playgrounds, a seven-story parking garage, and an internally lit cross tower and fountain.

The Psychology behind building buildings

Why do we, as a church, build expensive new buildings, what is the underlying motivation? My take: we build buildings to keep the people we do have and attract new people.  And I don’t think there is inherently anything wrong with that line of reasoning. (more on that in a minute)  We are, after all, called to make disciples of all people.

A new building signals that other people have already voted with their pocket book that this is a good place to go on Sundays.  And we, as consumers, look for social and economic clues to make an informed decision.  And a new building with new parking garages and with a new sound system certainly sends that signal.  But the question remains, is this the right signal to be sending?

What buildings should we be building anyway?

I agree that we should be attracting more people to the teaching of Jesus.  And, still, one of the best ways to do that is to send social signals signifying success.  But there in lies the rub.  We struggle under the ethical dilemma of funneling millions of dollars into brick and mortar and high-technology.  We see so much poverty, dysfunction, and distress around us and wonder if that money can’t be better spent.

Some argue that the mammoth new buildings benefit everyone.  And to a certain extent, it does.  Everyone is free to come and experience church for a few hours a week.  And yet, that money could have everyday impact to thousands if it was put into social programs.

But here, I think, is the real question: what buildings should we be building?  Since we already have a Church under construction – the Living Church of Believers – shouldn’t we work to complete that building first?  It’s bricks are made of you and me.  And an impressive building built with healthy, happy, successful people would be the greatest status symbol of all.

I can imagine a building built of people who have:

• deep friendships
• caring personality
• no addictions
• ability to give to the needy
• contentment
• unshakable spirituality
• a happy marriage
• a good home life
• a fulfilling career
• money for retirement
• strong bonds in the community

A building like this would by its very nature attract people to it.  This building could be placed anywhere, in any environment, and still it would compel people to come to its doors.  This building could be disguised in store front churches, home groups, old churches, and new churches.  But still its unmistakable imprint would be recognizable.

At the end of the day, It think, I am all for building buildings – but only the ones that Christ placed His importance on.  There is only one building that I can think of that fits that description.  And until we finish that building, maybe the others should have less importance (and less sky bridges).

The post The Psychcology of Building a MegaChurch appeared first on Glass House Theology.com.

Last week I had the pleasure of speaking with him and asking him a few questions. I wanted to get his take on a few key points and expand some of the provocative ideas he brought out in his book. Below is the product of that conversation.

Andrew casts light on a great point in that theology should be the study of God’s action in the world, both past and present. If we can get a grasp of what God is doing, we can begin to participate in His ministry. A critical distinction, since most of us are just worried about our own ministry.

Enjoy this short interview and make sure to comment, share, and engage in the conversation. Click on the toggle below to learn a bit more about Andrew Root and then jump on in:

Seeing God’s Action in the World: An Interview with Andrew Root

Q:In your book, Taking Theology to Youth Ministry, you say: “Theology at its most basic (and its most profound) is passionate reflection on God’s action, on God’s own ministry.” Every pastor (not just youth pastors) want people to engage God and His revelation – the Bible. So speaking for pastors: why is it so important to you that pastors focus on God’s action in the Bible as a form of teaching theology?

A:Yes. I have a book coming out with Intervarsity Press in April called “The Relational Pastor” that kind of pushes some of these ideas more broadly. I hope there’s some connecting tissue from this project to the other. What I’m really pushing for in this current series is to get us as a form of ministry to focus on the active, living presence of God in the world. I mean if we confess that God is active and moving in the world, then how do we help our people participate in that action? I think we believe that. We want that. We want people to see God not as just an idea or concept or theory or even being locked inside the Bible itself as if God were inert and kind of captured in history. We want to make this confession that God through the Spirit, that witnesses of Jesus Christ, continues to be active and moving in the world. That makes things fundamentally complicated because it draws us into big questions about our own person. It draws us into bigger questions about our context in how we make meaning within our cultural reality.

