poverty – an underrated blessing

Given our country’s current economic turmoil and crisis, this observation from Assault on Eden offers an insightful perspective check.  (This excerpt was written over 30 years ago but is as timely now as it was then.)

Poverty is viewed as the single greatest sin in our society.  It is an enemy to be annihilated, a shame to be hidden.  Whether springing from the conservative sources that say success is a sign of God’s favor or from liberal sources that say we must all enter the heaven of the median income, the message is the same: we must be saved from poverty.  But one has experiences when one is poor that are forever denied to insulated society, hermetically sealed in financial security.  Of course, like anything else, like drugs or education or geography, poverty is raw material.  It can be just as easily subverted as wealth, making its subject spiteful, petty, brutal.  But in our society, the positive potential of poverty has been obscured.  We scoff at its romantic advocates, pity its victims, ignore its Teacher.

I learned from poverty what I could learn from no other school.  I learned not to rely on possessions to supply an identity.  When you drive up to the bank in a rattletrap truck with slick tires and try to cash a check that you pull out of a worn flannel pocket with fingers permanently blackened from soot and axle grease, you learn to be prepared for people who don’t believe in you; yet even against that heavy wall of denial, you know your own worth.  You learn to stare down the insolent eyebrows of other customers who pay cash when you pull out your food stamps, refusing to accept their ignorant estimate of yourself and knowing that we all ultimately live by welfare and grace.  And, if you are very lucky, you learn how close to the edge all human life is lived, how we are held in existence from moment to moment by a power we don’t control.  You can rejoice in life as a gift.  In poverty there is no pretense and no protection.

What are we discovering in these trying times?

faith in a post-Christian America

Has Christianity in the US jumped the shark?

The AP reports that Americans are disassociating themselves from religion (based on this survey).

George Barna also finds that Christians are becoming less Christian — less are having a “biblical worldview.”

What’s the problem?  Is it that people don’t believe or know what the Bible says?  Or, have people become “turned off” to God and are walking away from the Christian faith?

sad sack, oregon?

Business Week has put Portland, OR at the top of it’s “unhappiest place to live” list. The list is,

based on their rates of suicide, depression, divorce, unemployment, job loss, population loss, crime, amount of green space, and cloudy days. We gave most emphasis to suicide and depression rates, crime, and economic factors.

They continue…

The city with the highest overall score in our index was Portland, the beautiful Oregon city that also has very high depression and suicide rates. St. Louis, New Orleans, and Detroit were high on the list largely because of their rates of crime, unemployment, and population loss. Other cities such as Las Vegas, Tucson, Sacramento, and Jacksonville, Fla., ranked high because of their suicide rates and difficult economic conditions.

Wow, we’re worse off than Detroit?  Bummer.

This raises a couple of good questions to ask, “What makes us happy?” and “When things stink, what gives us hope?”

paying attention to God is hard

Just finished a thoroughly engaging book by Leighton Ford about how we can pay attention to God.  I was struck by this observation he makes.

Psychiatrist Gerald May describes addictions as “attachments,” coming from the Frend word attache, which means to be nailed to something.  He believes that we are nailed to our addictions — drugs or alcohol, sex or relationships, work or even our “self-image” — because we refuse or are afraid to admit our need of grace.  Because we will not humble ourselves to acknowledge both our humanness and our brokenness, we desperately seek to control our lives, rather than experience the freedom of living as the children of God.

At the end of the day, then, inattentiveness is a control issue: I would rather try to control the trivial than surrender to the Eternal and end up not in control at all.  And we refuse to surrender control because we deep down think we have to justify our existence rather than be justified by the free grace of God.

[emphasis added by me]

a creative missions primer

i like how this church (strip church) is raising support for its outreach ministry.  some things that catch my eye –

1) it’s humorous

2) it imitates an art style that some folks have a strong dislike for and gently poles fun at it with a creative twist

3) they are ambitious about who they want to serve — the harvest is white if you know where to look and are willing (and called) to go.

