Let's Make Unbelievers The Missionaries.....?

"If we persist with the current status quo, we are in effect asking the nonbeliever to do all the cross-cultural work in coming to church! Remember, we are the sent ones — not them. So we not only bring people to church (that will work for the 40 percent); we also take church to the people (to reach the other 60 percent and growing). We can’t front-load church into the equation of mission." (Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Culturally Distant From Church

"The related problem comes from the likelihood that around 60 percent of America’s population (much higher in Europe and Australia) is increasingly alienated from the prevailing forms of church. In missionary terms, it means they are culturally distant from us. As a sent and sending people (that is, missional people), it is our task to take the message to them and deliver it in ways meaningful to them. This means we need to reassess the situation in the light of best-practice missionary approaches. We need to ask the question, what is the gospel for this people group? What would sound like good news to them? This means we must attend first to the existential and religious issues people are facing, before we can communicate how the gospel addresses them. Think of it this way: don’t plant churches; plant the gospel, and the church will grow out of it. ."

(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Institutional Church Can Flex Only So Far

"It’s worth noting again that the movemental paradigm we are suggesting in this book is inclusive of all forms of ecclesia, including ones that are more institutional in expression. Whereas, the institutional paradigm is by nature exclusive — it cannot make space in the paradigm for more-fluid and adaptive forms of ecclesia. In other words, the movemental paradigm is by nature a both/and form, while the institutional form maintains a stance of either/or." (Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Both And... Not Either Or....

"To overcome the fact that most contemporary churches focus on the same diminishing 40 percent of the population (and therefore compete against each other for the same slice), we must have more than just one arrow in our ecclesial quiver. The way to have a really good idea is to have many ideas, and the answer to the diversity of Western culture is diversity of church expression. One size will not fit all anymore. If our only answer to the strategic challenge we face is another tweak of the same institutional paradigm that got us here, then we must expect to be (and will be) sorely disappointed, and church attendance will continue its long-term trend of decline."
(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Some Organization Is Needed... But Not Conformity

"Organization is a social arrangement allowing people to pursue collective goals, control the performance of the members of a group, and distinguish the group from other groups. Because of this, it shapes so much of what we do and how we think. We all know this and experience it every day of our lives, and certainly we need organization of some form or another to get anything done collectively. But organizations can, over time, develop into impersonal institutions that tend to impose conformity (that is, crush creativity), are change-resistant, and become controlling entities that resist the promptings of the Spirit and undermine the “people dynamic” of the gospel." (Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Christology ONLY SHOULD Move Change

"In essence, the church needs to constantly return to its Founder in order to chart its way forward. He has full defining rights on the way the church defines itself in the world. We are Jesus’ people, and we are designed to reflect his purposes, his teachings, and his lifestyle and to fulfill his intended design for the church. Perhaps a way of saying this is that ]esus retains full rights regarding the church’s core intellectual property. And so any attempt to imagine a new future needs to ensure it is fully representing what the Founder wants and intends in the first place. If this was to be said theologically, it means Christology lies at the heart of church renewal in any time and place we find ourselves."
(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

When Change Is Just Talk Hamstrung By Systems That Prevent It

"Veteran church consultant Bill Easum says it this way: “Following Jesus into the mission field is either impossible or extremely difficult for the vast majority of congregations in the Western world because of one thing: They have a systems story that will not allow them to take the first step out of the institution into the mission field, even though the mission field is just outside the door of the congregation."
(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Change Your Story Change Your World

"Ivan Illich, the educator and philosopher, was once asked what he thought was the most radical way to change society. Was it through violent revolution or gradual reform? He gave a careful answer: neither. Rather he suggested that if one wanted to change society, one must tell an alternative story." (Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Change Is Almost Impossible For The Church

"Although all of us have heard about successful attempts to revitalize existing churches, we have to acknowledge that the overall track record is very poor. Few congregations ever achieve positive growth curves again once they’ve begun to decline. What’s more, church leaders report that their attempts to revitalize their churches don’t yield the desired results. A lot of energy (and money) is put into change programs, with all the usual communication exercises, consultations, workshops, and so on. Like fad dieting, it achieves short-term results but not long-term solutions.
In the beginning, things seem to change, but gradually the novelty and impetus tends to wear off, and the organization ends up settling back into something of its previous configuration. So instead of managing new organizations, leaders end up managing the unwanted side effects of their efforts. The reason for this is simple, though often overlooked: unless the paradigm at the heart of the culture is changed, there can be no lasting change. Change must come from deep inside the paradigm; anything less will simply be external and cosmetic."
(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

 

Fear... Real Fear

"Extreme fear and worry were the pervading themes of our Al Qaeda captivity: fear to the point of physical pain, fear that it would end suddenly with a sword, in a tent, on a video that would be seen by family and friends, and fear that it would go on and on and we would die of the heat, the food, the snakes, scorpions, or merely of broken wills and hearts."
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

These jihadist Soldiers Are Different.

"I have hung around soldiers a fair bit. At least in the West, the men seem to favour talk of women, sports, and cars (not necessarily in that order or, indeed, separately). My Al Qaeda abductors wouldn’t have understood a word of such conversations. We in the West seem to get a big kick out of the seventy-two virgins bit but my captors didn’t seem to care much about women. In fact, they were absolutely uninterested in anything other than praising the Lord while passing the ammunition in a fight that they deeply believed to be His fight. Never have I seen people less interested in material stuff. Most of them were under twenty-five, all under forty-eight. They neither expected nor wanted to grow old and considered me to be extravagantly time expired. They did not covet cool sneakers or sports paraphernalia; they did not ape the latest fashion, or seek to emulate the antics and ethics of rock or film stars, or even dream of nickel-plating their AKs. Similarly, I have never met a less horny group of young men. There was no skulking out of the desert for a little R&R or even for chaste reunions with family and friends. Admittedly, this would have been risky for them as I suspect that the Algerian intelligence apparatus watches such people very carefully. Normal familial attachments and pleasures of the flesh seemed to hold little attraction. The mujahideen seemed perfectly content to talk and chant about Allah and their servitude to Him … endlessly."

(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

14 Million Radical Muslims?

"Many Muslims insist that no more than 1 percent of their number hold radical fundamentalist beliefs and profess a commitment to jihad. But 1 percent of 1.4 billion is still 14 million. Such number games are not quite meaningless, even if they don’t really get us beyond the stark premise that jihadism poses a real and seemingly growing threat to Western interests and values."
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Softy Muslims Outside The Community

"Their most immediate operational priority remained the “near enemy”: the so-called apostate regimes of the secular, nominally Islamic states of North Africa and the Sahel region, declared takfir by these zealots. This meant that our captors rejected the credibility of the Muslim allegiance of all these governments, thereby, in the eyes of AQIM, setting them apart from the ummah and effectively excommunicating their members from Islam. As deemed non- believers, the political leaders, and the security forces that kept them in place, became, in the eyes of AQIM’s mujahideen, legitimate targets."
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Who Cares About Development Work?

"They also hated all Western development efforts undertaken both by state actors and by NGOs and were particularly exercised by Christian missionary activities, either overt or what they termed “covert,” which of course often included development work. There is no doubt in my mind that they wanted to grab me first and foremost because I was a senior officer of the United Nations, while also wishing to demonstrate that their reach was long and their cause universal. By so doing they hoped to discourage UN and NGO activity throughout the Sahel region." (Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

It is Jihad.. Not just Banditry

Almost since 9/11, there has been a loud debate among securocrats over whether Al Qaeda and its franchises, like AQIM, are bandits, opportunists, thugs, psychopaths, and restless, underemployed youths flying a flag of Islamic convenience, or, conversely, deeply committed religious zealots engaging, Robin Hood—like, in banditry, kidnapping, and trafficking to finance the achievement of their Islamic vision. Many, probably most, have opted for some variation of the convenient first option, and many security services still seem to favour this interpretation, mostly, I suspect, because it makes these movements easy to belittle and should make them much easier to defeat. Whatever the reasoning, based on my own experience, I know it to be the wrong answer.

Similarly, some anti—terrorism “experts” express doubt that the jihadi warriors of AQIM are “really Al Qaeda.” The question strikes me as startlingly moot: if they think like Al Qaeda, are motivated by and want to achieve the same things as Al Qaeda, behave like Al Qaeda, fight, kill, and die like Al Qaeda, and say they are Al Qaeda, then, quite simply, they are."

(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Good Christians Chickens With Our Heads Down.

