Culture – Page 6 – No Small Talk

Church is not a feel good place

This is something that I have touched on in the past before. But it seems that I’m seeing, reading, and hearing of people falling into the idea that church should be a “feel good place” – they would never admit to it, they would probably not even be really aware of it. Church should be a place of growth in God, and more times than not it seems God will use other people to cause that growth in us, that can be through a number of different ways. Sometimes it’s simply someone who is very irritating to you, other times it’s a leader who just doesn’t quit say things very nicely. Other times it’s God putting us in leadership and then being burnt by the leadership team.

When we commit to be in leadership, to make a church our home, or anytime we say Yes to something, we must make our yes be yes – even when disagreements, annoyances, and simple fleshly crap comes up. This doesn’t mean we become door mats to the people around us – absolutely not. Our no must be no as well, but we must communicate fully, and if God is giving people different visions, it’s ok – we have free will, exercise it, but do it in grace remember we are all human, even the Church leaders.

Collosians 3:12-15 [nlt]

¹² Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. ¹³ Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. ¹⁴ Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony. ¹⁵And let the peace that comes from Christ rule in your hearts. For as members of one body you are called to live in peace. And always be thankful.

GOD IS THE FEEL GOOD PLACE – Not the Church, the Church is simply the medium God uses to bring us to him, and many times it doesn’t feel good, and many times it does. Christ is the head of the Church, not any human – remember that, and we have full access to him. When we love him and truly love others as we do ourselves and him, then we begin to feel Good – even if it tortures us to look at people as God does.

A good kind of daily torture…

I have been doing a lot of reading lately, I’m reading my second Don Miller book – “Searching for God knows what” – and a lot of things on the Internet in the same thread as the social justice movement in and out of the church, and those kinds of things.

So now when I ride the train each day I am moved to look at people the way God does – and it humbles me, and tortures me daily. I’m tortured by the fact that when you think about how God must love the people around you, and you hear, and see how other people treat them, all you can do is begin to imagine how God feels for us. His love is torturing me, everyday. I’m okay with this.

I’ve been praying for God to give me his eyes for those around me, and now I see it everyday – and it’s my heart that sees people more clearly each day. Now I want the words, praying is great, but an encounter with God is better.

Receiving when you can’t give.

Recently Alexis and I have been the recipients of so many gifts from people, many different things, from dinners, furniture, and donations for our trips, to full outfits for Emma, wonderfully framed pictures, and freshly grown vegetables from people’s gardens. We are so thankful, and we would love to give back in someway, but in most cases we just are not able – and sometimes it gets hard to receive when you are not able to give back in return. However we are learning that in God’s kingdom there isn’t a balance in this area. We are told to freely give, so we may freely receieve… sometimes I think our culture twists this and makes us think that means we have to be “fair” in our giving and receiving, making sure that we give back to those that give to us. When really, to give freely means giving without expecting anything back, at all. And to freely receieve means exactly that, to receive and not be under pressure to give something in exchange. For if this is what Jesus wanted we would all be dead.

Still though, it is hard to be in a place where it seems so unbalanced, even harder when it is near strangers giving you things. It’s humbling, and it’s kingdom like. We are so thankful to be in a church family that gets this. We do thank God for all of them every day. Our appreciation can only be expressed in words and time spent with you all.

Thank you.

Being misunderstood…

Being misunderstood is one of the most frustrating things for me, especially between people that I sincerely love. Sometimes I feel like a politician, where I have to explain everything, in every way possible so that no one will be offended. Paul said some pretty harsh things, and we today read it knowing his heart, but our culture sure seems to have trouble when another brother or sister tries to express things similarly, all of a sudden we then become someone else, not the person they know in person… I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say here, I guess I’m just venting…

But God just reminded me that it isn’t a reflection on me, it’s simply the filters that each person’s life puts on words. Even when we know a person, and we’ve seen them work in love, our filters can twist words around – the enemy uses our past to mess with our viewpoints. Instead of automatically assuming someone is doing something or saying something in love it comes out instead as religious, legalistic, or any number of other assumptions.

