Mission Is Standing Close To Evil

Hate sometimes
stands quite
close to love.

God too stands
often near to
evil-like silent
chessmen - side by side.
Only the colour
of the squares
is different."

- Calvin Miller. The singer

Deeper Than A Sin Problem?

"The Bible, then, offers and an analysis of the human plight different from the one normally imagine. "Sin" is not just bad in itself. It is the Tell-Tale symptom of a deeper problem; and the biblical story addresses that deeper problem; it includes the sin problem but goes much further. The problem is that humans were made for a particular vocation, which they rejected; that this rejection involves a Turning Away From the Living God to worship idols; that this results in giving to the idols - "forces" within the creation - a power over humans and the world that was rightfully that of a genuine humans; and that this leads to a slavery, which is ultimately the rule of death itself, the corruption and destruction of the good world made by the creator."

- N.T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began. 

Who's Your Center?

“When Jesus asked people to ‘repent and believe’ the gospel, he was not asking them to be sorry for their sins and embrace an orthodox theology. He was asking them to forfeit their own agenda and embrace his. That’s the invitation to the kingdom. It is not whether we want to go to heaven or hell, but whether we want to trust God or continue trusting ourselves.” 

~ Wayne Jacobsen

What Is A "Royal" Priesthood?

"The Priestly vocation consists of summing up the Praises of creation before the Creator; the Royal vocation, in turn, means reflecting God's wisdom and justice into the world."

- N.T. Wright. The Day The Revolution Began. 

Kingdom Needs No Stage

"I began to notice where the kingdom really thrives, and it is rarely on a stage."

- Wayne Jacobsen

Why Do We Teach A Religion To Follow?

"The church in the West is not withering for lack of knowledge, but for a lack of knowing him and being transformed by him. We teach Christ as a religion to follow that is empty and futile, rather than helping people live it with freedom."

- Wayne Jacobsen. Beyond Sundays 

The Kingdom Is Not A Where

"But this kingdom He speaks about is not a where but a when. It is the state of the world when people acknowledge God; when God is honored and worshipped and respected—the Kingdom is present."

- John Pavlovitz -

• POSTJOHN PAVLOVITZ

We Are Not The Only Church Game In Town.

"So many of us institutional Church people are quick to disparage anything that is not of us, from us, and for us. We see ourselves as the center of all spiritual attention in our community. God's people are the ones who meet with "us" on Sunday. He is nowhere else as correctly today. There is no other church in this community but us, seems to be our assumption.

We literally fight against the idea that Christians, as members of the Universal Church and the Body of Christ at large, gather at different times, locations, in different numbers and by various expressions. 

Our location is not the only expression, and we struggle with this thought, why? Because we have never known anything besides what we know and how we've been doing it.

Not with us in our buildings? We assume something very untoward about those people, almost always. We understand so little about the diverse expressions that the Kingdom is taking in the world today. It is time for the the body of Christ to realize that the kingdom is here, and it is not only located inside our four walls this Sunday. Our expression is not the center of God's attention. There is often any number of people meeting in ways that bring no attention to themselves, and we institutional people are often unaware that it is happening. Why are we unaware? Because those gathering in other ways know better than to talk to us institutional folks about how they live out their faith. It puts a huge target on their back. They learned from experience, the hard way, to simply live out their faith in their community in quiet, before people like us. When was the last time you heard church leaders speak well of alternate expressions of kingdom taking place, apart from their own style of gathering on Sunday?

We are not enemies, but we are marking each other as so, because we continue to extend so little grace to each other in our conversations & writings.  Hostile assumptions and labels will continue to divide us, and this is to no good end.

A good dose of humility reminds us that we are not the only game in town anymore when it comes to the Kingdom. It's the new reality,  not everyone apart from us is dying on the vine. We better get used to it, and walk in peace and partnership, not "mouthyness.""

- Andy Rayner

Fate Of Following

"Following Jesus is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world."
- Richard Rohr 

Concentrating Too Much On Special Times

In response to their question "When(time) will the Kingdom come?" He tells them that Ultimate Reality is not here and not there, taking us away from our typical attachment to time. For the Ultimate Reality is "within you!" (Luke 17:21). If you let people concentrate too much on special times, feasts, services, and Seasons, they forget it is always now and here when God happens. They stop living in the naked now and wait for Christmas or Easter, Sunday morning, or some far-off future day of Enlightenment (see Colossians 2:16-19).

Then Jesus makes the identical point about place. When they ask, "Where should we look for the day of the coming?" He says don't look here and don't look there (Luke 17 23). Once you over localize God's action in one place, church service, Sacrament, or any other kind of event, we can easily conclude that it is not in another place - or even worse, that it is not available everywhere and all of the time.

