3 Questions about Jesus: Daniel So

This week Daniel So answers our 3 Questions About Jesus: Who is Jesus the Christ? What has he done? And why does it matter? (Previous installments: Jason Coker| Jesse Schroeder | Cari Jenkins | Jason Clark | Ben Sternke | JR Rozko | Amy Rozko | Steve Burnhope | Jason Evans).

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Jesus is the most remarkable person I’ve ever known.

In him, everything that has gone wrong is being put back together, in all the most important relationships we know — with God, others, ourselves, and the world. For many years, because of my disconnected sense of identity, I sought escape. The longer I have followed Jesus, though, the more I have come to see that he offers something better than escape: in him is genuine hope.  That which is lost, broken, and dead is found, restored, and made alive in Jesus.

Before Jesus found me, I struggled with a sense of being “neither/nor” as an Asian American — neither fully accepted as “American” nor fitting in a “home” culture to which we never belonged. In, through, and because of Jesus, I am learning to see another way forward. “Both/and” people learn to navigate fluidly between worlds and cultures, with empathy for those at the margins. Jesus is not obliterating my ethnic identity; rather, he is restoring it and freeing me to embrace it for the sake of loving God and people more fully.

On one day recently, I sent my daughter off to her first day of school, prayed at a funeral service, and visited a family in the hospital who was celebrating the birth of their child.  Life, death, new beginnings – everything all at once.  Days like those remind me of why I love and follow Jesus: the world we long for, which requires the courage, compassion, and creativity he fills our lives with, is already here and is on its way.

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Together, Daniel and his wife Jeya pastor United, their church community in San Diego, where they seek to cultivate better expressions of God’s love for the world. Their daughter lights up their house with her beautiful singing and electrifying dance moves.  Daniel also serves on the board of directors for Justice Ventures International, a nonprofit dedicated to strengthening ventures that promote justice around the world. As a freelance writer and graphic designer, Daniel explores the connections between faith, culture, and identity. For more, visit headsparks.com

Technorati Tags: 3 Questions About Jesus, Daniel So, Gospel, Jesus Christ

3 Questions about Jesus: Jason Evans

Yet another installment of our latest series is provided by Jason Evans, who tackles 3 Questions About Jesus: Who is Jesus the Christ? What has he done? And why does it matter? (Previous installments: Jason Coker| Jesse Schroeder | Cari Jenkins | Jason Clark | Ben Sternke | JR Rozko | Amy Rozko | Steve Burnhope).

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I don’t think you make up a story like Jesus’ and hope it convincing. Gods aren’t to be born in barns, to peasant girls and laid in feeding troughs on the edge of empire. You have to really believe this to be true to write it down for others. And I guess that is why I believe. It is so ridiculous, that it just might be true.

There’s no pretense. There’s nothing trying to convince me. Yet, I’m convinced.

I think Jesus was on to something. Jesus got it. He saw how the world was intended to work. He could see that in our broken, feeble attempts we-meaning humanity-had missed the point. He knew what it would take to set us straight. The way he lived his life, the things he said and did showed us a way of living which would draw us back into a way we were intended to. Yet, I think he knew that the death we let enter into our lives had to be removed. And we couldn’t do that on our own. So, he defeated death for us.

I think that is something only God could do.

I have found this to be so in my own life. I look at the Gospels’ account of how Jesus lived his life, and I see a way to live my own. Yet, I quickly find that I am quite incapable of living as I want to. Jesus said he was “the way, the truth and the life.” And as mystical and ill-defined as that may seem I find it to be true. When I conclude that I cannot do it on my own, and I submit to this God-made-flesh I find life.

Some would call this, a crutch. I prefer, a stretcher.

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Jason is currently a student at Fuller Theological Seminary and has a certificate in Urban Ministry from Hesston College. Before joining our team, Jason was a church planter and church planting consultant. These efforts have been documented in several books. He and his wife, Brooke, have three children, Paige, Matt and Sam. They live in the South Park neighborhood.

