“The very first tear he made was do deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know – if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy, oh, but it is such fun to see it coming away.” – C.S. Lewis, Voyage of the Dawn Treader

In Lewis’ tale, set in the fantastical world of Narnia, the boy Eustice has been transformed into a dragon by his greed. The change was unexpected and about as much welcome as when you burn your tongue on a hot cup of coffee or step into the shower before the water has warmed up.

After a series of events, Eustice finds himself in the presence of Aslan, the high king and true god of Narnia. In a way that only a lion can, Aslan begins to deliver the boy-dragon through a series of precise cuts with his razor-sharp claws.

The transformation is excruciating, but its effect is final. Eustice is once again a boy, delivered from the horrid reptilian body that once enveloped him.

This past weekend, I was invited to my own dragon-skin-shedding event.

My “Dragon Skin”

What was my “skin” you ask?  For me, it was a lie that I believed and became all too comfortable with feeding.

The lie?

It was the lie that I was a good Christian. If my spiritual life was a university, I was getting good grades, passing my classes, and staying in the good graces of my Professor.

The truth?

That’s the hard one to admit and, I must confess, it stings a little bit each time I think about verbalizing it.

In spite of all my religious education and theological prowess, I wasn’t doing the very thing that Jesus told me to do.

Let’s see if you can guess where I’m going. Read this, the closing words of Matthew’s gospel:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…”  - Matthew 28:19

Did you catch that? Are you smelling what I’m stepping in?

What Is He Looking For?

I’ve spent the majority of my life reading books, considering theological arguments, and leading/participating in detailed Bible studies. I’ve even had my share of preaching experiences!

While those things are good and there’s a place for them, there’s a problem I ran into.  Jesus never told me to hold those things as a primary focus on my life.

My Father, the faithful Gardener, is not looking for good intentions. He’s not looking for good ideas or well-worded arguments about post-mortem punishment or the open-nature of His dynamic dealings with mankind.

My Father, like any reasonable and experienced gardener, is looking for fruit.

What Is My Fruit?

Taking Jesus’ explanation of the Christian life a bit further, if He’s the Vine and I am a branch, then what’s my fruit?  That’s the real question here.

Let me ask you this… What is the fruit of an apple tree?

Apples? Really?

What’s inside of an apple?

Ah… Seeds are inside of an apple!

The fruit of an apple tree is more apple trees. The apple is just the means to deliver the seeds and provide an atmosphere were the decaying flesh of the apple can fertilize and facilitate the growth of another tree.

Driving It Home

I am a branch on the Vine. I bought into the lie that the fruit from my branch would result in a greener color or a more robust (and theologically informed) stalk.

What a selfish and inwardly focused religious experience!

What kind of gardener would put up with a branch that never bore any fruit?

In reality, the fruit from my branch isn’t for my own benefit; it’s for the expansion of the Vine. It’s for the proliferation of more plants. It’s all about reproduction!

Do you see where I’m going?

The fruit that Jesus is looking for in my life is more disciples. He wants me to be salt and light, reproducing myself again and again, season after season.

This year, I want to bear fruit. True fruit, true disciples.

I want to bear fruit that will remain: Disciples that will be sent out and, in time, produce more disciples, more apple trees, and together we’ll cover the earth in an orchard.

- Dedicated to Hakan

“A Conversation with God,” written by Alton Gansky, is a book about the basics of orthodox Christianity. Written in a conversational style, Gansky presents fictional monologues from Father God, Jesus, Paul, Abraham, and other people mentioned in the Bible.

The book itself was easy to read.  The conversational style helped me engage in the topic while also providing the freedom to take breaks between responses.  The book itself is a collection of monologues about the nature of God, the Bible, hell, heaven, etc.

I was disappointed in some explanations given about the nature of God, eternal judgment, and the books of the Bible. Gansky presented the material well, but in the end it still provided the same answers to common questions new believers face today.  The problem with discipleship in the Church is not due to presentation; it’s partly due to the insufficient answers being provided.

For someone like me who appreciates wrestling with topics and coming to my own biblically-based conclusions, it fell short of my expectations.  However, I think that most main stream Christians will appreciate this book and use it as a resource for new believers.

