thoughts on persecution 

In America there are legitimate difficulties in following Jesus. Historically, prosperity has been toxic to the Christian faith and the culture wars and politicizing of Christianity can make the message muddled. On part of the Christian message has made it through though, that Christians can be persecuted. This message seems to have been received and clung to by many American Christians (myself included). When someone on TV makes a jab at Jesus, we are persecuted. When the media focuses on a corrupt Christian leader, we are persecuted. When someone gets tight or weird around us when they find out what we believe, we are persecuted. But is this really persecution? In a world where people actually die, are imprisoned and are disowned by their families for their closeness to Jesus, can American Christians talk about persecution? 

I say no.

I think that we have been sold an "us vs. them" theology where we must always be on guard for those that are out to get us. We forget that every US President has shared the Christian faith. We forget that the majority of the country label themselves as Christian! 

Christians (like me) also fail to see what happens when we cry "persecution"; we insult and hurt those who are actually persecuted. We waste all of our compassion on ourselves. We take the message of a murdered teacher, who used is final moments to pray for compassion on his murderers and make his message about self-preservation. We are commanded to love those who are truly oppressed. 

I propose that American Christians take every bit of energy that we apply to our persecution and focus it on loving, serving and advocating those who are persecuted in the US today. Let us befriend and serve those who are persecuted on the basis of their sexuality, race, economic class or part of the country they live in. Let's stop giving our compassion only to those we agree with and share with all those who would benefit from the servant love of the largest and most powerful group in the US. 

I have complained and been hurt by reactions to my faith, but it is only recently that I have asked those who disagree with me what it is like to live in this country. They suffer more than me. They are mocked and characterized more than me. 

Note: I have no desire to make light of those in the world who are truly persecuted for their faith. Christians die daily for their belief. Those people are heroes of the Christian faith and all respect is due to them.  

how do you know when you are part of a movement?

Last weekend my world was changed. I have been a Christian for 8 years and I would say that I have been pursuing God's purposes of changing the world for about 6 of those years. I have been to conferences, mission trips, staff training and seminars. I have read books, listen to sermons and podcasts. I have prayed to be used and I have thought long and hard about my philosophy of ministry.

In doing all of this I have often felt alive and motivated. There have been many times where I am excited about waking up in the morning. I also have often felt tired and burnt out. Sometimes I have dreamed about quitting and getting a job where I could wear a suit and simply not worry about God's work anymore. Don't get me wrong, I would still go to church. I would still tithe. Even still read Christian books. I just would no longer lend my heart and gut to some promise of God changing things. I would become a Christian who would just grin and bear the values around me. God could still have some of my time, but I have often wondered how long God could have access to my passion. At times I have often felt too tired to be disappointed again.

This all sounds very hopeful, huh? Well, it's real. This is how I have too often felt in the past 6 years. I do ministry full time, but unfortunately I am often leading out of a passion that is simply drawing from a past well. I entered last weekend in this kind of place. I wasn't sure that I really had anything less to give God, to give ministry. I felt dead inside, but was supposed to talk to the students that I work with about life. I felt like a hypocrite and like a fraud. As I prayed for our winter conference (Jesustherevolution) I felt like God was saying "this is going to the beginning of something". Could I dare to believe that? Could I dare to hope? The answer was "no". I came into last weekend with a word from God and absolutely no hope that anything could happen, that anything would change. I secretly hoped that I could simply fade away from full time ministry, get a job and be glad that I had been able to give a few years to something bigger than myself.

But something funny happened; I now believe that last weekend was the beginning of something real and something new that Jesus is doing in the northwest and at the University of Idaho.

Saturday night has long been the crying night at InterVarsity conferences. The speaker says something powerful. People cry. We then all worship together. The script is set and can easily be predicted. This Saturday night though, was not about tears, it was about life and the life of being part of a movement that God is doing. Our speaker (Trent Sheppard, google his sermons and hear a prophet speak) read the "Vision" of the 24-7 Prayer movement and invited us to stand whenever we felt "something". That something for me started in my gut and resonated through my whole body.

I cried.
I stood.
I was able to hope again.

The room was electric. It wasn't a room of weeping or feeling guilty. I was a room where 250 people just became missionaries in a moment (yes I realize that word has negative connotations, but all can be redeemed). The living, breathing, powerful, immense God just called His people to pray and serve Him in a radical and new way. And I think that we said "yes".

As I am writing this my hands are shaking. I don't think this is a response to last Saturday night, but instead to God's continued work of revival in my soul. I feel so utterly alive, so utterly real right now. I want God. I want His presence all the time. Even more so, I want my generation to meet the author of their lives, their passions, their desires. I want to see God move so desperately it hurts. I want to see something deep and real inspire and change the world.