Those that know me personally, know how I am in person, read what I say, as just that, as the Travis you know. I don’t hold anyone to any kind of measure, nor any kind of performance scale – I may be disappointed, I may be trying to express my desire for more, but I completely understand the real life situations of others – which is exactly why we have to be free to express ourselves, even disappointments – otherwise how else can we let true love for each other work if we always have to be concerned that we might offend someone – we gotta be able to speak freely at times, as long as the foundation is in love. Otherwise without love it means nothing and the enemy will steal and destroy.

Voices of the past

I have been reading Don Miller’s “Blue like Jazz” for a week or so now, on my daily 1 hour commute each way. The MAX can be quite the cultural experience, and for the most part I like it. But combine a challenging book such as “Blue like jazz” and you might just end up frustrated. You see, this book gets to the core of what Christianity really is, really “should” be, the spiritual piece, not the standard life-behavior rhetoric we usually hear.

But this triggers voices inside that are at odds with my origins. First of all I’m suddenly convicted of not caring for people when I thought I did – my head does, I know what is right but if I don’t actually do it – then do I really believe it? For example, there was a guy who got on the train at the same place as I, he was quite confused, a little slow, and kept bothering people on how to get to some place he had written on a piece of paper. The whole time I heard God telling me to help him, possibly go with him the whole way to his destination… but the voice of fear said otherwise, and I kept reading the book – which threw me into a tornado of thoughts, and made me realize how much I fear rejection – even though I don’t let it emotionally bother me – but that’s probably because I don’t let it happen anymore.

None the less I am sure God put another person on the train – because moments later another guy got on and sat next to the confused dude, and within minutes he was describing to him in details how the Portland Transit system works, and where to get off to get to his destination (which apparently didn’t make sense, something like take the Yamhill bus to 10, and 10 to Yamhill… ummm). Anyway – this is just a very small example of the thoughts going on from about 6am to 7am and 3:30 to 4:30 these days.

Another creed series

From time to time I like to write about my “creeds” or personal beliefs if you will, and over the years these beliefs have changed, not dramatically. I don’t believe they have contradicted themselves, they have simply developed and matured – and probably will continue to do so. Even if they do contradict themselves, I pray that they continue to be based on my relationship with God and in agreement with the greatest commandments – love him with all of me, and love people with all of me.

So over the next few days I hope to take some time to address specific ideas and beliefs – some of which are of the controversial flavor. For now take a look at my past creedal statements.

Trip debrief – finally

So I’m finally able to relax a bit, nothing is planned for tonight and I’ve done enough thinking and processing about our trip that I can finally put most of it into words. In general I feel good about it, we spent significant time with people, creating new relationships, building up our existing ones, and ministering to our closest friends there. Overall this was the most exhausting trip for Alexis and I, due to the fact that on most days we got up at 6am and didn’t get to bed until around 10pm. We were getting up so early because we had about a 45 minute commute (via Bus and Tram) to the language school, which was from 9:30 to 2pm each day. While we were in school the rest of our team tried to meet up with people (not very successfully), prayed for the city and churches, and explored possible future neighborhoods for us.

Speaking of language school, now that we’ve taken nearly a week break, we know we need to get back to studying – and hopefully, God providing, taking private lessons from the director of the Polish school here in Portland. The course was very intensive and at times frustrating, however, I think we learned the concepts and with some review, and diligence on our part, God will help us get the fundamentals in our head.

Over the course of our first week we came up against some not so explainable health issues, on the first day Alexis got sick to her stomach on the tram to school, so much so she felt she was going to faint, instead she threw up. Unfortunately the only thing she had to throw up into was Emma’s blanket, the rest of our fellow tram passengers didn’t offer much help, either because they didn’t know how, or the language barrier froze them, or both. Eitherway I found myself a bit upset that no one offered any help – all I could do was pray, so that’s what I did. By the time we were at the school Alexis felt better – one of the most stressful moments of my life I think!