Allender’s book was a pleasure to read. I felt challenged to take my Sabbath-keeping to a whole new level: the entrance into pleasure. Allender suggests that man’s observance of the Sabbath is rooted in the 7th day of Creation when God rested and took pleasure in His creation. God enjoys pleasure and set apart (i.e. sanctified) one day a week for us to enter into that place of joy:

“The Sabbath is an invitation to enter delight. The Sabbath, when experienced as God intended, is the best day of our lives. Without question or thought, it the best day of the week. It is the day we anticipate on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday — and the day we remember on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Sabbath is the holy time where we feast, play, dance, have sex, sing, pray, laugh, tell stories, read, paint, walk, and watch creation in its fullness. Few people are willing to enter the Sabbath and sanctify it, to make it holy, because a full day of delight and joy is more than most people can bear in a lifetime, let alone a week.” (5)

Allender avoids the “shall nots” and emphasizes the “shalls,” the opportunities (invitations?) from God to partake in the richness of His friendship, our personal relationships, and the beauty of Creation. If you have a curiosity about the Sabbath and find yourself wondering where to begin, I’d HIGHLY recommend this book.

For the benefit of my friends and family who won’t take the time to buy the book and read it themselves, I put a few memorable quotes below to feed your curiosity:

Sabbath rest is entered when we refuse to be bound by complexity or drowned by despair (4).

The Sabbath is an invitation to enter delight.  The Sabbath, when experienced as God intended, is the best day of our lives.  Without question or thought, it the best day of the week.  It is the day we anticipate on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday — and the day we remember on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.  Sabbath is the holy time where we feast, play, dance, have sex, sing, pray, laugh, tell stories, read, paint, walk, and watch creation in its fullness.  Few people are willing to enter the Sabbath and sanctify it, to make it holy, because a full day of delight and joy is more than most people can bear in a lifetime, let alone a week (5).

The Sabbath is far more than a diversion; it is meant to be an encounter with God’s delight (12).

What would I do for a twenty-four-hour period of time if the only criteria was to pursue my deepest joy? (15).

We often fail to create a day of delight because to do so compels us to stand against the division, destitution, and despair that often holds us captive the other six days of the week…We are driven, exhausted, and depleted.  We were created for the refreshing and replenishing gift of the Sabbath.  And we don’t do so to our peril (18).

Many of us are afraid of delight. It seems to stand in such contrast to our harried multitasking. It is easier to drop exhausted before the television, laptop in hand, checking emails as we watch a pundit rattle on about the day’s news, than to live in accord with a pace that is measured by delight (25).

The festival involves four key components: sensual glory, rhythmic repetition. communal feasting, just playfulness (31).

The only parameter that is to guide our Sabbath is delight.  Will this be merely a break or a joy? Will this lead my heart to wonder or routine?  Will I be more grateful or just happy that I got something done? (47).

We are not to work on the Sabbath because it takes us out of the play of joy.  It is as bizarre as making love to your spouse, but getting out of bed during the process to cut your lawn or wash dishes. Such an offense would do far more than spoil the mood; it would be a direct assault on the integrity of joy, announcing that a mundane chore is more pleasurable than sexual joy with your spouse (61).

The Sabbath asks, how would you live if there were no wars, enmity, battle lines, or need to defend, explain, interpret, or influence another to see anything differently?  The Sabbath glories in the goodness, the amazing, solicitous, hearth-thrilling glory of each person to whom we are privileged to speak on that day (110).

The Sabbath is the day we set aside to look at one another from the vantage point of eternity and then to operate in time, in an actual hour or minute, as if it were true (111).

Worry is anti-Sabbath. Sabbath requires the release of worry and invites us to trust.  Both regret and worry assume there is no God, or at least not one who loves and pours himself out for his children.  Both worry and regret are satanic (136).

The Sabbath is like every other gift – it requires practice and discipline to grow in delight (165).

The Sabbath…is not merely a day to stop working, it is a day to renounce all activity that impoverished, enslaves, or demeans others.  It is a day set aside not to take or to procure but to nourish (186).

Note: This isn’t posted in judgment or to offend; it’s here merely for entertainment.

Something important to note: This chapter deals with the concept of “Christendom,” that is, our cultural understanding of how we gather as believers. This has been called “institutional church” by other authors. The following notes are not focused on individuals, but on the praxis.

This was one of my favorite quotes in the chapter. Extremely challenging.

