I have always wanted to change the world, but it seemed like I didn’t know how and I didn’t know many people who presented huge socio-economic need.

Oh, I had some experiences as a pastor working with drug addicts and we helped people in our little down-and-outer congregation in a multitude of ways… food and furniture donations, paying utility bills, transportation to therapy and drug rehab sessions.  We even did several random acts of kindness and washed cars for free, gave away bottles of water and cans of soda at events, held neighborhood dinners, and even stood at a toll way exit ramp to pay people’s tolls.

The house church that I am part of has developed a relationship with a family that is entangled in a web of medical, developmental, mental, physical, and monetary needs.  We try to do something for them as it presents itself, like cleaning, putting on a new roof, transportation to doctor’s appointments and follow-up medical assistance.

However, like most white, suburban, followers of Christ, I am not very up close and personal with really obviously disadvantaged people.

Now, I have begun a new chapter in my life by studying nonprofit management, a profession that I have chosen as my career. My studies and interaction with practitioners from around the world have opened my eyes to see what a high level of leadership and creativity is needed for a nonprofit organization to be truly successful in improving outcomes for their clients.  I am beginning to work with a local nonprofit organization by providing some help in strategic planning.  So, reaching out effectively to disadvantaged people is on my mind.  I have a lot of questions and few convictions are beginning to form.

Things We Have Tried (Observations)

Another way to look at these measures, is by considering them to be an initial, rather than long term responses to needs.  They may be necessary and good, but something more is needed.

Blessing. It is good to be just bless people, I mean, to do something like buy lunch for a panhandler and talk to him or to take time to treat the most disenfranchised and despised person with profound respect.  It won’t change the world, but it might bring a little sunshine to one life, which it very cool.

Money. Money alone won’t fix anything other than the immediate crisis. It might be a good thing to do, it will run out or the situation that created the crisis will arise again.

Quickies. Your can’t fix much in an hour or in a once-a-year Sharefest.  Again, you can bring a little sunshine to someone for a little while.  You can make volunteers feel better.  You can be a good (though brief) demonstration of the gospel, but probably not much that is long term will result.

Charity. Giving things away won’t solve long term issues.  It might be the right thing to do, especially, if we have too much and someone else does not have enough, but its effects will be limited, if the root causes are not addressed.

Programs in which people give things away have some unwanted effects.

1. People will try to circumvent the rules. (If you have a “two bags of groceries per family” rule at your food pantry, someone will say, my cousin and his wife moved in with us, can I have two more bags?)
2. The service providers will turn into the charity police, making sure that people are not taking advantage of the system by putting more rules into effect.
3. Most everybody will have some “challenges” with their attitude over time.

Things That Need Trying (Principles)

These principles are ideas for more of a long term response.

Oportunity. People do not have an equal opportunity.  I argue this point with people frequently.  Some people are disadvantaged.  Some need an advocate.  Some need inspiration.  Some need information.  Some just need to know that they don’t have to continue in the same conditions.

Dignity. People need to be treated with dignity and respect, no matter what.  That means not treating them like personal projects or pawns in a program.

Relationships. People need the trust and comfort that comes through long term, honest and loving relationships. That involves a commitment to get to know a person, rather than a hit-and-run approach.

Giving Back. People need the opportunity to give something back.  It is part of respecting them and treating them with dignity, but, it’s hard to design avenues for them to give back.  It is easier and quicker to just give them something.

Long Term. People giving back, is the hope of lifting them and their community out of their negative situations.  It’s the idea behind food pantries becoming cooperatives that offer low cost food and jobs for people in the neighborhood. The clothing closet becomes a thrift store.  The charity becomes a business with a purpose.

This is an oversimplification. Certainly, there are disadvantaged people who need us to get them in touch with services that will meet pressing needs.

What I have written about is also complex and takes a high level leadership, creativity, and the expertise of people with diverse skills.

These thought are just me beginning to sort out my thoughts, but the needs are real.  The long term solutions are challenging.  It will take us way out of our comfort zones.  But what a worthy challenge!

I would love to hear your thoughts.

My question implies that I have undergone some changes. That is almost laughable because so much has changed… externally, in my circumstances and internally, in my perspectives. I often say that my faith has been stripped down to the barest of bare bones and that I have become an enemy to my former self. Of course I can more easily identify things in my past that I no longer believe much easier than I can discern what is left and what may have grown stronger through transition, but here I will take a stab at both.

