Mission: Relational Equity

Submitted by Todd Murphy

The principle of community in our missionary practices is to intentionally bring people into close and valued relationships with our community.  But it is more than just connection.  It has also been my experience that as we increase the relational investment quantitatively, the indentification and conversion moves along more rapidly and effectively.  Let me explain.

There are two types of relational equity.  First is Qualitative Equity.  The deeper the quality of the relationship and personal connection between two people, the greater comfort level and intimacy is obtained so freeing up conversation.  For instance, persons who are long-time friends may talk openly about the personal problem one of them has, which may not happen with a newer acquaintance.  It should be noted here that this is usually what people have in mind when they talk about "friendship evangelism."  In this view people are thinking that the primary goal is to go deeper in the relationship until a level of intimacy is obtained to be able to talk about spiritual things.  Sometimes this does in fact happen, but sometimes it does not.  Sometimes people bracket their relationships where they may allow a great deal of intimacy on certain topics, but not others.  For instance, a Christian woman may have a close girl friend at work who connects with her and even opens up to her about her relationships with the men she is dating and even sleeping with.  But she may, on the other hand, be completely closed off to spiritual questions with this person for unknown reasons.  Then the Christian woman can often feel discouraged because she has been making a great deal of investment in this relationship only to hit an invisible brick wall.  Then comes the desperation of trying to force the subject, which often leads to an awkward conversation, in spite of all the intimacy and emotional investment anyway.  This is discouraging.  Or it may leave her feeling like it was a waste of time and eventually she will give up on the relationship.

The other type of relational equity is Quantitative Equity, which is not the depth of the relationship with the person but actually the number of relationships with other Christians.  This is what the "friendship evangelism" paradigm grossly underestimates.  It always tries to go deep, rather than wide.  But since we are communal people, there is a power in numbers that cannot be underestimated.  For instance, nobody enjoys a party where they don't know anybody, or even just one person.  But when you walk into a party and four or five people say, "Hey Todd!" there is a deeply soothing and compelling level of comfort and belonging that comes over a person.  With this you also relax more and feel more comfortable to be yourself.  In fact, this comfort might even embolden you in the crowd you know more so than in one-on-one settings.

As we also noted, people tend to conform to the group they identify with.  That is why "going deep" with "friendship evangelism" can often seem so ineffective.  You may have a lot of relational equity with a person, and they may even value that relationship so much that they do not mind putting up with your annoying attempts at evangelizing them, but if they have their identity rooted somewhere else, you will have a hard time getting through to them.  Like I said, the Gospel is a "world view" and it is inseparable from our personal identity.  The problem facing the Christian woman exampled above is that she is going at it alone.  She has no support.  However, if she is part of a Christian community, and she and that community make intentional decisions to befriend the non-Christian woman too, they will begin to do things together as a group.  They will all as a group begin to share experiences and enjoy one another.  But then what will happen is the non-christian woman will begin to notice (without them asking her to church or having an awkward conversation, etc.) that they will also speak freely when around her of their corporate experiences in faith together.  This does not need to be "spiritual talk" either like "Praise Jesus" every other sentence!  In fact, such spiritualized jabber should be avoided because it always sounds weird, even to a lot of Christians, and if nothing else, fake.  Rather, she will just begin to enjoy the mutual relationships of the group, while also seeing that there is another experience that her friends are sharing that she does not understand and enjoying that she is not.  This will naturally evoke interest and questions.  I have seen this happen again and again.

The key principle is quantitative community equity.  This is to say, the more connections a person has to your Christian community (that is people), the more they naturally begin to identifuy with that group and are naturally prone to begin asking questions of faith.  A particular way of life may not be persuasive until that person relaizes that quite a number of pople they respect buy into it which will naturally make investigation seem much more worth while.  Of course this becomes all the more compelling when these poeple are loving each other, serving one another, and speaking to one another respectfully in contrast to their other typical relationships.  The most compelling aspect of the Gospel is always our love for one another.  Also, this quantitative equity (the multiplication of persons in relationship to the non-Christian) naturally supports the qualitative equity of the primary contact person.  The great relief to the rank and file Christian is that with this approach you do not need fancy presentations, intellectual gifting, apologetic knowledge, or even printed literature.  Also, you do not ever have to feel tongue tied or the pressure of having all the right answers because you are not doing it alone.  You are not trying to present a list of propositional truths and defend them, but you are bringing that person into the experience of the community and way of life where the Gospel already exists in the lives of each person.  As the person begins to ask questions, you can easily defer to someone else who has more knowledge.  Ironically enough, it is the humility of "I don't have all the answers" that is more often far more winsome than the typical apologetic evangelism that wins battles and loses wars.

Contact with the Christian community offers a gentle and friendly exposure to a world view lived before their eyes.  But for a person to see this most compelling aspect of disciples loving one another, they must be in contact with a community of disciples.  They cannot see our love for one another if they only know one of us!  This is what Jesus says in John 13:35, By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.  They cannot see us love one another if they are not exposed to the community.

You are more influential than you think. 

Righting Our View of Self

Submitted by Summer Mohrlang (from Randy Rowland's Church)

 When God created us, He designed us to be in 4 relationships.  We are designed to be in relationship with God, ourselves, other people, and with creation.  But things aren't as God intended them to be anymore because humanity, starting all the way back with Adam and Eve, has made choices that has led to brokenness in ourselves, and brokenness in these 4 key relationships.  Previously we have looked at some of the ways our relationship with God has been broken.

