I first was exposed to Shane Claiborne as a naive youth worker at Resurrection 2002 (a United Methodist youth conference held at Gatlinburg TN every Januray).  He came on stage with crazy hair, crazy clothes, and a crazy message - care for the poor.  It was something I had always felt was key to the Christian life, but something I had always explained away in favor of a 'mainstream faith' that prized orthodoxy over orthopraxy.  So when I heard and saw this guy living and giving credibility to a  Matthew 25 sort of life - God put a fire in my bones and has broken my heart time and time and time again (mainly because I always try to fix it) for a broken world.  Please don't assume this means I have lived this uber-selfless life - not at all.  

So, needless to say, I was excited when I heard Shane was writing a book.  Throughout college my friends and I would dream of being a 'Simple', the term for one who lives with the The Simple Way in Philadelphia.  So now that you know I am totally unbiased when it comes to this book :)  I can tell you that it is great.  There are few places where he is a little too extreme for me.  Namely, where he denounces paying ministers or church staff.  I probably don't like this part because I am a paid pastor :) - but as a paid pastor I know that this job would be nearly impossible if it required one to work full time elsewhere.

With that being said, Claiborne presents a very well reasoned treatise on radical living in the 21st century.  The best part of the book are the stories.  These aren't just a set of theological axioms pulled out of someone's head or a few greek words, they have been lived out from the inner-city of Philly to the slums of Calcutta.  These stories of a radical faith speak much clearer than most of the theology I read in seminary.  Although both are needed, this is a breath of fresh air.   Another aspect of the book that keeps you turning the pages is the love and brokeness that Claiborne exudes in each story, and each call for a deeper faith.  The dedication reads like this:

Dedicated to al the hypocrites, cowards, and fools... like me.

May we find the Way, the Truth, and the Life in a world of shortcuts, deception, and death. 

Posted In: spirituality social-issues

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OK... Click on the title above and submit your caption as a comment.  Winner (of my choosing) receives a Mosquito Net donated in their honor at NothingButNets.net  I thought the sports analogy would be appropriate for the 'Touchdown' Jesus.  Winner will be chosen in October. 

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Probably one of the most challenging and encouraging books I have read in a while. Brennan Manning has a way of speaking right into the heart of the matter. In The Signature of Jesus he reassures us that no matter what valley, darkness, or even sin we are going through Christ is pouring out His love on us. So often we place our faith in feelings and emotions that when we are stripped of those in a 'dark night of the soul' we feel that God Himself has left us, but it is rather that He is removing the 'obstacles that keep us from a deeper union with Him.'

When this love is experienced and we trust whole-heartedly in it, then we cannot judge others. Having the assurance that Christ loves us extravagantly relieves from us the need to judge others.

The flip side of this is that Christ's signature in our lives is the cross. How is the cross present in our day to day lives? How does the cross help determine our politics, our relationships, and our view of others?

Posted In: life spirituality

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The call of Christ is never easy, it is rarely what we expect, and will most often be met by our personal conceptions of what the Kingdom should look like. And if we let grace lead, those conceptions will be melted down and refined into something much more beautiful than the small and often one-sided vision of the kingdom we have in mind. But we shouldn’t mistake this grace for something accomodating and comfortable (though it is comforting) because in these times it will always lead to fire.

I have been confronted with my own misconceptions of the kingdom as I try to find the balance between ministry to the rich and poor. I have seen that even when the wealthy show no desire to minister to the poor that doesn’t mean we should leave them to their own devices, but rather be a voice of truth. I have also seen that my own life needs constant refining in this area.

Posted In: life spirituality

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Every so often we are blessed with events in our life that begin and end as a story should. However most of the time we are left with mystery – How does it all fit together? Dennis Covington gives us a description of his sprititual and journalistic journey into the heart of snake-handling churches. This journey unfolds as one of those rare occurences where the chapters of a life are clearly marked, beginnings can be seen and closures are tangible. However, that does not mean that mystery is absent from the story. For in fact, one of the books main focal points is the mystery of snake handling and God’s Spirit in the churches.

