phil-larson

The following is an excerpt from the book Follow Me to Freedom by Shane Claiborne and John M. Perkins. Brings to light that slavery hasn't gone away. It is just masked with a different look and we are letting it happen due to our egocentric nature. We need to bring about true social justice. Loving this book.

Currently I'm reading.  I was going to start off telling you, "Currently I'm reading (insert title here)" but the fact that I was reading period was quite astounding enough.  What am I reading?  Donald Miller's newest book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years.  I have never read Don Miller's books and I suppose I was probably supposed to at least read "Blue Like Jazz" before this one, but I haven't.  I was at a local book store that was going out of business.  They had some deals.  Of course, I found my way over to the "Religious/Inspirational" section.  It's funny, those labels.  What I have experienced is that all books should be "inspirational," right?  Isn't that the point of books?  Isn't that how books catch on?  They hit you just right that they inspire you to spread the word about a particular book.  Word of mouth: a book's best (and cheapest) PR work.  Now, about that category "religious."  What I'm finding lately, in that section, is that with such huge writers as Shane Claiborne, Anne Lamott, Donald Miller, Francis Chan, Rob Bell, etc. the common focus is more anti-religion in the way of legalism of distracting traditions and more of a focus on the actual lifestyle practices of Jesus.  Was Jesus religious?  Ask the religious leaders in that day, they would have said no. They valued religion and its traditions at the sake of overlooking the person as a human.  A human with faults and feelings and a desire for deep relationship.  Enough ranting.  The book, right?  You want to hear about the book.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is a story about story.  Two movie makers approach Don about making a movie about his best-selling memoir, Blue Like Jazz.  It has caused him to take a long look at the story he was leading.  A Million Miles picks apart what makes a story great, first in movies then in real life.  ...but I can't tell you much more about the book.  Many incredible points are made.  Many I can't make you understand.  A lot of what his stories revolve around is the simple truth that experience in a journey is what changes a person, builds a person, grows a person.  The journey has a greater affect than arriving at the destination.  If we flew from the west coast to the east coast, what kind of stories could you have and what sorts of things would you have learned.  Probably not a whole lot.  What if you biked from the west coast to the east coast?  Would the stories be greater and would the lessons be more profound. Don did and they were.  The lives we live are the stories we are choosing to tell.  We have the capability of getting off our butts and giving the world a story worth retelling.

A friend of mine decides that he wants to start blogging.  I tell him that I always thought he should.  He tells me that he has hesitated because he doesn't know why anyone would want to read anything that he has to say.  What gives him authority to say anything of importance and why would anyone care?  A couple of years ago I started http://www.AGuildToBringAbout.com.  It is a community blog aimed at sifting through our encounters with God and inspiring readers to do the same.  Sometimes the posts are thought provoking and profound, discoveries resulting from the sifting.  And other times the posts are...well, a part of the sifting process.  One night, one of the writers was having a rough night.  She goes off and vents about what she is frustrated with God about and wonders why the heck she is where she is, etc., etc.  I tell my blog-conflicted friend about this post that she wrote only the night before our conversation and that sometimes people just want something they can relate to.  They don't have to learn anything or come away with some huge paradigm shift...just something they can read and say "Yes, I know how she feels and dangit, God, I feel the same way.  So what are we going to do about it??"  In the end it pushes them in some direction, which is better than the no direction they were going to sit in had they not read it.

Basically our stories, when told, affect the stories of others.  They connect and intertwine in some way, allowing one person's story to shove or tug another person's story, shaping that person's story all the more and allowing them to overlap with someone else's story.  Jesus tells parables (or stories) all the time because he knows that that is one of the best ways to make something understandable because then the lesson becomes relatable.  "Oh, now I get it because I've been in that situation before."  This is why "religion" is so much better when it becomes relatable.  The do's and don'ts and the force-feeding of traditions get in the way of something being revealed through journey and self-discovery, and it gets in the way of relationship.  Boy: "Mom, why do we have to take communion every time at mass?" Mom: "Because that's how we've always done it."  This leaves little room for a boy to come to a realization on his own about the magnitude of Christ's huge sacrifice for his undeserving self, bringing him to a desperate reality that he needs this sacrificed body and needs this sacrificed blood.  He needs it so much because he is nothing without it.  This sacrifice awes him to humility and brings meaning to his life.

When we go straight to the destination, there's no self-discovery, there's no elements to be weathered by along the way, there's no journey, no story.  This is the reason why I will never be able to make you understand this book in some blog posts.  I experienced my own journey through it.  Now it's your turn.

John 5 tells the story of a man who had been crippled for 38 years.  He, along with other cripples and sick, sought out the healing power of the pools of Bethesda.  It was widely believed that a ripple in the pool was an angel who would stir up the water.  The first one in would be healed.  This man, crippled for 38 years, never made it in first.  Why would anyone who wasn’t crippled or ill go to such an unclean place?  Yet we find Jesus there.  Upon being asked by Jesus if he wants to be healed, he says, “I have no one to help me in.”  No family, no friends, no one.  For 38 years, this guy experienced being the lowest of the low with a condition so disabling that he could never be the first one in the water...for years.  He was lost in the crowd among the others.  No one to lend him a hand or a simple push toward the pool.   Jesus notices, speaks to him, asks him if he wants help.  The first in years, maybe the first ever.

