Islamic Radicalism - Just Cry?

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

The Woman Who Makes People Weep

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

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

No Africans Or Asians In My Sunday School Material.

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

Sunday Morning Inside Four Walls With Clean Blood and Organized Drawers

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

(Swiss Musician Charlotte Eriksson) 

What Immortals Do on Sunday?

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

A Giant Thousand Mile Step

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

Christians Offer Charity Not Change.

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

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

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

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

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

(Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here)

Blissfully Ignorant Of Islamic Fundamentalism

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

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

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

Quiet

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

Prophetic Predictors Are Predators

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

(Jarod Kintz, This Book is Not for Sale)

The Person I Actually Married

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

Bound to Racism And War?

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

Church Growth Illusion

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

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

"Our church is growing," they argue.

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

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

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

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

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

Religious Institutions Do Not NEED To Change

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

Unable to Cry.....

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

(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

Digging Up The Kingdom?

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

Enlightenment Was Correct But Put The Wrong Person Center.

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

(Leonard Sweet. The Well Played Life)

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

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

Church Celebrity: Big Tails Make For Big Targets

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where Does The Money Go?

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

When Snakes Measure You.....

Something about pythons. .....

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

When Christians Create Their Own Persecution

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

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

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

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

Would We Hear Luther Or Wesley Today?

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

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

What Produces Luthers, Wesleys, and Bonhoeffers?

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

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

Hungry Fanatics. ....

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

Billy Graham On Rejecting The Institutional Church To Find Spiritual Food

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

-- Billy Graham (1965)

The Stench of Evil Words

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

Freeing he Church To Move......

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

Just Walk Away......

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

Risk is Right Says Missiomary Ebola Survivor

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

How Muslim Christians Changed Me....

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

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

Link to Article

Abandoning The Institutions False Priorities

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

Admire Our Institution...... Or Else

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Wayne Jacobsen.  The Naked Church)

Stripped Of Vitality But Supposedly Successful

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

Masking Inward Emptiness of Church?

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

Glory Perverting The Mega Church?

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

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

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

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

Not Fixing Anything

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

Caught Up In The Machinery Of Faith

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

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

 (Wayne Jacobsen. The Naked Church)

A Communion Of Jesus Followers Larger Than We realize

The Communion of Saints

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

(Henri Nouwen)

The Difference Between "With" and "Around"

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

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

Teams Built Around Love Not Gifts

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

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

Christianity Has No Geographical Center -Jesus Is Center Not Jerusalem

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

Food is A Cultural not a Technological Product

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

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

There Is Another Way Brighter Than Religion

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

Prepared For The One Who Asks Questions

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

Wasting Time With A Friend Is An Affirmation

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

Alone- Egotistical Solitude?

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

Too Much Speaking.....

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

(Brennan Manning. The Signature Of Jesus)

Academic Missionaries.....

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

A Church Marching To The Margins Of Society

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