Now this relationship with God, with our Creator, is the most important, the most defining relationship we are in.  And so when it gets out of whack, when we got off track there, all of our other relationships derail as well.

Today we are going to explore our relationship with self, some of the ways it's gotten off track, and then we're going to move towards a more healthy view of self, rooted in Scripture.  So, that's where we're going...we're going to do some self-reflection.

We're going to begin by diving right into our Scripture, As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.  All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.  Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.  But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved.  And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.  For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - and not by works, so that no one can boast.  For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:1-10)

I want to ask a question and I want you to think about it for a minute.  How do you primarily see yourself, as a saint or a sinner?  If you had to pic just one, what would you say?  That you are more of a saint?  Or a sinner?

Well, this dichotomy shows up in Paul's words in Ephesians 2.  Paul, a Pharisee of Pharisees, one of the elite believers, is a Jewish Christian.  He has an impeccable pedigree.  And, Paul is writing to blue collar Christians in the industrial port city of Ephesus.  He's writing to Gentile Christians, converts from a variety of different Hellenistic religions, people who had practiced magic and astrology.  This is a different breed he's writing to.  And this is what he says, As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world. (Ephesians 2:1-2a)  You could read these words with such disdain, with disgust at the lives people used to live.  And if anyone had the right to look down their nose at someone, it would have been Saint Paul.  But when we keep reading, this is what we see, All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following the desires and thoughts.  Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. (Ephesians 2:3)  Suddenly the language is uncomfortably us when he uses "us" instead of "them."  Paul doesn't get more than a sentence in to describing the Gentiles' sinfulness before he's lumping himself, the Jews, and all of us right in there too.  We are all, by nature, children of wrath.  We are fallen; we are all sinners.  We are all in the same boat.

But here's the problem, often we don't live this way.  We don't live as if we are all on an equal playing field, all of equal worth.  Most of us have a tendency to have either too high, or too low a view of ourselves.  This tendency, this evidence of brokenness, has its roots all the way back in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God.

So why does this matter?  What does my view of myself have to do with Embracing Justice?  Well, a faulty view of self is a sickness that takes root down underneath the surface and then has the potential down the road to manifest itself as injustice.

The authors of When Helping Hurts say, Until we embrace our mutual brokenness, our work to alleviate injustice is likely to do far more harm than good.  It's important that we take the time to recognize our own brokenness in how we view ourselves so as we move towards a place of living justly, we come from a place of humility where we can honestly say, "I am not okay, you are not okay, but Jesus can fix us both."

Let's look at a couple of these inaccurate views of ourselves.  But as we enter this time of self-reflection I want us all to hear a word of encouragement...there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.  No view of ourselves can put us outside of God's ability to redeem and to use for His plans and His purpose.

The God Complex

The first inaccurate view of self we may struggle with is having too high a view.  The authors of When Helping Hurts call this having a 'God Complex.'  

Is this something you struggle with?  If you're not sure, here's a little test.  In interactions with others are you often accused of not listening?  If so, you may struggle with this.

Now there are any number of reasons we are susceptible to this tendency to have to high a view of ourselves. 

1. We grew up in an environment where we were taught, either implicitly or explicitly that God blesses those He loves so since I am blessed, He must love me more.
2. Maybe you've been told or led to believe that we are where we are because we are smarter, or more morally upstanding, or have made better choices than those people over there who don't have the things we have
3. We've bought into the lie that our success is a result of our efforts rather than evidence of God's unearned favor and so our view of ourselves begins to increase.

But no matter how we arrive at this place of having too high a view of ourselves, attempting to embrace justice while also holding a faulty, overly elevated view of self is dangerous because it puts us at risk of hurting the very people we want to help.  Either we will engage in types of charity that foster dependency rather than independence (because this makes us feel powerful and needed), or we will be prone to rush in with solutions without taking the time to listen, to value the input of those we seek to help.

Another risk is that those with overly high views of themselves, those with unexamined lives, may unintentionally (or intentionally) dominate over or victimize others out of a sense of entitlement or on a quest to get what they want or deserve.

America's sense of entitlement to whatever we want, whenever we want it (nice clothes, electronics, fresh fruit in December), has it's cost.  Our killer deals at Safeway, H&M, or Ross are made possible because somebody else, far away with much less voice than we have, is paying the price through low wages, bad working conditions, etc.  It's a hard reality but it's true.  And having too high a view of ourselves enables us to turn a blind eye.

House building in Mexico is a popular spring break mission trip for youth groups across the states and as a seminary intern I helped lead my church's spring break youth group mission trip down to Juarez to build houses.  As you look around in Juarez, there are entire neighborhoods, huge hillsides of row after row of these houses, you can pick them out because they're all the same 12x24 plan.  Hundreds of churches go down each year, build a house or 12 and go home feeling good about themselves and the work they did.  But here's a window into my trip.

Now the first day, you have to get the foundation framed and poured or you won't have time to get the rest of the house done.  Mark has led a dozen of these trips down to Mexico when he was on staff at University Pres and so before I went he gave me all sorts of tips.  He told me that often, at the end of the first day, no matter how late the team left, the father of the family who the house was for, would be out, in the dark, smoothing the cement with a trowel and water until is was so smooth it looked like glass because many of the men in those neighborhoods are construction workers.  That's what they do for a living.

