This list was so profound, moving, and important that I had to re-post it in its entirety.

Top Ten State Abbreviations

10. LA

9. OR

8. GA

7. ZA

6. PA

5. OH

4. MA

3. ME

2. OK

1. HI

Hello to you, too.

David in Prayer, by Rembrandt

Lord, grant me your peace,
for I have made peace
with what does not give peace
and I am afraid.

Drive me deep, now,
to face myself so I may see
that what I truly need to fear is
my capacity to deceive
and willingness to be decieved,
my loving of things
and using of people,
my struggle for power
and shrinking of soul,
my addiction to comfort
and sedation of conscience,
my readiness to criticize
and reluctance to create,
my clamor for privelege
and silence at injustice,
my seeking for security
and forsaking the kingdom.

Lord, grant me your peace.
Instill in me such fear of you
as will begin to make me wise,
and such quiet courage
as will enable me to begin to make
hope visible,
forgiving delightful,
loving contagious,
faith liberating,
peace-making joyful
and myself open and present
to other people
and your kingdom.

From Guerillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle, by Ted Loder.

The second chapter of Joseph Myers’ The Search to Belong focuses on the deep longing all human seem to have to “belong.” But defining what it means to belong, and what it means for others to belong to us, turns out to be more complicated than you might think.

It all comes back to the fragmentation of family and community that has characterized American life for over 50 years now, and Myers seems to present this crisis as the issue the church must address if it is going to be salt and light in the West.

The expert in the law who asked Jesus “Who is my neighbor?” was essentially asking perhaps the most fundamental question of life; the question of belonging. “Who belongs to me? To whom do I belong? For whom am I responsible–and to what extent?” This search for community is a basic human drive and it especially haunts us today when all the foundations seem to be crumbling beneath us.

It’s one of life’s most important questions, but for the most part it is bewildering for most of us. How does belonging work? How does “community” happen? Small groups work for some people but not for others. Some people seem to connect spontaneously and there’s wonderful chemistry, but it doesn’t always last. There doesn’t seem to be a “magic bullet” or basic principle to turn to.

In many ways the church is trying to help (small groups! seeker worship! Sunday school!) but “it seems that in many ways we are not helping people with their life search. Rather, we are merely supplying them with another numbing thing to do that masks the real, nagging ache of their search for a neighbor, for family, for belonging.”

It seems what many people are seeking is what Elton Trueblood called “bold fellowship.” Myers quotes Trueblood: “Many contemporary seekers cannot abide the Church as they see it. their dissatisfaction arising not from the fact that membership demands too much, but rather from the fact that the demands are too small.” So it would seem that, to quote Jason Coker’s comment on the previous post, “belonging is a measure of commitment in one form or another.”

So where are those boundary markers? How do we define who belongs, and at what level? (Incidentally Jason poses the same question on his blog.) Myers quotes the Roman Emperor Julian to illustrate how the early church was somehow able to provide outsiders with a deep sense of belonging:

Atheism [Christianity] has been specially advanced through the loving service rendered to strangers, and through their care for the burial of the dead. It is a scandal that there is not a single Jew who is a beggar; and that the godless Galileans care not only for their own poor but for ours as well; while those who belong to us look in vain for the help that we should render them.

I’ll pose a few of Myers’ questions here:

• How do you define who belongs? Who fits this definition and who does not?
• Identify those who would say they belong but you do not consider “members” of the “family.”
• Make a list of all the things you belong to, and consider how significant they are to your life. Does everyone (person, club, organization, informal connections) know you belong?
• Have you ever been told you don’t belong? What were the implications?

I’ve just started reading Joseph Myers’ book The Search to Belong, and I’ve found it really helpful so far in helping me think through issues of community and belonging in the church we’re planting. I want to blog through the book to generate some more conversation around the issues.

Myers takes the first chapter to outline several “myths of belonging.” These commonly-held beliefs about what creates intimacy and community among people are:

• More time = more belonging. Not necessarily, it appears. One can experience a sense of belonging through annual events focused around common interest, for example.
• More commitment = more belonging. Again, not necessarily. A significant relationship is not always the same thing as a committed relationship. Commitment by itself does not produce community.
• More purpose = more belonging. Getting people organized around a common purpose or passion does not guarantee that they will connect.
• More personality = more belonging. Sometimes we assume that some people are “wired” for community <cough>extroverts</cough>, but this simply isn’t true. Oftentimes the most outgoing among us are the also the loneliest. People of all personality types are capable of developing deep connections with others.
• More proximity = more belonging. People living near each other, while definitely making it easier to connect with others spontaneously, does not in and of itself create a sense of belonging and community.
• More small groups = more belonging. Just because people are getting together on purpose doesn’t mean relational connections are being made. Having small groups does not necessarily lead to people having a sense of belonging.

