Prayer Retreat

Last Saturday I took a small group of high school students to the Dominican Reflection Center in Edmonds, Washington. I spent the day meditating on a fragment of Psalm 52; "I am like an olive tree, flourishing in the house of the Lord." I had no idea why this verse mattered until it two images came into my head. The first was of me in a house being trained into godliness: memorizing scripture, praying fervently, fasting, etc, like basic training for Jesus. Then I saw an actual tree in a house, which turns out to be an absurd image. But the tree is happy to just dig its roots deep into the soil and allow itself to be nurtured to health. The tree flourishes, not because of all its hard work, but because of where it puts its roots down. To flourish for me doesn't mean doing more stuff for God, but being rooted in him. It's a nice thought for me these days.

Anyways, it was a wonderful day and I know that I need to do this sort of thing much more often than I currently do.

Peace,
Matt

Kahlil Gibran on Love

"When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, 'God is in my heart,' but rather, 'I am in the heart of God.'
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips."

Peace,
Matt

Currently Reading: Reversed Thunder by Eugene Peterson. It's a wonderful, intense, and insightful book (not surprising, considering its topic is Revelation and the worship of God).

Contemplating the Lord's Glory

"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit."
-Paul's 2nd letter to the Corinthians

What does it mean to contemplate the Lord's glory with unveiled faces?

It is to see Christ in all.
It is seeing Christ when reading Moses.
It is seeing Christ in world events.
It is seeing Christ in our worship services.
It is seeing Christ when we would rather not see him at all.
It is seeing Christ in our neighbor.
It is seeing Christ in our enemies.
It is a straining to see Christ at all times, though he is always near.

That, to me, is the beginning of transformation. And what else can the days following Easter be about, than being transformed into the image of Christ, who is the very image of God. Maybe I'll even start putting all of that into practice some day. That's my hope.

Peace,
Matt

Currently Reading: The Prophet by Kahlil Gilbran, The Colossus by Sylvia Plath, and Dante's famous Inferno. I took more than a week off from reading, and am excited to get back into it again. Not quite sure how I ended up reading all this poetry at once, though...

Congratulations!

Quick hooray to my friend and now fellow blogger Kurt, who officially became the father of Elijah Allen Ingram earlier this week! You're gonna be an awesome dad. Way to procreate my friend.

(First thing I plan to say to my child when I have one: Who's Your Daddy?)

Gospel of Judas?

With the Davinci Code coming out soon (I have mixed feelings on that whole subject), now things are getting even more interesting. Apparently National Geographic has unveiled what just might be the Gospel of Judas. Fascinating. I really don't know what to think/do about it, but am definitely intrigued and think it is worth looking into. More to come (hopefully).

Peace,
Matt

Me, the Hypocrite

At the church I work at we are currently getting ready for our second year of an event called Shadows of the Cross. It's basically an interactive journey through Jesus' last week before the cross. Last year we made it feel like you were walking with Jesus through ancient Israel. This year is different, and we are mixing old and new images together as we interact with the words of Jesus during that last week; specifically as Luke repeats them. At each station there will be headphones where participants will actually hear Jesus' words spoken to them. As tiring as it has been, the reward has far outweighed the work. Personally, I've been put in charge of two stations, which I thought I'd describe right now (briefly).

My first station comes out of Luke 20, "the story of the corrupt farmhands" (Message). I am in the process of creating a small, fenced-in area that makes it feel like you are in a small farm. Once inside, the participant will hear Jesus' tale. Honestly, I think most people will just hear those words and think "wow, I can't believe those people didn't appreciate and respond to the prophets and Jesus...luckily I'm much better." As they leave the station, though, an interesting thing happens on the way to the next one. There will be a series of tombstones set-up, each with the name of a deceased prophet and a brief quote from each of them. Their words are just as condemning now, to us in our culture, as they were thousands of years ago. Whammy!

