Adventist Wheel

Where's the Fight?

mschwantes@yahoo.com (Marcel) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 02:15:13 PST

This post may not end up in the "happy" file. I've been troubled recently about the negligence of so many Christian men to become more Christ-like. You see, I believe God justifies us freely, and then we are called to run with him in sanctification. The Apostle Paul is clear in the book of Philippians that we should press on and put sin to death.

Yet I find so often, even in my own circles of the past and present, a sit-on-the-couch-and-wait-for-God-to-do-something mentality that is, dare I say it(?), unbiblical and even wicked. There seems to be so little war, the way Paul went about it, when it comes to sin. Like the dude who comes to his support group every week and dismissingly says, "Oh, I looked at porn again." Where's the war? Where's the hate for sin?? And so we go on and forgive this person once again.

I believe there's a strong victim mentality in my generation. I think it's spiritual laziness. Men will tell me and preach that God is sovereign over all, but then I hear this: "Well, I wish he would sovereignly take away my lust issue."

Where's the fortitude? Where's the fight?

I've been finding myself more and more pleading, yes, pleading with men to wage war against sin, against the carnal lusts that eat away at their marriages, relationships and connection to God. It's never easy because some people are meant to wrestle with their sin a long time before God brings them to freedom. Bu you have got to wrestle! You've got to fight! Do something besides complain about your sinful existence.

Sanctification begins by answering two questions: What stirs your affection for Jesus Christ? And what robs you of those affections? Many of the things that stifle growth are morally neutral. They may not be bad things, like TV or movies, but it doesn't take long for me to begin to find humorous on television or the movies what Christ finds heartbreaking.

So go ahead, fill your life with things that stir your affection for Him. Think beyond what's right and wrong and fill your lives with things that stir your affections for Jesus, and, as best you can, walk away from the things that rob those affections--even when they're not immoral.

You'll be surprised at the results.

______________________________

Marcel Schwantes is a certified professional life and leadership coach, and an organizational consultant with a virtual practice coaching church members and pastors across the country. He may be reached here.

I PRAY BECAUSE

aphanson@csuchico.edu (Andy Hanson) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:49:01 PST

I pray because
IN THE VALLEY
of despair
I need to reflect honestly
on the way I live my life

Because
IN THE SHADOW
of death
I need to express my hopes and dreams
my fears and misgivings

Because
IN THE GREEN PASTURES
of God’s territory
I can spend a moment
beside still waters

I pray because
It restores my soul
It’s an affirmation of my belief that
God can be trusted

I pray today
especially today
for a grace connection

andy hanson
12/2/09

Holy Moment

noreply@blogger.com (Leslie Foster) — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 22:52:57 PST

By Leslie Foster

One of my favorite scenes in "Waking Life", Richard Linklater's groundbreaking 2001 film, involves two men speaking about film and the nature of God. Known as the "Holy Moment" scene, the two philosophize about whether film has the ability to capture, if only briefly, some of the essence of God and what, if anything, is truly holy. There are a few things they say with which I disagree, but much more is said that inspires and provokes me to think.

If there has been a single constant in the 19 months I have lived in Hollywood, it has been my own questioning and re-evaluating of what my purpose here is. I was certainly doing a lot of that questioning on one of my worst days on set. The day included an inane script in which an Oscar-winning actor spent most of his time making out with bikini-clad actresses and a job position that left me feeling fairly incompetent. Inveterate overthinker that I am, an experience like this does nothing but add to my mental chorus of concerns singing in happy cacophony. "Am I really supposed to be here? Maybe I've gotten this calling thing all wrong. I wonder if I'd be a decent tugboat captain...that might work out better than this." And yet, when I take the time to be still, I know my calling is striving to, even for a moment, capture that Holy Moment on film; to share, and retell the holy moments that I and others have encountered.

To quote from another portion of "Waking Life": Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each other's presence....Our eyesight is here as a test to see if we can see beyond it."

The Christian filmmaker's challenge, as I see it, is to tell stories that illustrate the little miracles of life. I know many filmmakers who dream of shooting a grand epic detailing the Great Controversy (among other things). My reply to this is that we need to tell parables, find the stories of 'the least of these,' and get excited about those moments in which we ourselves are flabbergasted to be in each other's and God's presence. Tell parables that go beyond the visual, stories that see beyond our own eyesight.

Practically, what does this mean? I think it means learning to be still and listen for God in the quiet moments before we race to grab a camera or jot down an idea. We speak of doing this and of the importance of daily worship and meditation, but it's so often forgotten in the rush. I'm constantly guilty of this. Beyond that, this means walking on to every film set willing to listen to and serve everyone, regardless of attitude. People notice that kind of service.

I have friends who are constantly recommended to other productions and whose crew are completely loyal to them because they embrace this idea. A storyteller dedicated to parables cannot forget the treatment of the crew and cast in the process. This is just as much a part of the story as what is being recorded. I have a feeling that without the moments of holiness that are possible on set during production, even the most moving and edifying of stories will not achieve what it could have. Is a good story, which is told at the expense of the crew, worth telling?

I realize this question doesn't have a black and white answer and the deeper you dig, the more gray you will find. I think it's one that we'll have to live with for a while. I do know this; whether I am leading a production or working for another storyteller, the next time I am on set and feel lost, frustrated, or upset, I intend to close my eyes for just a moment. And in that moment, I will remember that I am blessed to be in the presence of these other human beings and challenge myself to discover the small stories around me.

____________________________________________________

Leslie Foster is a filmmaker living in Hollywood, CA. He is a founding members of Traveling Muse Pictures, a nonprofit film collective.

Meeting the Seventh-day Adventists

savinglivesgw@gmail.com (gwalter) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:25:53 PST

Guest Post by Kim L. Ranger

Kim Ranger is a Quaker and member of Grand Rapids Michigan Meeting. She has recently completed a two-year sojourn with Seventh-day Adventists. She is a senior librarian of Arts and Humanities at Grand Valley State University. This article appeared in the September 2009 Friends Journal.

This peace is an abridgment of the article rather than a review. It is important to note that Kim’s comments reflect involvement with a conservative Adventist community. It is impossible to determine from her experience whether or not she would be more or less attracted to an Adventist community in which traditional shibboleths are not so universally agreed-upon.

Five years ago, a spiritual friend and I visited a couple of the Seventh-day Adventist churches, where Adventism piqued my curiosity. I had been a seeker all my life, open to other traditions. As a Liberal Quaker, I was initially appalled by my continuing attraction to the fundamentalist and evangelical Adventism, but eventually I realized that this was a call from God to open up to a different way of believing, worshiping, and living. I began to read about Adventism, study the Bible, participate in Sabbath School each week, and occasionally attended the services for worship.

Before my study with the Adventists, I had considered myself to be non-theist who believed that "God" was the same as "the universe". During my time in the SDA Church, I went through an overwhelming conversion. God spoke to my heart, asking, "Why do you deny me?" and came to call myself Christian. I began to observe the Sabbath in the way Adventists do, and I found that devoting a day to rest and spiritual reading after the workweek was refreshing.

The commonalities I've found with Adventists that made it easy for me to worship in harmony with them included the fact that truth, integrity, simplicity, and racial equality were held to be vital, and all people were to be treated with respect; the conviction that each person could access God directly, without the need for intermediaries; and their belief in peace (Adventists refer to themselves as 'noncombatants'. The music of both Sabbath School and worship often moved me to tears of joy.

My own beliefs were wildly different from those of the Adventists. Some of the conflicting concerns involved the form of worship and a fundamentalist reading of the Bible in which evolution is viewed as evil. (SDA’s believe in a literal six-day creation, the rightness of 'creation science', and a 'young earth'.) Their standardized system of belief and the authoritative prophecies of Ellen G. White were also problematic, as were not wearing jewelry and not drinking alcoholic beverages.

However, the largest issue for me was their stance on homosexuality. In the SDA Church, gays and lesbians who were sexually active were subject to church discipline, including the potential loss of their membership. Adventists believe that the Bible condemned same-sex relationships as sinful perversion.

Sacraments such as baptism and foot-washing, dressing up for church, and beliefs such as employing a paid clergy and allowing only men to be pastors made me uncomfortable and never got easier for me to accept. I would not be willing to be baptized with water, nor would I participate in communion, finding these antithetical to basic Quaker practice.

I no longer experience the heart-wrenching loneliness I felt when trying to live by SDA rules that didn't come from my experience of God and Christ. Ultimately, it was the early Quaker testimonies that sustained me.