Technorati Tags: 3 Questions About Jesus, Gospel, Jason Evans, Jesus Christ

3 Questions about Jesus: Steve Burnhope

This week my friend Steve Burnhope answers our 3 Questions About Jesus: Who is Jesus the Christ? What has he done? And why does it matter? (Previous installments: Jason Coker | Jesse Schroeder | Cari Jenkins | Jason Clark | Ben Sternke | JR Rozko | Amy Rozko).

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To me, the reality of a creator God is the most likely explanation of the created order; and to be in relationship with that God, humanity’s most likely calling.

Christianity understands a perfect God wanting a perfect creation to love and be loved by.  But for any love to be genuine, it must be freely offered.  Love compelled, even by God, is abuse.

Creation had to include choice, the option of living in a different story.

Christianity sees humanity choosing badly, collectively and individually, and finding ourselves living in the consequences of our bad choices – dominated and polluted by selfishness, independence and alienation.

Screwed up relationships with God, each other and our world.

A humanity once somehow made in the ‘image’ of God, now like a badly-faded portrait, stained and ripped.

Surely, though, a perfect creator God would know that this possibility would arise?  Yes – from the very beginning.  The potential, the risk, could not be programmed out without compromising perfection.

Surely, then, he must accept some responsibility for what happened?

Actually, not just some.  The Christian explanation says he intended all along to take the full responsibility; to pay the entire price of restoration.  To give us back a choice.

In Jesus, God became human and entered his own created order.  Sharing in the suffering caused by our choices, submitting himself to humanity’s abuse of humanity, fully and genuinely participating in the best of what it means to be human in relationship with God and in the worst of what it means to be human in a damaged world.

God’s solution still requires us to choose.  There is still no compulsion.  This time, though, we know better what our God is like.  Who and what we’re choosing for.

And what he, in Jesus, has done to make it possible.

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Stephen Burnhope lives in Buckinghamshire in the U.K. and is part of the North Thames Vineyard. He was awarded the Master of Arts with Distinction by the London School of Theology and will begin PhD research in 2010. Stephen is married to Lyn, a religious education teacher and fellow MA graduate of LST, with four children and one grandson.

Technorati Tags: 3 Questions About Jesus, Gospel, Jesus Christ, Steve Burnhope

Should Christians be the most powerful people in the world?

On facebook this morning I took a line I’d crafted related to recent thinking on gender issues and reworked it. Here’s the original line, taken from a paper I wrote Monday about much of the Church’s teaching on gender and sexuality:

Men are domineering leaders who, through sheer expression of their potency, conquer hostility in the marketplace and reluctance in the bedroom, bringing forth a dual harvest of subservient wealth and children as their enduring legacy.

Personally, I don’t believe this is what it means to be an authentic man, but, unfortunately, many Christian men and women do (including many pastors). I think their belief betrays a fundamental error about the nature of Christian power in general and the nature of Christ’s power in particular.

So, today, while thinking of the recent idiocy surrounding the so-called Ground Zero Mosque (which, is an imaginary figment of right-wing propaganda), I took that line and reworked it:

Christians are domineering leaders who, through sheer expression of their potency, conquer hostility in the world and reluctance in the heart, bringing forth a dual harvest of subservient nations and converts as their enduring legacy.

Obviously, I don’t believe this is true either, but I think it is what many Christians believe – that the consequence of Christ’s victory on the cross is that Christians should come to rule in this present age, whether that be through governmental power (i.e. the Religious Right), cultural power (entertainment media), commercial power (business success and dominance), or familial power (husband/wife, parent/child). For me, the very nature of the gospel, and especially Christ himself, speak directly to these issues in a remarkably clear way.

Then in the comments, Jonathan Brink asked me a provocative question:

Jason, how would you say that to my 8 year old son?

Hmm. Good question. I took Jonathan’s prompt and asked my own 9 year-old daughter, Alannah:

“Alannah, I have a question for you. I have a friend who says that being a Christian means we should be the most powerful people in the world. What do you think?”

“What? Who’s this friend?”

“Oh, just someone I know on the internet.”

“Um, No.”

“No? Why not?”

“Well, first of all, I know some people say that we should make everyone Christians, but I don’t think so. I think if you’re Jewish or whatever, that’s not wrong. It’s not wrong to be Jewish. And, if we had all the power that would ruin everything! I mean, the only one who should have all the power is God. That way we would all have a leader.”

