For hospitality or for narcissism?

The average North American consumer spends between 30 – 40 percent of their monthly income on home related expenses. Much of that same group rarely experiences any social interaction at all within that home with the exception of their immediate family.

We often justify the purchase of homes and lifestyles so that we will have enough space to have friends over, to “entertain”, or within the evangelical community to “use for ministry”. However, too often we end up working so much to pay for our financial over-extension that we never have the time or energy left over to engage in actually entertaining or “ministering” in our neighborhoods.

So if this significant investment of such a large portion of our financial resources is not truly being used for the sake of loving others well through acts of service and hospitality, thereby expanding the influence of the gospel within our immediate communities, are we then not doing so simply for the sake of narcissism and personal comfort?

May we see our sin and negligence towards Christ’s command to love neighbors well.

May we be grieved.

May we be driven in desperation to the compassion and mercy that only the cross of Christ provides.

And may we then, from that place of forgiveness and assurance of the Fathers good pleasure towards us, move forward into our communities, throwing open our arms as well as our front doors and love well those whom God has sovereignly placed in our path.

A Church for the Non-khaki Crowd?

This past weekend was a festival filled extravaganza around the Birmingham area. There was The Preserve Jazz Festival in Hoover, the 8th annual Art in the Gardens at Aldridge Gardens, also in Hoover, and then there was the Magic City Brewfest held at Sloss Furnaces. Basically, if you weren’t out and about in and around Birmingham this weekend, you missed some amazing opportunities.

For my wife and I, the appointment on the calendar was for the Magic City Brewfest. Some friends of ours had extra tickets to this sold out event and invited us to tag along. While this may not necessarily have been a “normal” outing for us, the free tickets fit very nicely into our family budget and we really do enjoy spending time with the couple who invited us, so we gladly accepted.

There were several things that struck me about the day. First of all, contrary to popular belief, Birmingham and its residents are in no way shape or form an “over-churched” city. This is not to say that there are not segments or cultural pockets of our city that are not saturated. There seems to be no shortage of churches seeking to grow Christ’s kingdom by reaching people who dress like them, eat like them, smell like them, speak like them and agree with every conceivable point of doctrine and theology.

And of course, there is certainly a place for this. After all, men in khakis, loafers and golf shirts need the gospel too. However, if we only surround ourselves with echoes of what we already are convinced is “normal”, it becomes all too easy to slip into a continually shrinking community of individuals who simply “amen” our ever narrowing perspective.

Which, I guess, leads me to a second realization. Many within the churched culture do not spend time outside of our circles of social comfort very often. In short, we do not deal with “different” very well.

But what I witnessed on Saturday afternoon at a beer festival in downtown Birmingham was a church plant waiting to happen. The people there struck me as a crowd Jesus would have felt very much at home with. And those whom I had the opportunity to spend time with struck me, somewhat surprisingly I must confess, as a somewhat Jesus friendly crowd. (Of course they were a generally friendly crowd to begin with and became even “friendlier” as the day went on.)

About half way through the afternoon, I looked at my wife and wondered aloud, Where is the body of Christ followers pursuing this particular group of people? People like the guy with one argyle sock permanently tattooed from ankle to mid-calf on one leg. People like the young couple gently pulling their two toddlers behind them in their Radio Flyer wagon as they went from booth to booth sampling the various products on display. People like the molecular biologist who has a guitar case full of half finished verses and partial choruses at home, never bringing them out for public display because he wasn’t a “real” musician. People like the band member from one of the bands performing that day, who loves his wife and kids, faithfully shows up at work every day and spends all his free time playing multiple stringed instruments and perfecting his own home brew.

Will these individuals be reached by a community of believers who often pride themselves in a devotion to traditionalism and conformity to cultural norms over and above a devotion to Christ and a conformity to Biblical norms? Or will it take a return journey, past a church who often still pines for the “golden age” of the 1950’s, beyond the revivalism of the 18th and the 19th centuries, through the 16th century and all of the glory that was the Protestant Reformation, going all the way back to the 1st century and a wandering Palestinian preacher who made it a point to pursue those not welcomed within the acceptable circles of established religion of the day?

