Thanksgiving and National Identity

Thanksgiving is tomorrow. People all over the U.S. will gather together in homes with family and friends to celebrate the day that pilgrims were showed compassion by the Native people of North America. Reflecting on this moment in time, people all over the country will gather in thanksgiving for our country and our national identity. This will cause some good Christian people to reflect on the hope they have for a day that our nation can return the “Christian roots” it was found on; believing that the return of the Ten Commandments and prayer to the public schools, outlawing abortion and homosexuality and restoring “Christian family values” to the families of our nation will put this country back in order again restoring it to a “Christian nation” status.

Over the last few years I have started to hate Thanksgiving. Not because I am again with my family (I love spending time with my family) or because I hate turkey just that much (which I don’t, I love turkey) but, because I feel that in celebrating Thanksgiving as a national holiday we are somehow celebrating the ideas our nation was founded on, mostly “Manifest Destiny” or our “Divine Right” or ourselves as a “Christian Nation,” seeming to look back to that one day that the Native America’s shared a meal with the pilgrims as the day our “Christian Nation” was born.

But I ask the question that Gregory Boyd asked, “When was our nation ever Christ-like?” What does this “Christian Nation” that so many good Christian people want to return the U.S. to look like? Was it when we built our economy on the backs of African American slaves? Or was it when we murdered thousands of Native Americans for our “God given rights”? Or maybe it was when we lead the way in industrialization, employing children and workers in unsafe working environments? Or maybe it was after in the 1950’s when we treated women and minorities unfairly not paying them same wages or even giving them their “God given” right to vote?

Our nation has never been a “Christian nation.” We might have been a nation with Christianity as a part of it but never a “Christian nation.” As Christians we should not find our identity or pledge ourselves to a national idea or earthly nation, we should find our identity and pledge our lives to God.

Therefore, I urge you this Thanksgiving not to look back on Thanksgiving and be thankful for who we are as an earthly nation that will pass away no matter how much money we spend on national defense. Find your identity and give thanks for the continued compassion God has for you as a member of creation and the Kingdom. May we as people of God then go and bring forward His Kingdom, which does not pass away and does not have boarders. May we as a Christian people find our hope and thanks not in the reform of a constitution or law(s) but in what God has done in the world through His Son and through His people.

"Oatmeal and Throw-up:" an update on my life...

Just thought I would write I quick life update...
As the Holidays approach I am starting to look forward to having a month of school off and spending time with friends and family without homework hanging over my me. I especially looking forward to going up north to Monterey, San Fran and/or Mammoth during the break! It is crazy to think that over the last eight weeks I have almost learned enough New Testament Greek to start to doing exegesis in a Greek New Testament! This quarter as gone by so quickly and has been really tiresome, but really good. I have meet some really good friends in my Greek class at Fuller. I weekly look forward to our hour breaks from class where we sit together over coffee or breakfast and discuss life, Jesus, the kingdom of God, politics, and community living. I will miss our tri-weekly meetings once our class is done, but I think we all hope that our conversation time together won't end for good.
Ministry wise...I am loving Baseline but am also realizing how hard it is for me to only have to time to being doing youth ministry part-time, while also knowing that I could be leaving the church for a full time position in the next few months, being that I have been interviewing with a few churches lately. I am hoping that by this summer I will be in a full time ministry position but we will wait and see if my plans line up with what God has in store for me.
Two weekends ago I spent two nights in a row at the Brand New, Thrice, and mewithoutYou shows in L.A. The shows were really good both nights but different. I was sad that I didn't really get to see mewithoutYou's set either night only catching five songs Saturday and two Sunday night. Thrice's set Saturday night was okay, the structure of the set was kind of weird, moving from slower songs right into quick ones, then back again. Sunday night was much better, their set flowed a lot better and was overall a stronger performance. I was surprised that they only played five new songs in a twelve song set both nights. Brand New took the show both nights. Saturday night their set was nothing more than spiritual. Both Casey and I left in awe. Sunday night they changed up their set and totally changed the feel of their show into more of a rock star performance with everything from guitar throws to ground spinning guitar solos. Other than that music wise as my friend Casey put it, "I have been drowning in music lately." As the year comes to an end and as the question of what are my top ten albums of 2007 rapidly approaches I have been cycling through more music than ever. You can check out my current listen section to see what I have been playing over and over.
Friend and girlfriend stuff are good. I miss my friends like Casey, Jon, Tyler and Garret but just knowing they are there for me is refreshing. I am excited to see Jon Axtell this weekend and meet his new friends! I love that I have come to a place with so many of my friends that even though I don't see them every weekend, when we do see each other it is like we were never away from each other. If you really want to know that details of Katie and my relationship then call me, don't worry I promise all is good!
I guess over-all life is good, now all I have to do is get rid of this stupid cold!
P.S. Mallory thanks for the title!