"Gordon McKenzie, in his creative book on organizations, Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace, describes a story from his childhood where he and his cousin learned to “mesmerize” chickens on his uncle’s farm. They did so by capturing a chicken and holding its beak down to a white line of chalk until it became spellbound. The chickens would remain frozen in this position until the boy’s uncle would come along and give them a kick in the backside to wake them up from their hypnotic stupor. McKenzie tells the story because he notes that organizations, like the white line of chalk in his story, can have a mesmerizing effect on people in their orbit. They create a culture of conformity that requires docility and dull obedience from their members. This stifles appropriate dissent and puts a lid on imagination and innovation. Unfortunately, churches can also tend to have the same effect on their leaders as well as on community members. Something in our traditions, theology, or inherited methodology tends to keep our collective noses down on the line. We rarely break free to do something genuinely imaginative, something adventurous, or something that challenges the status quo. Like it or not, we behave like a group of mesmerized chickens. And, like them, every now and again we need God to give us a proverbial kick in the backside to break our inertia and get us moving again." (Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Lets Reject Progress Shall We...

"He who rejects change is the architect of decay. The only human institution which rejects progress is the cemetery." (HAROLD WILSON)

"You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus." (MARK TWAIN)

Know it All Leadership...

"Michael Fullan, the Canadian guru on leadership and change, has observed that the two greatest failures of leaders are “indecisiveness in times of urgent need for action and dead certainty that they are right in times of complexity.". (Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Jesus Empowered Ordinary People, Not Religious Elite.

"The church Jesus designed is a movement and not a religious institution. If this isn’t the case, then there’s no way to understand why Jesus reserves his harshest criticisms not for the so-called sinners but rather for the religious people of his day. It also explains why he chose and empowered ordinary people and not the religious elite to take the gospel to the world. This isn’t to say God doesn’t like order or that there’s no structure to movements; it is to say the original church structure is very unlike the kind of structures that emerged with the Christendom form of church." (Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Some Flexibility From "The Church" Is In Order.

"We insist that a genuinely apostolic paradigm of the church is by nature inclusive of all forms in service of its mission, whereas the more institutional paradigm is by nature exclusive, demanding high conformity." (Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Church as we have Appeals to only 40% Of Population. 60% Will never come here EVER

"It is our opinion, and that of the Future Travelers group, that the prevailing, contemporary church-growth approach to church will have significant cultural appeal — marketability, if you will — to about 40 percent of the American population. (This is informed opinion, anecdotal in nature because to date there is no hard research on this.) This is not attendance; we know that attendance in these forms of churches is far less than that. This means that the prevailing models of evangelistic churches could likely max out at around 40 percent of the population, perhaps 50 percent at the very best.4 However we cut it, it leaves us with two major problems. Strategic Problem The first one is a strategic problem. Most of our churches believe and act as if modeling on (and perfecting) the successful contemporary church approach will resolve their problems of mission. But even if they could all become successful megachurches, the vast majority of churches cannot and should not. The financial capital, managerial infrastructure, leadership ability, communication strategies, and amount of artistic talent are huge in megachurches — all making for a model that is not very reproducible. So we have a vexing situation where probably 90 percent or more of evangelical churches in America (and other Western contexts) are aiming at becoming a model that not only is improbable for the vast majority but also (even if they could crack the codes) effectively would still just be competing with other churches for the same 40 percent.5 This should concern us very deeply. Anyone with a sense of strategy should be immediately alert at this point. Why? Because all our missional eggs are in one ecclesiological basket! We have no diversity of options — most of our current practices are simply variations of the same model. This is not to say it’s wrong or not used by God, and so on. Please don’t hear us wrong here. Clearly, God uses the contemporary church. It is simply to say it is not sufficient to the increasingly missional challenge now set before us. It was psychologist Abraham Maslow who noted that when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. The tool itself begins to define us and determine our approaches. However, if we are going to rise to the situation we face, we are going to need more tools. More disturbing, perhaps, is that this dearth of options demonstrates a serious poverty of imagination in the way we think about the church and mission and indicates why we desperately need to innovate.....
As Jesus’ sent people, we have to ask ourselves, what about the possible 60 percent of people who for various reasons report significant alienation from precisely the contemporary church-growth model(s) we rely so heavily on? What will church be for these people? What is good news going to sound like for them? And how are they going to access the gospel of Jesus in ways that are culturally meaningful for them? The reality is, if we expect more variations of the prevailing practices to reach into increasingly de-churched and unchurched populations, we are fooling ourselves. We’re avoiding the missionary call of the church to take Christ’s message to the people and nations....

This is exactly the issue we face. We are all competing in the red waters of the 40 percent while the 60 percent remains largely untouched."
(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

You Have Church Wired In.......

".... every member contains within them a church,..".
(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Neil Cole says we are apples... Each  Christian has all the DNA in us to birth more churches and a Jesus community.

Only God Can Revive A Church. Only God Can Make A Movement.

Really, who will live missionally unless THEY chose to do so. No church can Avon lush this unless they have it flooding their spiritual heart to emerge into their life and community harvest field. No amount of human lecturing, preaching, or planning can replace this seminal fact. Is the desire really there in the heart of our people? They don't act because they don't want to.

<block quote>"....we don’t want to give the impression that reigniting apostolic movements can be simply a work of human endeavor. It must be, and is, a work of the Spirit of God. Certainly, we must do our part, but in the end the church exists by the grace, presence, and power of God himself, and to him we must constantly turn if we are going to be the kind of people he wants us to be. Forgive us if we ever give you the impression to the contrary." <block quote>
(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

We had too many people supporting our missional movement with prayer and finances, but not with their 24/7, everyday lives

"We understood and were putting into practice the apostolic mission of reproductive church planting, but we were not mobilizing all of God’s people into every sphere of life. We had too many people supporting our missional movement with prayer and finances, but not with their 24/7, everyday lives. We had become skilled at reproducing macro (sites and churches), and now we needed to become equally proficient in reproducing micro (mobilizing every person for mission in their context)" .
(Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Don’t Intersect With The Spiritual Scripting of Congregational Church.?

Love the phrase... "Spiritual Scripting"

"More recently, a new expression of missional church has captured the attention of those of us who are tracking the missional movement. It is the rise of missional communities. This development signals the arrival of a new life form in the taxonomy of church life. The emergence of missional communities is part of the Spirit’s response to deploying the church in an increasingly postcongregational era. Translated into English, that means the church is figuring out a way to be present in populations that are not susceptible to becoming church people (people who align their spiritual journeys with the goals and rhythms of organized congregational church). Yet these people are spiritually inquisitive and open to relationship with Jesus and with other believers. It is just that their lifestyle or their employment or their personal interests don’t intersect with the spiritual scripting of congregational church." (Reggie McNeal forward to -Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

What Does Missional Mean/Look Like?

"While there are some nuances and various dialects of missional being spoken, widespread agreement exists around a core expression of what it means to be missional. The missional church engages the community with the intent of being a blessing. It looks for ways to connect with the world beyond the walls of church real estate and programming. For many congregations, this external focus finds expression through service, not more “services.” The congregation becomes the church not just in the community but for the community. Cross—domain collaboration with other sectors of the city enables the church to begin to address some of the challenging issues that threaten the welfare of the city. Typically, existing congregations are entering the missional movement across this threshold."  (Reggie McNeal in forward to-  Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

Why Hang Out With Others?

The importance of Community.

"Science tells us that our depth perception comes through our binocular vision." (Michael Been in forward to Alan Hirsch & David Ferguson. "On The Verge")

When Muslims Sound Like Evangelical Christians

This Muslim missionary kidnapper for Al Qaeda sounds so much like what the average Christian fundamentalist or evangelical would preach and say to people during evangelism..... Wow... Might make us stop and think....

"Omar told us with great reverence and detail what would occur leading up to the Day of Judgment and then on that day itself, of Gabriel’s questioning, on Allah’s behalf, of each part and each organ of the body—none of which, of course, could speak anything but the absolute truth—to determine the individual’s worthiness for admission to paradise. He described the tortures of hell in as meticulous and vivid detail, and again and again he urged us to consider our options very carefully. The Day of Iudgment was indeed nigh in his view, and he wanted us to be fully aware of how relevant this ought to be to two weak and elderly unbelievers held by Al Qaeda in the Sahara. If we died without having submitted to Allah, the horrors of hell would be immediate and extreme. To that end he detailed the Five Pillars of Islam and regularly explained the simple act that would make us their Muslim brothers." (Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Which Way To Go Once You Leave.

Is there a cost for those around you for escaping?

"Then there was the issue of where to head, and the only plan I could come up with was to go south hundreds and hundreds of kilometres across the Sahara desert. Even if I could find a well- travelled track and a passing vehicle were to pick me up, there was a good possibility that anyone transiting those regions would simply hand me back to AQIM or turn out to be worse abductors. As for retribution for any escape attempt, I had to consider the likelihood that it would be Visited upon both me and Louis, whether or not he were to join me in the attempt, and likely to be worse for him in the extremely unlikely event that I succeeded."

(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

The Potential Cost Of Escape.....

Does escaping the institutional church have repercussions?