Well, I remembered that story when I got to Mexico and I was determined to have a perfect floor so the day my kids poured the foundation, I made sure I was one of the ones smoothing the cement.  You see, you build the frame and then you begin filling it with cement at one end and you level it by dragging a 2x4 across the surface of it, resting it on the fame on either side to make sure the floor is level.  Then 1 or 2 people will be out in front of the 2x4 where you haven't poured cement yet with water and a trowel, carefully smoothing the cement so that by the end you should have a level, smooth floor.  Well, I was the one out front with my trowel, smoothing that cement like Mark had showed me, and man it was a beauty by the end of the day and I went home proud of the work I had done.

Well, I'm sure you can guess that something went wrong.  We showed up the next morning and I saw in the daylight what I hadn't noticed in the dark.  As our team had dragged that 2x4 along, pushing that pile of cement level...every time we'd pause so I could smooth with my trowel, that pile of cement in front of the board would harden just a bit more so that when the kids started dragging the board again it would bump over that pile a bit before it started smoothing again.  The result?  A floor with a surface as smooth as glass that rolled like a wave on the ocean.  It was horrible.  And to make matters worse, one of the kids thought it would be cute to push a glass marble into the foundation right in front of the door...which of course broke before we finished the house.

I got mixed up on that trip and began to think that our time down there, the work we  produced in 5 days, was somehow going to change those family's lives.  I never asked for help, offered to let them work with us to make their house what they wanted it to be.  It never occurred to me.  Because I was the ex-Air Force project manager.  I could do this and my overly high view of myself made it so I couldn't see the people I had come to serve.

Low Self-Esteem

Okay, now the second inaccurate view of self we struggle with is having to low a view of ourselves.  Here's a test to help you figure out if this is something you are susceptible to: in interactions with others are you often accused of not speaking up?  If so, you may struggle with this...or...you may just be an introvert.

There are many reasons we may struggle with too low a view of ourselves.

1. Perhaps we grew up in a community where we were never good enough, where our sinfulness rather than God's grace was the focus.
2. Maybe we were the victim of physical or emotional abuse that led us to believe we aren't valuable or resulted in our feeling broken or impure.
3. Or perhaps our gifts have simply never been appreciated.  Maybe you're an artist and grew up in a family of engineers or vice versa and your unique gifts were discouraged rather than encouraged.  

There are many reasons why we might see ourselves as less valuable than we really are, but what happens when we view ourselves in this way?  There are a couple of possibilities.  We may fail to act on the behalf of others because we don't think we have anything to offer.  Perhaps we succumb to the "when I" syndrome, where we believe we'll do something, we'll help, "when I get a job, finish school, get a handle on my finances" but that day never comes and so we never reach out to lend a helping hand.

Another possibility when we have too low a view of ourselves is that we might become the victim of injustice ourselves.  When we don't value ourselves, then likely we don't expect others to value us either.  We aren't likely to stand up for ourselves because we don't believe we deserve any better.

Too high a view, too low a view...both can negatively affect our ability to embrace justice.

What Do We Do About It?

So what do we do about it?  How do we begin to find a middle ground, to find a healthy view of ourselves?

The answer may be a little counter intuitive because the most important step towards righting our view of self has nothing to do with changing 'me."  The key to righting our view of ourselves is righting our relationship with God.  The key is re-orienting ourselves.  It's changing our perspective so that Jesus is our focus, our relationship with him rather than ourselves or our problem.  The key to having a healthy view of ourselves is re-orienting ourselves so that Christ is at the center rather than ourselves or our problems.

Ephesians 2 offers several truths that can help us refocus, that can help us maintain a healthy view of ourselves.

Truths To Transform Us

The first thing Ephesians 2 tells us is that God loves us.  In verse 4 Paul says, Because of His great love for us, God,...made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions.  Even when we are our most sinful God loves us.  And because God loves us, we are valuable.

Second, in verse 10 Paul tells us that we are God's handiwork.  The word here is poiema and it means work of art.  We are God's masterpiece.  He created us and He delights in us just as Michelangelo must have delighted in his statue of David.  Just like Michelangelo must have delighted when he first stepped back and gazed at the finished ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.  God delights in us.  This is true.  Nothing anyone says or does can change this fact.  God made us and therefore, we are valuable.

Third, in verse 5 Paul reminds us that we are saved by God's grace not by our ingenuity, hard work, or good luck.  Paul is clear that it is God who is responsible for picking us up out of the muck of this life, for making us alive, and for raising us with Jesus rather than leaving us here mired in the muck.  If we are great, it is God who has made us great.  If we are strong, it is God's strength in us.  If we are pure, it is God who has washed us clean.  None of this is our accomplishment.

And finally, God didn't make a mistake with you.  Now I've been know to leave an ingredient out of a recipe and to end up with a royal mess, but God didn't leave anything out when He made you.  He didn't leave you on the burner too long.  You are exactly as God intended you to be, and He has prepared you, just as you are, to do good work in His name.

There's an African saying that goes, "If you think you are too small to make a difference, try spending the night in a closed room with a mosquito."  None of us is too small to make a difference.  David, the youngest brother, a mere pip-squeak, killed a giant and became a king.  Mary, an unwed teenage girl, gave birth to the Messiah, and Peter, a lowly fisherman, established the church and changed the world.  There is no one too small to make a difference.

Conclusion

These truths have the power to transform us if we let them.  They can help pull us towards the center if we've gotten off kilter in ourselves.  But if you are like me you need a little help to keep these truths front and center and so I want to remind us all of the value of community and worship in helping us remain healthy.

