Michael Kruse on Christian Economics

I know I've linked to this before, but it's worth the reminder. Michael Kruse is doing a series on Christian economics at Jesus Creed. It's fantastic. He has a new post on "wealth."

El Tiempo Ha Venido

Michael Ewen is in Guatemala right now doing some independent humanitarian work (his family is a part of Believers Fellowship). He focuses on micro finance, clean water projects, and food aid, and his blog is El Tiempo Ha Venido. Check out what he is doing; it's good stuff! I am sure that when he gets back to Washington he is going to look to expand the project. I think my church will get involved!

Renewal Video

Here is a video of the work we did with YFC Tillicum (described below).

Surprised by Hope by N.T. Wright (Chapter 15)

N.T. Wright concludes Surprised by Hope in style, discussing the relevance of the Christian hope to the mission of the church. He covers three areas--the redemption of time, space, and matter; the resurrection and mission; and the resurrection and personal devotion.

N.T. Wright reminds us of the importance of the traditional forms of Christianity as they relate to resurrection. With regard to the redemption of space, he says that too many people have discounted the value of "holy places," i.e. churches. While he sees the wisdom in avoiding undue worship directed at "holy places," he says that there is something valuable in feeling that church is a place where one is on holy ground. (N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church [New York: HarperOne, 2008], 260.) But redemption extends beyond just space to encompass time as well. To this, Wright warns us not to discriminate against those who have gone before us. Honoring tradition respects God's redemption of time--that we are all part of God's story. (261) Finally, redemption affects matter itself. To this, Wright speaks of the importance of the sacraments of eucharist and baptism. In these sacraments, heaven and earth intersect in the realm of matter. (262) Wright says that the sacraments describe heaven in ways that language can't. He writes, "Remember the ballerina who, asked to say what a particular dance meant, replied, 'If I could have said it, I wouldn't have needed to dance it.'" (263)

In addition to it's effect on time, space, and matter, the resurrection also affects the mission of the church. Wright says that the mission of the church should be to be the "already but not yet" to the world. He writes:

"The world of space, time, and matter is a place where real people live, where real communities happen, where difficult decisions are taken, where schools and hospitals bear witness to the 'now, already' of the gospel while police and prisons bear witness to the 'not yet.' The world of space, time, and matter is where parliaments, city councils, neighborhood watch groups, and everything in between are set up and run for the benefit of the wider community, the community where anarchy means that bullies (economic or social as well as physical) will always win, where the weak and vulnerable will always need protecting, and where therefore the social and political structures of society are part of the Creator's design." (265)

Finally, Wright says that the resurrection gives new meaning to personal holiness. In order for the church to bring heaven to earth, heaven has to break into the lives of the individuals of the church. Thus holy living is motivated by our future hope. He writes:

"The point of 1 Corinthians 13 is that love is not our duty; it is our destiny. It is the language Jesus spoke, and we are called to speak it so that we can converse with him. It is the food they eat in God's new world, and we must acquire the taste for it here and now. It is the music God has written for all his creatures to sing, and we are called to learn it and practice it now so as to be ready when the conductor brings down his baton. It is the resurrection life, and the resurrected Jesus calls us to begin living it with him and for him right now. Love is at the very heart of the surprise of hope: people who truly hope as the resurrection encourages us to hope will be people enabled to love in a new way. Conversely, people who are living by this rule of love will be people who are learning more deeply how to hope." (288)

In Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N.T. Wright makes scholarship practical. This is the thing I love about him--he has one of the sharpest minds in New Testament scholarship, but his heart is in the church.

The church in America seems split into two camps, represented by "Pastor Gospelman" and "Reverend Smoothtongue" in the appendix to Surprised by Hope. Many, like Gospelman, focus on the "truth" of the resurrection and all of the theology that this entails. "Because Jesus is raised," they say, "we are going to heaven when we die." Others, like Smoothtongue, belittle to Scriptures as antiquated and irrelevant, and focus instead on the moral clean-up of society. "What really matters," they say, "is that Jesus is resurrected in our hearts and in society." I've been looking for some middle ground for a long time. I'm conservative like the fundamentalists, but I think the church needs to get out there into the culture to "bring heaven to earth," as Wright says. Hopefully there will be movement in America--one that takes the historic doctrines of the faith seriously, but one that isn't afraid to put legs on their faith to make a difference.

Tutoring at the Tacoma Rescue Mission

I tutored math at the Tacoma Rescue Mission today. Good stuff. I can't wait to go back.

The Tacoma Rescue Mission has a program called New Life. Homeless men and women can sign up for an intense, in-house program that emphasizes spiritual growth, addiction recovery, and employment skills. At New Life Square they have dormitories for all of the guys in the program. It's pretty neat--they have lounge areas, a basketball court, and a work-out facility. It kind of reminded me of a college dorm. Every day they have an intense program of devotions, recreation, and education. I helped with the math class--teaching people job skills and preparing some to test for their GED.

I'm hoping to go back every Monday afternoon, but I haven't been officially taken on as a tutor yet. You can get more information about the Tacoma Rescue Mission here.

Gig Harbor Community Development

Fresh on the heels of my meeting with the folks from NLF, I met with leaders from several churches in Gig Harbor to talk about how we can work together to develop the community around us. Again, what a great meeting!

We all seemed to be on the same page with everything--that Incarnational ministry was the key to making a significant difference for the kingdom of God, that parachurch ministries and other agencies were doing a better job at this than most churches, and that the best way for us to move forward would be to partner with these agencies to help the community of Gig Harbor.

