Honest Friends

“An acquaintance merely enjoys your company, a fair-weather companion flatters when all is well, a true friend has your best interests at heart and the pluck to tell you what you need to hear.”  ― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

See Everything As I See It...or else

"It takes God a long time to get us to stop thinking that unless everyone sees things exactly as we do, they must be wrong. That is never God's view." (Oswald Chambers)

Strange Conversations----

“Sometimes it's better to be with the sheep, who don't say anything. And better still to be alone with one's books. They tell their incredible stories at the time when you want to hear them. But when you're talking to people, they say some things that are so strange that you don't know how to continue the conversation.” 
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Weeping Mothers

“It is Rachel of old,” said the elder, “weeping for her children, and will not be comforted because they are not. Such is the lot set on earth for you mothers. Be not comforted. Consolation is not what you need. Weep and be not consoled, but weep."

(Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Brothers Karamazov)

Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God

What I’m “looking for” in church is inner stillness and peace of the kind my friend Holly Meade lived out as she faced her death, not an adrenaline rush or entertainment, let alone spectacle. I do not need more entertainment! I live in a time and place where I’m bombarded by entertainment 24/7. Nor do I need more celebrity leaders or Bible teachers. I’m not looking for clever new words about so-called theological facts but for the experience of spirituality itself. The last thing I crave is to be exposed to the sort of grandstanding preachers that so many evangelical churches seem to breed with the ubiquity of maggots appearing in road kill. The last thing I want is a new and improved “worship experience.” The last thing I want is for the service to be socially and politically relevant ...Why I am an Atheist Who Believes in God: How to give love, create beauty and find peace

by Frank Schaeffer

It's Not About Revival Anymore.

"....... but they will not primarily be based on calling people back to what they have left, but instead be based on calling people into something they have never experienced." (Carey Nieuwhof)

Getting In Close With People....

Michael Frost once said:

It is not any longer possible that we sit in some command center telling other people how to go forth. I’m speaking in particular to those of you who are clergy. You cannot preach about, encourage or motivate or mobilize people into mission unless you model what missional proximity looks like. You cannot sit in some ivory tower spending days and days preparing sermons which are seeking to motivate people into mission unless you yourself are prepared to embrace that similar commitment to proximity. Do you follow what I’m saying? I’m not just talking about proximity like our building is on the street corner on the main street with a gigantic sign and everyone knows that we are there. I’m talking about personal, relational, and geographic proximity to people.

What Is Our Real Position In Church?

"Instead we get hung up with other questions of hierarchy, gifting, and finding our own little molehill on the mountain of the Lord. When this happens, the church becomes its own personal proving ground. It is in this dastardly place that we see the simplicity of life together replaced with the all-too familiar scenario of human striving, ambition, and organizational strategies. It’s here, when the Body of Christ becomes all about personal achievement, approval, and self-actualization, that so many lose heart. The good news is, when we finally learn that our place in the family of God is simply “in Christ,” we begin a new journey— one that makes the Lord Jesus central so we can look to him for leadership, guidance, comfort, and love."

( STEPHANIE BENNETT in the forward to Finding Church by Wayne Jacobsen)

Church is not Bricks And Boards.... But the Blood And Bonrs Of Peoplem

"The Church is not the bricks and boards of the building but the blood and bones of people in a growing relationship with each other with Jesus as the head."

(Nick Sembrano)

Take Yourself Seriously For Once

"He had a high opinion of his own insight a weakness excusable in him as he was fifty, an age at which a clever man of the world of established position can hardly help taking himself rather seriously."

(Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Brothers Karamazov)

Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Big Grace Of God

"At the last Judgment Christ will say to us, “Come, you also! Come, drunkards! Come, weaklings! Come, children of shame!” And he will say to us: “Vile beings, you who are in the image of the beast and bear his mark, but come all the same, you as well.” And the wise and prudent will say, “Lord, why do you welcome them?” And he will say: “If I welcome them, you wise men, if I welcome them, you prudent men, it is because not one of them has ever been judged worthy.” And he will stretch out his arms, and we will fall at his feet, and we will cry out sobbing, and then we will understand all, we will understand the Gospel of grace! Lord, your Kingdom come!"

(Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Crime and Punishment)

Why Am I Afraid To Dance?

“Why am I afraid to dance, I who love music and rhythm and grace and song and laughter?
Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of the earth and sky and sea?
Why am I afraid to love, I who love love?”

(Eugene O’Neill’s play The Great God Brown)

I Can Do It Myself.....

Wow.......     ouch..... but thank you. ....  
"Though lip service is paid to the gospel of grace, many Christians live as if only personal discipline and self-denial will mold the perfect me. The emphasis is on what I do rather than on what God is doing. In this curious process God is a benign old spectator in the bleachers who cheers when I show up for morning quiet time....
Our eyes are not on God. At heart we are practicing Pelagians. We believe that we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps—indeed, we can do it ourselves."

(Brennan Manning. Ragamuffin Gospel)

Bearable Suffering Eats Our Soul.

"Intense, unexpected suffering passes more quickly than suffering that is apparently bearable; the latter goes on for years and, without our noticing, eats away at our soul, until, one day, we are no longer able to free ourselves from the bitterness and it stays with us for the rest of our lives."
( Paulo Coelho.  The Alchemist)

Everything We Want To Do Is Impossible

"...we are told from childhood onward that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear, and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible. But it’s still there."
(Paulo Coelho,  forward to, The Alchemist)

A Soul Cry?

“The worst type of crying wasn't the kind everyone could see--the wailing on street corners, the tearing at clothes. No, the worst kind happened when your soul wept and no matter what you did, there was no way to comfort it. ” 
― Katie McGarry, Pushing the Limits

Dance Like Nobody's Looking

“You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching,
Love like you'll never be hurt,
Sing like there's nobody listening,
And live like it's heaven on earth.” 
― William W. Purkey

Grown Up Christmas Wish List

"No more lives torn apart
That wars would never start
And time would heal all hearts

And everyone would have a friend And right would always win
And love would never end

This is my grown up Christmas list"
- David Foster

Discipleship Will Fix It

"I am not one who thinks that we ought to criticize the church very much. There is nothing wrong with the church that discipleship will not cure."- Dallas Willard

The Preferably Unheard

"There is really no such thing as the voiceless. There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard." - Arundhati Roy

How to Measure A Church3s Success Accurately

"Ultimately each church will be evaluated by only one thing, its disciples. Your church is only as good as its disciples. It does not matter how good your praise, preaching, programs or property are. If your disciples are passive, needy, consumerist, and not moving in the direction of radical obedience, your church is not good." Neil Cole?

We Have The Same Questions And Problems

"Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions."
(Paulo Coelho)

Drink From Every Cup????

"Never be ashamed,’ he said. ‘Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle.’
‘How will I know which is which?’
‘By the taste. You can only know a good wine if you have first tasted a bad one."

(Paulo Coelho, Brida)

Warriors Telling Stories Around The Fire.

"The most important thing in all human relationships is conversation, but people don’t talk anymore, they don’t sit down to talk and listen. They go to the theater, the cinema, watch television, listen to the radio, read books, but they almost never talk. If we want to change the world, we have to go back to a time when warriors would gather around a fire and tell stories."
(Paulo Coelho. the-zahir)

Courage To Say Yes To Life

"Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back to where I came from because I didn't have the courage to say "yes" to life?"
(Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes)

Somewhere On Earth There Is Someone Holy

Oh! he understood that for the humble soul of the Russian peasant, worn out by grief and toil, and still more by the everlasting injustice and everlasting sin, his own and the world’s, it was the greatest need and comfort to find someone or something holy to fall down before and worship.

“Among us there is sin, injustice, and temptation, but yet, somewhere on earth there is someone holy and exalted. He has the truth; he knows the truth; so it is not dead upon the earth; so it will come one day to us, too, ... "

(Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Brothers Karamazov)

Are Those People Worthy?

"Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy." (Thomas Merton)

Buffoons Of Buffoons.

"His former acquaintances found him looking terribly aged, although he was by no means an old man. He behaved not exactly with more dignity but with more effrontery. The former buffoon showed an insolent propensity for making buffoons of others."
(Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Brothers Karamazov)

A Righteous Gentile - Bonhoeffer

"Just hours before his execution in Flossenbürg concentration camp, the man directed his last words to this bishop. That Sunday he spoke them to a British officer, who was imprisoned with him, after he performed his last service and preached his last sermon. This officer was liberated and brought those last words and the news of the man’s death across Europe with him.

