the.slow.down

jesus, wow, i’m tired and i’m full in my brain, so full i’m not sure that i even know what to write?

we had “the meeting” this afternoon and it was good to get our stuff out on the table, hopefully it can open up dialogue on some of these issues that seemingly divide us or that we have strain over.

some big questions:
- how do we organize ourselves? around doctrine? core values? mission? relationships? multiples of the previous? that’s a biggie.

- practices of the core values? how in depth do we go? how in depth do we need to go? what are we trying to do by defining the practices of the core values? how do the practices draw us closer to being more denominational?

anyways, i’m not so muchy of a good processor this way, i do better person to person, it will be good to have more dialogue on all of this.

Lord, help me to remain humble. help me to remain a listener and a learner. Lord help me to pray for the process and for those leaders in key positions. Lord lead us as a church and as elders and as a ministry into your heart.

Lord i pray for jayne, give her grace to recieve your grace. i pray that you’d minister to her through the HC tonight.

Man God i’m just so stinkin tired it’s ridiculous. help me to obey whatever it would be that you’d have for me tonight.

well, i’m here in missouri on the lake of the ozarks for the gcc pastors conference. it’s been a good time, challenging to be sure but also good to spend some time with some guys and talk about “church stuff.”

more questions than answers for sure. i’m sick, that’s no fun, but i’m hanging in, not too bad yet.

there ya have it.

made it safely home to ind. after a short trip to my motherland, oklahoma. it was great to see the folks, the grandfolks, and show off our kid. he’s a trip.

stopped off in a sweltering st. louis zoo from noon to 3 today, i wonder why it was so hot? anyways, most of the animals were asleep, and we were hot, so we didn’t stay long, but it’s a cool zoo. i like monkeys, and if i didn’t mention it, it was hot there.

it’s crazy to thing of how the summer is cruizing along. there will be none left soon, so i better get on with things i guess.

had a stanley hauerwas book recommended to me recently. i’ll let you know how it is, but it sounds good. Resident Aliens I believe.

just some thoughts…

it’s quite a different picture that bonhoeffer gives of “Christian Community” than what i imagine or picture in my mind as to that thing.

so good to be challenged in this. so far it seems he’s laying the groundwork, building the foundation of all that is truly community. tying people together through Christ alone, centering on Christ, making sure that Christ is the be all end all, the aim and goal and mortar that binds “the church” together.

i’m especially struck by the idea that he gives as the goal of all Christian community, that is: the bringing of the message of salvation to one another.

i’m also struck and convicted in his mention of the desire for “something more.” he speaks of the danger of wanting more than what God has chosen to provide in a community, the danger of being in disagreement with God on the point of community and the mode that it’s lived out in. i’m sure that i want to do that in certain ways. i’m sure that i have my own ideas of how i want it or think “it should be” which are a detriment to the work Christ may want to really do in our midst.

may God keep me and us from a “wish dream” that isn’t of God at all, but simply desires the comfort of the “roses and lillies” in community.

that’s all i can digest right now, more later. really good stuff though.

some excerpts from ch. 1, community…

- It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies … all his disciples deserted him … on the cross he was utterly alone.

- So the Christian, too belongs not tin the seclusion of the cloistered life but in the thick of foes.

- The Kindom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers adn betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared?
>> Luther

- So between the death of Christ and the Last Day it is only by a gracious anticipation of the last things that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with ohter Christians.

- The believer feels no shame, as though he were still living too much in the flesh, when yhe yearns for the physical presence of other Christians.

- But if there is so much blessing and joy even in a single encounter of brother with brother, how inexhaustible are the riches that open up for those who by God’s will are privileged to live in the daily fellowship of life with other Christians!

- Christianity means community through Jesus Christa and in Jesus Christ.

- … a Christian needs others because of Jesus Christ … a Christian comes to others only through Jesus Christ … that in Jesus Christ we have been chosen from eternity, accepted in time, and united for eternity.

- God has willed that we should sseek adn find His living Word in the witness of a brother, in the mouth of man.

- … the goal of all Christian community: they meet one another as bringers of the message of salvation.

- He who looks upon his brother should know that he will be eternally united with him in Jesus Christ.

- Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us.

GOOD
- One who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood. He is looking for some extraordinary social experience which he has not found elsewhere; he is bringing muddled and impure desires into Christian brotherhood. Just at this point Christian brotherhood is threatened most often at the very start by the greatest danger of all, the danger of being poisoned at its root, the danger of confusing Chrsitian brotherhood with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, of confounding the natural desire of teh dovout heart for community with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood.

just began re-reading Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. struck by it’s profound nature and the confidence with which Bonhoeffer writes. prophetic in nature, and cutting to the heart of what community is and what we dilute it into so often.

here are some notes, written mainly for my own rememberance, but for others benefit as well.

from the intro…
- “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
- imprisoned in April 1943, with his sister and her husband.
- excerpt: “Bonhoeffer always seemed to me to spread an atmosphere of happiness and joy over the least incident and profound gratitude for the mere fact that he was alive… He was one of the very few persons I have ever met for whom God was real adn always near… On Sunday, April 8, 1945, Pastor Bonhoeffer conducted a little service of worship and spoke to us in a way that went to the heart of all of us. He found just the right words to express teh spirit of our imprisonment, the thoughts and the resolutions it had brought us. He had hardly ended his last prayer when the door opened and two civilians entered. They said, “Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us.” That had only one meaning for all prisoners-the gallows. We said good-by to him. He took me aside: “This is the end, but for me it is the beginning of life.” The next day he was hanged in Flossenburg.”