The second station I am doing comes from Luke 23, where Jesus goes before Pilate, then Herod, then Pilate again. Reading this a few times through, I began to notice something intriguing: Jesus is silenced, progressively pushed out of the narrative as the trial moves along. Read it right now and see for yourself. At first, his only words are an affirmation of Pilate's words which are spoken for Jesus. With Herod, he isn't quoted at all, just standing there being abused. Finally, when he's back with Pilate, he's barely even part of the fight any more. He's been banished to the shadows of the story, the least important character in his own Gospel. To show this progression, the station will have headphones playing the Sermon on the Mount on repeat. The action step is simple: take off the headphones while Jesus is still teaching. The reminder is painful: we just don't like to listen to Jesus. Along with it, I took some old artwork depicting the trial scene, and used my photoshop at home (I didn't really sleep last night) to blur, darken, and cover Jesus so he is barely seen in the paintings. It should be really amazing when it comes together.

Oh, so concerning the title. I've been working non-stop lately. I worked at home until 11:00 last night and started working at 5 today (obviously I'm taking a break at the moment, though), am driving 8 hours tomorrow to go to a memorial service, am then working another couple of days before going to a week-long camp right before Easter. The next weekend I have a retreat, followed by going to the Mustard Seed Conference the following weekend, and then the next weekend is our Spring Retreat, which is the biggest thing my ministry will do all year. Apparently I can tell everyone else about Sabbath, rest, sanity, etc, but not live it out very well. I feel like a bit of a hypocrite today.

Peace,
Matt

Last note: I read this cool quote from Zechariah in the Message translation yesterday: "You're interested in religion, I'm interested in people" (7:6).

Currently Reading: Recently read The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis. I seem to enjoy the Narnia books less and less the further into the series I get. The first 3 are definitely my favorites so far. Late last night I started reading Selling Out the Church by Phillip D. Kenneson and James L. Street. I'm still not sure if it's very amazing, as much as I like their premise.

Why I Love the Net

Always fun.

The Shaping of Things to Come (part IV)

"The heart of the problem [with modern church planting] is that we have been planting churches that are (smaller) carbon copies of the already beleaguered, failing Christendom-style church. The Christendom virus is passed on... In fact, it's more often than not been the case that Sunday services are planted rather than missional Jesus communities... The overly reproduced Christendom-mode church has at its core a number of fundamental flaws. These flaws occur in the model's very DNA. The way forward is not to tinker with its external features, but to rebirth a new movement on different ground."
-page 18

This is a very condensed quote from 2 amazing paragraphs, which then goes on to address three main flaws in the modern, Christendom, church: it is attractional, dualistic, and hierarchical. Although I'd like to talk about those three areas of concern, I will instead focus just on the above paragraph because it speaks very deeply to me.

The Sunday service plant; why is it that we think we can just take a model of "doing church," move it to a new location, and think that is the best way to form a new community of believers? One of my strongest convictions is that the shape of a church's gatherings has to come from the shape of the community itself. I'm learning that this is the path to being a true church. But it is harder. It is so much easier to just draw-up a church plan and fall into the routine of doing it every week: 5 songs, announcements, sermon, 1 song, go home. Too often I've seen church employees (specifically mega-church) sitting around a table talking about how they can "be creative," and deciding they could throw a song in the middle of the sermon and really throw everything off with their creativity. Wow.

Worse than all of that, when a new church is planted it typically takes with it not only the problem of focusing solely on Sunday mornings and the only way of doing them, but it takes the shape of the entire church structure with it. What is this structure? It is the hierarchical structure where the senior pastor is elevated to a point of reverence. When people talk about the church they "attend," they talk about how great his sermons are, and when he doesn't preach one weekend, attendance and financial giving go down that week.

What Frost and Hirsch are advocating is an organic church. It is a church body that rises up as believers meet together, praying and dreaming over what could happen to their neighborhood as the Spirit moves within it. It is more about them praying together, doing life together, than forming a church service and a congregational hierarchy. Sooner or later the meetings breed a sort of form of their own that continues to change, shift and move as members grow in faith and new ones join the family.

When Luther left the Catholic church, he kept a lot of baggage. This isn't surprising considering he never wanted to fully leave it. So we kept much of the Catholic way of being a church within the Protestant way. I think it's time to try to drop-off our Christendom baggage and go the path of the minority of churches who are taking risks and getting rid of church models, curriculum, etc and just trying to really be the church together. That sounds a lot healthier to me.

Peace,
Matt

Currently Reading: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.