Just a note to say . . .

 . . . that this summer I've been busy with various summertime activities, and blogging is taking a back seat. I expect this to continue for a while, with maybe only one or two posts per week, but I'm hoping to make them good and worthwhile posts at the very least.

Good things going on in my life these days:

• Good health. I'm loving the running life, even though it has caused me some aches and pains.
• Course correction in my spiritual life.  I'm psyched about being involved with a local church plant, and feel like it's exactly where God wants me to be.  Stay tuned for more on this.
• Music.  Ah, I'm trying to learn the accordion.  Leave it to me to pick the most dorky instrument known to man, right?  But it's a lot of fun, and I believe I'm in this for the long haul!
• Good books.  Just started reading American Brutus.  Amazing.

Now read the long post below and let me know what you think.  And have a fun summer!

Jesus Calling

Reading the early chapters of Mark's Gospel, I've been intrigued by the idea of the call of Jesus, and how people have understood that over the years.

Early on in Mark, Jesus states his purpose in two ways. First, he says he came to preach in the surrounding towns and villages of Galilee. What he preached, of course, was the good news that the Kingdom of God had come. And following that he issued a call: “Repent and believe this good news.”

At another point he says, in answer to a criticism of the Pharisees, “I came to call sinners, not the righteous.”

The call implicit here is the same that is explicit in his proclamation of the Gospel. “Repent and believe.” Jesus "came" to issue this very call to one and all.

That word, “believe,” has a universe of meaning, of course. Believe the good news. Believe what you will learn from Jesus as you walk with him, as you listen to his teaching, as you see how he loves people, how unafraid he is, how bold to love, and how the natural response of people who have received such love is to love him back.

But to walk out this believing is a progressive thing. Sometimes, as we will see later in Mark's account, some who have followed Jesus with dedication will suddenly drop away. And Jesus meets their later return to him not with mistrust and rejection, but again with his call. “Follow me. Keep following me. Even after I'm gone, you will be able to follow me. For that I will send the Holy Spirit, and he will empower you, and show you what to say, in a hundred ways and situations, some of them quite dangerous. But the Spirit will show you the way.”

But that's getting ahead of myself. For now, Jesus calls. His call is to repent and believe, and then to follow. “Follow me,” he says to Peter and James and John, the fishermen, and to Matthew, the tax collector. And they do. They follow. They stick close. They watch and learn. In following, they become his students, and he their teacher. They want more of him. They want to do the things he does. They want to understand.

Then, in chapter 3, having taught them, he appoints them to do the same things he's been doing. Preach the Gospel, and overpower the demonic with simple commands, demonstrating thereby that the Kingdom has come indeed.

Now, here's a kind of “leaderboard” snapshot of the moment. You have Jesus at the top. He's the preacher/teacher, calling people to follow. Then next you have “the twelve.” They've been sticking with Jesus a little more closely and consistently than anyone else at this point. But one of these twelve will betray Jesus, and most of the others will desert him when the going gets particularly rough. But for now, they're a band of devoted ones, who've dropped everything to follow them.

After these twelve we have the many who have flocked to Jesus for healing. They too have heard his teaching. Some of them have no doubt believed his news, although who at this point can really understand its full implications? But most will go home, whether believing it or not believing it, and try to get on with their lives.

Now flash ahead to the church in Paul's day. Hundreds of people had seen the resurrected Jesus. There was then the remarkable event we call the ascension. After that, the Pentecost descent of the Holy Spirit in power. There is much powerful preaching of the Kingdom, and much miraculous healing (see the book of Acts), just like when Jesus was alive. The church is spreading like wildfire. Soon, one of the Pharisees who had been chief persecutor of the young movement will flip sides, becoming a Christian himself, and in time he will be best known as a prodigious church planter and writer of memorable epistles. In many of those epistles, which are usually addressed to whole churches (not just particular Christians), he will routinely describe every single believing member of that church as a people who have been "called to be saints."

What I want you to notice is this. It is not just the twelve who are called, but all who believe. You were called to believe, and the call to believe continues, and persists, and echoes down through your days and nights. It is a call to let your believing work its way into your blood and bone, and to let it guide your feet and your hands and your thoughts and your speech.

The call "to be saints" is the continuing call of Jesus to believe the good news and walk it out. No one does this overnight. That is why the call continues and continues and continues. Sometimes, even as the twelve, we fall a gigantic step back. We go from following to fleeing. No one is immune to this.

