-14 Below Zero

You can get used to anything. Really. It's surprising, I know, but I am now getting used to living in snow. If you would have asked me a year ago if I could be comfortable living in a climate where snow was simply a daily reality and that temperatures were an average 60º lower than where I was living, I would have just laughed. Really. But I am now living in a place where snow is as soft as fine powder, people don't go nuts when driving in below freezing weather and when you go outside you need a scarf to cover your face because the possibility of frostbite is a daily reality.

The picture on the left is of my commute to the bunkhouse yesterday at about 5:30pm. The temperture was 0º with a windchill of -22ºF. Visibility was limited to about 50 yards. What you are seeing is snow being blown across the road from east to west. It wouldn't just come straight across though. It would swirl too and so the angle was constantly changing. It was difficult to see the road, almost disorienting. The effect it had on the sun and moon was interesting too. Obviously, it obscured them, but it also produced some interesting effects. I saw my first winter rainbow yesterday for example. I am not quite sure how the rainbow was created, though I can only assume that the angle of the sun through the blowing snow somehow created it.

This kind of weather, normal for the Gallatin valley, is also reflected in the actions and attitudes of the people. The ruggedness of the weather creates an interesting character. There is a craving for community, an openness and a deeper desire to understand the things of God. The natural beauty of the valley lends itself to the existential questions of life, but the harshness of the winters - which last roughly from November to May! - also embeds a deep respect for the power of God. You must respect the cold and the snow in the same way a Texan respects thunderstorms in the spring and heat in the late summer.

Just an observation.

The Cateye Cafe

The "Cateye Cafe" pictured at left is on Tracy street, just north of Main street in downtown Bozeman, Montana. It is an extraordinary place and I don't mean just because the food is good. Located in the old telephone company building, it is owned and operated by Tina and Kevin. Tina and Kevin are fun. Tina is a native of Montana and Kevin, her husband is a native New Englander. She is the personable host and he is the creative chef. The dining room is small, but the personalities are large. Wait service is excellent. It is both personable and efficient. The food is spectacular. (I suggest trying the banana bread french toast!) All walks of life can be found at the cafe. It is open for breakfast and lunch daily, and dinner on Friday and Saturday. Now this is not simply a 'plug' for a good eating establishment. What I have found there is a representative of the postmodern life: a life that eschews traditional religious expression, yet is simultaneously desperate for the good news.

At the Cateye, the secular crowd gathers for community. People find fun, food and personal acceptance. It is a rudimentary fellowship, bound together by the ethos of its owners, who function as both hosts and priests. The people who gather there find love and acceptance, sprinkled with a little joy. The most injured of human beings find an atmosphere where they can let down their guard and laugh a little while they enjoy a feast.

I sometimes wonder if the church couldn't learn from the Cateye and I couldn't learn a little more from Kevin and Tina.

An Outpost of Love: Addendum

A friend of mine wants me to go further on my ideas. But before I can explore the "outpost of love" further, I need to post an addendum. My journey has been one of agnostic 20 year old to charismatic to fundamentalist to generous Evangelical and then simply to generous Christian. It has been an interesting journey. When I look back on this journey, I think two things. First, I see a life in process with God and second, I observe what it means to take scripture seriously. Let me take these two observations in order.

1) A Life in Process with God. It has now been 27 years since Christ came into my life. It has been a life that has reflected Psalm 150, Psalm 51, Psalm 150 and Psalm 27. There have been spiritual highs and lows. I have experienced grave disappointment and deep sadness but I've also experienced tremendous victory and the accompanying joy. As I look back on these 27 years I can see how God has used time, circumstance and Spirit to lead me along and indeed to shape me. I am who I am because of the great I AM. It is indeed a 'walk', a journey and as well a 'shared' walk or journey. Although there have been times where I walked without human company, God has always been there. The journey is shared first and foremost with Father-Son-Spirit and then with other human beings. I have been lonely, but I have never been alone since Christ came into my life. Now, I see life not only as participation in and with God, but as one of becoming* - by 'becoming' I mean transformation into that instrument which God utilises for His glory, His Kingdom and the benefit of humanity. It is only in this participation and transformation that I gain my true self.

2) Taking Scripture Seriously. Aye, here's the rub. As a young Christian, I became involved with fundamentalist influences. I don't see this as a negative, simply part of the process. For if there is one thing in which fundamentalists excel, it is taking scripture seriously. Many of my more 'permissive' friends don't truly take scripture seriously. Now don't get me wrong; they read and preach the bible - but problematically, they don't take its claims as seriously as they could, or as I argue, should. They have allowed another ideology- usually science, history or secular psychology - to determine how they will handle or understand the scriptures. Sadly, this approach to scripture inevitably leads to a diluted faith and a weak theology. In extreme cases it leads to a biblical atheism or unitarianism, where one posits the existence of God, but the Father is Mother, the Son is not deity and the Spirit is an ambiguous 'world consciousness'.