“If we once have the courage to give up our defense of the old facades which have nothing or very little behind them; if we cease to maintain, in public, the pretense of a universal Christendom; if we stop straining every nerve to get everybody baptized, to get everybody married in church and onto our registers (even when success means only, at bottom, a victory for tradition, custom and ancestry, not for true faith and interior conviction); if, by letting go, we visibly relive Christianity of the burdensome impression that it accepts responsibility for everything that goes on under this Christian topdressing, the impression that Christianity is a sort of Everyman’s Religious Varnish, a folk-religion (at the same level as that of folk-costumes – then we can be free for real missionary adventure and apostolic self-confidence…” – Douglas John Hall, “Metamorphosis: From Christendom to Diaspora”

Michael Frost goes on to explain that Christendom has negatively impacted Christianity. Instead of the Church moving forward, she has been moved into maintenance mode:

[Christendom's] type of leadership can generally be described as priestly, sometimes prophetic to insiders, but almost never to outsiders (no one “out there” is listening), and rarely apostolic. Christendom has moved Christianity into a maintenance mode.

Another quote:

The church is worse off precisely because of Christendom’s failure to evangelize its own context and establish gospel communities that transform the culture.

Another quote:

Christendom is not the biblical mode of the church. It was/is merely one way in which the church has conceived of itself. In enshrining it as the sole form of the church, we have made it into an idol that has captivated our imaginations and enslaved us to a historical-cultural expression of the church.

We have not answered the challenges of our time precisely because we refuse to let go of the idol. This must change! The answer to the problem of mission in the West requires something far more radical than reworking a dated and untenable model. It will require that we adopt something that looks far more like the early church in terms of its conception of the church (ecclesiology) and its core task in the world (missiology)

Main point of  the book:

The whole tenor of this book will be to call post-Christendom to see itself again as a missionary movement rather than as an institution.

I appreciated the approach towards discovering ecclesiology.  It is rooted in an understanding of Jesus and mission:

Christology determines missiology, and missiology determines ecclesiology. It is absolutely vital that the church gets the order right.

When you set out to pursue organic, simple, outwardly-focused models of “doing church” (i.e. ecclesiology) you find that it is your own responsibility to set the pace and sustain momentum. To respectfully paint a picture of this, you’re leaving the well-oiled machine of the traditional church, where procedure and sub-cultural expectations are defined and observed, and launching out into the great unknown where format is fluid and the modus operandi is undefined. You’ve set out on an pioneer adventure, there are no roads, and only you can “blaze the trail” westward towards the unknown.

This week, I’m traveling to New Hampshire to install a phone system (It’s my day job). I brought two books for reading, (1) Vol. 1 of the Ante-Nicene Fathers and (2) “The Shaping of Things to Come” by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch (n.b. hereafter referred to as “SOTTC”). The Ante-Nicene Fathers are good, but heady; the SOTTC is earthy, practical, and deeply prophetic. Not camel-skin-suit prophetic, nor expensive-suit-and-white-feathery-hair prophetic. The words of this book are a timely and much-needed wake-up call for believers to deeply consider the way we operate in our cultural context.

What follows are a few quotes and my own commentary on chapter one, “Evolution or Revolution?”:

D.H. Lawrence said as long ago as 1924, “The adventure has gone out of the Christian venture.”

I think most of us can relate to this feeling. Where is the excitement? Where is the lasting sense of adventure? We are overfed, overeducated, and jaded to the excitement of innate within the wild Mission of God. Hence, the reason for revolution.

[We must ask ourselves] “What has God called us to be and do in our current cultural context?” The issue of cultural context is essential because the missional church shapes itself to fit that context in order to transform it for the sake of the kingdom of God. By definition, the missional church is always outward looking, always changing (as culture continues to change), and always faithful to the Word of God.

Heeding the cultural context is important for two reasons. One, it implies that we as the people of God are looking outward, outside the physical or societal walls of our group. Two, it recognizes that the expression of Jesus’ Bride will be different depending on the cultural context it is within. Missional church can (and should) look different across cities, countries, and people groups.

Albert Einstein, one of history’s greatest thinkers, once noted that “the kind of thinking that will solve the world’s problems will be of a different order to the kind of thinking that created those problems in the first place.” … If Einstein was right, then the problems of the church, like all real problems in any context, cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created those problems in the first instance. In other words, boxlike thinking simply cannot solve the problems of the box.

