Emergentia 09: Save the Date

I’d really like to see many of you this fall at this event in Portland, Oregon!  It’s going to be a great event!  Save the date…

p.s. Southwest has some good deals right now to Portland!

 

Emerging Nazarene White Paper – pdf

Is There Room At The Table

 

Emerging Nazarene White Paper: A Few Words

The paper presented in the below post represents years of dialogue, new friendships, renewed passion in Christ and in the Nazarene church.  I hope that it is percieved in the spirit that it was written: with arms wide open for more dialogue and more new friends.

I’m happy to discuss this paper with any who wish to engage the conversation.  I’ll just ask that you read it in its entirety before you comment on any part.  I’ll also ask that you remember that the other writers and myself are all pastors and people who love Jesus and love the Nazarene church.

It is with much humility that we present this to you.

 

Emerging Nazarenes White Paper

Is There Room at the Table?

Emerging Christians in the Church of the Nazarene

A “White Paper” Submitted to the Board of General Superintendents

in the hope of beginning a dialogue regarding the Emerging Church

and its place in the Church of the Nazarene

Respectfully submitted by:

Dr. James K. Hampton

Rev. Brian Hull

Rev. Jon Middendorf

Rev. Jim Wicks

Rev. Tevis Austin

Rev. Dave Charlton

May 20, 2009
Is There Room at the Table?

Emerging Christians in the Church of the Nazarene

On the third of February, 1931, a powerful earthquake hit the coastal area of Hawkes Bay in New Zealand. This seismic upheaval so substantially altered the surrounding landscape that the inhabitants of the area soon discovered that their local knowledge and maps were now useless. It proved to be impossible to navigate by them. The local population experienced a sense of disorientation as they discovered old familiar landmarks had disappeared and new geographic features had appeared. Previously well-trodden paths and main roads no longer existed. Consequently, new routes had to be forged and new maps had to be drawn so that the locals could once more understand and find their way around their now unfamiliar homeland.

What happened in Hawkes Bay is eerily similar to what is happening in the church today, and especially in the Church of the Nazarene, as we are experiencing the cultural equivalent of the Hawkes Bay earthquake.

 

Quitting on Coffee

You read that right.  I’m quitting coffee.  Actually this is the beginning of week 2 and  I’m doing pretty well with it. Some mild headaches and occasional shakes, but all in all, pretty good.

coffee!

Some might remember that I tried this a few years back.  Quit cold turkey mid-winter.  That did not go well.  My family was ready to pack up my things and send me out into the cold.  The co-workers commented on my “grumpiness”.  [I guess throwing that Jr. Higher out of my car going 70 down I-95 wasn't a good idea...]  This sounds so silly because it’s just not drinking a beverage every morning, but it was one of the hardest things I’ve done.  [BTW... just kidding about that - I was only going like 63.]

Why quit?  It’s part of my normal cylce of dependency.  This is the third time in my life I’ve completed the cycle.  Here are the steps.

1.  Drink 1 cup of joe occassionally as needed

2.  Drink 1 cup/day

3.  Drink 3 cups/day

4.  Drink 3 pots/day

I’ve worked up to number 4 and its time to reset the cycle.  Besides I’m eyeing an i-touch and am thinking the $25/month could go a long way to getting me there!

In all seriousness, it is also an attempt by me to recognize that I should not live my life dependent on anything other than God.  I’m trying to cleanse my life a bit.

Will I ever drink coffee again?  Probably?  Considering PhD work + teaching full load begins in the fall.

So what about it?  Anybody else show some discipline in their life lately and quit something old or start something new?  Do you think Jesus would be a coffee drinker?

 

“Knowing” God’s Name

I don’t know how I missed this all these years.  God telling someone that the fathers of the faith didn’t really know Him seems like it would stick out.   [Then again, my wife often says things that she thinks should pretty clearly stick out and I just bumble along like nothing ever happened.  Mr. Astute Observation I am not.]  But my shortcomings aside, there is something big going on here in Exodus 6.

Check this out from the Complete Jewish Translation:
2 God spoke to Moshe; he said to him, “I am ADONAI. 3 I appeared to Avraham, Yitz’chak and Ya’akov as El Shaddai, although I did not make myself known to them by my name, Yud-Heh-Vav-Heh [ADONAI].