Although I did not find an opening for a joint venture between the Adventists and Quakers, my experience with the SDA Church opened my heart, helped me to be more adaptable, and provided me a community when I needed it most. I learned to keep a time and space sacred. I learned to trust more and to bring up difficult matters with more courage. This study with a worship group so different from my own certainly led me to a different understanding of what it means to be a Quaker, and I'm grateful I had the opportunity to do so as part of a recorded ministry. Now I am glad to share the results of my experience with others.
____________________________________________

©2009 Friends Publishing Corporation.
Reprinted with permission.
To subscribe: www.friendsjournal.org

Reflections On The Homosexuality Conference

savinglivesgw@gmail.com (gwalter) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 17:13:48 PST

Guest post from apokalupto blogger, David Hamstra

There's still time for me to jot down a few final thoughts on the Marriage, Homosexuality, and the Church Conference I attended last week at Andrews University. It's also time for me to share my position on the debate over whether homosexual sex is sinful, since that will inform the comments that follow. My theology on this issue is informed by presuppositions I have found to be well articulated here.
I believe that from Genesis 12 onward, the Bible tells the story of how God is leading his people on a journey, which includes moral progress, toward Heaven. So I believe the descriptions of Heaven in Scripture (primarily found in Genesis 1-2 and Revelation 21-22) are an ethical compass for God's people, pointing us toward the ideal to which he is taking us. According to this ideal, marriage is a union of one man and one woman (Gen 1:21-28, Gen 2:18-25, Rev 21:2)

Now the problem is, given all the aberrations from this ideal that human beings desire, how do we get there from here. In the scripture we can trace God making allowances for our less than ideal situations while moving his people closer to Heaven (cf. Ex 21:10, 1 Tim 3:12). Some might argue that based on this we can make an allowance for homosexual marriage as a step closer to Heaven.

The problem with this is that God has never indicated in Scripture that such an allowance should be made. Even if you believe that the biblical injunctions against homosexual sex apply to only exploitative or non-mutually fulfilling homosexual sex, it remains the case that God never revealed homosexual marriage as the solution to this problem. In fact, given those injunctions, it seems very unlikely that God would make such an allowance.

Therefore, I believe homosexual marriage is not the way forward for God's people on their journey to Heaven. But if that is a difficult conclusion to arrive it, it leads to the even more difficult question of how the church should then respond to homosexuals. So I offer these reflections on the Andrews homosexuality conference in light of this conclusion and in partial answer to the question that comes from it.

As was the diagnosis another time Adventism and psychology converged, I suggest that the symptoms of multiple personality disorder may have been present in the conference; it spoke with two voices. Those from the counseling and pastoral care disciplines said we need to love homosexuals, and those from the public policy and religious liberty disciplines said we need to fight homosexuals. Now that's a generalization and oversimplification, but the popular perception of this conference will be generalized and oversimplified and the message of the conference will, I believe, end up sounding schizo.

Now if you're schizo, you're mad; and when you're mad, people, in this case homosexuals, don't feel the love. My point being that if you want to do some tough love, you've got to earn the right. Now the public policy guys at the conference said Adventists already have that legitimacy because of ADRA, etc., but I don't buy it.

Adventists earned the right to advocate against slavery by helping with the underground railroad, we earned the right to advocate against alcohol and tobacco by helping people kick their habits, and we earned the right to advocate for religious liberty, by sticking up for other religions, too. What have we done for homosexuals? Since the Colin Cook debacle, officially we've done whole lot of nothing.

I believe our level of public policy advocacy on homosexual marriage, regardless of the position we take, must be correlated with our level of direct ministry to homosexuals or we will end up preaching to the choir and loose our public witness. Right now we've got GLADventist.org and a handful of Wayne Blakelys and Ron Woolseys, so that means we can probably send our lawyers to court. I don't think we should start mobilizing our church members to vote until they can identify at least one homosexual person in their congregation. And if Adventists get something like an AIDS hospice going in San Francisco, I think we'd be ready to start talking to homosexuals about homosexual marriage.

Along the lines of ministering to homosexuals, I think Mark Yarhouse's three-tier distinction is an excellent starting point. I think it has implications beyond homosexuality and could be a good tool for discussing sexuality with heterosexual youth. It opened my eyes to how I have constructed my sexual identity, and, as I've said elsewhere, I think it will be remembered as the ideological core of the conference.

One thing that disappointed me at the conference was conservatives playing the victim card. I believe we need to act out of faith that God is protecting us, not fear of being marginalized.

It also seems to me that conservative Adventist Bible scholars need to take special care to speak the truth in love (Eph 4:15), and this is not something that's impossible to do. When discussing the possibility that a whole class of people may be required by God to forfeit sexual and romantic companionship, we're going to have to do better than, "Life isn't fair." That may or may not be the truth, but it is certainly not the truth in love. Scholars would do well to heed Miroslav Kis' advice that we never discuss this issue from an impersonal, abstract perspective.

Finally, I believe this conference is the start of a new and more healthy direction in how the Adventist Church relates to homosexuals. The general assumption of the presenters was that homosexually attracted persons could, like persons attracted to other sins, be regular members of the Adventist Church. If this assumption is adopted by the church as a whole (and I believe it gradually will be), it will remove a fair bit of the prejudice that Adventists have against homosexuals.

Progressives are of course miffed that the basic question of homosexual practice was not up for debate and will likely claim the conference results are just the same dish reheated and served as leftovers. But why not? Sometimes it takes a little time in the fridge for the flavors to sort themselves out into the right combination. And maybe if we work on it a little more we could one day have a potluck.

Blogging the Homosexuality Conference (other posts)
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David Hamstra lives in Berrien Springs, Michigan and is a child of God, follower of Jesus, husband, father, minister, Adventist pastor, seminarian, and others

Depression in Pastoral Ministry

savinglivesgw@gmail.com (gwalter) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:00:33 PDT

Guest Post by Ryan Bell

Yesterday’s USA Today carried the disturbing story of a 42-year old pastor in North Carolina who committed suicide. I was deeply moved as I read about this young man who had apparently come to the end of his hope and, in complete despair, took his own life. Suicide is rare among pastors, the article reports, but many live with depression. Loneliness, isolation and the resistance of congregations to cultural change are cited as primary causes of depression.

The day before, the New York Times ran a piece entitled “Kierkegaard on the Couch,” by Gordon Marino. After reading the piece twice I began to discern the important distinction he makes between depression and despair and Kierkegaard’s concern for the spiritual dimensions of despair.

Then, while chatting online with my friend, Alburn, he pointed me to this interesting Money.com article entitled “Stressful jobs that pay badly," which describes “15 of the most overworked and underpaid professions out there.” Number 10: Minister. According to this piece, 71% of ministers report that their job is stressful.

"A human being is a spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relation relating itself to itself in the relation." ~ Kierkegaard

This was like a perfect storm for me. But the picture is not yet complete. My own personal story is that I serve a congregation that is creative, flexible, open-minded and open-hearted, loving, supportive and fun. They are a group of spiritual pilgrims that genuinely enjoy being on this journey together. And, they love me. How do I know? They tell me. Frequently. It may have escaped your notice that October was Pastor Appreciate Month. For the past five years I have been appreciated by my church family in a way I never imagined possible. This is due primarily to the ministry of one of my dear friends and church elders, Kirsten Salvador. She has the gift of remembering important moments in people’s lives and making them understand that they are treasured.

Last Sabbath, as I was walking up to the front of the church to give my sermon, a video started to play. I am usually aware of everything that’s happening in worship, and this was unexpected. On the screen was a friend and church member – a young lady I baptized about 4 years ago – who currently lives in New Jersey. She thanked me for my ministry in her life. I sat back down. When the video finished, 6-8 other members of the church simply stood where there were and blessed me with words of affirmation for my ministry in their life and in our congregation. I was so overwhelmed that I nearly broke down and wept. Somehow I held it together and gave my sermon, but I’ve been thinking about those words all week. They came at a good time for me.

For the past several months, maybe since January, I’ve struggled. I haven’t wanted to call it depression. I still don’t know what to call it. It isn’t constant and it usually isn’t debilitating, but I don’t feel like myself. It isn’t necessary for me to go into details here, but it has made me think about my friends and colleagues who are pastors.

First of all, I hope you know you are not alone. It isn’t unspiritual to experience depression and despair. In fact, it may be the most spiritual thing you’ve experienced in a long time. You’re aren’t less because of your silent struggles that no one knows about.

Secondly, I wonder how some of you manage in congregations that aren’t as supportive of you as mine is of me. Some of you, I’m sure, serve churches that are downright hostile towards you at times. I, too, have been in that place and know the darkness that can surround you and your family in those times. But even in congregations that are as supportive as mine, pastoral ministry is lonely. The pressures of expectations (notibly our own self-imposed expectations) can be crushing. The challenge of helping congregations make the turn to missional life is daunting on a good day.

To the pastors who are reading this I would just like to say, break the silence. Get with a trusted friend and tell them what you’re going through. Find a counselor to talk to. Even better (and I think Kierkegaard would approve) start a relationship with a Spiritual Director. The goal of all of this is to be attentive to your own soul and how God is at work in your life. In our Prozac nation we have lost the art of being attentive to our souls. It may be frightening and Prozac may be exactly the help you need, but ignoring what’s going on isn’t healthy. It might not end like our fallen colleague in North Carolina, but it could. Jesus isn’t asking that of you.

To the non-pastors reading this who have a pastor in your life, please take care of your pastor. You may think he doesn’t do anything all week long. You might think her sermons are lacking depth. You might not agree with his ideas for how the church should change. But before you decide, do your pastor a favor. Take her to lunch. Invite him to your house to talk. No agenda. Just to talk. Find out what’s going on in his life. Ask her what stresses and pressures she feels. Listen not only for what he says, but what he doesn’t say. He’s not going to come right out and tell you that he’s at the end of his rope and thinking of giving up. That’s not what pastors do. We tell you that everything is fine and that “God is good, all the time!” Which, of course, is true, but doesn’t lessen the fact that God’s goodness is all but imperceptible at times, even to us.