Questions...(Youth Specialties Review)

This last weekend I went down to San Diego to the National Youth Workers Convention put on by Youth Specialties. Before going down I was looking forward to spending time with friends and learning about youth and ministering to them; excited to see how God would then continue to shape my philosophy of youth ministry during this weekend. I never expected to have my heart be challenged in such an amazing, yet difficult way.

During the Saturday morning general session, an all-too-familiar speaker walked on stage, Francis Chan. I had heard Chan many times before during my undergrad at APU, and yes, at times had felt the spirit move through his words but never like this. Chan had gone through a type of crisis of faith over the last year bringing him to the point of thinking of leaving his church and questioning if he was really a “Christian at all” and taking a leave of absence for a while. Confronted with questions of his own spirituality in light of Jesus’ message of the Kingdom, he wondered why if Jesus commanded us to love our neighbors as ourselves why he was not and why his church as a whole was not. He wondered why when he and most of the American Church when coming face to face with the message of the Sermon on the Mount or Matthew 25 side stepped it by over-spiritualizing it, and not taking what Jesus said with much seriousness. This brought Chan to the conclusion that he could not truly be in love with God if he was not truly a follower of Jesus; which defined as a person who followed Jesus’ commands. Chan believed that the role of a Christian was to urge others to follow them as they followed after Jesus, as Paul did and urged many to do.

After coming to this conclusion Chan realized that he could no longer live his life as he had for so many years. Therefore, Chan sought to become what we believed was a true Christian, or follower of Jesus. After a few months Chan was asked to return to his old church by the leadership. Chan said he would think about it but only if they made a few changes in the way they ran the church. One such change was to stop a multi-million dollar building project which included constructing a new sanctuary. Chan instead believed that the church should spend much less money and construct an outside ampi-theater where the church would worship together outside, instead of inside a building. Another change Chan requested, believing that the church should love their neighbors as themselves; the church must give away 50% of all tithes to the church to help those in need.

Over the last couple of months the Spirit of God as been moving within me in a troubling way. It is troubling because God has been convicting me personally that neither myself or my communities of friends are doing much to live out the Kingdom in our lifestyle. I have really come to question if many of my, or my friends’, weekly and daily lifestyle practices are Kingdom driven or even remotely Christian driven, if you will allow me to make this distinction in light of Chan’s talk. As of late, and in light of Chan’s talk I have been asking myself questions such as: if buying $170 dollars worth of beer and liquor to celebrate a friend’s marriage is Christian Kingdom living? Is living in a house for two plus years but still not knowing your neighbors’ names Christian Kingdom living? Is spending a majority of my money on CD’s and going out on weekends Christian Kingdom living? Is not calling out a friend for hooking up with a random girl or encouraging a friend to do it Christian Kingdom living? Please don’t misunderstand me, I am not saying these things are or are not “good” or “okay,” I am just wondering why I or my community has not been asking these questions, because we should be! If we are not and we are just sitting around talking about the Kingdom we have bought into the lie that words are enough. To quote Thrice, “what have we (myself and my community) to show except the promises we never kept.” We have in fact let ourselves down. Can my life, can our lives, be more than just “flashing lights and sounds?” If “rhetoric can’t raise the dead,” I, and we, should be “sick of always talking when there is no change.” Let me, let us become followers of Christ. Let us become leaders. Let us be able to say as Paul did, “follow me as I follow Christ.” Let us see the Kingdom here, now.

