In the Driscoll interview (he was going after the host because his wife is a pastor) he said something that is hugely troubling about its implications for the value of certain types of people. Driscoll was asking about how many young single men have come to Christ in the past year. Not how many people, but how many of them were men. Still not satisfied, he asked about what kind of men they were – were they strong men?

Do you see the sequence? (some might call it a pecking order)

He asked not about numbers of people who came to Christ, not about Church health or the British context (ie. implications of having a Church of England)

• How many were men … specifically young single men.
• Not men in general, but a specific type of man (strong)

Some may want to simply dismiss this as an eccentric fascination of an isolated mentality. I beg to differ.  I see this as a ongoing, if below the surface, mentality that is pervasive in the North American Protestant-Evangelical-Charismatic camp (also known as ‘my people’).

I have written recently that we may worship success more than any God – and I don’t want to make sweeping generalizations about the fallout of the 20th centuries rejection of the Social Gospel or the inherent downside of anti-intellectualism that is still widely pervasive – what I am saying is that Driscoll’s views and Tebow’s fans are not an anomaly. They are the logical end expression of an underlying belief about who God is and how God works.

The Driscol-Tebow controversies are merely the public manifestation of an underlying theology surfacing in examples that bring to the public’s attention to what is always bubbling just below the surface – or behind the closed doors of the sanctuary.

The Gospel as it is configured in some quarters is surprising to those who are outside this stream. Does Jesus love everyone? Technically, yes. Is there a type of person that Jesus loves more … or a part of that person (soul, gender, etc.) that Jesus is more interested in?

If this concept is completely foreign to you – I may need to come at this a different way:

I had a chance to talk to a faithful saint who suffers from a chronic degenerative disease. She found a piece that I wrote about why we need to move away from old understandings about curses. She had undergone more than a decade of people ‘discerning in prayer’ that someone had placed a curse on her when she was younger and then attempting through intercession and deliverance to break the enemy’s power over her.

She was intrigued by my insistence that God was not picking and choosing who to intervene for and which situations to interfere in. She had heard last week’s interview with John Cobb where he said that we believe that God is doing in every situation all that God is able to do that in situation.

This is a radical assertion and a sharp departure from the common belief about how God can and does work in the world.

I told her about an old interview that Tripp did with Bruce Epperly where Tripp paraphrased him by saying “God does not hold out or run out”.   Think about the implications of those two statements:

In every situation God is doing everything that God is able to do

God does not hold out or run out

I love this view of God. Some people get really upset because God is not as powerful as the Zeus-Caesar (theos) character they have been told lives up in the heavens watching us all and intervening/interfering according to ‘His’ will. But we are actually saying that God is powerful – its just that God’s power is a different kind of power from the unilateral and coercive power that has classically been ascribed to the Divine Being.

In this past week’s TNT I said that I thought something really positive came out of the pushback we got from our cross-efforts with Rachel Held Evans and Kurt Willems. It became clear that Process-Relational thought really is saying something quite different than classical theologies based on Imperial assumptions and Greek metaphysics.

This is not a simple tweak of the existing system (like Open theology). This is not a program that you just download and install into your already in place operating system. It is not a patch that employ to get rid of the bugs and kinks in the classical program. Relational thought is a different operating system (to use the fun Mac v. Microsoft Windows analogy).

I am excited about the upcoming Theological Conversation Jan 31-Feb 2  between the Emergent Village and Process-Relational thought. I am not under the impression that P-R is for everyone or that many folks will ‘convert’. But I am hopeful that we can engage, in a significant way, the ongoing and persistent glitches that  (while they may rarely come to full blown Driscoll-Tebow levels) are perpetually just below the surface.

• podcast with Dr. John Cobb
• Calvin blog with Rachel Held Evans
• Granny blog with Kurt Willems
• Paul Capetz on Calvin 
• Tony Jones blog on Prayer

It is a wild and woolly 30 minutes as they prepare for the 2012 Emergent Village Theological Conversation. You have two week to sign up and get yourself to Southern California.

p.s. it was 76 and sunny here yesterday*

* previous results do not guarantee future success  

Since then he has lost 3 games. The choir has gone shockingly quiet. It appears - and this may come as a surprise - that Americans worship success more than any ‘god’. In fact, one might wonder if success is America’s god.