My overall hope is to focus on the agency of God, that God is an active mover within the world. I think we distinctly and deeply need the Biblical text to be able to make sense of the complication of God’s own action in the world. I think that if we’re going to have ministries that are robust and ministries that are significant, especially within a cultural context with the rise of secularization and the like, then we absolutely have to be able to speak in a rich and theological way about God’s activity. It’s important to me that pastors focus on God’s action in the Bible as a form of teaching theology. I think this is the only way to make sense of God and God’s activity. We must allow God to break in and move within our lives, or else it just becomes either stale religion or kind of disconnected thought and doesn’t actually engage within our concrete lived situation.

Q:In your book you have a great quote: “Theology is only theology when it becomes dangerous, when it threatens to leave us limping by exposing our motives to the action of God.” You now treat theology as something that engages people and makes them wrestle with their innermost thoughts. At what point in your ministry did you make the switch from “third person” learning to “first person” interaction? Was it a definitive “Aha” moment or a gradual evolution?

A:I think there are two things that led me into seeing theology this way. Theology absolutely is something dangerous.

One was a ministry experience that I mentioned in my first book, “Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry”. It’s the beginning story that sets it up.

I got into theology not because I had any real proclivity towards theology. I actually thought if I’d ever be in the academic world, I’d be a sociologist or something like that. I thought that thinking big thought experiments was not my destiny, especially when I was I kid. I thought the best I could do, which I actually think is, in some ways, nobler – would be just to be a youth pastor. I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would write books or anything like that. I was always into ideas. For example: I was in ministry watching my church struggle with these young people from the neighborhood. They just showed up on the church steps and then we had to figure out how to do ministry with these young people. We were thrown into a lot of perplexing situations as these kids vandalized the church and harassed people as they came to church on a Wednesday night.

Big questions arose like whose church is this? Is it the kids’ who live in the neighborhood or the kids’ of people who put money in the offering plate? But the big question really was this: where is God to be found next in these young people’s lives as they are dealing with very difficult situations?

At that level it was kind of an “aha” moment where I started to realize that theology actually mattered in this situation. How we thought about God and how we thought about the church and how we thought about how God relates to the church had an incredible significance. It had an impact on the very practice and action and the very interpretation that I made of these situations. I think there was an “aha” moment at that level. That’s one thing. My lived, concrete ministry experience led me to see that theology is dangerous, that theology can lead us into rethinking what we’re doing as we try to correlate what we’re doing to the very action of God in the world.

At another level, the theological tradition that I work in and grew up in, the Lutheran theological perspective as well as the Reformed theological perspective,  really sees theology as fundamentally a dangerous activity and is fundamentally existential or engaged in your own person and your own being.  Especially when you think of Luther and what Luther had to wrestle with. The Protestant Reformation comes along because Luther is trying to make everything make sense. He is trying to please this God and doesn’t feel as if he can do it. Justification by faith alone is not just a theoretical idea he comes up with, but it’s actually a way for him to make sense of his own being – next to his confession or commitment of the presence and absence of God in his life. I think for me, both within these traditions that I live in as well as my own ministry experience, it kind of led me to see theology this way as something dangerous. I guess at one level it was an “aha” moment and another level it was gradual.

Q:In your book you explain, “Youth ministry developed due to cultural reasons more than theological ones, because we have societal institutions like the high school that divide age cohorts into a group that then forms a distinct culture and a marketing niche.” I get the gist from your book that you do not want to abolish youth groups, but does the segregation of generations do more harm than good? What can be done to knit the different age brackets together?

A:Yes, this is a really great question and I wish I had the direct answer for this, especially from kind of a practical perspective like, “Take these three steps and these two pills, and everything will be fine.” I don’t necessarily have an answer in that sense. I will say that you’re right, that I’m not against youth group in that I think youth group is important. I do sometimes wonder… let me say it this way: I think it’s significant and important for young people that we cohort them. They are distinctive – yes, and culturally determined, – yes, but nevertheless they are in a distinctive cultural situation having uniquely cultural experiences; and we shouldn’t minimize those. There’s reason for us to cohort them. I just wonder sometimes if we have it backwards. We cohort them up every week or twice a week and then work on inter-generational experiences maybe once a month or once a quarter or once a year. Maybe it should be the other way around. Maybe we should be focusing on inter-generational engagements weekly and maybe cohorted times once a month or something like that.