Wow. She covers alot of ground in that answer. Freedom, power, evangelism, and a sense of God that transcends religion. You can tell Alannah had thought about this before my question. We continued our conversation. I wanted to share with her my own thoughts about how Jesus exercised power in a surprising and truly revolutionary way, and how his life informs and empowers his followers’ recapitulation of that same pattern.

But what do you think? How should Christians wield power? Can they? What ought to be the power relationship between ourselves and non-Christians? Or between us and other family members? Between men and women, parents and children? Or between Christians and the State?

Technorati Tags: Church and State, Gender, Gospel, Politics, Power

3 Questions About Jesus: Jason Clark

This week Jason Clark responds to our 3 Questions About Jesus: Who is Jesus the Christ? What has he done? And why does it matter? (Previous installments: Jason Coker | Jesse Schroeder | Cari Jenkins)
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We all try to make sense life, what the meaning of life is, asking what is my purpose here, what is a good life, at least for myself?  And we all seem to get one shot at this life, one chance to take all that we are and invest it into our best answers to those questions.  At this time in history, and even when I was younger (I know it was some time ago), life seems about competition, survival of the fittest, and doing to others before others do it to you. Or as my gentle white haired grandma used to say, ‘take care of yourself grandson, because in this life I’ve learned no-one else will’.

It’s not that we don’t want life to be about more than this, it’s just that in our fast paced consumer world, being successful, getting ahead, looking out for yourself, is what our friends and family and so often we default to.  And even if you wanted to, you can’t jam the system, there is no way to opt out of the juggernaut for getting ahead in life. It’s the way things are, so either drop out, or get stuck in.

And the effort and investment to get ahead, is kept alive and made worth while by the prize of what we think life is about, maybe a great career, great family, holidays, living somewhere cool, and retiring early.  Where we live, what job we do and what relationships we have reveal the answers to what we really think the meaning and purpose of life is about, they are the real investments we are making, daily with all we are.  It’s our life, we are kings of our kingdom with our decision and choices, as we decide who and what we are, and what we bring into our lives, as we make a life.

Jesus was someone who understood what life was about, and decided to invest his life very differently. Instead of getting ahead, he said he had come to serve others, that his investment was into a different reality and economy, which he called ‘The Kingdom of God’. That life, this life was about investing all we have, time, energy and money, our heart, soul, body and mind in a different reality. He said that jobs, where we live and relationships are very important, we’ve got that part right, but how we invest ourselves for those aspects of life is very different.

He even told us not to worry about all these things, that the reason we worry is because we fear losing things we shouldn’t be putting our heart and soul into in the first place.  And he did more than talk about this new reality, he lived it.  Every day, every breath, every step, he invested his life in helping others see that life was about knowing God, and entering into the plans God has for us. Using our gifts, and skills, passions and interest to invest in God’s economy.  And he said that if we do that, God will give the best life we could ever have.  And he said that if we practice this life investment, our lives will continue, after death into eternity.  Jesus brought a warning too, reminding us to take care.  That where we invest our lives determines who we become now and forever, so choose wisely.

Jesus invitation seems so impossible, it was as impossible 2,000 years ago as much as it is now.  In fact people intent on investing in a way of life much like ours today, eventually put him on a cross and killed him. And as they looked at him dying with no friends, no job, no career, no success, and no status they asked him, ‘where is your God and this way of life now’?

I was 17 the first time someone explained to me who Jesu was and is, and why it mattered, and maybe if I tell you what that friend told me, it will sum up what I’m trying to say here?  My friend said that, investing my life in Jesus, taking all that I am and giving it to Him, might not make my life easier, in fact in lots of ways it would be much harder.  But he promised me that, I would have something to live for and something to die for, that there wouldn’t be a day when I wouldn’t know meaning, adventure and purpose.

I chose to make that investment, and 24 years later, I have experienced the most amazing life, with all of that and more.  The depth and richness of discovering who I am, the most amazing experience of life with others, as I daily try to invest all I have in Him, has been stunning.  I’d love to tell you more about that sometime. Choosing Jesus was the best investment I ever made with my life.  Where are you investing yours?

