There are certainly questions about the real character of Obama. Do some digging on Google, and it won’t take long to get beyond the obvious lies about Obama (such as him being a Muslim) to valid concerns about who he has associated with and what causes he has supported. I have a degree in speech communication, so I really appreciate his communication skills. Do I think he lies or covers up things? In my opinion, yes. Did McCain lie or put spin on anything? Again, in my opinion, yes. Obama is just much better at it. We’ll soon see what Obama is really like as President, and whether he is really as evil as some say.

My faith, though, is not in a presidential messiah. My faith is in Jesus Christ, and his body. There are seeds in the body that give me hope, though not as many as I’d like. In an election year, there is a sense of urgency for people, one that often goes away after the latest messiah is elected, because then, we can relax and let the messiah do all the work. Obama’s campaign has inspired a lot of people to get involved, many of them from outside the Christian faith, though he has inspired a number of Christians as well. Since a lot of Christians, perhaps the majority, don’t like Obama, I’m hopeful that this will keep Christians from being apathetic and lazy. During the Bush era, many Christians seemed to support almost every action of the Bush Administration. Now the challenge will be for Christians to move beyond being defensive and reactive.

The real power, though, is where it always has been…in the grassroots, locally, regionally. Washington will do what Washington does, and we certainly need to prayer for our leaders. But we can act locally, being Christians wherever we happen to be, creatively serving our communities. The politics of the Kingdom are centered on Jesus Christ, in saving our lives to follow a King who is not of this world. ALL systems of government are flawed because money and power ultimately get in the way. The change Jesus Christ brings is a revolution of the heart, and His Kingdom stretches across borders, nations, people groups, languages. And my allegiance is to that King first. My hope is in that King. And the body who makes up that Kingdom is multicultural, multilanguage, multicolor.

Whatever the new administration brings, we, as Christians, can proactively bring about positive change. As Christians, we can let our faith transform our values, and be Christians. We can serve the poor, feed the hungry, point out the false idols in our culture, and let our faith affect how we choose to live our lives. My hope for the next four years is to see Christians wholistically engaging the culture around us. That hope begins with me turning my own words into actions. It always begins with the person in the mirror.

We live in times of incredibly rapid and prolific changes. People, products, ideas and cultures meet, mingle and mutate at dazzling speed. (Clapp, 17)

In the first chapter of Clapp’s book, he highlights an aspect of our postmodern world not actually mentioned. Part of the reason we are in a postmodern age is because technological change, communication advances, speed, and globalization have made made it difficult to slow down, difficult to be isolated. We are confronted with ideas and points of view from all over the place.

The modern world, profoundly shaped by the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, was based on a deep faith in unaided human reason. Weary of religious wars, modernist assumed that reason - apart from any particular religious tradition - could provide a universal human basis for morality. From this womb liberal democracy and the modern nation-state were born….Religion could be relegated harmlessly to private, individual life; the democratic state, supposedly resting on truths available to all reasonable people, would tend to public life…Reason would show the way. But the twentieth century shattered that dream. (Clapp, 21-22)

We have had war after war, mass destruction, and seen the limitations of science, among other things. Progress and efficiency came at a cost. Mass media as splintered in the age of the Internet to accomodate many voices. Clapp mentions three points relating to Postmodernism:
1. The postmodern world is a world which has lost its supposed universals and common goods.
2. The postmodern world is a fragmented world, more and more populated with isolated and drifting individuals.
3. The postmodern world is a world acutely aware of the “other” or stranger.

Relating to 1, Clapp points out that this actually frees us, as Christians, to be Christians, as we don’t have to make all aspects of Christianity fit into a framework of reason. We can ask deeper questions. For 2, Clapp says that Christianity, with it’s focus on community, has an answer to give here. With 3, postmodernists are suspicious of universal truths apart from culture, as people are very different. How do we relate to those that are different…and what does the Bible say about this?