People close to you often have a more accurate view of you than you have of yourself.  If you struggle with low self-esteem or is you wrestle with pride, invite someone you trust, or a few someones to help you make an honest assessment of your strengths and to point out areas where perhaps you need greater humility.

And challenge yourself to devote a few minutes of each day to some self-refection and self-examination.  Whether you do it during times of silence, singing, or prayer, this is a space set aside for that exact purpose.  Re-orienting ourselves.  This is a place we come to take ourselves down off the throne, and to put Christ back on it, to be reminded of your value in God's eyes and so allow yourself some time to do that.

What's a Blessing For - Jude 2

Submitted by Larry Doornbos

What gives strength to a person and to a community?  Jude is about to enter into a hard conversation with people who have liars, deceivers, and destroyers of community in their midst.  Living in this environment they need strength.  Jude offers that strength in terms of a blessing: May mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. (Jude 2)

A blessing of mercy, peace, and love.  A blessing is a prayer for God to give something to a person or to a people.  But it is also much more than that.  When done correctly a Biblical blessing is given by one of God's representatives.  This means that no one less than God Himself stands behind the blessing.  It is God who will bring to fruition the blessing that His spokesperson has pronounced.  The Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament says, In general, the blessing is transmitted from the greater to the lesser.  Its major function seems to have been to confer (i.e. grant or bestow) abundant and effective life upon something or someone.

Jude, as God's representative, is bestowing an abundant life of more and more mercy, peace, and love.  Mercy speaks of God's loyalty and loving-kindness toward His people (in the Old Testament mercy refers to God's covenant faithfulness).  In the New Testament Jesus most often shows mercy by bringing all different kinds of healing into people's lives.  In a situation where the people are struggling, God assures them of His loyalty to them, and His tenderness toward them.  The blessing is one of mercy and peace. 

Peace is about God giving His people security, safety, prosperity, and happiness - it is the promise of a full life.  In the Old Testament peace or shalom was pictured as each man under his own vine and fig tree.  The New Testament does not shy away from giving a full-orbed picture of God's shalom (both physical and spiritual fullness), but it always holds that complete peace comes only with the return of Christ and our concern needs to be first with God's kingdom even if it means we have to sacrifice some physical fullness (see 1 Timothy 6 and Hebrews 10:32ff).  But even in this sacrifice we can find the fullest life possible on earth as we live blessed by God's peace.  The blessing is mercy, peace, and love. 

 Love is God's unfailing giving of Himself for His children.  This blessing gives strength to the community Jude writes to and to us.  For the blessings we read in the scripture are blessings that are ours.  Ours not only because we read them and take the words in with joy, but because these blessings are spoken over us at the end of worship services.  John Calvin once said it was worth going to worship just to hear the blessing given.  Sometimes people make a mad dash for the exits during the last song in a worship service - it is a sad mistake, for they are missing the blessing of God conferred on them and the community.  A blessing of mercy, peace, and love.

Judging By Our Weaknesses

Submitted by Todd Murphy

A good friend of mine and I were chatting recently.  We were discussing a situation in which he had lost patience with a friend and needed to go back and make some amends.  We all have been through this.  Truth be told, there are many more times where we don't actually hurt the surface relationship while we hide it beneath the surface in our heart.

We are constantly sizing people up, even those who are closest to us, and then comparing them with ourselves.  Why do we do this?  We do it to make us feel better about ourselves.  When we see a fault in someone else, we can easily say, "Well, at least I don't do that," or "I am not that bad."  We also have more subtle approaches where we begin to treat others with contempt, and when a situation arises, we find ourselves talking down to that person as if from a superior position.  It is a form of posturing that makes us feel superior.

This exposes a self-righteous pattern in our thinking that we often over look.  If you ask anyone if they have faults, almost all will admit they do.  We are just not to forthcoming about them, and the ones we do take responsibility for are usually more like faux pas that we are really not all that ashamed of.  It is admission of the particular more serious character faults that we most often don't see.  And when we do see them, we try the smoke and mirrors approach to avoid the shame.

The reality is that when we are judgmental of other people it is because we are not looking at our own faults. Let me say it this way: The reason we judge other people is because we judge other people's weaknesses by our own strengths.  So let me give you an example.  You may have a friend with a drinking problem, but that is not your particular weakness.  You have been friends for some time with this person and have watched their destructive behavior.  At some point though, their drinking problem becomes a problem for you.  Now this does not mean you do not lovingly challenge self-destructive behavior in them.  A real friend does, even if your friendship eventually gets rejected over it.  But what usually happens is we tend to get personally exasperated with that person and at some point effectively wash our hands of them, even if temporarily.  People do this in marriage and other relationships all the time.  Becoming exasperated with the person's faults, we want to cut-off or distance.  Or perhaps we stay in relationship, but we begin to treat them in a somewhat patronizing way.  My point is this.  It is easy to judge people for things that we don't struggle with.  I have never struggled with binge drinking and have never had any attraction to drugs.  At one point in my teens when I had left home, I was living with drug dealers.  I saw tens of thousands of dollars of street cocaine pass through my house while I was there.  I never tried it or any other drug once.  But I have struggled with other things.

