are you smarter than this 5th grader?

we were talking about bible school classes and which ones were for whom. the discussion turned around a simple question of order: which course should someone take first- an intro to the bible course, or a biblical study methods course? the study methods course is a 150 class, whereas the intro to the bible class was a 100. i proposed this idea:

i'll ask some little questions that are basic bible knowledge/ literacy and if you feel that you can confidently answer them then perhaps the 150 course would be the right one to take right now. if not, then a brushing up on the broader approach to the word first might serve you better at this time.

ready? (remember, you can't use your bible to look up the answers and none of them are 'trick questions')

1) How many books are in the pentateuch and who is the presumed author?

2) Is Hosea considered to be a major or minor prophet?

3) Who wrote the book of Titus?

4) How many sons did Rachel have?

5) What public office in Israel did Samson hold?

6) Who is the king in the book of Esther?

7) Which of the Patriarchs did God rename as Israel?

8) Which of the four gospels is written by the same guy that wrote Acts?
9) Solomon's mother was: Michal (Saul's daughter) or Bathsheba (Uriah's widow)?
10) How long did Moses live in the wilderness after being driven from Egypt for murdering a man?

okay, so there you go. hope this was helpful. write the answers down on paper so that you are committed to one per question, then look them up answers on your own afterward to see if you were right...

ha ha- thanks for playing our little game!

tongues of fire

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so you learn to love God and man by loving. Begin as a mere apprentice, and the very power of love will lead you on to become a master of the art. (St Francis de Sales, 1567-1622)

okay, now apart from the fact that it has to be one of the most entertaining commercials on television right now, the DQ Flamethrower commercial is also a rich illustration of how important it is to be deeply mindful of the necessity of learning how to express love carefully, lest we destroy each other with our good intentions…

see, we were talking just the other day about excellence in service of others, and it occured to me that, apart from all the quality control filtration that we employ to the things we do in our quest for the ultimate offering of our best, there is one crucial element that can establish or blow the whistle on the level of excellence of any service endeavor:

it is the investment of love.

if we explore romans 12.9-21 together, in particular the bit about heaping flaming coals upon the head of another (the writer of romans is citing proverbs 25.21-22) , we can conclude that to love is to be more than merely hospitable... it is to give the gift of fire.

the exciting affirmation comes when we dare to look at the story of pentecost recorded in acts 2.1-4 through this lens.

in acts 2, we see God living by example, pouring out love upon those who, steeped in sin, would be the enemies of God if it were not for their acceptance of the grace and forgiveness that God has offered. we read an account of a mighty rushing wind and tongues of fire lighting upon the heads of the faithful gathered in that meeting place, as God gives food to the spiritually hungry and drink to the spiritually thirsty, affording them the kind of spiritual nourishment that they will need to speak openly about the life-changing power of Jesus Christ's death and resurrection in the same town that, a month and a half earlier, orchestrated the execution in a surreal kangaroo court. we read about miracles and wonders and acts of service and healing performed on that day. we read about people from every region and dialect hearing the message in their own language.

what are the languages that people speak around us today?

how might we share, with this heavenly anointing, the gospel with the needy?

how might we speak life with a heavenly accent?

***
In Chapter XVII of his Rule of 1221, Francis of Assisi (different francis) told the friars not to preach unless they had received the proper permission to do so. Then he added, “Let all the brothers, however, preach by their deeds.”

The great (and very catchy) quote, very Franciscan in its spirit, but not literally from St. Francis seems to say the same thing...

Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.
(http://www.americancatholic.org/messenger/Oct2001/Wiseman.asp)

traces of an encounter

weird

i failed to save the words that i prepared for a recent talk. then i threw away the 'manuscript' when i was at a network meeting out of town. all i have are the scribblings in my journal... and these are sketchy at best. it's as if i'm not supposed to post them- that God intended for them to be used in only one context, and that those in attendance are to be the testimonial living out of these words, these ideas, this truth...

it began with a question that was posed in a book that i've been reading called The Deity Formerly Known As God by Jarrett Stevens. the question was this:

If you had to describe the God you've found floating in the wake of your parents' presence in your life, what would this God look like?

the time we spent together looking at the scriptures was rich and meaningful. at the end, people came to the cross of Christ in prayer...