Mr. Einstein, there was a deposit of the wisdom of God in you. However, the record still stands that King Solomon was (and is) the wiset man who ever lived.

A metanarrative is an overarching story that claims to contain truth applicable to all people at all times in all cultures.

A definition like this forces us to ask ourselves what the gospel REALLY is. How much of what we preach as doctrine is rooted in our own cultural norms? Can we be focused (and brave enough) to challenge the sacred cows in our ecclesiological praxis to whittle things down to the essential gospel of God, that spans culture?

Table 1: Depicting Three Phases of the Church and its Characteristics

Many of the items are the same between the “Apostolic and Post-Apostolic Mode” and the “Missional Mode.” This is not illustrated in an attempt to prove that the missional mode has it “all correct,” but rather that the missional mode seeks to restore some of the timeless principles that were in operation in the early church age.

Christendom thinking…assumes that the church belongs prominently on the main street, and it claims that the church has the right to take over a public space and clean out the local people while creating a so-called sanctified religious zone.

What do you think about this (above) statement?

The missional church always thinks of the long haul rather than the quick fix.

As believers, we must be after lasting change. It takes a summer to grow a zucchini, but generations to establish an oak tree. What is our goal? Are we willing to invest time and resources without the reward of instant gratification?

Below are fifteen hallmarks of a missional church. I won’t comment on them in this post. I believe they can stand on their own and challenge our current understanding of “church.”

1. The missional church proclaims the gospel.
2. The missional church is a community where all members are involved in learning to become disciples of Jesus.
3. The Bible is normative in this church’s life.
4. The church understands itself as different from the world because of its participation in the life, death, and resurrection of its Lord.
5. The church seeks to discern God’ specific missional vocation for the entire community and for all of its members.
6. A missional community is indicated by how Christians behave toward one another.
7. It is a community that practices reconciliation.
8. People within the community hold themselves accountable to one another in love.
9. The church practices hospitality.
10. Worship is the central act by which the community celebrates with job and thanksgiving both God’s presence and God’s promised future.
11. This community has a vital public witness.
12. There is a recognition that the church itself is an incomplete expression of the reign of God…
13. The missional church is incarnational, not attractional, in its ecclesiology…
14. The missional church is messianic, not dualistic, in its spirituality. That is, it adopts the worldview of Jesus the Messiah, rather than that of the Greco-Roman empire. Instead of seeing the world as divided between the sacred (religious) and profane (nonreligious), like Christ it sees the world and God’s place in it as more holistic and integrated.
15. The missional church adopts an apostolic, rather than a hierarchical, mode of leadership. By apostolic we mean a mode of leadership that recognizes the fivefold model detailed by Paul in Ephesians 6. It abandons the triangular hierarchies of the traditional church and embraces a biblical, flat-leadership community that unleashes the gifts of evangelism, apostleship, and prophecy, as well as the currently popular pastoral and teaching gifts.

This book addresses the ancient practice of the “daily office.”  Simply put, the daily office involves praying at set times throughout the day.  There are seven periods defined, but the most common periods observed today by are morning, noon, and evening.  Benson advocates the daily office as a means for ordinary people to cultivate a life of ceaseless prayer. Set times serve as reminders throughout the day that we live in the light of Someone greater than ourselves.

Benson writes with humility and honesty. His style of writing kept me reading at a fast pace while still holding my attention. I finished his book within and hour and left feeling informed and challenged to consider incorporating the daily office into my own routine.

This is one of those book that will not remain on my shelf for reference, but instead leave a lasting imprint on my heart and an open invitation to experience God through planned times during my day. With a life as busy as mine I feel that this practice will really help me slow down and realign my focus.

Additional Resources on the Daily Office:

• “Daily Prayer” by Robert Benson – www.dailyprayerlife.com
• “Venite” by Robert Benson – www.amazon.com
• “Book of Common Prayer” – www.churchpublishing.org
• “Celebrating Common Prayer” by George Carey – www.continuumbooks.com
• “The Little Bok of Hours” by The Jesus Community – www.paracletepress.com
• “The Daily Office Book” – www.churchpublishing.org
• “The Divine Hours” by Phyllis Tickle – www.amazon.com
• “Hour by Hour” – www.forwardmovement.org

What can I do to maximize my retention?