I've noticed over the years that a lot of Christians have imagined a kind of two-tiered "call." Priests and pastors occupy the upper tier. They have been called to a closer following than the rest of us. It's their duty to be pretty near perfect, or the rest of us get upset about it. These priests and pastors are the modern equivalent of "the twelve," in this view. They answered a "special" call. They're the elite. The rest of us are simply called to obey them. They're pastors, we're sheep. That's our call. They are set apart, while we just go about our lives, like the crowds who gather for a time around Jesus, seeking healing, seeking miracles, then disperse. Our call seems to all boil down to attending church and volunteering in its programs and ministries.

This way of looking at things fits nicely with a desire to elevate the priesthood to an elite status, leaving everyone else in an undifferentiated mass known as "the flock." When egomaniacs go into the ministry, this is the view they take. It serves them well.

But all this is so wrong, has such deleterious repercussions, and (most importantly) is so un-biblical. If you have once received and believed the good news that Jesus offers, you are not only saved, but called to work out that salvation from day to day (in fear and trembling), for it is God's purpose to work his will in and through you (Phil 2:12-13). You have been called to be a saint (a consecrated one, set apart for the purpose of God). Not just your pastor, your church leaders, but you. Not by sitting on as many church boards as you can get yourself appointed to, but by walking out the love of Christ for you by loving others in the same way.

The fact that we don't necessarily do that well, we saints, tells you either that love is hard or that we are weak and sinful and need a lot of help. Or both. We're going to have to draw near to Jesus, learn from him, and follow closely behind. We're going to have to let his words dwell in us richly, thankful to God for what He has done and continues to do. (Col 3:16) For we have been called, ultimately, to the very presence of the King, high and lifted up.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4 ESV)

A high calling, that. And it's to all who call upon the name of the Lord. There is no higher calling. Do not dream of another world, another time and place, in which you might walk out your faith. You are called to walk it out today, where you're at. May God be with you.

Book Rec'

My time for reading has dropped off quite a bit this summer. I'm just busy doing other things, that's all. Like practicing my accordion! But I'm gradually working my way through Donald Miller's Searching for God Knows What, which was published way back in 2004. I'm just here to say, it's really good. I've got a feeling there must be people out there who will say it doesn't have enough Scripture references, or it doesn't espouse their pet doctrines firmly enough, but I think it's an amazing real-world picture of the call of Jesus. It's my first Donald Miller book. I hope to have more to say about it soon (when I finally finish it), but suffice to say for now that I highly recommend it. Miller and Spencer are definitely on the same page.

Kruger Brothers

I've been soaking in live music the last few days at a local festival up here in Maine. The Kruger Brothers were one of our pleasant discoveries. Here's a sample:

The Bible and Jesus

As I've mentioned before, I've been reading the Gospel of Mark slowly over the past couple of months. My plan from the beginning was to read a passage and write about it privately (not primarily for the blog), and that remains my plan. I'm thinking of this as a devotional practice in which, instead of reading someone else's devotional (there are plenty of good ones, of course), I write my own.

Of course I have a guiding principal or two. Foremost among them is the hermeneutical assumption that each and every passage is about Jesus. You might think this would be obvious, but many devotionals take each passage as an opportunity to teach a lesson about life, or having the right attitude, or doing the right things. Sometimes they're helpful, but advice is different than seeing (being shown) Jesus. My assumption is that this was Mark's purpose in writing his account: to show Jesus to his readers.

So the question I'm always asking myself is, how does this passage, this episode in the life and ministry of Jesus, help to clarify my understanding of Jesus?

I'm just about to the end of chapter 2 now, and maybe picking up a little steam. I've written about 30 devotional entries, each one no more than one page in length, two to three hundred words I suppose. It's been fruitful, and also fun, and I would recommend the practice to others. I know many of us need to get over the notion, enforced by lots of preachers, that the Bible is a recipe book for Christian living. It is not. It is a revelation of Jesus.

Back to the music . . .

Sounds almost like a 50s rock'n roll song, played on acoustic strings. Really really nice song though, and nice video.

From Christ Died for the Sins of Christians Too:

I used to tell my students at an evangelical Christian college that they had never heard real preaching, with the exception of a few sound evangelistic appeals. Their weekly diet in the congregation was often a moral exhortation to be like Jesus, or Paul, or Daniel, or some other super saint in the Bible. They were constantly peppered with the question, “What are you doing for Jesus?” The preaching was not, as it should have been, a proclamation of God’s grace to them because of the finished and atoning death of Christ-God’s grace for them as Christians. That emphasis is desperately needed. But the only way we can recover this message is by ceasing to read the Scriptures as a recipe book for Christian living, and instead find within the Scriptures Christ who died for us and who is the answer to our unchristian living. We must have that kind of renewal (a renewal, which not surprisingly, was important to the reformers, as well), and it can only come if we realize that the gospel is for Christians, too.

