New format…

So we are beginning a new format here – we are bringing in a couple of seasoned authors to write for us. So now, we’ll have 3 contributors to the blog. Very exciting! From my side (Jason), I’ll be including some insights from my study and preparation from the messages. Either things that didn’t get into the “teaching” on Sunday or things that I feel are important enough to follow up on. Also, I’ll try to regularly include quotes that I find interesting from the reading I’m doing. Look for new posts coming soon…

Grace & Peace!

 

Pearls

Jesus said this once -

Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.

Now what in the world does this mean? It might mean a lot of thing to a lot of different people but to me – the major thing that stands out here is the world “pearls.” Now, a pearl is something so valuable, so precious that one would take an exceeding amount of care and caution with it – especially in Jesus’ day where many people would never in their whole life even see a pearl. It was one of the most valuable treasures in the day. And then I ask myself – what is the most valuable thing in Scripture? What does God value most? What should be most valuable to us?

And I come to a simple answer – life.

Life is the most valuable thing – the most precious, the most beautiful, the most important. Now why would anyone take life and throw it to the dogs, to pigs? We think we would never do this, right? But how often do we…when we fail to live out our God given identity. When we don’t value our own life – or those around us – enough to embrace the image that we were created in – God’s image. And when we don’t live within our purpose.

So often I find myself throwing my life to the pigs – my identity – my image – my purpose.

What I get out of what Jesus is saying here is this, “Value Life. Value your God given image and your divine purpose. Live within it, embrace it. And through it – bring life to others.”

This is what we are talking about this week at Transformation City. I hope you can join us as we explore the value of pearls.

Peace.

 

Service

Thanks to everyone who helped out on Monday at the Wisconsin Nazarene Compassionate Center – a great time was had by all. But more importantly we were able to serve the resident of WNCC by cleaning up and painting a bathroom. I know it wasn’t much – but it was something. And a fundamental principal of Transformation City is service. We believe that the church is at it’s best when it serves, sacrifices, and loves – caring about the things God cares about.

We are planning to do projects like this at least once a month and as we embrace the vision and mission God is putting before us. We don’t simply want to be people who come and serve somewhere once-in-a-while, but rather, we want to be people that live a life of service to those around us. I hope we can grow into this type of community.

A great question that was recently asked of me is this, “If your church shut its doors today, would your community, neighborhood, city miss it?” My prayer is that we can grow into a community of faith that engages those around us in such a way that we are making a difference in people’s lives – always.

Thanks for being a part of what we are doing here.

 

Mosaic

If we are completely honest with ourselves, if we look deep within, I think we all have something in common…our brokenness. We all are broken in some way – we all carry some sort of baggage with us – we are all addicted and enslaved to something. But we are not alone in this – humanity as a whole has dealt with brokenness, has longed for something more, something deeper, since our creation.

As a follower of Jesus I see our only hope to heal our broken souls is to surrender to Him – because in the midst of a world that takes little pieces of us here and there, in a world that tells us we aren’t good enough, that we are not worthy of love, of acceptance, of hope – Jesus offers something else. He offers freedom – and He came proclaiming a message that says no matter how broken we are, there is nothing we can do to make God love us less – nothing.

We are like a piece of broken tile – alone we are broken, we are fractured, we are isolated. But, but…if we gather as a community – under the banner of the love of Christ – if we join hands and say – we were created for community, we were created to reflect the image of our creator and we can only do this as a community of fellow reflectors. If we do this then we no longer find ourselves a single broken shard – but now, we see a beautiful mosaic, a work of art that holds each other up, that joins together and echos the message of Jesus – there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.

Let this be our message – that we are broken, but together, through Christ, we can find healing, we can find hope, we can find love and form a mosaic masterpiece. This Sunday we will strive to do exactly this…

 

Consumed…

So here’s a question for you – what is consuming your life? Maybe we don’t think this mattered to Jesus but as we continue on looking at His teaching on the Sermon on the Mount maybe we see something different. This week we are going to be talking about what Jesus says about adultery. Yes, this is about adultery but I think there is something deeper, something more going on here. This is about desire, about desiring what we don’t have and allowing that desire to consume our life.

As Americans we live in a consumer driven economy – but not just an consumer economy – a consumer world-view. We are consumers by nature. But is this a good thing? I think not. When we become consumers we lose ourselves in slow pieces. Our life becomes defined by what we have or don’t have, our pursuits center around obtaining, owning, grasping. Our sense of happiness becomes what we buy. And this – doesn’t really create happiness at all, but rather dependence.

Check this quote out made by Retail Analyst, Victor Lebow, in a 1959 article in The Journal of Retailing

“Our enormously productive economy…Demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction in consumption. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and discarded at ever increasing rates.”

Wow. The life that Lebow describes simply cannot be a way of living that generates happiness…can it? I don’t think so – and I think Jesus has something to say about it.

What is consuming you?

This is what we will investigate on Sunday.

 

Raca!

Jesus’ teachings are simply amazing. We’ve been walking through this text in Matthew – The Sermon on the Mount – and this week we come to the place where Jesus says, “You have heard it said…” and He goes on to talk about murder and hatred and unforgiveness – and He seems to lump these together, of saying that if one is angry with another person they are subject to judgment in the same way as if someone murdered another person. Wow, what is Jesus saying here?