An atheist recognizes a need for God

First, a shout out to Randy Alcorn for this article.

This is a profound, honest observation from a self-described atheist. In short, the writer, Matthew Parris, offers some insightful thoughts about how Christ is the Answer to deal with human suffering in places like Africa.  I think a great deal can be learned about how the Gospel can be shared by simply being a Christ-follower.

The work being done in Africa by Christians is, as a good friend describes it, the Gospel that is social, and not a social gospel.

Also noteworthy is Parris’ irenic spirit.  He’s not a militant atheist (imho, an unfortunate stereotype), but seems to be a person looking for honest conversation with intellectual rigor.  I’m sure he’s got an engaging story for why he became an atheist — if anyone knows it, i’d like to hear about it.

The comments in response to Parris’ column are worth checking out, too.

best job in the world?

“What would be your dream job?”  If you could have a job doing what you enjoy or desire most, what would it be?

This one go so much attention the web site crashed — paid to live on a beautiful tropical island.

What makes the job so enticing?  What would be your ideal job and why?

Scot McKnight, a seminary prof, made this observation:

One site had a question about the “dream job” for the pastors and not one of them put down pastoring or preaching and discipling … one had building furniture. Nothing wrong with building furniture, that’s for sure, but … if your dream job isn’t pastoring … well, it should be.

Without getting to the implication and merits of this comment, it seems many folks have a dream job in mind.  What keeps us from getting this job?  It may be viable limitations (4′11″ and 120# can be career-limiting in the NBA or NFL), but what else?

Here’s a different take on the question — what if our dream job is doing what we’re uniquely made for?

What has God called you to and how are you doing at it?

how to share the Gospel…

“Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.”

Here’s an example of “preaching the Gospel” without words.

“How much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize?”

you can remove the words on the video screen by “removing the annotations” (go to the triangle on the toolbar — 2 spots right of volume control and toggle it on the drop-’up’ menu)

(shout out to Art Rogers for pointing out this video)

what a multiracial church can look like

From a ministry colleague, Rodney Woo, in TX — a PBS special on interracial churches.  (paste this in your browser if the link doesn’t work — http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/episodes/december-19-2008/interracial-churches/1734/ )  It’s a joy and it’s hard — it’s a work of Christ.

Pastor Rodney was a plenary speaker at the Mosaix Conference in Portland.  I’m heading up the follow-up to the conference and getting folks who are interested in multiracial/multiethnic ministry in the metro area (Portland, Vancouver, Gresham, Beaverton, Hillsboro) networked.

Interested?  Let me know via the comments or our church web site.

the joy of slowing down

when it snows, Portland can shut down pretty quickly.  as odd as it sounds, i think it’s pretty nice.  snow days at school, highways and streets with restricted access, and ice that turns the freeways into a slalom course — they all impose a “forced” rest on the metro area.  since we can’t do much we soon discover what we really have to do and what we really need.

when the area experiences heavy snow, the other thing that happens is that everyone wonders what’s going to happen the next day.  because the weather is unpredictable planning becomes difficult.

case in point, this past week the elders were trying to figure out whether or not we’d have church on Sunday.  at the beginning of the week, we thought the weather would be fine.  toward the middle we were unsure because predictions of bad weather hadn’t come to pass.  however, we waited until today to decide what we’d do for tomorrow.

what does this demonstrate? it is useless for us to stress out about an indeterminate future, even if it was just a couple of days out.  we could only take each day as it came — planning was limited to what we could see and experience.

i’m wondering if this is a picture of what our relationship with God is suppose to look like.

God invites us to live in the present and rely on Him for our day-to-day needs.  yet, it seems to be our (okay, MY) nature to try to plan ahead — i plan and worry about an unrealized future, which is an imagined view of a possible reality (or “unreality”).  just about the only time i slow down is when things are out of my control.

snow days like these force us to live in the moment because whatever happens tomorrow is anyone’s guess.

of course, telecommuting messes up a slow down but that’s another story…