Myers then introduces us to the main thesis of his book, that community is multidimensional. That we belong to each other on different levels. Building on the work of Edward T. Hall, Myers proposes that we could perhaps think about community and belonging according to four “spaces:”

• Public
• Social
• Personal
• Intimate

“These four spaces communicate how we belong to each other,” Myers says. “This conversation is about recognizing, describing, and validating (or invalidating) the ways in which we build healthy community and employ specific spaces to communicate belonging.”

A few questions for discussion:

1. Which of the above myths have you fallen for or seen employed? Where would you push back a bit?
2. Does the language of public, social, personal, and intimate space resonate with you? In what ways have you experienced those kinds of “spaces of belonging?” How would you describe each?

Here are some sobering facts about bottled water. For example, did you know that the health standards for tap water are higher than those for bottled water?And it takes three times as much water to make a plastic bottle as it does to fill it? And 40% of all bottled water is simply tap water anyway? Click the image for a larger version to get the facts. (ht)

Intercessory prayer has never been my thing.

That is to say, I have never been very “good at” intercessory prayer (praying for others). I know how important it is, and how much gets accomplished when we simply hold others in God’s presence and ask him to act, but I’ve never had that natural ability or inclination to regularly pray for others, to my shame.

But because I have come to see it as one of the most important things I do as a pastor and church planter, I realized I needed to learn how to do it. I found some “training wheels” recently: a prayer form that I have begun to use that enables me to pray for others with regularity and consistency. The prayer form is taken from Ruth Haley Barton’s excellent book Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership, which she adapted from the Iona Abbey Worship Book. Perhaps it could be something that helps you pray for others more consistently as well.

Loving God, I hold in your healing presence those who suffer pain and ill health…
(silence to allow the names and faces of those you know to come to mind, and then pray)
…may they know the deep peace of Christ.

Loving God, I hold in your healing presence those who suffer in mind and spirit…
…may they know the deep peace of Christ.

Loving God, I hold in your healing presence the suffering people of our world, and the places where people are experiencing hurt and division—including places of heart
…may they know the deep peace of Christ.

Loving God, I hold in your healing presence those experiencing grief and loss…
…may they know the deep peace of Christ.

Loving God, I hold in your healing presence those who need wisdom for their next steps…
…may they know the deep peace of Christ.

Loving God, I hold in your healing presence those people and situations that seem broken beyond repair…
…may they know the deep peace of Christ.

Loving God, I hold in your healing presence those whose needs are not known to me but who are known by you, and those for whom I have been asked to pray…
And I name in my heart all those who are close to me…
…may they know the deep peace of Christ.

Glory to God, from whom all love flows,
Glory to Jesus, who showed his love through suffering,
And glory to the Holy Spirit,
Who brings light to the darkest places. Amen.

David in Prayer, by Rembrandt

O God,
this is a hard time,
a season of confusion,
a frantic rush
to fill my closets,
my schedule,
and my mind,
only to find myself empty.

Give me hope, Lord,
and remind me
of your steady power
and gracious purposes
that I may live fully.
Renew my faith
that the earth is not destined
for dust and darkness,
but for frolicking life
and deep joy
that, being set free
from my anxiety for the future,
I may take the risks of love
today.

From Guerillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle, by Ted Loder.

At the upcoming Missional Learning Commons in Fort Wayne (Jan 8-9, 2010), Chris Smith and I will be giving a talk on “Crucial Practices for Deeper Churches.” We’ll be discussing how corporate worship and communal economics are intertwined in the community of faith to shape us for participation in God’s mission. I have become fascinated by the connection between these two things, especially in the early church. You could call it “Eucharistic economics.”

It turns out John Howard Yoder has a lot to say on the subject. So here are several conversation-provoking quotes from the chapter on Eucharist in Yoder’s Body Politics:

The meal that Jesus blessed that evening and claimed as his memorial was their ordinary partaking together of food for the body.

In celebrating their fellowship around the table, the early Christians testified that the messianic age, often pictured as a banquet, had begun.

