I was paging through the Gospels last night and decided to make a list of what I felt a community of believers of Jesus would look like. Below is the laundary list of characteristics I found in no particular order:
- discipleship - following Jesus/understanding the cost
- miracles
- persecution
- peace
- prayer/reliance on God
- giving, a no-worry faith
- receiving/welcoming/open-doors/accepting
- bearing fruit
- filled with grace
- Matthew 11:28
- teaching of the Word
- proclaiming the Kingdom/eternity
- service - feeding the poor/caring for the sick/elderly/widows
- internal purity and righteousness without forsaking external obedience - Mt. 15
- servant based - "least of these"
- community/relationship drive
- non-Pharisaic
- Holy Spirit led (what does this look like?)
- humble
- focus on transformation/inheritance/repentance/redemption
- covenant focused
- John 2:5
- abundant life - now and eternity

I hope to rank these at one point, but I don't know if that is wise or not.


I also made a short list of what the visible church is not:
- business
- method of accumulating wealth/possessions
- method of control

It struck me today in a meeting that I am a parent... I gues I should hav realized that by now...and that I have an enormous say in how my daughter grows up, the level of her faith, whether or not she will be sexually active, how she will respond to authority, etc...SCARY

I also am convicted daily that I don't live out what I believe. I believe in this radical form of Christianity, yet everything I do tends to be safe and calculated. I say I want a NT type of Christianity, but my life doesn't nearly approach that level of faith. My prayer is that I may live out more and more what I believe.

I saw “Hotel Rwanda” on Friday evening. You’ve probably all seen the reviews, yet I will say it may be one of the most powerful movies I have ever seen. I strongly recommend the few dollars to see it, or you could wait until I purchase it in a few weeks and I’ll lend it to you. I may buy a few copies and have my own little library.

…One of my favorite bloggers, who doesn’t blog much, is Joe Boyd. Anyway, last Easter he undertook a little project where he wanted to do his own commentary on the Gospel of Matthew. Before he did that, he warned his readers that what he was doing was for him and not them. He didn’t want to be rude, but was just warning us that we may not agree with what he is saying, but he was thinking on paper and we needed to just go along for the ride. I write this because that is how I feel now and have felt for some time, so thank you for bearing with me in my blogging and going along for the ride.

…I’m doing much better psychologically lately, been out of my funk for almost two weeks and hope to never go back. Lisa even commented on how much better it is living with me lately.

…Tomorrow night I am getting together with two more gentlemen to seek the Lord’s leading on where He is taking us. It may be to start a church, it may be to continue what we are doing, it may be to stop what we are doing and do something else, who knows. We are just going to the Lord as a group and see what He says. The Lord really spoke to me twice this past week, once when I read about the sentencing of a man who brutally abused his little girl, awful stuff! It seemed that He pressed on my heart at that moment that He is going to lead me into a position to help children like this little girl and be of service to them. Similarly, with watching “Hotel Rwanda,” when it was over Lisa went to bed and I was lying in the basement and the Lord again seemed to tell me that He is going to use me as a voice for these people, that I am going to love them and serve them and share His love with them. Exciting yet intimidating at the same time!

…This one’s getting a little long, but I want to share something I was thinking about at our Bible study this evening. While the group was discussing Luke 15, I went on my own to Romans 8, a favorite Scripture for many Christians. I had read it probably hundreds of time, but I read it again, focusing on verses 18-27. A few things stuck out at me:
- Creation itself will be redeemed and is actually longing for redemption, just as we as humans are.
- “Hope that is seen is no hope at all.” That reminds me of Hebrews 11:1 where the writer says “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”
- Paul also writes that the “Spirit himself intercedes for us…” when we do not have the words to pray. I often lose the words to go to the Lord with, at those times I just pray that the Lord knows my heart for His people and ask Him to move. Cool stuff that we can do that.

The following quote was submitted last week Tuesday in the editorial of my local newspaper. It began a longer essay on why America should not have lowered their flags to half-staff for the pope:
How easily we forget. For more than 2,000 years, Christianity has through coercion, deception and prevarication forced its ideology on Western civilization.
Pretty interesting, if one feels like that about Christianity, I wonder what they feel about Islam, the religion of the sword!

I don't find it that often, but when I do it really moves me. I'm talking about the body of Christ working together for the common good. And I'm not talking ecumenicism for all you skeptics like me out there. I'm talking two church, in this instance one mega- and one house- being of like mind. The house church needed some video work done in exchange for some consulting. The video work was of great cost, yet the mega-church said they could not charge the house church, noting "we are all in the same body..." That type of attitude is exactly what the Lord is looking for.

I think one of the devil’s greatest tools is telling Christians to stay away from non-believers, causing them to cling together in a holy huddle while the world around them goes to hell. He’s done it to me.

I was driving over the College Avenue Bridge today and looked out to the east to see a man in a fishing boat. I had never seen that before.

I’m doing better personally. Still in and out of the funk, did better all day today but back into it tonight. See the light at the end of the tunnel though.