Daddy's Got a Squeezebox!

I bought an accordion!

Crazy me. I'm nearly 55 and have yet to coax my inner-musician out of hiding. I've written a few songs, and I really thought the ukulele might be my breakthrough instrument, but no.

So I bought an accordion yesterday. It's nice, it's vintage, and I bought it in part to help out a friend. She could use the cash, and I wanted to bless her. But, yes, I've always wanted to play the accordion!

I think it's all of a piece with the season I'm in just now. I want to dream, I want to take chances, I want to challenge myself. And I want to play the accordion.

This is actually pretty important to me. In a way, it's an attempt to set a pattern of taking up new things, meeting new challenges. In a strange way, I believe that learning to play the accordion will make me a better, more flexible person, more confidant about the next challenge that comes along.

But isn't that just like me to make it all about self-improvement? Sure, but I also want to take pleasure. I want music. I want laughter. I want quiet and unquiet glee, me and my squeezebox. And maybe some earplugs for my honey!

In all honesty, I could use some prayer on this.

Are we not disciples?

I really enjoyed the Stetzer/Hirsch conversation on the nature and meaning, and the theological underpinning, of the whole concept of the missional church. God is a sending God, and the church is a body of "sent ones," in the power of the Holy Spirit, whose purpose is given them by Jesus himself:

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” (John 20:21-23 ESV)

DebD asked in a recent comment, "what do you think it means when someone is a disciple (beyond learning from Him and going and making more disciples)? What does becoming a disciple look like?"

In answer, I think I'd go back to the Hirsch/Stetzer conversation, where Hirsch says, "the church does not create the mission, the mission creates the church." The mission precedes the church, and the church is the embodiment of the mission. This means that the church is not merely the dispenser of spiritual goods ("join now and we'll throw in one free hands-on prayer for healing before signing you up for the usher team!") but it is nothing less than the continuation of the church in Acts. A sent people, preaching the Kingdom, teaching, healing, forming community, worshiping God together, etc.

What that looks like is going to be somewhat different in every context, but it bears repeating, believers are disciples. All of them. They are radically committed to the practice of grace, embodying the gospel of grace in their relationships, explaining the significance and relevance of Jesus at every opportunity, being available to the Spirit for the work of the Spirit in drawing people's attention to Christ. They do this in their ordinary lives.

Hirsch and Stetzer on the Missional Manifesto

I haven't watched this yet myself. I'm storing it here to watch later.

The Exchange May 2011 - The Missional Manifesto with Guest Alan Hirsch from Ed Stetzer on Vimeo.

Missional Thinking

I think Ed Stetzer is writing some of the best stuff on the subject of missional churches. He's now up to 5 entries in his eight part series called Developing Missional Churches for the Great Commission.

Understanding What We Mean When We Talk about Being Missional
The Great Commission and Missional Thinking
The Challenge of Being Missional
The Missional Idea in Scripture
God Sends

By the way, "mission" and "commission" need to be closely connected or you will go off the rails.

And also, for another linked set of posts, take a look at Kenny Silva's personal resolutions. Good stuff.

The Search is Definitely Over

So, we've been taking this long sabbatical (you might call it that) from church-attendance for over a year now. I kind of wanted to wait and think and not leap too quickly, and have also been limited by the simple fact that there seems to be a dearth of what I would call Christ-centered and Gospel-driven churches in this area. [I've discussed all this at length in the various posts here.] In the meantime, we've gotten involved in a weekly Bible study at the home of a church planter, which has been a real solid blessing to me. Upshot of all this being, I seem to be experiencing a little revival in my soul.

This morning we went back a second time to a church where we'd had a favorable experience previously. In between visits they'd moved to a new meeting place, and we thought we'd let them get the kinks out before returning (well, I was really waiting for an increase in my wanna level). Anyway, back we went this morning and I just want to tell you, it was everything I've been saying a church ought to be about. Christ exalting, Gospel-driven, not flashy or loud, no video presentations, and humble worship leaders focusing our hearts and minds just where they ought to be. I haven't been this satisfied on a Sunday morning in a long time.

Anyway, it's a Harvest Bible Chapel, part of James MacDonald's tribe. So for now, this is where we'll be settling in. I'm still tracking with my church-planting friend, but until he moves to having a full-fledged worship service, HBC seems like the place and the family where God is leading us.