Too often we hold hatred in our hearts for others, we hold onto unforgiveness and it eats at the inner core of our soul. If we hold onto that long enough, allowing it to burn within us, it can consume us. Relationships are destroyed, our perspective is destroyed, community dissapears, and it becomes as if another person is dead to us. And we burn and burn and burn with unforgiveness and bitterness and hatred for others. This is no way to live. This is hell and it may just lead us there as well – but don’t take my word for it.

This is what we will explore on Sunday. And hopefully we can all let go of the ties of unforgiveness and hatred we have for others. And maybe, just maybe we can come to a place to receive the forgiveness of God as well.

 

Happy Earth Day!

So today is Earth Day. How are you celebrating? Actually, its turned into more of Earth week. This day has really picked up a lot of steam lately in the media and in our culture. Stores are giving away free canvas bags, discounting mini-florescent light bulbs, and more. What does Earth Day mean for you? What have you done to give back to the environment? This past year we installed mini-florescent bulbs throughout our house – trying to cut back on our water usage – got rid of a gas guzzling SUV and are dedicated to having one car – and made a greater commitment to eating locally grown organic foods that put less stress on the environment. I’d be interested to hear some of the things you have done…

I think this day is great. I’m certainly not a “tree-hugger” but I am very interested in how I can do my part to help the environment. As a Christian leader I think that the church largely ignored this issue for far too long – and only now are we getting more behind the trend. Shouldn’t we be in complete support of creation – since the God we worship created all things, shouldn’t we work to preserve creation? To me – our lack of support for creation in the 20th century shows an alarming foundation of consumerism that runs rampart within the western church. We are consumers – plainly put, first and foremost we are consumers. We consume in a way where we want more of what will benefit us and are generally unwilling to give back – we consume God & church, we consume our leaders, we consume goods and services, and we consume creation.

I genuinely hope that a new day is coming where the church won’t be a bunch of consumers – but rather we will be people who would be a prophetic voice against consumerism, that we will be out in front leading the way to preserving creation, that we would be dedicated to living on less and giving away more, of bringing life to those who are suffering instead of making our already easy life even easier. Maybe instead of living as consumers – we would live to give our lives away. Maybe instead of consuming God and church we would be willing to give them our lives, be willing to be consumed. What would the world look like if we really did this?

 

One year at VT

Today marks the one year anniversary of the shootings at Virginia Tech. My heart and prayers go out to the students and families there as VT will always hold a special place in my heart. Check out this article written by my friend Matt Rogers who is a campus pastor at VT.

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/17574224.html

 

Common Ground

If you live in the Milwaukee area and haven’t heard of the new organization called Common Ground then check it out at www.commongroundwi.org. On Sunday the 13th they had their founding convention where 2300 people stacked into the Midwest Center downtown and stood together to formally launch this organization. I had the honor to tell the story of our church and our battle with the city – in which Common Ground helped us – to this group. It was great. You can read the article in the Journal Sentinal about the convention, which also includes some highlights from my speech. And even though they messed up the name of our church and a small detail about the zoning situation (the zoning law did not actually change, we simply came to a comprimise with the city) its still worth checking out.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=738843

 

Re-Judaizing Jesus

Ok – you have to check this out. The article isn’t the best as it doesn’t explain the siatuion very well – but the fact that Time came out with a Top 10 list of “What’s Next 2008″ and #10 is “Re-Judaizing Jesus.” Not surprising it focuses on Rob Bell’s influence in this arena, it also threw out Ben Witherington’s name in there as well – a prof at my alma mater – Asbury. Be sure to check out the article in the link below.

I will agree that this newfound focus on the “Jewishness” of Jesus and placing Him in the context He lived withing is incredibly valuable. Context, context, context. It’s like real-estate. I have certainly been influenced by theologicans such as David Bivin, Rob Bell (if he can be counted as a theologian), Abraham Heschel,  Don Moseley, Nahum Sarna, etc. I’m an avid reader of Jewish literature such the Talmud and other Rabbinical works. For me, it makes sense to understand the backdrop of what is happening in the Scripture with Jesus. I think for centuries Christians kinda threw out anything “Jewish” and worked to interpret everything in the New Testament through the lens of the cross. I certainly think the cross is the most colosal moment of human history but for me, it makes more sense when viewed in cultural context – instead of a created context, which we are sometimes guilty of.

But really, I’m surprised to see this Re-Judaizing Jesus on Time’s list of What’s Next. What is this saying? I think an intersting question to ask is this – Does this Re-Judaizing Jesus make Jesus less offensive? Does it put more focus on the culture of Jesus rather than the sacrificial and prophetic works and teachings of Christ? Does this “re-casting” of Jesus as a spiritual guru Rabbi (I do believe He was a Rabbi) make Jesus acceptable to our world and thus we can invite Him to the dinner table, but conviently leave the fact that He was God and offered Himself as a sacrifice for humanity’s sin to reconcile us to God. Interesting questions…

Check out the article at:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1720049_1720050_1721663,00.html