Again, I’m not exactly sure how that happens or how that movement is made. I will say one of the most fundamental ways that it would have to occur is that we would have to take this very bold step in our congregations to actually start treating young people as if they are, yes, nascent and immature, but nevertheless nascent adults. And treat them more adult-like than child-like. I think this becomes a problem especially in traditions that have confirmation, other rites of kind of passage that we usually do these when kids are 13, 14, 15 and then tell them that they are now “an adult member of the church” or “your voice is significant,” but it really isn’t. We send them to the high school youth group because we’ve been kind of co-opted by this cultural secondary education framework. It could be naive to say we need to treat them like adults. I think our faith communities could take steps to actually understand our young people, not as just these crazed teenagers, but actually as young, nascent, growing adults and therefore engaged in the congregation in more of an adult way than simply as kind of hormone-loaded crazy people as they’re often treated.

Q:Since I believe that “Taking Theology to Youth Ministry” could be a book for the average Christian and not just Youth Pastors, let’s wrap up with a broader question. You speak in your book about a theology that is action oriented, embraces mystery, confronts current reality, and prompts good questions rather than just giving answers. How do you practice these things in your life? How do you cultivate these principles in your walk with Christ?

A:Yes, that’s a great question. I know I try and make discipleship a huge portion of my life. And this thought plays out through all of the four little books that I wrote. Discipleship is really this brave movement into wrestling with your own story in your own search for God – and your own doubts. In my own faith journey, I want to think about faith and put it up against the deepest questions that haunt me.

I also think there’s something significant about the historical trajectory of Christianity. The people who did not hide from reality but tried to find God in the places of their deepest question – they were the people that led Christian thought.

Where I do this most often is with my children. I try not to just “punt” their deep theological, philosophical questions. I try to lean deeply into those questions and wrestle with them.

I also think one of the places that starts in my own faith life is to not settle for easy answers and to guard against – and maybe this is just me – but to guard against sentimentality. I come from, again, a theological tradition that does not rest on sentimentality. It tries to encompass the depth of the very act and being of God in the world. It requires that we have to try to say things directly and address the fullness of our experience – that calls an experience of hell, hell, and calls an experience of great joy, joy, and tries to live inside of those things. I think there’s this sense of the kind of freedom to live our lives and to search for God deeply within it.

In my own walk of faith, what is true is often not easy or easily digestible; but it is something that I actually have to wrestle deeply with. In my own life I watch way too much television and movies and things like that – but I do kind of seek for those significant moments of resonance within myself that point to something true and then try to think through why those are true. Why that scene or that song or whatever resonates with my spirit and to then put that realization into dialogue with the Biblical text or theological tradition.

Closing Thoughts

Wrestling with how we engage theology, God, and our culture is a full time job.  Having Andrew Root here to talk about them has been great – and informative.  I encourage you to dig into some of his research and have this gut check: are you learning doctrine and dogma to feel safe in your salvation? Or are you plumbing the depths of theology in order to better identify God in your circumstance, surroundings, and world?  Let’s keep the conversation going in the comments below, Facebook, and Twitter.

The post An Interview with Andrew Root, PhD appeared first on Glass House Theology.com.

So today I would like to offer my take on the Chi Rho Symbol.  Below is a brief explanation of the parts and the history of the symbol, most of which I shamelessly cobbled together from Wikipedia (click on the toggle button):

Here are the parts and their meaning:

• Chi and Ro together: The first two letters of CHRIST and directly ties the symbol to Christ.
• Chi: is a dual symbol for the cross and the celestial axis mundi.  It symbolizes that Christ is the center of all things and by Him all things hold together.
• Rho: It has been suggested that the Rho is similar in shape to the shepherds staff.  This is a reminder that Christ is our shepherd and cares for/leads us.
• Crown of Thorns: the sufferings of the cross.
• The Laurel Wreath: the victory of the resurrection.

The post Christian Symbols – The Chi Rho Symbol appeared first on Glass House Theology.com.