So I am praying again. I am praying the way that I did in the Youth Room at La Villita in Chicago, the way Eli and I prayed in China until late at night and then again early the next morning. Students at U of I are also praying. We have gotten the crazy idea that we can do it for a month straight, 24-7. My basement is full of candles, Bibles, lights, and a giant wooden cross. It is time to pray!

This is happening all over the world. Go to http://www.24-7prayer.com/, read the stories let God speak to you. I really could care less if you are a Christian or not, take the risk and ask why 20 somethings in every corner of the globe have begun to pray.

I do worry that I am not really part of a movement. I worry that I am so hungry to be part of something bigger than myself that I will latch onto anything. I worry that it is not really staff work to spend 2 or 3 hours a day in prayer room. I worry when I start a facebook group that has 50 members to pray, but 6 or 7 people are actually signing up to pray.

What is a movement and what is a good idea? What's the difference?

The difference is marked down the line. Honestly you can't tell the difference in the moment, it can only be judged in historical perspective. When you are in the midst of something, it is nothing but faith that keeps you going.

In spite of my worries, in faith I have to believe that God wants to catch up this generation in a movement that will start in wild, crazy, obsessive prayer then will lead to...who knows?

I feel too alive to play it safe. I feel to alive to build a net if we fall. Someday we will all know if this is a movement or a good idea. As for today, I choose to believe that it is time to pray.

Here is the "Vision" as it was scrawled on a prayer room wall by Pete Greig in England at 3 AM:

THE VISION

So this guy comes up to me and says "what's the vision? What's the big idea?" I open my mouth and words come out like this… The vision?

The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus.

The vision is an army of young people.

You see bones? I see an army.

And they are FREE from materialism.

They laugh at 9-5 little prisons.They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday.They wouldn't even notice.They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won.They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport.. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence.They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying.What is the vision ?The vision is holiness that hurts the eyes. It makes children laugh and adults angry. It gave up the game of minimum integrity long ago to reach for the stars. It scorns the good and strains for the best. It is dangerously pure.

Light flickers from every secret motive, every private conversation.It loves people away from their suicide leaps, their Satan games. This is an army that will lay down its life for the cause.A million times a day its soldiers
choose to loosethat they might one day winthe great 'Well done' of faithful sons and daughters.

Such heroes are as radical on Monday morning as Sunday night. They don't need fame from names. Instead they grin quietly upwards and hear the crowds chanting again and again: "COME ON!"

And this is the sound of the undergroundThe whisper of history in the makingFoundations shakingRevolutionaries dreaming once againMystery is scheming in whispersConspiracy is breathing…This is the sound of the underground.

And the army is discipl(in)ed.

Young people who beat their bodies into submission.

Every soldier would take a bullet for his comrade at arms. The tattoo on their back boasts "for me to live is Christ and to die is gain".

Sacrifice fuels the fire of victory in their upward eyes. Winners. Martyrs. Who can stop them ? Can hormones hold them back?Can failure succeed?

Can fear scare them or death kill them ?
And the generation prays like a dying manwith groans beyond talking,with warrior cries, sulphuric tears andwith great barrow loads of laughter!Waiting. Watching: 24 – 7 – 365.
Whatever it takes they will give: Breaking the rules. Shaking mediocrity from its cosy little hide. Laying down their rights and their precious little wrongs, laughing at labels, fasting essentials. The advertisers cannot mould them. Hollywood cannot hold them. Peer-pressure is powerless to shake their resolve at late night parties before the cockerel cries.
They are incredibly cool, dangerously attractive inside.

On the outside? They hardly care. They wear clothes like costumes to communicate and celebrate but never to hide. Would they surrender their image or their popularity? They would lay down their very lives - swap seats with the man on death row - guilty as hell. A throne for an electric chair.

With blood and sweat and many tears, with sleepless nights and fruitless days, they pray as if it all depends on God and live as if it all depends on them.
Their DNA chooses JESUS. (He breathes out, they breathe in.)Their subconscious sings. They had a blood transfusion with Jesus. Their words make demons scream in shopping centres.Don't you hear them coming? Herald the weirdo's! Summon the losers and the freaks. Here come the frightened and forgotten with fire in their eyes. They walk tall and trees applaud, skyscrapers bow, mountains are dwarfed by these children of another dimension. Their prayers summon the hounds of heaven and invoke the ancient dream of Eden.

