Times like this are a great chance to get our houses in order...

Times like this are a great chance to give...

So this Sunday I wrap up the message series on the Book of Daniel and the spiritual disciplines with a look at the spiritual practice most Christians only want monks to observe...simplicity.

Anyway, I could use your anonymous help, if you don't mind spending a few minutes taking a real quick, "simple" personal inventory and using the "comment" below to get back to me with your results...or just email it to me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

So, here's the inventory.  Please be honest.

1. The number of rooms in your house/apartment and the number of people living in your house/apartment.

2. The number of pairs of shoes you currently own

3. The number of vehicles you own which can be used for transportation of at least 5 miles round trip from your home (car, motorcycles, scooters, bicycles)

4. Number of non-perishable food items in your pantry you WON'T be using this week.

5. The number of televisions in your house.  Include an in-car DVD if you have one.

After answering the questions to the best of your ability, just answer using the "comment" button or email me at address above.

Thanks for your help in preparing my message.  I'm going to take the inventory too.

Community Organizing has fallen on hard times in recent days, at least with some of a particular political persuasion.  But it gets a pretty decent rep in the Bible.  Back in the Old Testament Book of Nehemiah, in response to what amounted to institutional price-gouging and unfair credit practices towards the poor, the title character organized a "great assembly" of the people to put the creditors on the spot.  They had to answer for their practices and promise publicly and spiritually to turn things around and to their part to make the community more just.

Biblical justice is basically a recognition that God's provision and blessings within His creation is the inheritance of all creation, and when there exist any practices or institutions which unfairly block or horde this provision the people of God are called and equipped to lovingly yet firmly confront and repair the situation.  The methodology for accomplishing restorative justice within the context of Israel and the church is to gather people toward the problem.  The power of relationships is the best way to bring restoration to our social rifts.

But that takes organizing within the community.  I've been honored to be a part of PEACE (Polk Ecumenical Action Council for Empowerment) in the past.  I've served as co-chair for the organization and chaired the pastors' caucus.  The personal blessing has been to make friends with some amazing fellow Jesus Followers of all backgrounds and races.  But I have also been able to join with them, and our churches, to bring organized people power to difficult community justice issues and see positive changes.  Through the shared work of PEACE churches in Polk County (including FPC), community leaders have changed direction and offered increased police protection in hot spot drug neighborhoods, a renewal of an effective drug rehab program in the county jail, building primary care health clinics for those who struggle to afford health insurance, offering a successful reading program in underperforming public elementary schools, and a commitment to increase in- and outpatient facility spots for drug rehabilitation.  These are things which I am convinced would not have been done without PEACE, and only got done because Jesus Followers in the community came together and organized themselves.

I have no stake in the political leveraging on one side or the other in the Presidential campaign.  But I did feel the need to defend the honor of community organizing, particularly when it answers the ancient Biblical call of God's justice.

PS: If you want to learn more about the Biblical call to justice in our community, I strongly urge you to attend this Saturday's "Rethinking Justice" workshop at FPC, 10 a.m to 2 p.m.  I am celebrating Lynn and I's 15th wedding anniversary and will be unable to attend, though I have gone to two previous years' workshops and it is excellent.  You won't be sorry you invested the time.

I came across this quote the other day, from Richard Foster

Service flows out of worship. Service as a substitute for worship is idolatry. Activity is the enemy of adoration . . . One grave temptation we all face is to run around answering calls to service without ministering to the Lord himself.

It was the same day I read the story in John 4 about the woman at the well.  Jesus begins the dialogue with the broken/shamed/hardened woman with the request "give me a drink."  I've always focused my attention on the heart of the story, where Jesus and the woman speak of the living water, welling up to eternal life, he offers her.  But I missed the fact that the boundaries of the story - the beginning ("Give me a drink") and the ending (the woman goes and tells her village about Jesus, and they come to him) - are about serving Jesus. 

This raises all sorts of interesting questions, and I would like to hear your answers. 

Does Jesus need our service?

When we serve others, are we serving them or him? Is there a difference?

Are worship and serving our neighbors mutually exclusive?

Does Vine run any risks, or present a false representation of Jesus' call upon us, when we emphasize the goal of being a "servant" community?

I have to say I’m a little ambivalent, if not leaning toward generally annoyed, about a certain “megachurch” pastor in California who’s been in the spotlight the last few days since he and his “megachurch” hosted a televised forums with the two presumptive presidential candidates.

First off, I don’t exactly know what the word “megachurch” means but it sounds faintly blasphemous.  Maybe if I was the pastor of a “megachurch” I might like the name better, but I think that’d be more the pride than the Jesusness inside of me.  I guess it’s guilt by association – when I hear “mega” I think “mall.”

Second, I’m still a little bent that I attended a conference in Long Beach, CA last week at which this certain “megachurch” pastor was supposed to give a plenary. That would have been Saturday, the day prior to this big made for TV thing. Only someone else came out onto the stage saying he couldn’t come because his mother-in-law had a fall and was in the hospital. Probably true, but last night I tuned into Nightline and realized he was also getting interviewed all weekend for ABC. Probably not fair, but I’m feeling a bit blown off.   We were just as good without him anyway…it was actually better he wasn’t there bringing all his megachurchiness and huge presence…so there.