It always piques my imagination when politicians say ‘May God bless America” at the end of their speeches … I try to pay attention to how they say it and what they might be expecting that blessing to look like.

 There are two elements to this that really attract my attention:

Part of the reason this sticks out to me so sharply is that I have dual-citizenship with Canada. I went to High school and started Bible College there. When I see Tebow bowed on the sideline praying in the 4th quarter, I smile as I think of the completely different religious and political atmosphere in Canada. Almost every Canadian I know – even the believers – I can hear saying “Easy big guy, don’t make too much of a display”.

 American zeal is a phenomenon. I have a theory that it is actually embedded in the DNA of this country courtesy of those original Calvinists who brought with them the concept of “signs of divine benevolence”. This little mechanism says

‘while we can’t know who is elect unto salvation or damnation – certainly we say that a good tree will bear good fruit. So, while no can know for sure if they are “in” certainly God graces the chosen with “signs of divine benevolence”.

This is how we get that famous “Protestant Work Ethic” in order to make it as easy as possible for God to ‘bless you’. It almost boils down to ‘If its good  = its God. If its bad = its you… unless your good = then its the devil.”

The second element is this idea of the 99 and the 1. I heard over and over in the Tebow hysteria “If even one person comes to Christ because of what God is doing for Tebow and Tebow’s witness, then it is worth it.”  I hear this “if even one person” thing so often that I can see it coming a mile away.

Admittedly, Jesus told a story about the 99 sheep and the 1 lost sheep. But I just have to say that it was a metaphor- a poetic picture of how much God loves each person. It is NOT a permission to be irresponsible with our resources and strategies to either neglect or disrespect the 99 in order to attract the one.

I became of aware of this during the 80s and 90s when statistics about Billy Graham’s actual effectiveness regarding Stadium campaigns and alter calls. Studies found over and over again that of all of those thousands who came forward, the number who were actually un-churched was quite low … and of those, the number who were associated with a Christian church in the years that followed was atrocious. But if any question the effectiveness of this style of Evangelism and the millions of dollars that were spent on these campaigns, the battle cry would go up “If only ONE … then it is all worth it”.

I’ve said before that I like Tim Tebow, that I am amazed at both his life and his work ethic. I have also been clear that he does not think that God intervenes in football games. But Tebow and his zealous cheerleaders have actually exposed an interesting trend that I can’t quite put my finger on… America worships success, we hold it to be a ‘Sign of Divine Benevolence’ and we are fine with collateral damage to the 99 if, in the end, “the one is found… then it was all worth it.”

Thoughts?

* Tim Tebow is the Quarterback for the NFL football team the Denver Broncos

“the miracle of birth” is a wise phrase, pointing us toward a healthy theology of miracles. Birth is not supernatural. It involves no intervention violating natural processes. We know a tremendous amount about reproduction and may one day be able to create life in laboratories. Yet for all that, we still feel, and speak of, the miracle of birth…

Miracles become problems when we think of them as demonstrating divine power to intervene in the world however God wishes. The problems are not merely scientific, but also theological and moral. Nothing challenges the goodness of God or the justice of the universe more than the stark randomness of such alleged “miracles”.

That is an interesting way to think about the subject, but I want to make an important distinction between supernatural and miraculous.  The Miraculous can be seen several ways – as something that surprises us, outside our expectations; as something that is amazing; like the miracle of birth, something that is statistically improbable , like landing a Airplane on the Hudson River; or religiously as something that only divine help could account for. There are several reasons why I think that this topic is SO important:

I can not tell you how often someone says something about how God directed them to take a specific road or a route that avoided an accident.

• Did god tell everyone and they just were not listening?
• Did god only tell those whom love god?
• Does god monitor all traffic patters and why would god be so concerned with getting you  home on time but so unconcerned with children being abused and people going hungry?

People often get defensive and say “In a worship service I saw/experienced  _____. Are you trying to tell me that did not happen?”  No. I absolutely believe you that it happened. What I am saying is that maybe the explanation provided in the worship service was not the whole story of why the phenomenon happened (people being slain in the spirit, etc).

