This week's sermon passage is really challenging when it comes to evangelism. I am still trying to get my mind around what evangelism will look like in a postmodern church context. Brian McLaren's character Neo, from A New Kind of Christian encourages us to count conversations rather than conversions. Yet the urgency I see in the book of Acts with the apostles witnessing seems to be more intense than I see in much of postmodern/emerging church thought.

Here is a quote from the NIVAC commentary on Acts by Ajith Fernando:

This whole passage pulsates with the urgency of the evangelistic task. The apostles are arrested for evangelizing (Acts 5:18). But after their miraculous release the angel tells them to go to the center of Jewish religion, the temple, and proclaim "the full message"; they are not to give in to the temptation to compromise it (Acts 5:20). The divine encouragement to persist in witness in spite of threats is a recurrent theme in Acts (Acts 4:31; Acts 18:9, 10; Acts 23:11). This not only shows how important witness is, but also that people need constant encouragement, for it is easy to lose passion for evangelism, especially in the face of opposition.

When the apostles are rearrested and asked to explain their actions, they use the opportunity to proclaim the message, not try to secure a release (Acts 5:29-39). This method of witness has been used throughout history. Christianity is a religion with a message, a message so important that it simply must be shared to all who live on earth. God's salvation in Christ is the answer of the Creator of the world to its basic problems. If it is that urgent, then every human being should be told this good news. Thus, when people bring us to trial for preaching, we must explain God's message. Both Stephen and Paul did this when they were brought to trial (Acts 7:2-53; Acts 24:25; Acts 26:2-29).

Is the postmodern, emerging church urgent enough in its aproach to evangelism? Are we passionate enough about the Good News of Jesus Christ?

I know that we must be sensitive to our audience. I am turned off by much of evangelicalism's attempts at evangelism. I am deeply troubled by the reductionistic approach to the gospel which often misses the point and fails to change lives. But one thing that is true of much of evangelicalism is the sense of urgency.

Fernando goes on to say this:

Evangelism also influences our attitude toward success on earth. From Acts it is clear that suffering is an essential feature of effective evangelism. In this passage the suffering of shame (flogging is a humiliating experience) because of faithful witness is an honor worth rejoicing about (Acts 5:41). What the world considers as failure we may consider as success if it furthers the cause of evangelism and, as here, demonstrates our loyalty to Christ. We must always look at life with evangelistic eyes and be incessantly involved in evangelism. Even if we are brought to trial, we must use it as an opportunity to witness for Christ. If we are dishonored because of evangelism, we can view that dishonor as a great honor.

I agree that suffering is clearly to be expected by Christians and often our culture of pain avoidance influences what we followers of Christ deem as success. Our churches often define success by bodies, bucks, and bricks. Suffering is not part of the equation.

Yet I struggle with the reductionistic idea that "we must always look at life with evangelistic eyes." Here is the crux of my struggle. To look at life this way will cause one to be urgent. But is evangelism the end all be all of life? Don't get me wrong; my evangelical upbringing is still strong and I feel that evangelism is of great importance. But I also think that God is very concerned with my spiritual growth. Perhaps this is the answer to my dilemma. Perhaps greater spiritual maturity brings extra urgency to witness. What I mean is that witness becomes a natural outgrowth of spiritual maturity. And the lack of spiritual maturity in so many Christians today leads the modern church to create programs to entice conversions.

Let's go and make disciples not programs!

MSNBC - Girl, 6, recovering from 10-day crash ordeal:

A 6-year-old girl who survived 10 days in a crashed car, nourished only by dry noodles and Gatorade, was recovering from dehydration as her family marveled at her resilience and mourned the death of her mother.

Having a five year old son and a four year old daughter, this story is gut wrenching for me.

OnlineRev - Partnering With Pastors:
New Job Descriptions for the emerging Church

by Leonard Sweet

This isn't an easy time to pastor a congregation. I have utmost sympathy for those who are having trouble making the transition to ministry in the emerging culture.

Once something sinks into the skull, it's hard to get it out and embrace a contrary idea. New modes of worship come easier for some than others. This suggested list of “worship positions” in the emerging church is no doubt old hat to those of you who've been moving in these directions for years. But for some of us, it will be a stretch to transition our ministry to embrace these possibilities:

Ushers—an usher used to escort people to their seats, where they were enjoined to sit down, be still, and keep silent. But a true usher has the sacred role of ushering people into the presence of God. An usher is the name of every member of the worship design team. The “head usher” is who used to be called the worship leader, who's now less a moderator of order or a human metronome keeping everybody together than a participation artist.
Curators—a new position which is already manifesting itself in what the English call alt.worship (alternative worship) circles. A curator is a servant of the people who curates (not leads) worship by functioning as an “installer of art and creator of an environment that is conducive to experiencing God” (see Andrew Jones, “Is This the Next New Worship?” FaithWorks).
Concierges—experts in the art of hospitality, replacing what used to be called the church host or hostess. George Hunter's right when he says that the presence of church visitors is “the most misperceived signal in local churches today, and the church's most neglected opportunity” (The Celtic Way of Evangelism). But concierges need to be employed for members as well, resolving problems, handling complaints, and managing “moments of truth.”
Servers—people who put the service in “worship service.” Instead of bringing people to their pews, servers bring coffee, handouts, artworks, and other necessary instruments to the people, who are increasingly at tables or in other conducive seating arrangements to fit the worship experience. Servers build a service culture in the church at every point of contact (starting in the parking lot), and mentor others in service training.
Sommelier—more than a fancy name for “wine steward,” this is a person whose ministry is to know each member of the congregation intimately, and find creative and original ways to personalize the church's ministries and make people feel at home.

Instead of lumping everyone together as nameless “volunteers” (how I hate that word) or “unpaid servants” or even “ministers,” the church needs a vocabulary of respect and nuance that names people's ministries. What other ones would you suggest?

Great article! I like the position of liturgist that Brian McLaren has often discussed. Good Friday services are a great example of the opportunity and need for liturgists.

Here in Wray, we had a Good Friday service at the Presbyterian church. We included readings from Jesus The Son of Man by Kahlil Gibran. It's a great book with fictionalized readings from the perspectives of people who witnessed Jesus and Good Friday. We incorporated these readings with Scripture readings which introduced each character. Then we sang one verse and the chorus responsively to "Were You There". It was a powerful service. I will try to post the entire service soon.

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: You Are What You Tax:

Take a break as you fill out your 1040 form, and play this game: suppose you could choose which government entities your tax dollars support - and in what proportion. Since it's a thought experiment, let's assume that local and state government functions are part of the list. What percentages will you assign to which departments, agencies and programs?
Some people will split their taxes between the local police and national defense and leave it at that. Some will assign it all to the Environmental Protection Agency. Taxpayers from red states will choose differently from taxpayers from blue states. But polling data tells us enough about the government services people value to permit reasonably confident predictions about the national results.
Police, fire, water and sewage, courts and prisons and national defense will get far more money than they would ever have the nerve to request. The allocations for national parks, environmental protection, air-traffic control and highways will probably be many times their current budgets. But my first point (match my prediction against your own choices) is that almost all the choices will be for tangible services. Most of them will be for services that fall under the classic understanding of a 'public good' - something that individuals cannot easily provide on their own and that is shared by all (police protection, clean air).

Fun thought experiment! How would you answer the question?

In a similar question, if you specified what your tithe or giving to the church paid for, what would you want to fund? In denominations with a "head tax" I would bet that much of the church bureaucracy would be left unfunded. Is that really such a bad thing?

And the local church may find that people are willing to volunteer more than they are willing to pay professionals to do ministry. I imagine that most people would pay for those things that they receive the most benefit from. So what are those things in the church that people typically think they receive the most benefit from?

I'm currently having trouble with my Amazon links to what I'm reading and listening to. I have been tempted in the past to switch to Typepad but I am cheap. Hopefully I can get this sorted out.

The New York Times > Movies > Holy Week Pilgrims Flock to 'Passion':

"The Passion of the Christ,' Mel Gibson's unflinching film of the Crucifixion, drew crowds last week during Holy Week, the most sacred period of the Christian calendar. Attendance grew steadily through the week and reached its highest on Good Friday, the commemoration of the Crucifixion

The film finally made it to our one screen movie theater this weekend. Several people from the Presbyterian church had a potluck supper before going to the movie together. We read Luke 22:14-23:65 before going. It was a very moving, yet difficult film to watch. But it was extremely powerful to see on Good Friday.

The New York Times > National > Drought Worsens Across West and Threat of Wildfires Grows:

The mountains of Colorado and northern New Mexico got more than a foot of snow this weekend, and meteorologists said the Albuquerque area could be looking at record rainfall this month. But this is only a start toward recovery.
'It'll help,' said Larry Palser, a farmer in Colorado's Washington County. 'It'll buy us some time.'
The United States Natural Resources Conservation Service says there could be water restrictions and widespread crop and pasture losses in central Nevada, southern Idaho, most of south-central Montana and eastern and southwestern Utah.
Most of southern Idaho and parts of southwest Montana are in 'exceptional drought,' the Department of Agriculture said. That's a step worse than 'extreme drought,' which the department said best described the situation in other parts of Montana and in Utah, Wyoming, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon and Colorado.
With dry trees raising the risk of wildfires, it is not just farmers who will be hurting. Already this year, 10,000 acres have burned in Arizona, along with 8,500 acres in Colorado.
'In terms of fire, I think everybody is real nervous,' said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council in Portland, Ore.

we definitely are in extreme drought here in eastern Colorado. Pastoring two small churches out here and many of the farmers are hurting. Many are looking for jobs in town or with the USDA. All of the dry land farmers will be making insurance claims on their wheat crops this year.