The dirty little secret is that pastors are human beings, too, with struggles more or less just like yours. If your pastor is being honest with you he will tell you that he feels desperately alone most of the time. Yes, he may have close friends. You may see him laughing a lot. You may see him with his family looking like they have it all put together. But trust me: it’s not as pretty as it looks. And your pastor may not tell you much, but just know that your encouragement may be the only thing that gets her through the next week.

(This article was originally posted on Facebook. You can see dozens of comments there.)

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Pastor Ryan Bell and his family pastor in Hollywood, California

Book Review: Beyond Ellen White

parkergreat@gmail.com (Steve Parker) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:16:23 PDT

For those of us growing up Adventist in Australia, Avondale College was our mecca. I can remember, as a child, always hearing about how Avondale was the place to go to develop spiritually, physically — and find a life partner! In my younger days, I had the opportunity to briefly visit Avondale a couple of times and remember feeling awe at walking on such "sacred" ground. But, it hasn't come as a surprise that this was a very romanticised picture. Avondale is a human institution run by flawed humans and, despite the alleged supernatural circumstances around its establishment, the human has played a major part in its evolution. Contributing to our understanding of this evolution is Michael Chamberlain's deeply scholarly book, Beyond Ellen White: Seventh-day Adventism in Transition.

Although the title of the book doesn't mention Avondale College, Chamberlain's work, based on his PhD thesis, is a sociocultural analysis of the College from its inception to the present day. What his title does imply, is that Avondale College can be seen as a microcosm of the transitioning of Adventism beyond a White-defined culture as it struggles to clarify its identify in an ever-changing society.

Chamberlain traces the transitions of the College through its sociocultural standards that, he argues, have been its 'distinctive and identifying markers'. These include standards around entertainment (opera, theatre, dancing, etc); the reading of fiction novels; dress (vain vs plain dress, cosmetics, and jewellery); sport; music; audio, visual, and print media; alcohol consumption; and sexual behaviour and marriage. Arguing that the original standards, conceived in Methodism, shaped by an Old Testament fortress model for education, influenced by eschatalogical emphases, and challenged by wider societal influences, and managed by various College presidencies, have been shaped and reshaped to be what they are today — the product of revisionist thought which began around 1977.

Chamberlain chose the year 1977 because he believes that this was a

... point in time when traditionalist elements in Adventism, namely the all-powerful administrative arm, lined up with the General Conference in an attempt to prevent the Church from further sociocultural or theological erosion. (p. 283)

A significant event, around this time, was the formulation of the Twenty-seven Fundamentals by the Church. Despite the stance of the Church to have no other creed but the Bible, the Twenty-seven Fundamentals became, to all intents and purposes, a creed to which scholars, pastors, and others were to give unconditional allegiance. The 1980s, according to Chamberlain, became a time when it was 'apparent [that] younger academics were in growing tension with Church leaders and administrators.' The fallout of the 1980s is well known to most of us and this, as well as events prior to and following that time, have been the response of the Church to meet the challenge

... to Seventh-day Adventism, as it has been for all militant organisations, [of] understanding truth in its static and dynamic forms and being able to discern the difference. [Chamberlain's] book is, therefore, about describing the struggle of the dynamic, evident as culture, considered for a time as a landmark of the Church's ultimate identity. (pp.284-285)

This tension between the static and dynamic forms of truth has, according to Chamberlain, let to a revisioning of Avondale's original mission. As I read Chamberlain, he is not criticising or condoning this revisionism. It seems to me he wishes to place his thesis before the denomination and the College and make clear that Avondale is at a crossroads. This basically comes down to a choice to continue pursuing higher education status or remain and develop as a traditional institution sustaining a particular style of education and theology. Chamberlain clarifies the choices for Avondale:

If the history of the direction taken by American religious colleges has any valid bearing, Avondale's mother Church identity and executive powers may have an increasingly limited use-by date. At best, should it continue on its higher educational path, it may achieve, eventually, the identity of a non-denominational Adventist university and by no means a model of Seventh-day Adventist cultural idealism or control. On this basis, a post-Ellen G. White revisionist model and not a rebel implant might remain intact. Should it fail to gain continuing higher status, then as a theological and educational seminary-styled institution its traditional culture is more likely to be sustained.

Stark choice indeed. As I said at the beginning, the title of Chamberlain's book implies a broader application of his observations to Seventh-day Adventism as a whole. The transitions that Avondale has undergone (and continues to struggle with) are reflected in the larger denominational culture and history. Some would welcome this revisionism; other will not. But whatever side of that debate one may find oneself, Chamberlain's book provides superb insights for anyone thinking about Adventism today.

You can find out more about Beyond Ellen White at Michael Chamberlain's website

— Steve Parker

Review: By the Rivers of Brooklyn

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Brown) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:20:46 PDT

Review by Nathan Brown

It has been a bumper publishing year for Adventist author Trudy Morgan Cole. But of her four books released in 2009, the one you are least likely to see advertised—or reviewed—in church venues is probably her most significant literary achievement.

By the Rivers of Brooklyn deserves a place of honour on that relatively small bookshelf that contains published mainstream fiction authored by Adventist writers. Cole has already established herself as one Adventist publishing’s regular, reliable and successful writers but her second foray into literary fiction—after The Violent Friendship of Esther Johnson—sees her prove her credibility in a much wider publishing world, even if her book sales may well be fewer in that wider world.

Based in and around the experiences of a wave of Newfoundland migrants who settled in Brooklyn in the early 20th century, Cole’s novel fits within that well-populated genre of historical fiction focused on reclaiming women’s voices from places and times in which those voices have been lost or neglected. It is carefully crafted and elegantly executed, even if it takes a little time to warm up to the story and engage with the characters.

The story of By the Rivers of Brooklyn is that of the sprawling, multi-generational epic but the novel itself feels not quite large enough for the story. In her acknowledgements page, Cole comments that the original manuscript was “substantially shortened” in the editing process and perhaps this explains the sense that there is more of the story still out there. This is not necessarily a problem: the feeling of a larger story of which the characters are a part gives a sense of depth and credibility—although I think I might have preferred the extended version.

The novel feels like a collection of postcards, not necessarily from different places—of which there are only two primary settings—but from the different times spread across the novel’s span from 1924 to 2004. This snapshot narrative style means we do not get to know some of the characters as well as we might like but allows us to make a long-term acquaintance with the recurring characters, with the vignettes creating a more intimate kind of epic story.

Because of the scope of the story over three generations, keeping track of the different characters becomes more challenging toward the end of the book. To help readers through this complexity, a family tree is included at the conclusion of the story. This is helpful but should be consulted as late as possible in the reading experience as it contains significant plot spoilers.

The two settings impose similar limitations on the breadth of the story as those imposed by the sparseness of the narrative. While major world events such as war and depression impact on the character’s lives, we see only those impacts, not the events themselves. And even the interaction between St John’s, Newfoundland, and Brooklyn, New York, is always and only either in one place or the other.

But place is important. Cole’s storytelling—and historical research—works hard at creating the atmosphere of the respective places and does this well, albeit in a way that is realistically limited to the experiences of the characters. Ironically, it is often the place in which the character is situated that sparks the yearning for the other place and this is underlined by the regular switches between the two locations.

By the Rivers of Brooklyn is drawn around the question of “home.” This is an important part of the migrant experience and perhaps even more so when focusing on the experiences of migrant women, whose experiences of the new “home” is often limited compared to that of their menfolk who more directly engaged with the host culture by virtue of earning a living. Of the women’s voices we hear, only Rose, who becomes truly lost in the new culture, is most at home in her adopted Brooklyn.

While elements in this story situate it outside “Christian writing,” religion also plays an interesting role in various of the characters’ lives. This fits with the historical setting in which church was a larger part of society but perhaps also reflects on Cole’s questions about what faith may or may not be able to offer her characters by way of hope, solace and redemption. Her treatment of this aspect of her characters’ lives comes across more as faith experiment than preaching—and is stronger for it.

By taking her writing beyond the expected route of Adventist publishing, Cole demonstrates an ability and passion that also reflects well on her Adventist-published writing. Her books have a subtle quality that should not be overlooked in being “swept away”—to borrow a quote from the back of the book—by her storytelling. In this way, By the Rivers of Brooklyn fits with her other work, as well as finding stories, themes and readers bypassed by her biblical narratives.

For more about By the Rivers of Brooklyn, visit the book's

Cross-posted from Adventist Today

Reading Into Doubt?

parkergreat@gmail.com (Steve Parker) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:47:17 PDT

About a year ago I posted a blog article here entitled The Need to Read. I was honoured to have it published in the Record a few weeks ago. In that article, I suggested that it was necessary to read widely in order to have a robust faith.

I was reading the Letters to the Editor section in the latest Record where Adrian Contant, in Queensland, wrote in response to my article:

"I have to agree that reading widely can be good. But not so with religious books. I have seen many good Christian friends read themselves into doubt and become critical, losing their faith. That is just how Satan wants it.

"There is only one religious book that we should read, the Bible—God's Word. Other religious books express earthly writers' opinions. Be very, careful [sic] you don't lose your spiritual anchor." (Record, October 17, 2009, p. 12)

Is is possible to read oneself into doubt by reading religious books other than the Bible? I believe this is exactly what reading for learning and growth is all about.