I don’t believe that church is an organization and programs.
I do believe that church is a way of life that involves relationships.

I don’t believe that allegiance to an organization should be equated to faithfulness to God.
I do believe that faithfulness to God is best revealed to us when our life falls apart and there is little else to rely upon.

I don’t believe the best way to understand God is through trying to systematize our understanding of him, as we commonly understand theology.
I do believe that the better way to understand God is in the way he has revealed himself, through narrative, story, relationships, nature, and experiences.

I don’t believe that buildings and paid personnel are important to be the church.
I do believe that community and being an active demonstration of God’s kingdom are important to be the church.

I don’t believe that packaged materials and church leadership trends have served the church well.
I do believe that church is based in relationships and a uniquely local response.

I don’t believe that most people are far from God.
I do believe that they are far from the church, but God is at work in their lives.

I don’t believe in excluding people because they don’t fully agree with our understanding of God.
I do believe in a church that is safe place for doubters and questioners, because that which is true can withstand questions and doubts and because we need to love and accept one another without qualifiers.

I don’t believe in an evangelistic sales pitch.
I do believe in the sheer force of a person living out Jesus’ teachings.

I don’t believe in a secular/spiritual divide.
I do believe that God is in no way confined in his working

I don’t believe in forsaking community because it is hard, or, at times, painful.
I do believe in nurturing relationships and community wherever you find them.

I don’t think the church is falling apart.
I do think the institutional church system is being questioned and frequently away turned from, but something more true to its beginnings and the current culture will, to great extent, take its place.

I never intended to write a series of articles about what has happened to me, but writing is largely personal therapy.  So, this exercise has been helpful.  I have already considered changes in my political and cultural perspectives. In this post, I will consider the personal and psychological changes that have happened in the last few years.

I used to be bound by responsibilities forced upon me because of my occupation.
Now, I choose my responsibilities.

I used to give my family whatever time my church and civic involvement schedule could afford.
Now, I prioritize times with family.

I used to be worried about what people thought about me and my family.
Now, I try to be who I am and let others do the same.

I used to have my course in life figured out.
Now, I have had to forge a whole new focus for my life that is true to my identity.

I used to have a very strong and specific sense of calling.
Now, I still do, and it is the same in general terms, but different, in specific terms.

I used to try to manage my image, including my language and displays of emotion.
Now, I am more real with people.

I used to love a way of doing church.
Now I love the church.

I used to mentally categorize people.
Now, I probably still do, but try to accept them and find ways to love them.

I used to do more things out of shear obligation and expectation.
Now, I do more things because of positive inner motivation.

I used to worry about change and conflict.
Now, I understand them to be a part of life and try to take them in stride.

I used to think of sin as the ultimate failure.
Now, I think of not accepting grace and love as the ultimate failure.

My seven years of being away from the inner circles of church life has been a time that has brought seismic changes in my perspective. I joke about being an adversary to my former self, but it is true. A few years ago, I would have locked horns with the likes of my current self.  Maybe, I am just getting crotchety in my old age.  Here are a few of my changed perspectives in the political and social arenas.

I am a cynic concerning political matters because I believe politicians typically get more concerned about re-election and jockeying for power within the political system and within their political party than they do about serving their constituents.

I am not impressed by those who characterize the American President or any other public figure as the Messiah of the Antichrist, i.e., someone who will make or break the country. I have heard it all many times before and it has never proven true. This opinion belies a weak view of our form of government. Think of all it has withstood through the years.

I hate party politics because it never seems to help us arrive at the best solutions, just more partisan wrangling, finger pointing and polarization. The idea of the party with the most power winning out on legislation is rather scary, meaning that our laws about who was in power at the time. I believe that better solutions would be obtained through listening than accusing.

I think our news media is stupid. Sound bites and pretty models who can read copy and keep us caught up with the latest on our celebs do not prepare the electorate to make informed decisions. I have found NPR and PBS to be a wonderful alternative to this kind of nonsense. I reserve a special disdain for the media types whose sole purpose is to rile people up (and boost their ratings) , whether they have the facts or not. We need less heat and more light.

I don’t like Democrats or Republicans because throwing massive sums of borrowed money at problems and expanding the government bureaucracy has never been very efficient, neither has ignoring those problems and wishfully believing that somehow a greed-driven free market economy will magically fix everything. Solutions aren’t that simple to these complex issues and each side would have something to contribute if the other side would listen.