Creating a Life Plan

I recently downloaded and read Michael Hyatt's ebook (pdf) Creating a Life Plan. I think I'm going to take this up (create my own life plan), tweeking Michael's system for my own needs. It's all about intentionality--being thoughtful about what you're doing with your time, figuring out what's important to you and setting some goals.

As for the "tweeking," I'm probably not going to work all this out for every aspect of my life in a two day retreat (as Michael suggests), but will take one category at a time, giving myself a week to work out the details of the plan. Really it's pretty interesting. For me, it's simply a response to the recognition that I've been drifting through life of late and need to take the rudder, as they say, and set my course.

Categories? You choose. Michael's are, Health, Marriage, Family, Career, Finances, Ministry. He's talking about being intentional about all of these things. I'm not the most highly-organized guy around, and I do actually value the messiness of life. I don't want to eliminate that, and the idea that you can really plan your life may smack of hubris. But I don't really think of this as a plan so much as the setting of values and targets, which is something we all do every day without much thought.

I'm 55 this year and am thinking about the time I have left. Not morbidly, mind you, just facing up to the reality that what lies before me is a shorter road than what lies behind. I haven't exactly been carping the diem lately!

More on all this in a future post.

Not that it really matter, but . . .

I've been noodling around with my link lists on the sidebar. I used to use these as a way to keep up with blogs that I liked, but for a while now I've been using Google Reader to do that, so I thought I'd pare down the lists and do some rearranging.

Any blog is a kind of self-portrait, and these lists have to do with letting visitors know the kind of things I'm interested in, the "focus" of Wilderness Fandango. Now, admittedly I haven't had much of a "focus" lately. I've kind of been meandering, and very recently I've been thinking about what I want this blog to be about.

Hence, the first list is labeled "Missional Types," because I want that to be one important focus for me. The second list is "Other Assorted Christ Followers." These folks are Christian bloggers who are not necessarily self-defining as missional, but I love and respect them and their writing, they are old friends of WF, and I want to continue to feature them somewhere here at WF.

The third list is a sort of catch-all. Right now I'm calling it "Readers, Philosopher-Poets, and Classic Film Junkies," but that may change. Again, I "follow" these folks in my Reader, so they're here simply as a part of the self-portrait, or for those who like to rummage about on blogrolls!

Long-and-short, I've dropped some, I've moved some, and it doesn't really make much difference.

Some Quick Thoughts on Church, Mission, Discipleship

Christians are disciples.

Disciples follow Jesus, learn from him, and are charged with the mission of continuing to do so, and to draw others to the same kind of life ("go and make disciples").

The original disciples were called by Jesus and in answer to that call they followed Jesus. But when Jesus departed, he charged them with the mission of making other followers and learners like them, so somehow the ability to follow Jesus and learn from him did not come to an end with his departure. It continued through the disciples. They continued to be disciples (followers of Jesus) and in so doing they made new disciples.

The church is the coming together of such disciples. When they come together they might be expected to sing the praises of the one to whom they have dedicated their lives, or to discuss their mission (the ups and downs, the troubles and triumphs), or to pray for one another as disciples (or you might say, to pray one another into their missions). Jesus said he would be with them when they came together, even just two or three of them. To be with him and to have him be with them is the desire of their hearts.

If you conduct church as if your congregation is not in fact a gathering of disciples on mission but simply a needy crowd, then that's what you will have.

If you, as church leaders, funnel your definition of mission entirely through a church-activity grid, then you're failing to teach the true nature of discipleship or the true nature of mission. It is almost entirely outside the walls, along the highways and byways.

If when disciples come together they choose to listen to someone preach, that preacher probably should preach what Jesus preached. They're Jesus followers, after all, not Bible-worshippers.

And when, after coming together and learning from one another, praying for one another, singing the praises of Jesus together, they go their separate ways, they are going back out to their missions as Jesus-followers. Their mutuality is in their love for Jesus and their shared mission as his followers.

The alternative to this vision of church is one in which the church is merely a dispenser of help (Biblical or not) and the congregation is merely a crowd of needy people. There can be a lot of comforting at such a church, but often very little calling. Leaders in these churches see their primary mission as attracting more needy people and dispensing the help they need, but seldom calling (and even re-calling) people to the mission the way Jesus did ("follow me, and I will make you fishers of men").