Just Moments in Time

For the past two years I feel that much of my life has been run based on some future event that is going to happen. Whether it is the end of a quarter, the end of a season in life, the end of a job, or the end of a day, much of my life has been lived impatiently looking forward. I have let myself become bound to the measure of clocks, watches, computers screens or calendars. There have been nights and days where I have dwelled on the future so much that I become paralyzed for doing anything at that current moment. I have felt that if a current moment of life comes, all will somehow come into order: my friendships, relationship with God, relationship with Katie, parent stuff, money. I have been living in the future, not within a current moment of life. Don’t get me wrong, there are times that I feel that I am right in that moment as if all rest of time is insignificant, but over all it pains me to say that this is not true for most of the moments in my life.

As of today I know longer want to be constricted to the impatience which has ruled my life of much of the last two years. I want to live my life in patience. Not the type of patience that is waiting for a future event, like a child patiently waiting for the morning to arrive on Christmas Eve. I want to live a life of patience that calls me to fight against the grain of my natural impulse. As Nouwen points out in his book Compassion, a life of patience enables us to “see, hear, taste, and smell as fully as possible the inner and outer events of our lives,” to “enter actively into the thick of life and to fully bear the suffering within and around us” as we “give up control…entering into a unknown territory.” The patience that Nouwen speaks of reveals a new time, a time of grace. This time is not measured by units or numbers but it is lived in fullness. These moments of time are not necessarily happy, joyful, painful, or marked with struggle. These moments of time are experience in the fullness of there importance. Every moment in life is important, I…we, can no longer afford to live lives of impatience. May you and I live every moment to its fullness, experiencing everything each moment holds within it for the purposes of His glory that is now but is to come…

Is true community possible in the "now but not yet"

It has been a while since I posted...much of the reason for that this because for much of the last 2 years I feel that my life has been a weird balance of fragmented constant change. Moving from quarter to quarter, living pay check to pay check, moving from close friend to distant friendship, and driving place to place. I rarely have the time to just sit and process what is going on as I run through my life. As Katie can confess, this has lead to many nights where I lay on my back, in tears, trying to talk out what I am feeling.
It is about once a year that I really get the time to sit and process life...these last 2 weeks have been this time. During the first 3 weeks of Sept. Fuller usually stops enough while job stuff is in transtion that it allows me enough time to process what the last year has held. Last year, these 3 weeks ended with an amazing trip to CO, spending much needed time with good friends giving me enough strength to run towards the distance finish line. This year, while I have enjoyed not having school or work for the last 2 weeks, I don't feel as if I have recovered enough to keep me going. The only day during these last 2 weeks that I feel that I have really have been refreshed was the day I spent celebrating my 2 year relationship with Katie. (Side Note: I love you babe! and thank you for everything during these last 2 years!) Many of the last 2 weeks have been filled with me sitting on my butt...doing nothing, which if you know me is a quick way to kill me. I thrive off of community, doing, friendship, and conversation with people I love and who love me. My community has of late shrunk to a roommate whom I love, a girlfriend whom I don't know what I would do without, a friend who I talk to on the phone from Central Cali, friends whom I feel I don't really know anymore, what I can make out of the few friends from college I still have and what I can piece together with the new friends who are still to new to amount to much as of now. For some people this might seem like a normal group of friends but for me it is barely enough to survive. Maybe this is what life has come to. It seems that if the days of dreaming of a community of friends has drifted away. As I sat in church today and listened to my pastor Donn, who has been an amazing blessing in my life over the last 2 years, talked about community, I sat there wondering if a biblical community is really possible in our culture and world today? I long for a day where my married friends don't fall into some invisible married cassim of no return. I long for a day where people won't come home and sit in front of a box where they entertain themselves to death. I long for a day where people talk face to face and not read about each other on a blog sites or myspace pages. I long for a day where families of singles, marrieds, kids, and elders can come together weekly in fellowship. Maybe this hope is fleeting? I would like to think not, but it seems that the possibility of a world like this has been drifting further and further away in the "now but not yet."

