a drop of water

Are we able to accept that God’s calling on our lives is the best that we could ever have? Am I at peace with the idea that what God wants me to do with my life is the best thing, most satisfying, most rewarding, most caring thing that could happen to me? Am I satisfied with who God has made me and do I identify more with who God has made me instead of what I accomplish or do? Or am I doubting God’s calling on my life and am I trying to make my own way because I think I can discern the best for my life, the most satisfying outcome and path. Do I ignore the opportunities that are in front of me because they are helping them in a — me versus them mentality. Does God paint a world view there there is no me versus them or is the me made whole in the them?

We have always called ourselves tax-exempt 5013c anti-profit organization. We wrestle to free ourselves from macrocharity and distant acts of charity that serve to legitimize apathetic lifestyles of good intentions but rob us of the gift of community. We visit rich people had have them visit us. We preach, prophesy, and dream together about how to awaken the church from her violent slumber. Sometimes we speak to change the world. other times we speak to keep the world from changing us. We are about ending poverty, not simply managing it. We give people fish. We teach them to fish. We tear down the walls that have been built up around the fish pond. And we figure out who polluted it. p123.

Sometimes people call those of us in our community radical. As I said before, if by radical we mean “root,” I think it is precisely the right word for what we are trying to do — get down to the roots of what it means to be Christian disciples. Most of the time, though, I think that if what we are doing seems radical, then that says more about the apathy of Western Christianity than about the true nature of our discipleship. And this is why “radical” has to be coupled with “ordinary.” p131

But that doesn’t mean community is easy. For everything in this world tries to pull us away from community, pushes us to choose ourselves over others, to choose independence over interdependence, to choose great things over small things, to choose going fast alone over going far together. p135

excerpts from the irresistible revolution by shane claiborne (www.thesimpleway.org)

I was talking with my friend Chris W. this morning over breakfast and he’s been reading up on why church leaders fail in recent weeks. I think failure in leadership comes from two things, a separation of family and leadership responsibility and a separation of leader and led.

From the little experience that I have had in church ministry and campus ministry, I see people neglecting their significant others and families under the guise of ministry. We seem to glorify sacrificing the few for the sake of the many. It’s like we settle for the “lesser” of the two evils. Chris W. spoke some truth and hope into the matter and referenced 1 Timothy 3:4. He reminded me of the hope that this verse brings, that it is possible to do both, to not have to sacrifice family for ministry.

The second separation the one between the leader and the led I think results from exceptional leaders and people wanting to be exceptional leaders. Exceptional leaders themselves are instrinsically differentiated and put on a pedestal by the people they lead, creating a gap, essentially removing the community from the leader. People who want to be exceptional leaders put themselves in isolation by their own doing and severe the community from themselves. This is unfortunate because many leaders now have no community to turn to for help. Yes they are suppose to lead, but that shouldn’t mean they are alone.

Without family support and community, leaders end up taking on too much alone. So we need to come around our leaders and provide them with community.

Random thought of today is to use your cell phone like a prayer list. Go through a couple of names if you have some free time and pray for them. If you don’t know what to pray for, give them a call and see how they are doing. This is easy cause we always have our cell phone with us, and typically the people whose numbers we have are people that we care about and/or God has put in our life to serve.

I’ve been reading Rob Bell’s book, Velvet Elvis after watching a few of his Nooma DVD series. I’ve been learning about about Hebrew culture and such. For example, in Flame (#2 in the Nooma series) Bell goes through 3 words that describe love in the Hebrew language: Raya, Ahava, and Dod. Raya is translated as a friendship type love. Ahava is the commitment type love and Dod is the sexual part of love. You can read the transcript for Flame here. But this post is not about love, it’s about Rabbis.

When a student of a Rabbi would come up with an interpretation of the Torah (first 5 books of the Bible) that the Rabbi believed completely missed the point, the Rabbi would say, “You have abolished the Torah.” If the interpretation completely got the point, the Rabbi would say “You have fulfilled the Torah.” Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” It brings a contextual solid feeling to how Jesus is addressing the culture in their own words.

Here is another example that Bell notes. When a Rabbi has a new interpretation of the the scriptures, he is validated or protected perse against accusations of blasphemy by having two other Rabbi’s support him. They would lay hands on him and say something like, “We believe this rabbi has authority to make new interpretations.” So at Jesus baptism, there are two “rabbis” who validate him: 1. John the Baptist and God the Father himself. That’s exciting.

My last note from Bell’s book on this topic is that supposedly in the Jewish context, action was the goal. Living out what you believed was the perspective that everyone had.