• moved to embrace the reality that our picture of God is very strongly influenced (dareisay distorted) by the picture of our own earthly parents;
• moved to embrace the reality that God desires to be known personally without all the stereotyping that we've done as we've clambered through life and relationship trying to sort it all out;
• moved to embrace the reality that scripture promises joint heirship with Jesus Christ, but that this clearly doesn't have anything to do with living a charmed life- on the contrary it probably has to do with enduring suffering in faith and hope that somehow this endurance will be of use to someone somewhere;
• moved to abandon the expectation that God needs to be there in a state of perpetual intervention in order to be real and in order to prove love;
• moved to moved to leave the many preconceptions of who this God-person is at the tree of pain in order to move forward in the relationship with a clean emotional slate...

that i have lost all written record of this just makes that time more precious to me. to try to retype it would be like trying to rephotograph and eclipse.

all those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain
(roy baty- rutger hauer's character in blade runner)

the scriptures we explored together were:
romans 8.15-17
luke 11.9-13
philippians 3.10-13

in and out

"I agree that our focus as a church should be connecting everyone together... How do I connect with people I don't know with in the church?" (crazy mom)

these two ideas were posted in the comment box for an earlier post. i think that they invite a whole new post. i am hoping that this kind of spinoff will happen regularly on this blog and will be its lifesblood.

anyway, first off i think that we might have a couple things backwards here. whereas mission and ministry are great connectors, the focus of the church is not to be missional in its ministries in order to facilitate connection between its members. that feels really contrived to me, like the church is somehow using the needy to serve some kind of in-house social agenda.

ew- put that way any ministry loses its beauty. the glory of ministering to anyone is the fact that it is for the benefit of the other- a kindness given away, no strings. believers get accused of making people 'love projects' and such in order to bolster their numbers or in some way self-serve.

perhaps a better way to view this would be to first identify the focus, which is to be missional (outward rather than inward)... and then to acknowledge that a nice biproduct of doing ministry together seems to be connection between those ministering BUT that ministry to others will be our focus whether connection takes place within this context or not.

now the thing i was getting at a week ago or so was that there is a need in the church for both OUTreach and something i have been calling 'INreach'.

we have varied ideas and strategies concerning OUTreach- as we attend to Jesus' final words about making disciples and baptizing people, we are thinking OUTreach and it challenges us to look away from ourselves.

great- but what does INreach mean?

INreach is still ministering to the other, except that these others actually walk through the doors seeking community. they are easily spotted: for those interested in 'other-spotting', they are the people who linger after a gathering rather than make a mad dash to their cars. they are waiting for something social to happen that doesn't happen when they are sitting in the big room. that is why they are still standing in the lobby.

these are people who know no one (or very limited numbers of someones) and have no real means (apart from introducing themselves around which is not particularly comfortable for most) of establishing connection with a bunch of complete strangers who all seem to know each other well and are on their own turf.

INreach is attending to the need for community that a person expresses simply by walking in off the street and remaining in the facility for longer than the duration of the basic gathering.

so back to the big question posed: how to connect?

(note: i don't really feel comfortable blogging like an advice columnist, but i can't figure out a way to answer the question without suddenly sounding all stuffy and detached, so here we go with 'personal.')

"just be you and remember that you are much more comfortable that the other is, and so you have an opportunity to share that comfort around.

buy a coffee for someone, introduce them to somebody you know- now they know twice as many people and it's only their first day."

they linger for a reason.

we'll have to do a few more tests

in a talk i gave recently, i began with a little quiz.

the idea was to establish that, with regard to the Bible, we all have defaults within us that are imprinted through our socialization, and often these defaults affect us the way 'blind spots' do... our picture of things (in this case, our interpretations of passages of the Bible) is distorted by them or, perhaps more accurately, riddled with holes by them.

the challenge is to know ourselves- to know where we tip in this way or that- so that we can more objectively (if that is possible) deal with the revealed word of God and receive the blessings of grace, wisdom, insight and perspective that are to characterize our every thought and action...

at least that's the plan.

so anyway, i presented a couple questions from Scot McKnight's Hermeneutics Quiz as presented in the winter 2008 leadership journal (volume 29 no.1)... the idea is that a (1) for any given question represents a more conservative spin, whereas a (5) represents a more progressive approach. (3) would indicate moderation- somewhere in the middle.