This creates an "apples and oranges" scenario.  If I don not have a problem with drinking and my neighbor does, or if I don not have a problem with greed, complaining, unthankfulness, etc., and my neighbor does, then it seems that I am comparing "apples with apples."  Right?  Wrong.  Different people have different strengths and life experiences that make them have different patterns of strength and weakness.  So to compare my strength with my neighbor's weakness, be they the same thing, is actually comparing apples with oranges because we are not the same person.  To play fair and to remove our naturally self-righteous posture, we need to compare our personal weaknesses with that of my neighbor's.

For example, since I have never struggled with substance abuse, it does not help my personal growth nor my neighbor's to compare my strength with his weakness.  However, my temper is another thing.  I have always struggled with that to one degree or another.  That is where my flank is exposed.  I have worked really hard throughout my Christian life to control my anger.  I know the same frustration of lapsing in this area that a binge drinker might in his own area.  As I have grown, these have gotten fewer and far between.  But it is not gone.  It is a daily struggle that I still have to keep wraps on myself about, perhaps a lot like a recovering substance abuser.

What is most important is that only when we begin to see us against our neighbor through our own weaknesses will we not only be a help to him, but a help to ourselves.  Comparing ourselves by our weaknesses levels the playing field and creates the opportunity for true humility.

As I was chatting with my friend I pointed out a climbing analogy.  When rock climbing or mountaineering, you only understand and see clearly what you have already climbed.  What is above you is always obscured by what is right in front of you.  When climbing a sheer face, you cannot see beyond the next outcropping or bulge in the rocks.  Our pilgrimage of life is similar.  What we have overcome already is clear to us, but what we have not is still obscure.  So in the climb of life, the person that is farther ahead may be able to see the person's situation more clearly and wonder why they cannot.  Yet if he turns his gaze back upward, there is someone else above him who sees things clearly that he does not.  We often look at each other mystified by how in our struggles we cannot see what seems grossly obvious to others.  But that is the challenges of the climb of life.  We need to understand that our own perspective is always limited by our current location in the ascent.  But if we learn to begin with our weaknesses it helps ground us in a humility that will help both us and our neighbor.

Healing the Broken Relationship With God

Submitted by Randy Rowland

Derek Webb, formerly of Caedmon's Call, sings a song of hope for justice along with recognition that all of us help make up an unjust world.  The final verse of Webb's song "This Too Will Be Made Right" underscores how fostering an unjust world comes back on all of us:

     I don't know the suffering of people outside my front door.

     I join the oppressors of those who I choose to ignore.

     I'm trading comfort for human life

     And that's not just murder, it's suicide;

     This too shall be made right.

As we move forward in looking at justice, we move from a foundation rooted in God's plan for all of creation to be whole and properly ordered.  This state is called shalom.  We move forward with the conviction that God's plan of shalom has been severely damaged by networks of broken relationships in which we all participate.

We all populate networks of broken relationships at 4 levels.  We have a broken relationship with God.  We have a broken relationship with ourselves as we under-perform our true humanity.  We have broken networks of relationships with others that lead to a deeply disordered society and harmful systems of injustice and poverty.  And, we also suffer from a broken relationship with creation itself as we damage the planet, litter space with dangerous junk, and exterminated species of life God asked us to take care of.

The first layer in the network of broken relationships in which we participate is a broken relation ship with God, where God is ignored, or God's image is distorted in such a way that God's intention for creation is not fulfilled through us, His people.

The starting point for repaired and restored relationship is with God.  To that end, listen to God's word from Deuteronomy 6:1-12, There are the commands, decrees, and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing Jordan to possess, so that you, your children, and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping His decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life.  Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you.  Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.  Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.  There commandments that I give you today are to be on your heats.  Impress them on you children.  Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.  Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.  Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.  When the Lord your God brings you into the land He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, -- to give you a land with large, flourishing cities you did not build, houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant -- then when you eat and are satisfied, be careful that you do not forget the Lord, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

Key notes for righting relationships with God and clearing up faulty God-views:

     1.  SHEMA - "hear" - listen to God:  My grandma Rowland was really cool.  Every once in a while, I would be sprouting a bad way of thinking and she would not say, "No!" or, "Shut up!"  Grandma would say, "Listen to yourself."  Then she would quote me back.  Then it would wind up with me listening to her and really hearing what she was saying from the depths of her life to the heart of me.  This kind of encounter is a SHEMA event: Now hear this.
     2.  ONE GOD - The Lord is one - He is the center that must hold for all the other relationships to matter.  

          a.  There is no room for "a little religion never hurt anyone."  

          b.  Most of the religious damage done in the history of the world by Christians was done by those who had "a little religion" attached to their ambitions.

     3.  LOVE GOD - give one's self fully and sacrificially.
          a.  Heart - Intellect + Intuition

          b.  Soul - Emotion + Relational

          c.  Strength - Will + Resolve +Energy Spent

     4.  Create rituals and habits of remembering and listening.

          a.  Public Worship

          b.  Scripture study in depth

          c.  Prayer that includes listening and meditating on God's word

          d.  Small groups

          e.  Engagement in the Missions of God in risky ways

          f.  Remember that every success, entitlement, and achievement that comes our way is a temptation to forget God and crown ourselves as lord of the universe.

Application of Deuteronomy 6 as a tool for keeping our relationship with God fresh and responsive helps move us away from some dangerous and lurking faulty views of God that destroy shalom and cause us, as Derek Webb sang, To trade human life for comfort.

Here are some faulty and/or broken vies of God that can lead to an unjust world...

ANIMISM/MAGICAL -- This worldview may mot be prevalent among many of us, so I start here as an example...