"Our escape plotting centred on the fundamental issue of establishing our location. Unless we knew where to head and that getting there was feasible, any attempt would be futile and quite possibly fatal. Would we be able to get a reasonable start before we were missed, given 24/7 guards? And, of course, the cost—benefit calculation had to measure the prospect of a successful attempt against the certainty of reprisals which would follow a failed attempt.
We knew we were about a thousand kilometres into the Sahara, north of Gao and at a somewhat greater distance northeast of Tombouctou. I figured that if I could slip away into a moonless night, I could probably walk twenty kilometres before dawn, carrying—if Louis agreed—our communal four-litre plastic jug of water. That would leave only 980 kilometres to go. I knew I would not last long once the sun came up and, unless I left during one of the relatively rare sandstorms, which itself would probably do me in, a child could follow my tracks across the desert. They would accomplish that in a few minutes in one of their trucks. "
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Insight From Time Spent With Al Qaeda

"But for somebody who has spent most of his professional life analyzing geostrategic challenges, it was also fascinating to be living, talking, and sleeping with Al Qaeda. At one point I said to Louis that if only we knew this nightmare would end well, from a professional point of View this very intimate opportunity to examine militant Islamic fundamentalism—arguably the greatest current threat to international stability—would be a unique and informative experience. I think it was at that point that I decided if I got out in one piece, I would write this book."
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Some Talk To Allah, Others To God, Still Others to Family

"..... it would be time for the evening portion of our walk, if, that is, Omar One had not shown up for a reading from the Qur’an, or Omar Two did not loom above us to assess our readiness to become his brothers in faith.

Those sessions, or our walk, would eventually be interrupted by their evening prayers. After some discussion Louis and I decided, almost from our arrival at Camp Canada, that we would show respect for their so deeply cherished religion by standing— during the daylight prayers—while they assembled in a single line facing east fifty metres away from us. That practice was fiercely resented by those few who believed it to be cravenly designed to curry their favour but admired by most, who took it to be a freely offered sign of respect. In fact, I found the chanting, rhythmic, soft voice of the imam rather soothing, and those became welcome contemplative moments during which I developed a ritual of my own.

I have, since an early age, found religion faintly ridiculous. I do not write this to cause offence to anybody and hope I have not done so. Indeed, I respect the evident fact that many wise people and some close friends profoundly disagree with me on this rather fundamental point, beginning with Louis. So, while these jihadi fundamentalists prayed to their god and Louis spoke to his, I talked to my family. (Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

No "What Ifs" Or Cranky Talk After Noon

Might be good hostage advice, and an excellent life habit......
"First rule—no what ifs or if onlys. We agreed, first tacitly and subsequently explicitly, that it would be perilous, counterproductive, and downright self-indulgent to wallow in any musings about what had brought us to this pretty pass. Thus we neVer—not once—discussed whether or not I should have accepted this assignment from the UN Secretary-General; whether Louis should have agreed to sign on as my assistant; if we really had to make the trip from which we were abducted or whether we ought to have remained by the pool at the hotel in Niamey that Sunday afternoon; or, indeed, to play the blame game of wondering if we would be in this pickle if only the other guy had....
Second rule—no discussing bad stuff after midday. Very soon we realized that if we shared our worst worries and fears late into the night, we would not be able to sleep with such thoughts chasing each other toward what my brother, Bruce, calls “the hour of the wolf”: that period just before dawn when even at the best of times everything looks bleak. Thus, in a ridiculously effective act of self-delusion, we decreed that those dark thoughts could be aired and dissected in the morning, and they regularly were, but not after lunch."
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Never Ignore You Flies...

"We usually began before sunrise and as the rim of the sun appeared above the horizon the flies would begin to gather and I would estimate their numbers on Louis’ jacket. Often I counted more than a hundred and, of course, they covered his pants and turban as well. I knew I was also covered with flies but focusing on Louis helped me to ignore mine." "We would strive at all costs to maintain healthy bodies in the extremely hostile environment in which we found ourselves, with the hope and expectation that physical health would help preserve mental health and maintain morale, which we took to be our greatest challenge." (Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Physical Training Of Value As A Hostage.

"We would strive at all costs to maintain healthy bodies in the extremely hostile environment in which we found ourselves, with the hope and expectation that physical health would help preserve mental health and maintain morale, which we took to be our greatest challenge." (Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

At Least Not Alone!

Good illustration for fellowship, or community......some might use it to bash us about institutional church attendance too. ;-)

"We understood from the outset that our greatest strength was each other. So far, we had remained together. We had been able to help, comfort, support, assist, cajole, challenge, shame, sustain, and encourage one another. We had not been close friends before this nightmare nor had we worked together for very long on this UN mission, but we understood that we were fortunate to be in this mess together. We were also well aware that alone the chance of coming through unscathed would be considerably diminished for each of us." (Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Better The Devil You Know?

"Escaping from AQIM into the clutches of any of these shadowy groups would not necessarily have changed our circumstances for the better." (Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Human Trafficking in Sahara Desert

"Then there are the people movers- the African equivalents of the Asian snakeheads—who for a substantial fee escort desperate people from West Africa who brave the perilous Sahara and the Mediterranean crossing to attempt illegal immigration to Europe. Their hope is to find employment in those lands of plenty so they can send money home to their all too often starving families. Many of these people had been awaiting their moment to get across the Mediterranean when they were caught up in the piteous suffering, turmoil, and upheaval currently besetting Libya. And finally, there are the ordinary smugglers who have worked these regions for millennia."
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Canada's North Like The Sahara?

".... rather similar in its unforgiving austerity, dramatic weather, and stark emptiness to the Barren Lands of northern Canada. Nor is there an effective police or military presence anywhere in this bleak region. Mali’s ill- equipped, underfunded, and poorly trained army ventures warily and rarely into the Sahara, which is the realm of a variety of nomadic peoples, and dominated by rebels, bandits, traffickers of all kinds, and, of course, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb." (Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Sahara Desert Drugs Destroy Tuareg Society

"Thus the Sahara houses a complex netherworld of people operating outside and beyond any law. Gun runners bring weapons and ammunition of every description, mostly of Soviet—era origin and mostly from Sudan, Somalia, and Chad, to clients across the western Sahel. Drug traffickers are reportedly paid $40,000 by Colombia’s FARC rebels or their West African partners to run a shipment of cocaine from, say, Guinea- Bissau across the Sahara to the eastern Mediterranean littoral, from where it is taken into Europe’s soft underbelly or to the Arabian peninsula and the Gulf States.
Such vast sums of drug money are wreaking havoc within the traditional Tuareg leadership structure. The elders find it increasingly difficult to hold sway over, and can exert little discipline on, the flash kids with weapons and pockets full of cash. Absent the traditionally strong Tuareg cultural foundation and clan discipline, the kids are easier pickings for AQIM as the region drifts toward the anarchy of Somalia and the turmoil of Darfur, which, my jailers told me, was very
much their objective. "
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Lucky To Be Kidnapped...?????

"From time to time, when we remarked on some aspect of our desert surroundings, our AQIM captors—usually Ibrahim or Omar One—would point out how fortunate we were to be touring the Sahara and ask if we were aware of the exorbitant prices European tourists and Saudi princes paid to see such sights. We usually just shrugged and stared them down and they grew tired of that play." (Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Desert Beauty And Horror At Loss Of Freedim

"In its stark variety, the desert is as stunning as it is daunting. Unlike Louis, though, I had trouble appreciating beauty in such circumstances. Yes, the plethora of stars in clear air so very far from any light pollution was stunning. And it’s true that the many faces of the Sahara, from the high ridges of classic, shifting dunes standing across our route to the absolutely flat, almost pure white, horizon—less shimmering pans of the Malian desert, or the sharp, rugged, black and red stone mountains rearing out of the desert—some streaked laterally with white salt deposits —were all dramatically different, imposing, and not a little frightening in their harsh and unforgiving primordial vastness. To me, however, that all highlighted our lack of freedom and a terrifyingly uncertain future. Louis enjoyed the glorious sunsets but I had trouble seeing past the circumstances in which we were viewing them."
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Stunning Desert...

"In its stark variety, the desert is as stunning as it is daunting." (Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Honor All Of God's Creatures -Except Infidels?

"Omar One had been assiduous in teaching us about the need to honour all God’s creations, animate and inanimate. However, while all of Allah’s creatures were to be protected even if they could be used to sustain life, there were, as we suspected, exceptions, though they delicately omitted infidels from the list. Prominent among the exemptions were poisonous snakes, scorpions, and hyenas, which were to be dispatched on sight. Their fear of these things was contagious and neither their fatalism nor mine was sufficient to overcome it." (Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Al Qaeda Kidnaping Realities.

