Showing posts with label Faith. Show all posts

Time Magazine's PERSON OF THE YEAR is "The Protester."  I guess I can understand why "The Protester" was chosen and not Steve Jobs...although I have more of an affinity towards Steve Jobs.  I assume that their "person of the year" is the person who has the most influence on the year, was most newsworthy, and will have the most lasting influence.  And, while Steve Jobs did some great stuff in 2011 and his passing was definitely newsworthy, one can argue that much of his work and influence covers the last decade, not so much the year.  The protesters, in contrast, were quite a phenomenon for 2011.  It is clear that their influence on "The Arab Spring" will be felt for years to come as the dust settles throughout the Middle East.  On the home front, it has been the Occupy Wall Street protestors, from coast to coast, trying to confront the social and economic inequity that affects our nation greatly. 

So, yes, "The Protester" makes sense.  Impact on the calendar year.  Lasting impact around the globe.  Newsworthiness.  How they will impact history.

That, and we'll put Steve Jobs in second place.

Well, what about my PERSON OF THE YEAR.  I decided I'd go with some of the same qualities that I think Time Magazine uses.  This person would be newsworthy to me...the focus of much of my time and attention.  This person would need to have made an impact on the year...there were changes or movements that this person was intimately connected with.  This person would be someone whose actions or choices would have a lasting impact on myself, my family, or my job.

This narrows things down dramatically and there are some runners up who didn't come out on top:

Gail Grossman (my mentor) -- Gail is a layperson I met with 10 times over the course of the first half of the year.  All of our meetings were by phone.  While her help was enlisted to address some of the financial difficulties at Girdwood Chapel, what she ended up doing with me is helping us figure out a long-term ministry plan and get the ball rolling.  It's because of her that our small group ministry is taking root.  She was also influential in the start of our "Friday Night Live" youth nights and our Tween Group.  I can't thank her enough.

Mark Scandrette (author/Christ-follower) -- I read his book this year...and it changed the way I think about discipleship.  It's not that any of what he said, as far as the individual pieces are concerned, was new to me.  However, the way he put it all together was exceptionally helpful.  I just want to jump in and put it all into practice and once and need to take a breath as I realize that it's a marathon and not a sprint.  I think this book is something I'm going to have to take out again and again and again.

Jon Stewart (TV Personality) -- OK, so Jon was probably not really in the running for PERSON OF THE YEAR for me.  But I want to take a moment and recognize that, The Daily Show is one show that I catch 3-4 times a week...and it's only on 4 times a week. This year, perhaps more than any other, I have gotten totally frustrated with the world of politics. I know many accuse Jon of firing his shots from the left, but I seriously believe he's frustrated any time politics is put ahead of people and he tries to shine a light on it.  He recognizes the lies that this world tells us through the media.  Some of it is painful to watch.  Much of it is uproariously funny.  But his show has made me want to live into the notion that all politics is local.  It's about people.  It's about the people I know and meet and eat with and love.  This year, more than any other, I've been shaped by this.

Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) -- I am an Apple fan boy.  I type this on a MacBook Pro.  This year I got an iPad and and iPhone.  Much of my time is spent on a device that this guy thought up and brought to production.  He has had a lasting effect on how I communicate and the ways in which I use technology for my job...for pastoring people.  This year I mourned his death.

But with those three finalists out of the way, it's time to introduce my PERSON OF THE YEAR.

Drumroll, please.........


MY PERSON OF THE YEAR IS JULIE DOEPKEN, MY LOVELY WIFE.

Here's how it is. 

This year we celebrated our 20th anniversary.  She's been instrumental in what I do and think and who I've come to be over those 20 years.  Moreover, this year was a big year for her.  Not only did she complete her hours of education for her teaching certificate but she performed her student teaching and jumped through hoop after hoop of administrative requirements.  This was a Fall fraught with turmoil and conflict as we navigated the rough waters of her job...much of it related to a killer schedule.   Together we struggled and made decisions about what was best for us as a family. 

Over the last four months in particular, Julie has been "newsworthy."  Her work and her education, the struggles and the great joys, were what we spent time talking about.  She got up early to get to work.  She worked after everyone else had gone to bed.  She was a focus of our family and the rest of us rallied to enable her to complete the job before her.

All the while she managed to mother our five kids and be a wife to me and be an active member of our church community and the Girdwood Community as a whole.  This was no small task.

And it will have a lasting effect on all of us.  She exhibited both strength and humility...a fine example for me and our kids.  Her choices in her job will have a positive effect on our economic situation...especially important as I move from full time to 3/4 time employment in the church.  Almost always, she was an example of grace under pressure...and Lord knows we had enough pressure.

I thank God for her.

So, with that in mind, I declare that JULIE DOEPKEN IS THE PERSON OF THE YEAR...at least "my" year.