Across the English Channel, across France, and across Germany, in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, in a three-story house at 43 Marienburgerallee, an elderly couple sat by their radio. In her time the wife had given birth to eight children, four boys and four girls. The second son had been killed in the First War, and for a whole year his young mother had been unable to function. Twenty-seven years later, a second war would take two more boys from her. The husband was the most prominent psychiatrist in Germany. They had both opposed Hitler from the beginning and were proud of their sons and sons-in-law who had been involved in the conspiracy against him. They all knew the dangers. But when the war at last ended, news of their two sons was slow to arrive in Berlin. A month earlier they had finally heard of the death of their third son, Klaus. But about their youngest son, Dietrich, they had heard nothing. Someone claimed to have seen him alive. Then a neighbor told them that the BBC would the next day broadcast a memorial service in London. It was for Dietrich.

At the appointed hour, the old couple turned on their radio. Soon enough the service was announced for their son. That was how they came to know of his death.

As the couple took in the hard news that the good man who was their son was now dead, so too, many English took in the hard news that the dead man who was a German was good. Thus did the world again begin to reconcile itself to itself. The man who died was engaged to be married. He was a pastor and a theologian. And he was executed for his role in the plot to assassinate Hitler. This is his story."
( Eric Metaxas.  Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet,  Spy. A Righteous Gentile Vs The Third Reich.)

Our Church Buildings Can Feed EVERY Hungry Person On Earth.

"The rational dissonance gets even more intense at this time of year as millions of people will gather in billions of dollars worth of religious buildings to celebrate the birth of a homeless man while mostly ignoring the homeless around them. ....

Forget the money spent on pet food that would feed the world’s hungry.

Forget the money spent on arms and war that would clothe, educate and feed every poor person on the planet ten times over.

Forget what the 1% do with their wealth.

The money spent on religious buildings by those who claim to follow Jesus would also feed, clothe and educate every child born into poverty.

This is not about a scarcity of resources.
This is about misallocation of abundant resources.
This is about actually following Jesus who said, “Whatever you do unto the least you have done unto me."

(Steven Hill)

Status Over Happiness In Old Canada

"You mean they convinced people serfdom was an okay thing?
Oh quite easily. The most menial and wretched toil was held to be highly honourable. It conveyed a magical thing called "status." People preferred it to happiness."
(Pierre Berton, The Smug Minority,  1967)

Degradung Jobs And Grinding Poverty.

"...where those people really like serfs?
They would have resisted the name; but in our terms they were... historical evidence makes it clear that the masses of the people who lived in Canada in the Sixties were chained to tedious and degrading jobs which they despised; that between one-fifth and one-third of them were prisoners of a poverty so grinding we can scarcely contemplate it; and that only the wealthy had the freedom to enjoy a proper education."

(Pierre Berton, The Smug Minority. 1967)

Im Not Doing Anything

"When people ask me what I am doing on my day off. I say, 'l'm not doing anything."

They then suggest doing something.

To which I reply 'You must have misunderstood me, when I say I'm not doing anything. It' means I have specifically put time aside to do nothing."

Usless Jobs

"In a mechanized society there are tens of thousands of such button pushers and machine watchers. When true automation comes they will not be needed, but unless we abandon the work ethic of another era, their lives may still be wasted because of blind insistence that everyone must have a "job" even if the job is useless."

(Pierre Berton, The Smug Minority. 1967, Page 60)

Ebola Can't Be Cured In MY Church!

Time Magazine: Amazing Ebola heros.....  must read.... 

However, this quote made me sad..... because people still think God has a special house, requires one for worship..... and we shan't contaminate the "sanctuary" by.....

We have resurrected temple theology, by creating a local church building theology....
Yep, and no matter what you say some still dont get it.... just like the article says.

"The Eternal Love Winning Africa (ELWA) hospital didn’t have an isolation ward, nor was there time or money enough to build one. No hospital in Liberia had one. Looking around the compound for a solution, Brown’s eye settled on the modest chapel, bare but for a few battered wooden pews and a lectern that served as a pulpit.

“Well, of course, turning the chapel into an Ebola unit was not welcomed by the staff of the institution. The bulk of them said, ‘Why should we turn the house of God into a place where we put people with such a deadly disease?’ And some said, ‘Where will you provide for us to worship in the morning?’” Brown recalls"

Foul Tyranny.......

"There be rulers who have ruled with a foul tyrannic sway, • But they soon
became as though they had never, never been:..."

(Lady Burton's Edition of Her Husband's Arabian Nights: Translated ..., Volume 1 edited by Lady Isabel Burton, Justin Huntly McCarthy)

Don't Piss On The Earth's Rug...

"We are all time-sharers on planet Earth.  We are not asked to leave it a better place.  We are asked not to break anything or stain the rug."
~ Robert Brault

The Happy Rain

"There are many things I do for amusement, but for happiness I like to gather up my memories and go for a walk in the rain." ~ Robert Brault

Never Wrong.... But

"At some point you must decide if you want to succeed or just be someone who was never to blame for anything going wrong."
~Robert Brault

Only Sad, Not Unhappy

"One thing I've gotten used to over the years is people thinking I'm unhappy when I'm just sad."
~Robert Brault

Costs Of Exploring A Mysterious Smile

"There is often little behind a mysterious smile, but there are only expensive ways to find out."
(Robert Brault )

Men Want "Life Woman"

"What a woman wants from a man is love.  What a man wants from a woman is life." ~Robert Brault

Babe-In-Arms

"Is it so much that love asks -- that one day you be somebody's strength, the next day their babe-in-arms?"
(Robert Brault)

One More Chance To Love

"Another day, another chance to cherish those who have cast their lot with yours."
~Robert Brault

Better Houses... Lesser Men

"While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings."

(Henry David Thoreau)

Alone In What Matters Most

"In what concerns you much do not think that you have companions —know that you are alone in the world." (Henry David Thoreau)

Ask To See God... No Servant

When you travel to the Celestial City, carry no letter of introduction. When you knock, ask to see God — none of the servants. ~Henry David Thoreau. Letter to Harrison Blake. March 27,  1848

You Blind Me From Seeing God.

"When you knock, ask to see God — none of the servants."
~Henry David Thoreau

Trust Is Average Of Lies?

"If there be no God, then what is truth but the average of all lies."
~Robert Brault

Travelling At The Speed Of Time

"No matter how you rush about, you will find at the end of the day that you traveled at the speed of time."
~Robert Brault

Unknown Shrines?

"We are Godseekers all, though some be churchgoing believers and others pilgrims to an unknown shrine." ~Robert Brault

God Tried To Be A Secret..... but then....

"If God had wanted to be a big secret, He would not have created babbling brooks and whispering pines."
~Robert Brault

My Joy and Life Sucking Need To Be "Right" Causes Me To Be So "Badly" Wrong

I believe the core problematic issue within the human experience has something to do with the inherent desire of wanting to be certain we are 'right' (aka, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil). This to me is the root of the core problem within our united journey as mankind because as soon as we feel certain we are 'right' we then believe we have the grounds to judge others. As soon as we convince others they can join us in our 'rightness' we can create power in numbers to do as we believe our 'rightness' demands of us.

This is where all the evil in life takes place, isn't it? Right there in the assumptions that bind judgement of others together; for no matter what actions follow judging others, they are always justified in our minds for we are certain these judgmental actions are for the greater good, no matter how awful these actions truly are....

We still have our beliefs, but we hold them in open palms instead of closed fists. We love with our beliefs instead of fighting with them. We choose to be human, and embrace our oneness as humanity. Most of all, we choose to enter into dialogue and discussion where we previously only entered into battles and angry defense."

(Mick Mooney.  How to Be Free in Faith Instead of a Slave to Religion-Made Certainty ,12/10/14 10. Huffington post)

Love Mingled With Grief Grows Greater?

“The world is indeed full of peril and in it there are many dark places. But still there is much that is fair. And though in all lands, love is now mingled with grief, it still grows, perhaps, the greater."

~J.R.R. Tolkien. Lord of the Rings

Unflinchingly Following The Light

"No half-heartedness and no worldly fear must turn us aside from following the light unflinchingly."

-J.R.R. Tolkien

Becoming Alive... Tolkien

"Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick."
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

There Is A Savage Savage Greed In Our Genes (Farley Mowat - Canadian Author)

"I think,  that there is a blind greed, a savage savage greed that is in our genes. The best that we can do with it is mask it. And that is what a lot of writers, including myself, I think,  have been doing, without realizing it. We tend to act as apologists for our own species. We tend to mask our detrimental aspects. And most of us don't ever realize that we are: I can't say we are being used, because who is it that is using us? We are using ourselves or abusing ourselves for the good of mankind, the apparent good, leading to the ultimate destruction, not only of our own species, but of many other species too.... It's confused, and I am confused."

