Book review: One.Life

Greetings friends!

Last week on Wednesday and Thursday, I snuck away to Pine Springs Camp to have a time of quiet reflection and prayer (more on this later). As I was getting ready to leave, I was scanning our office book shelf looking for something to read while I was away, and Ed suggested I take a look at One.Life by Scot McKnight. I had really only taken that and N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope, which turned out to be a bit heavier and more theological than I really wanted for the weekend. I wanted something that could both challenge me and nurture me, and One.Life did not disappoint!

In short, I think One.Life is like the Christian Field Guide to Everything. Each chapter builds one upon the other in an attempt to describe what the life of a true disciple of Christ looks like. I've seen other books that attempt a similar goal, but these other books almost always come across as a bit snarky, matter of fact, or even rude. Not so with One.Life. As I said, the tone was both challenging (it said some things that I truly had to wrestle with up in the cabin) and reassuring (I came home more enthused to do youth ministry than I had when I left, which was the goal).

Perhaps my favorite chapter of the book was Imagined.Life, where McKnight takes a look at the world as Jesus saw it, and invites us to see it in the same light. I am pretty well known throughout the galaxy as a dreamer, and it was super encouraging to see our Savior in the same light. However, again to go with the challenge, I was convicted that the dreams I have for the world and the dreams Jesus has for it might not line up exactly as well as I had thought.

I highly recommend this book to anyone! Go to Amazon and get yourself a copy today!

Godspeed,

Jason

Wait, how many blogs do you have?

Friends,

I've been posting about my cycling on the J-Blog for a bit now, but I'd like to get some separation between all things theological and all things cycling. Plus, I have some pretty hefty fundraising goals for a few rides coming up, so I thought it would be best to set up another blog to keep up with all my cycling adventures.

I'd love it if you could poke your head over to http://thecrankset28.blogspot.com and read the continuing adventures of my training and the handful of fundraising rides I have coming up this summer.

Specifically, I'm raising funds right now for the MS-150. If you are willing or able to make a financial contribution to my ride, please go here. You have no idea how much it will mean to me and my team (The Roadkill Warriors)

Thanks friends,

Godspeed,

J

Thinking about doubt part two: The good kind

Hello friends,

Last week we took a look at the bad kind of doubt, when we doubt ourselves or our importance in the kingdom work being done all around us. But actually, I think there's a very good kind of doubt, the kind that not only helps our faith, but is central to our spiritual survival!

For example, I am working right now on a sermon for our Easter sunrise service. Have you ever stopped to ponder the sheer lunacy of the resurrection? In our world, typically, when a person dies, they remain dead. Typically stones weighing hundreds of pounds do not roll themselves away of their own accord. We do not typically see men in shiny white robes. We do not typically confuse the Lord and Savior for a gardener. And so, I think if we're honest, most of us doubt these stories on some level, even if it's only a double take.

But what if we let the doubts play out? What if we let our questions take over? What if we start to dig into the reality of the resurrection, and see what kind of truths we might find along the journey? Because the truth of the matter is, if we claim (rightfully so I believe) that Jesus Christ is the ultimate truth in the universe, then I have the freedom to dive as deeply into that truth as I want. Just accepting the truth is great, but doubting the truth and letting it take you on a wonderful journey towards a deeper truth is even better.

And honestly, when we talk to a lot of non-believers, we hear people who are frustrated at Christians for their "closed mindedness," which ultimately make no sense because my idea of Christianity is extremely open to whatever Christ is doing in and through the world. Maybe what they mean is this constant acceptance of facts as facts, without any room for growth within them. It's not that I'm suggesting we throw the facts out. I'm suggesting we're not getting enough out of them.

What have you doubted? And what did you learn from asking questions?

Godspeed,

Jason

Thinking about doubt part one: The bad kind.

Hello friends!

I was reading through my typical blog roll this morning, and came across this entry by Donald Miller, and it got the brain kicking in to high gear. Seriously, people could smell the smoke all the way down the hall!

I can't tell you how many times people have said something to me that puts me on a much higher pedestal than I deserve. When my family gets together and someone needs to say grace, the eyes all turn to me because I'm the youth pastor. When a new volunteer steps up, the say that they could never teach the way I teach. People assume when I'm shopping for groceries, I'm somehow doing it more holier than they could.

Truthfully, I hate it.

If people only know the very humble path I took to get to ministry. I'm here because I went to be a music education major who couldn't read music. When I started, I didn't know anything. I didn't have a full or complete grasp of the Bible or what was in it. I didn't have the most eloquent teaching style (I've seen some old tapes from college, and they'll be making their way into a bonfire very soon). I am not special when it comes to religious-y things. I'm just like you.