Let me explain.

Doubt is not the issue. Unbelief is. Many Christians mistakenly believe that doubt is the opposite of belief. But the opposite of belief is actually unbelief. Doubt is faith in two minds trying to decide which way it should go. Reading may lead to doubt as we come across ideas that are different to those we currently hold. But those doubts are normal as we move beyond what we already know.

This doubt is absolutely necessary for learning. Without some degree of uncertainty regarding what we think we already know, it would be impossible to entertain new ideas that may lead us further into new understandings. This form of doubt is not to be feared. It is to be embraced. Without it we would stagnate and possibly blindly go along believing error.

"This doubt is absolutely necessary for learning..."

This avoidance of doubt is particularly concerning if it is related to the religious domain. The only alternative is intellectual blindness and, sometimes (often?) dogmatism. In essence, the suggestion to avoid wide reading of religious books is to avoid religious conversations with others who may be able to teach us. A book allows us to enter into dialogue with another person's ideas. It is arrogant to think we can travel our spiritual journeys without the input of others.

The letter author's implication that reading non-religious books is safer than religious books is also misguided. Dividing reality into the sacred and profane, and not recognising the sacred nature of all life, leads to a retreat from the real world and the fear of being "contaminated". As Christians, all reading, whatever it is, is to be read from the perspective of a comprehensive world view. The newspaper might not be religious but understanding the newspaper from the perspective of a Christian world view is essential in developing a spirituality that is down to earth rather than "pie in the sky". If our spirituality is not informed by the so-called "non-religious", then it is difficult to see how it can be a useful spirituality.

The fact is that it is how we read — not what we read — that is important. It is possible to read the Bible incorrectly and unthinkingly. We can see that in the fanatical evil that is sometimes perpetrated in the name of God. Whatever we read, whether it is religious or not, needs to be read critically and thoughtfully, testing all things and holding on to what is good (see 1 Thessalonians 5:21).

All of this is not to say that we should lack confidence about what we believe is true. We are to 'rejoice in our confident hope' (Romans 12:12 and elsewhere). But being open to the possibility that we have things to learn is absolutely essential to spiritual growth. Ellen White recognised this when she wrote:

We have many lessons to learn, and many, many to unlearn. God and heaven alone are infallible. Those who think that they will never have to give up a cherished view, never have occasion to change an opinion, will be disappointed. As long as we hold to our own ideas and opinions with determined persistency, we cannot have the unity for which Christ prayed. (The Review and Herald, July 26, 1892).

Reading widely, including religious books, is not the problem. Nor is doubt. Instead not reading widely, especially religious books, may lead to a determined persistency that could ultimately lead us very much astray. So read, doubt and learn! And when you doubt, pray for wisdom (James 1:5), think deeply, and allow your doubt to lead you into new possibilities for spiritual growth.

— Steve Parker

We Are Sabbath, Part II: An Event Worth Celebrating

savinglivesgw@gmail.com (gwalter) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:02:43 PDT

Guest post by Travis Claybrooks

She...was...PERFECT! All 7lbs. 6oz. of little Abeni Michele Claybrooks – PERFECT! At about 12:25, on an early Sunday morning, October 2, 1994, Abeni let the world know that she had arrived. Boy, could she yell! It was a moment to celebrate – the birth of a baby. Our best of friends were crowded there in the hospital room. New grandparents were on the phone. There I was juggling conversations between both, lost in sheer ecstasy.

As the minutes following Abeni's birth turned into hours, I found myself alone and awake holding that little bundle. There she was, asleep in my arms. She was so tiny. My forearm was longer than she was. Her breaths were so fast and so deep. I began to look over her precious little body. All ten of her little toes and fingers were there. Her ears, eyes, nose and mouth were all normal. She had a head full of hair. Her arms and legs were without deformity. There were no blemishes or marks anywhere on her. She...was...PERFECT!

As I reminisce on that moment, a rather startling reality comes to mind. Considering all the things that have to come together to have a baby and the odds of that actually happening, it is virtually impossible to have a baby, much less one without a noticeable defect, disease, or deformity.

Think about it. As you know, conception begins when a sperm cell from Dad fertilizes an egg cell from Mom to form one little cell called an embryo. In this one cell are 46 chromosomes – 23 from Dad and 23 from Mom. On these 46 chromosomes, the best estimates are that there are something on the order of 30,000 genes (that we know of) – all in one little cell. It is these genes that will control everything that will happen in that body from the moment of conception until the moment of death.

Now, here's the kicker.

Over the next 40 weeks or so, that one cell will divide into two cells and those two will each divide into two more, and so on until there are trillions of cells that will go to make up that little baby's body. Each and every time a cell divides, all 30,000 or so of those genes must make an exact copy of themselves inexactly the same spot on the chromosome for the new cell. All it takes is just one mistake, just one time, in just one of those duplications for that baby to self-abort at worst or be born with some sort of deformity or disease at best. So, as you can see, the odds of having a baby are near zero and even less for having one without any noticeable deformity, defect, or disease.

I want to bring a seemingly obvious truth to your attention. She...was...PERFECT! However, she had absolutely nothing to do with it. She was simply made that way. It was a miracle and it's worth celebrating once a year (at least).

The Heart of the Matter

Sabbath. I've begun to ask myself what is the singular event that was so significant that God felt the need to set aside a day of holy and sacred commemoration – not once a year...not once a month...but once every seven days?

Most Sabbath keepers recognize that the Sabbath is a memorial of God creating the heavens and the earth and “all that in them is.” While this is true, let's explore deeper.

Luke 3:23-38 is another one of those boring genealogies that we usually skip when reading the Bible. However, this is not one to be passed over. For in it is a key that will liberate your soul, give you context for your life, explain everything that God has ever done for mankind, and help us all understand what event was so significant that God felt the need to establish a weekly time to commemorate it with the human race.

Luke begins with Joseph, Jesus' “father” and traces the ancestry all the way back through as series of ...which was the son of...which was the son of...which was the son of...all the way down to verse 38. Here it is, “...which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.”

This is perhaps the most important text in all of scripture. God through scriptural inspiration ascribes to Adam a title that usually is only given to Jesus Christ (see verse 22). Adam was more than just a miraculous creation. He was the son of God! But what did this mean? It meant that he...was...PERFECT! He had God's genes! When God bore Adam, he came forth with the same spiritual, mental, physical, and social DNA that God had. He was not God any more than Abeni is not her parents. But he was the son of God, made in the image of God. PERFECT!

This was the crowning act of creation and the reason for the rest of creation. Sabbath was a celebration and a commemoration of this event – God had had a “baby” and this baby looked just like his Daddy. And guess what, Adam had absolutely nothing to do with it. He was simply made that way and God felt that it was a miracle worth celebrating once a week (at least).

Unfortunately, on most weekends, we've traded celebrating this wonderfully important event in exchange for hymns vs. contemporary Christian music, for denominations and non-denominations, for green carpet in the foyer vs. no carpet at all, for church boards, and disfellowships. We've reduced the Sabbath from the celebration of a high and lofty event to simply having church. We have extracted from the Sabbath day the celebration of our heritage as children of God that were once upon a time PERFECT and replaced it with an infusion of religious forms and fashions that temporarily pacify the empty cry of both the day and the heart. What's a celebration without a reason for celebrating? What's a reason without the right one?

What have these trades cost us?

We have lost an identity linking us directly with God Himself as our Father and we His children that transcends religiosity and churchianity. We have lost a true and real sense that once upon a time, on a day before the very first Sabbath, we...were...PERFECT!

Here are some things that my family and I together are beginning to focus on re-discovering:

How God wants to celebrate with us the fact that we are biological descendants of His first son, Adam.
How God wants to celebrate with us the fact that the same perfection with which He made Adam is also intended for us and that we have absolutely nothing to do with achieving it. This is the theme of Sabbath rest and why we are asked to remember to celebrate the event (not the day) let we forget and try to achieve that perfection on our own.
How God want to celebrate with us the fact that He's simply in the process of making us that way and it's a miracle worth celebrating together once a week (at least)!

In part III, we'll explore Adam's Fall, it's impact, God's answer, and how Sabbath now has a new event to celebrate that is directly linked to the original event.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Travis, and his wife Gabriella, are the founders of of an exciting wellness ministry in Nebraska. You may contact him via his Facebook profile. This article was originally posted on Facebook here.

A New Order of Things?

savinglivesgw@gmail.com (gwalter) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:50:40 PDT

Guest post by Pastor Glenn Poole

The events in my life have condensed in the last six months into principles and concepts of "church", "spirituality" and "religion" that can only be described as a new order of things. Though their form is only as a misty fog right now, their function takes some discernible shape in phrases like:

living loved and loving
institution-less spirituality
Christ as the true, practical Head of His church
guilt-less, shame-less grace-filled spiritual existence
and many more of this nature

It is with interest then, that I came across this unexpectedly relevant quote from Machiavelli in a blog I've been following (TrueFaced) this morning.

“…there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from the fear of opponents, who have the laws on their side and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in the new things until they have long experienced them.”