But even though I have no desire to jump into youth ministry, it doesn’t mean I don’t like reading books about youth ministry.  A lot of what comes out of that ministry circle is gripping in both theological and ministerial scope.  Such is the case with Taking Theology to Youth Ministry. Andrew Root (PhD, Princeton Theological Seminary) is the Olson Baalson associate professor of youth and family ministry at Luther Seminary (St. Paul, Minnesota). He is passionate about students, discipleship, spiritual maturity, and asking the question: ‘What’s the point of youth ministry?’  In Taking Theology to Youth Ministry, Andrew Root takes you along the journey of Nadia – a fictional youth pastor who is trying to understand the ‘why’ behind her ministry. As Root unwinds her journey, he helps you uncover the action of God as it pertains to you, your ministry and the world around you.  And throughout the book he encourages you to discover how you can participate in that action.

Andrew Root does a great job of deconstructing youth ministry, exposing its faults, lauding its successes – and then reconstructing it in such a way that it serves as a more holistic approach to reaching this church demographic.

He explores the reasons why ministers approach their ministry the way they do by exposing their motives.  If your motives are wrong, the outcomes may be outwardly successful, but inwardly bankrupt. Here is an excerpt from the book:

“As a youth pastor, my intention is to love every kid for who he or she is. But at a deeper, perhaps even unconscious level, my motivation might be to see … indications that their faith is growing, because that will prove that my ministry is a success. And in such a situation, there will be times where my intentions (to love every kid for who they are) get trampled by my motivation (to see signs of growth in kids, whether in their prayer life or acts of social justice). We often try to smother our motives, never honestly acknowledging or wrestling with them, perhaps hoping that if we can be clear in stating our intentions, then our motives don’t really need to be dealt with.”

He advocates for getting our motivations right and letting the outcomes be a natural expression – instead of carefully concealing our motivations with layers of good looking actions.  His goal for youth ministry is to have kids engage the concept of God acting in history, understanding what that looks like, and learning how to partner with God as He works now in our present world.  Here is a snippet:

“I contend that at its core youth ministry is about participating in God’s own action. The purpose of youth ministry is to invite both young and old to participate in God’s action. Youth ministry, like all ministry, seeks in humility to be swept up into God’s own action, and therefore to participate in God’s activity in our world.”

Finally, here is 4 ways in which ministry can teach kids how to discover God personally instead of just reading about Him from a distance:

1.    Action over Frozen Doctrine
We see theology not as the process of thinking that connects our action with God’s, but as the doctrinal seat belt, the safeguard that keeps our ministry from dangerous errors. Yet, if we’re honest, we know teenagers’ hearts are rarely set ablaze by the heat of doctrine; doctrines are too stilted, too linear, and often too cold to light a fire in a fifteen-year-old’s heart. But at its core, theology is not doctrine; it is reflection on the action of a God who encounters dead and impossible realities for the sake of life. Doctrine is necessary and important, but it is not primary. The action of God— in our lives and in Scripture— is primary. Doctrine is to serve God’s action. What makes one a theologian in youth ministry is not her ability to repeat doctrines but her ability to notice and speak to God’s presence in the context of the lives of her young people.

2.    Mystery Over Frozen Knowledge
When we free theology from subordination to doctrine, when we make the action of God the content of theology, we are pushed into mystery. By focusing on the act of God, we make the assertion that what we see is not all there is, that there is more to reality than can be perceived. Young people already sense this in their being; they sense that to exist is more mysterious than rational, that there is more hidden within existence than we are able to know. When we see theology as simply imposing doctrine, we actually cut young people off from searching the mystery of their very existence.

3.    Issues Over Frozen Principles
At its heart, all theology is practical. Theology is to assist the people of God in participating in the action and mystery of God. This means that good theology, although it dwells in mystery, cannot be abstract. It cannot be a collection of principles with no real connection to our lives. Theology may call us to think big thoughts, but these big thoughts are embedded in our very lives. As we’ve said, we know God through God’s own action, and God’s action is found in the stories of our lives and the lives of the people of God throughout history. This means theology is more about issues than principles; it is about confronting the realities we face rather than a static set of principles.

4.    Questions Over Answers
Theology [should be] more active than static, more about seeking God in the issues of our lives than in books and intellectual arguments. Theology [is] the invitation to participate with God in a new reality, in the mystery of God’s own activity in the world… theology primarily [is] practical, as a way of “faith seeking understanding” next to our deepest yearnings.