The next step for us is to talk to the leaders of our respective churches, find out the key ministry areas that each of our churches are interested in, and then come back together to see where our interests overlap. This way, we can have the support of the leadership to make sure that this multi-church effort is a success.

I am excited about what is going to come of this. Although I want to see our church strengthen its relationship to Tacoma, I would also love to see us helping people here in the Harbor. After all, there are legitimate needs here, they just aren't always as blatant as they are in the Hill-Top area or in East Tacoma.

The combined work of all of the churches in Gig Harbor could make some serious progress for the kingdom of God. Chapel Hill Presbyterian, the largest church in Gig Harbor, already does some great things (as do the other churches, but we don't have near the resources and influence of Chapel Hill). I can only imagine what we can do if we pool our efforts. I imagine a time when the Gig Harbor churches have built such a reputation for community development that when the city faces a crisis it looks to us for relief. THAT would be cool. We'll be there some day. This is a much-needed first step.

Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren

In Everything Must Change, Brian McLaren develops the themes introduced in The Secret Message of Jesus to show how Jesus' radical new "framing story" is the solution to the global crises of our day. This book is by far the best by McLaren and is one of the best books I have read all year.

McLaren sees three crises in our world--the security crisis (the growing hostility between the developed nations and the poor, i.e. U.S. vs Al-Qaeda), the prosperity crisis (the unsustainability of free market "theo-capitalism" on our environment), and the equity crisis (the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer). I think McLaren is spot on in each of these crises, and I especially appreciated his analysis of the U.S. Al-Qaeda conflict. He calls the current dominating "framing story" (metanarrative) a suicide machine, meaning that if we keep operating the way we have been, we will destroy ourselves.

McLaren's solution to the global crises is the "revolution of hope"--substituting Jesus' message of the kingdom of God for the suicide machine. McLaren doesn't think that the phrase "kingdom of God" is appropriate for our day, so he substitutes titles like "God's sacred ecosystem" and "God's unterror movement." By convincing people to stop believing the dominant metanarratives and start believing Jesus' metanarrative, we will fuel the fire of the "revolution of hope" and turn around the suicide machine.

All of McLaren's thoughts (in this book) are good.

However, I think McLaren's one-sided view of the kingdom of God will torpedo any success he hopes to accomplish with this needed message. I completely agree that the world has adopted a metanarrative that is self-destructive. I also agree that Jesus' message of the kingdom of God is the message that is needed to turn everything around. However, notably absent in this book is any mention of the church or the Holy Spirit.

When McLaren speaks of "the Gospel," he refers to God's good news that He is redeeming the world. This is half true. McLaren has an axe to grind against most evangelicals that just want to preach substitutionary atonement and self-help sermons. His writings to this point have been a needed wake-up call to social justice. However, in reacting against Reformed theology, McLaren has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. He doesn't address the fact that deep down, people have a spiritual problem. They will read his book, think "That's nice," and then go back to the suicide machine. Apart from the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, no one will set aside the suicide machine to live the kingdom of God. We can't do that on our own because we are infected with the disease called sin. Therefore, we can't throw out preaching of the cross. The Holy Spirit works through that Gospel to regenerate people so that they can live the life McLaren is calling them to live.

If it weren't for the significant disagreements that I have with Brian McLaren about Jesus' message, I would say Everything Must Change is the best book I have read all year. But I do disagree with him on some major points, so I will just say that the book is very good.

Love INC Project Finished

One of the things that I do at Believers Fellowship is organize periodic outreach activities in which I get the church involved with a local ministry for a one-time event. In my opinion, there is no need for us to reinvent the wheel when there are so many great ministries doing awesome things around Pierce County. Why should our church start a homeless shelter when the Tacoma Rescue Mission already does that? Isn't it better just to get our church involved in what they are already doing? I think so.

In order to connect people with local ministries, I team up with their leaders to come up with a one-day event that we can do together to expose people to what is going on around them. My hope is that once people get their feet wet, they will be more willing to volunteer in the future.

The latest group that we worked with is Love INC (In the Name of Christ) of Pierce County. Love INC does a ton of cool stuff around the country, but one of the things that the Pierce County chapter does is provide furniture to people who have lost everything in a fire, flood, etc. One of the most common scenarios in which people need furniture is when they are forced to take their kids and leave everything in a domestic violence situation. In such cases, Washington State hooks women and children up with a place to stay, but doesn't give them furniture. Love INC steps in and fills this gap.

Well, the folks at Love INC needed a place to store all of the donated furniture. They had this old barn on site, and we thought that with a little bit of renovation, it might be a good place to store furniture. The only problem was that there was 9260 pounds of junk in it. So, our project was to clear out the junk, pressure wash the inside, put up a new wall, create some mattress racks, and install a garage door. Also, I thought it would be cool to have a used furniture drive at the church so that when we were done building the structure we could fill it with furniture.

We finished this past weekend and the project was a huge success! We filled a 26 foot rental truck with donated stuff and even had to take 2–3 pickup trucks worth of stuff separately. The work we did over the past few weeks is going to impact countless people around Pierce County. The question I asked the congregation for this project was, "When is a couch more than just a couch? When it provides hope for a new life." That's what we did these past few weeks. We worked toward giving people hope.

I am so impressed by the people of my church. They have an amazing heart for social justice and community development, and they are the most giving congregation of which I have ever been a part. I am excited about the things we will do in the future! Enjoy the video.