(Farley Mowat ). Interview

Putting Back More.....

"A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out."George Bernard Shaw

Confusing Accepting A Belief Position With Connection with A Life Giving Spirit

"In our society, we tend to swear unyielding allegiance to a rigid position, confusing that action with finding an authentic connection to a life-giving Spirit."
(Rich Mullins. Forward to "Ragamuffin Gospel", Brennan Manning.

Does God Embrace My Humanness Even If You Don't?

"I discovered how little I had to do to deserve and receive the love of God and that He loved me more than I had ever imagined. Suddenly, instead of fearing and denying all of my real or imagined shortcomings, I could embrace my humanness. I could see God pursuing me through it and in spite of it."
(Michael Smith. Forward to "Ragamuffin Gospel. Brennan Manning)

I'm An Alive Child Soldier Boy

"Grateful that I am alive and was lucky enough to survive the civil war in my country, Sierra Leone, where I fought as a child soldier at the age of thirteen. " (Ishmael Beah)

Your Christian Noose

" Religion has programmed you with fear.

Fear of God’s rejection and disapproval
Fear of God’s discipline and punishment
Fear of Hell Fear of forfeiting God’s blessing
Fear of what you feel inside
Fear of trusting your own inner guidance
Fear of thinking for yourself
Fear of being wrong
Fear of being rejected by others

This is what religion does to some people. Fear is a noose that binds until it strangles. Courage is a muscle that needs exercise to get strong."

(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)

Christian Kissing..... Let's Talk Kissing

Who wants a Left brain kiss? Bla! Speaking about how life is not so scripted....

"When we kiss someone, we don’t left brain it; we right brain a kiss. We don’t analyze a kiss before we do it, or plan it out according to some rule of thumb. We just make it up as we go along, following the signs, signals, and feedback loops of the one we’re kissing. We “kiss” life the same way."
(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

Love God And Do As You Will

“Love God, and do what you will.” (Augustine)

There Is No God Plan For Your Life. .. Only a Purpose

One of the biggest clichés in the church today has provided legions of people with untold comfort and consolation: “God has a wonderful plan for your life.” .....  it’s time to hack our way through the underbrush of presumption. Are you ready for the whack hack? Here it comes . .  . There is no plan. God didn’t give us a plan, but a purpose; not a map, but a mission; not a blueprint for tracing, but a blue sky for exploring. God’s plan is for us to spend our lives doing whatever unlocks our tear ducts, makes our throats deep with song, keeps the gales of laughter surging in our souls, and turns our feet to dancing."
(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

A Piñata Jesus: Piñata Worthy Jesus Clichés

I once had a student whose daughter, in year, went from being deep into SpongeBob SquarePants to being deep into Jesus. She wanted a Jesus birthday party . .  . with Jesus cake, Jesus candles, Jesus napkins, Jesus balloons, and, “Mom, can we have a Jesus piñata?”

No one is more tired than I am of seeing Jesus turned into a piñata for hacked-off people to hack away at to their hearts’ delight. But certain clichés about Jesus are piñata worthy  — and I give fair warning: I have just now become a hacker."

(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

A "Come See" Pilgrimage

"In whatever age you’re in . . .  to wherever places your pilgrimage takes you, from First-Age tinkering to Third-Age world changing, just keep following that voice: “Come and see!”"

(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

A Christianity Of Celebration and Festivals?

"Before much of the church sold out to a muted and moderate Gutenberg culture of words and propositions, Christianity itself was a celebratory culture of feast days and carnivals and festivities where artists of various media were employed to design architectural settings, paintings, music, clothes, food, sporting events, dancing, speeches, liturgy, movement. Festivals were as dynamic and dramatic, authentic and lunatic, noisome and fulsome as life itself."

(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

Play-Doh For The Spirit?

I suspect that a prime reason why Bethany was Jesus’ favorite place on earth was because he enjoyed Martha’s cooking. The problem was that feeding Jesus had become work for Martha, not play. She had gone from the joy of cooking to the burden of cooking. The Bread of Life yearns to be fun: not workspace for the stressed, but Play-Doh for the spirit. Most of us are like Martha: too busy to party."

(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

I Wanted To Kiss You This Way.

"I didn't want to kiss you goodbye- that was the trouble- I wanted to kiss you goodnight. And there's a lot of difference."  -Ernest Hemingway

How We Lived and Died

"Every man's life ends the same way. IT is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another."
(Ernest Hemingway)

Harmony Among A The Brokenness

"When you became a part of her family, you stayed a part of the family. It didn’t matter. When her youngest daughter divorced, Grandma still kept contact with the ex-husband. He was one of the pall bearers at her funeral, right alongside the daughter’s current partner. When her grandson (my husbands cousin) divorced, his wife still came to help Grandma clean her house. The ex-wife’s daughter (cousin’s step-daughter) was still very much a part of the family, even though there were no blood ties.
She was feisty, a hard worker, fiercely loyal, and outspoken. Everything I aspire to be. Man, I miss her. I am so glad I knew her."
(Carrie Marshall- "Remembering" About her husbands grandmother)

http://awefilledwonder.blogspot.com/2014/11/remembering.html

The Sound of Peace When It Goes Away.

"When Peace Goes Away, it Doesn’t Make a Sound"  (David Cain)

Inspired Repulsion While Weeping

"She had died quite suddenly in a garret, according to one story, of typhus, or as another version had it, of starvation. Fyodor Pavlovitch was drunk when he heard of his wife’s death, and the story is that he ran out into the street and began shouting with joy, raising his hands to Heaven: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace,” but others say he wept without restraint like a little child, so much so that people were sorry for him, in spite of the repulsion he inspired.

It is quite possible that both versions were true, that he rejoiced at his release, and at the same time wept for her who released him. As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too."
(Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Brothers Karamazov)

Looking After Nothing Else?

"But he was one of those senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after their worldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else."

(Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Brothers Karamazov)

Swimming In God

You go to church to find God but any God you found in church you brought in with you.... You are swimming in God, Truth and peace but you are oblivious to them."
(Jim Palmer. Notes From (Over) The Edge)

Religion Taught Us That We Should Be "Nice" And "Conform"

"Religion taught you that you should be nice, considerate, polite, amiable, and selfless. An antonym for “nice” is “improper.” “Improper” is defined as: “not being in accord with acceptable behavior and procedures; not in keeping with conventional mores.” Yep, that was Jesus! The road to Truth has improper written all over it. People traveling this road are a threat to all the nice people. Don’t expect them to be nice anymore, at least to you. Your world works because it hinges on you being nice. There will not be a crowd cheering you on. Knowing Truth is not a popularity contest, and the road to your freedom and end of suffering will be lined with people expressing disapproval. Every step on the path of Truth is an act of non-conformity.There will be resistance. There will be a lot of chances to turn back. Keep going! Be fearless! How much suffering will you tolerate? How many things will you continue doing and believing that have not worked and never will? How long will you put on that fake happy face, be nice, go to church, and conform?"

(Jim Palmer. Notes From (Over) The Edge)

Your Neighbour Must Eat Before You: Said Mohamed At The Fall Of Mecca

" Meanwhile, a few weeks before I meet Faizan Peerzada in Lahore, the Muslim Salvation Organization posts the even-harder-line view of a Mufti Ebrahim Desai from www.ask-imam.com’s fatwa department who claims that “[ t] he use of the drum as a musical instrument is expressly forbidden. . . .” Apparently percussion is not permissible but an online fatwa department is.

Dancing right in his chair (Faizan Peerzada, Pakistan), and playing air duff and nay to illustrate his story, he recounts: “All these things were present at the fall of Mecca, when Prophet comes down from the camel.” From that moment in Islamic history, Faizan sketches a tolerant, humanist Islam. “The first thing the Prophet Muhammad says is, ‘The smaller jihad is over today. Now begins the biggest Jihad.’ To fight with yourself to be a good human being. Your neighbor on the right and left must eat before you, as simple as that.”

(Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here : Untold Stories From The Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism)

Art The Only Protest Left Against Islamic Fundamentalism

<blockquote>" “Now art is the only way we can fight fundamentalism.” (Madeeha Gauhar, director of Ajoka Theatre, Pakistan) In an era when so many successful performers in the West are busy hawking perfume, modeling designer frocks, or dancing with the stars, this is an entirely different vision of what it can mean to be an artist."
(Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here : Untold Stories From The Fight Against Muslim Fundamentalism) <blockquote/>

Let The Children Sing Without Fear

Two years earlier children and parents were bombed by radicals for attending this theater with play and song. But the people of this Pakistani city would not give in, and the children perform their play anyway.

"Though the bombers made headlines here two years ago, this night and these people are just as important a story....
When I leave, I come across an open drawing space covered with graffiti. Someone has scrawled two words: NO FEAR."
(Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here) 

Wounding The Beautiful Kind Of People. ...

Wounding the best kind of people. I've seen it, and sadly, I've probably done it too...

“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”
- Ernest Hemingway

Sadness On Earth.

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

I Don't Live At All.....

"Why, darling, I don’t live at all when I’m not with you."
(Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms)

I Forgot You Are Suffering Quiet One.....

"You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering." (Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms.)

Islamic Radicalism - Just Cry?

These witnesses knew that the best hope for politically defeating Muslim fundamentalists is that their atrocities be exposed, so they testified through their tears. Even after twenty years of such interviews, it remains hard to know the best way to react. I usually say, however uselessly, how sorry I am. It is the least that decency demands. On these trips, I developed a policy that I would not cry during the interviews, no matter what someone told me, or at least I would try not to. The people attempting to get through their awful tales with dignity deserved at the very least that I hold it together."
(Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here)

The Woman Who Makes People Weep

"Making people tell awful stories has been part of what I have done for several decades as a human rights lawyer...

I was then a legal adviser for Amnesty International in London, collecting nightmares for a living in order to combat abuse in places like Lebanon and...
When your job is to document horror, as it was for me at times when writing this book, you try to convince yourself that it is inherently good for people to tell their stories. I am not sure that is always true. Some of the people I interviewed were desperately eager to recount their travails. An older woman at the offices of Djazairouna, the Association of Families of Victims of Islamist Terrorism in Algeria, rushed into the room and started talking at breakneck speed before I could manage to get my new digital recorder turned on. But for some it was terribly difficult. Another person I interviewed went into a depression afterward. With this research, I again became the woman who makes people weep."
(Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here)

No Africans Or Asians In My Sunday School Material.

"I saw no African people in the printed and illustrated Sunday school lessons. I began to suspect at this early age that someone had distorted the image of my people. My long search for the true history of African people the world over began."John Henrik Clarke

Sunday Morning Inside Four Walls With Clean Blood and Organized Drawers

“I am not a Sunday morning inside four walls with clean blood and organized drawers. I am the hurricane setting fire to the forests at night when no one else is alive or awake....." 

(Swiss Musician Charlotte Eriksson) 

What Immortals Do on Sunday?

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." (Susan Ertz)

A Giant Thousand Mile Step

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." (Lao Tzu)

Christians Offer Charity Not Change.

"Much of the fundamentalist leadership is middle or even upper class. It is with a distinct agenda that their movements sometimes offer social services where governments fail to do so. They distribute headscarves along with health care and fatwas with the food. Like the Christian fundamentalists, they offer charity, not change in the economic status quo. They usually justify the protection of private property against measures like land reform.
According to an Algerian fundamentalist fatwa from the 1970s, prayer performed on nationalized land would not be accepted by God. In fact, Muslim fundamentalists often seek to defeat the movements most likely to be able to tackle social injustice— social democrats, the humanist Left, trade unions, human rights advocates, women’s rights defenders. These fundamentalists spend more time talking about who gets to the next life than about who gets what in this one. “I have never heard them pronounce on structural adjustment and what Islam would say about it. Not once,” Codou Bop fumes in Senegal."
(Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here)

Islamic Radicals Punish Fellow Muslims. Those Suffering Need Us.....

"An Afghan woman having her nose cut off by the Taliban becomes a platform for saying that there is violence against women everywhere. I think when we talk about Muslim fundamentalism, we have to actually talk about it. It exists. It gravely menaces the human rights of people of Muslim heritage. It is just as deserving of critical discussion as U.S. foreign policy or the Israeli government or anti-Muslim bias. To quote one of the last articles published by left-wing Algerian educator Salah Chouaki before his assassination by the same forces he warned against, “The most dangerous and deadly illusion. . . is to underestimate fundamentalism, the mortal enemy of our people.”

The Algerian journalist Mohamed Sifaoui once told me that he often has to explain to European leftists and human rights advocates that “the Muslim fundamentalists are our extreme right.” All too often, because they are (sometimes mistakenly) assumed to be the enemies of the same Western governments criticized by the Western Left, parts of that Left confuse the Muslim fundamentalists with allies....

The people I met while writing this book deserve for us all to rethink our positions, to neither advocate violations of human rights and discrimination against Muslims in response to the actions of Muslim fundamentalists, as some on the right do, nor tolerate the fundamentalists in response, as some on the left do. Instead, these progressive opponents of Muslim fundamentalism on the ground need our principled support."

(Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here)

Blissfully Ignorant Of Islamic Fundamentalism

"While the Western Right sometimes advocates international crimes and bigotry in response to Muslim fundamentalist violence, the Western (and global) Left often refuses to recognize the relity of that violence and the actual danger posed by its underlying ideology. Both of these positions have drastic consequences on the ground for the people......
I must admit, however, that I am more shocked by the failings of the Left and the human rights movement because I am in their camp. For example, my former employer Amnesty International, which has done so much good on many human rights issues, suspended and then forced out the head of its Gender Unit, Gita Sahgal, after she publicly criticized the organization for cozying up to a jihadi sympathizer and former Guantanamo detainee, a British Muslim named Moazzam Begg, and his pro-jihadi organization CagePrisoners. While Begg had clearly suffered at the hands of U.S. authorities, and deserved defense while detained without trial, he himself had a nasty track record of support for the Taliban, of running an extremist bookshop in the United Kingdom, and of numerous visits to jihadi training camps. Yet he was lauded as a human rights defender, brought in to judge a children’s poetry competition, depicted on Amnesty’s website reading his own poetry about “tyrants,” and repeatedly given a platform by the organization. When Gita Sahgal went public with her concerns, several of South Asia’s leading women’s rights defenders wrote an open letter to Amnesty that garnered two thousand signatures, including those of such prominent women’s rights defenders as the leading Pakistani human rights lawyer Hina Jilani, and pioneering Egyptian feminist writer Nawal El Sadaawi. In response, the acting secretary-general of Amnesty would write a letter claiming that advocacy of “jihad in self-defense” is not “antithetical to human rights," thereby actually endorsing a myth that has been used to justify fundamentalist atrocities from Iraq to Afghanistan to Algeria. Gita Sahgal was absolutely right to speak out, and she paid a high price for doing so." (Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here)

Somethings Wrong With That Religion..... All Of Em!

"... diatribe from the Far Right in the West increasingly suggesting that all Muslims are members of one big sleeper cell and that there is something inherently wrong with this religion, and this religion only. Such views contravene basic tenets of humanism and decency. They also give a powerful weapon both to actual fundamentalists and those who apologize for them by suggesting that the extremists are just fighting an oppressive, imperialist West and defending Muslim interests. Making Muslims into victims, or making them feel like they are, plays into the hands of the fundamentalists who know just how to play that card."
(Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply here.)

Quiet

"Joy – in the fall, winter, and always in the mountains where people are few, wildlife is abundant and there is peace in the quiet."
(Donna Lynn Hope)

Prophetic Predictors Are Predators

"I am prophetic. I predicted it would snow tomorrow yesterday, and sure enough today it snowed. True, I’ve been saying it will snow tomorrow every day since June, but as you can see, my fortune telling prowess is improving."

(Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not for Sale)

The Person I Actually Married

"It's an extraordinary thing to me that Hugh and I have been married for 29 years. It is also, I believe, a good marriage, although much of it would not seem to be so in terms of the kind of success commercials would hold out to us. However, our own expectations of marriage were false to start out with. Neither of us knew the person we had promised to live with for the rest of our lives. The first bitter lessons of marriage consisted in learning to love the person we had actually married, instead of the image we wanted to have married."
(Madeleine L'Engle, "The Irrational Season")

Bound to Racism And War?

"I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Church Growth Illusion

"My own feeling is, the Church in America is headed for a similar destiny. 

Of course, Church devotees wish to argue with me by pointing to the few churches - usually its the one they are attending - that seem to be growing.

"Our church is growing," they argue.