(And she should be pleased as can be that she, too, beat out Steve Jobs.)

THIS

Thanks ASBOJesus.

I've used this quote before. It's a good one.

Via

Below are words of Menno Simons (1496-1561), yes, the founder of the Mennonites. These words exemplify the notion that evangelical faith is one that is lived out in community and service. It is "incarnational."

Too often evangelical faith has been concerned about what one had on the inside (Jesus) and not how one loved because of the acceptance of Christ's first love of us. What's going on inside of us in faith will be shown with what we do with our bodies and our lives.

True evangelical faith is of such a nature it cannot lie dormant, but spreads itself out in all kinds of righteousness and fruits of love;

it dies to flesh and blood (1);
it destroys all lusts and forbidden desires (2);
it seeks, serves and fears God in its inmost soul (3);
it clothes the naked (4);
it feeds the hungry (5);
it comforts the sorrowful (6);
it shelters the destitute (7);
it aids and consoles the sad (8);
it does good to those who do it harm (9);
it serves those that harm it (10);
it prays for those who persecute it (11);
it teaches, admonishes and judges us with the Word of the Lord (12);
it seeks those who are lost (13);
it binds up what is wounded (14);
it heals the sick (15);
it saves what is strong (sound) (16);
it becomes all things to all people (17).

The persecution, suffering and anguish that come to it for the sake of the Lord’s truth have become a glorious joy and comfort to it.

What's cool about these words is how all-encompassing Menno's views faith are. There are aspects of sanctification in the individual life. There are aspects of peacemaking, justice, evangelism, and healing.

Too often Christianity has been concerned only about belief and not about life. The two are connected. Wesley, of course, got this as well. But here it is from another source.

VIA

[feyth-ree-uh-tiz-uhm]


NOUN

1. religiously based devotion, love or support of one's country
2. a system of religious belief which is tied to a belief in a particular country
3. a mixing of god (or God) and country found in many places in the world and prominent in some churches in the United States.

I learned this word from Matthew Paul Turner's blog.  A search of ye olde intertubes found no record of that word outside of his blog post today.  I think the word gets at one of the main issues that the Protestant Church in America will need to grapple with as they reach out to the rest of the world.  And my issues with said "faithriotism" go back to my days at Duke Divinity School and the classes I had with ethicist Stanley Hauerwas.  Yoking God to our country might make our country much bigger.  But it makes our God much smaller.

David Hayward suggests that it doesn't take much for some folk, perhaps even having their "idol" leave their favorite company.

Image by Todd Huffman via Flickr

And this from Eugene Peterson's, The Message, Colossians...

He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he's there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.

(This is from Ron Cole: faith unleashed...running wild.  See the whole post there.)

Via

--John Piper

I think this is an important video, telling the story about how one man's faith in God is replaced (to some extent) by the internet.  It's where religion becomes the interconnectedness of separate individuals working for good.  There are a lot of very Christian themes that come through this talk and I think it's an important video to watch.

It might make you tear up.

It might make you want to tell him all about Jesus.

It might make you wonder where the church is in the story.

It might help you see technology in a new way.

You might just agree with everything he says.

(Also, know that you might be asked to offer up an email address in order to watch more than about five minutes of it.)

HT/Matthew Paul Turner

This is a quote from her book, Evolving in Monkey Town, and found on her blog.  and I think it's a beautiful description of some of us who come to faith early and can't really remember a time when they weren't trying to follow Jesus:

People sometimes ask me when I became a Christian, and that’s a hard question to answer because I’m pretty sure that by the time I asked Jesus into my heart, he’d already been living there for a while. I was just five years old at the time, a compact little person with pigtails sticking out of my head like corn tassels, and I remember thinking it strange that someone as important as Jesus would need an invitation. Strange now is the fact that before I lost my first tooth or learned to ride a bike or graduated from kindergarten, I committed my life to a man who asked his followers to love their enemies, to give without expecting anything in return, and to face public execution if necessary. It is perhaps an unfair thing to ask of a child, but few who decide to follow Jesus know from the beginning what they’re getting themselves into.

Image via Wikipedia. . . To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you.
-- 1 Peter 1:1-2

[T]he work of salvation is one in which all three act together, the Father purposing redemption, the Son securing it, and the Spirit applying it.
-- J.I. Packer

The Christian life is a matter of "being taken up into the life of the Trinity."
-- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The Trinity and the Gospel have the same shape.  Our faith is about entering into Trinitarian life...entering into it by way of the Trinity.

Gotta' say, I don't do a whole lot of thinking about the Trinity.  It's more practical, it seems, to separate the persons of the Trinity out from each other.  It's easier that way.

But, when you bring them all together and think of what it means for faith and the relationship within the Godhead itself...it blows my mind. 


(HT/ Jared Wilson)

This is from her book, Evolving in Monkey Town.

