:: in.a.mirror.dimly ::

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, but you haven’t picked up my book Coffeehouse Theology: Reflecting on God in Everyday Life, I think I know what your problem is. You’ve probably gone to Amazon and noticed that the best possible deal is a $2 – $3 used copy that probably has all of the awesome passages underlined.

SPOILER ALERTS!!!

Who wants to read a book with all of the underlining, stars, and exclamation points already inserted? And then you need to pay an extra $3 or $4 for lousy media mail shipping which ensures you’ll probably get the book sometime in 2013. If there’s still a scrap of the cover left on it, you’ll be lucky.

Sighing, you realize that it won’t be much cheaper to pick up the E-book version of Coffeehouse Theology for $7.99, and then you’ll be robbed of seeing the beautiful cover art. This is worse than a Catch 22. It’s like a Catch 44—twice as bad.

My Insanely Awesome January E-book Offer

But wait, there is hope. What if I told you that you could download every major book I’ve written for between $3.99 and $4.99??? Would you question my ability to do basic math? Though I wouldn’t doubt that, I’ve worked on these numbers for days now, and I keep coming up with $3.99 or $4.99.

The trick is that this super-awesome, mathematically impossible feat of book discounting is only good for the month of January. Here are the links you need to pick up all three of my books:

• Coffeehouse Theology is $2.99 at NavPress
• Divided We Unite: Practical Christian Unity is a free download (optional $.99)
• A Path to Publishing is $.99

Thanks for checking out my work. And believe me, this is a fun way to get my writing in front of lots of people, so please do share these offers with your friends who are curious about how theology works, wrestle with Christian unity, or dream about publishing a nonfiction book. You’re not robbing me by passing this offer along to as many people as possible.

And speaking frankly, even if you did rob me, I’m so bad at math I wouldn’t notice.

Did you know that everything in world history has been converging on a little point known as right now? Today is the most important moment in world history. Everything hangs in the balance. If we fail, the world will be ripped to shreds, not unlike a pillow factory attacked by an army of rabbits.

This is the chosen generation. We’re part of a great turning point, a time of transition. We are responsible for the great reformation of today.

The moral fabric of society will unravel if we fail. Floods and famine will destroy the earth. Life as we know it will cease to be (as in, we won’t be able to go shopping on the weekends and watch TV for thirty hours each week).

And then again, maybe not.

The clichés, alarmist rants, and calls to action shared above are common statements we run into on a daily basis. I’ve heard them from people coming from a variety of perspectives. They may advocate different views and priorities, but they all share a common belief that “now” is the most important time.

Maybe there are some urgent needs that we face today, but we don’t know when God is returning to set things right and we lack the insight to judge whether today is truly the most urgent or important point in world history. Most of the above statements are some kind of rhetoric aimed at stirring up the masses to take action. The sources of these statements are not necessarily the most detached, unbiased observers. That prompts me to ask a tough but important question…

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I watched my friends and colleagues share a video by a young man who claimed to love Jesus and hate religion. Some identified with his passion for Jesus and his desire to leave hypocrisy behind. Others weren’t so sure he could slam the religious practices that can be so central to following Jesus with sincerity, let alone the religious tradition that has been passed on to us.

Those who had their doubts about this young man suggested that religion isn’t just bad stuff. Religion can be anything from regular Bible reading to reading liturgy to fasting. We can do all of these things with either sincere or hypocritical hearts. In response to that, the supporters of the young man said, “You’re not defining religion in the same way as him.” To that I say: EXACTLY!

If anything, this young man has succeeded in proving that we need theology today, and for that, I thank him. Any time we see well-meaning holy fervor expressed with a jumble of confusing ideas, we see a need for theology. We can’t “just love” Jesus because no one has been able to do that—ideas always creep in no matter what. There is no pure way to love Jesus that can transcend the beliefs and practices that have been passed on to us. We always attach something “religious” to our worship, and if we try to break free from the past, we’ll just make up new religious things to pass on to others.

Theology helps us because it defines what we’re talking about. Theology constructs a common playing field where we can sort out what religion actually is and all that it means. Theology saves us from turning religion into this huge, enormous, awful embodiment of everything we hate.