What these persons do not know, however, or wish to overlook, is that  the growth they are experiencing is really just an illusion. The growth is coming from church-goers leaving dying churches and turning to the remaining few showing signs of life. It is transfer growth, therefore, not real organic growth."

Steve McSwain: "NONES!" are Now "DONES" Is the Church Dying?

How Church Growth Books & Libraries Kill Your Pastor's (Priest, Minister and Leaders) Soul.

Reminds me of the day, about fourteen years ago,  I walked up to my bookshelves and began hauling books off the shelf forming a pile on the floor. When finished, I sorted through the four foot high mountain and made a pile to give away, another to burn. I gave away many thousands of dollars worth of books. The burn pile had almost $3000 worth of "Church Growth" and  "Discipleship" books. I began hauling them up the upstairs and out into the back woods. After several trips my wife came down and asked me what I was doing. I explained... My wife suggested I might give these very "popular" church growth and discipleship books to some other minister or leader who would like to have them.  I replied, "Why would I heap a burden on another young minister,  a burden that even I myself could not bear?" I burned them in the woods over that fire promising God I'd seek him instead.... and promised that I would not read another such book for ten years, and only then to see if the conversations had changed yet........

"Even as i sit at my desk writing this chapter, a ravenous monster lurks not more than 12 feet behind me. He is big— ten feet across and eight feet high. His name is library. In small doses he can be very helpful, but when he lines up all his resources against me, he can be quite formidable even though he can’t move an inch.
He has eight shelves full of books of every size and description. Most I've read, some I've skimmed, and some are there because I still hope to read them. But each one calls to me with its own agenda. Here are five books with detailed blueprints for deepening my spiritual life. I have nearly two dozen books on the definitive church structure, none of which agree with the others except on one point— my church is doing it wrong! I have a dozen books on human relationships and family life. I’m amazed that marriages even stayed together before the invention of the printing press. And i have 12 different slants on eschatological events, each using the same scriptures to prove widely varying points of view.
I have workbooks that offer me ten easy steps to anything I want— but most of them don’t work. ......
But my selection of books on current issues is the most intimidating of all. I have 15 selections cheering me on to more activity than I can produce in six lifetimes. Sell your home and live among the inner-city poor! Get rich so you can send money to God’s evangelists so they can help the poor! If God hasn't specifically told you to stay in America, go overseas as a missionary! We must stop abortion now! The list goes on and on— antipornography, new age movement, politics, Latin America….
Sometimes I want to rip this monster from my wall. It’s not that i don’t enjoy books, since my wall wouldn't be full of them if I didn't. But I get this nagging feeling that we've made Christianity far more complicated than its Founder intended. And i get that same feeling whenever i look at a church calendar or my own schedule, or attend a pastor’s conference.
When our hearts cry out for an intimate fellowship with God that seems to escape us, maybe we ought to look at how complicated we've made a very simple gospel."
(Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)

Religious Institutions Do Not NEED To Change

"We’ll learn how to embrace his presence and walk in his glory, without our religious institutions having to make any change at all. I hope these words provide the impetus for some of the institutions we call church to make significant changes and embrace relational christianity, but it is not necessary. To God, ‘church’ is not a building down the street, or a name brand denomination. His church is made up of every person who walks in friendship with him. He came because he loved people, not organizations. he desires to change you, not them."
(Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)

Unable to Cry.....

"IF I WERE TO ASK YOU to tell me a cave story, I bet you’d have one. Not as memorable, perhaps, as the one told by Prisoner 46664, who spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison hewing stones in and out of the caves of Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. There, Nelson Mandela’s ideals of mercy and reconciliation were honed with every strike of the hammer that broke the rocks  — rocks broken for no other purpose than to break the spirit of the prisoners. Constant movement from pitch blackness to glaring sun caused Mandela’s eyes to be burned to the point where he lost the ability to cry, even after he was released. But his suffering in the caves of Robben Island taught the world to cry."

(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

Digging Up The Kingdom?

"We dig up the Kingdom as we play in the dirt with God."
(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

Enlightenment Was Correct But Put The Wrong Person Center.

"The Enlightenment Project, another name for “the modern world,” got it half right. “Person” does belong at the center of the universe, but the modern world chose the wrong one. You don’t belong at the center of the universe. I don’t belong at the center of the universe. The human self is not the center of the universe. Only Jesus belongs at the center of the universe."

(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

"Here we Sand" - or - There we Go" ?????

"We have spent five hundred years in the “Here I Stand” mode of Protestantism. Maybe it’s time to move to a “There We Go” mode of mission."
(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

Church Celebrity: Big Tails Make For Big Targets

"The male bird of paradise has gloriously colored plumage. Those with the longest, thickest tails attract the most females. Subsequent offspring also exhibit the long tail and also compete well for females. Unfortunately, the birds with the biggest tails also have the biggest problem escaping predators who appreciate large birds pinned in place by their plumage. So the bird with the most sex appeal is also the worst choice as a fit mate. Not unlike high school . .  . or the rest of life." (Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

“Come to Christ” has Devolved to “Come to Church"

"Our “self” has fallen more in love with its own appearance than in loving “Christ’s appearing.”Our church is less “hidden with Christ in God” than hiding Christ while crowing and crowning itself. “Come to Christ” has devolved to “Come to church.” (Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

Fish Don't Applaud: Why I Am A People Pleaser...

"In the closing pages of Bob Hope’s bestselling memoir about his then fifty years in the business, "Don’t Shoot, It’s Only Me", he answers this question: “After all these years, why don’t you retire and go fishing?” “Fish don’t applaud.” Bob Hope wasn’t the only one hungry for applause. In some ways, we are all applause seekers, more dependent on the approval of others than we would ever like to admit; more inclined to be people pleasers than God pleasers. When we place our sense of self in the reflection we see in other people’s eyes, what happens when those other people go away?" (Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

Cree's Proverb - We Can't Eat Money Like Fish

"Only when the last tree has died, and the last river been poisoned, and the last fish has been caught, will we realize we cannot eat money."  (Old Cree saying)

Where Does The Money Go?

"Exiles ought to carefully consider how much of their income they can give away in an attempt to be true to the biblical calls to generosity and love. But we also need to research where our money is going and in what ways it’s contributing to the alleviation of suffering and to the extension of God’s kingdom. Contributing a tithe to a local church that has plenty of money and is going to spend it on new carpet or a new youth hall might not be the most effective use of a gift. As Tom Sine says, “Let’s quit kidding ourselves; we even tithe to ourselves. Everything we put into our churches we take back. We are not, as Bonhoeffer said, ‘The church for others’; we are the church for ourselves.”
-- Michael Frost "Exiles"

When Snakes Measure You.....

Something about pythons. .....

“She wants to know why the snake is acting weird. It still isn’t eating. It lies beside her, flattening itself.” “Did you say flattening itself?” Hock said. “Listen, get her on the phone. Tell her to put the snake in a cage immediately.” “Why are you shouting?” Only then had Hock realized that his voice had risen almost to a scream. In this same shrill pitch he said, “The snake is measuring her. It’s getting ready to eat her!”"
(Paul Theroux. The Lower River)

When Christians Create Their Own Persecution

(Stephen W Hill)
"I pray for the day that I stop hearing stories like this one! A friend in the majority world invites a brother from the west to come and teach at a conference. This person claims to have ministered in 60 nations. During the ministry this man curses the dominant religion in the culture. He leaves on a plane the next day meanwhile the brother who invited him into this home and circle of influence flees at midnight with his wife and small children from their home and goes into hiding in order to avoid being murdered.

This man will boast to his circle of ministry partners about his boldness and faith but when gently told about the danger and poverty that he has just plunged his majority world friend into he says, "Sorry." but offers no help, no financial assistance, nothing."

Church Is Nice and Helpful..... But.....

"I’ll warn you that this will not be easy. All of us can point to wonderful, even lifechanging moments, that organized religion has provided for us. Who doesn’t enjoy the aesthetics of a beautiful worship service? Who has not been enlightened by the teaching of God’s Word? Who doesn’t have friends there whom we enjoy? No, church life today is not all bad, and that’s what makes it difficult to recognize its deficiencies. But the larger question must still be asked: Does it lead us to the fullness of an intimate friendship with Jesus? and if not, why not?....
Such talk is not any more popular in our day than it was in Luthers. His contemporaries thought he wanted to destroy the church, when his motives were quite the opposite. He offered the church healing and spoke out not because he loved it less, but because he loved it more than did the others of his day, who cared less what God wanted than what they did." (Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)

Would We Hear Luther Or Wesley Today?