I was a fundamentalist because my security and self-worth and sense of purpose in life were all wrapped up in getting God right—in believing the right things about him, saying the right things about him, and convincing others to embrace the right things about him too. Good Christians, I believed, don’t succumb to the shifting sands of culture. Good Christians, I used to think, don’t change their minds …

I was a fundamentalist not because of the beliefs I held but because of how I held them: with a death grip. It would take God himself to finally pry some of them out of my hands.

photo © 2010 Peta de-Aztlan | more info (via: Wylio)
Paraphrasing A.W. Tozer,

What comes to mind when we think of Jesus is the most important thing about our Christian faith.

Ron Cole, who writes "The Weary Pilgrim" describes the work of Jarrod McKenna as the "Australian version of Shane Claiborne."  "The Weary Pilgrim" highlights a podcast of Jarrod's.

What I wanted to quote, however, is how he describes Jarrod and this "radical fringe" of Christianity.

He is part of a radical element on the the fringe of the church that sees faith and works, the practice and action of faith as being critical. The teachings of Jesus put into practice must be lived out, as radically today... to dilute them, co-modify and embed them in western church culture is not the redemptive vision and imagination of Jesus. This radical fringe believes Christianity is in trouble because it has become to passive and culturally accommodating. They are stirring the luke-warm pot of status quo Christianity.

That's some powerful language there. 

And I am left with the struggle of determining how I should live this out when I have bills to pay, kids to pick up, a church to fund, construction workers to check in on, and a stewardship campaign to close out.

Sometimes I seem and feel so far from this "radical fringe."  I feel so...established...so diluted...so co-modified...so embedded.

Alas.

Image by megpi via Flickr

This is a post over at Ragamuffin Soul, a blog by Carlos Whittaker that inspires and challenges me.

And, this quote..., well, it inspires and challenges me.

First off, it's entirely out of context.  I have to admit this. As I read this I have no idea what it is that brought Mr. Cain to this conclusion.  Could he have been made to feel "unchristian" because he brought up questions of faith or because he expressed doubts?  Maybe he had just come back from a retreat with some "SuperChristians" and others doubted his own way of expressing his faith?  Perhaps he just got off the plane after sitting next to someone who spent the entire flight trying to convert him?  Or, quite possibly, this was spoken or written after years of trying to find a church that would welcome him because he's divorced?  Or or a minority?  Or Goth?  Or....

Secondly, even though I am a born-again Christian and have been rescued from my sin by the grace of Christ (Thank God!), I have had my struggles with some of my "born again" brothers and sisters in Christ.  I have felt excluded.  I have had my faith questioned.  I have had my interpretation of Scripture belittled.  I have even had the way I pray -- which can be quite colloquial -- criticized.  Some of my issues have been semantics...just the language we're all comfortable or uncomfortable with.

Third, there are a whole lot of really awesome "born again Christians" out there.  I'm friends with a lot of them (which sounds pretty meaningless as I write this).  I find many of them to be challenging and accepting, loving and respectful, and really not pains at all.  The notion that they are all "pains" is a cultural generalization that is merely a stereotype.  This is not to say that there aren't "pains" among them.  It just means that the generalization is a generalization.  This is a cultural stereotype that, even though it is not entirely true, has some basis in truth based on the experiences of many.

Fourth, and last, Mr. Cain could very well have said this about me at times.  I sometimes wear my Christianity like a badge...giving me the authority of the "faith police" in my environment.  I have bouts of self-righteousness and I can, I know, sometimes struggle with the fact that other Christians aren't more like me and my own understanding of the faith.  I recognize that as sin.  I recognize it as pride. I recognize that as Pharisaic. And I see that sin in myself.  At times, I'm part of the problem.  I merely hope and pray that my actions, my words, my expression of Christ in this world won't lead to all Christians being defined by the same broad stroke Herb Cain uses here.

It is in ours.

 Thanks to ABSOJESUS for another fitting cartoon.

I'm in Nashville, staying at the rather nice Renaissance Hotel next to the Convention Center for the School of Congregational Development for the United Methodist Church.  There's about 500 or so attendees, from what I've been told.  My guess is that there's more than that if worship last evening was any indication.  Lots of talks.  Lots of education.  Lots of worship.  And it's fun having a layperson from our congregation along as well.

My guess is that a lot of my blog posts from the next several days are going to include information that I've been given while here.   This is one of them.

One of the speakers (actually someone giving an introduction tonight) said the following:

AUTHENTIC ENTHUSIASM BRINGS FORTH HOSPITALITY AND EVANGELISM.

Tim Keller offered this observation in his introduction to “The Reason for God”.

A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person’s faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen patiently to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection.

Found over at Think Christian.


I have various doubts.  But I will not share them here.  It's not the place.   Not here.  Not yet.