My brain is churning, my heart is enflamed, and my prayer is for Christ to invade and move among a people who do not yet know that they are a people. May the glory of the Lord illumine eyes that are dark and warm hearts that are cold, wherever they may be found.

Extreme Giftedness; Dedication to Craft; Desire to Glorify God

What do you get when you mix an extreme giftedness, and dedication to craft with a desire to glorify God by forming and impacting culture?


Makoto Fujimura is an artist who creates beauty from a place of deep theological understanding. And he does so to wide critical acclaim as well.

What if all of Christendom lived out the inescapable call to bear the Creator's image in each of our uniquely assigned realms? There is only one possible outcome of such a movement...

REVIVAL.

A Former Monastic, An Actor, A Pastor

(image by John L. White P/D)

Several years back, when I was a student at Covenant Theological Seminary in St. Louis, MO, I was fortunate enough to be able to work in the seminary's admissions office. As a full-time student, and a full-time father and husband, being able to have a job where I could walk straight out of class and into a setting where I was immediately applying practical ministry skills was an incredibly valuable part of my preparation for being a shepherd of God's people.

And the opportunities to shepherd were numerous and varied, like the guy who was investigating seminary because his boss at Taco Bell said he couldn't really do anything else worthwhile, so he might as well be a pastor. (We decided that seminary probably wasn't the most appropriate path for him, by the way.)

And then there was the evening a guy named Jim Butz walked in and asked to talk to someone about applying to seminary. There were several things that stood out about Jim. For one, he had spent some time living in a monastic community. A real live monk. You don't meet many monks in real life, so when you do you kind of want to take advantage of the opportunity.

Another thing that stood out about Jim was his passion for life and his respect for the image of God in people. This conviction of a persons intrinsic value manifested itself early in Jim's marriage when he met a homeless guy downtown in Forest Park and invited him to come home and sleep on the couch until the guy could get back on his feet. Did I mention that Jim and his bride had barely been married a year at this point? This was no ordinary guy (or ordinary bride for that matter).

Jim was also an actor. A real live, honest to goodness, Shakespeare-in-the-park kind of actor. It was actually after one of his performances of Shakespeare in the Park where Jim met his homeless roommate. Just met him and brought him home.

I have remembered my conversations with Jim often. It was one of many opportunities God has taken to introduce me to individuals who pursue art, craft and beauty to the glory of a creative God.

I was excited recently to discover this April 2010 article in the St. Louis Post Dispatch about Jim and the relationship between his craft and his faith. Imagine, a man living out in his God-given, creative spirit what it means to be both an artist and a pastor.

I, for one, pray for many more "Jims" to be called by a God who creates and ordains beauty; a beauty which sings of His own great Glory.

Being morally and spiritually distinct without being culturally segregated

An excerpt from Tullian Tchividjian's Unfashionable: making a difference in the world by being different.

Martin Luther was once approached by a man who enthusiastically announced that he’d recently become a Christian. Wanting desperately to serve the Lord, he asked Luther, “What should I do now?” As if to say, should he become a minister or perhaps a traveling evangelist?

Luther asked him, “What is your work now?”

“I’m a shoemaker.”

Much to the cobbler’s surprise, Luther replied, “Then make a good shoe and sell it at a fair price.”

In becoming Christians, we don’t need to retreat from the vocational calling we already have. Nor do we need to justify that calling, whatever it is, in terms of its “spiritual” value or evangelistic usefulness. We simply exercise whatever our calling is with new God-glorifying motives, goals, and standards—and with a renewed commitment to performing our calling with greater excellence and higher objectives.

One way we reflect our Creator is by being creative right where we are with the talents and gifts he has given us. As Paul says, “Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. . . . So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God” (1 Corinthians 7:20, 24). As we do this, we fulfill our God-given mandate to reform, to beautify, our various “stations” for God’s glory.

I once heard Os Guinness speak about what such reform will require. He said the main reason Christians aren’t making more of a difference in our world is not that they aren’t where they should be. There are, in other words, plenty of artists, lawyers, doctors, and business owners that are Christians. Rather, the main reason is that Christians aren’t who they should be right where they are.

