My 2010 Journey and Other Musings

So now that it is New Years Day 2010, I thought I should probably blog a little about what is happening in my life and the things that God is doing and teaching me.

First of all, I am stoked for the opportunity to follow Jesus another year. Already he has allowed me to venture into new territory and experience him in new ways, bringing my trust in him to new levels. This is where I want to be. I can't help but believe that this year is going to have some amazing things in store for the kingdom of God, and that God is going to use me and others around me, to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.
I am venturing into the unknown by leading a team, with Michael (a brother of mine), to Africa to share the good news of Jesus and bring his love to people in need. I am taking my old band, Alytheia, with me :) Lord willing, we are going to be bridging the gap to God through music and other acts of service so that people will turn and see the living God. Africa Tour here we come. God is putting together a solid team of people that are entrusting their lives to him and striving to see the kingdom of God come to earth in a new light, while wanting to know God more and be more intimate with him personally. God is going to do some incredible things as we seek his face and strive to love him more fully and glorify the one who is worthy.
I am also in the second half of my journey through seminary and the MDIV program. It is hard for me to believe that this much of school as transpired, and I am trying to continue to revel in the place that God has placed me for the time being. My wife is a dear and is so supportive through this whole process. Thanks be to God.

I was reading on the way back to Portland from Fresno, a book by Metzger on Ecclesiology. In this book he states something that I find to be an incredibly honest assessment of the church, and frankly, so true that it can be offensive. Offensive in a good light. I have witnessed these truths in my own reality, and my heart breaks for those who have scummed to our in these ways.

While relationship with Jesus is truly personal, it is by no means private, individualistic, and consumeristic. It is public and interpersonal or communal. Prayer requests, sermon titles, and messages often reflect this individualized and consumerized Veg-O-Matic imbalance. All too often, sermons tend to follow the "How to loose weight and be filled with the Holy Spirit" pattern, not the "take up your cross and follow me" paradigm. No doubt, the problem goes back to the fall and its aftermath, where everyone began doing what seemed right in their own eyes. It is just that today we have perfected the art of individualized identity and self-realization.
The problem does not end with the individual Christian. It extends to the individual family. People may claim to community-oriented by spending time with their families. Unfortunately, the individual nuclear family too often takes precedence over the family of God. One reason why Dr. James Dobson is so powerful a figure now is how he speaks to one of America's greatest national treasures and endangered species - the nuclear family. Pastors can speak on all kinds of subjects at church. But they dare not challenge prevailing notions of success, our use of money, the American nation, and the family. Just about anything else will do. In fact, we often use our money to foster successful ministries that often cater to the American dream of stable and wholesome birth families.
(He then goes on to talk about how churches closed their doors on Christmas when it fell on a Sunday, so that people would in turn spend time with their families. "In doing so, this pastor placed the birth family over the born-again family." What about those who had no family to go to and were looking for their church family for their fellowship?)
Churches often cater to this tendency to overvalue the nuclear family in the American culture. Ironically, those churches that cater more to the family - making Christ and the church a predicate of family values - often become more successful churches. And not so ironically, it tends to produce competition between churches where families shop for the best children's ministry...
**** We have before us three problems: overemphasis on the individual, the individual family, and the individual church. How shall we respond? The individual is important to God, just not in isolation from the church. The family is important to God, but not to the detriment of God's family. The individual church is important to God, just not in isolation from other churches.
When Christianity places undue emphasis on the individual, it reduces the church to a group of believing individuals or, worse, sees Christian identity as separate from participation in Christian community.
The problem is not limited to the individual person. When the church places undue emphasis on the individual family, it tends to disregard the church as the ultimate family. As a result, it also tends to disregard the single person or the single parent raising a family. However, when we see the church as God's family, and ourselves as part of that family, we realize that our spouses and our children are our brother and sisters in the Lord. So too we realize that single present and their children, orphans and widows in their distress, and those who visit our fellowship, are members of our family.
It is important for us to emphasize that members of our church families are members of our nuclear families, and that our nuclear families are part of this larger church family. This would keep us from prioritizing family over church, and visa versa.
Just as God is indissolubly communal, so too human identity is a relational being...Just as God gave his Son to save the world, so God gives his church to the world. The church is a microcosm of the world, and of the transformative work God is undertaking through his Son and Spirit to make all things new.

These statements are powerful ways in which to view the family in light of the culture in which we live. I love when people chose to use their families for the betterment of the greater family, God's church, of which Christ is the head. If we alienate ourselves from the body of Christ, we take away from what God wants to use to change the world. May we live in such a way that Christ is the center of our lives, and nothing else. May all idolatry cease to exist in the lives of those who follow the Savior, including such things as mentioned above.