"Finally, there was the largely unspoken yet constant threat of being physically mistreated, beaten, or tortured. There had been a few signs in the early days of their wanting to abuse us but they had not been repeated. What, though, if negotiations did not go their way or a sadist among them (and a few candidates had already identified themselves) simply decided to have a go? Would Jack's discipline prevail?

Without a doubt, my greatest and most debilitating concern was that one day we would be marched into a tent, required to kneel before the AQIM tableau of black flag and heavily armed masked men, and executed, probably beheaded, as the video camera rolled. It was a worry that never left me. Sometimes it was very present, sometimes more abstract, but it was always there. I knew with absolute certainty that their patience and fatalism could work both for and against us."

(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Sold To This Institution

"But the rich man--not to make any invidious comparison--is always sold to the institution which makes him rich." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Some Thing Change Too Slow

"As for adopting the ways of the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man's life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not everything to do, but something; and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should be doing something wrong." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Being Friction To Stop The Machine Of Injustice

"...... but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter—friction to stop the machine." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

The Institution Causes The Harm, Not Reforming Ideas

"Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil.
It makes it worse. Why is it not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to put out its faults, and do better than it would have them? Why does it always crucify Christ and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?"
(Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Action On "Right" Divides Churches And States

"Action from principle, the perception and the performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divided States and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Blind Sheep Prevent Reform

<blockquote>"Those who, while they disapprove of the character and measures of a government, yield to it their allegiance and support are undoubtedly its most conscientious supporters, and so frequently the most serious obstacles to reform." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)<blockquote>

Sounds like this might apply to the "Covering" theology in fundamentalist evangelical circles.

Indifference Makes Your Bed...

"After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we have made." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Giving Others The Same Freedom.

"If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man‘s shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Accepting Change Only When it's Easy.

About how I see the institutional church accepting other expressions of church outside a building. They will only extend a hand because they have to.. The change arrived without them.

"When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Leaving Mercy To Chance?

"Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Temporary Guardians Of Virtue

"There are nine hundred and ninety—nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man. But it is easier to deal with the real possessor of a thing than with the temporary guardian of it." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

What Does Waking Up Cost?

"What is the price—current of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate, and they regret, and sometimes they petition; but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for other to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give up only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and Godspeed, to the right, as it goes by them." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Let's Do Nothing That Matters!

"It is not so important that many should be good as you, as that there be some absolute goodness somewhere; for that will leaven the whole lump. There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them;...." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Interested More In Money Than Humanity

"Practically speaking, the opponents to a reform in Massachusetts are not a hundred thousand politicians at the South, but a hundred thousand merchants and farmers here, who are more interested in commerce and agriculture than they are in humanity, and are not prepared to do justice to the slave and to Mexico, cost what it may." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Let Us Not Have An Oppressive "Machine"

"All machines have their friction; and possibly this does enough good to counter-balance the evil. At any rate, it is a great evil to make a stir about it. But when the friction comes to have its machine, and oppression and robbery are organized, I say, let us not have such a machine any longer." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

A Slaves Government Is No Government.

"How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it. I cannot for an instant recognize that political organization as my government which is the slave's government also." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Great Inefficiency

"All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

I can't help but think the great tyranny and inefficiency of the church is why many leave the institutional church.

Serving The Devil As Much As God.

"Others——as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office—holders——serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Respect For Right

"But a government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it. Can there not be a government in which the majorities do not virtually decide right and wrong, but conscience?——in which majorities decide only those questions to which the rule of expediency is applicable? Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Machine Mindless Bodies At Your Service

I can think of another institution this can apply to when a man (or men) with control issues are permitted to led with no checks.

"They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? Or small movable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power? .......

The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies....

In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Corporations Have No Conscience.... Except

"It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience; but a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience." (Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

Better Government.....

"Governments show thus how successfully men can be imposed upon, even impose on themselves, for their own advantage. It is excellent, we must all allow. Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way....
But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no—government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government.
Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it."
(Henry David Thoreau. Civil Disobedience.)

One In Ten Are Borderline Unstable

"Drunks, Crooks, Creeps, and Weirdos The most dangerous hours to be on the road are between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., especially on weekends. Those are the hours when the drinkers are heading home from the taverns. Your risks double during these hours... Give the drunks lots of room. If you’re wired for communication, do the rest of us a favor and report the vehicle before someone gets killed. Nighttime seems to bring out the creeps and Weirdos. Some people are just looking for a confrontation. Psychologists suggest that about one out of ten people are at least borderline unstable."
(David L. Hough. Proficient Motorcycling:The Ultimate Guide To Riding Well)

Love This Kind Of Love.

"Love motivates me to show more love and care to everyone around me, to take time to know others more deeply, and to perpetuate a world that provides everyone with human dignity and spiritual nourishment." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

My Better, Bestest, Stupendous Way Of Doing Things

"I become overly zealous about my spiritual discoveries, experiences, and place on the journey and suggest them as the way or superior to others’ spiritual discoveries, experiences, and progress. Abiding in love honors the image of God in everyone and respects all religious traditions and spiritualities seeking God’s love for all people. Abiding in love motivates me to walk in spiritual humility, realizing I bring my own limitations to every encounter with God. Yet I enthusiastically share and advocate what I have found compelling in my own relationship with God and encourage others to explore what helps me."
(Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

When It's Just Talk.....

"I’ve learned from personal experience that believing Jesus’ message in theory makes you a good Christian, but fleshing out and living the implications of his message can get you in a lot of trouble. Love is the most transformational force on earth, but judging and condemning is so much easier. There’s a lot of resistance to love and peace in the world, even from Christians. If you don’t believe me, start hanging out with people in that “really bad” group, and criticism from the Christians will find you." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

The "Get Busy" Style Of Christianity

"It was a startling revelation for me to discover that “becoming like Christ” was not adding an increasing number of religious activities to my life, but being guided and governed by a totally different way of living and interacting with others in the world."

(Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

Hammered Christianity And People Tired Of Love.

"Christianity seems to be in a much different and precarious situation in our day and time compared to its beginnings. Two thousand years ago, the first “little Christs” revolutionized a predominately religious world with the eternal spiritual message of God’s unconditional love and peace. Now we seem to live in a world where the Christian message has lost its edge, dulled by the hammer of man imposing conditions and rules to the unconditional nature of God’s love. It seems we’re back to where we were, before Jesus ever appeared, living in a world of religion instead of living spiritually. Have people heard the “gospel” repeatedly and become weary of it—you know, weary of unconditional love and peace? Or has the gospel been replaced by a Christianity devoid of true love, joy, and peace, and now focused on preserving out-worn structures, traditions, and the status quo?"
(Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

A Spiritual Luke Skywalker... ya... That's What I Want To Be When I Grow Up.

NOPE!

"There was a time when I considered Jesus’ emphasis on things like love and peace as a nice but unrealistic ideal. My religious sensibilities told me to grow up and let go of those silly, child-like notions. Instead, I acquired a militant View of life. I was a Luke Skywalker— type Christian soldier in a war, striving to defeat Darth Vader and the evil empire. You were either with us or against us. One way or another, it was all headed toward Armageddon."

(Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

God Seems Schizophrenic Because.....

"For many years, following Jesus’ example of love was implausible because my religious logic pitted my belief in God’s “holiness” in conflict with God’s “love.” At times it made God seem schizophrenic. One minute God was too holy to look upon sinners; the next minute he was hobnob-bing with the worst of them. The Christian belief system I constructed rested on the notion that God rejects sinners. Yet Jesus offered unconditional love and acceptance to them (us). Religion often implies one must “clean up your act” before receiving anything from God. Jesus, however, had no qualms about leaving open forever the floodgates of God’s favor for people regardless of what condition they were in." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

Before Now......

Before: God is synonymous with religion. 

Now: God is synonymous with love.

Before: Christianity is a belief system. 

Now: Christianity is a school of love carried out in apprenticeship to Christ.

Before: God hates sin because it disgusts him.
Now: God’s motive for hating sin is love. Sin causes hurt and suffering for me and others.

Before: I primarily experience God through religious rituals and acts of obedience.
Now: When I am experiencing love, I am experiencing God.

Before: Christian living is trying harder to be more and do more.
Now: Christian living is an overflow of God’s love in me.

Before: My source of love is outside myself and I’m dependent on others to supply it.
Now: My source of love is within me, and while I enjoy the love of others, I’m not dependent on it and can freely love others without the expectation of receiving love in return.

Before: I am created in God’s image, which means I have the capacity to make rational choices and exercise my free will.
Now: I am created in the image of perfect love, which means love is the core of my identity and I can choose love.

Before: The main thing is getting people to adopt my beliefs about God.
Now: Loving people creates desire within them to know God.

Before: Somewhere out there is God’s purpose for my life, and I must find it. 

Now: At every moment, God’s purpose for me is to be love.

