One of the early speakers at the Q Conference in Austin was David Goetz, author of Death by Suburb. See more on this by visiting Jason Barnharts blog: Windmills

David Goetz immediately stirred my interest because he is not just an academic or unseasoned clergy with an opinion. He is He is president of CZ Marketing, a brand and strategy firm serving the nonprofit sector.  AND Goetz lives with his family in the very suburban Wheaton, Illinois. He is positioned within the culture he is writing about, and admittedly knows first-hand the struggles and temptations of suburban temptation.  For me, someone who is speaking out of their own experience and vulnerability has a special place.

To listen to David Goetz talk about Death by Suburb, download the MP3 file by going here Death By Suburb Audio

I am reminded over and over again how deceptive Satan is. This god we call the Suburban Dream seems so right and so heaven-like, and yet its very pursuit usually takes us in the very opposite direction from God. The more we find what we’re looking for in the suburban life, the more it creates an emptiness that demands to be filled.  The hamster wheel is a perfect, in overused, metaphor for the suburban golden calf. It is an idolatry of our own making that seems under our control, but that really puts us on an endless, empty, exhausting pursuit that makes us spin wildly out of control, yet demands that we look calm and happy and put-together on the surface. It’s an amazing device of the Enemy that few see through unless prayer or hardship pull back the corner on the real scene.

Goetz’s talk wasn’t all that profound or novel, but it did pull back the corner a bit and sort of jabbed its finger into a familiar, but undefined sore spot. Now that we know what the pain is caused by, we can work on the tough, thankless job of helping ourselves and others detox. The hardest part of this whole picture is that every addiction denies its own existence and resists its own cure. Addiction can’t exist in the presence of a cure, so it makes the cure look ridiculous and impossible. Many of us have come to the point of knowing our Suburban addiction, and we want to detox, but the question is HOW?

“When Jesus heard this, he said to him (them), ‘You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.‘”

WRONG ANSWER! IS THERE ANOTHER WAY GOD?!  David Goetz humbly says that the other ways will be prayer (which most don’t like) or hardship (which no one likes). Addictions suck!

“When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was a man of great wealth.”

————————————————

So anyways, I mentioned in the last post that one of the tradmarks of the Q Conference is its understated treatment of times of worship. Normally, it consists of an individual playing an instrument (guitar or piano) off to the side of the stage. There are white lyrics on a black screen to help lead the singing, but there is no sermonizing, no cheerleading, no request to stand/sit/kneel just sort of natural invitation to enter into worship with the presence of God and and the simplicity of song doing the “work”. Below is a cell phone shot of David Hodges, former  member of Evanescence, leading worship from the side of the stage, plunking on a keyboard and singing softly.

You gotta read Jason Barnhart’s blog to get some of this. Go there now, by clicking here: Windmills

For me, Alan Hirsch remains credible because he presents good data and because what he says makes sense. He’s not just a bunch of bluster and unsubstatiated opinion. He also has been an observer of trends in England and Down Under that seem to be pre-cursors to what is happening in America. He can predict what will happen in America by explaining what happened in those parts of the world.

So, here’s the the tough part of putting Hirsh’s wisdom to work in the Church. We like to contain things and then measure them. As long as we are using an attractional or extractional model of church, we can put our arms around those who respond and we can count them, survey them, monitor them, etc.  Since we measure success in the church by numbers and dollars (c’mon, you know I’m right) we replicate those things that look like successful outcomes.  Bringing people into the church environment, and assimilating them into our culture, look like success as we do it on greater scales, so we keep doing it.  What we can measure we can manage, and the conventional attractional/extractional church environment allows us to measure and manage people and behaviors. And so we keep doing it. If Hirsh’s ideas of missionality are correct, which I believe they are, then we are going to HAVE to divorce ourselves from the old measurements of success. Not mask them. Not rename them. Not rewarm them. We need to detox from them and send them as far as East is from West.