The guy had the faith.  It shows by him being there for so many years, trying to make it in.  He lacked the ability.  Jesus grants the ability.   When we seem helplessly lost, Jesus takes notice.  In our time of need, demonstrate the faith and watch Jesus grant the ability.  Romans 5:6 says, “When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just     the right time and died for us sinners.”  It is in our utter helplessness when Christ’s sacrifice carries the most weight.  It becomes personal.  Why?  Because you are being noticed.  You are being noticed by a big and significant Creator who demonstrates over and over again that he takes notice of the things the world would deem as small and insignificant.

We were in MN two weeks ago to honor the life of Kylee’s grandfather.  As her family walked out of the hospital, they witnessed a large, vivid rainbow across the entire sky.  It then dissipated as if only to exist for them alone, offering hope that the Creator notices them in this time of loss and utter helplessness.  Hold tight to this promise, for he offers it to all.  He offers it to you.

Here's the deal.  I met I guy while at Dunkin Donuts and we talked for a really long time.  Have you ever experienced something that was so divine and incredible (even something small like a conversation) that we fear to tell someone about it because there is no way that they are going to fully grasp the same experience you had.  If they're not going to fully get it and I'm not going to fully be able to portray it the way it happened, why try?  Yeah, it was like that.

Basically, this guy was leaving and felt a tug by the spirit to come talk to me.  After I told him that I was a high school pastor at The Bridge, conversation ensued.  Come to find out our ideas of how ministry needs to be done today lined up.  The old way of doing church is just that, old.  It tends to (when done incorrectly) focus primarily on the keeping of legalistic traditions only to overlook the hurt and need in people's lives.  So many people are so burned by church that they wouldn't dare set a foot in one again for fear of another burning, which is completely understandable.  This guy and I come to find out that we know a lot of the same people and he went to college with my dad.  Here's this 56 year-old man that tells me his life as a traditional Church of God pastor who hears from God "I didn't really like how you were as a Church of God pastor for so many years.  Let's be done with this."  This guy over the last 12 years, gets his whole view on ministry rocked when he decided to get involved in other, non-traditional ways of ministry.  He begins to do ministry on the street, takes the living word of God to the homeless, lives with them and gains insight.  It became more of a ministry to him as he began to truly understand what the ministry of Jesus was and how we tend to downplay it as "oh, that was then, this is now.  Life is different now."  Life is more similar today than we realize.  Too often are we preaching to the choir, people.  The choir don't need preaching to.  They should be the ones preaching.  One of my favorite verses is Mark 2:17 when Jesus says, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."  What are we doing about that in our churches today?  Would a homeless person feel welcome in your church.  What about when they see what everyone else is wearing or how they are acting?  What about when some traditions are being performed that they don't know about?  Will they continue to feel left in the dark?  Will they feel accepted?  For some people who have been burnt by the church, this next time they show up is you only chance.  Show them a Jesus that would accept them and love them, the same Jesus that hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors and all those "sinners" that were looked down upon by the "religious leaders" of that day.  You got one chance to show them the church Jesus had intended all along.  One chance or ... they're gone.  "That's it!  The last straw!  This is no religion I want to be a part of!"  Me neither.

"You're not as radical as you think you are," this guy tells me.  Of course, I get a little defensive, telling him all the ways we are reaching out to the community, loving others who have never been loved and all this.  At the beginning he asks me, "What is God doing?  What can you see happening that is getting you excited?"  I tell him how I came to The Bridge and how they only way we are going to be able to do this is by raising our own support.  God keeps providing the money, God is providing in so many ways.  I thought that was pretty radical right?  No, he tells me "You're not as radical as you think you are.  There are 2 places that I send these people on the street to for church and The Bridge is one of them.  You guys are doing great things.  But you are not as radical as you think you are there."  We explore what that word means.  He tells me, "You have one chance with these people that I send to your church or else they're done going to church forever.  Do you notice them, are you creating a community that notices them, and then are you following up with them on the streets?"

We were sitting there talking for a long time.  He asks me, "How many homeless people have you seen walk past this window?"  I said that I noticed one and described him.  He said, "Yeah, that was Paul.  What about the other 3 (and he names them).  He says, "I know 2 of those guys closely, the other 2 I just know who they are."  He then asks, "Do you see Jesus is those people."  I said (sheepishly), "I know that I should..."  I mentioned my one time I went to a prison to do ministry there.  He told me about this prison in Noblesville that he goes to twice a week (By the way, in no way was he ever portraying himself as better than me or a better Christian of whatever).  He said that he goes there specifically because of the large amount of sex offenders that are in there.  He said that the sex offender is the modern day leper to the church.  "No one wants a sex offender in your church when there's a children's ministry, right?  You know the ones down the street because they have already commited a crime and that information has to be made public."  There is one on Kylee's and my street.  We were warned by people on our block what he looks like and the car he drives.  They all steer clear of him...  This guy says, "What about the sex offenders who haven't done anything yet?  The sex offenders that, given the right situation, snap and commit their first crime.  That's why we need to see Jesus in everyone.  All people need to experience this life-changing love of Christ before it's too late." 

