The Medium is the Message

I am a Christian, I love Jesus deeply, and according to my church I believe all the right things. Sometimes I wonder though, if what I say and what I do are connected. Sure, I am a Pastor and I have made some choices to do what I think Jesus would want me to do, but does my faith and my action truly interact?

I read this morning in Frost and Hirsch's book that the medium is the message and as that applies to the Christian life, our actions are the message. Do my actions in my everyday existence communicate what Jesus means to me? I think all to often the answer is no...instead of communicating what Jesus means to me, my actions all too often communicate that I am selfish.

Do you want to be with the kids right now? No, I'd rather watch TV. Do you care about the poor? No, I really want a new iPhone (or laptop, or car, or house, or kitchen, or book, etc.). Do you care about people in your community that are hurting? No, I don't take time to be with them, I have too many other things going on.

Lord, I want my medium to be the message.

Problems with Passion

I often look at passion as a negative thing. I hear things like this...I got in an argument and I got passionate and it got me in trouble...I got caught in a moment of passion, and now she's pregnant, we didn't mean for that to happen...I better be quiet now because or my passion is going to get me in trouble.

What if we looked at passion differently? What if we noticed that the problem was not so much our passion, but our direction. Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch write about this in their book The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21st Century Church (this book is excellent if you love dreaming about the church, and what it could be - I will probably post more about it over the next while), they say that, "Passion is only evil when it remains in the directionless state, when it refuses to be subject to holy direction, when it will not accept the direction that leads toward God."

This is a beautiful picture of passion. The Church is often known to be a place where passion is to be suppressed and often not even talked about, but really the Church should be about directing our passions to the holy. Even our passions about sex? Yes. Even our passions about driving fast cars? Why not.

Let's allow ourselves passion, but let's point it in the the right direction, a holy direction.

Is it OK to Get Paid to be a Christian?

I am a Christian...I believe in a dude named Jesus and I try to live my life like him...I am also a Pastor, which basically to me means that I get paid to...believe in a dude named Jesus and try to live my life like him.

I am increasingly uncomfortable with that idea. I often wonder if it cheapens my christianity, or if it makes who I am unauthentic.

I remember when I volunteered to work with young people I would often say things like this to the young people, "I just believe in this so much, I really love you guys, I don't get paid to be here, I do it because I truly care." I can't say that any more. I do believe that I do it because I love it, and I can't imagine doing anything else.

I guess I just want to be authentic in my beliefs and in sacrificing for those beliefs...I am not sure how I do that in the situation I am in.

Does it Surprise us When Homeless People do Something Good?

There was a story that caught my attention a little while back in my city. At first I was happy about the story because it isn't often that homeless people are painted in a positive light. Here is an excerpt from the story:

Faron Hall, 44, was given a medal of valour by Mayor Sam Katz at a ceremony not far from the riverbank where Hall often sleeps. Hall saw a boy fall into the river last weekend and dove into the chilly, fast-moving water to pull him ashore. Now the man who has been homeless for about seven years has become the talk of the town.

I was excited to see that people would see that homeless people have heart, courage and respect for their fellow man. However, when I saw the same thing on the national news a few days later, as the story seemed to take off around the country I began to wonder...is it really that surprising to us? Is it so shocking that people who live on the street care about people?

In the time I have spent around homeless people that is the thing that sticks out to me more than anything. People who live on the street or in poverty tend to be more generous and caring about one another than anyone else I have ever met.

Reminds me of a sign I saw at a church I was driving by one day:

Poverty is a problem
Riches is not the answer

Jackhammer

We are renovating our upstairs bathroom...so I am going to jackhammer in my basement...makes sense to me. It definitely is something I don't get to do everyday:

Church

I work at a church, I have attended a church my whole life and if I were completely honest I love church (probably a bit of a love/hate). I am scheduled to preach on March 29th and I was thinking about speaking about the church. However, I am not sure that I completely understand what church was intended to be, in fact, I think there are many times when I think that I have completely misunderstood what church is supposed to be about.

Sometimes church seems to be misunderstood, sometimes people within the church do not represent it well, sometimes the way it is set up just does not work, sometimes the church does not seem to be at all close to what it should be...

I have some thoughts on these questions, but I am more interested in yours.

...but what is church supposed be? What is it that church is supposed to accomplish? What is it that church is doing well? What is it that church is not doing well? Why is it that church is misunderstood? What can be changed about the way it is set up?

I am curious about your thoughts on this. What has been your experience with church...what do you like? What don't you like? What would your dream church look like?

I See People

Seeing people is at the same time simple and difficult. I remember when I preached a sermon about 1 1/2 years ago. I spoke on the story of the good samaritan and talked about how we should learn from the people we normally look down on (those on the margins - for me...the homeless). I remember that someone talked to me afterward and challenged me on it. He said he knows a lot of people in the inner-city who are not good people at all, in fact they do a lot of evil things. What are we supposed to learn from them? At the time I said that the evil things are not what we are to learn from them, but that we can find some good. I have always felt uneasy about that conversation because I did not think I answered well.

At the end of Tim Huff's book, Bent Hope, Steve Bell writes a Benediction. In it he says that Tim has an innate ablility to really see people. Not their problems and tragedies, not their lies, not the external decoys, but truly see who they are and that they are a person of value. That is really what I meant in my sermon 1 1/2 years ago, but did not really know it. That is how I hope to live. I hope to be someone who really sees people, I want to see my children, I want to see my wife, I want to see the people I (or most people) usually don't notice, and especially don't see.

So, you would think that this would be fresh on my mind as I went to volunteer at an inner city - drop-in mainly frequented by homeless adults this past week. I was there with a few people from our church. I met George (name changed) who I talked to for a long time. He told me all about his beliefs, his hopes, his dreams...many of which I thought were really wrong, but did not know how to respond to. As we were driving home after the evening, some of the people in my car were telling me about their experiences and the joy they took in really connecting with people. They didn't see drunk, or homeless, or unemployed people, they truly saw people, and were filled with love. I, on the other hand, told them about George and said, "I just didn't know how to counsel him."

This morning as I thought about George some more, I read Acts where it talks about Peter and John walking into the temple to pray...
"Now a man crippled from birth was being carried to the temple gate called Beautiful, where he was put every day to beg from those going into the temple courts. ³When he saw Peter and John about to enter, he asked them for money. ⁴Peter looked straight at him, as did John. (Acts 2:2-4)" They saw him, they looked straight at him and truly saw this man, this man who everyone passed by his whole life. I realized that I had only seen George's problems, his "wrong theology," his misunderstandings, I wished that I could go back and truly see George.

Going back to my conversation about my sermon, I wish I could have been wise enough to say, "It is not about what people do or the kind of things you can learn from them, but moreso it is about seeing past the problems, the evil, the garbage, the facades and looking straight into their eyes and actually seeing them."

I hope to look to see more often.