How in the heck do we do that?  Some people say they have made the switch from measuring numbers of people in their programs to measuring stories. Huh? What? I don’t know what that means really.  I think it sounds really good, but we’re still qualifying and quantifying to measure success. I’ve heard others say that they measure inputs instead of outputs. Like, Statistical Process Control, if  the theology, training, message, experience, commitment of the Christian community is strong, then the outcomes will be strong. What outcomes? How do you measure how well a mom loves her kids or how effectively a boss relates to his employees or how purely a missionary serves his field? My instinct says that a true missional model has to be a total clean break from dependence on metrics as measures of success. We’ll always have metrics but our confidence in their integrity is indirectly proportional to our freedom to be missional. There will be much argument on this point, but no one can ever win, because we have no way to prove the answer metrically. Some things “work” in some places. The same things “fail” other places. There’s something really important about the Fall of Man and that has to do with categorizing everything as good or bad, but that is another conversation for another time.

So…if we are to be missional, the Church has to cease conforming to the patterns of this world.  The clergy system that depends on butts and bucks is in jeopardy. The facilities system that we’ve adopted to contain the Christian community is on the chopping block. The programs that we use to direct people in tracks of proper behavior might have to go. The worship-centered experience of the faith may have to fall into equal proportion with other less pleasant components. AND…when we become missional, the very metrics that Hirsh uses to show that we’re currently failing as a church will say that we have failed miserably, because to measure how non-missional we are, we are using non-missional metrics!!!

So, on to more important things… The first night there, we ate at a place called the Hickory Street Bar & Grill. It was good in spite of all the buckets scattered around to catch water leaking through the ceiling from the recent rains. It has sort of an indoor outdoor format and a hippish, grungish vibe.

Here is what I ate… Grilled Portobello with corn-salsa, rice and black beans. It was really tasty with its zingy seasoning and freshness. Pretty guilt-free too!

Three years ago, an unlikely hero stepped up and became a Crossing legend by handing me $100 and challenging me to see what our church could do to grow the $100, with the hope that we could help some needy people in the area. This man, Merle Mercer, has little money and has even less desire for recognition, but his generosity and dare to our church inspired the name “Merle’s Challenge” for this grassroots endeavor. That year, we had 20 volunteers take $5 dollars each and they “grew” their share of money by making and selling jewelry, washing windows, trading pennies for dollars, roasting and selling coffee, etc. We ended up raising $2,100 to help three families with medical bills and Christmas presents. Word of the challenge spread to other churches and groups and many more dollars were raised for needy people all over the Ashland area. Merle’s Challenge became an expression of the love of Jesus as His people reached out to those in need.

This year, Merle did it again! This time, I was sitting with Him at the Ashland Breakfast Center one Saturday, and he told me that he really feels badly for the kids in the area who suffer because their families are struggling financially. He gave me $350 and dared us again to grow the money to help kids with basic items that would contribute to their health and quality of life. On Sunday, April 19, at the Crossing, ten people came forward and each selected one of ten envelopes containing various amounts of money from $0 to $100, totaling $350. Each of them accepted the challenge to take the money and creatively, legally, quickly grow it to help out kids of the area. One of them is an artist and will create and auction a painting, one is having a car wash, one is selling garden plants, one is selling photographic portraits for Mother’s Day…and so on. On Sunday, May 3rd, they will return the money they started with, along with the money they “grew.” The money will be used to purchase items that will be assembled to provide basic health kits to children of needy families. The kits will include things like toothbrushes, dental floss, oral thermometers, ibuprophen, antibiotic cream, etc. - all things that can prevent or ease preventable health issues in kids.

I am inviting the ten people who are growing the money to post a comment on this blog to allow them to raise awareness of their own project. Stay tuned and check out the posts. Maybe you can help the cause by supporting one or more of these projects.

I have a feeling that we will be overwhelmed with the outcome of this challenge as God moves us to compassion.

Now, let’s go!

Every time my alarm clock rings, or when I’m brushing my teeth or mowing the lawn, I’m reminded of the horrible, brain-numbing monotony that drones in the background when there isn’t some bright, important sense of purpose to pull us through life.

Thousands of years ago a rich, bored guy named Solomon volunteered to experience a lot of the tasty looking stuff in life - booze, ladies, money, power, stuff, etc - to see if he could find the meaning of life.  While the whole trip sounds like a joy ride, what he found out was pretty surprising…

Without even realizing it, most of us are on the same ride. We are cycling through lots of things that look pretty satisfying. Starting this Sunday, some of us are going to join Solomon on his ride, and we’re going to find that his experience was totally relevant to ours and the punchline is the same…

Please join us for a straight-up study of Solomon’s journey into pleasure as we work through the Old Testament book, Ecclesiastes, together. There won’t be any extra books to read or any homework. Just an hour of shared understanding of some really important ideas.