Covington begins his journey while covering the trial of Glen Summerford, a snake handling preacher from Alabama who was accused of attempting to kill his wife with snakes. As he probes deeper into the lives of those involved he begins to become one of them – people who handle poisonous snakes, drink strychnine, speak in tongues, lay hands on the sick, cast out demons, and, some claim, raise the dead. Covington soon discovers that his relationship with snake-handlers begins before he was born, with his ancestors – people who were forgotten in his family tree, and were themselves snake-handlers. This true story covers nearly a century of snake-handling history, five states, and the rural religious customs of them.

This was a great book. Covington reads very easily, and for a documentary type of story it was very gripping.

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Life can seem very average sometimes, especially when you see adventure in the lives around you. It is as these moments when deep ugly things begin to raise their head and suck the joy out of life – envy, depression, loathing. I feel that when these moments come, and they will come, we have a few options, some of which probably depend on the personality/struggles of the individual. One of these paths, a bad one, is to lump all the folk who are experiencing adventure into one category and poo poo it for the mere fact that you are suffering from it’s deprivation (in that particular form – I would not say that the possibility of adventure is completely absent in any life).

Being someone who has a foot bent towards self-righteousness as a way of resolving internal stuggles, I am sad to say that this is the first idea that pops into my head. However, when I turn my heart from envy to the white hot passion of my God I begin to be aware of who I really am. A son of the King. It is He who lifts me up out of my ghostly self and puts me into newness. It is from this newness that He gives the grace to love the adventure of others and rejoice in their blessing.

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Do you ever feel strange when you know that you are a part of Christ’s body that spans the globe, yet whenever there is something happening at a nearby church that could be significant for the Kingdom you feel far away from it? I have wrestled with this for a while now. On one hand I know that there are many parts of the body, so there is no way we can be totally involved in every local happening, and yet I feel a yearning to be connected to it.

This has been on my heart recently because our old church Nathaniel Mission is having a revival this week and I want to be a part of that celebration, but circumstances and prior comittments have kept me from it. However, I think I have come to terms with this phenomenon by focusing on what Christ called us to in the first place. He did not call us to revivals, and VBS’s, and Bible studies. Rather, he called us to love whole heartedly. When we are doing this we are tapped into the kingdom. When we are loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourself then we are tapped into the movement of the Kingdom. And that same movement is sweeping through those events we once felt seperate from.

I want to get to that spot where loving Christ and His Kingdom is outworked in loving my neighbors and praying for my enemies. And where that love for neighbors is consummated in, and finds its fulfillment in my love for Christ. For he is the means and the object of our love. Without Him no one can dare love the way He calls us to.

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I had one of those moments where a certain truth becomes real to you in a matter of seconds. It happened as I was enjoying a late night Oatmeal Pie and a new book. I was sitting there on the couch and I saw a little black thing scurrying across the floor. I imediatedly jumped up and found something to squish it with. After desposing of the unwelcome creature I began to wander why I killed it. Now don’t tune out thinking I am one of those people who refuses to kill any bugs. The point is that I killed it out of fear. You see, recently the vacant apartment below us was found with a roach problem and our landlord had some pest control people come and spray both the infested apartment and ours. Now the techniques of the pest control company (which shall remain unnamed) were horrible so I wasn’t confident in their roach killing capabilities.

In fact I am pretty sure that they probably killed all the roaches in the apartment below us, and any other living creature in the unit. However, I was able to keep the pest control technician from spraying the pesticide, which he said was as safe as water, on every surface in our house. But anyways, back to the point… I didn’t know what the creature crawling across my floor was. If it was a lady bug or lightning bug I would have probably scooped it up and put it outside. However, the fear of letting our apartment be inhabited by even one roach-like creature drove me to kill the booger. So… then I thought about the TV show ‘LOST’, and how they have come to suspect and even sometimes kill anyone whom they did not know. And it was at this point that I realized that my ignorance of the creature birthed my fear, and that is when I realized I am not as far away from people in history who have committed the worst autrocities as I thought I was.

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