Institutional "church", Churchedome, and Churchianity are deeply ingrained in all of us. We ourselves have done well at times under those kingdoms and find it hard to leave behind. There are also many who will be deeply threatened if we operate noticeably anywhere near their borders. And our own coolness from our disbelief that the new order of life can really be experienced - because we have not long experienced it - will require supernatural courage we have not yet seen in order to overcome.

May God have mercy on us as we dare to press forward the riches of His grace.

You can visit the original post here.
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Glenn Poole and his wife are bi-vocational church planters in Colorado Springs, Colorado. He sidelines as a finish carpenter and she as a stay-at-home-mom.

Worshiping the Sabbath vs Worshiping on the Sabbath

savinglivesgw@gmail.com (gwalter) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 11:29:28 PDT

Guest post by Travis Claybrooks

Recently, we celebrated my oldest daughter, Abeni's 15th birthday. She was born October 2, 1994 and I remember that day like it was yesterday. I remember all the details of the experience – the labor, the delivery, the incompetent nurses that didn't believe that she was-a comin' right now! I remember feeling real good as I tastied her with my kisses, touching her with my hands, hearing her extremely loud cry, smelling that newborn baby smell, and just seeing the miracle of something that, just a short while ago, was not.

Now, those of you who know me know that I'm not a big birthday person. In fact, I'm not a big holiday person at all. My pragmatic mind thinks birthdays are just one more way for me to get poorer helping someone else get richer. Anyway, being an effective long-distance parent is extremely difficult and I'm always trying to find ways to get and stay more closely connected to my kids. So, I've decided that one way I can do that is to be physically present on birthdays and make them much more of a celebration than I have in years past. And that's just what we did for Abeni last weekend. We drove from Shelton, Nebraska to Colorado Springs to throw Abeni a birthday party!

We had a whale of a time!

Abeni, and all of her friends, did too! Just seeing the sheer joy in their faces the whole weekend was great. It was a wonderful connection for us and I feel that our relationship grew significantly. We seem to be just a little bit closer.

As I was sitting in our hotel room, I began to think about the real significance of October 2. I concluded that October 2, 2009 would have absolutely no significance in my life if October 2, 1994 had never happened. In fact, October 2, 1994 would have had no significance if the events of that particular early Sunday morning had never happened. For example, I have absolutely no recollection of what happened on the morning of October 1, 1994, not even 24 hours earlier.

This led me to a quite obvious but extremely significant conclusion. It's not October 2 that's significant but the event that happened on that day. It's the event that give the day its significance.

The Heart of the Matter

Sabbath... Reflecting on God's command to remember to keep the Sabbath day holy, I have come to some conclusions about my efforts as a “Sabbath-keeper.” Let me share some of them with you:

While I have had an intellectual awareness of the events that give the Sabbath day its importance, I have never really made a practical connection between those events and my “Sabbath-keeping;”

Thus, I have primarily celebrated a day and not an event;

Celebrating a day and not an event is quite an empty experience. There's just not much to get excited about in simply celebrating a day of the week.

Therefore, to fill the emptiness of celebrating a day and not an event, and because I have never made a practical connection between the events that give the Sabbath day its importance, I have created a set of events that I do or do not do on the seventh-day (like going to a weekly religious meeting and not watching football) and called the sum total of those experiences “worship” and “keeping the Sabbath day holy;”

Because I have equated this contrived set of dos and don'ts with “worship” and since they in essence honor a day and not an event, I have concluded that I have been worshiping the Sabbath and not worshiping on the Sabbath. That makes the Sabbath a god;

I have concluded that this is why Jesus, in a particular conversation, had to explicitly say that He is Lord of the Sabbath;

And finally, I have concluded that I need to get a real-life understanding of the event(s) that give the Sabbath day its significance.

What do you think?

_______________________________________________________________________________

Travis, and his wife Gabriella, are the founders of of an exciting wellness ministry in Nebraska. You may contact him via his Facebook profile. This article was originally posted on Facebook here.

Adventist Church Launches Youtube Channel

savinglivesgw@gmail.com (gwalter) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:57:45 PDT

This is well done:

Posted by Gary Walter
http://bit.ly/gwalter

The Abominable Blister Beetle

aphanson@csuchico.edu (Andy Hanson) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:08:11 PDT

To those like Clifford Goldstein (“One Lord or the Other”, Adventist Review, August 20, 2009) and F. J. Ayala ("Darwin's Greatest Discovery: Design Without Designer", 2007, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 104 (Suppl 1): 8567–73.) who make authoritative arguments designed to force a choice between creation and evolution to explain life on this planet, I offer the life cycle of the Abominable Blister Beetle. Are other choices possible?

“Reporting recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Leslie Saul-Gershenz and Jocelyn Millar described the case of the abominable blister beetle and the benighted solitary bee. Blister beetles live in the southwestern deserts of the United States. Females lay their eggs in grassy patches where solitary bees forage. The beetle eggs all hatch simultaneously, and the thousand or so newborn larvae immediately gather together into a tight formation. They form a nice oval shape, all dark and fuzzy. They travel as an inseparable unit, up and down the blades of grass. They look and act just like—a female solitary bee.

Before long, they start releasing a pheromone mimic, and now they smell like a female bee too. A male bee lands on what he thinks is a mate, and the blister pack clings to him en masse. Disappointed by the encounter, and seemingly unaware of his cargo, the male bee flies on in search of new love. Should he find and approach a real female bee, the beetle larvae will instantly abandon him and cling to her. The female will take them where they want to go, back to her well-provisioned nest. The larvae will deplane, settle down, and gorge themselves to maturity on nectar, pollen, and, best of all, the bee's eggs.”

The Art of Deception by Natalie Angier
National Geographic Magazine
August 2009

Multi-Generational Church Leadership

mschwantes@yahoo.com (Marcel) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 16:10:35 PDT

By Marcel Schwantes

Ah yes, the generational divide. It's in just about every church. Look around your worship services and ministries, and you'll soon note--we are niched by generation.

Church life today is contextualized to reach people in different segments of culture influenced by media, music, entertainment and technology. So multi-generational church ministry is uncharted territory.

Trends toward the "multi-cultural" has seen an increase, as more churches incorporate this into their DNA and stated values. But I have yet to see a church or church plant with clear "multi-generational" in its vision statement.

In terms of a worship service, we typically define an effective intergenerational worship by a congregation of diverse ages sitting through a service of mixed styles, usually getting bummed out equally. Nothing like stifling the spirit of a worship environment when grandpa has to sit and listen to a pounding rendition of "God of Wonders."

Lets shift our thinking. Another way of defining "multi-generational" is based on the relational. How many relationships with people of different generations do folks at your church have? If the answer is "not many" or "none" then it's time to investigate the kinds of activities and events that are actually relationship building.

Imagine a ministry where young and old serve together. While musical tastes often separate and isolate people, serving brings them together. Community services (Habitat for Humanity, Compassion International, homeless feedings, etc.), and multi-generational small groups fit the bill. Another effective way to mix the ages is intergenerational mentoring. But you can't get mentored by a stranger. Finding a mentor for one of your youth works best if they start out by being friends first.

Those of us who are older tend to under-estimate the difference between generations. We think that what feels comfortable to us will not--or should not--be a barrier to those who are younger. Those of us who are younger tend to over-estimate the difference between generations. We feel as if those who are older are a different species and could never understand "our" experience.
The key concept behind this illustration is connectedness. Who feels "connected" at your church, my church?

Connectedness isn't just about relationships. It has more to do with whether or not, when I enter a church, does it feel like a place for "people like me." If I feel connected, I am likely to overlook how disconnected people of another generation may feel. Yes, we will never be able to make all people totally connected all the time, but having conversations about what people in your generation are experiencing may be a good start. Be aware of the dynamics going on.

As a leadership coach and organizational consultant, I've personally seen many generational issues affecting church effectiveness and hindering community. But once every thing's out on the table, change can begin to take place. We can never move to where we want to be without speaking honestly about where we are.

Marcel Schwantes is a certified life and leadership coach, and an organizational consultant with a virtual practice coaching church members and pastors across the country.

It’s Really All About God

noreply@blogger.com (Nathan Brown) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:44:40 PDT

Review by Nathan Brown

In our increasingly pluralistic societies, one of the most urgent questions facing Christianity—and Adventism—is how we relate to those who believe differently. Too often, the traditional approach seems to have been to dismiss these others—anyone and everyone who does not believe as we do. But our increasing interaction with those of other faiths forces us to re-examine these assumptions. Life is often not as black-and-white as we might like it to be.

Samir Selmanovic is one voice who can help Christians—and particularly Adventists—wrestle with these issues. Writing overtly as a Seventh-day Adventist Christian and pastor, his book It’s Really All About God is published by a large mainstream press, Jossey-Bass, but highlights a number of distinctly Adventist contributions to Christian faith and how these also connect beyond Christianity.

In his introduction, Selmanovic is careful to emphasise the Christian foundation for this project. He acknowledges that some of his friends claim they are able to embrace four faiths—Muslim, atheist, Jewish and Christian—simultaneously but expresses his doubts that this is either possible or sustainable. Instead, he acknowledges that he “would not have become or stayed Christian without the blessings of Islam, atheism, and Judaism.”