Outwardly, there may be no clearly discernible difference between a non-Christian’s work and that of a Christian. Many have noted that a transformational approach to culture doesn’t mean every human activity practiced by a Christian (designing computers, repairing cars, selling insurance, or whatever) must be obviously and externally different from the same activities practiced by non-Christians. Rather, the difference is found in “the motive, goal, and standard.” John Frame writes, “The Christian seeks to change his tires to the glory of God and the non-Christian does not. But that’s a difference that couldn’t be captured in a photograph. When changing tires, a Christian and non-Christian may look very much alike.”

Not only is Christ the Lord of the church; he’s also supreme over the family, the arts, the sciences, and human society at large. In the famous words of Abraham Kuyper, “There is not one square inch in the entire domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’”

That’s why we must not withdraw from the world but rather bring the standards of God’s Word to bear on every dimension of human culture. Making a difference for Christ means bringing every area of our lives under his lordship. We must live in passionate devotion to him at all times and in all circumstances. As we do this, God’s renewing power is unleashed through us.

So, while Christians are to separate from the self-glorifying motives, God-ignoring goals, and subpar work standards of the world (our spiritual separation), we’re not to separate from the peoples, places, and things in the world (a spatial separation). We’re to be morally and spiritually distinct without being culturally segregated.

In Luke 16:9, Jesus encourages his disciples to match the resourcefulness of worldly people in reaching goals, but he specifies that the goals Christians pursue are different. We’re to focus on the glory of the age to come, not on the worldly pursuits of pleasure, profit, and position. The old saying that Christians shouldn’t be so heavenly minded that they’re of no earthly good is true as far as it goes, but in today’s world Christians’ earthly good depends on our heavenly mindedness. This reminds me of C. S. Lewis’s remark that the Christians who did the most for the present age were those who thought the most of the next.

One artist's interaction with the book of John

Seth Conley is an artist in East Nashville, TN. This is a snapshot from his story.

Can your back yard impact the Kingdom?

Were you aware that the state of Alabama has the 12^th highest rate of food insecurity out of all 50 States?

What about the fact that we rank 48^th according to the United Health Foundation America’s Health Rankings in national health status due to the high rates of obesity (28.4%) and diabetes (8.7%), increasing rates of children in poverty, and high premature death rate?

According to other recent studies addressing our specific area of the state, “over a third of Birmingham city children live in families below the poverty level. Younger generations, especially among the lower income communities have been shown to be becoming increasingly reliant on lesser nutritious convenience and fast foods. In conjunction with the tendency for Alabama children to eat the fewest fruits and vegetables of other states surveyed, Alabama children living in poverty are at even greater risk for health complications that can be easily prevented by dietary improvements and educational intervention.”

For many of us, this type of information is the equivalent of watching TV news reports of large scale African famines complete with swollen bellies and swarming gnats and flies. We would honestly rather just change the channel.

And we have.

Rather than seeing what is there, we would rather hang out at The Summit or Patton Creek. It’s pretty easy actually. As long as you never cross Red Mountain, one could easily go on indefinitely without ever stopping to contemplate the crisis that exists 15 minutes to the north of us.

But what if someone cared enough to move past the “I wouldn’t even know where to start!” stage? What if we began to contemplate the grace shown to us in our own relative economic blessing? What if there were a small handful of people who decided to apply for a Hope for the ‘Ham grant and walk into a downtown elementary school to do something like this? Or this? Or perhaps this?

Or what if a church decided to challenge its members to tap unused backyard space to produce, well…. produce? Each Friday, whatever is harvested for that week is then transported to an adopted downtown school where a small scale farmers market is erected. As children leave school for the weekend, they leave with a small sampling of fresh produce to take home to their families. Students families could also sign up for a “garden mentor” to spend one Saturday a month during the gardening season visiting with the family and laying out a home garden space, aiding them in becoming self-sufficient gardeners.

How long can we continue to simply change the channel? How long before God’s people are moved to see this dilemma, not as a welfare issue, but as a spiritual issue, an issue of our inadequate understanding of the grace shown to us by a merciful Father?

May God grant His people the eyes to see, the heart to care, and the will to address the issues that grieve His heart.

Matthew 25:35 – 40

35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? 38 And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? 39 And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ 40 And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’