From David Kinney: Where does God live?

Where does God live?:


photo credit: Alex E. Proimos
Ephesians 2:19-22 (CEB) You are no longer strangers and aliens. Rather, you are fellow citizens with God’s people, and you belong to God’s household. As God’s household, you are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. The whole building is joined together in him, and it grows up into a temple that is dedicated to the Lord.  Christ is building you into a place where God lives through the Spirit.
For too long we have confused the church building as the church, or we’ve called it “the Lord’s house” but these four walls are not the church. This building is a tool, it’s a resource. You are the Lord’s house.
Paul says the foundation is scripture, the cornerstone is Christ and In Him YOU are built TOGETHER (in community) as the home of God.
It’s a terribly mixed message when we tell our little children that God lives in their heart where it’s loud and colorful and filled with joy and butterflies, but then we also teach that God also lives here in his quiet, stuffy building.
Which is it?
Friends, the church is us, God lives in us and we come to the building to love Him and to love each other; to be his sons and daughters. But if we are to live out our purpose as God’s church, we can not do it alone. God designed us to be in community, to live in community and to love in community because  our God is a community God.

Evangelical Resistance to the Gospels: How & Why

Evangelical Resistance to the Gospels: How & Why:

A few days ago, I wrote that Christian people, evangelicals included, have developed the terribly unfortunate habit of misreading the Gospels.

It goes beyond unintentionally cultivated habits.  I think that reading the Gospels for what they’re really saying threatens to upset and destabilize our church community dynamics that have become predictable and comfortable.  Contemporary Christians—evangelicals included—are too threatened by the Gospels to read them for what they’re actually saying.

Resistance to the Gospels takes many forms and happens for various reasons.  We’ve noted in the comments some of the forms resistance takes over the last few days (e.g., older premillennial dispensationalism, some forms of a Law/Gospel contrast). 

Here are a few more.

I can recall our Gospels-resistance reading strategies from Bible studies in high school and college.  We would encounter a challenging statement of Jesus, such as that in Luke 14:12-15:

Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

Realizing that Jesus very clearly says to invite the poor and those of shameful social status, we would fall silent and then ask, “what do you think Jesus means by this?”

Inevitably, someone would say, “I think Jesus is referring to our hearts—that we should have willing hearts in case we’re ever called to serve.”

This is a familiar strategy, one I’ve encountered (and used myself) many times.  We stare at the clear words of Jesus that challenge our well-established social patterns and community dynamics, and we flinch.  We relegate Jesus’ commands to motive-purification, ignoring that he’s calling for purposeful transformation of actual social practices.

N. T. Wright is dead-on when he says that evangelicals are Bultmannian when it comes to the Gospels (How God Became King, pp. 22-23).  Bultmann sought to strip away the “husk” of the historical details of the Gospels in order to get to the “kernel” of theological truth the Gospels writers were really communicating.

We strip away the “husk” of Jesus’ clear words to find the spiritual “kernel” that we apply to our hearts and motives. 

This is a reading strategy whereby we keep Jesus safely tucked away in our hearts, self-satisfied with our piety.  But we intentionally avoid doing what he says with our bodies, social practices, and community dynamics.

It’s too threatening.  If we actually did the things Jesus says to do, we’d have to change, and we just don’t want to.

Another example, not so much of why Gospel-resistance happens, but how.  Several years ago, a senior colleague confronted me angrily about something I had written.  He quoted to me the following passage from a paper I had presented on racial reconciliation:

[The gospel is] the announcement of the arrival of the long-awaited kingdom of God—the announcement that God has come in Jesus to begin his work of reclaiming and redeeming the world, which begins with a redeemed people—a holy people who will manifest, in their social practices, the very life of God on earth.

He demanded to know where I could have gotten such a statement.  I thought he was joking.  He wasn’t.

I told him I got it from reading the Gospels.  He brushed that aside, insisting that this was a sign that I was “emergent.”

I’ve had a number of conversations like that more recently.  I spoke to one person about the church embodying Kingdom life through transforming corporate practices.  He told me that was the “social gospel,” a distraction from the mission of the church.

I said to another that based on a certain text in Mark, Jesus calls the church to take uncomfortable steps of faith—to go beyond what is familiar—in order to enact the Kingdom of God.  He asked me for a few examples, so I suggested that he and a few of his friends initiate a church-based urban mentoring program, looking after some junior high boys who don’t have fathers.

He told me that “sounded emergent.”

I asked him if he thought a more effective demonstration of faith would be getting together with his friends and praying for impossible things.  He nodded. 

After a brief pause, he smiled and said that he may have been speaking out of his theological conditioning, admitting that he doesn’t want to be pushed out of his comfort zone.