A Christian relief and development agency attempted to improve crop yields for poor farmers in Bolivia's Alto Plano.  Although successful in increasing output, the impact on the farmers' income was far less than hoped for because of the farmers' deep reverence for Pachamama, the mother earth goddess who presides over planting and harvesting.  Seeking Pachamama's favor, farmers purchased llama fetuses, a symbol of life and abundance, to bury in their fields before planting.  At the time of the harvest, the farmers held a festival to thank Pachamama.  The larger the harvest, the larger the celebration was.  In fact, a large percentage of the farmers' income was being spent on the fetuses and on the burning of usable crops as sacrifices at the harvest festival, thereby contributing to the farmers' material poverty.  Furthermore, by increasing agricultural output without worldview transformation, the development agency realized it was actually adding to these farmers' idolatry, as the farmers were giving increasing levels of praise to Pachamama for her benevolence.  

That might seem primitive to some of us, but what about some of our faulty word-views?

THE  GOD COMPLEX -- Who needs God?  I can handle this.

Steve Corbett and Brian Fickert, authors of When Helping Hurst, say, Few of us are conscious of having a god-complex, which is part of the problem.  We are often deceived by Satan and by our sinful natures.  For example, consider this: why do you want to help the poor?  Really think about it.  What truly motivates you?  Do you really love poor people and want to serve them?  Or do you have other motives?  I confess to you that part of what motivates me to help the poor is my felt need to be needed.  The God complex excuses our poverty, injustice, and need for God and others and places ourselves in a role of spiritual, moral, social, and material superiority.  If you want to see what some of this looks like, look at the free distribution of baby formulas and pesticides and medicines to Africa that should be okay for them, but we wouldn't use here due to risks involved.

FATALISM -- God is out there somewhere, but I don't know where and I don't have any skin in this game.  I am just a spectator.

Walter Brueggemann has said that, The key pathology of our time, which seduces us all, is the reduction of the imagination so that we are too numbered, satiated and co-opted to do serious imaginative work.  I come to those works of imagination for the reawakening of the imagination, and such reawakening is so necessary, precisely because of the pathology that Breuggemann argues, The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.

The dis-orderedness and injustice of our world urges each one of us out of resignation and into "prophetic imagination and articulation" of a world that breathes, even oozes God's shalom.  This is where music, theater, poetry, and art become so important to us.  They fire the imagination and they kick against the darkness.

Singer songwriter Bruce Cockburn once said, Every totalitarian regime is afraid of the artist.

THE HEALTH AND WEALTH GOSPEL -- I have done all the right stuff and have claimed God's blessings and I have stuff and I am healthy.  That means I am good and you maybe could be good too if you claimed your blessing.

There have been versions of this "name it and claim it" theology around for many years.  It has roots deep in the belief in manifest destiny of nations and also in the American Ideal that hard work and good character result in material prosperity.

The health and wealth gospel hit its popular peak just a few years ago with the Prayer of Jabez where one prayer in Scripture is over-emphasized into a distorted view that God wants to increase my territory -- by the way, whose territory decreases when my prayer is answered?

The true view of God is that what He does promise to those who are faithful is:

     A meaningful place in the world and a contribution that matters.

     Enough days to do all that must be done by you and me.

     And, we are promised a blessed and loving relationship and union with God in our innermost being.

Examples:

• Jesus faithfulness on the cross for the salvation of the world.  His increased territory was spaced next to 2 ordinary criminals by who he would be crucified.
• St. Francis of Assisi who eschewed wealth and power to be among the poor and to work to restore the broken relationship with all God's creatures.
• Father Damien who sacrificed health and long life to work among despised lepers in the Hawaiian Islands where he too became a leper and died. 

The list is endless -- the increased territories of such men and women of God do not coincide with material wealth, financial prosperity or earthly health.  Yet, they are blessed among all people.

I AM/WE ARE THE ELECT -- God chose me to be special and I am!

This doctrine has confused many people in the Reformed Tradition who believe that Election has more to do with salvation than on calling to ministry.  And, this notion is further distorted by extreme expressions of double predestination in which it is believed that God actually creates some people to be poor, destitute, oppressed, enslaved, and godless.

A series of Reformed scholars at Oxford University were recently discussing election on one of my favorite podcasts, called Godpod.  Here is what they said, If you look at election throughout the scriptures story, election is not about salvation, but about a calling to bring salvation and wellness to all of creation.  Those who are elect are not on behalf of themselves, but on behalf of others.

• Abraham - to be the father of nations.
• Moses - to deliver people from slavery in Egypt like is referred to in Deuteronomy 6, and into a new and free land that he never sees.
• The Apostle Paul to bring freedom in Christ to non-Jewish converts, who, ruling the nation of Rome, beheaded him after a lengthy prison stay.
• Was Abraham Lincoln elect to free slaves?  If yes, the 15th president of the United States did that for others because his candle was snuffed before he ever saw the day!

I believe in and take seriously the true and un-sullied doctrine of elections...that we are selected and called by God to act on behalf of others.  We are invited to love Him fully and live for others.  

Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, The church is only the church when it lives for others.  Yes, you count.  You are important.  But, you are important for the others for whom you live.  Who is that for you?  So what new orientations and perspectives become imperative to you as you ask the question, For what and to whom has God called me?  Asking this question in a shema (hear) posture, might just lead you to examine the following:

The alternative future lived in faith, hope, and love.

