asleep next to me

unaware because i was taken
by a glowing box
you stumbled in with pouty lips and sleepy eyes
you'd go first
kiss
good night

peace
a soft glow upon your face
shadows beget light
magnifies your presence

the thunder in my chest tells me
reach over and love her
comb her hair and touch her face
with your sinful hands and fingers

dare i cast my clumsy pebble
into my pond of beauty and simplicity?

tug o' war
because you're
asleep next to me

When I consider our church and the responsibility of building it and growing and and nurturing it in the right direction, I am humbled by the thought.

I just saw an episode of The Restaurant and how the chef, Rocco, has to deal with just a host of problems to keep his restaurant moving in the right direction. He has to keep the food warm, the employees happy, and the atmosphere positive. He has processes to manage, people to schmooz, fires to put out constantly. After the show ended, I began to reflect on how similar this always to our church.

But then I realized that the similarity wasn't that great. It was so tempting to make that leap, but there is a big difference.

The Church is not an organization; this is where my mistake is. It is not a matter of simply implementing the right processes, creating the right programs, recruiting the right personnel, etc. It's not about adapting Jack Welch's or Stephen McCovey's theories into how we do church. I read "The Purpose-Driven Church" and I realize that, as successful as the church is, the tempting conclusion is that if we take the marketing and consumer principles and apply them to the church, then the church will be successful! I read about cell group models and the tempting conclusion is that this model is the key to growing the church. But this is all so misleading...especially since so many church have implemented these church growth models and have looked successful doing it!

My conclusion is that I need to abandon my hunch that the church is just another organization...a Rotary club for Jesus. No, it is an organism, a living entity. Morever, they key to "success" is not simply implementing the right process (b/c programs are so passee!), but relying on the Spirit's power. I'm not saying that we need to be mindless as we approach the church, but we need not "trust in chariots". Use them, but don't put your trust in them. Because the church is born of God's will, not man's.

What am I saying? I can't rely on my own smarts, the "proven" methods of others, or any thing related that stuff. I can think, I can read books, talk to experts, and all that. But when it comes down to it, this church is God's, and unless we're hooked up with him, we're not doing anything that, at least in God's eyes, resembles a church.

I just read an amazing article about youth ministry and the church.

After reading this article, I became so excited because it resonated so deeply with what we envision for our church, Home of Christ (6) in Ardenwood.

Quite honestly, right now, we're not there. As of yet, we have some young adults that downright detest our youth. They avoid them, unfairly judge them, and look down up on them. It really saddens me and upsets me at the same time. Don't they realize that they were once in junior high? Don't they realize that we are not a social club where everyone is equally nice and sound? We're God's refuge for princes and paupers.

That said, while I feel sad and even quite upset about this sometimes, it is this vision that keeps me and my coworkers going. Proverbs 29:18 tells us that where this is no vision, or revelation...the people perish. And without this prophetic-ish vision of the God's church, we'd all be gone. But this vision of the church drives us, fuels us, and excites us.

I've worked since I was 17, went from kindergarten thru college, and I've never regularly waken up each morning, looking forward to what I had to do until now. Working full-time in this ministry has been a joy because of the people, my call, and this unshakeable vision...this hunch that God's plan is just gonna explode...and I might be around to see it!

So I decided.

I accepted their apology, forgave them, and believed them that they wouldn't do it again...not because I'm a saint, but because I'm a sinner too.

What do you do when someone has stabbed you, not in the back, but in the stomach? And then hits you up for $50?

Because I'm not sure what to do.

Believe it or not, I'm 24 and I finally registered to vote. You know, it's strange, but the people who push for voter registration, many of them are worse than any breed of fundamentalist! Talk about guilt and pressure!!

Anyways, everything looked fairly straight forward: name, address, driver's license number, and such. And then I got to the political affiliation portion. This was tough for me. I've never really aligned myself with any particular party. What party was I going to join?

What makes this a dilemma or even remotely interesting is that as I pursue the pastoral path, politics becomes a rather sticky issue. Is a pastor to have any allegiance to a particular political party? Should he make that public?

My conclusion (with the help of some friends), is that a pastor should not have any political party affiliations. He certainly can (and must) have views on political issues as they are seen through the lens of Scripture. But the pastor must be defined by his affiliation, allegiance, and association with God, his kingdom, and his church, not by a political party.

Many people would say that this is a moot point, since, nowadays, your affiliation with a political party is not really all that significant, especially since moderates make up the vast majority of both parties. For most people, it seems that joining a political party simply means you are privvy to primary elections. But I don't think it is unimportant. What affect would it have on you if you found out I was a Libertarian or a Democrat? What affect would that have on you especially if you were a non-believer? Would that color your listening of my sermons, my presentation of the gospel, my lifestyle? I'm sure it would. "Oh, Brian's a Republican, just a typical fundamentalist preacher..." or "Green Party? Does he promote a social gospel?" The coloring of my image should not stem from my allegiance to any earthly government system, but the politics of the heavenly kingdom, which has been breaking into our earthly reality since the birth of Jesus.

This all begs the question, which is much larger than my small issue: what political party would Jesus join? I would be the first to defy anyone who would claim that Jesus was apolitical, because most of what Jesus' message was about was very politically loaded (he was crucified, at least on the superficial level, for his politics). But I would be the last to identify him with any existing political party. It could probably be argued quite vigorously that Jesus was the head of his own political party, one that advocated theocracy.