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Jason Clark (www.deepchurch.org.uk) is British, recently turned 40, and lives on the SW edge of London, UK. He has three teenage kids, and is celebrating 20 years of marriage to Bev later this year. He is midway through a PhD in theology at Kings College London, holds a D.Min from George Fox Seminary, and is the senior pastor of a Vineyard church that he started with his Bev 13 years ago, having been involved in Vineyard churches for 23 years in total.

Technorati Tags: 3 Questions About Jesus, Gospel, Jason Clark, Stories

3 Questions About Jesus: Cari Jenkins

This week we asked Cari Jenkins to respond to our 3 Questions About Jesus: Who is Jesus the Christ? What has he done? And why does it matter?
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I was in front of my home taking down twinkle lights one year just after Christmas when I saw a young girl walking down the street towards me. She was too young to be walking alone and I noticed tears streaming down her cheeks. I ask if she needed anything two times. And two times she turned me down. She paused at the end of my driveway and I asked a third time. This time she responded with a yes. She used my phone to call someone to come get her.  Over the next hour I learned that she had run away from home the night before. Then my door bell rang. A man stood desperate at my front door. He was singularly focused, “where is my daughter!” I invited him in and watched as the two were reunited. I stood in the kitchen, giving them space and trying to keep myself composed as I was invited into this very intimate event of a relationship being restored. It was beautiful and powerful.

A friend had an old piece of furniture. It was cracked, paint was peeling and it was literally falling apart at the hinges. He didn’t see the dilapidated mess which I saw, he saw what it was originally designed to be. Over the next few months he spent hours restoring this piece of furniture. He poured over it with love, sweat and patience. Then one day I got the call, he had finished. I stopped by his home and before me was a beautiful, masterpiece. The once old chest of drawers was fully restored to its original design and it was beautiful.

Both of these stories speak of Jesus. He restores broken relationships. He restores people, like my friend restored that chest of drawers, He restores us to our original design. He restores us in our misguided beliefs and He constantly is making old things new again. Jesus, He is the one who brings restoration to this planet and to all people everywhere and His restoration is perfect and we, you and I get to share in it. It is powerful and beautiful and it constantly invites others into restoration as well.

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Cari lives in downtown San Diego, Ca where she founded The 11:29 Project. An initiative that seeks to connect people to the rest and restoration found in Jesus and advocates for the marginalized. She blogs a carijenkins.wordpress.com.

Technorati Tags: 3 Questions About Jesus, Cari Jenkins, Gospel, Jesus Christ, Stories

Resolved, To Embrace Christ as the Embodiment of Healing and Hope

I have to admit, although the people at Resolved had been a pleasure to interact with, by Saturday evening I was resigned to be continually frustrated by the preaching. Thus far I’d found the messages to be pedantic, fallacious, and repressive – not so much in content, but in the way the story of Christ had been conveyed and applied.

For a brief few hours that all changed Saturday night when C.J.Mahaney took the stage.

I was taken by surprise when he began by drawing attention to a woman and daughter he had met in the airport. They were finally able to attend the conference after being held back for several years due to the degenerative illness of the husband/father. Sadly, he had recently died and, though grieving, they decided to attend the conference this year in his honor. C.J. was deeply moved by their story and in front of 3000 people honored their loss and offered them comfort. It was the first display of compassion I’d seen thus far at Resolved. It was a genuinely powerful moment.

He then began his message, titled “I wish I’d been there,” launching into the first truly expositional teaching of the weekend. He read from the story of the Gadarene Demoniac in Mark Chapter 5, effectively immersing us into the social fabric of the time, the interpersonal tragedy of the affliction, and the inherent suffering and triumph of the story itself. He spoke with sincerity and expressiveness, with humor and creativity, and with a powerful sense of dramatic suspense. He was the only great storyteller of the weekend.

He addressed the obvious difficult subject – whether or not Christians can be demonically afflicted – handling it constructively and reasonably, without ridiculing opponents or propping up straw men. He did not try to scare us into believing he was right. In fact, quite the opposite: his tone and tenor he made it clear that standing with Christ was the safest possible place to be, and that nothing need be feared in the light of the gospel.