What I Need from PoMonasticism // Radical Congruency.com
Great thoughts!

TheOOZE - Articles: Viewing Article:

Have you ever heard of a church or ministry that teaches anyone a scripturally based criterion for decisions about real estate and where and how we should live our lives?

Challenging article! I was first exposed to Sine's ideas on housing in his excellent book Mustard Seed Vs. McWorld: Reinventing Life and Faith for the Future. Very challenging and countercultural thinking!

LivingRoom >> A space for Life: Stations of the Cross:

With Easter fast approaching I thought I'd post a link to a great collection of images by Australian Artist Geoff Todd. They are an interesting collection that go through the 14 Stations of the Cross. They make a great reflection time in preparation for the weekend.

I hope to be able to do this in the next day or two.

The New York Times > Business > Oman's Oil Yield Long in Decline, Shell Data Show:

Perhaps more ominously for the world's oil outlook, he added that the failure of Shell's horizontal drilling technology in Oman suggested that even advanced extraction techniques 'won't bring back the good old days.'

I have never been much of an environmentalist. This is largely due to my evangelical "left behind" theology upbringing. But this is changing. More and more I am understanding the gospel to include all of creation and not just a "free-get-out-of-jail-card."

My reflections started changing on this topic as I was preaching through the book of 1 Corinthians and especially chapter 15. One of the most interesting questions I wrestled with from that chapter was "Why is a physical resurrection of Jesus Christ so important and necessary? Why is a spiritual resurrection not enough?"

I believe that part of the answer to that question is that God is working to redeem (put right) all of creation. All of the physical creation. Clearly we have made quite a mess of it.

Essay: The Altered Human Is Already Here:

To look at it in another way, Americans take so many drugs that some researchers - Dr. Christian G. Daughton of the Environmental Protection Agency's National Exposure Research Laboratory in Las Vegas, for example - are worried about the effects on the environment. What does it mean if the sewers run rich with Zoloft? Or to be more precise, what might happen to fish eggs if the rivers soak up waste water with discarded and excreted pharmaceuticals and personal care products, like shampoo?
No one has the answer yet, but the idea that what runs through our collective bloodstream is a potential environmental hazard makes you look at your medicine cabinet in a different way.

No kidding!

In Math, Computers Don't Lie. Or Do They?
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'I don't like them, because you sort of don't feel you understand what's going on,' said Dr. John H. Conway, a math professor at Princeton. But other mathematicians see a major boon: just as the computers of today can beat the grand masters of chess, the computers of tomorrow may be able to discover proofs that have eluded the grandest of mathematicians.

Is this a non-native response to the emerging new technological culture?

Op-Ed Contributor: The Fog of War:

These accounts may seem perplexing given the momentous nature of the unfolding events. One might even wonder whether one of the parties has engaged in willful distortion. But these conflicts need not involve bad faith on the part of either person.
Indeed, conflicting recollections are neither unfamiliar (recall the testimonies of Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill in 1991) nor surprising. The way the brain stores and retrieves information, research shows, can sometimes lead people to hold different memories of the same event.
Memory errors can be classified into seven categories (sometimes called sins). Three are especially relevant to conflicting recollections: transience, misattribution and bias. Transience is the term for the well-known fact that memories tend to fade over time (unless we rehash and discuss them frequently). Experiments show that specific details of an experience are lost more quickly than general information about it.
In one such study, 12 people were asked to summarize their activities during a 'typical day' at work; they also were asked to recount exactly what they did the day before and a week before. The study confirmed what some researchers suspected: the day-old memory was a nearly verbatim record of what actually happened, but a week later memory was closer to a generic description of what usually happens. With the passage of time, memory shifts from a reproduction of the past to a reconstruction that is heavily influenced by general knowledge and beliefs.
Similar considerations almost certainly apply to what Mr. Clarke and Mr. Miller remember. Of course, 9/11 was not an ordinary day at the office. Shocking experiences like the terrorist attacks or the explosion of the space shuttle tend to be better remembered than mundane occurrences. But studies show that with the passage of time, people can forget and distort details of even these experiences.