What are you doing to show that love?  What aren't you doing?  There's an urgency and expectation that needs to be realized in the church today.  Does your church have that?  Does it even want it?  It's a big responsibility Jesus asks of us, to represent him.  It is detremental to how Christianity is portrayed to the world and no wonder some people get a bad taste in their mouth when someone uses the words "Christian" or "Church."  If you don't see it, please stop looking inward.  Look at all the hurt.  There's so much to be seen.  Not only seen but noticed.  Sometimes we see it and close ourselves off to it.  We shelter ourselves from it.  Jesus went straight for it, held nothing back and he gives us the same power to do so.  Jesus was fully human.  Some of the things he did seems superhuman... no, he was fully human.  The same power that lives in him, lives in us.  Everything he did, we can.  This guy told me, "Don't let your generation fall into the same lie that my generation did: that we were living radically.  The church isn't the head, Jesus is the head.  We got really good at worshipping on Sundays a believed that was ministry.  We came to believe that the only thing sacred was when we came together one morning out of the week to worship together." 

Wake up church!  Live outside of yourself.  Real ministry happens in real life circumstances.  Often the real life is ugly but that's where Jesus hung out: in the ugly, with the ugly.  We are too quick to shut our eyes and ears to what we deem as "worldly" and "ungodly" but not quick enough to shut our mouths about it.  That's not how change happens.  There is no regard for people as people that way.  They are just another number, another soul to convert.  Look out!  This is not the way of Jesus, this is not the way of the everlasting.  That will never bring everlasting life.  Jesus is grace, Jesus loves without condition, Jesus allows for self-discovery and never forces himself upon anyone!  The choice is individual, and we better not feel like we have the responsibility to make them see what we see as truth.  Truth is a personal discovery.  God, Jesus, is personal discovery.  It will never be provable to everyone, ever.  Even when Christ seems so completely evident, people will still choose hell (Luke 16:19-31).

What are we to do?  Simple.  See Jesus in others and love them as Jesus would, seeing their whole person inside of them and paying attention to and identifying with their needs.  Love.  That's what it comes down to.  Unconditional.  Love.  No strings attached.  They don't owe you anything.  You don't owe them anything.  The love of Christ you have been shown needs to overflow and become the same love that you show everyone you come in contact with.  And that's the only reason.  But that reason is good enough.  Because that love is radical.

I'm reading a book entitled:  "unChristian: What a new generation really thinks about Christianity...and why it matters" by David Kinnaman.  That's pretty self-explanatory.  This guy runs surveys for research as a profession.  His findings are pretty alarming but, ultimately, it starts with us who proclaim to be "Christian."  What image are we portraying?  FYI, he calls those who are not of the Christian faith "outsiders," for they are outside the Christian faith.  But he does explain that he has trouble using this term because it has a tendancy to define them as what they are not.  Here's an excerpt that I read and like.  Can you relate or have you had a similar experience with those who proclaim to be Christian?

"One thrity-five-year-old believer from Claifornia put it this way: 'Christians have become political, judgmental, intolerant, weak, religious, angry, and without balance.  Christianity has become a nice Sunday drive.  Where is the living God, the Holy Spirit, an amazing Jesus, the love, the compassion, the holiness?  This type of life, how I yearn for that.'  Jesus was called a friend of sinners, relentlessly pursuing the down-trodden.  What an irony that today his followers are seen in the opposite light!  How can people love God, whom they can't see, if those of us who claim to represent him don't respond to outsiders with love?"

A lot of those outside the faith of Christianity appreciate what Jesus had to say and how he lived his life.  It is becoming more and more evident to them that the church today is far too often claiming to be followers of Jesus without living his same lifestyle.  This, understandably so, is not the kind of faith they want to associate themselves with.  The book also talked about many young believers today who avoid saying that they are Christian so that they can distance themselves from the current "branding" of that word.  Then, they say, it is easier for them to bring their friends into a relationship with Christ.

Hmm, interesante and sobering.  I'm only 25 pages into the book but I'm realizing that it's time to wake up... actually it has been time to wake up for quite some time...  It is time that this word "Christian" gets some redeeming.  We are called to be that, the hands and feet of God.  It is up to us, the way we represent him, our love which needs to be unconditional.  If you have experienced this love, we are called to give it to others.  How selfish are we if we hold onto this experience and keep it for ourselves.  You are the light of the world!  You have been given this power!  Christ says, "Freely you have recieved, freely give." It is not to be abused.  Representing our God is a life or death task.  You have the ability to destroy his image to someone.  But you also have the ability to represent the true loving God and also, maybe most importantly, restore that image to someone who has recieved a contradicting one.  Let's wake up.  The time is now.