Wednesday, August 26, 2009

A Cool Church Name

So I tweeted today that my latest read has surprised me. I seem to be something I formerly was happy to say I wasn’t.
Ever thought you were definitely not something and it turns out you may actually be it!
This is often how we operate. Its not that we claim to be something, we more often or not claim not to be something.
We so often define ourselves by what we aren’t.

So, we’ve changed the name of our church. No longer First Baptist Church of Reedley we are now Redeemer’s Church and everyone is loving the change.
The new name is so powerful.
Yes its classic and not hip.
Yes its got a religious smell to it more than a cool smell to it.
But it is a loaded, powerful name that is absolutely spot on.

So come back to our habits of defining ourselves by what we aren’t, what we stand against, what we don’t do, rather than who we are, what we do and what we stand for.

Enter the Redeemer.

Its Exodus 6, early on in the story of God. God appears to Moses and he gives Himself a new name …and the moment that new name is given God, Jehovah, The Lord (or as its best interpreted The Eternal One) talks about redeeming. It’s a bigger word than ‘rescue’ and a bigger word than ‘save’ – the bigness of the word is in the wholeness and fullness of what redemption does.

Redemption is a rich word.
It’s a Bible word that Christians need to speak and talk about.
Redemption is a salvation word.
But this word doesn’t present salvation as ‘get me out of here God’ or the other classic Christian mistakes such as ‘it gets me saved so I can get to heaven’. Redemption is a word that we must preach because it tells us how brilliant God’s salvation is – its not only future in heaven when we die it is slap bang in the here and now and very much about who you are and what you do. It involves your essential being here and now and on into eternity.

Redemption says – I no longer need to define myself by the negatives I do not do, believe or stand for, I can define myself by what I fully have been made by God's redeeming power. Negative (I am a wretch) has been replaced with positive (I am a redeemed child of God). Its not what I don’t do its what I do – and that doing is me, fully me doing it because of the power of a redeeming God.

It challenges teaching that majors on how wretched we are and how that won’t be fixed until we get to heaven. It rather says …..there is a you that is created in the image of God with all God’s beauty, and God has come down now in Christ and is redeeming you to that original design beauty outworking now Christ’s redemptive death and resurrection.

So come back to my surprise today as I read a book and discovered I may be something I thought I wasn’t – this is sin. And its sin every time I define myself by what I am not or what I do not; when I define myself as a redeemed follower of Christ in the negatives. Sin is when we remain in the broken, wretched state of defining our being not by the redeeming work of God in Christ, but by the state of sinful, broken humankind.

Imagine how different you would be and everyone you engage with or even set eyes on could be if we spoke the language of the redeemed because we live the life of the redeemed and we tell everyone we meet about the Redeemer.

It really is a cool name for a church!!

Monday, May 18, 2009

Is Twitter destroying us?

It’s been too long since I last visited this blog. But, I’ve started to tweet!
The explosion of Twitter and the multiple other social networking forums has caught my imagination and the imagination of the thousands who sign up daily for either Facebook or Twitter. It’s the web 2.0 surge - the web now doing what its original designer hoped it would do.
But I guess as I join in – Twitter name GilbertFoster – it’s got me asking some questions of civilization especially western civilization.
In my life time we’ve gone from face to face communication to letter writing, to conversations via telephone, to emails, to then texting to now Twitter – 140 characters (not letters). The whole thing needs to be in the space of 140 characters.

It’s a neat exercise to succinctly put down comments in 140 characters.
I’m a bottom line kind of guy – give me the short version – and even I struggle to get it to 140. It becomes a new way of thinking and communicating.

We live in a society that is so cluttered. Every day hundreds of adverts hit your eyes; every day hundreds of messages cross your mind.
Maybe something as short, brief and summarized as 140 characters will be noticed; will help de-clutter us.

But if Web 2.0 and social networks are to develop new 21st century forms of community – can we really know someone in 140 characters?
Is it really social networking or is that just a myth, a dream …even worse – is it a destruction of civilization.

Think about relationships. Think about what it would look like if we all spoke in 140 characters. In some friendships this might be helpful but in most it would be unhelpful.

Would we ever get to the real person? Would we ever reach the real stuff to talk about?
Just as you get past the usual pleasantries – boom …out of characters.
Maybe you think we’d avoid the pleasantries and just get to the real stuff …but you and I know that doesn’t work in sex, its unlikely going to work in building genuine loving relationships!!

140 character social networking.
Is the issue the limiting number of characters, or is the issue the limiting amount of time?
Are we becoming a nation of fewer words, or is Twitter successful because we are a nation of fewer minutes.

I guess Twitter would never work in Africa.
But maybe Africa’s healthier than America – because of it.

And then what about the Gospel.
Yep – for too long people have shrunk the Gospel down to too few characters. The four spiritual laws; the sinner’s prayer; recite this prayer and you’re in.
Our reduction of the Gospel has damaged the Gospel and distorted God.
Both God and the Gospel are a lot more than 140 characters.
Both God and the Gospel need time, development, following.