Before: Being “in love” is some temporary euphoric guy-meets-girl experience. 

Now: Being “in love” is walking in the conscious awareness of and being dependent on God’s love in me and as me.

Before: Tough love is withholding love from others as a means of disapproval or attempt to bring change.
Now: Tough love is loving others without condition, regardless of the result.

Before: The most powerful force on earth is hate.
Now: The most powerful force on earth is love"

(Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

Box It Up... Take It Out

"Many people choose to fill their world with hate, hurt, division, fear, and despair, even though we are all desperate for love and peace." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

So, I Have The Doctrines All Figured Out.

"I’ve learned not to limit God to “the box” of my current set of beliefs, because there always seems to be something new and more just outside the lines of my present understanding."
(Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

Religion Has No Ears.....

"Religion usually assumes its answers are the right answers and doesn’t take too kindly to people opening topics for further investigation." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

And We Stop Asking Questions Because We Have Only Answers

"It seems most folks eventually stop asking so many questions. Apparently, you eventually cross this invisible line where you have more answers than questions. For the most part, people cross that line in their early teens. Any parent can validate the well-known anthropological fact that once a kid turns sixteen, he pretty much thinks he knows everything." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

Adults Who Can Hear, See, Or Imagine.

"The problem is it’s not too difficult for kids; it’s too difficult for grownups. Too many grownups tend to put themselves into little rooms with windows that don’t open and doors that are locked. And they want to close themselves off from any new ideas." (Madeline L'Engle. Author of, A Wrinkle in Time.)

Lets Play The "Fake" Game To Please Unpleasable

"Starting back in childhood, I began an enslaving habit of fulfilling dysfunctional roles I clung to for self—esteem. In many cases, these roles were a result of my caving in to others’ demands and expectations. Like a dog conditioned to roll over in exchange for a treat, I performed the roles in hopes of receiving some bone of self—worth. Some of these roles I identified as “Chameleon”—continually taking the shape of other’s expectations; “Star Performer”—striving to accomplish something extraordinary; “Victim”—blaming past wounds as justification for failure; “Healer”—taking responsibility for fixing or compensating for the wounds and sorrows of others. As the story of my life played on, new characters were introduced, fresh backdrops were wheeled in, and different plots emerged, but I stuck to the scripts others handed me. Each time I played the part, another layer of pretense smothered my innermost being and true self to near extinction." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

When There Is No Direction From The Director....

I think he hit the nail on the head with this one. The direction is coming from another source. The still small voice is drowned out by the roar of leadership, and vision plans.

<blockquote>"There is a sizable gap between the number of knowledgeable Christians and the number of Christians who express the reality of God. Why is that? Really, why is that? I wonder if it’s because we too often take someone else’s word for the Truth, rather than experiencing for ourselves God’s Spirit confirming Truth within us. Maybe that’s the difference between knowledge and knowing. We acquire knowledge by absorbing teachings others show us, but knowing occurs when the life of God within you reveals Truth and your spirit says. “I know that I know.”" (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)<blockquote>

Christendom's Safe Little Box of Celebrity

"I’ve stepped into this kingdom myself, but years of religious programming stopped me from going with it for a while. I learned to mistrust and invalidate what I most deeply felt within. Instead, it was impressed upon me to have the right belief system and be done with it. Fear kept me in my head where God is known on paper, captured in creeds, and mediated through the goods, services, and personalities of Christendom; reasonable, safe, and doable."
(Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

Playing Dead... Stop That....

"I don’t want to play dead in a world that God wired to help me fulfill my purpose of knowing him."

(Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

Good People....

"People continually come into my life at just the right moment. Some come to teach, others to comfort, some to challenge, and some to affirm. Some people offer me help when I am struggling, some give direction when I am searching, and others wake me when I’m lost in the endless barrage of yellow sticky notes. At times they are close friends, and at times they are complete strangers. People have brought me joy and gratitude, challenged my beliefs and attitudes, stretched me toward growth, and strengthened me by their presence." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

"Purpose" Isn't About What You Do... But Who You Seek

"Purpose is not something you have—a specific skill, gift, interest, passion, endeavor, vocation, volunteer involvement, or whatever. Instead, your existence is one unifying purpose, and every facet of your life is part of it. That unifying purpose is this: knowing God." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

Planting Your Flag .... GOD IS ENOUGH

"Saying these words surprised me. So much of my life, I strived and strained to become someone important. Now as I was experiencing God’s unconditional love and acceptance, my desire to fashion some important human identity diminished. Somewhere back on my spiritual journey, there’s a hill where I firmly planted in the ground a flag that reads: GOD IS ENOUGH. It is my flag of freedom, and it includes being liberated from the need to have a purpose. Notice I said a purpose. There is a big difference between determining some specific area of endeavor and excelling in it to feel good about yourself, and what it means to live out our eternal purpose here on earth." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

What If I Don't Have A Purpose.

"For many years I assumed finding my “purpose” was the secret to a meaningful and fulfilling life. It was just one of those universally accepted facts that each of us is born to do something, and life is incomplete until you determine what that “something” is and do it. My childhood was one of drifting purposelessly through time. I wasn’t involved in extra—curricular happenings at school and never really developed a main interest, passion, or hobby. As I got older, it troubled me more because I saw other guys excel in sports, music, and mechanics. As time went on, I became more intent on finding some (any) purpose. I reasoned it out as follows:
a. Everyone is born to do something.
b. Whatever that something is, you will be wildly successful at it because, if you were born to do it, you are especially gifted and skilled to excel in it.
c. Being wildly successful at something makes you some—body and people take notice and applaud accordingly.

I was desperate for some applause or a pat on the back, for someone to notice me and affirm I had done something good. It was a great theory, but there was one little problem. I wasn’t overly intelligent, artistic, athletic, mechanically inclined, or business oriented, and I couldn’t rely on my looks. In short, I couldn’t do anything."

(Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

Life Requires Vulnerability

"Living requires vulnerability, which is not possible while hiding out in the refuge of an overly protected self. Parts of me are just now, at forty—one, waking up and coming alive. As more of me comes alive, I realize too much of me is still playing dead." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

Christians Are No Different

“Christians are usually sincere and well~ intentioned people until you get to any real issues of ego, control power, money, pleasure, and security. Then they tend to be pretty much like everybody else. We often given a bogus version of the Gospel, some fast—food religion, without any deep transformation of the self; and the result has been the spiritual disaster of "Christian" countries that tend to be as consumer—oriented, proud, warlike, racist, class conscious, and addictive as everybody else—and often more so, I'm afraid." — Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater: Spirituality and the 12 Steps

I Was There...

“If your road to spiritual maturity is leading you to despise more people then you’re going the wrong way.” (NakedPastor)

Start At Home. ....

“It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start." - Mother Teresa

Humanity Is About The Same.

It's what I have found to be true, as I lived in a predominantly Muslim nation.

"What I’m discovering is that after you skim off every religion’s 5 percent of extremists and fanatics (including Christians), the remaining 95 percent from each group care about the same things: peace, justice, family, health, dignity, and basic necessities for living." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

How's Your Voice Speaking To You?

About sums up the voice in my head...... And what was implied in many sermons U preached and have heard.

"I have believed all kinds of lies, which have enslaved me and poisoned my relationships and prevented me from walking in the freedom God desires for me. My head said, “Jim, you are one colossal failure and your life is a waste. You better get busy and try to turn this around! Do something! Accomplish something huge! You are not worthy of love and too defective to be accepted as you are. Seek love, acceptance, meaning, and worth any way you can get your hands on it.” But the voice of God in my heart said, Jim, you are a person of magnificent beauty and worth. I unconditionally love and accept you just as you are, no changes needed or required. You are perfect to me. Rest. I had a choice: listen to the lie in my head or the truth in my heart. That evil lie in my head almost destroyed my life. Listening to the voice in my heart is saving me, (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces) "

Grow Up To Who You Are.

"At some point you've just got to grow up and become who you really are." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

Forbidden To Invoke God's Name.

"Omar Two was interested in us, perhaps even intrigued, but he never, not for a moment, liked, admired, or befriended us, and that pretty much sums up how I felt about him. At this first meeting he forbade us to use the classic Arabic greeting Salaam Aleikum (Peace be upon you, or God be with you), because, as infidels, we were disqualified from invoking Allah in any context. He was both fascinated and appalled by what we represented. We were in his eyes inherently evil, literally godforsaken, and thus his implacable enemy. His only objective was to get us to convert, going to any length or using any tactic to achieve that end." (Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell: My 130 Days In The Sahara With All Qaeda)

Don't Question.... The Church... or else...

