all walls/borders are "misty and ethereal"

"Jesus walked through walls in His resurrection body because He was the solid object,
and the walls mere misty and ethereal."
-John Dawson

oh yeah

See:
#114 Church marketing

"Let's be honest. We tithe to ourselves"

"Let's be honest. We tithe to ourselves"
-Tom Skinner

Drucker: hardest and 2nd hardest jobs on earth

The Elder Elder recently quoted this in his newsletter...from a good book:

"The business guru Peter Drucker said that he pondered the various difficulties of various careers and came to the conclusion that church planting is the hardest job on earth, and that pastoring is the second toughest job"
-Steve Sjogren and Rob Lewin, "Community of Kindness"

Several thoughts come to mind, including:

• That is likely true..but only if we are doing the job wrong
• That is likely true...if we are doing the job right
• Wait! whoever said it was a job or career to start with?
• Am I nuts for doing both? (:
• I am not really doing both
• 

the best criticism of the bad

“New structures that can make the emerging church possible cannot be in opposition to any existing church structures; they cannot be against anything but merely for Something. 'The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better' is one of our core principles at the Center for Action and Contemplation.

Don’t waste the next years of your life being against anybody, anything, any group, any supposed sin, or any institution. Just go ahead and do it better yourself. It’s so common sense when you hear it. As Mohandas Gandhi put it, 'Be the change you hope to see in the world.' And in the church!”

– Richard Rohr, "What is the Emerging Church" webcast 11/08

'O, Evangelicos!'

Hope I'm wrong, but it seems like Yancey has written his "final column for Christianity Today—for a while"...partly because he's upset about the new format, which kicks his column (dating back to 1983) 'The Back Page' from the back page to the center of the magazine (and obviously renames it).

It includes this cool story from Brazil as his last word:

In one encouraging trend, the fundamentalist-social gospel divide that marked the church a century ago has long since disappeared. Now evangelical organizations lead the way in such efforts as relief and development, microcredit, HIV/AIDS ministries, and outreach to sex workers. I have visited thriving ministries among the garbage dump communities outside Manila, Cairo, and Guatemala City. Evangelicals have taken seriously Jesus' call to care for "the least of these."

I recently heard from a friend who visited a barrio in São Paulo, Brazil. He grew nervous as he noticed the foot soldiers of drug lords standing guard holding automatic weapons. They were glowering at him, a gringo invading their turf. "Then the chief drug lord of that neighborhood noticed my T-shirt, which had the logo of a local Pentecostal church. He broke out in a big smile: 'O, evangelicos!' he called out, giving us hugs. Over the years, that church had cared for the children of the barrio, and now we were joyfully welcomed."

Some of my friends believe we should abandon the word evangelical. I do not. I simply yearn for us to live up to the meaning of our name.

Phillip Yancey, link

Temple tantrums and the "others"

More on Jesus' temple tantrum as against the racist religious system, and not all about "don't sell stuff in church.":

By intercalating the story of the cursing of the fig tree within that of Jesus' obstruction of the normal activity of the temple, Mark interprets Jesus' action in the temple not merely as its cleansing but its cursing. For him, the time of the temple is no more, for it has lost its fecundity. Indeed , read in its immediate context, Jesus' subsequent instruction to the disciples, "Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea'" can refer only to the mountain on which the temple is built!

What is Jesus' concern with the temple? Why does he regard it as extraneous to God's purpose?
Hints may be found in the mixed citation of Mark 11:17, part of which derives from Iasaih 56:7, the other from 11:7. Intended as a house of prayer for all the nations, the temple has been transformed by the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem into a den of brigands. That is, the temple has been perverted in favor of both socioreligious aims (the exclusion of Gentiles as potential recipients of divine reconciliation) and politico-economic purposes (legitimizing and
consolidating the power of the chief priests, whose teaching might be realized even in the plundering of even a poor widow's livelihood-cf 12:41-44)....

...In 12:10-11, Jesus uses temple imagery from Psalm 118 to refer to his own rejection and vindication, and in the process, documents his expectation of a new temple, inclusive of 'others' (12:9, Gentiles?) This is the community of his disciples.
-John T, Carroll and Joel B. Green, "The Death of Jesus in Early Christianity," p. 32-33

Publish Post

See:

• temple tantrum

• NirvanaMan, Righteous Mischief, SuperChurch, Supreme Synagogue