1. Radical monotheism
2. Active remembering of God in very context
3. Painful re-alignment of views that are in line with loving God wholly.
4. Behavioral repentance beginning with re-devotion to a God whose mercies are new every morning.
5. How must I live today to be true to my true love?

At the beginning of his short novel Remembering, Wendell Berry offers a poem:

     Heavenly Muse, Spirit who brooded on

     The world and raised it shapely out of nothing.

     Touch my lips with fire and burn away

     All dross of speech, so that I keep in mind

     The truth and end to which my words now more

     In hope.

Amen.

Reflections On the Prayer Summit

Submitted by Andy Sytsma

Last month I attended the CRC Prayer Summit with other leaders from the US and Canada.  It's hard to put into words how "full" I felt afterwards.  Many people in my church were praying for the Prayer Summit and we felt answers to those prayers.  I enjoyed spending time with my dad and reconnecting with good friends from New Jersey.  Almost all the Texas Pastors were there.  And it was good to make new friends as well.  But first and foremost, we were there to pray.  We were seeking God's face together and as one speaker said, we were "wasting time" with God and each other.  What a better way to "waste time" than to be near to God?

I have a whole notebook full of reflections I'm still processing.  The other members of my church who went with me also came away with many practical suggestions for prayer that we are starting to implement.  And there are even plans to have a Texas Prayer Summit later this fall!  But for me, the two biggest takeaways had to do with persistence in prayer and also being authentic and humble in prayer.

There are areas of prayer in my life that I am strong in and doing a good job.  There are also other areas I've been lacking and need to change.  One of the things I decided to do is to set aside more time in the morning to pray.  I want to do this because I haven't been faithful in lifting up each and every person at my church in prayer and praying over each and every request.  And I haven't persevered in prayer.  I've been proud, thinking I can pastor my church in my own strength.  I've been complacent with the way things are instead of really wrestling with God in prayer for Him to change lives and bring transformation in our community.  And I've also lacked vision for why I should pray.

What is that vision?  One speaker said, "My hand is only so big.  Why would I try and take things into my own hands when God's hands are so much bigger?"  Another speaker spoke about that line in the Lord's Prayer that says, "Your kingdom come" and said we can't see that kingdom come in power the way God would want if we're not seeking the King's face first.  

Friends, we serve a big God and we want to see Him make a difference in our lives and in this world.  But we also need a vision for God Himself.  This is the starting place for prayer -- to be near to God and to seek His face.

I'm thankful for everyone who prayed for me and the others at the Prayer Summit.  I was also excited that most of the Texas Pastors were there and am looking forward to a Texas Prayer Summit!  Let's seek God together, give ourselves fully to Him, and not be shy about "wasting time" with God and one another.  And let's pray that God has His way with us and that He uses us to ignite a missional movement in the CRC and beyond.  Amen!

What's the Problem?

Submitted by Randy Rowland

On February 3 we looked at the words of Jesus as he quoted the prophet Isaiah about why he came to earth.  Jesus' self-described mission was to fulfill the favorable year of the Lord by proclaiming the good news, ministering to the poor, setting captives free, giving sight to the blind, and eradicating oppression.  We talked about the fact that Jesus has come to restore "shalom" - which is the Hebrew word for things being fully functional and whole.  Jesus has come to reconcile all things.  This total salvation, shalom, or holistic mission of Jesus is broader and more comprehensive than many of us recognize.

So, on to our Scripture for this blog entry: You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.  Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.  But God demonstrated His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him!  For if, while we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to Him through the death of His Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!  Not only is this so, but we also boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have received reconciliation.  (Romans 5:6-11)

Christ enters into our brokenness to bring us reconciliation.  Christ redeems us and makes us fit for heaven.  He brings us to heaven.  But, he also brings heaven to us and entrusts us to work with him in redeeming all things.

So, as Christ followers we are committed to proclaiming heaven and all of its benefits offered us in this one named Jesus who died for us while we were enemies to him so that we might one day live eternally in heaven.  We are equally committed to the idea that we are saved through his life as our text reads.

The word saved in Greek is "sodzo" and it means whole - it's the equivalent of the Hebrew "shalom."  Jesus' life demonstrates a wholeness that we too pursue as a new humanity in a new creation.

This is where justice enters the picture.  Jesus justifies you and me and others with God and we bring justice to the people and systems around us.  In the book When Helping Hurts, the authors say, Jesus' life and death brings reconciliation to every last speck of the universe, including both our foundational relationships and the systems that emanate from them.  Poverty is rooted in broken relationships, so the solution to poverty is rooted in the power of Jesus' death and resurrection to put all things into right relationship again.

The very fact that Jesus came with this mission in mind is indicative of the fact that God knew there was a problem with His creation.  All creation needs to be reconciled and restored to shalom.

The Scriptures tell stories that speak of a pattern that takes place in the cosmos.  It is a pattern of creation, fall, and redemption.

Creation: God made the heavens and the earth and all forms of life that dwell here.  God completed His creation, according to the biblical story, by saying, "It is good."  He saw that is was good.  The Hebrew word for good is "tov."  But if you study the word tov, what it really means is functional.  God's world was created fully functional, ordered, beautiful, and purposeful.  Relationships were ordered and God was glorified.  The state of Creations was shalom at its best.  All creatures had freedom and fullness of life.

Then a second movement takes place: The fall.  In the disobedience and disconnection caused by the actions of our fore-parents Adam and Eve, what was Good was shattered and shalom was vandalized.  The pandemic of sin enters the creation and wreaks havoc.