It was nothing short of a tour de force of gospel preaching.

Mahaney pointed out how this amazing story of deliverance demonstrated Christ’s authority to save people from all manner of sin and oppression; how we are all – like the demoniac – ruled by the prevailing powers that work death and destruction in our lives through our own brokenness; and, most importantly, how the infective mission of the liberating gospel was there too, in Jesus’ commission to send the man back to his own town to be a witness of this new, liberating Kingdom.

It was the gospel and it was all there in the story, plain as day and easy to see. C.J. was there in the story as well – he pointed himself out several times in the image of the demoniac – but I was there too…and so were you. Indeed, Mahaney started his message by saying, “I wish I’d been there,” but by the time he was finished we all had been. Each and every person in that room had just seen Jesus – the living embodiment of the healing, hope, and power of the Kingdom of God – and we would never be the same. It was now clearer that through Jesus all bonds could be broken, all wounds could be healed, and the distant and long-suffering promise of a truly good and liberating life had rushed in from the future, crashing headlong into the powers of death and oppression.

I had been sitting in a kind of lobby area, listening over the sound system and taking notes on my laptop, but halfway through I was compelled to get up and walk into the main hall so I could see for myself what was happening on stage. I was transfixed for the next 30 minutes or so. The message he gave us wasn’t merely audible. He actually seemed to bear the weight of it on his person and so preached it with his whole being. The experience changed me.

There was nothing resembling an alter call, and I don’t really even believe in alter calls anymore, but afterward it was all I could do to keep from rushing toward the stage and falling on my face before God in gratitude. It took all my powers of restraint to keep from disturbing the conference at the renewed and deeper realization that the Kingdom had come in the person of Christ.

Now anything was possible.

Technorati Tags: C.J. Mahaney, Gospel, Jesus Christ, Mark, Preaching, Resolved Conference

Resolved, To Not Think Wrongly About Jesus (But To Speak Uncharitably About Our Enemies)

I honestly feel I’ve approached the Resolved conference with an open mind. I’m not saying I had no bias – my initial post made that bias quite clear. But honestly, as each speaker has taken the stage I’ve found myself inwardly excited about the possibility of hearing something true, edifying, and spirit-filled. After all, these are some of the most highly acclaimed preachers in this particular evangelical camp.

However, I spent the majority of Saturday rather disappointed.

First up was Al Mohler, who chose to preach on Jesus as the high priest and mediator of a new and better covenant. Mohler stressed the Holy requirements of God and the desperate need for a perfect substitute to satisfy the wrath that resulted from the human failure to meet those requirements. It was clear from the beginning that Mohler wasn’t really there to speak about Jesus, so much as to press a particular – and for most people, obscure – agenda about Jesus’ death: namely, penal substitutionary atonement. Towards the end he hammered his point home:

“The shortest summary of the gospel in the NT is, ‘He saves.’ Jesus is our savior. We all desperately need a savior. He is the high priest who brings salvation. This is the doctrine of penal substitution and without it there is no gospel.”

In other words, to put Mohler’s teaching as precisely as I can, faith in Jesus isn’t the defining marker of salvation – rather, it is the ability to understand, agree with, and articulate a particular kind of technical belief concerning how and why Jesus died. This theme of salvation hanging on the apprehension of a technicality is one I would hear several more times throughout the conference – although, interestingly, not always in relation to theories of the atonement. Apparently, according to some of the Resolved preachers, there are several finely nuanced abstract constructions one must think about properly in order to be “saved.”

Mohler never explicitly defined what he meant by “salvation,” but in listening to his message it becomes quite clear that according to him what we’re saved from is God (meaning God’s wrath).

It’s not that I disagree with the notion that we must strive to have a proper conception of God. Actually, I do agree. I just don’t agree that thinking wrongly about God eternally condemns us. If it does, we’re all buggered. Making doctrinal purity salvific is the fundamentalist equivalent of Pentecostals making mystical encounters salvific. Both camps say that in order to be saved we must “know” God. Fundy’s make such “knowing” about doctrinal assent, while Pentecostals make it all about having a sensory relationship with God. (I’ve pointed out before that Jesus didn’t say we have to know him in order to be saved, but rather that he must know us).