My commentary is simple this. The focus on reason in the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution that followed has been good things in many, many ways. BUT, for a Christian, reason alone will not show the way. We believe in a world kingdom beyond the kingdom’s of this world. By aligning our beliefs so heavily with modernism, we have also made it easier for our beliefs to be thrown out along with modernism. Modernism is a FALSE worldview. It is NOT Biblical. The same can be said of Postmodernism. It’s not a matter of whether we agree or disagree with postmodernism. We live in a postmodern world in many respects. There are both dangers and opportunities that go with it. Recognize the dangers. Take advantage of the opportunities. We can lament how bad the world is, or do something to make it better. I choose the latter.

The Prophet, pointing to his positive track record relating to things happening in the US, claims that God told Him the next elected President would be the most ungodly ever. He then asked God, is there nothing that can be done? To which God said, “It depends on the Christians.” That’s convenient. As he himself says, he speaks for God as a prophet. Whether he has ever been wrong, well, we don’t know, as he doesn’t refer to those things.

His reasoning started off badly though. He said that he had prophecied about when Bush was elected, we would have the 8 most prosperous years in our country’s history. He then says that what the Democrats said about the Bush economy isn’t true and what he said is true. Well, it depends on your view of prosperity. If an entire country borrowing against its future on credit is your view of prosperity, so be it.

A blogger was talking about Christian music, and painted broadly how all music must come from God by way of anointing, and that most Christian music industry musicians aren’t anointed, and certainly it’s obviously that metal, rap and hip hop are not beautiful, and therefore aren’t Godly. He then picked out one Christian band to turn apart as his example of how CCM is wrong. And again, the part that gets me, is him pointing out how he has all these spiritual gifts, and being advanced, he has a sense of discernment as he’s gotten closer to God, that younger people in the Lord may not have, so those who listen to secular music or secular-inspired music are deceived by Satan and his lies.

That’s great. In both cases, I just simply can’t disagree. If I disagree, I am one of the following: A) not close to God, B) haven’t developed my spiritual gifts, C) deceived, D) unChristian, or perhaps something else. It doesn’t matter whether their are any logical flaws in their arguments, because they are speaking by divine inspiration.

It must be great to speak for God and always be right, and for people not to be able to disagree with you. I disagree.

Of course, the challenge is to be open to what God may have to say, regardless of who it comes from. Maybe I just tend to put more stock in words spoken by people who don’t claim to be the voice of God…

Links not provided as I don’t want to dignify their ideas by promoting them.

We get greedy because we do not believe that God truly will provide for all our material needs. We become anxious because we do not trust God for the future. We resort to violence because we think that we ahve to create our own way. We are selfish and possessive because we fear that we will not be able to satisfy our emotional desires. When our devotional and worship lives suffer, we lack the relationship with God that enables us to find harmony with others and with ourselves. Lacking peace with God, we cannot be at peace with anyone else. The root of our failures to share in community, then, lies in unbelief.

Fundamentally, part of what it means to be made in God’s image is that we are all created with an intense longing for God. If we cannot meet that need, we desperately try to fill the gap with all sorts of other gods. (Dawn, 86)

In a very good chapter on community and belonging to one another, Marva Dawn cuts to the core. How many of our issues come down to unbelief, essentially lack of faith in God. Sure, it’s easy enough to believe He exists, and even to say that the Bible is true and that Christianity is the right path. BUT, simply acknowledging those things, even teaching those things, doesn’t mean we truly believe them.

Trust doesn’t mean we cease to act. It could be argued that faith isn’t faith until we act on it. When we step out, though, is it in faith and trust of a supernatural God, or do we act as if God doesn’t exist, and if He does, do we act as if He isn’t worthy of trust?

Community is close to my heart. I want my faith to be real, for it not to be just a word, but alive in action. It’s really convicting to realize all the ways I don’t believe, when I ask myself honestly. Once I see how I don’t believe God, He then has an opportunity to help my unbelief, and that is very encouraging.