"One reason traditional church life is sometimes not a helpful stimulus for spiritual formation is that people are normally rewarded for reinforcing the status quo and frowned upon for upsetting it, which questions often do. Church history is littered with troubling stories of what happens to people who question things." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

God Is Found Only Certain Places, In Certaib Events, Or Special Times

"In a similar way, religion conditioned my mind to expect God in a fixed number of places, like at church or in my Bible. God was always present and continuously reaching out to me, but I passed right over him. My spiritual brain cannot compute God outside those few avenues.....
For years I had early morning “quiet times” because I thought of these as my time to “be with God.” But then I’d become more or less unaware of God throughout my day until the next morning. Pulling into church, the reality of God was turned on; pulling out, it was turned off. I once was told the rationale for our midweek church service was to remind people about God, because people naturally started forgetting about him a couple of days after the Sunday service. It’s like we become dependent on church or the Bible as the spigot of our spirituality and can’t seem to tap into God’s presence in the natural ebb and flow of life. " (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

"Together" Only "For Church", And That's It

Fake fellowship. This is what we try to pass off as "Community". What a crock.

"Looking back, I sometimes wonder if we really were a “community.” Seems like what we were facilitating was mostly meeting—based relationships. People would attend services, classes, programs, and groups, but outside the scheduled meeting time, there wasn’t much interaction between these people the rest of the week until the next meeting rolled around. When the class or group came to an end, for all practical purposes so did the “relationships.”
(Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

Only When People Are Ready... No Convincing Required

".....not meant to convince you of anything. Trust me, it’s not from lack of desire. But I’ve crossed the line of realization that people have to discover truth for themselves. We can encourage one another along in the process, but we can’t make other people embrace our truth as their own. People embrace truth when they’re ready for it." (Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

Religion Is Not God

"It is no secret that God can be lost beneath the waving banner of religion. 'Divine Nobodies' is my story of how this happened to me. Sometimes you have to disentangle God from religion, even Christ from Christianity, to find the truth."
(Jim Palmer. Wide Open Spaces)

Organized Religion..... and Stephen King

“And while I believe in God I have no use for organized religion”: (Stephen King)

Just Mimic, Right?

"... grateful for the reminder that being a Christian means vastly more than adhering to the paradigm.” (Andrew Peterson)

Yes....Yes, and Yes To Underlining Books

“My favorite spiritual practice is underlining books." (Leonard Sweet)

Soul Tired

"We are tired of giving our souls to something that stops giving us life." (Kathy Escobar)

Best Spiritual Practice- Showing Up!

"My former bishop Allan Bjornberg once said that the greatest spiritual practice isn’t yoga or praying the hours or living in intentional poverty, although these are all beautiful in their own way. The greatest spiritual practice is just showing up. And Mary Magdalene is the patron saint of just showing up. Showing up, to me, means being present to what is real, what is actually happening." (Nadia Bolz-Weber. Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of A Sinner & Saint.)

Ressurected Bodies Are In Bad Shape

"How God indeed enters into our messy lives and loves us through them, whether we want God’s help or not. And how, even after we’ve experienced some sort of resurrection, it’s never perfect or impressive like an Easter bonnet, because, like Jesus, resurrected bodies are always in rough shape." (Nadia Bolz-Weber. Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of A Sinner & Saint.)

God Keeps Resurrecting Us.....

"‘‘It happens to all of us,” I concluded that Easter Sunday morning. “God simply keeps reaching down into the dirt of humanity and resurrecting us from the graves we dig for ourselves through our Violence, our lies, our selfishness, our arrogance, and our addictions. And God keeps loving us back to life over and over.”
(Nadia Bolz-Weber. Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of A Sinner & Saint.)

God Is Only Present When I'm Aware.... ? No!

"Jesus brings a kingdom ruled by the crucified one and populated by the unclean and always found in the unexpected. I’d expected to look at the past and see only mistakes that I’d moved on from, to see only damage and addiction and tragic self-delusion. But by thinking that way, I’d assumed that God was nowhere to be found back then. But that’s kind of an insult to God. It’s like saying, “You only exist when I recognize you.” The kingdom of heaven, which Jesus talked about all the time, is, as he said, here. At hand. It’s now. Wherever you are. In ways you’d never expect." (Nadia Bolz-Weber. Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of A Sinner & Saint.)

Is Good Really Greater Than Evil? That Evil Guy?

"Just ask my friend Don, the Lutheran pastor who had to leave his job after doing Dylan Klebold’s funeral. Dylan Klebold was one of the Columbine shooters, and Don had the gall to think that the promises given to Dylan by God at his baptism were more powerful than the acts of evil he committed. It helps me to think about Don because I realize that he wasn’t saying What Dylan Klebold did was OK. He was defiantly proclaiming that evil is simply not more powerful than good, and that there really is a light that shines in the darkness and that the darkness can not, will not, shall not overcome it."
(Nadia Bolz-Weber. Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of A Sinner & Saint.)

When Seeking Justice Makes Us Like The Enemy

"Somewhere along the way I was taught that evil is fought through justice and might. The Way we combat evil is by making sure that people get what they have coming to them. An eye for an eye. You attack me and I’ll attack you. Fair is fair. And there were times in my own life when I’ve been so hurt that I was sure retaliation would make me feel better. But inevitably, when I can’t harm the people who harmed me, I just end up harming the people who love me. So maybe retaliation or holding on to anger about the harm done to me doesn’t actually combat evil. Maybe it feeds it.
In the end, if We’re not careful, we can actually absorb the worst of our enemy and on some level even become them."
(Nadia Bolz-Weber. Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of A Sinner & Saint.)

Central African Republic Does Have a Few Real Christians Among the 75% of the Population Who Are Christians.

About time church

"Now is the time for men of good will to stand up and prove the strength and quality of their faith," said Father Fagba, standing in his floor-length black cassock beside a concrete wall peppered with bullet holes.
"When I did this, nobody in the community understood me. They attacked and threatened me."
The Muslims - about 650 in all - arrived at the church on 16 and 17 January.
"It's not safe in this church. Every evening they shoot at the building. The Christians don't want us here. They want to kill us all," said Ms Hamadou.

CAR crisis: The church sheltering Muslim

I Fear the "Inclusion" and the "Exclusion" Police!

"This desire to learn what the faith is from those who have lived it in the face of being told they are not welcome or worthy is far more than “inclusion.” Actually, inclusion isn’t the right word at all, because it sounds like in our niceness and virtue we are allowing “them” to join “us”— like we are judging another group of people to be worthy of inclusion in a tent that we don’t own....
Until I face the difficulty of that question and come up, as Philip did, with no good answer… until then, I can only look at the seemingly limited space under the tent and think either it’s my job to change people so they fit or it’s my job to extend the roof so that they fit. Either way, it’s misguided because it’s not my tent. It’s God’s tent."
"  Bolz-Weber, Nadia (2013-09-10). Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint (Kindle Locations 1060-1063, 066-1068). FaithWords. Kindle Edition.

Wanting Something Wrong....With Me

"….. I got sick a lot, which convinced me that something was really wrong with me. I Wanted something to be wrong with me. I Wanted a hall pass for a while so no one would expect anything of me. But the tests always came back negative and, finally, after my third visit to the doctor in two months, he said, “Nadia, nothing’s wrong with you. You just have to deal with your life.” Truth. It can make me hate the person speaking it. Until the point at which I want to kiss them for setting me free." (Nadia Bolz-Weber. Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of A Sinner & Saint.)

Puts Back Together Honesly....

"... it feels like the truth might crush me. And that is right. The truth does crush us, but the instant it crushes us, it somehow puts us back together into something honest. It’s death and resurrection every time it happens." (Nadia Bolz-Weber. Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of A Sinner & Saint.)

What Sets Us Free?

"There’s a popular misconception that religion, Christianity specifically, is about knowing the difference between good and evil so that we can choose the good. But being good has never set me free the way truth has."
(Nadia Bolz-Weber. Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of A Sinner & Saint.)

Why We Lean....

"We leaned on each other because it’s hard keeping so many contradictions together by yourself." (Nadia Bolz-Weber. Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of A Sinner & Saint.)

To Leave Or To Stay?

“There’s not enough wrong with it to leave and there’s just enough wrong with it to stay,” Matthew later told me. “Fight to change it.” (Nadia Bolz-Weber. Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of A Sinner & Saint.)

Sometimes I Experience It... But Mostly I.....

"I once heard someone say that my belief in Jesus makes them suspect that I intellectually suck my thumb at night. But I cannot pretend, as much as sometimes I would like to, that I have not throughout my life experienced the redeeming, destabilizing love of a surprising God. Even when my mind protests, I still can’t deny my experiences. This thing is real to me. Sometimes I experience God when someone speaks the truth to me, sometimes in the moments when I admit I am wrong, sometimes in the loving of someone unlovable, sometimes in reconciliation that feels like it comes from somewhere outside of myself, but almost always when I experience God it comes in the form of some kind of death and resurrection." (Nadia Bolz-Weber. Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of A Sinner & Saint.)