I want to be clear about something: I believe in prophetic words. I have told people things that I could not have known in my own power – including twice that I have described pictures that hang in their homes, homes that I had never been to.

I absolutely believe that the Lord could ‘lead’ you to call someone who needs a call ‘at that exact moment”.

So keep that in mind when I say that we need to revisit our frameworks around the miraculous and we definitely need to abandon the whole ‘super’ natural worldview. It does not hold together under even the slightest examination in the 21st century.

I have seen people who were headed toward knee surgery, back surgery, chemo therapy and legal blindness avoid those outcomes miraculously – and I think that prayer  had something to do with that. When we are open (mind and spirit) to the presence of a greater possibility – it makes sense that the cells in our body would have a receptivity to those functions and processes that bring health and life. If we believe that there is a God, and that this God has something to do with creating our bodies, and this God’s spirit  is present in the world, then it makes sense that our bodies created by this God would response to an openness to the presence of this God.  That is why I can believe in and pray for healing. But it is not supernatural – it is the most natural thing in the world.  

 So let me put forward a simple proposal: Holy Spirit presence in the world makes God’s power both transcendent (a different conversation) and immanent. God is present with us and at work among us.* If I am talking to someone and this Spirit is at work in both of us , then naturally if I am open and receptive, then it is possible that God would lead me in that conversation. It might take the form of questions or suggestions – but I would go as far as to suggest that maybe the Lord is not absent from any conversation.

This would impact things like prayer for sickness and an openness for healing and restoration. For Christ’s followers, the miraculous is a natural part of the world. We have errored greatly to conceded the ‘normal’ to nature and a scientific explanation and then superstitiously hang on to everything else and blindly cling to it as ‘super’natural. As the kids say “Epic Fail”

Just don’t talk to me about why hurricanes hit certain cities (weather patters are not changed because one super-holy pastor had a lot of faith). And don’t tell me that tornados or earthquakes hit certain towns because of certain sins. Or the President W or X is being corrupted by demon Z. That is all ridiculous. 

Tim Tebow is a phenomenon is the media these days. His Denver Broncos football team is on a 6 game winning streak and he is 7-1 as their starting Quaterback. Despite his apparent limitations (skills) he has orchestrated a series of amazing comebacks during the winning streak.  That is a big deal! Any fan would love to have their team on this kind of a roller coaster – come from behind – frenzy.

That, however, is not what makes this news.

This past week the Broncos beat my beloved Chicago Bears in overtime after a miraculous set of circumstances turned the game around in the 4th quarter. The Tebow’s teammate picks up the story there: 

“Tebow came to me and said, ‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ because God has spoken to him,” Woodyard told The Denver Post this week.

It was Woodyard who then stripped Bears running back Marion Barber to hand the football — and the game — back to Denver.

For Tebow, just another day at the office.

“I believe in a big God and special things can happen,” he said, after he erased a 10-0 deficit against Chicago in the final 2:08 of regulation. “It’s not necessarily prophesying, but sometimes you can feel God has a big plan.”

Woodyard, for one, has no lingering doubts: “For all the Tebow haters: You better start believing.”

I want to be clear this before I say anything else: I am not hating Tebow. In fact, I like him. I like how he uses his summers to serve needy people in other countries. I like that he works so hard. I like that he is unorthodox in his throwing motion and scrabbling technique. I like that he is so sincere and transparent about his faith.

Some people get upset that he is always cramming his faith in their face. That is not what concerns me. It is his brand of faith that concerns me.

I have been very forthright that A) this is the camp of evangelical-charismatic zeal that I was raised in and emerged from B) that the epistemology behind ‘hearing from God’ … and the interventionist assumptions behind a ‘super’ natural worldview are antiquated relics of a pre-modern understanding and are untenable in the 21st century. If you want a more nuanced explanation, listen to “Pentecost for Progressives” [here] - starting in  minute 55 OR read the summary [here].  

This is the season of Advent and we do tell the story of God speaking to Mary. That is not what I am contesting. 