Dawn, Marva J. Truly the Community. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 1992.

I’m not proud to be an American. What have I to be proud of? For being born here? Besides, this type of pride is sinful. I am thankful though, to be born in this country, to be part of it. I could say that we are blessed, but that’s a mixed statement. We are fortunate to have so many natural resources so that we are one of the few countries in the world who have the option to be mostly independent. That’s not what we’ve done though, but what happens to be here. With abundance comes the danger of materialism, self-absorbtion, pride, and apathy. To all those things, we are guilty. Not all of us, and not all the time, but we are.

Luke 12:48 says, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” There’s a responsibility that comes with our ‘blessing.’ We don’t always own up to it. Sometimes we act entitled. What gets missed sometimes, is that a lot of Americans are noble too. The US has done a lot of good in the world, and Americans have done a lot of good, given a lot of time and money, given themselves for others. I don’t agree with all that we do, all that our government and military do, but that’s our money and soldiers on the line.

When I get emails that question whether I love America, maybe even if I love God, if I happen to disagree with any of the actions of a Republican government who happen to have a President who has some sort of Christian faith, I get confused though. The prophets in the Bible questioned their government. Even their best king, the one after God’s own heart, David, was questioned. Jesus actually followed a fair amount of cultural practices, but when it was wrong, he confronted it. We like to point to those who founded our nation. We seem to forget that they were rebels to the established order. They questioned abuse of authority.

I’m an American. I care about my country and those in it. And it’s because I care that I will oppose governmental actions that I believe to be wrong based on my convictions as a Christian. Last I checked, Christian leaders are capable of making mistakes and wrong choices. While I may personally support them and pray for them, if they are wrong, they should be confronted.

Our government is not a Christian organization though. While I do not believe every lifestyle choice people make is the way God wants us to live, I believe a government should protect their choices as well as mine, to a point. For instance, while I disagree with practicing homosexuality, people should have that right. However, abortion involves ending the life of another yet to be born, and is wrong, and shouldn’t be legal.

As a Christian, in this country, I can agree or disagree with what the choices made in this society. We’re not as free as we think we are, but we are more free than most (legally-speaking), and for that I’m thankful. But there’s a responsibility that goes along with that freedom to care about more than ourselves.

As it says on her website: “Kate lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she is hoping to reach out to people with her music and love people with her friendship. Her goal in her music and her life is To paint an accurate picture of God to those who have misunderstood Him.”

She has quite the voice. You have to hear her to understand what I mean. You just don’t know it’s there, until she starts to sing, and then you go: Woah.

Fortunately, she has a free 5 song EP called You Are Not Alone available for download, so you won’t have to wonder:)

This book was written in 1993, and the first chapter, which we will deal with another week, is on Postmodernism. This is a full 10 years before McClaren’s A New Kind of Christian. Clapp is considered by many to have a postmodern or postliberal perspective. One reviewer of Clapp’s A Peculiar People takes issue with some of his issues as unbiblical, but also commends him for a lot of his ideas. In Families at the Crossroads, Clapp challenges a number of traditional assumptions about the notion of family. Whether you fully agree with him or not, there is definitely some merit to this book, which most people probably have never heard of.

As we will see, what evangelicals call the “traditional family” is in fact the bourgeois or middle-class family, which rose to dominance in the nineteenth century - not accidently alongside capitalism and, a little later, America the ascendant world power. In this sense the typical evangelical account is accurate in linking family, free enterprise and “traditional” values. (Clapp, 11)

This is a bold statement to make, and probably unsettling for a lot of Christians. Perhaps some will outright condemn him as a postmodern Christian without even looking at how he supports the claim. That itself is one thing that scares me, when we, as Christians, label someone and condemn them as wrong simply because they hold a view that questions the popular or so-called conservative view. In this case, his search for truth is telling him that the popular view is historically wrong and unbiblical, and I happen to agree.