Yet, at the same time, Selmanovic maintains that it is his Christian faith that inspires him to seek good in and for other believers. It is precisely because he seeks to follow Jesus that he reaches out to others and has something of value and beauty to share with them. Applying such basic Christian tenets as the Golden Rule, he urges that we use these principles to guide us toward treating other religions as we would like them to treat ours—listening with respect, learning from their wisdom, standing up for their freedoms and serving their needs. Rather than watering down Christianity, Selmanovic seeks a more radical, costly and sometimes difficult engagement with our faith and each other.

Selmanovic has sought to model this approach to those of other faiths in the form of Faith House Manhattan, a multi-faith ministry project he founded in New York City. Described as “an experiment in the kingdom of God,” Faith House seeks to create a space in which believers from the world’s three major monotheistic religions can worship together, learn from each other’s traditions and serve together in the world.

As someone who has spent portions of his life in a number of these faith traditions, Selmanovic is not merely a philosopher or theologian. He grew up in a nominally Muslim family in then-Communist Yugoslavia. When he became a Christian and Seventh-day Adventist while completing compulsory military service, Selmanovic was expelled from his family for a number of years. He eventually completed doctoral studies at Andrews University before pastoring on both coasts of the United States, including ministering in New York City at the time of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

It’s Really All About God takes its narrative direction from this story, with Selmanovic’s own realisation of God, growth in faith, slowly repairing relationship with his family and life experience escorting readers through a similar journey. As such, the book is part spiritual memoir but with added depth of reflection and engagement with other religious traditions and literature. Appropriately, the narrative climax of the book is perhaps a seemingly small moment bringing together Selmanovic’s family and church family, reading of which is rendered more poignant in light his father’s recent death.

It’s Really All About God is both deeply philosophical and profoundly pragmatic. One of the book’s recurring statements is “Life wins,” meaning that our beliefs or theories about life and God must have practical applications and benefits, or risk fading into irrelevance. Written and published primarily for a Christian readership, It’s Really All About God might have helped some readers by a more direct engagement with some of the Bible references used to launch the “exclusive claims” of Christianity—but Selmanovic’s aim is to outline a vision more than argue apologetics.

Although it’s easy to be distracted, It’s Really All About God is really a book about God—as the title suggests. Any authentic discussion about religion must ultimately be about the God we are seeking to worship and serve, and what He is like. And that is the book’s greatest achievement.

Through his sometimes funny, sometimes moving and sometimes poetic reflections, Selmanovic points us back to a God Who embraces, Who stoops to serve, Who pursues us relentlessly but lovingly, Who weeps at the tragedies, heartaches, fear and brokenness of our world, and Who is truly “our Father” to all His children. This is the God Who calls us to join with Him in serving our world, to value each other and to participate now in the wonderful and mysterious kingdom He offers to us all.

Cross-posted from Adventist Today.

Please get rid of your spiritual life…

savinglivesgw@gmail.com (gwalter) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:09:38 PDT

Guest post by Pastor Sam Neves

Somewhere along the line I think we missed the point. I am constantly reminded of the difference between secular and sacred, worldly and spiritual.

Have you ever wondered why so much energy has been spent labeling parts of our life? I remember being taught that I should develop my academic life, my professional life, my family life and you guessed it, my spiritual life. Over the years I have noticed that if each area of my life was compared to a slice of pizza (can’t help it, my family is Italian), then my spiritual life was just another slice of the pizza.

In practice, this meant having to do my morning worship to feed my spiritual life before I faced the secular world. It meant dedicating one day a week to my spiritual life, the Sabbath, whilst caring for my needs on the rest of the week. It meant having to choose certain music as sacred and ignoring others as secular. Some friendships were spiritual whilst others were worldly. Maybe you can relate. If you are happy with this, please forget this invitation and stop reading now!

If you are not fully satisfied with this formula, please read on...

When I realized what my life had become - a compartmentalized complex of disconnected interests - I did what I’m inviting you to do: I got rid of my spiritual life.

“But I thought you were a pastor?” I hear you ask.

Yes, I still am. So here is what I mean:

I realized that the Bible doesn't separate our life. It seems far more interested in showing that God is in every part of it. If our various activities are like the slices of the pizza, our spiritual life is the box that holds everything together. Furthermore, it’s the cheese that melts through every slice. I call this Domino’s Theology! This has given me incredible freedom to explore my life as a dynamic whole. Everything changed.

Today I no longer divide my day between the moments with God and facing the world. As a fellow pastor, Rob Bell, has put it, everything is spiritual. In my own life, here are a few examples:

Kissing my wife and baby in the morning - spiritual
Eating - spiritual
Driving - spiritual
Shopping - spiritual
Facebook - spiritual
Listening to music, any music - spiritual
Going to the toilet - spiritual (Try it - it’s great!)
Preaching - spiritual
Praying - spiritual
Playing Tennis - spiritual
Reading, any reading, including the Bible - spiritual
Sex - very spiritual
Hospital visitation - spiritual
Starbucks visitation - spiritual
Everything, I really mean it, everything is spiritual

When I read the story of Jesus it is abundantly clear that he would have never referred to his spiritual life because everything he did was spiritual. Sure, he spent much time in prayer, but that had no less spirituality than healing the sick or going to meals and parties. Paul goes further: ‘So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God’ (1 Cor 10:31).

Image by vincos via Flickr

So how is my life now? Well, I’m free! For example, my music collections are no longer secular vs. gospel. There are certain tunes that I simply deleted from my iPod. Other tunes that I would have considered ‘secular’ and listened to with a slightly heavy conscious, now speak loud and clear into how amazing God is. Just as an example of each, I no longer listen to ‘Learn to Fly’, by Foo Fighters whilst many songs by Leona Lewis have become deeply spiritual to me because of just how accurate they are in describing my love for Amy, my wife (The First Time I Every Saw you; Here I am; Footprints in the Sand; etc).

I can now see God everywhere I look. When my life was divided, I used to ask a very silly question: ‘Where is God?’ Now that everything is spiritual, the real question is: ‘Where isn’t God?’ My ministry has become to invite people to see where God has been in their lives all along. I no longer take God to the ‘secular’ people as God can be quite heavy! I truly believe that God is already there because they are people and so God is fully present in their lives - they just can’t see it yet.

In Acts 14 Paul addresses a crowd that really doesn’t believe in God and proclaims: “Yet he [God] has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.” (v. 17) It was God who gave them rain, food and joy. Joy! The next time you see a family playing and laughing in a park - it is God who is giving them that joy - but they might not be aware of it yet.

So once again, let me invite you to get rid of your spiritual life and discover the amazing truth that everything is spiritual. Join me as we take praying without ceasing to a whole new level. Walk with me through the streets of our cities showing people just how close God has been all along.

So once and for all - please get rid of your spiritual life...
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Sam Neves is the senior pastor of Wimbledon International Seventh-day Adventist Church. You can read more of his story in the Adventist Review: Fulfilling a Mother's Dream

His recent post in Spectrum is also a great read.

Relevance, Part 3

savinglivesgw@gmail.com (gwalter) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:42:58 PDT

A couple of things have happened in the last few weeks that inspired me to begin this series on relevance. This will be the concluding post - but you may find this theme throughout much of what I write (both in the past, and in the future). When I preach, when I write, when I do just about anything, I ask myself, what is the point? And this becomes the question I have to ask about God, His Word, and His Church - what is the point?

For me, I've found meaning in God. The Bible was a little more challenging - but once I moved past the cultural distortions, I have found great relevance in those words. I'm still wrestling with the Church though. I'm wondering, what is it that people are trying to do there?

I had the somewhat unique opportunity to plant a church a few years ago. From the beginning, we knew we had the opportunity to design this community from scratch. We sought to be real, authentic, relevant, and experiential - and, for the most part, we achieved that. In addition, it was fun!

Unfortunately, we discovered that the denomination wasn't quite ready for a church that was made up of mostly unchurched people. And, we discovered that the unchurched still had a lot of prejudice towards anything that remotely looks like a church. We thought the denomination would throw resources our way when they saw the evangelistic successes; and we hoped the unchurched would be crashing our gates when they saw a church that spoke their language. Neither of those happened.

A few weeks ago, my family and I attended an Adventist worship service not more than 25,000 miles from here. This church is set in a semi-rural community and has been a shining star in North America. Not only have they achieved some spectacular growth, they have an awesome facility, and they are an integral part of the surrounding community.

And yet, I felt out of place there. This isn't too unusual, I feel out of place at most Adventist churches. For one, I don't match the demographics of the membership (e.g. I'm younger, I didn't grow up in the church, my politics are more moderate, et cetera.). But the real thing that makes me feel out of place is my view of what a church is about. Let me explain:

I see the Church as a standing army. Most people see church more as a place for fellowship. To me, the purpose of gathering together is to be trained and equipped (discipleship) for the battle we face (evangelism). Most church goers want to be encouraged and nurtured. For me, eternal salvation has little or no motivation - what I need is salvation from the daily grind. My walk with Jesus strengthens me, enables me to experience serenity, and keeps me out of the pit of hopelessness. I hear a lot of talk about eternity from the saints in the pews.

I don't really see my salvation as the primary goal of my walk with God. From my understanding of Scripture and Ellen White, I see this whole Great Controversy issue being about vindicating God and glorifying Him. Yet, I hear a lot of talk from the average Adventist that leads me to believe this is a selfish pursuit for our benefit. Don't get me wrong, I think our salvation definitely says something about God's character - but that isn't the end of the story.

