Athiest's Confession

Steve (right) and me in Auckland now years ago...seems like yesterday!




I just checked into my Google Reader and saw Steve Addison's (CRM Australia) blog today... you need to read this. It is encouraging!

READ HERE: Good News Out of Africa

I remember

I remember...

• "White water fountain only"
• "Colored restroom"
• Leon, the only African American kid in my primary school
• Mrs. Hines, my first African American teacher
• Separate schools for "them"
• Arguments for "separate but equal...some more equal...from my own family
• I remember segregated lunch counters
• African Americans not allowed to try on clothes at school
• the suspicion of a person of color in my neighborhood
• I remember...
• my first African American friend
• Prescilla, now a heart surgeon, and African American, who had so much class
• SFC Diggs, the African American platoon sergeant who made his white platoon commander look good

I know now...

• If a white friend loses his job due to the down turn, the mere weight of referrals from friends will ease the burden for most, while few AA's enjoy such
• A white son gets opportunity because of the privilege of affluence
• We ignore the sin and pain of the past
• Most AA's look to tomorrow with hope, peace and good will - not the equal turn they've been given.
• My sons hate injustice, don't even recognize or judge by color, and have a deep ethos different from my experience - and we gave it to them intentionally, and one of their heroes is MLK.
  

I hope today...

• For change, not just in, but definitely including racial reconciliation
• Change in how we approach the world, deal with poverty, and opportunity
• Change in politics
• Change in economics
• Change in dealing with people different from us, even here...we've become a divisive, confrontational people who are agro to anyone not like us...

Mr. President, you represent so much more than ideology, race, or politics. You carry the burden of planting, nurturing and birthing hope, change, peace. You carry the chance, the one chance in my lifetime, to bring real change, to bring hope, and restore decency, virtues and character as part of the American fabric. It has been lacking for so long, eroding one bite at a time for so long.

May the Lord Himself turn His eyes to you, bend down His ear to listen to you, and speak directly to you. May He give you favor, grace, blessing, empowerment, influence, stalwart resolve, unshakable character, wisdom far beyond your years, intelligence rarely experienced, protection above human ability, and success to bring about healing to not just this one nation, but to nations globally, rich, poor, western and peoples of color in poor lands.

May your mistakes be few, and caught early. May your ego remain humble. May He choose you as today's guide out of such deep sins, for which we now pay penance.

Mr. President, God bless you...not out of sentimental desire, but fervent intercession for all people. This idea, this empire, this people called America can be like all fading empires in history, or with one chance, it can be a people who bless others. May God bless others through and because He blessed us and continues to bless us here.

Amen.

As I pass by the closed school, pictured in the Norman Rockwell painting above, I often think of Ruby Bridges, the little girl, now 55 years old, and her role to work and bring that Katrina shuttered building to life once again as a charter school in the St. Claude neighborhood. Ruby lives a mere 5 miles away from us. Her dignity and honor and life time commitment to empower those with out the seed or germination of seeds of possibility are an example to us all. Mrs. Obama said this week in an interview, "The veil of impossibility is being ripped off of millions of children" ...who never before dreamed of new heights and possibilities. Mayor Nagin of New Orleans said the USA has reached a "new level of maturity".

We bear witness of change and prayerfully of healing, deep healing in the poverty, social decay, spiritual malaise and emotional depravity of our past. Could we actually become a healthy people? Do we, can we, might we, actually dream such lofty things?

A parable of what we're about

We are constantly working to understand ourselves, who we are, why we do what we do. We're wrestling to bring this, to communicate our culture, our passion, our intent, our focus. We're not trying to diss anyone, but looking for some ideas of how to effectively do this.... So here goes:

Take the parable as far as applicable of the main point. Don’t waste time trashing the corners, that’s not the point of any parable.

⊕ Subjects: • Subject theology: wants it settled, organized, safe.
• Subject churches are in the town square, the courthouse framing and mandating life in the town. It hosts the trials, taxes collected, symbol of stability.
• God in Subject theology, he is the royal, the aristocrat, the magistrate, the aristocrat…dictating. He is ordered and not seen, predictable. He is dressed like coronation day. In some denominational towns. Scotch is replaced by soda, cigars by gum. Peace and quiet are his concerns.
• His sheriff is sent to check up on pioneers riding in. Jesus is the sheriff. He is sent by the aristocrat with a white suit of armor, drinks milk, out draws the baddies. He determines the jailed.
• The Holy Spirit is a pub girl. Her job is comfort. Her job is helping when they are lonely, tickles them under the chin. She squeals to the sheriff when things go bad. Whisky is non-alcoholic.
• The Christian is the subject, fears the unknown and open. Wants to stay in good stead with the lord mayor and avoids the Sheriff. He wants peace, order. Keeps his money in the bank. He stays in the shade and never misses the ice cream social.
• Faith is the safety of the town, obeying the laws. Sin is breaking one of the towns laws.
• The clergy is the banker. He is respected and hides his gun. He has a lot in common with the sheriff.