Such errors are sometimes associated with the memory sin of misattribution, where we remember aspects of an experience correctly but attribute them to the wrong source. For instance, a college student recalled that she first learned of the Challenger explosion in 1986 from television, when the actual source was a group of friends. Misattribution errors can occur for traumatic experiences, as in the case of a rape victim who accused a psychologist of assault based on her vivid memory of his face. In reality, she had seen the psychologist on television just before she was raped.

Because parts of misattributed memories are accurate, people can maintain high confidence in such mistaken recollections. Both Mr. Clarke's and Mr. Miller's accounts are probably correct in some respects, but either one may have fallen victim to misattribution, leading to different claims about who said what to whom.

Bias, a third memory sin, occurs when current knowledge, beliefs or feelings distort the past. For example, studies have shown that we often inaccurately recall political attitudes we held in the past. Our recollection ends up reflecting our current attitudes instead. Research also reveals an egocentric bias, meaning we remember the past in ways that reflect positively our current self — a bias from which government officials are not likely to be immune.

Transience, misattribution and bias occur even when we do our best to recollect the past accurately. Without external corroboration, we cannot know for certain which aspects of Mr. Clarke's or Mr. Miller's account are off the mark — but we do know enough about memory's sins to implicate the likely culprits. It's something the commission, and the country, should keep in mind when Ms. Rice testifies as well.

Could these memory "sins" explain the different accounts of Christ's resurrection in the Gospels? This may make some evangelicals uncomfortable seeing how a view such as this may conflict with the idea of inerrancy and possibly infallibility.

False Promises on Gas:

The sad part about this squabbling is that it drives the debate toward short-term fixes of dubious value and away from the heart of the matter, which is getting the country to cut consumption while embarking on a serious program of alternative fuels. Tweaking the petroleum reserve, jawboning foreign leaders, even increasing refining capacity - none of these ideas have ever provided sustained protection against the volatility of world oil prices. A better approach would be to wean the nation from its profligate use of oil. In that context, a 50-cent gasoline tax is not a ridiculous idea; had such a tax been imposed a decade ago, consumption might well be less than it is now.

Tired of energy shaping so much of our political debate? Me too! Why didn't we make the difficult changes during the '70's and the energy crisis? I guess we don't want it to hurt too much. Eventually it's going to hurt a lot!

A Heretical View of File Sharing:

"But what if the industry is wrong, and file sharing is not hurting record sales?
It might seem counterintuitive, but that is the conclusion reached by two economists who released a draft last week of the first study that makes a rigorous economic comparison of directly observed activity on file-sharing networks and music buying."

This is a very interesting article. One conclusion reached by the researchers is the that many people who download music would have never bought the album in the first place. I know I fall into this category in many respects. Fortunately, we now have iTunes and MusicMatch that allows you to legally download individual songs without purchasing the entire album.

A Bridge Over Troubled People - Christianity Today Magazine:

'The church has got to rediscover its purpose in a postmodern culture, when absolute truth is no longer accepted by the mainstream,' Dorrell says. 'Unchurched people are looking for something that speaks genuineness to them.'
Church Under the Bridge, he says, serves as a call for renewal for the church in America to be about the Father's business.

This sounds like a very powerful ministry.

Our Sprawling, Supersize Utopia:

You don't have to travel very far in America to see radically different sorts of people, most of whom know very little about the communities and subcultures just down the highway.

Fascinating article on urban sprawl and the growing distance between people in American culture.

The Quest to Forget:

All of us have done things in our lives we'd rather not have done, things that flood us with remorse or pain or embarrassment whenever we call them to mind. If we could erase them from our memories, would we? Should we? Questions like these go to the nature of remembrance and have inspired films like ''Memento'' and, most recently, ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,'' in which two ex-lovers pay to erase their memories of each other. We are a long way from the day when scientists might be able to zap specific memories right out of our heads, like a neurological neutron bomb, but even the current research in this area ought to make us stop and think. Aren't our memories, both the good and the bad, the things that make us who we are? If we eliminate our troubling memories, or stop them from forming in the first place, are we disabling the mechanism through which people learn and grow and transform? Is a pain-free set of memories an impoverished one?

Pain avoidance taken to an entirely new level.

I always find that my first full week back from vacation or study leave is difficult. I think it's because my soul needs to catch up with my body!

My wife and I had a wonderful talk on our way home from Brownsville, TX. We discussed the difficulties in her family and how it seems that none of her "Christian" friends have ever been able to or wanted to walk with her through the difficulties in her family. Many Christians give cheap, formulaic advice. "Forgive and forget."

But aren't Christians suppose to come alongside fellow strugglers? Yes, we are to exhort each other and encourage one another but how can we effectively do that if we are not walking alongside one another?

When it comes right down to it, most Christians are too afraid or too selfish to really get their hands dirty with the business of truly loving someone else.

I hope and pray the emerging church challenges this!