Relationships between God and humanity were fractured.  People denied God and did their own thing.  Human beings lost their true humanity and dove into a deepening cesspool of shame.  Adam and Eve tried to hide from God.  Nice try kids.  Relationships between humans cratered.  Adam blamed Eve for the fall.  Adam and Eve's son, Cain, murdered his brother Abel.  Relationship with the rest of creation is broken; the land and humanity are in opposition to one another.  Land is worked wrong.  Species are annihilated.  Pollution and global warming choke the planet.

Let me also add that these 4 key broken relationships with God, self, others, and creation create systemic states of disorder.  Good systems go bad.  Bad systems get introduced.  The brokenness is so deep and humanity's lost-ness is so profound that there is little or no hope of fixing things on our own.

We collectively live in a perpetual state of spiritual, relational, moral, psychological, social, and economic poverty.  All this brokenness is the very antithesis of shalom.  And at the heart of the brokenness is layers and systems of broken relationships.

Scripture is a book about relationships between God and people.

Creation is a story of good, healthy relationships.  The fall is the description of all the symptoms that point to a core diagnosis of broken relationships.  And here's the real rub.  We are all broken.  This fall is us.  It's ruin is ours.  We are affected by the fall in each of these relationships: With God, with ourselves, with others, and with all of creation.

Yet, while we are indeed broken and limited, sinners and enemies of God, we often take on a god-complex where we see ourselves as fixers rather than part of the problem.  Fact is, we help others in ways that actually hurt them when we try to fix.

If we don't embrace our brokenness and work really hard to correct and amend our faulty thinking and skewed world views, then we seriously limit our ability to be agents of Jesus' reconciliation and shalom.  The problem might best be described in the poetry of William Butler Yeats...

     Turning and turning in the widening gyre

     The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

     Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

     Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

     The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

     The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

     The best lack all conviction, while the worst

     Are full of passionate intensity.

If the story were to stop here, a brief creation ruined by a deepening fall, the most strident Nihilist would be considered an optimist.  But, it doesn't stop here!  There is a 3rd movement in God's symphony of grace.  There is creation.  There is fall, but there is also redemption.  Jesus Christ inserts himself as an agent of reconciliation to repair and restore.  Redemption repairs broken relationships.  Redemption introduces justice.  Redemption rights wrong systems.

Huge oppressive systems can emerge from one faulty thought even about our loving and gracious God who sends us Jesus.  Imagine, someone assumes because there are stories of slaves in the Bible, that slavery is a "normative" institution.  Look at the misery that caused - benefiting some fantastically monetarily.  And, look at how this world view led to the oppression of millions, the assassinations of a US President, and the highest casualty count war in our nations history in the Civil War.  One faulty thought - a world of broken relationships and misery that is still not righted in this area.

Redemption restores creation's beauty.  All that is wrong is reconciled and made right.  When I think of God's redeeming intention and redeeming power for creation, to me, it is like holding a beach ball underwater in a swimming pool.  You strain to hold the ball under.  The ball strains to break loose and shoot to the surface with force, and it will, and it does.  That's what redemption in Christ is like.

I earlier described the state of the fall as a comprehensive state of poverty or injustice.  Poverty and injustice vandalize the face of God's creation.  They hold the ball underwater against the forces of hope and reconciliation.  Because poverty is a huge issue, it is important that we examine the nature and definition of poverty.  In our majority culture American thinking, we assume poverty means lack of material goods that make us happy and secure.  But if you listen to the voices of those who live in poverty around the world, you hear a deeper issue.  Poverty is a psychological state of despair and helplessness.  Poverty is being surrounded by systems you didn't create and you don't control.  These externalized systems that leave the impoverished powerless are at the heart of oppression and injustice.  Poverty reduces freedom and distances it's victims from opportunity.  And, along with the despair and depression, those in poverty often lack the material goods needed to survive.

A huge work Christ enlists you and I to do is walk with those suffering every level of poverty and brokenness and help create a new worldview in which people are no longer controlled by shame, inferiority, powerlessness, humiliation, fear, hopelessness, depression, social isolation, voicelessness.  Tragically, there are many times when words and deeds that actually increase the magnitude of these indignities emanate from the lips, arms and legs, and notions of people who claim Jesus Christ as their Lord and who claim to worship the one and only God.  And, if my biblical studies and theology are correctly located, that includes you and me.

I don't want to over-distill or be simplistic here today, but poverty and injustice can be seen as symptoms of broken relationships with God, self, others, and creation.

One of the ways in which we of Western privilege have failed in attempting to bring justice and material well being to others is that we have treated symptoms of poverty rather than addressing the disease.  We give material but don't create freedom for others to discover their vocation and glorify God with their work.  We play God and try to fix everything our way.

The type of deep and eternally lasting reconciliation Jesus brings us treats the real root problems of broken relationships and changes world views toward God, self, others, and creation in ways that release people from poverty.

I have made numerous trips to Central America where poverty, oppression, and injustice are out of control. Again and again, I learn from Christian leaders in Latin America that correcting faulty world views is the first and foremost place to bring transformation to society.  The more I visit, the more I see that it is those of us from the North and in privilege who need our worldviews corrected.  And, that we have some great teachers living in the midst of poverty and working their way out. 

As we continue to work, let's be mindful that we are working always on us, and never on them.  We need to fix our worldviews first and foremost.