⊕ Pioneers/colonists:

• Pioneer theology: live the strange gift of life, a wild adventure to uncharted land. In Pioneer theology is not the church in the town square, but a covered wagon, but scarred, bandaged, where the action is, ready to move, doesn’t glorify it’s past. It is about exploring.
• God in pioneer theology he is the captain on the explorer ship, the rough and hard one who gets in the water and in the mud, keeps it going, slugs the soft. His fist is an expression of His concern.
• Jesus is the scout or the wild one who climbs the rigging to the crow’s nest – dangerous, solo, there in the storm and the dark. He is out ahead showing the dangers, suffers the hardships, feared by the subjects. He shows concern and sees the future. He is willing to go ahead alone, and calls others to risk the same. He carries a cutlass and a gun, loaded all the time.
• The Spirit is the hunter, unpredictable. He scares the subjects. He rides into town just to shake up the subjects, can’t wait to get back out to sea, to the new lands.
• The Christian is the pioneer, ready for the new. He is tough. He knows how to use a gun. He tries to tell the subjects back home about life on the trail.
• Faith is the spirit of adventure – to risk. It is obedience to the restless voice of the captain explorer.
• Sin is wanting to turn back.
• The clergy is the one who serves what the hunter provides, ready when the trail boss calls, just a pioneer who learned to cook. He serves the wagon train.

*Adapted


⊕ This is who we’re called to be. We’re the pioneers who help others pioneer. We are here for pioneers. They are more confident than the subjects in the past. They are reckless and willing to go out and make it happen. This is our call – to be the scouts, the trail bosses, the buffalo hunters.
⊕ Where do they go if we don’t do what we do.

Alan Roxburgh:
⊕ The end of the 40-40 world. The career of forty hours a week for forty years is over. In this era, the other parent was present to manage the household and freed people up to do the many church demands: VBS, etc, etc, etc. That world is over.
⊕ We now live in a “whatever-it-takes world”. We are all consultants, doing whatever it takes with no job security. Anxiety with no guarantees… It now takes two people to live this way.
⊕ The church is framed to operate in the 40-40 world. This model was past, and yet has not changed. This frames mission, evangelism, ministry, being a good committed Christian.

⊕ So in an era where there is not this time, how do we be the committed saints, the church, on mission, moving forward, reaching a lost world? What we know is that we’ll not do it in program, not organized institution. We’re not in the business of status quo, or polishing what has been. We’re in the business (under assignment from God) to develop leaders for the world becoming.

• Join us and you’ll be shot at and misunderstood – and almost every bullet will come from behind.
• You can’t be angry, can’t hold a grudge. It’ll eat you. You still have to love the Kingdom subjects, for we long to bring the hope of our King to the unknown world. We go because they made it possible and actually were the nourishing soil from which we were planted and uprooted. We cannot stay and have to go, but we love home.
• You have to be a person at home, not drained and taxed by being in the wilderness, with no maps, with no towns, with few friends who live in towns.
• You have to be willing to figure out how to befriend the natives, to carve a future in the unknown.
• You must be a man or woman who is called to lead, not just be, one of the pioneers, the colonists, those willing to get on a ship and go to the unknown. We exist to influence others.
• You must be the person who tells the church that it is normative as Christians to live lives as missionaries – witnesses, sent ones, committed, ordered, daring to call the world to hope.

⊕ If you are more comfortable, refreshed, called to love and lead the town’s people, we’re the wrong mob for you. We sail to unknown lands and burn our ships.
⊕ Our assignment (mandate, calling, mission) from The Living God is to:

• Engage the natives & show them life with the Living God
• Engage the towns people & call them to reckless life as Kingdom sent ones, not restful safe harbors of church
• Empower the those, leaders, who are restless, longing for more, dissatisfied in the safe harbors, knowing and hoping there is more.
• Help other colonists, pioneers, to set out, survive and actually thrive
• Replicate ourselves and claim more new lands for the King.

⊕ What of the people of the native lands to which we go, the colonists invade lands with aboriginal people?

• Do we come to settle them like the old country? Are they civilized when they take on our culture and our concept of the realm?
• How do we invite them out of the cannibalism and savagery of their broken culture, into a Kingdom of life, without taking the culture and mores of a culture that are healthy, that doesn’t force them into our idea of culture…. How do we invite them to participate in the realm, without squashing them, but we empower them?

⊕ As God’s people, where is the subject within me that seeks safety? Where is the pioneering colonist that is suppressed and thwarted from risking?
⊕ Missionaries ask and seek different things, different refreshment. Which are you?