Getting Past Fundamentalisms Need To Be Right About EVERYTHING

"And it is the story of how I have experienced this Jesus thing to be true. How the Christian faith, while wildly misrepresented in so much of American culture, is really about death and resurrection. It’s about how God continues to reach into the graves we dig for ourselves and pull us out, giving us new life, in ways both dramatic and small. This faith helped me get sober, and it helped me (is helping me) forgive the fundamentalism of my Church of Christ upbringing, and it helps me to not always have to be right." (Nadia Bolz-Weber. Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of A Sinner & Saint.)

Smiley TV Preachers...Lie

"Smiley TV preachers might tell you that following Jesus is about being good so that God will bless you with cash and prizes, but really it’s much more gruesome and meaningful. It’s about spiritual physics. Something has to die for something new to live."

(Nadia Bolz-Weber. Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of A Sinner & Saint.)

A Rowboat Of Idiots.....

"We talked about God and anger,resentment and forgiveness—all punctuated with profanity. We weren’t a ship of fools so much as a rowboat of idiots. A little rowing team, paddling furiously, sometimes for each other, sometimes for ourselves; and when one of us jumped ship, we’d all have to paddle harder.

In 1992, when I started hanging out with the “rowing team,” as I began to call them, I was working at a downtown club as a standup comic. I was broken and trying to become fixed and only a few months sober. I couldn’t afford therapy, so being paid to be caustic and cynical on stage seemed the next best thing. Plus, I’m funny when I’m miserable.
" (Nadia Bolz-Weber. Pastrix: The Cranky Beautiful Faith of A Sinner & Saint)

You've Been Deputized.

“If the holy spirit were pastor of a church, what would that church look like?” I thought it was a great question. Perhaps, somehow, theologically speaking, He already is the pastor of a church. Not sure how that works.

Regardless, though, the vision I got was of a pastor who sees his or herself as a pastor to pastors. What I mean is, a pastor who spends Sunday equipping the congregation to be pastors themselves, that is to baptize people through the week, perhaps in their home swimming pools, to guide people through communion, perhaps around their own dinner tables, to teach the Bible to their friends and neighbors, to sing together in their homes, to make meals and share them with the sick and so forth. Then, on Sunday, “pastors” could gather to encourage each other and share stories about their own “churches” in the world. I even imagined buying a bunch of little sheriff badges so a pastor could “deputize” their congregations as priests in God’s kingdom, answering to the Holy Spirit and doing the work of Jesus directly....

And I think in a decade or so, it would be beautiful if a shift happened in our cultures, where pastors played more the role of Gandolf or Yoda (I’m not new age! Don’t attack me!) and saw their congregations as young, struggling heroes, scared to death but with a massive responsibility to be priests in the kingdom of God. What if we really were called to that kind of adventure and at church we were being equipped to do pastoral work, to have authority and agency? " (Donald Miller)

Stop Fixing Me And Walk With Me

"If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine then let us work together." (Lilla Watson)

Life of Al Qaeda Kidnappers: Gods Will

"When we were all loaded up and set to leave, Ahmed’s truck would not start, would not even turn over. However, the surface was hard and four of the mujahideen simply pushed the vehicle a short distance, Ahmed popped the clutch, and we were on our way. But the generator needle would not register. Nobody seemed the least concerned that we were setting out across one of the most inhospitable regions in the world in a vehicle with a failed electrical system.

This was my introduction to the extreme fatalism of these jihadi warriors, where everything comes down to Insha’ Allah (God willing, or If it is God’s will) which flows from the Qur’anic admonition that Allah decides everything: all that occurs is exclusively according to God’s will. "

(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell. My 130 Days In The Sahara With Am Qaeda)

Money For Evil.

"A little later Omar must have felt we needed more reassurance for, without prompting, he informed us that it was all about ransom; about, that is, raising money for the cause, for jihad. It was simple, he proclaimed. They would make demands, the United Nations and/or Canada would negotiate a suitable number, and we would be freed. “It might take a few days, but,” he explained, “you could be back in Niamey by the weekend.” Indeed, if a deal could be expeditiously concluded, he confidently proclaimed, he would drive us back himself, “right to your hotel.”

Louis and I told him that we did not think it would be so simple: that, as far as we knew—and we stressed that neither of us had had any direct experience of such things—neither Canada nor the United Nations would pay a ransom to kidnappers. Omar brushed such observations off as mere posturing on our part." (Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell. My 130 Days In The Sahara With Am Qaeda)

Kidnapper Logic

"....I croaked out a question to Omar, “Is it your intention to execute us?”

Omar replied with what I took to be gratifying vehemence. “That would make no sense at all,” he shot back. “My mission was to capture you and bring you back to my emir, where you could not be found.” He then continued with some pride, “If my mission had been to assassinate you, you would now be dead.” His unassailable logic was comforting, at least superficially."
(Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell. My 130 Days In The Sahara With Am Qaeda)

Facing Injustice With More Than A Sermon.

“...these very impoverished Rwandans at their point of most desperate need, huddled against those advancing machetes in that church, did not need someone to bring them a sermon, or food, or a doctor, or a teacher, or a micro-loan. They needed someone to restrain the hand with the machete—and nothing else would do.”

"As Haugen makes clear, the poor do not just face violence from war and conflict. In fact, according to the U.N., 4 billion people live outside the protection of law. Every day, they live in fear of violence that threatens their livelihood, dignity and safety. This everyday violence comes in the form of sexual violence, violent land seizures, forced labor and police abuse--violence that affects individual people. " (Review of The Locust Effect. Gary Haugen.  RELEVANT Magazine / by Michael wear)

Bonhoeffer Quoted...

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”
(Bonhoeffer)

“Being a Christian is less about cautiously avoiding sin than about courageously and actively doing God's will.” (Bonhoeffer)

“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” (Bonhoeffer)

“The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children.” (Bonhoeffer)

"The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists of listening to them. Just as love of God begins with listening to his word, so the beginning of love for our brothers and sisters is learning to listen to them." ( Bonhoeffer. Life Together)

Marriage Is Not For Happiness?

"My wife makes me a better person. She calls out the best in me. She calls me to live up to who I really am, to who God is making me to be.

She also brings out the worst in me. What Paul calls “the flesh.” The ugly, nasty part of me that doesn’t want to change. She exposes my selfishness and my pride....

If you go into marriage searching for happiness, all you will do is walk out filled with disillusionment. Don’t get me wrong. Marriage is incredible! But it’s not heaven on earth. It’s two broken people coming together to follow God’s calling on their lives.

Let marriage be marriage, and let God be God. Let marriage be for friendship and support and sex and family and re-creation. And let God be the well for your soul. Your source of life.....

Here’s what I’ve learned over the last few years. God is the source of my life, not my wife. She’s an amazing gift that I don’t deserve, but she’s not Jesus. It took me a long time to get this. And to be honest, I’m still pounding away on living it out. Hopefully, you’ll get this sooner than I did."

(John Mark Comer. The Promise You Can't Keep In Marriage.)

Kidnapped....

Canadian Diplomat Kidnapped in Niger...held in Mali. Released near Mopti in 2010.
"Ibrahim snorted with derision. “I told you I was Senegalese. What would I be doing with a gang of amateurs like that?” I simply stared at him as the fire danced in his menacing black eyes. Finally, drawing out the moment with cruel anticipation, he fiercely spat the words, “We are Al Qaeda!” And the bottom fell out of my world." (Robert Fowler. A Season In Hell. My 130 Days In The Sahara With Am Qaeda)

Why Don't You Work Change From Within The Church?

“YOU NEVER CHANGE THINGS BY FIGHTING THE EXISTING REALITY. TO CHANGE SOMETHING, BUILD A NEW MODEL THAT MAKES THE EXISTING MODEL OBSOLETE." (BUCKMINISTER FULLER)

Your Assigned Problem is Not My Problem.

"One of my professors admonished me that the problem was with my will. I just needed to choose to believe. I thought long about what he said. I was pretty sure the problem was not with my will; I was pretty sure it was my broken heart." 

(Tony Kriz. Neighbors and Wise Men: Sacred Encounters in a Portland Pub and Other Unexpected Places.)

Marriage, Cows, & Pigs.... What Does It Take To Get a Little Milk & Sausage?

“Yes, we praise women over 40 for a multitude of reasons. Unfortunately, it's not reciprocal. For every stunning, smart, well-coiffed, hot woman over 40, there is a bald, paunchy relic in yellow pants making a fool of himself with some 22-year old waitress. Ladies, I apologize. For all those men who say, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?", here's an update for you. Nowadays 80% of women are against marriage. Why? Because women realize it's not worth buying an entire pig just to get a little sausage!” ― Andy Rooney

Restoration Principles

Principles of Restoration:

"Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent.”

