nakedpastor

Welcome to another contribution to my “split segments”… posts that have to do with the church split which I went through 10 years ago. It’s also a little meditative commentary on the cartoon below.

People’s actions speak louder than words. I’m convinced that there are few Christians who actually want to split a church. I mean consciously. Christians want to believe they are good people. Christians want to be sincere. So they will never say to you, “If you don’t do exactly what I want, I am going to split this church in half!” It would be sinful to even think such a thing. But our actions betray us. You must believe what you see! You must hear what they are saying between the lines! They may say to you, “You are my pastor, and I’m behind you 100%. I will go with you to the end!” But beware! Jesus wasn’t impressed with Peter’s boisterous claims about himself, but discerned the overwhelming fear that motivated Peter to say that. You need to realize, like I painfully did, that the very one who is always claiming to be loyal actually may be desperately fighting their deeper urges to betray you. The people who were responsible for the split genuinely and sincerely expressed to me their full support. They truly believed in themselves and believed that they were actually helping the situation. They totally believed that what they wanted was best for the church. But the destructive forces they unleashed were beyond their understanding. I’ll tell you a secret: (more…)

I wanna rant! I need to say something right here right now. Just the thought of having to sit in a meeting to talk about what we OUGHT to do, SHOULD do, or MUST do, just makes me want to hurl. Just the thought of sitting listening to someone reiterate the vision and try to fire me up to follow it makes me want to quit even before I join. I absolutely love the saying of Jesus, “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest!” I’m telling you people: this world is full of people weary and heavy laden with the expectations of religion and its leaders. That’s what Jesus was talking about. When he saw the people so burdened and vexed without a shepherd, that’s what he was talking about. When he chastised the religious leaders for laying burdens on people without lifting a finger to help them, that’s what he was talking about. No amount of our talented tweaking is going to change the weight of the burden, only it’s appearance. Let the visions and agendas go! They are only burdensome expectations in modern fancy dress.

I live with teenagers and their friends. Our house is often full of them… loud, funny, wild, uncontrollable, disobedient and visionless. All they want to do is hang. That’s it. That is life’s pleasure for them. And it is enough. It is enough! What can be better than being together, loving each other, challenging each other to be more authentic, and laughing? What can be better? Save the world? From what? They’ll tell you, “Let’s save the world from assholes who are trying to shape us into something other than what we are!” “Do NOT sell your soul to any agenda for any price!” They’re rubbing off on us, and it ain’t all bad! What can be better for Lisa and me than to be among these lunatics, laughing with them, teasing them, affirming them in their beauty and aimlessness, and receiving their reckless affection? Answer me that!

The pic is of my daughter Casile, my son Jesse, and just a few of their goofy friends.

I want to clarify something I wrote yesterday. When I said I don’t like what I do, etc., I wasn’t referring to the different things I am involved in. I should’ve written, “I don’t like how I’m doing it!” Some people got from that post that I wanted to chuck in everything, leave pastoring, and do something else. I was hoping that the analogy of Frank Gehry would be applied: he was an architect before, but he did things he didn’t like in order to just pay the bills. After he decided to do this no longer, he didn’t leave architecture but became a more passionate, creative, daring and radical architect. In the same way, I want to continue painting because I’m passionate about art, I want to continue pastoring because I’m passionate about the church, I want to keep writing and singing because I’m passionate about words and music. And this applies to everything about my life, including being a husband, father, friend, and so on. Hope that clarifies things a little.

This incredible tattoo was created and applied by my friend Zara Leaf.

Thanks to Matt over at his blog for the heads up on this YouTube video. I love some of Hillsong worship and we actually do some of it here, but we must hear the indictments this satire presents:

I watched The Sketches of Frank Gehry, a documentary on one of the most radical and unconventional architects of our time. He describes the turning point in his life. At a party, a friend asked him why he designed and built a certain building. “Because I needed to pay the bills!” His friend remarked, “I don’t like it!” Gehry said, “I don’t either!” His friend responded, “Well, never do it again! Stop doing that!” They shook hands and Gehry agreed never to do anything ever again just to pay the bills. He went on from that point to create the most amazing architectural wonders in the world, such as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. He said life got harder and scarier, but he experienced a freedom and a happiness he hadn’t known before.

Lately, I feel that much of what I do is to pay the bills. I’m tired of it. I don’t like what I do. It has become expected, conventional and boring. I want to break out of the safe box I’ve created for myself and what others learn to applaud. I’m bored, restrained, cautious, and uncreative. I need to shake the hand of passion, risk, and adventure and courageously thrust myself into my own life, a life of authentic creativity that is truly mine and not borrowed, stolen or copied.

The Wikiklesia project has been birthed! I was invited by John La Grou over at microclesia to contribute a chapter to an online cooperative book that will be available for download in just a matter of weeks from Amazon. It is going to be a virtual, self-organizing, and participatory attempt to address the impact of technology on the church, community, theology, spirituality, etc. Several other authors have been selected. I am honored, humbled and nervous to be among them. You can read more about the project here, here and here. The proceeds from the sale of the book are going to Not For Sale, a campaign to end slavery in the world in our lifetime. The topic I chose to address is this, in summary:

Being a pastor of a local community, I want to explore how the idea of online community being virtual (not real, but seeming to be real) is not a symptom of the internet, but a condition of fallen humanity that finds expression even in our local churches and congregations. In other words, virtual is not an internet problem, but a human one. I also want to tie in the notion that the principalities and powers find their vitality and expression through the maintenance of the virtual model, locally and online.