"Could Luther and Wesley speak in our pulpits? As long as their words apply to another generation, we revere them. Would we tolerate them if they spoke the same about things we hold dear? Let’s try it! Luther spoke out passionately against Rome’s practice of selling indulgences— offering spiritual forgiveness and status for money that was put into a building fund at the vatican. Here’s what he said: 'The revenues of all christendom are being sucked into this insatiable basilica. the Germans laugh at calling this the common treasure of christendom. Before long all the churches, palaces, walls and bridges of rome will be built out of our money. First of all, we should rear living temples, not local churches… he— the pope— would do better to sell st. Peter’s and give the money to the poor folk who are being fleeced by the hawkers of indulgences....'

What if Martin Luther were alive today? Do you think he would look on our fundraising techniques or our opulent buildings with any less disgust? We may not be so crass as to sell forgiveness of sins for those who contribute to our cathedrals, but most fundraising appeals contain a nearly identical mixture of guilt and glory.... Would we listen any better if Martin Luther used those same words to cry out against our favorite tv pastor, or the megachurch being built on the outskirts of our city? Care to try it?"
(Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)

What Produces Luthers, Wesleys, and Bonhoeffers?

Wow... what produces the Luthers, the Wesleys, the Bonhoeffers?????

"All the people who have walked closely with God throughout history were stirred both by a vision that burned in their hearts and by their ability to look at the status quo and admit that it did not live up to that vision. That dichotomy alone creates hunger— to see what God has promised and to be real enough about our lives to admit when we’ve fallen short of it. This is what produces the Luthers, the Wesleys, the Bonhoeffers. They saw a great disparity in their day between biblical promise and cultural reality, and they set about to narrow the gap in their own lives."
(Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)

Hungry Fanatics. ....

"In such a climate, hungry people are regarded at best as fanatics and at worst as rebels. 'Sensible' people accept the status quo for what it is and use it as advantageously as possible." (Wayne Jacobsen)

Billy Graham On Rejecting The Institutional Church To Find Spiritual Food

"Multitudes of Christians within the church are moving toward the point where they may reject the institution that we call the church. They are beginning to turn to more simplified forms of worship. They are hungry for a personal and vital experience with Jesus Christ. They want a heartwarming personal faith. Unless the church quickly recovers its authoritative Biblical message, we may witness the spectacle of millions of Christians going outside the institutional church to find spiritual food."

-- Billy Graham (1965)

The Stench of Evil Words

"An evil word is like a stench. It attacks a man strength, going from the nose to the throat, the liver..." (Segu. Maryse Condé)

Freeing he Church To Move......

We have been told for so long that we can’t possibly be all that God wants us to be without a properly ordained minister, or without a purpose- built facility, or without the support and assistance that a denominational leadership structure can offer us. Of course, it should be no surprise that we’ve been told that by seminary professors, ordained clergy, and denominational leaders. Many people have too much to lose if we rediscovered what the church around the Southern continents is discovering. Let me make myself clear on this matter. I am not suggesting that there is anything inherently wrong with seminaries, denominations, church buildings, and the rest of the massive infrastructure that the church in the West has at its disposal. What I’m saying is that our reliance on them is limiting our spiritual growth. We are not fully realizing our calling to be the church of Jesus Christ as long as we rely on money, buildings, and paid experts.
-- Michael Frost "Exiles"

Just Walk Away......

"When faced with senseless drama, spiteful criticisms, and misguided opinions, walking away is the best way to stand up for yourself. To respond with anger is an endorsement of their attitude."
(Dodinsky)

Risk is Right Says Missiomary Ebola Survivor

"So I think if I were to speak to a young missionary, I would tell them they need to ask themselves, Is God enough? Most assuredly, he must be enough for them before they go. And let me be the first to tell you, even when you are in the darkest struggle of your life God will be enough for you." (Nancy Writebol - Risk IsRight, Says Ebola Survivor and Missionary)

How Muslim Christians Changed Me....

Your book is filled with insights about how Muslims view Jesus, Christianity, and the church. But how did your encounters with Muslims change you personally?

I've traveled to 100 countries over the years. The thing that changed me, as I look back on it, was finding that the living Christ has already been in these places.
I was hearing from Muslim-background believers that they had met Jesus. Sometimes we as Christians feel we take Jesus to people. What we forget sometimes is that we're attesting to a living Christ who continues to break into people's lives, into their dreams, into their visions, and into their prayers.
Jesus answers those prayers, and he meets with them, and it shakes them up. From West Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia, Indonesia, I met people whose lives had been shaken and rattled by their encounter with Christ. They were not persuaded by logical doctrine or a better civilization, but by that encounter with the living Son of God who changed their life and world. They can't go back to life as usual.
That changed me. I had my own faith renewed. We serve a living God, a living Christ, and a living Lord. (David Garrison)

Link to Article

Abandoning The Institutions False Priorities

"Structures will only change when enough individuals abandon the priorities they service and discover again the simple joy of knowing the living God."
(Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)

Admire Our Institution...... Or Else

"Anyone who does not gush with admiration for church institutions and activities today is accused of being arrogant, rebellious, or judgmental. That’s our modern equivalent of being stupid or unfit. So, even though our Christian experience feels empty, we think we’re the only ones to feel that way. To admit this is unthinkable, so we rationalize those nagging thoughts that tell us this can’t really be what God had in mind. After all, there is always more to be gained by exploiting a system than there is by exposing it.
Today we are so impressed by our own efforts that through endless hours of talk shows and endless pages of fundraising letters we congratulate ourselves: “Look how much we’re doing for Jesus!” When we believe this thought, the trap is fully sprung. Our visions of a powerful and relevant church, with love enough for all and selfless sacrifice for God’s kingdom, are filed away under the heading “too idealistic.” We settle for the status quo as if it were all God intended— like a baby crocodile born in the zoo pond."
(Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)

Church Can Not Say, "Silver snd Gold I have None"

".....an encounter which Thomas Aquinas, a theologian of the thirteenth century, had with Pope Innocent iv. One day Aquinas found the Pope counting a large sum of money.

“You see, Thomas,” Pope innocent said, “the church can no longer say, ‘silver and gold have I none.’”

These are the words Peter and John, two of christ’s disciples, had spoken one morning when a lame beggar sought money from them. Instead, Peter and John healed the beggar’s legs and sent him home dancing.

Aquinas thought about the Pope’s statement for a moment and then replied, “True, holy Father, but neither can she now say, ‘rise up and walk.’"

(Wayne Jacobsen.  The Naked Church)

Stripped Of Vitality But Supposedly Successful

"What an amazing paradox— while we were stripped of the vitality of our relationship with God, we were handed enough statistics and programs to think our selves successful!"
(Wayne Jacobsen. The naked Church)

Masking Inward Emptiness of Church?

“Even if the church seems to be succeeding, growth outruns depth and outward success masks inward emp­tiness.” (Howard Snyder)

Glory Perverting The Mega Church?

"The church has been brought into the same value system as the world: fame, success, materialism and celebrity. We watch the leading Christians for our cues. We want to emulate the best-known preachers with the biggest sanctuaries and the grandest edifices. Preoccupation with these values as perverted the church's message. (Chuck Colson loving God pg 14)

Something. ... considering it was written in 1984.

Forgive Us For Offending Your Son......Gossipy Adultery

"Not long ago I heard of a pastor caught in the very act of adultery. As I passed on that choice morsel of gossip to a college friend of mine, I expected him to break out with the same righteous indignation that churned in me. Instead he began to cry and pray, "My God, forgive us for offending your Son.” That's an attitude we all need. Instead of finger-pointing at others or rising to our own defense, we need to take stock and turn to God. (Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)

Not Fixing Anything

"Those who come to this.... looking for institutional answers will be disappointed. My aim here is not to fix the system, but rather to challenge believers to discover the depths of intimacy with God.... Regarding the abuses and excesses I address, I have been a victim of all and it perpetrator of most." (Wayne Jacobsen The Naked Church

Caught Up In The Machinery Of Faith

"From the outside looking in, it was easier to see how I had gotten away from some of those passions as our congregation had grown, and how I got caught up in the machinery we thought necessary to maintain it.

In the years since I have learned so much about Father and how he invites us into a relationship; about myself and why I am so easily lured by empty substitutes......."