there are no white hats or black hats here. it is not that (1) is Christian and (5) is heretic, or that (5) is cool and relaxed while (1) is uptight. these questions are posed mainly to raise some key issues regarding how we interact with scripture. in scot mknight's words:

This quiz is designed to surface the decisions we make, perhaps without thinking about them, and about how we both read our Bible and don't read our Bible. Some will want to quibble with distinctions or agree with more than one answer. No test like this can reveal all the nuances needed, but broad answers are enough to raise the key issues. On a scale of 1-5, mark the answer that best fits your approach to reading the Bible. (If, for example, you fall between response 1 and response 3, give yourself a 2.) Then total the points and your score will reveal where you land on our hermeneutical scale. (mcknight)

ha ha- important to indicate that it is, in fact, the writers' scale. the results of an instrument like this are largely inconclusive, but they do provide us with a picture- even if the picture is drawn in one's wrong hand using crayon!

anyway, here is the rest of the quiz. take it with someone fun.
see it as an alternative to playing scrabulous for hours on end!

feel free to take it on your own and then log onto www.LeadershipJournal.net (http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2008/01/the_hermeneutic.html)
to compare your perspective place in the hermeneutical cosmos to some 'big names' in the parallel universe refered to as 'the church.'

***

A. The Bible is:
1) God's inspired words in confluence with the authors.
3) God's inspired words that arise out of a community and then are written down by an author.
5) Words of an author who speaks out of a community's tradition, but which sacramentally lead us to God.

B. The Bible is:
1) God's exact words for all time.
3) God's message (instead of exact words) for all time.
5) God's words and message for that time but need interpretation and contextualization to be lived today.

C. The Bible's words are:
1) Inerrant on everything.
3) Inerrant on matters of faith and practice.
5) Not defined by inerrancy or errancy, which are modernistic categories.

D. The commands in the Old Testament to destroy a village, including women and children, are:
1) Justifiable judgement against sinful, pagan, immoral peoples.
3) God's ways in the days of the Judges (etc): they are primitive words but people's understanding as divine words for that day.
5) A barbaric form of war in a primitive society, and I wish they weren't in the Bible.

E. The story of Hosea (the prophet) and Gomer (his wife) is:
1) A graphic reality that speaks of God's faithfulness and Israel's infidelity.
3) A parable (since, for example, God would never ask a believer to marry a prostitute).
5) An unfortunate image of an ancient prophet that stereotypes women and too easily justifies violence against women.

F. The command of Jesus to wash feet is:
1) To be taken literally, despite near universal neglect in the church.
3) A first centruy form of serving others, to be practiced today in other ways.
5) An ancient custom with no real implication for our world.

G. The gift of prophecy is:
1) Timeless, despite lack of attention in the church today.
3) An ancient form of communication that is seen today in proclaiming scriptural truths.
5) No longer needed and dramatically different from today's preaching.

H. Prohibitions against homosexuality in the Bible are:
1) Permanent prohibitions reflecting God's will.
3) Culturally shaped, still normative, but demanding greater sensitivity today.
5) A purity-code violation that has been eliminated by Christ.

I. The unity of the Bible is:
1) God's systematic truth that can be discerned by careful study of the Bible.
3) The gospel call to living by faith that is expressed in a variety of ways by different authors in the Bible.
5) Not found by imposing on the integrity of each author in the Bible to conform to overarching systems; the unity is in the God who speaks to us today through the Word.

J. The Holy Spirit's role in interpretation is:
1) To guide the individual regardless of what others say.
3) To guide the individual in tandem/conversation with the church.
5) To guide the community that can instruct the individual.

K. The injunctions upon women in 1 Timothy 2.9-15 are:
1) Timeless truths and normative for today.
3) Culturally-shaped but, with proper interpretation and transfer, for today; e.g. we can learn from how Paul address a situation with uninstructed women in Ephesus.
5) Need for early Christians, bound in the first century, but not for today.

L. Careful interpretation of the Bible is:
1) Objective, rational, universal, timeless.
3) Dialectical, relational, culturally-shaped, timely.
5) Subjective, personal, culturally-bound, time specific.