A 140 character relationship - will only get you a 140 character worth of God, hope and faith.

So ……is it quit the tweeting and return to the blogging?
Or is it let tweeting do what tweeting can do – and make sure we don’t make it do what it never can do.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

What causes us to post anonymously?

So there are a couple of phrases we’ve got on our church staff that are really helpful.
The first one goes something like this “help me understand”.
Ever had that awkward moment when someone does something not very good or rather weird strange and you need to talk to them about it – the above phrase is excellent in confronting without confrontation. It’s a modern take on Jesus’ compulsion to speak the truth in love.
The second phrase we have around our staff is the Bill Hybel’s classic “always say the last 10%”.
Ever been in a situation where you are talking to someone – but you hold back from saying everything that needs to be said. You might have said 90% of what needs to be said – but that last 10% is so crucial. It’s also the most difficult to say – in the right way for the right reasons.

So why am I telling you this?
What’s this blog about??

If you’ve been reading my two blogs you’d see a confession by one blogger about blogging anonymously. So here’s a Scottish pastor’s musings – giving the last 10% and hopefully helping you understand.

Confession is leaving the church and the Christian’s vocabulary.
This is bad.
Interesting BBC article today on confession. The article is entitled “Two sexes ‘sin in different ways’”. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7897034.stm?lss
The report came amid Vatican concerns about the declining rate of confessions. A recent survey of Catholics found nearly a third no longer considered confession necessary, while one in 10 considered the process an obstacle to their dialogue with God.

It’s the classic outworking of Christian individualism and I’ll-make-my-remarks- anonymously-because-I-do-not-live-to-or-for-anyone-else.
Harsh but true words; the last 10% kind of words.

Protestantism has never embraced confession – sad when the Apostle’s all did.
Catholicism embraced it but then used it to allow a few take individualism to a dictatorial level.
But it needs to return for the church to be saved.

If we confessed out sins would we need to act anonymously ever??
If we confessed our sins would we need anyone to tell us the last 10%?
If we confessed our sins would we need anyone to ask us ‘help me understand?’

With confession comes humility.
With confession comes transparency.
With confession comes grace.
With confession comes hope.
With confession comes salvation.

Just some musings …..but musings I began to practice many years ago and since then I've never needed to be anonymous.
Live in the light.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Why we deserve to lose Prop 8.

So it’s January 1, 2009.
What a last few weeks we had in 2008.
It began with inviting a comedian to take our entire Sunday service to kick off Christmas – even my open minded, golf playing, now also pheasant and Bambi hunting wannabee yuppie younger brother who loves the music of Queen and has over 5000 songs on his iPod sync’d to his big Merc thinks that was pretty risky!
Then it was running a church service with two adults suspended on a plank of wood at what seemed like 30 feet high (it was more like 4 feet) all to illustrate Joseph going out on a limb for God. It felt like 30 feet high because inadvertently one of the people I spontaneously chose to help me suffers from acrophobia. And then another couple I chose might be more than a couple …maybe there were three people out on the plank. Of course we’d calculated the weight to anchor measurements – hopefully we had it right…..as we heard the plank make a breaking sound!!!
Sunday service planning and execution is no easy business.
But then came the request to host a funeral service in our worship center – for the local Buddhist congregation – incense, Buddhist altar and all.
The last month of the year was a risky month.

But is love not always risky.
We went ahead with the Buddhist ceremony in our facility because Jesus told us very clearly to ‘love our neighbors.’
Never easy to love.
Risky to love.
Hard sometimes to love.
But is that not the core of our faith.
Love.
Love moved God.
Love moved Jesus.
Love called us.

So we sit at the start of 2009.
I know this year will have its share of risky decisions. Not because our church staff is sitting around dreaming of what next whacky thing to pull off just to be controversial - although sometimes we get up to that also (how else do pastors have fun) - but because we are committed to following the way of Jesus which is a way of love.
Love can’t not be risky.

What is so sad, and so urgently in need of fixing, is that this risky form of love is the very opposite to how people perceive Christians.
Let’s take the Prop 8 battle of November.
Whether right or wrong (check out my blog of June 11, 08 “Are you martyring or being a martyr.”) Christians cannot enter into this debate without being viewed as bigots with hate and homophobia because for way too long Christians have failed to show any love - even a crumb of love towards those who do not share their views.
That historic failure leaves Christians with no right now to speak.

There is a warning Christians in America need to heed from what happened in the UK in the late 1980’s. Christian hate and bigotry left them powerless to speak with any impact and subsequently Christianity slid from a place of influence to a silent, mocked voice. The results - Evangelicals dropped from 25% of the population down to a mere 7% and are still slipping.