In revitalizing both time and space, Jesus is doing something similar to Eckhart Tolle is doing for many today with his "power of now." He makes us look for the absolute in a different way than by "certain ideas." Any good spiritual teacher has to overcome both space and time, or they have no ability to give you a sense of the Eternal and the Really Real. I would in fact say this is essential. Poor spiritual teaching is always saying only here and only there, such as "only in my church". Good spiritual teaching is saying "always" and "everywhere."

- Richard Rohr. The Naked Now. 

Unpatriotic Persecution Of Christians

"Christians were not persecuted by the Roman Empire for telling people how to go to heaven when they die—Rome didn’t care about religious postmortem ciaims‘ Christians were persecuted by the empire for being viewed as unpatriotic and for confessing that Jesus—not Caesar—is Lord."      ~ Brian Zahnd (twitter)

Thy Kingdom Go

"Most Christians glibly recite “Thy kingdom come,” but this means almost nothing until and unless they also say “My kingdom go.”

~ Richard Rohr

Reading The Bible As Subversive Literature

"For the first 300 years after Jesus’ death, Christians were the oppressed minority; we were rebels hiding in catacombs. But by the year 400, Christians had changed places. We moved from the catacombs to the basilicas. That is when we started reading the Bible not as subversive literature but as establishment literature.

Once we were in a position of power and privilege, we couldn’t read or understand many Scriptures (for example, the Sermon on the Mount) because we had to maintain our empire, and in this direction the Scriptures give us little support or consolation.......

But when Scripture is read through the eyes of vulnerability—what we call the “preferential option for the poor” or the bias from the bottom—it will always be liberating and transformative. Scripture will not be used to oppress or impress. The question is no longer “How can I maintain the status quo?”

~ Richard Rohr

Invisible World Is Bigger?

"........St. Francis knew, there is only one enduring spiritual insight and everything else follows from it: The visible world is an active doorway to the invisible world, and the invisible world is much larger than the visible. This is “the mystery of incarnation,” the essential union of the material and the spiritual worlds, or simply “Christ.”"

~Richard Rohr

Done Little or Nothing Yet

"Let us begin, brothers, to serve the Lord God, for up until now we have done little or nothing."

—Saint Francis of Assisi near the end of his life

Standardized Kingdom?

"Not that the genuine presence of the Kingdom in a person can be hidden.... But it also cannot be canned, controlled, produced on demand, standardized, or brought to a point at which it can be dispensed by one human being to another."

~ Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy

It Costs Us Everything We Have

"The economy of the Kingdom of God is quite simple. Every new step into the Kingdom costs us everything we have gained to date. Every time we cross a new threshold, it costs us everything we now have. Every new step may cost us all the reputation and security we have accumulated up to that point. It costs us our life. A disciple is a follower, an acolyte, a student, an apprentice. A disciple of Jesus is always ready to take the next step with Him. If there is anything that characterizes Christian maturity, it is the willingness to become a beginner again for Jesus Christ. It is the willingness to put our hand in His hand and say, “I’m scared to death, but I’ll go with you. You’re the Pearl of great price.”

~ John Wimber

Soul-Crushing Dead Ends.

"The Kingdom Must Make Sense. But this cannot come about unless what Jesus himself believed, practiced, and taught makes sense to us. And his message must come to us free of the deadening legalisms, political sloganeering, and dogmatic traditionalisms long proven by history to be soul-crushing dead.
ends."

(Dallas Willard. The Divine Conspiracy)

Nominal Christians Don't Get It.

"This is the ragamuffin’s secret, which nominal Christians do not understand, but for which martyrs have given their lives. For the sake of the kingdom of God, thousands upon thousands have had their possessions confiscated, homelands seized, and families, careers, and good names sacrificed. The nominal just don’t get it. They hear the Word of God, but it does not speak to them interiorly. The unseen world does not exist. The love story of the Bible is nice for children in Sunday school but not for rational adults. Faith is a relic of the Middle Ages. You can’t pay the rent, cook soup, or purchase a computer with religion. What matters is muscle, intelligence, connections, and stronger battalions. The rest is opium for the people. The nominal do not know the secret. The treasure is hidden from their eyes. The values and lifestyle of the ragamuffin rabble are simply incomprehensible. It is the ragamuffin alone who rightly comprehends what life is really all about. No effort is too great, no venture too daring, no sacrifice too painful for the sake of the kingdom. Her greatest risk is still too small."

(Brennan Manning. The Ragamuffin Gospel)

Joining Jesus And Christ

"In the second person of the Trinity, we have the visible epiphany of the Unmanifest One. First in the form of creation itself— which is “the Christ” in our shorthand— and secondly in personal form, whom we call “Jesus.” Someone who reverences the first epiphany (apophatic, sat) is surely best prepared to rightly reverence the second— kataphasis, chit. Up to now, we’ve led many people to love Jesus, but many less were led to recognize, honor, and love the Christ. The major future task of Christian theology and practice is to finally join the two together."

(Richard Rohr. The Divine Dance)