Clapp agrees that there are many negative forces affecting the family right now that we should be concerned about, and that there is value to family unit we refer to as the traditional family. Certainly there are concepts of family we’ve heard that are disturbing. However, is the nuclear, traditional family the Biblical model? Clapp says no.

In important respects, the “traditional family” is fact adopts family values that depart from those of the earlier evangelical heritage. For example, through much of history the family was an economically productive unit. The household was a place where husband, wife and children together farmed, did craftwork or otherwise earned their livelihood. The bourgeois or traditional family, by contrast, hos lost the family’s earlier function as an economically productive unit. Its main function is sentimental. It serves as haven and oasis, emotional stabilizer and battery-charger for its members. It demands that spouses and children love and trust one another, that they intensely enjoy being together. (Clapp, 13)

I think one of the dangers, it appears, of some conservative thinking, is that it is sometimes heavily rooted in a point in history, one often connected with the rise of industry, modernism, the Enlightenment, Reason. For me, I don’t really care whether an idea is conservative or liberal, modern or postmodern (and there are certainly more choices than A or B). I care about what idea is true, based on the Bible and history, even if it conflicts with a commonly held view. I believe truth is absolute, but if it were so obvious to discern, you’d think that Christians, at the very least, would have agreement amongst themselves about more ideas than they do.

Clapp, Rodney. Families at the Crossroads. Downers Grove, IL: IVP. 1993.

Local Service Teams
• A team would have a leader and coordinate service and/or outreach by either partnering with a local service organization or creating a team with a specific purpose. An example of the former would be a team that serves regularly at the Open Door Mission. An example of the latter might be a group that uses the arts to reach out on the street.
• The structure could require a service director who oversees coordinators (such as Youth, Tutoring, Creative Arts, Urban, etc) who in turn oversee leaders of specific service teams.
• A service team would have a leader and perform ongoing service locally. If with an organization, this would require a commitment on the leader’s part to bring a team to a regular basis (every week, every other week, etc).
• This format allows people to be a part of a team and not just serve solo. Jesus and the early church sent people out as teams of at least two (2).
• Volunteering together allows for relationships to be built with other team members. Since volunteering is sometimes uncomfortable and difficult, this environment is very conducive to this purpose.
• Relationships can only be built with the organization and the people they serve by ongoing service.
• Most organizations need committed volunteers, not one-off volunteers.
• Some organizations are cynical when approached by people who want to serve because the volunteers say they want to help, but aren’t committed. Similarly, many people who we want to serve are used to Christians who come in to serve and help, and who either don’t stay long or leave when it gets difficult. It takes time to build trust.
• Being a neighbor to people may require us to get out of our comfort zones. It is too easy to isolate ourselves from suffering and those in need. God’s concern for the poor and oppressed is unmistakable.
• Serving people outside our comfort zones gives us an opportunity to learn, live out what we say we believe, and build our faith.

Service Trips
• These would be service-oriented trips outside of Northern Colorado.
• Trips could occur during fall break, winter break, spring break, or summer.
• In the summer, it would be possible to have a 1-2 week service trip overseas.
• Coordinator: Someone would need to organize and coordinate the service trip(s).
• Leader: Someone would have to lead the trip. The leader may or may not be the coordinator.
• The leadership structure would depend on the number of trips. If the program developed, a coordinator would organize, promote, and recruit team members, and would then pass on to the leader to build and lead the team.

Service-Learning Group
• I went through a service-learning course in college, and still have the curriculum.
• If we went with this format, it would involve a commitment to volunteer/serve locally and a meeting to do the following: encourage, support, pray, reflect, study, learn, etc.
• The meeting would likely be shorter than a small group session would be.
• We could either volunteer at the same place or different places, though ideally it would be good if we were in terms of 2.
• A service-oriented job would be an option.
• Serving outside our comfort zone would be ideal.