Taking Theology to Youth Ministry grabbed my attention precisely because of what I said in the beginning of this post – adults are just more finely nuanced adolescents.  So what speaks to youth will also speak to adults.  And if getting kids to ask better questions helps them engage a living God – I dare say it will also helped us “bigger” kids do the same.

The post Taking Theology to Youth Ministry ~ A Brief Review appeared first on Glass House Theology.com.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

“Hobbling around a world of talking donkeys plants within a person a new hunger for the body and a new thirst for the blood of the incarnate Word. Enchanted Christianity is a medieval bludgeon to our imaginations. It might even inspire us to again call our bodies ‘Brother Ass,’ like Francis of Assisi, that skinny saint who scampered naked through the woods to worship the Lord and love those in need. To him the world was alive with the activity of God. To him, miracles, like electrons, could pop up anywhere, and not every ass was a dumb ass. My one goal for us is to believe like that: to believe better. Belief is not easy, but it shapes our whole lives. For a lot of us, it can seem downright impossible, and it does not help that many churches today are making Christianity confusing.”

Blanski’s work is an assault to our modern sensibilities. It asks for us to suspend our modern disbelief and put down our jungle-stripping, parking-lot-erecting view of the world. He asks us to put down the microscope and dust off the crystal ball, as it were. For me, as a researcher, amateur anthropologist, and theologian – I find that hard to do. I don’t like to put down my critical thinking. But I find that in order to engage God, I have to let go of my need to understand. Here is another quote:

“The idolatry of [this world] says, “Because I think, therefore I exist.” It says this because godlessness naturally leads to nihilism, narcissism, and inflated self-love. In [this world], I come first; I decide what is truth. Students in the kingdom of God, however, say, “I am because God is. I love because he loves me. Because I love, I think; and because I am sinful, sometimes I think idolatrous thoughts like, ‘I think, therefore I am,’ as if I were God.” When we live in the love of God, allowing Jesus to renew our hearts and minds, our loves are reoriented. We are no longer the harbingers of truth. We live in the trail of God’s salvation stories, of his love. When we apprentice ourselves to Jesus, we are enrolling in a class of love.”

How choicely put. Our obsessive need to “know” can just as easily be idolatry as anything else. Sometimes letting things be “magical” again is to see the world for what it really is – the handiwork, tool, and mouthpiece of God.

Now I am not about to cast off my years of study and careful research. But this book reminds me that all my years of page turning are but a grain of sand in God’s universe of knowledge. In fact, all of our combined knowledge is but a drop in the ocean of what God has yet to reveal to us. So why not revel in our ignorance and acknowledge that this world, this universe, this God – is wondrous and worth exploring with innocent, hope filled eyes.

To check out the book, follow this link.

The post When Donkeys Talk – A Quick Glance At A New Book appeared first on Glass House Theology.com.

It had me thinking because I have come in contact with a few fellows that go to a particular church in my town (Graham, WA).  Every time I talk to them they are polite, well-mannered, hard working, and have a positive attitude. The church itself I would never darken their door.  They are legalistic, misogynistic, and a little predatory in their recruiting tactics.  (Besides, they have barbed wire around their campus – weird.)

But their are aspects of their members that I can not overlook.  If I were to go off of the fruit of their lives alone – I would have little to say.  So it got me thinking, what if you could take the good from a church like that and toss the bad like so many chicken leg bones.  And that got me thinking about what a cult really is:

Cults: A Modern Definition:

“A system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object.” In reality, we use the word cult to mean an “organized group of people, religious or not, with whom [we] disagree. ~ Rawson”

Cults: Then And Now:

But the word has a longer and more vernerable history than our modern take.  It comes from Latin cultus which means “care, labor; cultivation, culture; worship, reverence,” originally used as “tended, cultivated, to till.” So the word had less to do with religious nuts and had more to do with discipline, cultivation of righteous habits, and good culture.  It spoke of a religion that produced good and uniform behavior from its initiates.