I took Maiya to a mainline denominational church this morning. As soon as we got in there and stated singing she wanted to sing “Jesus Loves Me.” I knew that wasn’t happening. We only lasted about ten minutes. I went to see a friend, but then didn’t see him there. One thing did impress me though. A man stood up asking the congregation to help an older lady who is confined to her bed, whose daughter is also disabled at the time, and whose granddaughter is very young. They all live in the same place and it seems they were being evicted. He asked the congregation to help not for him, not for the church, but as an act of worship on this the Sabbath. WOW! I never heard that before, like I said, very impressed.

I went to that gathering of believers again this evening that I mentioned last week. Again, what a blessing. Only a few people there this time, different location, but same old great fellowship and discussion. Talked about Matthew 18, good stuff! I hope to bring Lisa next week. I can’t really figure out what is so good about it, but once I do I’ll let you know. All I can say is how much I am being blessed!

Did I mention how great Alicia Keys was the other night? Took me to a whole new level of fanfare. I had always taken her as an "unplugged" type of musician, sitting at the piano, singing, playing, and talking. Au contraire mu fraire! She was up dancing, running around, quite simply putting on an astonishing show. I can't wait until she comes around again.

I started reading this book called "Reformission" the other day by Mark Driscoll. He is kind of one of the invented of post-modern ministry, or so I've heard. Anyway, I really expected it to be very liberal with some good ideas, yet the Gospel would not be present. Keeping with the theme of the day, au contraire mu fraire. I am very impressed with Driscoll's balance on cultural and theological issues. One of his statements is that the goal is to be culturally liberal while theologically conservative. Cultually liberal could be taken out of context, he doesn't say that what our culture is going through is right or just alternative, it's wrong but he advocates building relationships with these people and ultimately, hopefully leading them to Christ and allowing His transforming power to mold their lives into submission and obedience to Him. It's that that whole behave-believe-belong model vs. belong-believe-behave.

Some other good comments from the book include:
- the only thing worse than dying is living a boring life
- The first and most important statistic is that there are a lot of Americans who don't go to church-and their numbers are increasing
- The mission is to be close to Jesus. This transforms our hearts to love what He loves, hates what He hates, and to pursue relationships with lost people in hopes of connecting with them and, subsequently, connecting them with Him.
-There has never been a "good old day" since the Great Thud in Eden
- Anytime that Jesus is used as a means to an end, a false Gospel has been introduced and the thing improperly focused on becomes a false god
- I used to dislike minivans, because they are the product of a vast feminist conspiracy to inflict a dignity vasectomy upon men.

My thoughts exactly!

I'll end with this, he notes some questions he has been asked on Christian radio from recent converts (I'll leave out the more crass ones):
- Can I pierce a part of my body in an attempt to look like a spinning rack displaying fishing lures at a tackle shop?
- Can I tattoo the body God has given me?
- If I am an HIV-positive new Christian, can I still get married someday?
- Can I get a sex-change because I feel like God made me the wrong gender?
- What words count as swearing, who decides this, and if I disagree, can I cuss them out?
- Can I continue to make a living by being a professional blackjack player now that I am a Christian?
- Why are smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, or taking a prescription mood-altering medications okay, but smoking pot is considered a sin?

Contact me for the full list if you are interested.

I am the most selfish person I know.

In other unrelated news, I've been kind of down lately. It's really been around the last two months or so. I thought I snapped out of it last week but I'm right back in. Kind of a "gee ain't it awful" and "poor me" attitude. I don't like it, but I also don't know how to get out of it.

Sat in on a gathering of believers on Sunday night. AMAZING! Some great people asking some great questions and some great teaching. Two things that struck me:

1) Q: Is it all right to ask God the tough questions?
A: I believe the answer to this question is yes. The thing is, we need to be all right with the answer we will get. I think of Habbakuk asks how God can look at all of the wrongdoing in the world and do nothing. But God answers that He is doing something, He is going to raise up the Babylonians who will sweep through the land and destroy it. What? God, how can you do that? God says, "But the Lord is in His holy temple, let all the earth be silent before Him." WOW! Job, along with his friends, kind of shook his fist at God and asked some tough questions, and God's answer here is timeless:

Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations?
Have you ever given orders to the morning or shown the dawn its place?
Have you seen the gates of the shadow of death?
Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the storehouses of the hail?

I could go on and on, instead, read Job 38-39 again and marvel at the wonders of our Lord!

2) This is a group of people who are not big fans of the organized church, and one guy went off pretty well. And he was right in what he was saying. I agreed with him totally. He was bitter and was sticking up his middle finger at the organized religion. Yet if Philip Yancey has taught me anything, it's that we have to be careful that we don't get mad at Jesus when we blast the organized Church. That's not His plan. People have ruined it. It is the sin of man that has destroyed the look of the Church. And there are still good organized churches out there, they are just rare. We can blast the humaness of the Church, but don't blame God for the state it is in. That's a tough road to hoe, yet an important one. Get mad at the organization, but not the Creator.

By the way, that posting a few weeks ago about the hypocrisy of Easter and Christmas and how I can't stand it and play along, it's creeping into other areas of my life. Kind of scary.