What the New Testament is talking about whenever the theme is “breaking bread” is that people actually were sharing with one another their ordinary day-to-day material sustenance.

Bread eaten together is economic sharing. Not merely symbolically, but also in fact, eating together extends to a wider circle the economic solidarity normally obtained within the family.

The Eucharist is an economic act. To do rightly the practice of breaking bread together is a matter of economic ethics.

The Eucharist is one [way of planting signs of the new world in the ruins of the old], but so is feeding the hungry. One is not more “real presence” than the other.

That last quote especially resonates with one of the prayers we pray when we partake in the Eucharist meal in our worship gatherings (which directly precedes and flows into a time of eating together):

Come and embrace us with your life-giving power
that as bread and wine are made one with us,
we may become one with you.
Come and make of your gathered people
the real presence of Christ for the world,
living our prayer and praying our life
till justice and mercy kiss,
earth and heaven are reconciled,
the kingdoms of this world
become the kingdom of our Father
and the glory of the Lord covers the earth
as the waters cover the sea.

Christ’s “real presence” is among us as we partake in the meal together, and thus Christ’s “real presence” is in the world as we live out our lives together.

Ever wonder why evangelism gives you the creeps? If it doesn’t, don’t worry about reading the rest of this post.

A few days ago I wrote about where the story of the Gospel really starts, which is an important question. But for most of the kinds of people that populate our community, the mere mention of the word “evangelism” evokes nausea. It’s not because they don’t want to share their faith with others, and it’s not because they don’t think it’s important. It’s because they know it’s important, but they can’t shake the image of it that’s been burned into their minds by the way it’s been done in America for the past few decades.

Jason Coker diagnosed the problem very perceptively in a post from this past summer called “Unbecoming Buzz Agents For Christ.” He says the way evangelism has been done is essentially the same way as deceptive “word-of-mouth” advertising campaigns that attempt to start conversations around products for sale. “Buzz agents” are those who appear to be normal people looking to start conversations, but who are actually “under-cover” salespeople trying to steer conversations toward the product.

Isn’t this how many of us have heard evangelism is supposed to be done? Steering a conversation toward this product called “Jesus?” We’ve got the greatest product the world has ever seen, the pitch goes, so let’s “sell” it!

The problem, however, is that such conversations, like the ones initiated by “buzz agents,” aren’t authentic. At their core they are lies: a sales pitch masquerading as a conversation. As Jason’s post says, perhaps the first step in learning what evangelism should actually look like is first repenting of being “buzz agents” for Jesus.

If you live alone, whose feet will you wash?

Russian icon of St. Basil

(Warning: stream-of-consciousness post follows… just writing as I’m thinking).

The quote above is attributed to St. Basil, a fourth-century bishop, and one of the fathers of the communal monasticism of the Eastern church.

Basil was passionate about common life as the only place where people could truly grow to maturity in the faith. He taught that it is only in ordinary life with others that we have any chance of growing into persons and communities that are increasingly permeated with the values of the Gospel.

Without others, how do we grow in humility and patience, in solidarity and respect? Without others with whom we share life, how will we learn to embrace practical service to our neighbor? How do we learn to become a living body unless we have opportunity to serve and depend on one another in these small, everyday ways?

Basil writes:

How shall one show compassion, if one is cut off from common life of the many? For, behold, the Lord Jesus girded himself and washed the feet of his disciples in person. Whose feet then will you wash? Who will you care for?

Basil’s questions are a deep challenge for those of us who live in single-family homes, drive alone in our cars from place to place, and spend much of our time watching TV. If we don’t actively resist it, our culture will push us toward increased isolation and independence, when the Gospel seems to want to push us toward increased communion with God and one another, and an interdependence that reflects the reconciliation and forgiveness the Gospel brings.

The big question is “What does this look like in 21st-century America?” And it’s not simply community for the sake of community (as Bonhoeffer warns us against in Life Together), but a community shaped by the Gospel, created by the Gospel, revolving around the Gospel. This interweaving of interdependent community and corporate worship practices that keep us centered on Jesus lies at the heart of what we’re trying to cultivate in the church we’re planting.

We want it to be more than just a religious meeting once a week, but also more than just a bunch of friends who like hanging out. We’re praying and working to become an embodied witness to the reality of the resurrection of Jesus, a visible demonstration of the beauty and joy of living under the the kingship of Jesus.