”The church of Jesus Christ on earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one.”

"We are Christians only, but not the only Christians.”

"In essentials, unity; in opinions, liberty; in all things love.”

”No creed but Christ, no book but the Bible, no law but love, no name but the divine.”

”Call Bible things by Bible names.”

Quack Theology And Dangerous Imprinting

"But imprinting can go wrong. Baby ducks imprint on the first moving creature they encounter, no matter what it is. If the eggs are hatched in an incubator box, then the human being who cares for the new hatchlings will become the object of the babies' imprinting. If the eggs are hatched near a friendly dog, then the ducklings' "mom" will forever be a barker, not a quacker. There are some Christians who think they are following Christ, when really they have simply been imprinted by a culture that calls itself Christian. As any quick tour of religious history will reveal, following some accepted line of pious behavior is not necessarily the same as being a true disciple. This kind of imprinted behavior easily develops its own "quack" theology as well. This is what allowed the Nazis to enjoy church on Sunday after a long week of manning the crematoriums. It's what made it reasonable to burn heretics, sack Byzantium, and slaughter saints. Quack theology is what slams jetliners into skyscrapers and straps bombs onto the bodies of children"(Leonard Sweet. I Am A Follower. Pg 240)

When The Church Structure Became The Dictator.

"How did I get to the place where I was so off-task, caring more about my church’s “organizational extension and survival” and measuring success in business terms—attendance, buildings and cash—rather than in becoming and making mature disciples of Jesus? How did church become more of a business organization for consumers of religious goods and services than a training ground of followers of Jesus?" (Keith Meyer)

Shut Up And Point... Instead Of Saying "Follow Me"

"To follow means to follow, not to lead. To point not to our own superior moral character but to the dimly seen figure out there that we are stumbling after." —Frederick Buechner

You Sin By Questioning The Pastor! Oh Really?

"The New Testament idea of oversight in our churches contains no hint of individuals who have authority over other individuals in the ways we have learned from the systems of the world. In a community governed by oversight rather than by “lording over” others, dialogue and inquiry are welcomed and encouraged, which is a far cry from the message of the Seattle megachurch pastor who preached to his congregation about the issue of “sinning through questioning.” (Lance Ford. Un-Leader)

Overseeing Peoples Goodness.

"What is it that an overseer is to see over? It is the life of the person, not merely the work of the person. The life of the staff member should always come before the performance in the order of what the overseer cares about." (Lance Ford. Un-Leader)

The Executive Pastor - Insists On His Executive Power.

"Rob is a friend who joined a church that was deeply involved in overseas missions. He is an incredibly driven and smart guy with a background in military Special Forces. He is also a triathlete. Rob is a quick learner and a go-getter. He began to join in on some trips to a few places where the church was working, eventually leading some initiatives in a region the church had not previously been. In short order Rob had pioneered the new ministry and had raised half of the necessary funds to leave his well-paying “real” job in order to serve the new mission full-time. The church matched the funds Rob had raised, freeing him to give all his attention to the new mission. After a couple of years the ministry was flourishing and Rob was as well. Everyone agreed that he was doing a marvelous job. Then a problem arose. The senior pastor called Rob to tell him he had “great” news. The new budget included funds to pay Rob’s entire salary so that he would no longer have to raise his own funds for the ministry. He could now be a full-time pastor on the church staff. The pastor was stunned when Rob cheerfully said, “That’s great. I appreciate it. But use those funds for something else. I’m doing fine. The ministry over there is developing like crazy. What we are doing is working great. Let’s just keep going as we have been.” Rob would have loved to have given up the task of personal fund-raising, but he had been around the culture of this church for too long. He was well aware that those who were full-time staff members were not allowed to self-manage and carry out their ministries and callings with the freedom he enjoyed. The culture of the church was extremely hierarchical and top down. My friend’s instincts said the reason the senior pastor wanted to fund him fully was in order to own him as an employee. His instincts were right. A week later Rob was summoned to the senior pastor’s office, where in a ten-minute meeting with the big guy and the executive pastor, he was told his ministry with the church was over. Yippee-ki-yay!" (Lance Ford. Un-Leader)

Your Power Abuses Me....

"Worldly systems and structures were endangered species when Jesus came into the neighborhood. The Gospels record a multitude of occasions when Jesus broke down hierarchical structures that blocked relationships between people and God. His liberating judgment was aimed at all forms of oppressive entitlement at the hands of the religious elite....... The kingdom of God always threatens the power of those with vested interest in a particular structure. When we cherish our systems more than we cherish people and God’s mission, we lose the power to be changed ourselves, much less to change the system itself." (Lance Ford. Un-Leader)

Transformation Of "Power"

“The challenge before the church is the transformation of the very nature of power." (Jayakumar Christian. Missiologist)

Leader Worship... I'm Not Your Leader Jesus is.

"Every conference I had spoken at or attended had a “green room," a concept that comes from the entertainment industry. A green room is a lounge for actors and performers to relax in before they go onstage to perform. They are safe hideouts for the stars to be alone or among the other stars. When Brad and I began thinking about the ethos and atmosphere of our conference, we wanted to eliminate any hint of hierarchy. We informed each guy and gal that would be speaking at the conference about our “living rooms." These are hangout spots set up in the open common area of the conference venue. They have couches and club chairs for the speakers to hang out with all the conference attendees. It sets the tone for what we believe about leadership—that none of us are leaders. It isjust that at times we lead. So when a speaker is on the platform doing his or her talk, he or she is leading; when a speaker is finished with the talk, he or she is among the body. The person is thus not a leader but a fellow servant.” (Lance Ford. UnLeader: Reimagining Leadership and Why We Must)

Not In Your Church Means No Church?

"Why do you assume that just because we are choosing not to spend Sunday morning in a ritualistic, liturgical “rhythm” that we are not experiencing community with other Jesus followers throughout the rest of our daily lives? Hoping that a church will someday be a place to come home to assumes that we are homeless; hoping that we find our way back to a good church assumes we are lost. Hoping we find a place to be able to worship in community and feel loved by other people assumes we don’t currently dwell in loving community. " (Travis Klassen)

I Can't Do It....

"All this trying leads up to the vital moment at which you turn to God and say, "You must do this. I can't.” —CS Lewis

Power Cultures Can't Form Community

"Leadership cultures do not possess the cultural intelligence for genuine community. They will always fail to bring about genuine unity. They draw their cues from the system of this fallen world." (UnLeader. Lance Ford)

Sitting In a Building Is So Meaningful

"One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organization do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always." --A. W. Tozer

Argue With the Wind About "Tithing".... The People Have Spoken Church Leadership

Culturally, those under 40 have shifted in their value sets. Fifty years ago, one of the highest virtues was “loyalty,” and people would give faithfully to the church, trusting the institution and the leaders to use the money wisely.

And even if they didn’t agree with a building fund or focus for the corporate finances, they would continue to give simply because they trusted the spiritual hierarchy.
Not anymore.

Today’s believers are not loyal or blindly trusting. One of their highest values is “meaning,” and they will only give to what they see is making a visible difference, or what they perceive will bring them meaning at a personal level. You may argue with this at a philosophical level, but you will not be able to fight it at the street level. 

People, even those inside the church, are exhausted at giving to boxes or buildings whose influence is waning, and they simply won’t give to keep the lights on or pay the staff. They want to help real people with real needs................

In 2013, the Carnival cruise ship The Triumph lost power off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula. The voyage for consumers who had hoped for a beautiful, restful and enjoyable cruise turned into a nightmare as they had to be towed over a week’s time back to Alabama.

The toilets stopped, the air conditioning failed, the food spoiled and the travelers realized that their dream vacation was not worth a penny, let alone the thousands they had spent.

This is a picture of the failing consumer church—large, medium and micro forms. Yes, there will always be churches that seem to be avoiding all these shifts—churches that show growth based on old measurements and who seem to be growing both numerically and financially—but don’t be fooled by these aberrations.

Wise leaders look beyond the occasional success story and instead stare honestly at the undeniable trends. In seasons of economic struggle, what always occurs is a growing chasm between the haves and the have-nots.

As church attendance declines nationally, and as we fail on a global scale to see new disciples made, megachurches and growing churches are tasting what could be the last wave of transfer growth before the reality of the trends hit home...............

Gone are the days when a young man or woman can graduate from Bible school or seminary and find a great church to go work for....... 

As I’ve talked to waves of leaders both young and old, the pain of the church has gotten them close to shipwrecking their souls.

“How do I manage my true faith amidst the lies I’ve seen in the organized church?” How do I live faithfully after Christ without pandering to the consumer whims of the next cruise ship to go down?”

(Is Modern Church Leadership Tilting Toward Bivocational Ministry? Hugh Hater)