What I find so fascinating is the way God chooses to reveal His name.  There is definitely something in the power of a name.  I’m not sure (and neither are biblical scholars) what it is people called God before this, but here God clearly tell Moses, what His name is.  The fact that God chooses to reveal this to Moses is not what suprises me the most.  The fact that He did NOT reveal this to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob or anyone else yet (what did Adam and Eve call him???) does surpise me.  It also brings out some questions:

1)  Do I know God’s name?  I mean I know it’s Yud-heh-vav-heh.  But I don’t even know how to pronounce that, so maybe I don’t really know it.

2)  On the other hand, perhaps I do know it because I know it when it’s Him speaking to me and when it’s not (I get a lot of help from Scripture and community on this one).  If I do know it, is there something more to Him that He wants to reveal to me like He did to Moses?

3)  One of the main themes in Exodus is that God wants to be known.  Am I helping others to KNOW Him, KNOW His name?  Or am I just another mis-representation, taking His name somehow in vain by doing things that don’t represent Him at all?

 

Sharing faith?

One of the things that I’ve always struggled with growing up in church is the concept of sharing my faith.  I think it is important to share our faith.  I think it is important to invite others into the best kind of life that we find in the way of Jesus.  However, I’ve often felt that we’ve overly simplified this process and have also made it too much like sales.

I’ve been at schools and in churches where evangelism is a skill you learn that includes walking people through a set group of questions or progressions, helping them to logically see how they need faith.  I’ve received many a tract (I have a collection so if you have any laying around please send them to me.), some given to me because people want me to get saved and others given to me to share with others (which I could never do).  I’ve also seen a sort of abadonment of talk about bringing people to faith, which is not what I think any of us are after either.

I also feel that people are very interested in what we believe and want somebody to be convicted and caring about something, as I mentioned here when I highlighted a video post by Penn Gillette.

There have been a lot of conversations about this lately.  I’ll highlight a few here:

1.  Dan Kimball along with a gaggle of other big names are working on a new “community” that will embrace this new evangelism for a new day.  It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with and how they language this!

2.  I just ran across this article on Salon.com that is really well done and I think pretty fair about street evangelism and young people.  Kevin Roose goes undercover at Liberty for a semester to see what he’s missing as a college student.

3.  Greg Stier from Dare 2 Share, who is known for sharing and training students to share in this kind of a way, responded here.  This is a helpful response for me to understand both Greg and some of the whys.  (I really like Greg as a person and have enjoyed my encounters with him.)

4.  All of this I’m reading and writing in light of a new study on the Religious Engagement of Undergrads.

What about you???  Do you share your faith?  How?  I’m looking for less deconstruction and more stories and imagination.

How do you talk about this?  I think language is important.

What about those of you in youth ministry?  How do you “train” or “educate” students about this?  Or do you at all?

 

Making Fun of Youth Ministry

Any time something is really funny, its generally because there is some truth in the midst of it. If you are in youth minsitry at all, you really should watch the following two clips from a comedy show called “Horne & Corden” from across the pond.  These are pretty painful to watch and perhaps more painful to hear all the laughter about, not because they aren’t funny, but because that means they are probably pretty true.

What does this mean about youth ministry, the church and our future?

[HT: Johnny Baker]

 

Pure in heart… pt. 2

As I mentioned before, as a part of our observance of Lent, my family and I are reflecting on one of the beautitudes from Matthew 5:3-11.  I’ve chosen, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.”

I tweeted a question (and therefore facebooked) about what image comes to mind to represent “Pure” and got a wide variety of responses.  Thanks if you responded.  One that has stuck in my mind is the purity of gold AFTER its been refined.  One of the key assumptions to refining anything is that it already has impurities in it, which I really think fits well with me personally (and my experience of humanity as a whole).   Plenty of imperfections and impurities here!

This would be in contrast to “pure like driven snow”, which would indicate a “never been tarnished” type of purity.

Which brings me back to “pure in heart”… I know that I am full of impurities on my own.  I know that my heart contains all kinds of imperfections, perhaps not originally there, but there now nonetheless.  I also am fully aware that I am totally NOT capable of purifying my own heart.  There is literally nothing I could do, no retreat I could go on long enough, no amount of personal awareness that I could attain, no amount of self-actualization – yes, nothing I could do – to purify my own heart.

So here it is… God purify my heart, that I may truly see you.

more to come…

 

Spiritual Stimulus Plan

This is the newest term for “revivals”.  And I think I like it.  Very 2.0 if you ask me.