Now we in our Western culture bristle at the use of the word “uniform.”  But even in that sentence I betray us.  Culture, after all, comes from the word cult and loosely means “broad patterns of behavior.”  So even we, paragons of individuality, adhere to broad patterns of behavior.  Individuality, is in large part an illusion.  Our freedom, in reality, is more the freedom to migrate from one broad pattern to another with little encumbrance.

But back to the point.  Paul said that we are “slaves to righteousness” (Romans 6:18).  In other words, we should adhere to righteousness as if it were our master.  But we, in the church have majored so much in looking at “heart matters” that we have virtually ignored how righteousness looks in real life.  We say “love God and love people” but never give concrete examples.

Paul was not afraid of concrete examples.  One the one hand he would make sweeping statements like “what is not born of faith is sin” and then tell a congregation in a specific culture that long hair on men is unseemly.

In fact, these two statements are so diametric that some have wondered if Paul wrote both.  Yes, he did.  We cannot underestimate the power of great vision statements and gritty “boots on the ground” advice put together.  We need to follow the example of Paul and give the church both a compass and map.

At the end of the day – no, I do not think that a barbed-wire wreathed “church” is the way to go.  We need to be inclusive instead of exclusive.  Besides, that suggests some disturbing doctrines being preached if they feel it necessary to cloister themselves in steel and blades.

But one thing I will give them is that they are bold enough to “cultivate” right actions in their members.  They stand up for hard work, courteousness, forthright speech, and devotion to God.  They make their actions and speech fragrant – to God and to those around them.

Maybe, at the end of the day, the world needs more churches to stand up for right action as well as teach their members how to search it out on their own.  Maybe we need churches to “cultivate” righteousness and create a “culture” of good works.  Maybe we need more “cults” – the Latin version, that is.

The post We Need More Cults – Seriously appeared first on Glass House Theology.com.

A couple weeks ago I conducted an interview with Brian D McLaren.  A genuinely nice guy. He is an emergent theologian and a controversial figure among many conservative camps.  And rightly so – he is radical in thinking and approach.

I had him on this blog so that we could engage him first hand.  I did my best to treat him fairly and with respect, all the while not shying away from some tough questions.  While I do not see eye-to-eye on many of his positions, it is my job as an interviewer to allow the reader to engage the person interviewed without me getting in the way.  If I can fairly interview a person and have them share their thoughts, it allows you, the reader, to have a two-way, instead of a three-way conversation.

I expected some heat from many of my conservative readers – and I got it.  They labeled him as “unregenerate”, “apostate”, and a “deceiver”.  Fortunately, they did not resort to cursing.  But these labels have weight.  I do not take them lightly.  And for anyone to resort to saying that someone is in danger of hellfire – that is a call we cannot make and unnecessary.

Some, on the other hand, chose to engage and grapple with his ideas.  They grappled with his concepts and put his ideas to the test.  To that I say, GREAT JOB!  One thing that Brian is a champion of, and I agree with, is that we should accept our plurality of Christianities and embrace them.  So long as we agree that Jesus is God, come in the flesh, our Savior, and Lord – we can disagree on a lot and still be siblings.

As I put it in one of my responses to an email: “there are some things that I think that Brian is a pioneer and in others I think he has overreached.”  I think to engage a man as that – a man – is most fruitful in theological discussions.  Does he get the basics right? (Jesus is God, come in the flesh, Savior, and Lord.)  Yes.  Does he get some radical things right? (acceptance of other Christianities, narrative flow of the Bible, advancing God’s peaceable Kingdom) Yes.  Does he get some things wrong?  You bet.

The goal is to be clear headed enough to eat the meat and spit out the bones, as it were.  We can’t just be content to cluster together in tight circles with only those that agree with us.  The world needs more of us.  We need to engage cutting edge thought and look at things from every angle.  To give pat answers to tough questions is no longer acceptable.

But unless we talk to people with different ideas, we will never get newer, more precise answers to life’s tough questions.  We will never wrestle with why we believe what we believe.  We will never be challenged.  We will never grow.

So do I regret interviewing Brian McLaren? Not on your life!  I found him very personable and he challenged me to re-examine some of my comfortable theology.  And that was the point of the interview.

The post Reactions To The Brian McLaren Interview appeared first on Glass House Theology.com.