The congregation then takes on a two-tiered aspect. The handful that "minister," and the many that need "ministry." This set-up becomes entrenched by one-hour repetitions each Sunday morning. But it does not make disciples nor does it strengthen and encourage disciples, nor is it, I would suggest, even church.

On the other hand, a church that is the gathering of the called disciples will be all about sending not attracting. It will be all about mission, not about finding new way to get more people in the building.

Missional Blogger

I like Till He Comes, the blog of Jeremy Myers. He's a missional guy.

Twitter

So out of curiosity I got going with a Twitter account recently, but I'm not exactly sure what to do with it. Just finding my way, I quickly realized it was only going to get interesting if I "followed" a whole lot of interesting people, so I started finding and following all the young missional preachers and writers I know about, along with an assortment of poets, bloggers, and a relation or two. So yes, things did get more interesting, and I acquired a few followers myself, somehow.

Still, I have a couple of problem. I don't know what to "tweet" or why. I read that content-rich consistent tweeting is a way to "build your brand." Ah, but what brand am I?

And then there's the brief bio. I need one. Many of the other people on Twitter have bios something like this:

Speaker, vision-caster, rock-climber, thinker of deep thoughts, pastor of [insert cool church name here], etc.

Now, when someone identifies themselves as a "speaker," well, that's usually a bad sign, my opinion. But anyway, you can't hide from your times, and in our time people identify themselves as "speakers." Weird.

But nevermind. The point is, here I am with a "Twitter presence," such as it is. And I need a bio. Cuz with a bio I can build my brand.

And that's gotta be good!

July Poem: Lilies

Lilies

Tender yellow trumpets
swaying and bowing like
brightly-robed monks,

all in a row and welcoming
you to come down among
the green blades and the mulch

and to open up to the sun
and to stand there drinking in the warm light
and if it rains, then the rain.

Someday you may consider this
by far the most beautiful day
you have ever lived.

The Gospel is a Story

The Gospel is not just a series of facts to which we yield our assent but a dramatic narrative that re-plots our identity. - Michael Horton

So I'm reading and journaling through the Gospel of Mark slowly. Very slowly. I don't know how long I've been doing this, but I just finished chapter 1.

Here's something I'm beginning to realize. The gospel is, at least in one significant sense, a story. The gospel is not a set of theological propositions. The gospel may have many aspects, but any time you boil it down to mere theological propositions, it is no longer the gospel. The propositions may be important, they may be helpful, and they may be true and weighty, but they are not the gospel. They are, I would say (snidely), transliterations of the gospel into sem-speak. Most people I know who have been in seminary, training to be preachers, speak sem-speak. They act like they've got a fish on the line every time they open their mouth, but really it's just a textbook.

I'm not suggesting the gospel is only a story and nothing more. But the four documents in the NT that are specifically known as "Gospels" are narratives about who Jesus was and what he did and what he said. I'm not dismissing theological education at all, only suggesting that if Jesus thought sem-speak was the best way to communicate the riches of the gospel, well, that's how he would have talked.

But I was going to say, in the Gospel of Mark you run across this word gospel right away, in verse one, and you realize that Mark is calling the whole narrative, this story you are about to read, the gospel. Then again, you soon find out that Jesus, when he starts his ministry, is preaching something that he refers to as the gospel, and it's not the same as the story Mark is telling.

Jesus is announcing good news about the availability of the Kingdom of God. So that's the gospel too. A crazy announcement about the Kingdom of God. But it's an announcement that happens within the context of the story called "gospel," and it is an announcement that ramifies considerably as the story unfolds. In other words, all stories start somewhere, and that's where Jesus starts. It's his "point of entry" into something that will--at its center--have the words and deeds of Jesus. His story.

So you see we're back to a story again. A story about what Jesus did and said. And accomplished. What I'm trying to get away from as I read Mark is the tendency to separate each passage into a life-lesson or even a glorious message of encouragement, but to see it as a piece of the whole, which is a narrative. A story.

Now every part of this story has implications for life, and I'm not dismissing that, only sometimes I think we stray far and wide in the realm of "application," leaving the story behind. Some of the best preaching I've ever heard has been nothing more than a humble retelling of the gospel story.

And here's the clincher: I think when we leave the story behind, we leave the subject of the story behind. In a sense we leave reality behind, and go off into our own heads. We leave behind the living Jesus in favor of preaching-opportunities, injunctions, advice, corrective measures, critiques of "the world," imperatives, "Daily Bread" type encouragement, and a whole host of other things.

And we find ourselves sifting through all these derivative things, endlessly.

As for me, I'm just trying to "hear" the story again, fresh.