And this vision will be. It will come to pass; it will come easily; it will come soon.How do I know? Because this is the longing of creation itself, the groaning of the Spirit, the very dream of God.

My tomorrow is his today. My distant hope is his 3D.

And my feeble, whispered, faithless prayer invokes a thunderous, resounding, bone-shaking great 'Amen!' from countless angels, from hero's of the faith, from Christ himself. And he is the original dreamer, the ultimate winner.

Guaranteed.

discipline

"Fasting kicked my butt. I went into this chapter, still focusing on the previous chapter. I honestly have never had good experiences with fasting, I usually get too obsessed and prideful about weight loss and physical appearance. Recently though, I have felt God challenging me in my discipline and character. Seemingly, God has been showing me the connection between my discipline and character weaknesses. I think that my weakness in doing the things of God is directly proportional to my inability to resist evil. Not being able to stay committed to daily silence, keeps me from tearing away from my house to get to campus. Weakness in my own scripture study, contributes to me procrastinating on prepping Bible study and large group talks."

The above is from a journal entry for Practicum class. My reading on fasting today struck a nerve that has been permeating in my for awhile, where is the discipline in my life? I have some discipline, I work out 3-4 times a week, usually wake up between 8-9 AM...you know stuff like that. But spiritual discipline? I am pretty weak.

Ironically, this was not always so. My senior year of college I spent about one hour daily in prayer. For awhile it was great, but then it got very legalistic. If I missed my hour, I was wrecked with guilt, even though for the life of me I couldn't outwardly express any reason that God would be angry with me. My intern year with IV, I felt like God was actually calling me to cool it a little bit, so I did.

But now I am wondering if I have embraced my freedom too much. Am I tired, because I am spending too much time counseling others, without letting God check have input in my own heart? Am I without hope because I am not letting Jesus speak vision into my soul? Am I unwilling to create waves because without hearing Jesus say "I love you" I lack confidence? Do I have not, because I do not ask? Do I let fear separate me from God, because I forgot who He is?

I enter into discipline with great fear. I want to know God (at lead I think I do) but I do not want to let legalism back into my life. I enter in though, because I believe that the innermost parts of my soul are crying out for something eternal. I also believe the eternal God wants more of me.

funny thought from The Sports Guy

"One other bonus with Howard that nobody mentions: Because he's a devout Christian, even when he turns 35 in 2020, those will be Christian years -- he won't have any of that smoking-drinking-partying mileage on him, which means he could play at a high level until his early-40s (much like how Kurt Warner keeps chugging along at age 36)."
-Bill Simmons, ESPN.com http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/071218

Now that is funny.

I wish I had some clever insight on this, but I don't really. I am not sure that it is true is my deepest insight. His Airness played till nearly 40, and smoked some pretty intense cigars and Mark Sweeney of the Royals is one of the most outspoken Christians in Major League Baseball and he breaks down more often than my crappy Clearwire internet box. However it does raise an interesting question; if you were going to start a team, would rather have a "body is my temple" Christian player, or similarly talented wild man who will step on the throat of their opponent to win? Can a Christian step on the throat of an opponent? Can a Christian still follow Jesus and put a few smoking-drinking-partying mileage on themselves?

Interesting thought all around....

sports & race

This morning I went to a current events Sunday School class. This week's class was the story that came last week when a Golf Channel analyst suggested that the rest of the PGA Tour should "lynch" Tiger Woods in a back alley, as a strategy to catch up with the dominant Woods. Our class talked about this specific issue, this analysts subsequent suspension and whether we hold racist tendencies in our hearts. After listening to sports radio and television coverage about the incident over the course of the last week and having the conversation at church today, I am beginning to wonder if sports is the best venue for race discussion in the 21st century.

Whether you look at this incedent, the Don Imus controversy, the NBA dress code or the diminishing numbers of African-American baseball players, many of the meaningful conversations about race are happening not on CNN, but instead on ESPN. Of course this isn't anything new, Jackie Robinson integrated Major League Baseball in 1947, when Martin Luther King Jr was 18 years old. Sports is generally ahead of the social curve in terms of opportunities for minorities in the US, likely because sports are so result driven. While sports still remains behind in front office equality, one cannot forget just last year when Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy became the first two African-American coaches in the Super Bowl.

So why is sports leading the way in the conversation? I would argue because sports in probably the most integrated part of our society. It is ironic that my church would choose to talk about this controversy, since churches are possibly the LEAST integrated part of our society. Frankly the San Diego Padres have more experience walking the road of multi-ethnicity, than your pastor probably does. Schools tend to break up by ethnicity. Businesses often segregate themselves. Sports cannot. An NFL coach who doesn't want to work with non-white players will simply not be able to win, thus will not be able to work. Period.

