Fasting From Noise And Babble

“God commands recourse to the abyss of silence so that we might hear him in it: “Be still, and know that I am God.” Much has been written about the need for better Church music, and rightly so. Yet greater is the need for better silence. The best times to press this need are the penitential seasons, especially Lent. Our shepherds should urge us to emulate our ancestors, who knew the importance of fasting not only from food and drink but also from noise and babble.”

It Placates the Lukewarm and Cools the Zealous

"My experience with church ministry matched neither the hunger that churned so deep within me nor what I perceived to be the challenge of Scripture. In one moment all my excuses were swept away by a mass of evidence I could no longer ignore. When I looked for whys I kept coming to the same conclusion: Our application of present-day Christianity was deficient. I knew it wasn't the people; those I worked with loved the Lord deeply. I knew it wasn't a disregard for Scripture; we believed it whole- heartedly. I knew it wasn't a lack of knowledge; I already knew far more than I was living out at the time.

But when I looked at how church ministry operated, I saw how high a priority it places on safety and routine. At the cost of distracting people from personal intimacy with Jesus, it clings to the status quo. It placates the lukewarm and cools the zealous. Not only has it failed to lead us to the fullness of relationship with Jesus, it has more often lured us away from it."
(The Naked Church.  Wayne Jacobsen pg 12)

Mutual Pity In Cross Cultural Relationships

"We first became friends probably out of an almost identical sense of pity for one another. Any American can, I suppose, imagine my pity for Ramon. It was grounded in the contemplation of an intelligent and ambitious youth chained by circumstances to crushing and lifelong poverty in a poor country that offered no future to its ineptly educated citizens. Ramon's pity for me was just as basic as he watched me moving about, confused and frightened in his strange world. I was unable to communicate with anyone about anything but the most animal needs of survival. Except for bananas, and I didn’t know the Spanish word for them, I was unable to identify a single fruit or plant. I couldn’t catch a fish or paddle a canoe or net a shrimp or weave a piece of rope out of a vine or find my way on a jungle trail or even walk on one for more than fifty feet without sinking up to my knees in mud. I couldn‘t machete out a patch of weeds or fix a leaking roof. I couldn’t even cook a pot of rice that didn‘t come out like a great mass of glue. Jesus, I couldn’t even walk a hundred feet without shoes. Ramon found my ignorance so overwhelming that he could hardly bear it; he was confused between tears, depression, and anger. Chances are when I macheted down a tree it would fall on me, hopelessly entangling me in its spiny branches; paddling across the river I was almost inevitably swept out into the rip tides where the ocean breakers crashed onto the sandbar. In the middle of all this, to hear me speak of my four years at university filled Ramon with an incredulous impatience, and about the third time I mentioned my educational qualifications for arriving to overturn his life, he asked me if, in view of my obvious ignorance of everything that he had taken for granted since he was three years old, I would please
lay off the higher education bullshit."

(Moritz Thomsen.The Farm On The River of Emeralds)

Escaping Old Ideas

“The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones.”

(John Maynard Keynes)

Living in Cities Of Lost Civilizations

"I wonder what it’s like to live in a city that is built upon lost civilizations and early generations."  (Brenton Dickieson)

The Devil Loves Church Planting Says Charles Spurgeon

I do not think the devil cares how many churches you build, if only you have lukewarm preachers and people in them.
--Charles Spurgeon

Building The Kindgom Is A Silent, Hidden Affair?

"I propose that the Christian enterprise of building the kingdom of God on earth must be a silent, hidden affair. The public claims of many Christians have lost their credibility. The words on their lips are contradicted by their lifestyles. The problem in the American church is not that something has been hidden but that not enough has stayed hidden. Let the church go underground for a while. As it lowers its profile, let it raise the ante for membership. We are the church. Let us present to the world the image of a servant community, and let us preserve the beauty of the gospel not with showy, defensive fervor but with an intense interior life of prayer and worship, service, and a manner of living that only can be explained in terms of God."