We could go on for quite some time giving examples from a variety of theological perspectives and Christian traditions of ways we manage to resist hearing what the Gospels are saying.  My sense is that many of us feel deep-down that there’s too much at stake–our comfort, the predictability of our church community life, our positions of influence, our entrenched interests. 

All of those are threatened by taking the Gospels seriously and letting them radically sift, reorder, and transform the community dynamics and social patterns of our churches.

It’s easier to relegate their clear message to the “safe zone” of our hearts and label calls to actually obey them as “liberal,” “emergent,” or “social gospel.” 

Or, here’s a new one: “That’s something N. T. Wright would say.”

Stand AND Deliver

Stand AND Deliver:

Posted by Dan R. Dick in General Conference, Personal Reflection, The United Methodist Church.
Tags: General Conference, The United Methodist Church, Trust, Unity, Values
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At General Conference Friday evening, we celebrated (if celebrate is an even moderately appropriate word…) “An Act of Repentance toward Healing Relationships with Indigenous Peoples.”  The people I’ve spoken with about the service (before it began) were of three minds: 1) what was done to Native Americans was horrendous, but thankfully I had nothing to do with it and I love all people, 2) that was then, this is now — what do “they” expect us to do about it now? and, 3) I am so tired of this bleeding heart $#!/ aimed at making me/us feel guilty.  In almost all cases — from sympathetic to hostile — the common feeling is “I didn’t do it.”  Many people wondered why do “we” have to repent — and what exactly does this mean anyway?

It has always confused me how we glory in famous ancestors and celebrate wondrous stories of great, great grandparents, but want absolutely no blame for anything they did wrong.  We are a people of faith where our Jewish roots are very deeply steeped in bloodline, tribe, and ancestry.  Even in our Christian practice we honor the “communion of the saints,” and the “mighty cloud of witnesses” who help to define us.  For both Hebrew and early Christian communities, the plural was always more important than the individual, where shared responsibility for one another was a blessing rather than a burden.  Accepting a small measure of ownership for what our forebears did shouldn’t be such a stretch.  We benefit from the good things we inherit; perhaps we should shoulder the blame for some of the bad that produced the good.
But this can’t merely be about guilt, and as Rev. Dr. George E. Tinker taught us, it is going to take more than an apology to move things forward.  The process of repenting is not an act or an event, but a journey — a turning that is not a one-time thing.  Apologies don’t “do” anything but make the apologizer feel better.  Absent restitution or restoration, saying we’re sorry is an empty gesture.  So, in actuality, we experienced the beginning of a service of repentance tonight — we stood together and our episcopal leaders made a pledge that it will be interesting to see us live up to.  Bishop Goodpaster said our response must be specific, actionable and accountable.  Bishop Wenner listed Native American ministries, Native American Sunday, many awareness raising opportunities – including acts of repentance in our Annual Conferences and creating relationships of mutuality — as ways we can live into a shared partnership of responsibility.  We did the “stand” part.  Now it will be interesting to see how well we “deliver.”
But for me there are three essential elements that need to be part of the process.  First, how will we know we mean it?  The vast majority of people I spoke with thought they were being unfairly blamed for something they didn’t do.  This abdication of responsibility is not a purely intellectual reaction, and it will take more than information and “awareness raising” to change not only people’s minds, but their hearts.  Second, getting our heads around signficant change rather than superficial gestures is huge.  Are we willing to “give back” things we think of as ours, not theirs?  Is the justice aspect strong enough to motivate us to declare a jubilee year and divide our blessings equally?  Third, and most important for me, are we going to simply do nice things for indigenous peoples because we feel we ought to, or are we going to establish truly loving, caring relationships — expanding our circle of family?  If our ancestors took the dreams of indigenous people away from them, are we willing to listen to their deepest dreams for their future and work alongside them to help them realize those dreams?  Just “giving back” doesn’t change anything or make anything right.  But a true repentance will cause us to become something new, something more, something better.  We will seek to be partners in creating the kind of future that will honor and support us all.  We cannot undo the tragedies we caused (or that our ancestors caused) in the past, but we do have the power to create something good.  We must stand and deliver — the standing is easy (we do it all the time), but delivery is where we see the outward and visible signs of our inward and spiritual intentions.  Time will tell.  We laid a wonderful foundation.  Now, what shall we build?