Are sports perfect then? Nope. Not by a long shot. Many African-American players have drawn similarities between professional sports and slavery; they make the observation that while the players make money, the mostly white owners make so much more. When these players retire, they often cannot find jobs in these same organizations that they gave their bodies for. That is not a perfect system. The last calendar year has been marred by instances of racist comments first against the Rutgers basketball team, now against Tiger Woods. The NBA is facing the challenges that come when white people decide that they do not enjoy watching players who act too "street" (ie, too black).

No, not perfect...but the conversations are happening. There is value in that right? I think so, but I also think that for Christians who claim they want to be about racial reconciliation, this is an arena that we need to be in. These conversations are happening and they are happening on a very large and very influential stage. Are we part of it? Are we, the people who proudly acknowledge the depravity of all human hearts, present when people say that some athlete doesn't have a "racist bone in their body"? Are we there when Christian athletes like Deion Sanders are mocked because they don't act like white Christians, are we there? Or, are we in our segregated churches, talking to people like us. Hey, maybe we are too busy telling people to lay down the evils of sports or mourning all Sunday widows out there.

relief in defeat

The Seahawks are out of the playoffs.

The Cougars are not going to go undefeated.

So why do I feel pretty good this evening?

I think that it has something to do with some emotional detachment. I have been so busy defending the Seahawks from a skeptical national press and trying not to jinx the Cougs, it's nice not to have to get worked up for awhile. I can simply enjoy the Super Bowl. I can pay attention to the Cougars again in March. Mariners won't stress me out until April (though I am really pulling for them to make a run a Bedard). Whew...it's kind of nice to exhale.

I have always held out some dream to go into sports journalism. I really respect the hosts on ESPN Radio and like every other sports yahoo in America I will occasionally say to myself, "I can do that" (which is of course, debatable). Unfortunately, I am too much of fan to ever feign objectivity. So instead, I get myself too worked up and then get philosophical after defeat.

Hope you all enjoy the Conference Championships and the Super Bowl. I will be watching in total emotional freedom here in Moscow.

the gospel

Lately I have been growing tired of the word "gospel". Mind you, I am not tired of Jesus. I am not tired of Christianity. I am not tired of talking about the "good news" (the literal definition of gospel) of God becoming a man. I simply tired of the word.

How did I get here? Well, recently I was at InterVarsity's national staff conference and that is where I realized how I was feeling. The theme of the conference was not being "ashamed of the Gospel", which is something that apostle Paul talks about in his letter to the Romans. When I first saw this theme I cringed. Cringed! I felt so guilty. After all, my job is to be someone who communicates Jesus' offer of relationship and salvation to the world. I should love this theme. Yet I cringed.

I thought about my cringing later that day. I tried to identify what in the world was wrong with me. Then it finally hit me (or perhaps God did the hitting, I am not too sure) I am not tired of the gospel, I am tired of the connotations that I have with word, namely an oversimplified, one size fits all interpretation of Jesus' message.

Unfortunately, I am not sure that I have better definition of the gospel then a simplified one though. Is the good news that God became man? Is the good news that He died so that we don't have to? Is the good news that I can have relationship with God? Is the good news that whole world can have relationship with God? Is the good news that Jesus taught us to love the least among us? Is the good news that Jesus led His followers to talk about Him with gentiles (non-Jews), a necessary step for me and most people I know to be part of the Kingdom of Heaven? Is the good news heaven? Is the good news now? Is the good news Jesus' whole life and ministry? That would take a much longer blog post!

The good news of Jesus is so meaty, so multi-layered, so frickin confusing and so beautiful. I have given my life to it. I have been redeemed by it. I have seen it transform people that I love. I have seen destroy my pride more times than I can count. I want the world to know and more importantly, experience this amazing good news and really interact with God. At least I know that I am not ashamed of that.

self awareness

So I am back in the blogging world. Blogging again is kind of a New Year's Resolution of sorts. I have realized that when I don't blog stuff seems to just pile up inside of me and I am less honest with myself and in turn the rest of the world. To top all of that off, I tend to not blog (or even do the old fashioned journaling) when I feel like I have nothing to say. Unfortunately, when I get out of the habit of thinking about what is going on in my life, I have less to say. It is a vicious cycle.

So I am back. Unfortunately, I really don't have much to say for this first of (hopefully) many 2008 blogs. I am in St. Louis for InterVarsity's National Staff Conference so I should have a lot to chew on over the next couple of days.

Talk to you soon.