This is not acceptable to the fundamentalist. Of course, they have their own set of bizarre problems. They too tend towards a biblical unitarianism but it functions through a focus on the sovereignty of God the FATHER ALMIGHTY, and then proceeds to treat the balance of the divine Trinity hierarchically: the Son is divine, but he only gets it from the FATHER ALMIGHTY, thus it is a derivative divinity. The Spirit is the 'toady' of the Trinity, the errand boy of the Father or according to my fundamentalist pentecostal friends, the essence of God that motivates Father and Son, and, for a generous love offering and slaying of the Spirit, can be at your beck and call. Now I don't want this to become too negative or harsh, for I have benefitted from my Charismatic brethren as well. More importantly, in order to maintain a literalist, scientific approach to scripture, my fundamentalist friends have to affirm crazy millennial schemes, the marginalisation of women from ministry, the denigration of any type of evolutionary science and an exclusive focus on penal-substitutionary atonement as the only explanation of Jesus' death. If anything, my friends are not fundamentalists, but rather, 'saddamentalists'.

Let me make my point. Out of this trajectory, I have taken scripture seriously; and if one takes scripture seriously, you end up not with a rigid confessional theology as much as a theological ethos. I could not remain a fundamentalist because in actually reading and wrestling with the truth in scripture, I could no longer affirm the strange theological schemes and vacuous, angry ethic. I could not remain a Pentecostal or Charismatic because of their generally skewed understanding of the Holy Spirit.

What I found in taking scripture seriously was that a life informed by God does not dead end in confession, but rather explodes outward in transformation.

If we take scripture seriously, we find that God wants a personal relationship that results in a peripatetic, Jesus-like life. A life of grace, mercy and unconditional love. A life of loving the enemy, where forgiveness is our lone weapon. A life poured-out. Paul understood this. Peter understood this. John, James and Philip understood this.

Yet far too often, modernist, American Christianity emasculates the truth of the gospel and the scriptures in favor of an individualistic, commercialist corruption.

Too many well intended, bible-reading Christians make the confession of faith, only to hold transformation at arm's length. In this fashion, they can control the operation of God in their life. Their walk with God becomes stunted, precisely because they refuse to allow God to be in control of their transformation. The Christian life becomes a neat, tidy, acceptable way of living. They can even get away with a little sin if they are crafty enough. This is American Christianity at its best. I have lived this form of Christianity and it is ultimately vacuous and unsatisfying.

I want more and if you take scripture seriously, how you view and live life changes.

An Outpost of Love

It has been interesting cycle, ministering in Montana for 9 days, then back to Brownwood for 5 days and repeat. In all fairness, two of those five days in Brownwood are travel days. Nevertheless, I consider it a great privilege to teach my courses and simultaneously get to know a new community of people. Although it is physically demanding, it is also mentally stimulating!

What I want to share with you though is not my personal travel and schedule. It is a developing set of ideas.

1)People are sinners. All of us have some idea of this concept, it is not new. Sinners are not necessarily 'bad' or 'evil' - there are some people out there who obey the laws, go to work, have families and retire, but are still separated from God. We see this separation from God in our generally self-focused behaviors. In business speak, we are not maximizing our potential as human beings. We are unrealized. However, our generally selfish approach to life coalesces into a communally tragic situation over time. Our sinful condition manifests itself in anger, lying, greed, lust and a multitude of over painful behaviors. We are in desperate need of God.

2) Salvation is transformation. Salvation is not found in a confession of faith or even in a set of theological principles. Salvation begins with grace, resulting in confession, profession and transformation. Thus, our confession begins a transformation - a living theology. We are judged by the Creator in the end of time, not based simply upon our confession, but on the accompanying transformation! (See below) Most Christians don't get the transformation part because it is humbling. We like feeling superior; we like the fact that "we are chosen" and they are "not." Pride is always the final sin to go and it is replaced with a self-controlling humility. But the end of transformation isn't simply humility.

3) The end of salvation is love. God is love, agape love (1 John 4). Agape is "selfless concern for the other." Agape is not simply a noun, but a verb. One does not simply possess love; one lives love. Or better, love is lived through us. When love is lived, it becomes a fixed aspect of life and takes on objective, noun-like qualities. Understood in this fashion, salvation is the process where we learn to live in relationship with God, who is love, and allowing God, who is love, to love others through us. Jesus stated, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for each other" (NIV). We have often interpreted this 'each other' as 'one another' - this is a legitimate translation, just not a good interpretation. We naturally interpret this as others 'like us' - Christians. This is the ornery residue of the sin nature, the natural man, seeking the easiest path, the wide road. But the Spirit gently directs us 'other' wise!