We will be getting together every Sunday morning at 9:45, at 710 Park Street.  This is for any young adult, regardless of church affiliation. There’s room for a ton of people, so bring someone with you.

On Sunday we gathered around the idea of “positive presence” which is a short way of saying “making and being in relationships with people who are not part of the church.” We continued to use the story of Nehemiah (Ch 2:1-10) to show how a person who is trusted, close, and respectful to those who are in places of influence can actually work with that influence to make things more like God wants them.

Positive presence and relationships go a couple different ways. First, they are individual. It should be a totally natural thing for each of us to connect with people who don’t believe or even act the same as we do. I mentioned on Sunday that people who don’t live or believe the way we do will never care about our beliefs or lifestyle unless they know that we care for them and like them as friends. We need to be a positive presence within their lives and hearts if we are to have any chance at loving them as completely as we should.

Relationships are also cultural. I mentioned on Sunday that we cannot change something that we’re not involved with.  People outside of Christianity don’t seek guidance or direction from Christians or from the Bible. They are influenced, for the most part, by things like the media, entertainment, education, arts, government, science, etc.  If Christians are to have a chance at changing the world for good, we have to influence culture. To do that, we have to be part of the things that drive the culture.  We need to be a positive presence within the world culture.  We need to be positively present in news rooms, locker rooms, studios, court rooms, executive suites, classrooms and laboratories.

I want to punctuate this week’s conversation and look to next week’s discussion with words that have had a big impact on me. A few weeks back we shared a 2nd Century description of early Christians who were making their presence know in Greece, Rome and Jerusalem in very positive ways. These writings not only express the positive reputation of early Christians, but they also sketch a vision of the Church as it is still meant to be today. These words are from The Epistle to Diognetus:

For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life; they are assailed by the Jews as foreigners, and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred.

Beginning on Sunday, September 7th, we will be starting a new series at the
Crossing entitled “Visioneering”.  We will be diving into the book of
Nehemiah.  Scripture gives incredible accounts of God giving vision to His
people and them responding in awesome, sacrificial, tangible ways to make
God’s plans a reality.

Nehemiah is a story of awesome vision to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem that
had fallen amidst multiple conquests of the land.  In Nehemiah’s story, God,
unlike in the stories of Moses, Noah and Abraham [to name a few], works
behind the scenes.  A bulk of the story of Nehemiah is one we can easily
relate to; a guy receives a vision, works really hard to see it become a
reality, and has incredible faith that God will bless His endeavors.

Life is too short to live without vision and purpose.  Maybe you’re seeking
to rebuild the wall of sexual purity.  Maybe you’re seeking God’s vision for
Mr. or Mrs. Right.  You may possibly be seeking God’s vision for which
college you should attend.  We’re all asking, or should be asking, what God
wants to do with us during our time in Ashland, Ohio.  Let’s begin
visioneering [visioning + pioneering] on Sunday, September 7th together.  We
cannot wait!

This week at the Crossing, we will stay focused on Jesus’ words that have come to be called the Sermon on the Mount. Leading us into Matthew 6:1-4 will be Nate Bebout.  Nate is our good friend and a staff member at Five Stones Community Church.  The topic for this Sunday will be Giving to the Needy.

One of the most controversial, intriguing, popular, misunderstood, and powerful sections of the Bible is the Book of Revelation. For good and bad, people’s entire lives are affected and even plotted-out according to the words the apostle John wrote in this body of scripture. If nothing else, Revelation is one of the biggest curiosities of the 20th and 21st centuries, drawing people within and without faith in Jesus into conversation about its meaning.

Starting Sunday morning, April 20, at 9:30 at 710 Park St., Dr. John Byron from Ashland Theological Seminary will be leading a short series exploring ways to read and understand Revelation. John will help set framework through which an honest, responsible pursuit of meaning and application can be made. Any young adult is invited and encouraged to attend.

In order to prepare for this series, John would like to share an article he wrote for a local paper. Even if you can’t attend the series, please read the article below to gain an understanding of the perspective he will be sharing. Feel free to converse on the article’s content by entering a comment below the blog post. I hope to see you on Sunday!