I try to never-ever play this next card… but the cards that I have been dealt has forced my hand:

Are you under the impression that God cares who wins a football game and intervenes to bring it about but doesn’t care enough about the thousands of children who are starving to do something about it?

Are you telling me that god knows but doesn’t care, or that God cares but doesn’t know, or that god could do something but won’t or that god would do something but can’t?

Look, I am not an either-or guy. I hate binaries, dualisms, and us vs. them mentalities. But when someone says that this is how God is… sometimes it forces you to say that I believe this God to be a false creation of human imagination – nothing more than an athropomophic projection.  

______

Three things for clarification:

1. I could be wrong. He keeps winning and people say ‘If Joel Osteen wasn’t doing something right, he wouldn’t have 37,000 people who go to his church.”  In America, success = correct.
2. The Calvinists could be right. God chooses whom ‘He’ wants to. I don’t want to be one of those people who say “If God is not the way I believe they-she-he  is, the I am not going to worship them-her-him.” I will worship God no matter what way God turns out to be… but I happen to really like the Jesus of the 4 canonical gospels… just sayin’.
3. Tim Tebow himself has hinted in the past that he does not believe in an interventionist god. Bob Costas alluded to this to in his amazing speech.  It’s not Tebow that concern me – its Tebow’s fans.

Here are my two big points:

 What Pentecostals have to say to Progressives

Jesus laid hands on people, the Disciples laid hands on people and the letters of the New Testament tell us to lay our hands on people. If you have bought into a brand of Christianity that does not have you laying your hands of people and praying in expectation that something would happen – you may want to revisit the reasons why.

If your faith is primarily intellectual, abstract, and conceptual … it may not be the religion that the writers of the New Testament called us to. The early church was a hands on movement and prayed with expectation.

What Progressives have to say to Pentecostals

Being delivered from personal demons is great and praying over whole cities to break or bind the ‘strong man’ that holds people in bondage is fine. There is a vital missing element that needs to be added. Its not just about the personal (mini) and the heavenly (meta) – that leaves a gap that must be filled. In the middle is the address of systems, structures and institutions (what Walter Wink calls ‘The Powers the Be“).

If you faith is primarily personal-congregational and supernatural-heavenly, then you might want to revisit some understandings of Scripture and the address of systemic sins (like injustice).  Otherwise you are in danger of being so heavenly minded that you actually reinforce and empower that very structures that you say you are praying against.

The 21st Century

I think that it is important to have these two camps in conversation. Since the Azusa Street renewal of 1906 started, charismatic Christianity has swept the globe and become the largest branch of Christianity in the world. [see Philip Jenkins ‘The Next Christendom’ or 'New Faces']   But in the century that has passed we have come though the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and the internet age. Things have changed pretty radically. We think of the world differently and the remnants of the 3-tiered universe (pre-modern) are a real barrier to some. This is why I am favor of rethinking some of the vocabulary, conceptions, and constructed imaginations that go unquestioned (or assumed) by many.

The two best conversations I have these days are:

1. The future of the church is not to be found in Europe’s past. What is happening in the Global South (Asia, Africa, South and Central America) are the voices we need to engage with, learn from, and partner with.
2. I believe in the miraculous but I do not believe in the supernatural. The supernatural is a construct that come with too much baggage.  God’s work is all around us and is the most natural thing in the world.

I would love to your thoughts on all of this. Plan on being at the 2012 Emergent Village Theological Conversation where there will be a breakout session on Pentecost and Process. 

But there is also something that concerns me. It only shows up once in a while, but when it pokes through – I really get uncomfortable.

In this latest podcast, it shows up in minute 39.

He is talking about the moment during the the crucifixion story that the curtain in the temple is torn in two. We find out what was in there … nothing.  No ‘god gas’ comes out. It turns out that we are separated from nothing.

This is the moment of discomfort. I am uncomfortable with where he is going. I don’t like this at all.

I have always been led to think that in the rending of the curtain, that the Glory of God came out from containers made by men and came out into the world. This was a foretaste of what was to come in the gift of Pentecost. God’s spirit was poured out on God’s daughters and sons and the glory was no longer located in any one place but had come to the nations. God’s glory was then loose in the world and God’s glory was to be known in every place and in every nation.