Pastors and Christians, let's join his party.

I've been absent from this journal for quite some time...I'm only here because some akanekid made me feel guilty about not having some recent posts. But, not to blame her, she has definitely not the only one who has made comments about my poorly updated journal.

This online journal thing is pretty interesting. It is an invitation to voyeurism (hey check out the giant set of thoughts on that chick!). My immediate judgement is that only lonely and friendless people do online journals (or "blogs", is that still the current term?). Blogs appear to be some sort of cry out to the world. "Hey, I have no friends or family to pour out my life to, so I'm going to indiscriminantly post my inner thoughts for all internet-accessible people to see. And maybe, just maybe, someone will listen."

But you know what, I'm totally wrong. I doubt if any strangers have visited my journal (I really don't understand why someone would be interested in my thoughts, since they don't know me). But my friends visit my blog. So I guess blogs are actually just a more convenient way of keeping each other "in the loop" as far as personal thoughts? And maybe for people who do have friends, and who aren't always lonely, it is still a cry out to the world...

Why am I even contemplating the purpose of BLOGS?? This is really pathetic. It's like I'm gonna publish some pop sociology paperback with a black matte cover and glossy green courier font, revealing the truth about the blogging kulture. No thanks.

I don't think I've mentioned anywhere on this journal that I recently got married...yes, me...this past April. Just to put that for the record, cuz, you know, this journal is official record, right?

Alright, now that I've digressed to random thoughts, I guess I'll just share a little of what I've been thinking about lately. I feel like I have to make up for all these months of silence.

WARNING: This portion of my blog will very likely bore you to death. I am not understating myself here, I'm quite serious. So read if you will and imagine exlamation points after every sentence, if that helps keep you awake.

My thoughts, lately, have centered around Gentiles (non-Jews) and the Gospel (the Good News of Jesus).

So it seems that my understanding of the Gospel has been quite incomplete. The standard Gospel comes like this: God created us so that we could have a wonderful relationship together. He started out with Adam and Eve, but they screwed it up by disobeying God (sinning). A perfect God can't have a real relationship with imperfect people. So God kicked them out of Eden, but he always wanted the days of Eden back again, so he implemented this plan for his son, Jesus, to come in human form, to pay the penalty for our sins (because if you can't be perfect, you need to at least pay for your imperfection, thus making you pretty-much-perfect). As humanity, we need to recognize that we've sinned against a perfect and holy God, repent of our sins, accept and believe that Jesus paid the penalty for our sins. Once we do this, then we're "born again" and we have joy and peace to hold us over until we get to heaven.

But, it seems from a simple reading of Scripture that this is not the complete Gospel. I remember when some JW's came to visit me once (actually, they came like 20 times because I enjoyed debating with them; I was 15 at the time), and they shared that the heart of Jesus' message was about his Kingdom. I remember very vividly thinking: kingdom?! No, Jesus was here to share about personal salvation! But you know, that led me back to my Bible, and I started realizing that the message of personal salvation wasn't really the focal point of Jesus' mission. He really was proclaiming "good news" about the kingdom.

To understand this at least on a basic level, we need to remember that the Jews had been occupied for centuries. They were oppressed, persecuted, and all that. It was terrible. And to make matters worse, they claimed to be the people of the "real" God. Remember, back then, every people group had their own gods. But the Jews had the audacity to claim that all the other gods were either weak or fake, and Yahweh was the one real God. The problem was, being people of the the one true God, they were under captivity! It was embarrassing! If they were really the people of the one true God, shouldn't they be on top of the world, even conquering everyone else?! In fact, some Jews were so enraged by this dissonance that some would try to rise up against the Roman powers; today we'd call them terrorists, freedom fighters, revolutionaries, etc. Some others thought that if the Jews would finally lead a holy life, then God would send a "Messiah" or "Anointed One" to finally make things right: overthrow the Romans, establish Israel as the ultimate world power, make everyone recognize the Yahweh, not any man, was the real God and King.

So when Jesus came proclaiming Good News about the Kingdom, he was making a spiritual-political statement to the Jews. The Good News, or Gospel, was that everything that the Jews had been hoping for for generations was finally coming true. The Jews would soon no longer need to submit themselves to a foreign power, because God would finally be restored as their king! See, this really is good news! When the black slaves received the Emanipation Proclamation, that was good news! When America was finally free from British rule, that was good news! So for the Jews to hear that they would be free from Roman rule, and not only that, but God would be their king, this is really the best news that they could ever hear. This, friends, this is the good news, the Gospel.

So what's my beef?

I'm not a Jew.

What's my good news?

I asked my friend, Paul, this question, and he said, "Well, the good news for the Gentiles was that the Jews were right!" I totally cracked up. But, obviously, I still wasn't satisfied. And then he mumbled something about reading some books...

Now that I am a Christian, I understand that I am a "new" Jew. The non-messianic Jews rejected the Savior and gave up their birthright, so to speak, to Gentiles like me. So I am a Jew, now. I understand that much.

But, my question is this: how is this attractive to people who are outside of the faith? If I run down the streets proclaiming, "The Jews were right! The Jews were right!", I'm not likely to get many converts.

So what is the Gospel to the Gentiles today? That's my question.