But I believe it is best to understand 'other' as those not us. To love each other then becomes the command to love each person that is not us. Hence, Jesus tells us to love our enemies, to forgive those who abuse us and even those who would kill us - "forgive them father for they do not know what they do..." (Luke 23:34). We are to love as Jesus loved.

In Matthew 25:31-46, "The Parable of the Sheep and the Goats," the sheep, those who "entered into their rest" (heaven), did not do so based upon confession, but rather on transformed living. The sheep did not even realize that their lives were characterized by unconditional, selfless concern for the other. Their lives were lived love. They were transformed and being transformed.

4) The Church is a Movement of Agape-Love. Awash in the inner strength of the Holy Spirit, the church - made up of persons brimming with the Love of God as the Holy Spirit - penetrates its community. Rather than being a specific social strata of people who gather for a few hours each week for worship and discipleship, the church is the ekklesia, those called out by God to demonstrate the righteousness of God in selfless concern for the other.

My home church has started a project called, "Love Brownwood." That is the heart of what we are called to be and do. We go to the laundromat, to the impoverished neighborhood, the hurting professionals, the struggling businesses and we live selfless concern for the other. No fancy programs, no slick bible-teaching, no contemporary worship can replace the command to love. The church is an outpost of love, sending out sorties into the world, so that person by person, community by community, our world is changed into what God intended from the beginning of time.

Amen.

From the Bible Belt to Bozemania - part 2

When I last left an entry, it seemed as if I was 'dogging' Brownwood, Texas. Not true. Many of the churches in that community are attempting to connect with others in a culturally relevant and authentically 'New Testament' fashion. The Bible Belt culture simply makes it more difficult to do so. Thus said, I was making a comment about the culture in which much of the south is mired. Many of America's seminaries are located in the South, and many of them continue to train students as if all of the United States reflect the Bible Belt approach to the church. This is a serious problem. The culture is changing, the church is changing and thus theological education must adapt.

The Bible Belt and Bozemania have one important thing in common: people. People still yearn to understand the ineffable. They seek answers to the greater questions of life and the possibility of existence after death. They crave acceptance, forgiveness and love. This aspect of being human would seem to be universal.

In a culture that is not bound by the assumptions and theological considerations of the Bible Belt, there is a much greater chance that disciples will move beyond superficial understandings of salvation and the church. Indeed, explosive church growth in third world countries and the coastal and urban communities of the United States suggest this might be the case.

To the point: I am now outside of the Bible Belt. The ministry opportunities are challenging, yet invigorating. God is at work in a way I have not seen in quite some time. And so I pray for my friends in Brownwood and the work of the gospel that goes on there. I look forward to the day when they can join me in the 'fields of the Lord' in Montana - where the harvest is ready!

From the Bible Belt to Bozemania!

Good morning from Bozeman, Montana!

As I start my first full week of ministry in Bozeman - a stunningly beautiful place! - I am noticing the differences and similarities with my other place of ministry in Brownwood, Texas. The biggest difference I have noticed is that I am no longer in the "Bible Belt."

Brownwood, Texas is in the middle of what many scholars, pundits and just regular people call "The Bible Belt." The map on the right shows the density of practicing Baptist Christians across the United States in 2000 and it is a fairly good representation of the geographical location of the Bible Belt in general. This is how the author of the Wikipedia article on "The Bible Belt" defines the phenomenon: "Bible Belt is and informal term for an area of the United States in which socially conservative evangelical Protestantism is a significant part of the culture and Christian church attendance across the denominations is extremely high." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_Belt) If you would like to read more on the topic, Christine Heyrman's book, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (Knopf: 1997) is the book you want to get.

My observation of "The Bible Belt" phenomenon is that Christianity in this region takes on a "Constantinian Veneer." In other words, Christianity, rather than being the embodied living of faith in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit and expressed through the community of faith, tends to take on a much shallower, individualistic and cultural gloss. People often speak about "going to church" rather than being "a part of the church." In this context, 'church' can become a social obligation, rather than participation in the body of Christ through a sense of 'call'. And, at worst, community standing is often measured by which church a person attends or how many 'ministries' or activities in which a person is involved.

Now don't misunderstand me. Although Brownwood, a community I love and respect, is in the Bible Belt, that doesn't mean that this mindset is 100% manifested. The problem is that churches have to fight the mindset in order to reflect accurately their gospel commission. They do this generally by embracing a turn to mission. They become outwardly focused. They see powerful conversions and the church becomes healthy and experiences healthy growth. Theology in this perspective grounds mission.