When doubt begins to tell us what we can't do, we're in serious trouble. When we doubt our ability to have a kingdom impact, we have a bigger tendency to sit on the sidelines and wait for something to happen. When we doubt our ability to speak truth into someone's life, we have a tendency to retreat to our comfortable sanctuaries and cushy pews while a whole generation doesn't experience the love and grace of Christ. When we doubt ourselves, things fall apart.

More than that, we worship a God who believes in us and seems to have very few doubts about our abilities. Like Don said, Jesus left his ministry in the hands of fishermen and tax collectors. Not exactly the A-Team, and probably not even the B-Team. Yet God believed in them, and they in turn believed in themselves. When God believes in us, and we start to doubt ourselves, does that mean with think God's a liar?

Today, be confident in what God has called you to! Go confidently into whatever mission field you've been called to, whether it's in a distant land or right here at home. And know that God believes in you.

Tomorrow, we'll see how we can make doubt an ally.

Godspeed,

J

Stating Faith

Hello friends!

How I wish I had more time to spend with you all! Actually, this week looks pretty light, so we can see if we can get some more information pumped up on ye' olde blog this week. I can always dream!

This week is the one week of the year where I have a temporary change in profession. As the confirmation class finishes up their statements of faith, I sit at my desk and proof read and re-think and re-word and format and...it's a bit tedious at times. Luckily, this year as in the last few years the statements have been fairly rock solid in a theological sense, and haven't caused me to have a nervous break down.

Every year, I think about writing my own statement of faith along with the students. The problems that come up in my head are thus: 1) If I seriously wrote down what I believe about everything, it would take me three years to complete. And 2) A statement of faith seems so stale, so boring, and so lifeless.

I hadn't really considered it until this year, but I wonder if asking our students to write a statement of faith is at all worth it? What I write on that paper may or may not actually be what's going on in my head, heart, or more importantly my life.

Come to think of it, Jesus never wrote a statement of faith. He made statements of faith all the time, but it almost always comes as a situation response to an actual flesh and blood person. What kind of statement of faith did I make at the grocery store? Or at the hockey game last night? Or on a date with my wife?

Is there a better way to get at the heart of what we believe than just writing out a statement of doctrines and ideas about God? I wonder if there's a way to document faith as it's happening, as we're engaging situations along the way.

Any one have any creative suggestions floating around out there?

Godspeed,

J

The American Church: Still Searching.

Good morning friends!

As she does from time to time, Sarah shared with me an article she thought I'd find interesting. She was right, but I have some issues with the premise of the article that I thought I'd share here.

In the article (which I encourage you to read) the authors suggest that most American Evangelicals love Jesus because he grants them access to the Kingdom, but that they don't necessarily love the teachings he gave us. Love the least, pray for enemies, etc. The author at one point even suggests that Jesus preached socialism, which is kind of a stretch. We could spend hours debating back and forth these issues and points, but there is a broader message I think boiling here:

The American Church is still searching for it's identity.

For so long, we knew exactly who we were. We had a system, a flow of things, a rhythm. But in the last 10 or 15 years, it's started to fall apart. We've been presented with questions that we don't really have an answer too. For instance, if America is a Christian nation, and yet the American government is involved in torture, where does that leave us? If God provides everything we need, yet we lean on less-than-stable economic strategies and Wall Street companies, when they fail us we feel like he failed. If you're in one of the mainline denominations as I am, you start to realize that though you haven't done much in terms of change or radical departures from "the plan", people are leaving (or dying) our churches at breakneck speed, leaving us strapped for cash and "critical mass" to get things done.

And I have to say, I'm really disappointed in our response.

Rather than take these questions as an opportunity to explore and learn and dig deep into our faith, we (for the most part, I hesitate to generalize as deeply as this article's authors did with our evangelical brothers and sisters) have turned really really defensive, haven't we? Perhaps the article in question is true in certain aspects, and perhaps evangelicals are running hard and fast from certain teachings of Christ. But the article has a kind of snippy tone that really rubbed me the wrong way. Which, in turn if you visit the comment section, incited some of our evangelical brothers and sisters to develop their own snippy tone, which incited more snippy, which led to, which led to, which led to...

Rob Bell releases a book that dares to ask some questions, and we get snippy.

We see the response of those who have commented on Bell's book, and we get snippy.

Someone wants to change the color of the carpet in the parlor, and we get snippy.

More and more I have a longing for the next reformation. More and more I long for the people who will stand up in our midst and say that enough is enough. No more snippy-ness. No more finger pointing. No more unnecessary anger. I long for the American Church to find its way. And whatever my role in that is, I'm up for that too.

Love to hear your thoughts!

J

Thoughts?