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My College Football Ranking after Week 7

Rank Team Conf Rate
1 Iowa Big Ten 77.14
2 Alabama SEC 76.75
3 Florida SEC 76.50
4 Texas Big 12 76.00
5 Cincinnati Big East 75.67
6 Boise State WAC 75.50
7 LSU SEC 75.43
7 Georgia Tech ACC 75.43
9 TCU Mountain West 75.17
10 Auburn SEC 75.13
11 Pittsburgh Big East 74.71
11 USC Pac-10 74.71
13 Miami ACC 74.50
14 Oregon Pac-10 74.43
15 Houston C-USA 74.00
16 Wisconsin Big Ten 73.71
16 Michigan Big Ten 73.71
18 Oklahoma State Big 12 73.67
19 BYU Mountain West 73.63
20 Penn State Big Ten 73.57
20 Utah Mountain West 73.57
22 West Virginia Big East 73.50
23 Nebraska Big 12 73.43
24 Virginia Tech ACC 73.38
24 Idaho WAC 73.38
26 South Florida Big East 73.20
27 Kansas Big 12 73.17
27 California Pac-10 73.17
29 South Carolina SEC 73.14
30 Ohio State Big Ten 73.13
31 Missouri Big 12 72.83
32 Central Michigan MAC 72.75
33 Notre Dame Independent 72.71
34 Minnesota Big Ten 72.50
35 Boston College ACC 72.43
35 Kentucky SEC 72.43
37 UCLA Pac-10 72.29
37 Texas Tech Big 12 72.29
39 Mississippi SEC 72.17
40 Stanford Pac-10 72.00
40 Connecticut Big East 72.00
40 Arizona Pac-10 72.00
40 Oregon State Pac-10 72.00
44 Tulsa C-USA 71.50
44 Georgia SEC 71.50
46 Tennessee SEC 71.43
47 Navy Independent 71.25
48 Arizona State Pac-10 71.00
48 Louisiana-Lafayette Sun Belt 71.00
50 Clemson ACC 70.86
51 North Carolina ACC 70.80
52 Ohio MAC 70.71
52 Troy Sun Belt 70.71
54 Texas A&M Big 12 70.57
55 Oklahoma Big 12 70.50
56 Washington Pac-10 70.38
57 Northwestern Big Ten 70.29
57 Wake Forest ACC 70.29
59 Rutgers Big East 70.00
59 Colorado State Mountain West 70.00
59 Air Force Mountain West 70.00
59 SMU C-USA 70.00
63 Southern Miss C-USA 69.71
64 Middle Tennessee Sun Belt 69.57
64 Marshall C-USA 69.57
64 ECU C-USA 69.57
64 Mississippi State SEC 69.57
64 Iowa State Big 12 69.57
69 Baylor Big 12 69.50
70 Michigan State Big Ten 69.43
71 Louisiana-Monroe Sun Belt 69.33
71 Kansas State Big 12 69.33
71 Fresno State WAC 69.33
74 Indiana Big Ten 69.17
74 UCF C-USA 69.17
76 Wyoming Mountain West 69.14
76 Buffalo MAC 69.14
76 Nevada WAC 69.14
79 Toledo MAC 69.13
80 UAB C-USA 69.00
80 Arkansas SEC 69.00
82 Bowling Green MAC 68.88
83 Northern Illinois MAC 68.83
84 Florida State ACC 68.33
85 Colorado Big 12 68.14
85 UTEP C-USA 68.14
87 Purdue Big Ten 68.13
88 Louisville Big East 68.00
89 Syracuse Big East 67.83
90 Western Michigan MAC 67.71
91 Louisiana Tech WAC 67.50
92 NC State ACC 67.33
93 Washington State Pac-10 67.14
94 Eastern Michigan MAC 67.00
94 Tulane C-USA 67.00
94 Virginia ACC 67.00
97 Kent State MAC 66.86
97 North Texas Sun Belt 66.86
99 UNLV Mountain West 66.71
100 Hawaii WAC 66.67
101 Army Independent 66.50
101 San Diego State Mountain West 66.50
103 Arkansas State Sun Belt 66.40
104 Florida Atlantic Sun Belt 66.33
105 Vanderbilt SEC 66.29
106 New Mexico State WAC 66.14
106 Maryland ACC 66.14
108 Duke ACC 66.00
109 Memphis C-USA 65.71
110 Florida Int'l Sun Belt 65.43
111 San Jose State WAC 65.33
112 Illinois Big Ten 64.83
113 Utah State WAC 64.67
114 Akron MAC 64.43
115 Miami (Ohio) MAC 64.38
116 Rice C-USA 64.25
117 New Mexico Mountain West 64.14
118 Temple MAC 63.71
119 Western Kentucky Sun Belt 62.43
120 Ball State MAC 61.13

Acts 4 Thoughts

The Church in the US is facing an unfriendly situation. However, it's not nearly as unfriendly as what the Church in Acts faced. Here was their request to God:

Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is how the Church in America should be praying!

Acts 3 Thoughts

The lame man expected money. He got healed instead. What does God want to do for us that we are not expecting?

Acts 2 Thoughts

It's interesting that in Chapter 2, Luke mentions Peter standing up with the eleven not the twelve.