I suppose that I don’t actually need the glory behind the veil in order to have that reading of Pentecost. Its just that the two have always been connected for me. The rending of the veil is the moment when God’s presence is no longer contained in one location.

What happens to the narrative if the veil is torn in two and we find out that there was nothing in there after all? Is Pentecost then a replacement of real for what was not? Is it a continuation of the imagery? Is it a succession?  and if so, is it of the same type of emptiness?

Admittedly, I don’t like where this is going. But here is the thing – there is something noticeably absent from the the text of scripture. It does say that the veil was torn in two but noticeably missing is the next sentence. The one that describes the impact or implications of that event. There is no follow up. No ‘and people died’ or ‘and somebody saw this’ or ‘so God’s glory….’.

Just nothing.

So as much as I am made uncomfortable by how comfortable Peter Rollins (in his new book) is pointing this out, I have to struggle with the fact that he has pointed out something I had not seen before. Did I not see it because I already had my replacement explanation ready to plug into the gap.   

This is part of the appeal of a person like Peter Rollins. He says things I have not heard before or don’t want to hear again. Those same things are observations or insights that I probably need to hear – for that very purpose.

It’s the reason that I have not heard them before that bothers me the most: I already had a prepared interpretation in place that allowed me to miss what was right there in the text – or more accurately – what is not in the text.

We need both prophets and priests, both poets and practitioners if we are going to be healthy.

HT: Paul Rauschenbusch

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Shane Claiborne do those of us who struggle to live the life of an ordinary radical a favor in their new book ‘Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals.’  In this inspirational feast of stories, prayers from church history, and biblical invitations to prayer this dynamic neo-monastic duo encourages and empowers the reader to take the risky journey into prayer, a journey that can make you a radical.  The book is organized around three famous prayers from the New Testament, the Lord’s Prayer, John 17, and Ephesians 1:15-23 and in each section the passages are expostied and the reader is invited into the prayer of the text as the prayer starts to shape your imagination.  The treasure of the book is how simply these two brothers are able to connect a life of prayer to a life of radical faith in our world that is not in need of actionless prayer or unispired action.

We want to find
but not all of us do
give us the courage to seek
patience to endure
and faithful company for the journey

For those who have ears to hear
May they listen closely to the good tidings of your love
And sing it to us
For those who have eyes to see
May they fix their gaze on the hope-filled horizon of your future
And proclaim it to us

Amen

You know who we are
You know we like to convince ourselves we know and instead our enlightenment creates
all the anxiety over death
all the pride over truth
all the desire over people
all the fear that keeps us stuck
as victim and thief

Disturb us to hope
Convict us to listen to the power of the living that came to know death with us

patient power is the power of love
patient power is beautiful
patient power breaths
patient power grows
patient power makes a way
and leaves a trail of life in its wake

Amen

This was the first time I lead communion in my sweet robe and stole so I tried to come up with a liturgy that would break it in good. Here it is. I combined a Kenyan liturgy, the Didache, and some original material.
Call To The Table

It is good and our delight indeed to give you thanks and praise, Motherly Father, Fatherly Mother, living God, Holy Love, supreme over the world. Creator, Provider, Saviour and Giver. From a wandering nomad you created your family; for a burdened people you raised up a leader; for a confused nation you chose a king, for a rebellious crowd you sent your prophets; for a broken world that can not save itself you gave yourself and offer the gift of God’s Reign; for every person created in your image yet trapped in sin you seek reconciliation and offer the gift of eternal life. At this table we find ourselves having been pursued by you whose nature and name is Love. May all come and receive the gift of God.

Elder prays for Communion

We thank thee, our Gifting God, for the life and knowledge which was made known to us through Jesus your Son. As this broken bread was once scattered on the mountains, and was gathered together to become one, so may your Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom; for thine is the glory, and the power, through Jesus Christ, for ever.

Eat Bread, Sit down

Stand, Encourage the Cup

Receive the gift and be transformed by the God who made you, knows you, redeems you, and promises to journey with you through this life into the next.

We thank thee, our Gifting God, for the holy vine of David, which was made known to us through Jesus Christ your Son; to thee be the glory for ever.