So, a few weeks ago, I'm in this corporate worship "event." The worship team was good, the music was good, the preaching was good, the prayers were good, the seats were comfortable, the ambiance was pleasant, and everything was good - so why did I feel out of place?

It wasn't relevant. But it wasn't the content - it was the community. The content was good, but there was no connection between the content and the community.

But this isn't an isolated example. I've been to several hundred churches across North America (Adventist and others) in the last two decades, and I could count on one hand the worship services that went beyond people on stage and people watching, and were community worship experiences. And, amazingly, most of those worship experiences didn't happen during a regularly scheduled weekend worship event.

So, I have to ask myself, what is the point?

What am I gaining from attending these services? What is the benefit for my family? Is it worth our effort and what is the return on our investment?

We have two kids (ages 4 and 2) and they receive a lot of benefit from the Sabbath School programs. Adventurers, VBS, and other programs really benefit our kids. We, and other churches, do a really good job "training" kids and preparing them doctrinally. It is still our job, as their parents, to disciple them - to model and teach the spiritual disciplines (prayer, fasting, scripture, community, solitude, abstinence, etc), but the kids programs enrich our kids.

It just seems that preaching is often geared towards the lowest common denominator. I'm not talking intellectually - for Adventists tend to be a pretty intellectual group. I'm talking spiritually. I don't see a lot of preachers pushing people to be experimental in their spirituality - or to take risks. I need that - for I tend to rise to the level others expect me to attain. I believe that is true for most.

Long ago, I moved past worship styles. Whether singing hymns, or praise songs; whether responsive readings, or contemporary worship music; to me, it's about attitude, not style. My attitude is that I want to have a face-to-face encounter with God. I want to do this in my private worship and I want to experience that during corporate worship. But it's difficult for me to experience this when the majority are not worshiping - or are not engaged.

So, I again ask myself, what is the point of attending corporate worship if I am feeling alone and isolated?

I'm different - demographically, philosophically, spiritually, and emotionally. Demographically, I'm younger and not a lifer. Philosophically, I'm looking for more than fellowship - I want to prepare for spiritual warfare. Spiritually, I need more than doctrinal teaching - I want to be challenged; I want vision, I want a path. Emotionally, I was created to express my love and devotion to God. I have a need to connect, face-to-face, with my Creator, my Savior, my God, and my Friend - and a community of like-minded people.

Am I alone in these thoughts? Am I the only one that feels this way?

If you want to know why the Christian Church is losing ground throughout the West, I don't believe we need to look any farther than ourselves. It isn't style, it isn't comfort, and it isn't doctrine - it is engagement. Are we real? Are we authentic? Are we relevant? Are we experiencing everything God wants us to experience?

We need to move past the merely good and press towards the absolutely great.

Posted by Gary Walter
http://bit.ly/gwalter

Exporting Adventism

krisloewen@gmail.com (Kristopher Loewen) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:05:19 PDT

Overseas not long ago, I had an interesting interaction with an Adventist pastor. I had just finished telling him about a person who had expressed to me a desire to begin keeping Sabbath and to be baptized. I would have expected him to be thrilled with the news, as this individual had been an ongoing ‘project’ for him for some time. To my surprise the pastor appeared disappointed, annoyed, and even a little angry.

The new convert in reference had little (if any) desire to become a “Seventh-day Adventist”. Her perspective of the church (through being in contact with them for over a year) was that they were angry, legalistic, judgmental people. Being connected to another Christian community, she simply wanted the gift and goodness of keeping Sabbath and to publicly commit her life to Jesus Christ through baptism.

In our interaction, the pastor coolly peppered me with questions about the young new convert. Had she been to one of my evangelistic meetings? What had I said to her? How had I made that connection? Who was going to baptize her & when? He seemed put off that this ‘soul’ was now “off the market” for him.

She had been attending my meetings and I hadn’t had much more than a short greeting with her before we spoke about her baptism; I hardly knew who she was. As far as I was concerned, it was God who was doing the connecting – and I wasn't worried about who would be doing the baptizing (it happened to be a pastor whose authority she was under).

What could God’s perspective be on this person’s conversion? What might God’s expectations be with regard to her denominational association? How might He react to the Adventist pastor’s lack of enthusiasm?

Can we as Seventh-day Adventists celebrate people’s rescue from sin (its current destruction & future consequences), even if they do not come to be a part of the Adventist denomination/movement?

Can we ‘bless’ people with the gifts Adventists have been given on their terms? (I.e. can we ‘bless’ people with the goodness of Adventism without ‘taking’ from them [requiring membership/participation to our organization]?)

A dear friend of mine says “yes” – and he calls it ‘exporting’ Adventism: offering what we have to offer with no expectations of a ‘return’ on our ‘investment’. Exporting Adventism would mean allowing people to incorporate the blessings we have been given into their own spaces and affiliations without necessarily joining the Adventist Denomination. It would kind of mean stepping into the Abrahamic model of becoming a blessing because of God’s blessing on us - freely giving what we have received.

In his mind, if we became open to the idea of gifting what we have, we might lose some of the sense of ‘market share’ we currently carry. We might find ourselves partnering with other groups in creating kingdom breakthroughs. We might share our gifts on a much broader scale (it’s far far easier to talk about resting on the Sabbath when that is not exclusively tied to joining an organization). We might be able to celebrate the baptisms of people like my friend overseas.

In some sense we are doing it already (think no-pressure health programs & mission programs like food-banks); yet in a much larger sense, given our modernist-pragmatist cultural milieu, we have a hard time even envisioning what 'exporting' Adventism might look like. In many instances, we have theologies that work directly against it (“come out of her my people” ring a bell?). Ironically however, I believe that if we were willing to take the risk in no-strings-attached gifting, ‘exporting Adventism’ without expectations, we would become far more relevant, vibrant with life, and even growing than we possible could otherwise.

What are some ideas of what it could look like in the future?

Egocentric mission or inclusivist gospel?

parkergreat@gmail.com (Steve Parker) — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:17:57 PDT

I've just finished reading an article in Adventist World about the "Roadmap to Mission" draft document to be edited and presented at the Annual Council of the General Conference Executive Committee in October 2009.

According to Mark Kellner's report, the document affirms that

"[t]he goal of Seventh-day Adventist evangelistic and outreach work among adherents of world religions is to bring people into a saving faith in Jesus Christ..."

Near the end of Kellner's report, he quotes from the draft statement:

"In some situations,Adventist mission may include the formation of transitional groups (usually termed Special Affinity Groups) that lead people from a non-Christian religion into the Seventh-day Adventist Church," the document notes. However, such groups must operate with a deliberate timeline "to lead the people into membership."

The problem

The overall message of these two statements seems to be that bringing people into a saving faith in Jesus Christ is equivalent to bringing them into membership within Adventism. If this is the case, then there are a number of consequences which, in my opinion, we see illustrated in much of the denomination's media. Here are just a few of those consequences:

An inordinate burden in saving the whole world

all

Leads to an exclusivist mentality

The mission of the Seventh-day Adventist Church is to proclaim to all peoples the everlasting gospel in the context of the Three Angels' messages of Revelation 14:6-12, leading them to accept Jesus as their personal Savior and to unite with His church, and nurturing them in preparation for His soon return.

Notice the ambiguity of the word "church" in this statement. The first occurrence refers to the denomination. But what does the second one refer to? Given the whole paragraph, it seems to also refer to the denomination. The process seems to be:

This process has, as its ultimate goal, membership in the denomination on the assumption that it is the one church (denomination) that has the truth regarding the preparation needed for the return of Christ. Most other Christian denominations would probably express the third box as 'unite with a local church' that preaches the gospel rather than necessarily have their goal a person joining their particular denomination. To a great extent, this is why we have worked so hard to proselytise other denominations throughout our history.

Prevents authentic learning from others
When there is a deep-seated view, however subtle, that we are the "true"church, it makes it very difficult to authentically, and openly, learn from others. As I was growing up, I can only ever remember being taught the answers to objections and the marking of my Bible in such a way as to support Adventist belief. Most of my engagements with others had beneath them the idea of conversation to persuade to my point of view. Sabbath School Bible Study Quarterlies are rarely, if ever, inductive study guides. They most often come at the text from the perspective of Adventist doctrine. They rarely draw, in any significant way, on the thinking of non-Adventist scholars. This leads to a very narrow view which tends to merely confirm what is already known.

The solution

In my view, what we need is a fundamental shift in our understanding of identity. I often hear people say that, if it wasn't for Adventism's distinctive beliefs, there would be no reason for it to exist. But this attitude towards identify makes the denomination an end in itself. It's own existence is the purpose of its belief system and institutional processes and structures.