I don’t believe that everyone has equal opportunity in America. They never will because it will continue to be too hard for some and other people simply will not care. That’s not an American problem; it’s a human problem. I believe in providing opportunities and inspiration to lift people to up so they have a more equal opportunity.

I am a proponent of not swallowing a party line and not trusting someone else to develop our opinions for us.

What if the senior pastor, worship leader, and the entire pastoral staff suddenly resigned, the church building were foreclosed upon, and the congregation had no money to pay a pastor or to buy a building? What would you do?

There was a day when I thought this would be a worst case scenario.  Now I think it could be the catalyst for a more authentic and effective expression of the church.

I am a believer in stripping things down to their essence.  Many of us have had our ideas about church and theology stripped down to the barest of bare bones.  In fact, all the doubts, questions, and deconstruction are essential prerequisites to building something real and meaningful.

There comes a time for us to move into spiritual adolescence in which we question the teachings of our forefathers and sort out what we really believe.  Not unlike the teenage experience, our transition into spiritual adulthood usually involves significant turmoil and our spiritual mothers and fathers will think we are moving into dangerous territory and are turning our back on all we taught.  But usually kids come back to believing a set a of values that is not very different than those of their parents, though they may throw out one here or there,  add one along the way or express them in slightly different ways.

If there were no more staff of gifted pastors and leaders, no more state-of-art “worship center”, no more programs to help you understand the Bible, fix your marriage, your finances, your kids, your addictions, all in 40 days, and if there were no more obligation to support a budget and an organization, you would have one of two things.  You might have nothing and the morn the fact that your once great church has died, that is, if you were dependent upon the trappings of institutional church life in America and understood these forms and expressions to be one with what is means to be the church.  Or you might be free to truly be the church.

If those afore mentioned accouterments were removed, what would you have left?  In a word, you would have relationships… with God, with your community of Christ followers, and with everyone else.  Some would loose all of this, in their minds, because they needed the fancy trappings to give them some sort of framework to inform these relationships, but the trappings often detract from the relationships because the forms become a substitute for the essence.

So, if the perfect storm that I described in my scenario happened and it was just some friends who wanted to follow the teachings of Jesus and be the evidence to people around them that his kingdom was alive and well, would it be devastating or liberating?

What if the senior pastor, worship leader, and the entire pastoral staff suddenly resigned, the church building were foreclosed upon, and the congregation had no money to pay a pastor nor to buy a building? What would you do?

Do you have a latent dream?  Have you made some attempts, but suffered setbacks?  Are you all alone in this venture?  Are you wondering if it is worth it?  Are tired of getting kicked around while trying to do something important and meaningful?  Well, then…

Thanks, Aaron !

Lately, several posts have stirred my thoughts about freedom and I began making a list. I hope that you will add to it.

We are free from the captivity of oppressive guilt to pursue the vast possibilities and creative expression of the unique gifts and passions that God has given us.

We are free from the expectations of organized Christianity to explore new, meaningful, and practical ways to live out the teachings of Jesus.

We are free from being consumed with ourselves to truly give ourselves to another.

We are free from the expectations of others to live true to our own hearts and consciences.

We are free from reading and understanding the Bible the way we were taught to letting it speak for itself.

We are free from sin management to finding something that stirs our heart and draws us to God.

We are free from regarding the Bible as some sort of magic book or encyclopedia to understand it as the story of the relationship between God and man.

We are free from self improvement to self abandonment.

We are free from allegiance to an organization being equated to faithfulness to God to building relationships wherever we are.

We are free from the Christian adjective to realizing God has no bounds.

We are free of the self preoccupation that keeps us from being fully engaged in the moment to live life with childlike wonder and hope.

We are free from looking for God in church activity to realizing that he is at work in people everywhere and he is alive in culture and art in ways that are truly amazing.

We are free from avoiding the wounded and marginalized to begin to join with them in their world.

We are free from having to figure out everything about God and the Christian life to accepting that we do not understand some things.

We are free from living in failure to learning from failure.

We are free from defensiveness to devote ourselves to positive Kingdom pursuits.

We are free from being wounded victims to be wounded healers.

Also posted on Communitas Collective, if you would like to check out the discussion there.