This isn’t to say that theology wants to “save” religion. Rather, theology helps us see what it is and what it isn’t. In fact, every theologian I know approached his video from a similar perspective—trying to grapple with the ways this young man defined religion. If we fail to define religion, its advantages, and its disadvantages accurately, we’ll cut ourselves off from traditions, beliefs, and practices that have been instrumental in guiding Christians for centuries. We may also expose ourselves to reinventing Jesus into our own image without the stabilizing influence of tradition.

The downside of theology is that it can be quite dull. In fact, the problem with most theology texts is they begin by defining their terms at length and describing the current book’s position in an ongoing discussion. This is rather dull, thankless work that is hard to present to the average reader.

I struggled to present the basics of theology in an accessible format in Coffeehouse Theology only for one reviewer to say it was too simplistic to be of any use and another reviewer to say that I’d lost touch with how to communicate with normal human beings.

When we want to make sweeping statements about religion and our beliefs, we’re crossing into complex, daunting territory. I don’t slam this young man for his sincerity or desire to share his love for Jesus. I don’t think anyone is interested in that. Rather, this is a word of caution to make sure we know what we’re talking about when we speak of such large things as “religion.”

This Jesus vs. religion thing has been around for years. There were plenty of books and blog posts about it before YouTube was a sketch in a computer engineer’s notebook. As long as we have had this discussion, we have struggled to define what religion means. For most of us, religion has come to mean “anything we didn’t find life-giving in Christianity.”

Theologians can help us sort out religion, Jesus, and what it means to follow Jesus without tossing the good things that have been passed down to us. And even if we can’t figure out what they’re talking about in their thick books with tiny text, we should at least know that the number one rule for any theology discussion is this: define your terms.

We’re welcoming Sarah  Styles Bessey of www.emergingmummy.com today for the first guest post in the Women in Ministry Series:

There is my mother, of course. Can any woman’s story start without her mama, her first woman she watches? So I watched her, I took her freedom and confidence, her love for that well-thumbed Bible, into my bones. I can tell you how she grew up without really knowing much about this God stuff so when she somehow decided to take us to church, she came to Sunday school with me, passing out crayons, just so that she could listen and learn about her beloved Jesus, captivated. How she found herself in mothering us and found God there, too. In my later years, I watched her step out with my dad, gathering university girls, new parents, young couples, and friends around them, how she easily remembered their details, taught during home groups, cried and laughed, placing her hands on their backs to pray life into them, she feels like they are her family, I know.

Then there are the women in my churches. Because of the nature of our post-Christian society, we don’t do the mega-church thing too often here. So our communities tend to be a bit smaller, a bit more intentional, most of us are there because we want to be, cultural Christianity long since abandoned by all of our peers and parents. And in every Sunday service I attended as a kid and a teenager, there were women. They prophesied easily. They lead ministries. They preached. Taught. Read Scripture. Sang. Ministered. We sent them out as missionaries, single, married, far away from us, their smiling pictures tacked up to a corkboard in the foyer, a string of yarn connecting their pictures to push pins of their locations on the map.

Our pastor was usually a plural form.

I can tell you about Janet, whose husband was on staff with my own husband at our church. I was 22 when we moved there and, let me be perfectly clear, I was a know-it-all with a chip on my shoulder. This was no two-for-one deal, I huffed, I have a career, too, you know, and I am no pastor. It was Janet and the other gracious staff wives like Natalie, Bonnie, Sylvia, Jessamy, that revealed to me that I was a bit of an idiot, desperate for Jesus still. These women helped me to understand my own callings, my own vocation, to stop thinking so defensively, to learn generosity of grace. These women showed me the truth of life lived in ministry, they pastored me in the best ways possible, over time, gently praying, dismantling my brick walls by laughing, serving the least of these with joy, showing me a better way to live, forgiving easily. They taught me how to live a seamless life, all of my work an offering.