M. The context for reading the Bible is:
1) Solely an individual's responsibility.
3) The individual in conversation with, and respect for, church traditions.
5) The confessional statement of one's community of faith.

N. Discerning the historical context of a passage is:
1) Unimportant since God speaks to me directly.
3) Often or sometimes significant in order to grasp meaning.
5) Necessary and dangerous to avoid in reading the Bible.

O. The Bible:
1) Can be examined and understood without bias.
3) Can be understood but with biases.
5) Can be partially understood by a reader with bias.

P. Capital punishment:
1) Should be practiced today because the Bible teaches it.
3) Should be examined carefully to determine if it is the best option today; some instances of capital punishment in the Bible are no longer advisable.
5) As delineated in the Bible, pertains to ancient Israel; such practices are no longer useful and should be universally banned.

Q. Tattoos:
1) Are forbidden because of Leviticus 19.28
3) Are forbidden in Leviticus as idolatrous marks, which we know from study of the ancient Near East.
5) Are permissible because the purity codes are not for Christians today.

R. The requirement of the Jerusalem Council (Acts 5.29) not to eat any meat improperly killed (strangled instead of having the blood drained properly)
1) Is a permanent commandment for all Christians today.
3) Is for Jewish Christians only.
5) Is a temporary custom for first-century Jewish Christians, and is no longer a concern for Christians.

S. Adultery
1) Deserves the death penalty, as stated in the Old Testament
3) Was not punished by death when Jesus confronted it, and therefore death is not a Christian punishment.
5) And divorce were governed by Old Testament laws from a primitive culture, very different from our own; just as these concepts developed within Bible times, our understanding of proper punishment has been improved.

T. Sabbath
1) Was never eliminated by New Testament writers and should be practiced by Christians (on Saturday).
3) Developed into a Sunday worship observance for Christians, and Christians should not work on that day.
5) Turned into Sunday for Christians, who need to worship together (weekly, on any day) and can work if they think they need to.

so there you have it.

there are some guidelines and such at the end of the article, but being that Leadership Journal is a rather tough magazine to find anywhere, i will summarize and then encourage anyone reading to go online to find out more... intellectual property what it is and all...

(note: i have tried very hard to not project my own opinions on the followup here, offering instead a 'zip file' of the article- an 'executive summary' of sorts. remember that the results are skewed if you started working the numbers creatively by going off the scale- higher than 5 for 'extreme-sports progressive' or integers etc for 'radical right wing' responses! ha ha)

idea: count how many 1's, 3's and 5's you marked... the category with the highest number of responses is probably your default.

idea: add up the points... the total scores range from the low 20 to a possible high of 100...

then consider:

• the conservative hermeneutic group scores 52 or lower, with an emphasis on the authority- ongoing and normative- of scripture, tending to hold to the maxim if the Bible says it, that settles it. literal readings can lead to rather literal applications.
• the moderate hermeneutic group typically scores 53-65, and could be seen as the voice of reason and open-mindedness, being conservative on some issues and progressive on others. moderates can often be open to charges of inconsistency because of a flexible hermeneutic.
• the progressive hermeneutic group typically scores 66+, but there is quite a dramatic difference between 66 and 92 in perspective. the progressive tends to see the Bible as historically shaped and culturally conditioned, but still considers it the Word of God today. the challenge to the progressive is to not allow the Bible to be swallowed by a quest to find modern analogies that sometimes minimize what the text seems to clearly say.

Wherever you land on this scale, it is my hope we all will engage the seriousness of how we read the Bible- and don't read the Bible

(Scot McKnight, professor of religious studies at North Park University in Chicago, blogger on JesusCreed.org)

corrective lenses

we bring a lot with us to our reading of scripture.
people read…

through their tradition,
through their upbringing,
through their perspective,
through every sunday school class they did or didn't attend,
through every well-intentioned but doctrinally disjunct bible study,
through every talk that put them to sleep before the final point,
through every song they've heard that had biblical content..

everything.

reading the bible is a lot like trying to interpret a work of art.

it requires study, preparation and informance because we can't get away from the fact that we have perceptual screens which colour or otherwise distort everything. it's probably prudent to both acknowledge them and, where they distort truth, apply more perspective- like corrective lenses.

two lenses are particularly useful in this regard:

experience. nothing comes close to equipping us for drawing meaning from a piece of art or a piece of scripture like experience with the genre in question. the more experience we have with it, the more familiar we are with the languages used and therefore the more capable we are to perceive the deeper themes, to discover the rich poetry that lays beneath the surface of our earliest impressions.

relationship. being surrounded by fellow students affords us both balance and perspective, enriching and informing the conclusions that we draw through ongoing dialogue with these others as we wrestle the angel in search of meaning and blessing.

the goal, after all, is to earnestly discover the word behind the words...

distance and direction

Revive us with your fire
-Robin Mark

when we sing this song, what are we asking God to do?
what does this word Revival mean?