May 2009 be a year we put the brakes on our arrogant assumption that because we’re right we should be listened to, and may it be a year that we hit the throttle of demonstrating risky love.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

The Gospel Makes It Possible To Have Such A Radically Different Life

The gospel makes it possible to have such a radically different life.

Listen to the words of a lady who grasped how amazing the gospel is:

If I was saved by my good works then there would be a limit to what God could ask of me or put me through. I would like a taxpayer with “rights” – I would have done my duty and now I would deserve a certain quality of life. But if I am a sinner saved by grace – then there’s nothing he cannot ask of me.
[Timothy Keller, The Reason for God p183.]

I love that quote. She’s got it.
It is these radical asks of grace that make the Christian life so radically different – because when God asks he empowers.

This asks are beyond the realms of human or natural boundaries. In his grace he asks us to forgive those who wrong us. In his grace he asks us to trust him even when the darkest cloud hovers over us. In his grace he asks us to give – even our last dollar. In his grace he asks us to turn the other cheek. In his grace he asks us to forego how the world defines success – give up for his values and his Kingdom.
In his grace he asks us to die to self and live for his kingdom and his gospel.

And when get this you begin to live a radically different life – a life that some don’t understand. But what a life.

So why are so many Christians living dull, ordinary lives.
Maybe it’s because they have assumed they are saved by their works and they refuse therefore to let God ask anything of them.

But maybe these works are different than we think. Sometimes our ‘works’ are our biblical knowledge, or our “daily devotional time” or our ‘Bible study”. We’re not doing door to door work like some cults but so often we default into a works based salvation and we miss the radical call of grace….we stop listening to it too busy doing our ‘works’.

Of course nobody would ever confess this. But the evidence is in the ordinariness of our living. Christians are boring. Christians are just like everybody else. The words ‘radicals’ and ‘revolutionaries’ are absent from all but a few. [Take Jake and RenĂ©e. Living in Guadalajara to then head to Guatemala to plant a church …..with their little daughter and no money!! …check out their blog @ jakenrenee.blogspot.com - radicals.]

Grace more than knowledge, more than theology, more than church activity, more than Christian piety makes you open to do whatever God asks. Risk, boldness, radicalness…are products of grace not of works.

So Christ followers out there ….live in grace …it’s an adventure. Read about it; learn about it; but most of all live it.
So church pastors out there ….. teach grace; saturate your campus with grace; model it …it will transform your congregation.

The gospel makes it possible to have such a radically different life.

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Would America Vote For An Ugly President?

So we’ve just begun our new Sunday morning teaching series called Jesus is President. We kicked it off with a talk about Jesus being an ugly president (listen, download or itune it at www.reedleyfbc.com).
The cynic might suggest that politics is all ugly and so yep, we would vote for an ugly president.
But Jesus was ugly in a different way.

One of the prophets (the 8th century BC prophet called Isaiah) spoke of the coming Messiah and how ‘he would have no beauty that we would desire him’, and comments on how people would hide their faces from him. What ever Isaiah meant, he certainly meant to paint the picture of a coming Mashiach (Messiah) - President – would not fit the normal mold.

And Jesus didn’t fit the normal mold.
The normal mold required you to be born into a certain line – in Jesus’ day the line of the Hasmoneans. It required you to be part of their dynasty. Jesus wasn’t.
The normal mode required you to be approved by Rome. Some called this the genius of the Roman Empire, they approved of client-kings – local kings of provinces within the Roman Empire who were loyal to Rome and could help them administer local and religious matters. Jesus wasn’t.

The normal mode included being approved of by the right people, getting the nod from the hierarchy, learning the right hands to shake, if not the right handshake. Jesus didn’t do any of that …in fact the crowd that he most annoyed in his teachings and behavior were the established crowd.

To them Jesus was ugly.
His teachings were rebellious – too far left.
His associates were outsiders.
His parents unschooled.
And as for his campaign manager – some weirdo from the desert dressed in camel skins and he ate locust on a stix.

And then there was the central reason he was ugly. He appealed to the commoner - a group of people in that day known as the am ha-arets - immigrants, illegals, the religious illiterates. No one bothered with the am ha-arets. They were ignorables.

The Jesus campaign swung through their territory. In fact he spent most of his campaign out in the sticks, in backwater places, border territory where no one else would venture. Jesus connected with the commoner.

Anyone else like ugly – I do.

Going to be a fun series – listen along..

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

How come he got Napa?

I'm still not fully back from my summer break ....body is present in Reedley but my mind is still in limbo ...so no major blog article until after Labor Wk'd .....the official end of summer!

However, in the meantime....during the summer some good friends from Napa joined our team in Kenya and are now partnering with us the Furaha Community Center in the Huruma slum - its incredible work that is happening there and to have more join us - the Kingdom of God is advancing.

Pete wrote an excellent blog article about that partnership - here's the link enjoy reading it:

http://www.peterrshaw.blogspot.com/