I can tell you about Pastor Helen here in Surrey, of her more than 30 years of, yes, “official” ministry. I can tell you about her daughter, Angela, my age, ferociously preaching in her knee-high leather boots on a steel stage. I can tell you about Idelette who turned her passion for stories and women into a life-giving movement worldwide. I can tell you about Nancy who started a small home for girls in the grips of life-controlling issues and decades later, hundreds of women are set free and transformed. I can tell you about Musu, Juliet, Nicola, Rachelle, Megan all working at the women’s residential home where I work, too, here in Canada in the daily trench work of saving lives. I can tell you about Tracy who leads worship with passionate abandon, jumping and preaching and calling out to God every Sunday in that elementary school gym where we gather together.

I can also write a line for the good men around us. The ones who support their wives as they are supported, the ones who serve as they are served. The men who listen when a woman speaks and can easily receive wisdom from her. Men who are not threatened by a woman who leads, who affirm friendship and respect and mutuality in their marriages, their work, their parenting. Good men, true men, strong to the core and holy.

Oh, can I tell you stories about women in ministry. And the reason I can tell you stories is because women have been in ministry, in all ways, in my world without question for a long time now. We left behind a lot of those gender-debates that wear a soul out and just got on with the business of loving God and loving people.

There is life here in the wide open spaces. When you stop waiting for permission from anyone but God, you’d be surprised how many of us there are here, waiting for you.

About Today’s Blogger

Sarah is a writer and non-profit marketing director. At her personal blog, Emerging Mummy she grapples with spirituality, theology, mothering, politics and almost everything else you’re not supposed to discuss in polite company. She lives in British Columbia, Canada with her husband and three tinies.

About the Women in Ministry Series

The Women in Ministry Series is a collection of guest posts that aims to:

• Provide an alternative to the women in ministry debates by telling the stories of women in ministry.
• Encourage women to explore their God-given callings.

Comment Policy: Everyone is welcome to leave a comment. However, this series takes for granted that women are called by God into every facet of ministry. This is not the place to debate that point and such comments will be removed. Women have been told “no” in far too many places. This is one place that is committed to saying “yes.” For more about the comment policy, read here.

Next Week’s Blogger: Jamie Wright (Jamie the Very Worst Missionary)

When we kick off the Women in Ministry Series this Friday, I’m going to take the opportunity to release my latest E-book. It’s titled Divided We Unite: Practical Christian Unity, and I think it’s an appropriate book while we’re discussing a topic like women in ministry since it has been so divisive in the church. In this book I’ll aim to answer the question: How can Christians remain united if we’re already so divided?

The E-book will be a free download for my readers, though I’ll also include an option if you want to pay $.99 for it and support my writing a little—or at least buy me 1/3 a cup of coffee. Stay tuned for a fantastic day on Friday with a great story and a free E-book!

Want to get a sneak peek? You can read the first half of my book here.

About Divided We Unite…

When Jesus prayed that his followers would be one, he wasn’t setting up his future disciples for failure. In fact, the prayer of Jesus may be closer to fulfillment than many Christians in thousands of denominations suspect.

Christian unity isn’t created by signing off on a list of bullet point beliefs. The Holy Spirit unites disciples of Jesus together with bonds that are stronger than any divisions. Though Christians are divided into different denominations, it is possible to practice charitable Christian unity in the midst of very real divisions. Christians are divided, but through God’s Spirit, they can remain united.

Practical Christian unity is the art of living in the unity of the Spirit without letting divisions cut Christians off from one another. Practical, everyday unity is tough and costly, but Divided We Unite shows a way forward that rests fully in the power of God without neglecting the role of each Christian.

Some people are talented at making money. I, on the other hand, have the unique talent of choosing highly specialized professions that don’t make any money.

When I started attending seminary, the typical conversation with my family was something like, “How will you avoid becoming a beggar on the street?” OK, it wasn’t quite like that, but way too many conversations had those overtones.

Thankfully, I had plenty of pastors to look up to over the years. They seemed like reasonably well-adjusted individuals with normal lives. It wasn’t until I started working in a church and saw pastoral ministry up close that I realized it wasn’t for me.

I kept my misgivings to myself and my wife, not wanting the “beggar on the street” conversation to further evolve. As I searched for a new path forward, I realized that the obvious answer was writing full time. This did very little to assuage the concerns of my family.