· an awakening?

· a raising from the dead?

in 2002, recognizing that this moment of clarity would soon pass, i frantically scribbled a vision down in my journal while it could be contained in words:

I dream of a time when Revival of historical proportions lights this city on fire for months on end; a time when people are phoning us from all around the country asking what God is doing here because they have heard it on The National; a time when the only thing that matters will be that God's name is lifted up and his people are found faithful in serving him through truly loving those whom he loves and whom he died to save.

As God lights the fires of Revival in this city, I long to see him use our church... that we might not be boxed into these four walls, but that we would be part of God's larger work in this city and this world.

That we might be part of the day of the Lord.

yes yes, very nice

but what about the mass-murderers and the drug-dealers and the pornographers and the baby-killers and the war-mongers and those who misuse power to exploit others to some degree to their own ends... does this day of the Lord hold any hope for them?

1 corinthians 6.9-10 seems to be pretty clear that there are no easy spots to be flippantly had. we're all in the same soup and any winking at sin cheapens the shed blood of Christ. the writer of 1 corinthians is pretty frank in 6.11 when he speaks of being washed, sanctified and justified in Jesus' name by the Spirit of God.

and what about that frowning woman in the honking car with LOVE stamped on her license plate? does the 'day of the Lord' and all of this grace from God even include her?

i think i have more immediate grace for manson family member susan atkins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Atkins) than i have for someone who is simply rude to me.

it is humbling, considering how rude i myself can be.

yet Jesus made it abundantly clear when he spoke to his boys in john 14.1-7 that he was modeling, for us all, the extent to which we are to offer grace to another.

to one who has transgressed,
am i ready to offer unconditional forgivenness?
to one who is needy,
am i ready to offer food, clothing, shelter and fellowship?
to one destined for an eternal separation from God,
am i willing to offer my life in order to share the truth?
am i willing even to put my own forever in jeopardy
for another?
hmmm...

in his book, the brothers karamazov, fyoder dostoevsky tells a story of a woman who did one good thing for another in her entire life:

Once upon a time there was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into the lake of fire.

So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; ‘She once pulled up an onion in her garden,’ said he, ‘and gave it to a beggar woman.’

And God answered: ‘You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.’

The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. ‘Come,’ said he, ‘catch hold and I’ll pull you out.’ he began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her.

But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. ‘I’m to be pulled out, not you. It’s my onion, not yours.’ As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away. (dostoevsky)

in his book, Son of a Preacher Man, jay bakker (son of television evangelist, jim) urges the church to get over itself...

We should abandon the unimportant trappings of religion in order to meet real people where they really are. (Bakker)

interesting that the things that we hold dear, the things that give our faith experience some structure, are often referred to as 'trappings' (something that somehow ties us up from living a life of freedom.)

meeting real people where they really are may mean that we need to not only go out of our way to find them, but even further- living there with them, serving them, forgiving them, offering them the kind of fellowship that we would offer the king of kings if he were to grace us with a visit.

if not able to even imagine this, then how truly far are we from this kingdom- this realization of God’s glory and purpose for all humankind?

what if the coming of the day of the Lord relies more on our faithful response to the needs of the other than we realize?

***

Distance and direction, resistance and dissection
Assistance and perfection, insistence and inspection
Two of me, two of you, two of us, two by two
The double life we live
Distance and direction run straight ahead
To your better world (to your better world)

We're putting on our make-up. but we never make-up
We're the beauty and the beast, we're dead men telling tales
Sleeping through our wake-up
Two of me, two of you, two of us, two by two
The double life we live
Distance and direction run straight ahead
To your better world
(Terry Taylor, circa 1982)