 (Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)

A Communion Of Jesus Followers Larger Than We realize

The Communion of Saints

"We often limit the Church to the organisation of people who identify themselves clearly as its members. But the Church as all people belonging to Christ, as that body of witnesses who reveal the living Christ, reaches far beyond the boundaries of any human institution. As Jesus himself said: The Spirit "blows where it pleases" (John 3:8). The Spirit of Jesus can touch hearts wherever it wants; it is not restrained by any human limits.
There is a communion of saints witnessing to the risen Christ that reaches to the far ends of the world and even farther. It embraces people from long ago and far away. It is that immense community of men and women who through words and deeds have proclaimed and are proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus."

(Henri Nouwen)

The Difference Between "With" and "Around"

"Never confuse people who are always around you with people who are always there for you."
(Gee Linder)

I think the church confuses this often. They assume being there in the group is needed, you cant survive without this group. However, what if the people around us are not there for one another?

Teams Built Around Love Not Gifts

"Simply having strengths that others need does not form a team. Humility and love toward one another are the glue that binds us together as we pursue mission together. Gifts do not bind us together. I would rather have a team that loved each other and was willing to defer and submit to one another, even if we lacked the right gifts, than to have a team with all the right gifts but no unity.

Focusing on your strengths actually divides us because we can easily devalue the strengths of others. We have found that when you focus on your weaknesses you become stronger because you begin to value everyone else's gifts. Let everyone else notice your strength, while you value the strengths of everyone else "
(Neil Cole)

Christianity Has No Geographical Center -Jesus Is Center Not Jerusalem

"If we would meet God in worship, there is only one place we must go, to Jesus Christ. Christianity has no geographical center like Islam and Judaism... He came into the world to explode geographical limitation. There is no temple now. Jerusalem is not the center. Christ is." (John S. Piper)

Food is A Cultural not a Technological Product

"Speaking at the Agriculture for a Small Planet symposium in Spokane, 1974, literary master and pioneer of sustainable agriculture, Wendell Berry paints a sad picture of the changing face of agriculture following the Second World War. His account of a technocratic and large scale approach ends up with the demise of the family farm, livelihoods and community. His subsequent message is clear: food is a cultural, not a technological product, and a destruction of culture, which is far from a collection of relics or ornaments, invokes calamity for us all. Big-agriculture’s ‘efficiency at the expense of community, and quantity at the expense of quality, may already have been disastrous, and we have not yet seen the worst,’ he says. Today, ‘the worst’ seems imminent and Berry’s call to live in harmony with the complex and natural rhythms of the earth should resonate louder than ever." (Sustainable Food Trust)

Watch the video: http://youtu.be/t1tioiBrZRE

There Is Another Way Brighter Than Religion

"As a radical alternative this book is offered to Christians who want to live by faith and not by mere “religion,” for those who recognize that many of the burning theological issues in the church today are neither burning nor theological; who see Christianity neither as a moral code or a belief system but as a love affair; who have not forgotten that they are followers of a crucified Christ; who know that following him means living dangerously; who want to live the gospel without compromise; who have no greater desire than to have his signature written on the pages of their lives."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Prepared For The One Who Asks Questions

“O my soul, be prepared to meet him who knows how to ask questions.” (T.S. Eliot)

Wasting Time With A Friend Is An Affirmation

"Because simply showing up is a kind of loving. The readiness to conscientiously waste time with a friend is a silent affirmation of their importance in our lives."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Alone- Egotistical Solitude?

"The world does not understand today, in either man or woman, the need to be alone. How inexplicable it seems! Anything else will be accepted as a better excuse. If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement, or a shopping expedition, that time will be accepted as inviolable. But if one says, “I cannot come because it is my hour to be alone,” one is considered rude, egotistical, or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices solitude—like a secret vice."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Too Much Speaking.....

"How do we grab aholt of God? How do we overcome our sadness and isolation? How do we develop the courage and generosity to treasure the signature of Jesus on the pages of our lives? How, how, how? The answer comes irresistibly and unmistakably: prayer. “Seek first the kingdom of God” (see Matthew 6:33). This requires taking time out from family, friends, career, ministry, even “doing good” to enter into the great silence of God. Alone in that silence, the noise within will subside and the Voice of Love will be heard. Without such silence we will drown in the inner cacophony of dialogues, encounters, meetings, discussions, and conferences where there is much speaking and little listening."

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Academic Missionaries.....

"I’ve come to discover that there is a whole world of professional Christians who live primarily in the church or the Christian academy, and who determine what is the so- called true and proper terminology or the correct biblical procedure for mission, but who never seem to embody the ideas that they describe."
(Michael Frost)

A Church Marching To The Margins Of Society

"Those who are marginal in the world are central in the Church, and that is how it is supposed to be! Thus we are called as members of the Church to keep going to the margins of our society. The homeless, the starving, parentless children, people with AIDS, our emotionally disturbed brothers and sisters - they require our first attention.
We can trust that when we reach out with all our energy to the margins of our society we will discover that petty disagreements, fruitless debates, and paralysing rivalries will recede and gradually vanish. The Church will always be renewed when our attention shifts from ourselves to those who need our care. The blessing of Jesus always comes to us through the poor. The most remarkable experience of those who work with the poor is that, in the end, the poor give more than they receive. They give food to us."
-- Henri Nouwen

Mediocre Version Of Faith

"For many of us the great danger is not that we will renounce our faith. It is that we will become so distracted and rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of it." (John Ortberg)

God Passionately Loves Them, But They Knew It Not

" Many Christians never have grabbed aholt of God. They do not know—really know—that God dearly and passionately loves them. Many accept it theoretically; others in a shadowy sort of way. While their belief system is invulnerable, their faith in God’s love for them is remote and abstract. They would be hard-pressed to say that the essence of their faith-commitment is a love affair between God and themselves. Not just a simple love affair but a furious love affair."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Costs A Lot To Live In Decent Poverty

"And what about that decent poverty that Ramon and I claimed to have freely chosen as a guiding principal? We were still practicing it, though with a little less enthusiasm; we could seldom describe our poverty as decent. What we were learning was that it costs a hell of a lot to live in decent poverty."
(Moritz Thomsen. The Farm On The River of Emeralds)

Creating "Mobs"

"I suppose if we create mobs to serve our purposes then we must pay the price of being involved with and wounded by them."
(Moritz Thomsen. The Farm On The River of Emeralds)

Poor People Don't Worry About Tomorrow

"Santo’s house was so crowded with people that there were many days when there was very little to eat and no money at all to buy food. Poor people don’t worry about tomorrow; all of life’s problems can be squeezed into one day."
(Moritz Thomsen. The Farm On The River of Emeralds)

Too Poor To Boil Drinking Water?

"Still, I was looking for another Ramón all the time, someone with the intelligence and discipline and the desire to break out of his infinitely complicated cycle of deprivation. And still, like an old record caught in a groove, I continued to yell at the mothers with their sick children: “Boil your drinking water; boil your drinking water." It was stupid advice, for now I knew that, being poor, they had no extra pots for boiling and storing water and that their children must die."
(Moritz Thomsen. The Farm On The River of Emeralds)

Offending The Pharisees

“If you're not known as a friend of sinners and offending Pharisees, you're not being conformed to the image of Jesus.”
@alanhirsch

Strength

It is not the strength of the body that counts, but the strength of the spirit.”
- J.R.R. Tolkien

Closing The Gap Between Beliefs And Experience

"Closing the gap between beliefs and experience through the prayer of faith is not only of paramount importance, it is our first responsibility every day of our lives. The Word I preach must become incarnate in my own experience. It is the journey from Haran to Canaan, the pilgrimage from theory into reality, from unawareness to awareness, from idea into experience, from trivial concerns to unified consciousness with Jesus. As Christ is formed in us, we come to know him more deeply. “Maybe it sounds arrogant to say we come to know Christ as we persevere in contemplative prayer. But the truth is not less than this. We come to know what it is to live every moment, every decision, joy or difficulty from within his presence and so out of the infinite resources of this power—the power of love and compassion, an unshakeable reality.”

( Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

Constantly Teaching About God Does Not of Itself Lead to Being With God

"In my personal life the greater part of each year is devoted to writing, thinking, and speaking about God, Jesus, faith, contemplative prayer, the gospel lifestyle, and so forth. It is a curious phenomenon that such noble Christian enterprises distance me from God. (I assume that this is true for all Christian writers, preachers, and teachers, as well as songwriters, musicians, and singers.) Constantly holding forth about God does not of itself lead to being with God. Writing about God somehow takes me away from directly responding to God in the present moment. Preaching about Jesus somehow clouds my presence to the Reality I am proclaiming. In both situations, what is missing is any sense of felt intimacy with God through faith. Yet my beliefs remain vigorous and rooted."

( Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

Have We Experienced The Relentless Tenderness Of Jesus?

"As was stated in the opening chapter, the tragedy in the church today is that we have confused beliefs and faith, doctrines and lived experience. Contemplative prayer bridges the gap between belief and experience because it is the bridge of faith. It teaches us what theology alone could never convince us of—that God is love. It takes us on the longest and most dangerous journey of all, from the head to the heart wherein we taste and existentially experience the relentless tenderness of Jesus Christ. We come to know the compassion of Christ not as an abstraction but in the lived experience of his acceptance of us as sinners, as imperfect people caught up in a struggle in which we sometimes sell out ourselves or others."
(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

You Are Already United With God

"During a conference on contemplative prayer, the question was put to Thomas Merton, “How can we best help people to attain union with God?” His answer was very clear: We must tell them that they are already united with God. “Contemplative prayer is nothing other than ‘coming into consciousness’ of what is already there.”

( Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus )

God Expects More Failure From Us Than We Expect From Ourselves.?

"One Good Friday morning at 2:00 A.M., as I prayed in faith I heard him say, “Little brother, I witnessed a Peter who claimed that he did not know me, a James who wanted power in return for service, a Philip who failed to see the Father in me, and scores of disciples who were convinced I was finished on Calvary. The New Testament has many examples of men and women who started out well and then faltered along the way.

“Yet on Easter night I appeared to Peter; James is not remembered for his ambition but for the sacrifice of his life for the kingdom; Philip did see the Father in me when I pointed the way; and the disciples who despaired had enough courage to recognize me as the stranger who walked the road to Emmaus. My point, little brother, is this: I expect more failure from you than you expect from yourself.”

In season and out of season, in success and failure, in grace and disgrace, the courage to risk everything on the signature of Jesus is the mark of authentic discipleship."

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Jesus Delivers Us From Perfectionisms Depression

"Our failure to have done with our lives what we longed to accomplish weighs heavy on most of us. The disparity between our ideal self and our real self, the specter of past infidelities, the awareness that my behavior often flatly denies my beliefs, the pressure of conformity, and our nostalgia for lost innocence reinforce a nagging sense of existential guilt: I have failed. This is the cross we never expected, the one we find hardest to bear. We can no longer differentiate between our perception of ourselves and the mystery we really are.

The pernicious myth “once converted, fully converted” creates the impression that in one blinding bolt of salvation Christ expects our lives to be freed from contradictions and perplexities. The curse of perfectionism triggers episodes of depression and anxiety. Who will acquit us of guilt? Who will deliver us from the bondage of perfectionism and failure? Once again, it is the signature of Jesus that
rescues us from ourselves."

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Spiritual Pioneers Do Not Have It Easy.

I don't consider myself a pioneer, maybe an extremely early adopter.
However, I think David, aka - "The Naked Pastor" summarized how it really is when you launch out from the pack.

Consummed With Consumers As A Church

"Leadership gurus, frequently and authoritatively tell us that 20% of those who attend church are consumed with consumers.  That is that they spend their gifts and abilities on eighty percent of church attenders who simply show up once a week to watch. I for one am not in favour of propagating this." (Karl Ingersoll​​)

Working To Hard At "Church"....

My kingdom is not of this world." John 18:36

"The great enemy to the Lord Jesus Christ in the present day is the conception of practical work that has not come from the New Testament, but from the Systems of the world in which endless energy and activities are insisted upon, but no private life with God. The emphasis is put on the wrong thing. Jesus said, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, for lo the kingdom of God is within you," a hidden, obscure thing. An active Christian worker too often lives in the shop window. It is the innermost of the innermost that reveals the power of the life.

We have to get rid of the plague of the spirit of the religious age in which we live. In Our Lord's life there was none of the press and rush of tremendous activity that we regard so highly, and the disciple is to be as His Master. The central thing about the kingdom of Jesus Christ is a personal relationship to Himself, not public usefulness to men.

It is not its practical activities that are the strength of this Bible Training College, its whole strength lies in the fact that here you are put into soak before God. You have no idea of where God is going to engineer your circumstances, no knowledge of what strain is going to be put on you either at home or abroad, and if you waste your time in over-active energies instead of getting into soak on the great fundamental truths of God's Redemption, you will snap when the strain comes; but if this time of soaking before God is being spent in getting rooted and grounded in God on the unpractical line, you will remain true to Him what ever happens."

-- Oswald Chambers

Bivocational Ministry Is Actually the most "Normal" Ministry.

I am bi-vocational, and was discipled and baptized as a young man by a bi-vocational minister. They are the norm, and majority. 

6 Realities & Trends In Bivocational Ministry

Posted on October 17, 2014  by Karl Vaters

I’m not a church planter. But I spent three days teaching at the Exponential West conference for church planters last week.

I’ve also never been bivocational. But almost all the teaching I did was with bivocational pastors – most of it tag-team teaching with Hugh Halter and Artie Davis.

So why was I there? The one thing we all have in common is the Small Church experience.

I had a great time sharing my story and the lessons learned along the way, and hearing their stories, too. Bivocational pastors have a lot to teach the rest of us.

Because of the chance to spend so much time together (over 10 hours of teaching and conversations) we all learned a lot about the current state of bivocational ministry and some trends we’re likely to see in the near future.

Here’s a recap of six of them.

1. Bivocational Ministry Is Not Rare

Most of the pastors in the world are bivocational. Always have been.

If you live and minister, as I do, in certain segments of the world where there are larger churches with full-time staffs, it’s easy to start thinking of that as the normal church and pastor experience. It’s not. It’s fine, but it isn’t normal. Bivocational ministry is how most of the world’s Christians are pastored.

2. A Bivocational Pastor Is Not Half a Pastor

Hugh Halter pointed out that, when 1 Timothy tells us “elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor,” it’s not because pastors are more important than others. It’s because bivocationality was so universal for leaders in the early church that the believers were encouraged to give an extra blessing to those who were making such extraordinary sacrifices for the church body. Double the sacrifice, double the honor. 

3. Bivocationalty Is not a Problem that Needs Fixing

The Apostle Paul was a bivocational pastor. In fact, some people still refer to bivocational pastors as tentmakers because it was Paul’s profession. Obviously, Paul’s ministry didn’t need fixing. There’s nothing “less than” about a bivocational ministry.

4. Bivocational Ministry Is Not Always Temporary

Many, maybe most of the bivocational pastors I talked to weren’t bivocational by choice, but out of necessity – and they were hoping it would be a very short temporary situation. But, just like many Small Church pastors expect their small size to be temporary, it often ends up being their regular state of ministry. We need to get used to the idea that bivocational ministry is more than a pit-stop along the way to full-time ministry, because…

5. Bivocational Ministry Is a Better Choice for Many Churches & Pastors

I learned a lot from Hugh Halter last week. I recommend his book, BiVo, for more good information of this topic. Hugh is bivocational by choice. And he makes some very strong arguments that it is often a better choice for many pastors and many churches, because being bivocational…

• Allows for more money to go to hands-on ministry
• Keeps pastors in touch with the unchurched and their real-world needs
• Frees us from being trapped in the “ministry bubble”
• Requires us to fulfill our biblical calling to train others to do the work of ministry
• Makes the priesthood of all believers more of a reality, not just a theological belief
• …and more

Artie Davis, whose church has grown to be quite large and could easily stop being bivocational, has also chosen to keep his janitorial business as his primary income source for many of the same reasons.

6. Bivocational Pastoring Is Likely to Become the New Normal

As I mentioned last week, in the post, My Church Is an Endangered Species, Unless…, one of the “unlesses” was that bivocational ministry may be a financial necessity for the survival of many small- to mid-sized churches in the coming years. That’s always been true for many churches in small towns, but it’s going to be more common in large population centers too. Demographic shifts and changes in why and how much people give will make bivocational ministry a necessity for many city and suburban churches if they hope to survive and thrive.

It’s Time to Sing the Unsung Heroes

Bivocational ministry has always been with us. And it always will. In fact, some of the greatest heroes of the faith, like the Apostle Paul, were and are bivocational pastors.

We’ll never know most of their names. But we can learn a lot from their sacrificial examples.

They deserve our support, our prayer and our fellowship.

If you’re BiVo, on behalf of the church I thank you for all you do. In the very near future, you may not be coming to our conferences to learn about pastoring, we may be coming to you.