When we go back to Jesus and learn about missional engagement from Him, we discover a whole new way of going about it. We rediscover that strange kind of holiness that was so profoundly attractive to nonreligious people and offensive to the religious ones. I live in the red-light and drug district of Melbourne, and from my experience these people do not generally like Christians; and yet in Jesus’ day they loved being around Jesus, and He with them. This must mean something to us. I suggest that in a missional context, we must relearn the “how to’s” of mission from Him. From Jesus we learn how to engage with people in an entirely fresh “non-churchy” way. He hung out with “sinners,” and he frequented the bars/pubs of his day (Matt 11.19) he openly feasted, fasted , celebrated, prophesied, and mourned in such a way as to make the Kingdom of God accessible and alluring to the average person. It’s back to Jesus for us.
Last night we were reading The Chronicles of Narnia as has been our new nightly activity. It makes a great hour around bedtime. I find myself waking up in the morning and thinking, “man, what movie did we watch last night? That was awesome!” and then I realize I just read ONE CHAPTER of The Chronicles of Narnia.
Last night began something that I think is going to happen through all of the 7 books. It was the part where Aslan is singing and creating Narnia [ok, I’m now tearing up at the Donut Bank]. He sings the whole world into creation and the grass springs up like waves of water coming away from him. (I feel like I should capitalize that him.) Then Aslan chooses a few of the animals out of all of them that are created and calls them away from all of the other animals. He gathers them in a circle, looks at each one of them, and then commissions them. They were all alive, they were all moving around, but then He spoke, “Come alive, Narnia. Think. Love. “ etc. [dripping tears at Donut Bank] and as I read it I just threw away all of the creationist hogwash and the big banger hogwash. I’ve become a Narniast. I believe that the world was created exactly as C.S.Lewis described it. A big Lion sang it into creation, and then commissioned His creation.
It’s funny. In college I had some friends that said whenever I was about to say something important I adjusted my glasses. I bet after a few more chapters the boys will know that whenever Daddy starts crying, something of Biblical proportions is happening.
I think more and more if you call someone by the most respectable title you can think of for them it will be easier to serve them. listen<<This came out of a conversation I had where at the beginning of the conversation I referred to someone as “A big black guy” and by the end of the conversation I referred to him as “The nice African-American man”He deserved to be treated with respect from the beginning, and I’m not sure why I downgraded him as I spoke of him, but I was glad that I saw what I was saying and upgraded him as I continued to speak.>>
Well, when I was a sax player and Clinton showed up on TV playing the sax, he got my vote (which the regret from that is in some other blog post somewhere).
But now, I have my candidate:
Wow! I can’t believe I’ve been writing on here for almost 4 years! My first entry was about so-called “White Trash” in February of 2004, and it really wasn’t much of an entry. The crazy thing is, if you do a search on Google for ’short quotes’ I’m ranked number 10!!
I have no resolutions this year. I think that my wife said it best last night when she said,
“I think we consider and change our habits to improve our lives more than once a year, we do that like every day!”
Is she awesome or what?
Last January I began reading through the entire Bible Chronologically. It was a very good time, and it’s still going on. I’m currently at the end of Hosea, which means I will be going back to Isaiah 28 tomorrow. Stay tuned…
So about 100 years ago I voted for Bill Clinton because he played a sax. I regretted that when we were flying to Burma and all of the airplane TVs were showing some disgraceful sex scandal he was in. It was embarrassing for us as the only Americans on the plane.