When I started to pursue writing as a serious profession, I didn’t know any writers personally. How does one go about making a living as a writer? I could handle the part where I pounded out 5,000 words in a day, but the part where a paycheck ended up in my bank account eluded me. I had never seen the life of a writer up close and personal, and I had no idea how to go about pursuing my calling.

Enter writing blogs, books, and magazines. For years I inhaled Writer’s Digest, The Writer, and a bunch of writing blogs and books. These stories of professional writers became my lifeline. When people wondered how I could ever make it as a writer, I received support and encouragement from the stories of writers who kept up the struggle and dreamed up creative ways to make a living.

Without those stories, I would have given up on my calling a long time ago. If I didn’t know that there were other crazy people like me who loved to write and didn’t mind the spare pay checks, I would have been forced to settle for a soul-crushing job that didn’t tie into my passions.

Without stories, it’s hard to know if we’re on the right path. We need to know that other people have faced similar circumstances and have kept up the fight. We need to know that it’s worth the struggle.

As I’ve thought about the importance of the Women in Ministry Series that will be launched this Friday, the value of stories have been at the forefront of my mind. Women who feel called to ministry need to read stories about those who have blazed the path ahead of them. Women who have been told “no” all of their lives need to read stories that tell them “yes.”

Perhaps the most difficult part of this process has been contacting some very talented storytellers about contributing, only for them to reply that they don’t have any stories to share about women ministering in their lives. It never occurred to me that there are women who simply haven’t seen a God-empowered female ministering as either a pastor or a lay minister in the church.

That left me wondering how many women are struggling with a nudge from God that they simply can’t process. Are there women who sense a call into ministry, but they can’t sort it out because they’ve never seen it modeled for them?

As I think and pray over all that this series of stories about women in ministry can be, I hope that it will become a lifeline to women who need models. I hope that readers can share links with those who need encouragement and a few examples of what it’s like for God to work through women in the church.

And then, when a well-meaning relative asks a young woman, who is planning to go into ministry, how she will eat or find a place to live, she can smile and know that she has a treasure trove of stories assuring her that God will show her a path forward.

Every now and then I run into a statement like this: “The problem with the church is that it’s too feminine.” Other times I hear: “We need men to stand up and… and… be… MEN!”

I think these folks don’t know what they’re really saying.

These folks may have an idea in their minds of what this looks like, but if you asked them to really explain such things in detail, the training wheels of these undeveloped thoughts fall off.

I’ve been thinking about all of this for years now, and yesterday I finally put some thoughts together…

Read the rest of this entry »

When certain people read that I’m putting together a series of guest posts about women in ministry, they may be tempted to think and say that I’m out to destroy the Bible, nay Christianity itself. They may assert that I’m misconstruing clear passages from the Bible based on loose speculation and undermining the very faith I claim to support.

If women are allowed to teach and serve as equals in ministry, what will become of Christianity and the church? I’ve conducted a very thorough risk assessment of my series that kicks off next week, and such detractors are certainly right. There are tons of risks. Here are just a few that I’ve thought of:

Under the cold-hearted leadership of female leaders and ministers, men will be rounded up and locked in the nursery. Children will puke on their shiny shoes. Pastors will lose their expense accounts. Secretaries will stop answering the phone.

THE COFFEE WILL NOT BE MADE!!!

Yes, it is a terrible thing when sinners fall into the hands of an “angry woman.”

Sermons will start to include illustrations based on raising kids and cooking dinner instead of sports and war movies. Women will start to speak their minds to the male authority figures in their lives, thereby causing strain on men who are forced to utilize neglected parts of their brains. Men will have to start vacuuming better, moving the chairs out instead of just going around them. Dinners will not be cooked. Children will stop eating their vegetables.

Dangerous heresies will sweep through the church by “easily deceived” women—just like Eve. In fact, women will start forcing their husbands to eat apples all of the time. The line for the men’s restroom will become oppressive. The parking lot with become a scrap heap of twisted vehicles piled upon one another. The back rows will buckle and break under the weight of disinterested, dispirited men who feel like the church is way too feminized.