What happens when the Church and Business Strategies mix

At Fuller Seminary I constantly get asked two questions: Where I did my undergrad? And what was my major in undergrad? As I quickly answer the first question proudly, Azusa Pacific University, when I come to the answer of the second question I almost have to force myself not to mutter it under my breath, Marketing. The silence in the air speaks a thousand words. The silence is usually then broken with an awkward, “really?”

As look back on why I chose Marketing as my major in undergrad I usually have the same response, “really?” It has been two years since I graduated from A.P.U. and since I started Fuller Seminary the fall quarter after I graduated from A.P.U. and what may come to a supervised to some of you, is that I have been indoctrinated with more church/business ties than I ever did at A.P.U. You see it was one reason that I made the move from marketing/business to church ministry was because I couldn’t put together the things I was learning in my mandatory Bible classes with the things I was learning in my Marketing class. It was if Church and Business existed in to different worlds or maybe “spheres,” props to Abraham Kuyper, and they shouldn’t be emerged together. Yet, I soon discovered the world some Biblical studies classes painted for me of how the ideal church or Christian should exist in America is far from anything that it actually looks like. In America lines between the sphere of the church and the sphere of business, which Abraham Kuyper believes should exist, have become blurred more than we would like to think or admit to.

Our current case study A addresses this exact problem. A pastor returning from a pastor’s conference with many new business strategy ideas wants to implement them in his dying elderly church in order to save the church from becoming extinct. In order to do this the pastor feels that the church should translate church/ministry success into quantifiableterms (numbers) that can be measured and analyzed by numbers. All ministries then that do not produce numbers are done away with because they do not fit the strategy of the church, to maximize the church numbers.

So is it wrong for the pastor to want to implement business strategies into his dying church in order to try to save it? I wonder if I frame the question in a different way it might bring to light what I believe are the really questions at hand. Is it okay for the pastor to try to save the dying church, or should the pastor let the church die along with the last elderly member of the church? I don’t think so. Is it wrong for the pastor to want to bring new live into the church in the forms of new members? I don’t think so. I think the question we have to ask though is, does the strategy the pastor wanting to implement belong in the sphere of commerce only or can this strategy also belong in the sphere of the Church?

You see it is not bad that the pastor wants to try to revive his church through bring new life to the church through new members but I think the pastor get into troubled waters when he bring a strategy that was developed in the commerce sphere of the world and implement it into the sphere of the church as the only measurable way to determine if a ministry or church is successful. Ministry should never be based only on quantifiable terms or the numbers of people we can bring to a church or ministry, as it is in the commerce sphere. Yet, the pastor has some things right, sometimes it is necessary for the church to evaluate if a ministry is being successful or not based on certain terms, it just shouldn’t be just quantifiable terms. I don’t have the space or the time to come up with a list of other terms a church can measure the successfulness of their ministries but it is important to realize that there are times when we, the church, need to take a critical look at our ministries in order to evaluate if we are using the resources of our church in the best way we can. Therefore I cannot support the pastor if he was willing to implement a church strategy outlined above.