My problem with both camps is, either way, they’ve made “God” and faith and salvation into boundaries of division rather than bridges of reconciliation.

A good example of this tendency to divide in Al Mohler’s preaching was his constant use of insults and fallacious rhetoric, which he aimed at his ideological opponents. For example, he unfairly caricatured liberal Christianity by referring to some feminist theologians who declared Christ’s crucifixion was an example of “divine child abuse.”

Again, it’s not that I completely disagree. Such extreme theologies are silly and absurd. My problem is that pointing to the most extreme versions of liberalism doesn’t accurately portray the vast, legitimate spectrum of differing theological opinions. He’s not engaging other’s views, he’s hen-picking the worst examples of his opponents and painting all “liberals” with that brush. In doing so he effectively creates an “us vs them” posture for this community. He did the same thing with the Catholic practice of mass. Rather than honestly engage with Catholic theology on this point (which would have been off topic) he merely took a cheap opportunity to vilify all Catholics in a snide tone that communicated not only disagreement, but disdain.

(He also engaged in a rather bizarre rant about P.E.T.A. and the necessity of the animal sacrifices in the OT to cause real and extended suffering for the animals involved. He seems to believe that mere sacrifice wasn’t enough for propitiation; suffering was also required (how much suffering Mr. Mohler?). With this strange and completely unfounded argument he seemed to be going for a hat trick: defending penal substitutionary atonement, legitimizing eternal conscious torment in hell, and associating the opponents of those two beliefs with radical animal extremists.)

Let’s face it: It’s easier to rally people around the differences they have with others than it is to rally them around the commonality we all share. He’s protecting the boundaries of fundamentalism because it’s easier than ministering reconciliation. This kind of technique is simply a manifestation of violence, and hence, a total affront to the gospel. His tactics were fear, shame, and coercion; the gospel, on the other hand, is about Christ, the God-man who totally abdicated such tactics.

What really bothered me was that all I’ve ever heard about Al Mohler is how brilliant the guy is. After all, he has a Ph.D. in Systematic and Historical Theology from Southern Baptist Seminary. I would expect an awful lot more intellectual even-handedness and charity from a Christian scholar. At the very least, I’m quite sure he’s a hell of a lot smarter than I am, so I honestly expected someone who was reasonable, intellectually honest, and frankly, utterly convincing.

Instead, I was saddened and disappointed by what I heard.

Technorati Tags: Al Mohler, Atonement, Gospel, Penal Substitution, Resolved Conference

Galatians Series at Ikon Community Starts Today

This week at Ikon we began a series on Paul’s letter to the Galatian Christians. We kicked it off last night with a gathering centered around one of the major themes of the letter, and today I started the daily reading with an introduction of why I think this should be an important series for our little group.

As usual, any of you are welcome to join us!

Technorati Tags: Galatians, Gospel, Ikon Community, Paul

What Does The Gospel Really Look Like?

What does the gospel really look like in practice, on the ground, in the city, walking the streets, in the boardrooom and the legislative session, among the neighborhoods and schools of North America?

That was essentially the question asked by JR Woodward last year of 50 missional church practitioners, including myself. What would you write about the good news in your local paper if given the opportunity?

The 50 responses have now been collected and published in a wonderful little book called ViralHope: Good News From The Urbs to the Burbs and Everything In Between. It was humbling to contribute my small chapter to this book as many of the other men and women featured on the pages are people I have admired and emulated for years. Others I’m just discovering and getting to know. As Alan Hirsch writes in his endorsement of the book:

“ViralHope is a unique and enticing collection of postcards from a veritable who’s who of the missional church from across the Western world. It provides us with articulate and varied perspectives on how missionaries to the West are conceiving the good news in and for their various contexts. A worthy read.”

ViralHope would make a fantastic 50-day personal devotion, small group study reflection, or church-wide reading series. You can click here to get your own copy from Amazon.

Technorati Tags: Books, Christianity, Good News, Gospel, JR Woodward, missional, Missional Church, ViralHope