Here’s Dr. Byron’s article:

The Middle East Crisis and Bible Prophecy
John Byron Ph.D.
jbyron@ashland.edu

The current Arab-Israeli conflict has caused some Christians to wonder if this is the end of the world as we know it. Indeed, one only has to turn on the TV to find any number of televangelists declaring that this is the beginning of the end. These televangelists are sometimes billed as ‘prophecy experts’ who effortlessly weave together modern events in the world with apocalyptic elements found in the Bible. Each time the Middle East heats up another series of predictions, books and movies are made each connecting the politics of the region with the end of the world. The problem, however, is that when these events fail to occur they have to be reconfigured to explain why that last prediction was not incorrect. The fact is, there have been countless predictions made about the end of the world and none of them have been correct.

My reason for not viewing the current or any prior Arab-Israeli conflict as the end of the world is predicated on how I understand the nature of Bible prophecy. The major source used to predict end time events is the New Testament book known as Revelation. The reason Revelation is often used to predict end times events is because this is what it seems to do. But that is an oversimplification. Revelation represents a genre of literature found in antiquity intended to encourage those who were oppressed both politically and socially. The book of Revelation was written to a group of Christians suffering persecution under Rome and looking for a day when God would turn the tables on Rome and the evil in the world. This literature was intended more to give hope to people in their current situation rather than to serve as a 2000 year old road map to the end of the world. The book of Revelation is an historical document written to a particular group of people at a particular time in history. Moreover, we have a number of examples of this literature from antiquity demonstrating that Revelation is not unique. It is also a religious document that belongs to a certain genre of literature just as epistles belong to the genre of letter writing and gospels to the genre of biography. Since Revelation is particular type of literature, I interpret the symbolism according to that genre. Thus stars falling out of the sky, dragons, conquering armies, plagues and armies of demons or angels are all part of the world of apocalyptic literature. Just as a person going to a horror movie would expect certain elements to occur in the movie (blood, screams, scary monster etc), so to a reader of apocalyptic literature would expect these elements to be present. Therefore, I interpret none of it as predicting actual events but as symbolic descriptions of how the ancients perceived God working in the world. Apocalyptic literature was a way to deliver a message of hope that God would one day act on their behalf.

So is Revelation prophecy? Yes, the author identifies it as such. But the label ‘prophecy’ is not necessarily synonymous with predicting the future. In the Jewish and Christian tradition prophecy had more to do with what God was doing in the present age. Prophecy was more a critique of the people of God than a promise to annihilate their enemies. Even when future events were predicted, it was more about the imminent rather than distant future. Revelation fits this definition. Besides giving hope to persecuted Christians, Revelation is also a social critique intended to warn Christians not to become enamored with the Empire. It opens with letters listing the problems among some churches that seem to reflect their comfort level of living within the Roman social and political system. Revelation reminds the Church that the only true king is God not the Emperor. In the end, whenever that may be, one has to answer to God and not the Emperor.

So what does this mean for the modern Middle East conflict? We should not be watching in expectation for the end of the world by trying to connect the dots between Revelation and modern events. To do so is to betray a lack of appreciation for the kind of literature Revelation represents. I am uncomfortable with Christians who are quietly celebrating the current humanitarian crisis as the fulfillment of God’s end time plan. The teachings of Jesus promote peace and compassion not the celebration of war and death. Even if a Christian does believe that Revelation is a road map to the end times (which I do not) they should still be striving for peace. As Christians we should be working for peace between Jews and Arabs rather than finding theological satisfaction from the horrible ravages of war. I think a better use of Revelation would be to critique the Church and our comfort level within society rather than as a way to plot the world’s demise. Jesus said love your enemies, not plan their extinction.

Join us at the Crossing THIS SUNDAY as we kick off a study of the Prophets.

The world is and always has been a place of pride and great beauty. The life of a prophet is scandalized because amidst this world, they speak against the norms that many have come to believe as essential; impossible to live life without. The prophets are lonely bearing witness to a story, a cosmic story, that no one else wants to read or hear.

Through all their pain and heartache, the prophet remains committed to the Author of the story of life and continue to plead, rant and rave that others get onboard with the Author’s original intent.

This Sunday, we’ll be taking a closer look at Amos and exploring his message of justice. What was Amos’ message for people of his day? How does Amos message resonate with us thousands of years later? How is the world of Amos eerily similar to our world today?

See you on Sunday @ 11:00pm in the Park Street Brethren Church Family Life Center [fancy terminology for “gym”].