To answer the last question, what would I tell the pastor if I was on staff at the church, I would tell him my option discussed above. Sometimes in churches we like to play along with things as if arguments or disagreements should not happen with the church, as if we should just go along with what our boss or pastor says because after all he is the pastor. The Church needs to be place where we can discuss, in a loving way, our disagreements. After all that is what Paul did when he confronted Peter and James over the issue of Gentile and Jewish relations detailed in Acts and Galatians. If it came to the point where the pastor and myself strongly disagreed and we could not work it out and I was forced to leave the church because of it then at least I stood my ground because if I didn’t I would be giving up on one of my strongest convictions, that we have to be very careful when the sphere of the church and the sphere of commerce emerge together.

The Theology of the Indie Rock Scene

There is almost on other feeling in the world. You have been standing, or sitting depending on the venue, for what feels like hours, yet you don’t leave because something inside of you is keeping you their. Then all of a sudden the lights go out, everyone in the room quiets down. If you listen hard enough from the back of the stage your hear something. As it comes into focus the words ring out as if they are the clearest thing you have ever hear, “Run, Devil run. Run, Devil run.” The words are chanted over and over again getting louder and louder as three figures approach the stage. They continue to sing as the rest of the band joins them on stage, one by one picking up each of their instruments. Then nothing the band stands on stage quiet. The only thing you can hear is the random screams of “yeah!” from the crowd. Then, at what seems at the prefect time Jenny Lewis, the lead signer, strums her guitar and the experience beings.
While not all indie rock concerts begin like a Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins shows and bands all do have very similar details that make them quit similar to Biblical figures and stories. For one by it’s own definition indie music comes from the margins of pop culture. Indie music also is speaking prophetically into the wider culture of the world, like my Biblical prophets of old. While some might argue this is not the case for all indie bands, and I would not disagree, there are many indie bands where this is the case. Take for instance bands that are leading the way in the indie music scene such as Manchester Orchestra, Pedro the Lion, mewithoutYou, Bright Eyes, Cursive and the band motioned above Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins.
Indie music falls in long lines of great musical movements that have come from the margins such as Jazz, Rap and Punk. Yet, unlike these music genres indie music takes many different musical forms and styles. Somehow dispite the diversity of sounds indie music has created a community of individuals much like that of early movements in the Jazz, Rap and Punk scenes. Take the band Broken Social Scene for instance. This is a band made up of different musicians, all from different music genres, who come together to tour and play music just because of their love for the music and their common social bound.
We though live in an interesting time in music history, because of the rise of music down loading, web sites like myspace.com and purevolume.com, individuals search for something deeper than pop music brings and societies over stimulation of media; the indie music scene is finding itself growing in leaps and bounds. As the growth of indie music communities continue to grow, musicians from around the nation are joining together just to play music they love and music that challenges the norm.
Jazz, Rap and Punk not only find their musical roots from the margins but have historically been partnered with social movements. Yet unlike the urban start of many marginal musical movements indie music comes from suburban areas of our nation. Other than the love music another thing that brings indie musicians and participants together as a community is their stance against the norm of pop culture and the injustice of the world. Members of the indie music scene believe that there are more important things in the world going on. Therefore they look behond their selves, their views on sex, drugs, or religion and join together to fight a common enemy. Indie music has created a community of bands and individuals who are declaring, we are unsatisfied with the norm of society and are working to change things. While all of many indie bands like Bright Eyes and Cursive might be creating social noise and doing little to back it up in practice. There are bands such as mewithoutYou who are leading the way for all indie bands in the scene. Many members of the band mewithoutYou are apart of social organizations that working for social change such as mewithoutYou’s singer Aaron who is apart of the Simple Way Community. By participating in not only prophetic enouncement but social organizations mewithoutYou is declaring, don’t only sing about the social issues of the world but work to change those issues.
As indie communities and bands around the world come together they are marching to a different drum. A drum whos beats sound familiar to those of the early church. Stand against the norm, declare the coming of something different, hear our words because they are important and do not stand in our way because we are about something larger than the America dollar.