Third, the whole big “megachurch” pastor having a forum on national TV/CNN with two of his “friends” (his description) who just so happen to be running against each other for President made me feel…technical term…oogy. How did you feel about it?  I’d be very interested in getting your take.

The thing is, when the church of Jesus Followers and the “powers” of the world have gotten cozy with each other in the past, it’s not worked out so well. One tends to co opt the other for its own purposes so neither can fill their divinely ordained task very well. 

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely do not believe in the absolute separation of church and state/politics.  They have a cooperative partnership in God’s creation, but it is a very specific one.   The Apostle Paul speaks of government having a “power” role in the relationship (Rom 13:1-7) with the purpose of “defense and encouragement of them that are good, and for the punishment of evil doers” (Westminster Confession of Faith 23.1,3).  The church has the “prophet” role in the relationship.  It submits itself to the influence of the “power” since it benefits from its right use of authority, but it also holds the “power” accountable through the use of moral persuasion/”speaking God’s truth to power.”  If the church is involved in a relationship with government/politics which minimizes, silences, or co-opts its prophetic role – or if it exercises its prophetic role in a way which shows disrespect to power – it’s outside the bounds Biblically, I think.

Some might argue that it was the prophetic role a certain “megachurch” pastor was trying to fill on Sunday night…but I’m not so sure.  In my opinion, both candidates have some tough/prophetic questions to answer if they want to earn the right to symbolize/execute “the power” in our particular land.  I’m not nearly as interested in hearing about the candidates’ faith (it hasn’t, and still doesn’t, make any difference whether our President calls himself “Christian” or not) or leadership story (I assume they wouldn’t be on the stage if they didn’t have leadership ability) as I am about how they are going to bring creative use of power to huge moral problems building up around us – life issues, education, healthcare, war on terrorism, provision for our poor, definition and task of family in society, and care for creation.  Do the candidates have answers to those questions which jive with God’s gracious and abundant provision of shalom in His world, or will it be four years of shalom-breaking? 

There they were, in a place of worship inside a church (mega or not), and I’m still wondering about these two guys…and us Jesus Followers.

So I got two calls from a friend this morning.  The first was after just hearing his father had suffered a massive heart attack and was being transported to the hospital as we were speaking.  The second was from the road to the hospital, just having learned he did not survive.  I tried my hardest to give words of care and concern, and said a prayer over the phone with him.  But his pain...just in a fog of shock and hurt...made me feel so impotent.

I have another couple of friends who have a little four-year-old son who has terrible seizures.  This little blonde kid so full of life and energy and love of racecars and firetrucks suddenly and shockingly gets locked up by something inside his brain holding him in a death grip, making him worse for wear every time it happens. They're going to Boston in October for a ridiculously complicated surgical procedure which opens the brain, attaches a gridwork of electronic stuff, and then stays there, open brain and all, for a whole week to pinpoint and then fix exactly where the seizures originate.  I talk to them and promise to keep him and them in my prayers...but honestly wonder what that actually amounts to.

I just went through the stack of info cards from the worship gathering I get every week on Tuesday, reading through the prayer requests people have written on the back.  There's one from someone who just got a promotion to manager of a restaurant, only to see the parent company suddenly close it down one day last week putting him out of a job.  There's one from a couple who adopted two amazing children and provided a loving home for them, and now the biological father has decided to fight them for custody.  There's one from someone whose children fight alcohol and drug addiction.  One asking for forgiveness in their marriage.   One who just found out she is has cancer...

And I wouldn't be honest if I didn't say to you that promising people I will pray somehow feels like a pretty meager offering.  Part of it, I'm sure, is because I correlate the efficacy of my prayers with the depth of my spiritual life...as if I only have good prayers if I'm good, whole, pious, right with God.  On the flipside, if I'm feeling like a load of garbage spiritually I have a sneaking suspicion God has moved on to better things and my prayers fall short like Evel Knievel in his rocket bike over the Snake River. Better ask someone else to pray for ya.

But maybe I've misunderstood God's idea about the prayers of his people completely.  When I think that they have so much to do with me...my power...my spiritual strength...and when there is a deficit in those things my prayers automatically are at a deficit with God...that's not it at all.  After all, a proper understanding of God would have to include the realization that logically prayers are completely unneccesary and superfluous. God knows.  Maybe the connection of prayer...not the act itself...taps into a power borne from and through relationship and powerful loving flow like pulsing blood all through the relationship.  God as Trinity/relation prizes connection and loveflow within as the height of His glory received.  Check out the Bible verses which include ALL of GOD prepositionally in each of our meager little prayers...to God, through Jesus, in the Spirit.  Each and every one, whether on our knees, in a church, in the car, flowing freely or stuttering.  Every one. 

And me...as one in relationship with my friends and all of you in my Vine community...am drawn as my true, relational self into the purest expression of that love: prayer of compassion, mutual pain and anxiety, need and want, joy and sorrow.  It's not about what I'm able to do, but what God just does naturally in relationship within Godself and God's people when we enter into the connecting power of prayer.  Now I want more of it.