On the other hand, the church that is hamstrung by the Bible Belt mindset focuses on an apologetic for an exclusivist theology - a theology that can be either a stinging fundamentalist polemic or a more moderate apologetic for specific theological stances. These churches can grow, but the growth is based primarily upon their theological stance or their profile in the community - thus however mission is defined, it supports a skewed theology. My Bible Belt friends will die on many hills, usually just not Calvary.

Now I admit that this description is reductionist and a bit too simplistic. Some of my friends who read this blog are residents of the Bible Belt and will take issue with this description. Nevertheless, it makes the point. The Bible Belt, with all of its good intentions, can be a difficult place actually to reach people with the gospel. In an increasingly postmodern culture - even in rural Texas - the Bible Belt bound church is struggling to communicate with an increasingly skeptical, hurt and disenchanted younger generation. They have watched the Bible Belt church in-general fight, bicker and wound each other in theological turf-wars so often that they are abandoning the church of their childhood in favor of nondenominational churches or they even have abandoned the faith altogether. So to my friends who live in the Bible Belt, I simply encourage you to be an instigator of cultural change in your church. Put the gospel and its transformative power at the forefront of your faith!

Not so in Bozemania.

Bozemania isn't simply Bozeman, Montana. It is the area outside of the Bible Belt. Christianity in these places hasn't become a "taken-for-granted" part of the culture. Indeed, 70-95% of these populations do not have any religious affiliation. Most would consider themselves spiritual; just not 'religious'. They see society as basically secular in nature, with a few people on the fringe. They don't have any opinions for or against the church or Christians in general, unless of course, their politics collide. There are Christians here, of course; but they constitute a small segment of the population. There are Buddhists, Muslims, Jews and Mormons. There are also scientologists and atheists. They too constitute a small minority, more or less. The vast majority is either undecided or simply secular - unconcerned. In a democratic republic where the economy is capitalist in orientation, a person is prone to a secular orientation.

The key is that there is little or no Bible Belt bias. These people are willing to engage you, listen and discuss the deep things of the faith. They want to discuss these things. They may not be convinced quickly, but they will engage. The key for this generation, however, is action. This generation is not a generation of 'pew potatoes' - they want faith to mean something whereby they can make a difference in another's life. The form and trappings of religion - the tradition, if you will - is way down their list. This is golden. This is a paradigm shift.

Part 2 - Later!

Agape.

One last week...

With the new year - it is New Year's Day today - I contemplate the next four months ahead. I've remembered a year past, with all of its difficult decisions and now look forward to a four month transition that I can only describe as adventuresome! Beginning January 10, I will be spending alternate weeks in Brownwood and Bozeman. I know the physical aspects of this adventure will be tough; nevertheless, the spiritual challenge will be invigorating. So now I have this week, January 1 - 9, to wrap up the planning process and tie up loose ends before I leave on Monday, January 10 with a 14' Uhaul

full of books, some furniture and clothes. I will be ending my 'preaching life' in Brownwood on Sunday evening, January 9th, preaching at Coggin Avenue Baptist Church. It is a fitting conclusion to the ministry part of my time in Brownwood. The next morning I load the Uhaul and head for Oklahoma City. As you can see, the truck is pretty mundane. But the journey, from Brownwood to Bozeman with stops in Oklahoma City, Wichita, Denver and Billings in the middle of winter will be an adventure in itself. My traveling companion will be my father.

We will be dressed in our warmest clothes for the journey although it could be as warm as 27º when we arrive in Montana! Nevertheless, you want to be prepared for the very real possibility of being stuck in a blizzard or stranded in the middle of Wyoming in negative temperatures!

While in Oklahoma though, I plan to make a side trip to see my Aunt in Tulsa and pick up a case of my favorite root beer: Weber's! A native Oklahoman can't go to Montana without it - as well as a few of their fine hamburgers! Weber's is an institution, where one can major in the field of culinary studies with emphases on Grillology, Hamburgerology or the disciplined study of rootbeerology! Either way, its a side trip I've got to make. (Of course with stops in Marland, Ponca City and Blackwell too!)

Now enough about the trip itself. It's an adventure. What do I want you, my followers and readers to know? I have this one last week in Brownwood to tie up my loose ends, to see people that I will miss in Montana, or simply never see again. I've made good friends in Brownwood and I will miss them. If there is anything that I have found out over time, it is that places come and go, but a friend is a friend to the end. I don't want to leave this place without these people knowing that each one of them has made a mark on my life and that I'm a better person because they made it a point to befriend me. From the youngest to the oldest, I'm honored by the lives of these people. So I have one last week. I hope to make it count!