I came across a learning strategy in my Hebrew textbook that could be used to help you retain what you’re learning.  This concept is from the book, “Yes! You Can Learn a Foreign Language” by M. Brown-Azarowicz. My comments are in-line, contained in brackets:

• Memorize words grouped according to related meaning. [For non-language studies, look for conceptual groupings]
• Review 10 minutes after initial learning. [When you finish a chapter, go back and quickly review before moving on to the next thing]
• Review 60 minutes after that.
• Review again 24 hours later.
• Review every 2 days until automatic recall is attained.

This process does require more time, but it also helps ensure that the time you initially invested in the learning process is reaping the most “bang for your buck.”

Happy Thursday!

The tool is called Notational Velocity. It’s a lightweight app that has a minimalist design approach. All notes are edited in rich text and have a Spotlight-like (word?) indexing feature.

Where this tool really impresses me is the integration with DropBox. If you integrate the two, it stores all your notes in a DropBox folder that you can then access on your mobile with the Android/iPhone DropBox app.

For those who live in your DropBox, this is a great little tool.

Here’s some unique features (from their website, listed below):

• Modeless Operation - Searching for notes is not a separate action; rather, it is the primary interface.
• Incremental Search - Searching encompasses all notes’ content and occurs instantly with each key pressed.
• Transparent Database Encryption - All content is compressed and encrypted (enabled optionally) before it is recorded to disk.
• Mouseless Interaction - Notational Velocity’s window was designed for keyboard input above all else, and thus has no buttons.
• Data Instead of Documents - There is no manual “saving” in Notational Velocity; all modifications take effect immediately.
• Complete External Access - Synchronize natively with Simplenote, or via files with WriteRoom for iPhone and Dropbox.

Check it out.

http://notational.net/

N.T. Wright is known to be a prolific author on the New Testament, having written over thirty books on various topics ranging from the life of Paul to the bodily resurrection.  After reading “What Saint Paul Really Said” and “Paul,” both being shorter books, I decided to dive into one of his larger volumes entitled, “The New Testament and the People of God” (later referred to as NTPG). This is the first of five books in his “Christian Origins and the Question of God” series. In fact, the introduction classifies this 500+ page books as an introduction to the series.

Wright’s goal through this series is to “offer a consistent hypothesis on the origin of Christianity, with particular relation to Jesus, Paul, and the gospels, which will set out new ways of understanding major movements and thought-patterns, and suggest new lines that exegesis can follow up” (xiv).

Wright argues that the manner in which we approach scripture is very important. Without a solid framework, some have approached the New Testament as “a sort of magic book, whose ‘meaning’ has little to do with what the first century authors intended, and a lot to do with how some particular contemporary group has been accustomed to hear in it a call to a particular sort of spirituality or lifestyle” (4).

Throughout the millennia, there have been “land wars” over the territory of the New Testament.  Each group has sought to defend its hermeneutical approach, but was eventually overran by the more modern approach.

Pre-Critical Approach

The first method, called the “pre-critical approach,” was heavy on isagesis and personal application. Considering the parable of the wicked tenants in Mark 12, readers in the pre-critical era would have read themselves into the passage as either the wicked tenants or the messengers who were mistreated. Emphasis was placed on isagesis of the text.  Though they took the “authoritative status of the text seriously,” this approach has been criticized by its lack of historical, theological, and literary emphasis.  This approach endured as the modus operandi of the church through the 1700s.

Historical Approach

The second method emerged during the Enlightenment of the 1700s as the “historical approach.” Placing high importance on history, the following type of questions would be asked in reference to the Mark 12 parable:

• Did Jesus actually tell the parable, and if so what did he mean by it?
• How did the early church use this parable in its preaching?
• How has Jesus used this parable within this work?  What new color does it acquire from its placing at this point in the narrative, just when Jesus has performed a dramatic action in the Temple, and when the pace of the story is now quickening towards the crucifixion?

Theological Approach

This approach, unlike the others, openly considers the reader’s worldview and sensory response to the text as the foundation upon which the literary critique is formed.  While I appreciate the recognition given to the reader (for undoubtedly there is a measure of subjectivity whenever we interpret concepts through the lens of our worldview), utilizing this approach without the balance of the others would lead to an unfair interpretation of the text.

Your Approach?

As you read through these approaches, I would be interested in hearing from others.  Is there a certain approach mentioned above that you are predisposed to? Do you employ a mixture of these approaches?