“Anyone who puts a hand to the plow and then looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of Heaven.”  – Jesus in Luke 9:62

I have been plodding the New Testament story of Jesus’ life as told by the Luke for a long time now and I have only gotten to chapter 9. Thankfully, there is no special award for speed-reading the Bible!

When I came to chapter 9:51- 62, I was taken aback by Jesus’ words. I always have been rather clueless when I have read these terse comments to three different prospective disciples. Jesus seems to be saying that he was more important than having a home or caring for your family and if you are not willing to forsake those things, you are fit to follow him. I feel like saying, “Hold up Jesus, is that what you really mean?”

The historical and cultural context will help us to more clearly grasp the meaning of the passage. In that day, hand-picked disciples of rabbis literally followed them and lived them for a protracted period of time. Most scholars think the men in the passage were subtly making excuses for not becoming one of Rabbi Jesus’ followers. Perhaps the one man was waiting for his father to die so that he could receive his inheritance and the other was saying that he needed a protracted period of time to say goodbye to his family. Jesus was warning them that when they followed him, they would not have a regular place to live and there would be many other hardships in a society that would turn against him, crucify him and persecute his disciples.

My question is, do these words mean anything today? Following Jesus does not mean leaving everything and living with him for a few years, but are there any sacrifices Jesus’ followers must bear today? Does Jesus’ Kingdom ever clash with the prevalent culture? Does that cause conflict? How does that conflict affect a follower of Jesus?

Identifying with Jesus and his Kingdom is a total life orientation. It may affect where you live and what vacation you pursue. It will leave you in the minority opinion on many issues and it could cause people to misunderstand you or to ostracize you. A problem with this whole perspective is that all too often these responses have resulted not from following Jesus, but from aligning ourselves with some sort of Christian cultural view that is not necessarily a good reflection of Christ’s Kingdom.

Yet, I wonder if we have not played down the sacrificial, total commitment nature of following Jesus and I still wonder what that really means of me.

The Nobel Committee astonished the world by awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama and the firestorm of negative commentary began with pundits reacting to the surprise as though they were just waiting for it.

Did he deserve it?

No. He hasn’t brokered any peace deals or made the world safer. He was only in office for two weeks of the eligibility period for consideration.

What did he do?

He changed the international diplomatic tenor of the United States by assuming a humbler, more conciliatory tone. I think it is a good move for the US, since we are only one piece of the world puzzle, though I know most conservatives hate this about him.

What does it mean?

It means nothing in the long run. In the short run, it simply means that Obama has a lot of star power, though, it is diminishing rapidly. It probably means that much of the world is more comfortable with Obama at the helm than they were with Bush. At least they seem to like him in Western Europe.

I like Obama. Well, at least, I want to. He presents a positive, world savvy, young, hip image of America. I don’t trust him because he is a politician and an ambitious man with lots of entanglements, like every politician. His rhetoric is hopeful and reflective of the heart of most Americans. He leads well from the podium and the teleprompter, but his choice of advisors, policies, partisanship, and rush to dubious actions, sometimes alarm me.

“I think this may be way too preliminary, at the end of four years, maybe he has accomplished something and deserves it,” he added. “I think it has diminished the award itself. I think certainly you have to give him an ‘A’ for trying, but at the end of the day, what has he accomplished? Who on the world stage are his allies at this point in time?” – Republican strategist Ed Rollins

“The real question Americans are asking is, ‘What has President Obama actually accomplished?’ It is unfortunate that the president’s star power has outshined tireless advocates who have made real achievements working towards peace and human rights. One thing is certain — President Obama won’t be receiving any awards from Americans for job creation, fiscal responsibility or backing up rhetoric with concrete action.” – Republican National Committee

“At first I thought the announcement of the prize was a joke. On further reflection, the Nobel Committee has made itself a joke. It has decided to give a ribbon before the race, a trophy for aspiration, a gold star for admirable sentiments.” – Michael Gerson, a former Bush speechwriter,

“Thoughts on what? The moon invasion? The new season of ‘The Office?’ Or the joke that the Nobel folks just became?” Harris said. “Like most liberals, the Nobel Committee seems to think that Obama’s pretty words are a perfect substitute for him actually doing something. But if pretty words alone could provide leadership, then why not just give the presidency and the Peace Prize to a Hemingway novel?” – Republican strategist Todd Harris

“The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists — the Taliban and Hamas this morning – Democratic National Committee communications director Brad Woodhouse