Check out this story about the SAME Cafe in Denver. Opened to provide a dignified and compassionate way of allowing everyone to eat regardless of circumstance, Brad and Libby Birky run their restaraunt using a unique pay what you can system. Though they will never get rich doing so, they are contributing the betterment of their little block on Colfax Avenue. What are we going to do today?
Find out more at www.soallmayeat.org
Out of Ur publishes a dilemma faced by a congregation choosing to welcome a child molester into their body or banish him to the hinterlands. The question that swirls around this instance and the countless others that the Church faces every day is just how far Christ expects us to extend our love, acceptance, and forgiveness. But then, if we have to ask it appears that we missed the point of His life and death and life.
A profound change came over the direction of my ministry when a young homeless man became a part of church that I belonged to. He was tolerated by some, shunned by others, and loved by few. It was hinted that I devoted a little too much effort to ministering to him. Love, accept, forgive became endure, tolerate, and watch. I can envision the reception that the child molester is facing in that body.
Did Jesus give us the option to turn away from repentant sinners? Is there a sliding scale on which our sins are judged, some being acceptable and others not? The answer to both of these is no. However distasteful we find the sin, our call is to view the sinner in his new light, pushing his previous sin as far away as the east is from the west. What are those who run away going to do when they encounter this man in heaven?
I guess that I’m going to have to edit my previous posts about interracial marriage now that the Asian American Journalists Association has spoken. They are offended that the thug who massacred all of the innocents at Virginia Tech was referred to as Asian. If the racial divisions in our culture are ever going to be broken, it’s going to have to begin with recognizing that our race is a part of who we are. To say that you don’t see race not only makes you a liar but it diminishes the person on whom you are looking by not recognizing the fullness of their being.
We all need a lift today, so here’s a story of some mixed-up crazy kids by Robert Earl Keen.
We’ve all heard of the ‘worship wars’ and maybe even participated in the battles. Often, the skirmishes have centered around guitars versus the organ, hymns over the praise chorus, or even robes being more godly than the polo shirt. All of this, Labberton continues in The Dangerous Act of Worship, serves as distraction from the real battle within the body, the ease with which we forget our neighbor. The fracas over our personal preferences becomes somnolent, inducing a deep sleep that avoids God’s call for His people to seek justice in the lives with which theirs intersect.
Mark laments the ease with which the Church has forgotten her vocation. We have fallen asleep to the needs of our neighbor and, as we have turned inward within our fortress sanctuaries, we have forgotten that “our suffering world longs for signs of God on the earth.” He puts this omission in sharp relief by reminding us that Jesus’ command in Mark 12:29-31
(These) commands set the agenda for lifestyles of worship. No allegiance of love is ever to be greater than our allegiance to God. In God’s being and purpose, these are not rival allegiances. Love for God comes first and leads us to love our neighbor. In fact, failing to love our neighbor throws serious doubt on whether we are loving God.
We are challenged to expand our notion of worship from that hour on Sunday morning to include every twenty four hour in which we draw breath. Worship that loves God includes love for all of His creation and Creations. If our worship is limited to the verses of How Great Thou Art without recognizing the human-greatness in God’s eyes of our neighbor, we are slumbering. Worship that experiences the heart of God feels the burden he carries for our fellow man and woman who are suffering injustice in the world He made. Only when we awaken to this, are we fully engaged in worship.
What do you think?
According to these guys and their horrible misappropriation of the Bible. Hey guys, can you turn to Galatians 3:26-28? What is it going to look like in heaven boys, especially at the gathering described in Revelation 7:9? Is everybody going to be separated by skin color?
This Associated Press article was making the rounds of the net news over the past couple of days and appeared in the Denver papers Friday. It makes the case that, while interracial marriages were out of favor for much of the history of the U.S., the increasingly diverse population of the country has made these unions much more common.
While the trend toward racially mixed marriages is on the rise, they have not grown any easier. I have been married to my lovely Asian wife for twenty four years and it hasn’t always been easy. There can be familial difficulties and challenges with entire groups who disapprove. The children of these marriages face an additional challenge in choosing how they will racially identify. Our son has decided to be Asian but could just as easily identify otherwise. I’m happy to see that he didn’t shy away from that choice and, in fact, takes great pride in his Korean heritage.
But, it’s here where the article falls short; why are we still labeling couples this way? My wife and I don’t wake up every morning and reflect on our interracial status any more than a caucasian couple looks at one another and says “Hey! We’re both white!” It appears to me that the author tipped their hand early on in the piece as to why he goes to such great lengths to highlight the difficulties that the couples face, he wants to support his early assertion that the racial divide is bigger than ever. The division of the races becomes a self-perpetuating issue guaranteed to make someone think twice before crossing any of these invisible racial lines as they think about the supposedly insurmountable challenges that an interracial relationship should bring their way. And the circle of dischord turns round again…
Technorati tags: Culture, Race, Interracial Marriage, Love
The sun is out and life is good so of course our musical thoughts turn to Mr. Goodtimes himself.
If you’re not a meat eater, perhaps some of his other works? Come Monday, A Pirate looks at Forty?
I’ve been teaching at Regis University since the early 90s, with all of my courses being classroom based. I love this environment and the ability to interact with the students, getting to know them and their educational goals so that I can contribute to their growth. Recently, I was recruited to teach in the online environment and participate in our distance learning offerings.
All instructors are introduced to the system through an intensive, two week course in conducting and constructing your courses online. I’ve just finished week one, which sharply curtailed the amount of writing I have been able to do on my blog, and my attitudes toward the process are slowly shifting toward the favorable. Having taken some online classes in the past, I found that they gave the student too much of an invitation to procrastinate until the last minute thinking that the anonymity of the online world shielded their study habits. What I’ve discovered is that keeping student’s involved is more a product of course design than the environment itself. It will be interesting to see how this works out at the end of next week.
Mark Labberton, the author of the demanding The Dangerous Act of Worship, answers this question quite simply; Everything. All that we are, have as potential, or hope to become is wrapped up in our worship of God. Yet, with all this in the balance we concern ourselves with such mundanity as guitars versus the organ or KJV rather than NIV, all the while avoiding the suffering, poverty, and injustice that surrounds us. Labberton paints a vivid picture of the church as slumbering, unwilling or unable to waken itself.
In this first chapter, Mark establishes the foundation upon which he wants to ignite a change in our worship practices. He uses the familiar passage from Micah (6:8) to center his idea of true worship:
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
His thesis, teased out in the remaining chapters, is that we as the Church have fallen asleep to the call for mercy and justice. We should be awake, as our Lord Jesus was fully awake.
Jesus, if anything, was and is awake. That’s the shock for those who encounter him in the Gospels. He came to make a world of those who are awake-awake to God, to each other and to the world. Waking up is the dangerous act of worship. It’s dangerous because worship is meant to produce lives fully attentive to reality as God sees it, and that’s more than most of us want to deal with.
What do you think of his analogy of the Church asleep and the contributions of her leadership to its slumber? Is your congregation focused on comfort or justice? I’ll be interested in exploring this further with you.
LOVE | ACCEPT | FORGIVE 