Then on Tuesday (I think) Charis got sick (our friend who came to help watch Emma while we were in school) and threw up all night long. After some prayer with her home-stay host she was able to sleep in, Aris and Brandon took over Emma duty that day at school and by the afternoon Charis joined us. By then we knew something wasn’t quite right, because there wasn’t really anyway to explain these mysterious sicknesses. The saga continues with me getting a very strange cramping in my stomach all day Thursday, Brandon getting a nasty head-cold also on Thursday, me having cramps again on Saturday, Aris with a migraine, and when Corey and Jenise joined us on Saturday, Corey got pretty sick around their second day as well. Through prayer and endurance we didn’t miss what God called us to do, learn the language and build relationships.

In spite of all the sickness thrown at us, and some communication mishaps, God confirmed over and over and through multiple people that the Polish people, our friends, and those that we hardly know, are encouraged, excited, and ready to have more people in Kraków to work in God’s kingdom. Our commitment to learn the language in advance of our move has spoken volumes to the Poles – and over and over we heard “the single biggest sign that God is calling you here is that he has opened the door for you to learn Polish and you are doing it” – many other missionaries in times past have not taken this important step. Not to compare ourselves, but to contrast the difference in preparation that we feel God is very specifically asking us to do.

Enough of me blabbering – Brandon has some great photos up on facebook, below are the public links (you don’t need Facebook to see them).

Questions and things that bother me

I’m hoping to motivate some thoughts in my mind for future blog posts… So the following is a list of questions and things that bother me in some way or another.

Disunity in the Church
Misinformation in the Church
Is that Christian or just religion?
The above caused by poor communication
The above caused by assumptions
Relationship or religion?
People not willing to reconcile relationships
People stuck in poor relationships
Self-focused churches
Grace forgotten
Truth forgotten
When fear drives decisions
When God is not saught in decisions
Would Jesus really do that?
When people seem to think they are entitled to something
When Jesus’ follwers forgot to operate in the Kingdom
When Jesus’ people operate as the world does

Got grace or just truth?

Telling the truth about God, life, people, or just about anything, is very hard to do in a graceful way, in a way that keeps the truth of God’s character intact. I hear peers today so concerned by the church’s image, afraid to use words like “saved” and “blessing”. While I admit those words have made me cringe as well, I have also realized that people not in the know, really aren’t offended by these words, instead, my observation from co-workers have been simple questions, like “what do you mean by saved” – which opens a door.

What I’m getting at is, yes we need to communicate in a way that the most people can understand, yet we must also remember that God’s character is the most important thing to communicate. If we communicate that God is anything but what he tells us in the Bible, than we’re failing. So in our attemp to communicate on issues of homosexuality, politics, war, etc, in a graceful way, we must not leave out crucial truths, and in our attempts to communicate his truth we must not use shame.

Why Church?

Today’s Church is a whole lot of everything, but to many its a whole lot of nothing. With all the differences between churches, and all the crap that goes on, it’s a wonder we have a Church at all. When I say “Church” I mean the family of God that calls themselves Jesus followers.

I believe in critical thinking, processing information in a holistic way, such as with peers, teachers, elders, and youth, getting other people’s perspectives. It doesn’t mean we have to be in agreement, and it doesn’t mean we have to seek approval or confirmation from others – it does mean we need to have an honest assessment of our own thinking and how it may affect others, and for us followers, how it affects the Church. We are all responsible for the state of the Church, when we decide to disconnect, slander, or be apathetic, we choose to allow poor behaviors to harm others – this is not love, this is not the greatest of the commandments that Jesus speaks about. In fact, in my view, this is the complete opposite.

Lord,

I ask for your wisdom in living amongst your people, I get how to love you (or so I think I’m gaining in that area), yet I am grieved and disheartened by people, and to love on people who seem so bent on doing their own thing seems like a waste of time – and yet, I know I must continually act in Love and not on my own understanding. So I ask for your heart, your words, and your love, for mine does not understand. – In Jesus’ name, Amen.