The reason any denomination should ultimately exist is solely because it wants to bring people to Christ — not to itself. For me, if a person comes to Christ it matters not what denomination they join. Like everyone else, I am enamoured by the thought that someone else might agree with what I think. But this is to place our own egos at the end of the process of conversion rather than Jesus.
To shift away from this organisational egocentrism would lead to at least three benefits:

We could genuinely begin to work with others on the fulfilling of the Great Commission — to make disciples of Jesus. We would be relieved of the burden of taking the gospel to the world on our own and see ourselves as supporting, and being supported, in the proclamation of the Good News to all people everywhere.
We would be able to genuinely celebrate the advances made by others in spreading the gospel. Our media would need to change and, instead of things like Mission Spotlights talking about the presence or absence of Seventh-day Adventists in countries around the globe as if that is the sole purpose of our mission, they could talk about what we are doing in the context of a greater work being done by all Christians.
We could genuinely engage in conversations with others by which we actually learn and grow in our own understanding rather than seeing ourselves as the proclaimers of the most advanced understanding of truth for this time.

In writing such things, it is inevitable that someone will respond with a caution that we might lose our identity or dilute our unique contribution. This is an appropriate caution because authentic humility will always run the risk of leading us to the conclusion that we could be wrong about some things. And it is appropriate to be cautious. We always need to test all things and retain those that are proven to be true and right. But it also means that we might need to discard or modify some things. So be it. The reality is, however, that the more we try to protect our identity, the more disinterested they will become in listening to us.

I look forward to the day when our missions statements will read something like:

The mission of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination is to bring our unique perspective to the work of all Christians, to proclaim to all peoples the everlasting gospel in the context of our contemporary times, leading them to accept Jesus as their personal Savior and to unite with His church, and nurturing them in preparation for His soon return.

These might be subtle refinements. But they might produce enormous changes that could make us more effective at spreading the gospel to all. In the process, we might ourselves become better representations of that all-inclusive gospel.

Relevance, Part 2

savinglivesgw@gmail.com (gwalter) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 07:47:53 PDT

Image by Lawrence OP via Flickr

When I look around at others, and I try to understand people's motives for church attendance, I am often baffled. I don't really understand why people choose to attend a weekly church service – or get involved at a deeper level. But my not understanding probably says more about me, then it does about the people I'm trying to understand.

Typically, I am not a joiner. I tend to not just go along because everyone else is doing something. As a certified introvert, I tend to prefer my own company over that of others. So, when I see groups of people gathering – for anything, not just church – I am left a little confused as to what their motives, or intentions are.

It is really easy for me to start down the path of criticism and to unfairly judge people. When I was younger and more brash, I would loudly disdain those who attended church because they were “supposed to.” I ridiculed those who had been lifelong attenders, but were still mere spectators. And, unfortunately, I sneered at those who seem to revel in positions of responsibility, especially when their actions and behaviors don't appear to reflect Christ's character.

Now I'm a few years older, and ~~a little~~ more broken. I have experienced a significant number of failures, disappointments, and hypocrisies in my own life. Looking back, enables me to look forward a little more clearly. I realize that we all have our reasons, and we all are trying to whatever it takes to survive – maybe even thrive!

I never really planned to be a part of a church again. As I wrote in the first installment of this series, when I would attend a church worship service, I would often leave more discouraged than when I arrived. Then there were all the inconsistencies I saw in doctrine, practice, and belief. Tradition too often trumped theology, and behaviors too often ridiculed people's faith. It's one thing to know that I'm not a joiner, it's quite another thing to experience a loss of integrity in order to join with people I don't necessarily want to be with.

"And yet, here I am, 25 years later, not only attending regular Sabbath worship services, but involved in service and leadership. How did that happen?"

It started with surrender. It's a simple concept, yet quite powerful. I never really learned about surrender in my first run at being a Christian. But the second time, fresh from 12-Step meetings, and seeking serenity, I now understood that I can't fix myself. I didn't have the tools, the skills, nor the wisdom and experience to make it alright again. I had given it over to God and I was determined to follow His steps.

The picture began to unfold for me...

So, even though I didn't want to become a part of a church, my wants weren't really part of the equation. Through my daily Bible reading, prayer and meditation, and a little book that I still try to read every year – Steps to Jesus – I discovered that God had a plan for my life. I'd be a fool if I didn't follow that plan.

It was as if I was alone and wandering through a vast spiritual desert – looking for food, water, and shelter, but hopelessly lost. I began to see Jesus as the pilot in an aircraft overhead. He knew the terrain ahead, He knew where I had come from, and He knew my exact situation. More than that, He knew where the food, water, and shelter could be found. All He had to do was get my attention and help me to understand that He had my best interests in mind.

Well, now He had my attention, but understanding His benevolence was another matter indeed. When I finally figured out that not only does God know my past and my current situation, He loves me despite that information. In fact, as Cherie Peters is wont to say, “He's crazy about me!” The picture began to unfold for me.

First, there is a God. That was a huge step. Even today, I have trouble wrapping my mind around this concept – but I'm ok with that. My finite self could never contain an infinite God, It is a mystery that I will spend eternity unpacking – and that's why eternal life will never be boring.

Second, this God is omniscient. But not just about the ethereal things, the universe next door, and all that metaphysical stuff. This God is omniscient about my life – personally. He does know my past. He knows my present. He understands my motives, my failures, my brokenness, and my ugly insides. In other words, he knows me even better than I know myself.

Third, despite this knowledge of me, He is still crazy about me! Seriously – this is crazy. Erwin McManus once said that dating is a series of conversations where we try to suppress our real selves. In fact, most relationships are that way. We're afraid that if people really knew us, they would certainly run away. But not only does God know us better than anyone else; and not only does He not run away; but He wants to be with us. He loves us so much, He'd be willing to do whatever it takes to be with us.

Finally, because of this love God has for me, He wants me to be fed, sheltered, and and quenched. Not just physically, but spiritually, emotionally, intellectually, socially, and actually. He wants me to find water, food, and shelter. He wants all of us to find these things.

Understanding this image of God gave me greater freedom to surrender.

In other words, I was learning to trust Him. The more I trusted, the more I let go of my own preferences. The more I let go of my own preferences, the more He was able to lead me. And the more He led, the more I trusted Him, and the more serenity I found. This – this is the abundant life Jesus spoke about in John 10:10.

Sometimes we don't – or can't – know why something works. It just does. In the 12-Step program they told me to go to meetings and keep going. We can't explain it, they said – it just works. Paul, on inspiration from the Holy Spirit gave us basically the same advice. Remember to gather together, he said (Hebrews10:23-25 ). So even though I'm a person who not only despises joining, and I'd rather be by myself in the woods than with a group of people in a building, I heard God telling me to go to church.

You see, because I trust Him, I listen to what He tells me.

Even down to the detail of which church I attend. It's not about me ~~sometimes~~. Well, in fact, it really is never about me. When I surrender less, and take my own preferences into consideration, I find that I begin to lose ground spiritually. When I lose ground spiritually, I lose my serenity. When I lose my serenity, I lose the abundance of life – and a little part of me begins to die.

For me then, it's just easier to surrender.

That's why I started going to church. But why do I keep going to church? That's a good question. I'm glad you asked. I'll answer that in part 3 of this series on relevance.

Event: Idea Camp Coming to Portland

savinglivesgw@gmail.com (gwalter) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:23:05 PDT

Idea Camp followed us on Twitter a few days ago, but other than liking the name, I didn't think much of it. Then, last night, two of my friends invited me to the Facebook event listing for the Portland event. Now, I don't know about you, but I get a lot of "invites" on Facebook, and most aren't worth my time, but since I recognized the name, I took a look.

If you're familiar with the OpenSource software movement, or the openspacee format of the un-conference, you'll recognize this format. I've attended various tech events locally, and have been thinking the Church needs to embrace this format of reaching out to our culture, but I haven't had the time to make it happen - yet.

In a nutshell, what this does is to take your online social networking into the real world - and vice versa...

But here it is, live, and coming to PDX!

More details here: http://theideacamp.ning.com/page/icpnw-details

Being Open

aphanson@csuchico.edu (Andy Hanson) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 20:13:56 PDT

I was looking through my files the other day, trying to gain some perspective on “then” and “now” when it comes to where we are as a church and a nation. Jan Paulsen’s words in the November 9, 1995, Adventist Review have special meaning in light of the current acrimonious, sometimes hateful, potentially deadly, and fundamentally unChristian political rhetoric. “Being open”, when reason is drowned out by shouting, listening is seen as unproductive, and compromise is ridiculed as weakness, is a fundamental test of patriotic duty and Christian virtue.

“What does it mean to be ‘open’? Essentially it means to be truly able to look beyond yourself without transmitting threatening or intimidating signals. It means not that the borders or boundaries that mark our personal space are obliterated, but that they are easily crossed back and forth. It means that when you listen politely you do, in fact, also hear what’s being said to you. . .It means we acquire the grace of being quiet and walking gently so as not to frighten off the other person with too many words or too much loudness.

“Openness means to be transparently genuine. You are clear in what you say, and where you stand is understood. In contrast to political posturing . . . openness does not operate with a range of private agendas that must somehow be accommodated. Political astuteness is the ability to predict what is going to happen and then support it before it happens. But a political environment is a most hostile place in which to spend your days, for in that environment all those around you are strangers. You may well know their names, you may well listen to their speeches, you may even sit next to them, yet you will all be strangers, each not really knowing the other person. Openness, by definition, is transparent, genuine, nonthreatening.”

Comments

savinglivesgw@gmail.com (gwalter) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 16:36:53 PDT

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Join the Community, Participate in the Conversation

savinglivesgw@gmail.com (gwalter) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:36:38 PDT

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