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Attendance At A Church With No Community and Little Fellowship Is All We Need

"At the risk of sounding repetitious, I shall say it again: We have made it too easy to be a Christian. The sole requirements are the recitation of a creed and attendance at a local church where there is no community and little fellowship. Christianity used to be risky business. It is no longer. Cost-free discipleship produces wimps and pleasant personalities who, in Scott Peck’s forceful phrase, “belong to a church that in the name of Jesus can blasphemously co-exist with the arms race.” From my vantage point, the greatest single need in the American church is to know Jesus Christ, ..."

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

My One Post On Mars Hill And Mark Driscoll

I see hundreds of comments on media by church people saying things like... "I think the devil is laughing over all of this." The idea that because people are talking about this stuff it some how is creating a black eye on "The Church".

Oh good grief.

Here was my reply at one point.

"I think the enemy laughs even more when it's not exposed and found out, because the abuse continues. Silence and secrets are what cause sin to grow. I think the enemy is shaking in fear, not laughing, because of this exposure. Now believers can build a loving community with loving leaders.
Why is it we think the world is shocked and surprised when some of the churches leaders have issues?

We think it puts a black eye on "Church". I don't think the world is surprised at all. This Forbes article seems to ask why we are not questioning our power-centric leadership models and leaders more often.  No one in the community is looking down on the church when they expose and address abusers or narcissistic leaders. They applaud us.

I think we Christians are more concerned with the image of "the church" than non attenders are.  We are more shocked at the revelations than they are because we have an unwritten rule: hush it up, sweep it up as quickly and quietly as we can, bury it, move on, pretend it never happened, and never never ever talk about such things ever.

And then we invite people to this lie - A large church that never has messy relational issues and dynamics? Oh really? This stuff is not really shocking.... it's actually normal. It just has bigger fall out in multi-site popular churches and we sit up and notice because the more people know about us in the good, the more people know about us in the bad.

Anyway, I personally do not see much gloom in this. Mark will recover, Mars hill will continue. The believers leaving will be in other communities,  those seeking Jesus will be taught up front that they need to seek Jesus, not celebrity.
Jesus still stands."

The other lesson in all of this should cause us to examine the affects of persecution and money. We are ministering at the upper edge of affordability in the west. Typically, 90% of our money is required to prop up that building, programs and staff salaries we are juggling. There is little left for "Go to all Nations", we have our hands full floating this church structure we inherited. It's stating a reality, not a value judgment.

We are not persecution proof.
Knock out our leaders and many things fall, or simply will lack someone to "run it". A few members leave, and we are in a major financial crisis.
Tamper with our money flow (Government) and most of our institutional forms will fall.

Are we really that easy to topple over as a church body in the west? 

How would we build a little differently if we considered a day when we could not build public structures and just had to live one on one discipleship? I think these things should at least be in the back of our minds. Because, we have forgotten that though the church has this stuff, it does not NEED much of this stuff. How much does people discipling other people, and meeting together as the body really cost in the end?


Learning from Church in China. 

Take out our pastors, and we still gather because  we are all pastors (Priesthood of all believers)
Take out our leaders and we still have vision. Because we all seeking Jesus' will and seek to serve others.
Take away our buildings, We have homes, or we can meet in two's or three's anywhere.
Take away our money. Well, and we discover bible study, relational discipleship, prayer, and helping others with the sweat of our brow are, in the end, surprisingly, all free. We don't need to gather as much money as a group, and now we release people to sow generously into the needs of people around them in each individual mission field, or people can pool together resources for a common mission.

Does not take much for church to survive in the end.

Personality Cults

"Personality cults end badly, because anyone objective finds themselves mauled by loyalists trying to hold the cult together."

(Rob Asghar. Forbes. From The Enron Of American Churches. 9/16/2014) 

Puritan Ethic That Forces Me to Judge Everything.....

"I am crippled and restricted in South America by that puritan ethic that forces me to judge everything as either good or bad, that makes me uneasy with prolonged leisure or guiltless excesses, with procrastination and fatalism. I am nervous around emotion and unplanned joy."