Community House
• Acquire house/duplex in or near Old Town.
• If possible, convert to boarding house to bypass 3-unrelated limit.
• Ideally the house would be 6-10 people, possibly coed.
• Commit to living in community and serving locally for a year.
• Serving component would likely be 3+ hours of ongoing service a week.
• People would ideally serve in groups of 2 or 3.
• There would be one weekly dinner and/or meeting with the group.
• I have a few different community house visions written shortly after college, as well as people I could ask advice from. A new plan could then be written.

Recession is Looming: How Can We Prepare?
Ideas for Recession Preparedness
Lessons Learned from Church Disaster Plans
How to Help the Most Vulnerable

Tom Sine, of MSA, has written quite a bit on globalization and planning for the future while keeping up on and anticipating trends, with special attention given to what this means for the church in the US and worldwide.

I have read and heard a lot of things about the level of consumption in the US and questions about the sustainability of our consumerism, especially as the rest of the world modernizes. Colorado, where I live, has an above average economy, and has already been slimming down the last decade after the dotcom bubble burst. We still feel it though, and as always, the poorest among us feel it, and those in other parts of the country, and those in other parts of the world. And if rises prices make it harder for Americans, just think how that is affecting people in other parts of the world who were paying higher costs to begin with?

Sometimes this is what it takes to get us to notice our neighbors…

To pray is to change. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us. IF we are unwilling to change, we will abandon prayer as a noticeable characteristic of our lives. The closer we come to the heartbeat of God the more we see our need and the more we desire to be conformed to Christ. (Foster, 33)

I really like that description, because it highlights the importance of the relational nature of prayer, and that prayer is a primary means of transformation. And really, if we don’t spend time with God, it probably should come as no surprise that we aren’t as like Him as we’d like to be.

Foster mentions both Martin Luther and John Wesley. I’ve always marveled at Luther saying that he “had too much business” to not spend three hours a day in prayer. How different we tend to see things in our busy culture.

For some Christian pioneers, prayer was the chief work of their lives. That too, seems out of reach, and counter-cultural. We pray, but do we really, really believe prayer makes that much of a difference? How often do we pray because it’s expected? And when we ask for things, how much faith do we have that it will make a difference? I, for one, have struggled with the last question more often than I care to admit.

That’s partly why I like the idea of communing with God. But if I truly trust Him, I can’t get away from petitioning and intercession, now can I? I don’t want my prayers to be functional though, as if prayer is a technique where I have to correctly insert a coin into the great slot machine in the sky.

In Foster’s view, “Real prayer is something we learn” (Foster, 36) over time, by doing it. As we pray, we get more tuned into God, and thereby find our prayers more often answered. But first, we must listen. Certainly verses like John 15:7 convey that God answers prayer: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you.” I’ve always liked John 15, though the challenge of that chapter is not to abide in order to get close to God as a task to get what we want, but to get to know God himself.

I grew up Pentecostal, so we prayed a lot, and definitely believed God answered prayers and moved among us. That might have carried more weight if the character of a number of people I knew lived up to their supposed prayer lives. Christians fail though, and ultimately, either what the Bible says about prayer is true or it’s not, and fortunately, there are always those Christians whose lives remind me why I believe.

Foster talks about prayer by using the imagination. Some detractors liken his description to astral projection or other Eastern religion practices. I’ll let others disect his methodology and just focus on my view of it. “Children also teach us the value of the imagination” (Foster, 41). As adults, we sometimes get too serious, too concrete. That’s not to say there isn’t a time to be serious, but there’s also a time to play and use our imaginations. I’ve used my imagination in prayer before, and it’s rather cool to form a picture of the person I’m praying for. Hey, if Peter, and Paul and John can see all the visions they saw (including the entire book of Revelation), and we are looking to the Bible for examples of how to pray, I’d say imagination has a place in prayer.

Foster also wrote a comprehensive book on prayer called Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home. Anyone know any other good books on prayer?