(Moritz Thomsen. The Farm On The River of Emeralds)

Farming Where We Pray More Than We Spray

"From a practical viewpoint Ramon knew much more than I did about tropical agriculture, but he had grown up in that medieval world of ritualized poverty where out of absolute desperation a farmer goes into partnership with God. He prays instead of sprays."
(Moritz Thomsen. The Farm On The River of Emeralds)

You take a knife and slice open your breast and pull out your heart and hold it in your hand....

"One of my good friends was in the group; he explained very carefully to Ramon that now he had a chance to be a rich man if he played his cards right and that he, X, was prepared—for a reasonable percentage—to show him how to do it. “But we’re friends,” Ramon cried. “I’m not just in this for the money. We’re friends; we’re doing this together. I’m doing this for something that I feel here in my heart.”
“Friends,” X said in disgust. “Holy shit. Don’t talk like a child. Look, Prado, you’ll never get another chance like this if you live a thousand years. Now listen to me, Prado, for the sake of Christ. You take a knife and slice open your breast and pull out your heart and hold it in your hand and try to sell it, no? How much do you think you can get for your fucking heart?""

(Moritz Thomsen. The Farm On The River of Emeralds)

Ordering Around Great Masses of Poor Workers

"Faced with the very practical problems of running a large tropical farm, I found to my embarrassment that not only did I not know where to begin but, since it would involve ordering around great masses of poor workers, I actually didn’t much want to do it.....(pg 67)

How can there be brotherhood between a man with a five-thousand-dollar truck and a man who makes a dollar a day?"(pg 68)

" (Moritz Thomsen. The Farm On The River of Emeralds. Pg 67-68)

The Dead Capital Of Institutional Christendom

"In all our criticism and near-despair of the institutional Church, it should never be forgotten that many powers and possibilities really exist in it, but often in captivity; they exist as frozen credits and dead capital."
(Hendrik Kraemer (1888-1965), A Theology of the Laity)

“Our present disunity cannot be God’s will

"We have come a long, sad journey from the first century when pagans exclaimed with awe and wonder, “See how these Christians love one another!” to the twenty-first century when all over the world nonbelievers dismiss us with contempt: “See how these Christians hate one another!” We have deprived the world of the only witness the Son of God asked for during the supper of his love. “Our present disunity cannot be God’s will for us; it is a scandal to angels in heaven and human beings on earth.”

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Deep and Delicate Respect For One Another

"Jesus said that the foremost sign of discipleship would be our love for one another: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34–35). His teaching is unequivocal here. We would be known as his followers not because we are chaste, celibate, honest, sober, or respectable; not because we are church-going, Bible-toting, or Psalm-singing. Rather, we would be recognized as disciples primarily by our deep and delicate respect for one another, our cordial love impregnated with reverence for the sacred dimension of the human personality."

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Plastic Buttons Decimated Poor Communities

"Until sometime in the 1920s the tagua nut was harvested where it grew wild and widely scattered through all the rain forest areas; it was shipped to Germany, England, and the United States and was used for making buttons. Hundreds of people had their standard of living further lowered when some jerk invented plastics."
(The Farm On The River of Emeralds. Moritz Thomsen)

Church Placates the Lukewarm and Cools the Zealous

"My experience with church ministry matched neither the hun­ger that churned so deep within me nor what i perceived to be the challenge of scripture. In one moment all my excuses were swept away by a mass of evidence i could no longer ignore. When i looked for whys i kept coming to the same conclusion: Our application of present-day Christianity was deficient.

I knew it wasn't the people; those i worked with loved the lord deeply. i knew it wasn't a disregard for scripture; we believed it whole­ heartedly. I knew it wasn't a lack of knowledge; i already knew far more than i was living out at the time. But when i looked at how church ministry operated, i saw how high a priority it places on safety and routine. At the cost of dis­tracting people from personal intimacy with Jesus, it clings to the status quo. It placates the lukewarm and cools the zealous. Not only has it failed to lead us to the fullness of relationship with Jesus, it has more often lured us away from it."
(The Naked Church. Wayne Jacobsen)