Without a man to wear a suit up front, men will no longer know how to dress on Sunday morning. First they’ll forget their ties, and then they’ll soon denigrate to stained t-shirts, slippers, and dirty Carhartts. They’ll stop reading their Bibles because they’ll become convinced that only a woman can interpret it for them. They’ll stop signing up to lead anything in the church. Even the hunting group will be organized through the cabal of the lady’s knitting group. Camouflage will be replaced by knit teddy bear sweaters. Venison dinners will be replaced by crusty, inedible scones and fruity teas.

Yes, letting women teach, speak in church, hold authority, or call themselves “ministers” in any sense of the word could destroy Christianity as we know it. And even if my little series of stories about women in ministry won’t do any of the things I mentioned above, I do hope it destroys part of Christianity as we know it—the part where women think they are somehow designed by God to be inferior to men.

This will be a destructive series. However, we’re not destroying something for the fun of it. This is a matter of obligation, a dirty job that someone has to do: undoing the wrongs of the past and restoring women to their proper place in the church through empowering stories.

I’m not interested in forcing anyone to join me in this. I know there are some men and women who are comfortable with male-dominated systems. That’s fine for them. I’m not forcing them to change anything. I’m far more interested in speaking to the women and men who think there is something wrong with that—who sense in their times of prayer and readings of scripture that God created men and women to be equal partners in salvation, ministry, and the home.

And really, what’s the worst thing that could happen? A woman may discover her calling into ministry?

I know I have a problem when I’m walking for less than 10 minutes from the café to my house, and I’m trying to remember to tweet something clever.

I know I’m a little unbalanced when Facebook has quadruple the visits of my invoice program.

When I’ve checked my inbox more times than I can count in a three hour span, I know that an intervention is needed.

Nagging questions come to mind: Am I too focused on creating an image for myself? Am I consumed with the minutiae of my day? Am I obsessed with self-promotion? Am I simply contributing to the noise and clutter of the world?

Over Christmas vacation, I kept a very low profile on my trinity of distraction. I left e-mails unanswered. I avoided Twitter like the plague. I even stopped myself from scanning Facebook for distractions.

Instead, I tried to focus on single activities such as writing a little, reading a book, or jotting down ideas in a notebook. Here are a few things I learned in the process:

Twitter Can Bring Out the Worst in Us

At its best, Twitter is a really efficient and low pressure way to communicate information with a broad group of people. At its worst, Twitter is a soul-sucking cesspool of self-obsessed minutiae where I scream out, “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!”

I started to think about what I wanted to tweet and what I saw others tweeting. At a certain point I grew weary of it. Twitter is a “what have you done for me lately” kind of service. It can be a grueling taskmaster that fragments ideas and chews up huge chunks of time with little to show in return—that is, if used for the purpose of distraction.

The Immediacy of Communication Enslaves Us

While reading a book or jotting ideas in my journal, I often thought that it would be nice to know if I had any e-mails in my inbox. I mean, my agent could have sent an e-mail saying that a big time publisher wants to pick up my next book!

Unfortunately, I can’t use that excuse 30 times a day, or however often I want to check my e-mail. OK, I try to do that. Saying no to myself is hard. The immediacy of our communication can be extremely convenient and also maddening. I can do something now, and putting it off until later feels like I’m doing something wrong.

What could possibly go wrong if I put off checking my e-mail of Facebook until later tonight? I don’t know, but I don’t want to find out. I heard a story once about a musician who missed a pretty sweet gig in Europe because he hadn’t check his e-mail first thing in the morning, and now I live my life tethered to the internet, fearing that I’ll miss… something.

When everything is important, we lose balance and perspective, treating everything as essential. This weakens us to the point that we can’t give our best energies to the most important things.

We All Grow Weary

My calling in life is to write. It drives me every day. If I can string together a few thousand words in a day, I go to bed feeling like I’ve accomplished what I’m put on earth to do—even if it all gets scrapped the next day.

Despite my love for writing, I needed a break from my blog and my books. I still jotted down ideas and even figured out my April Fools prank while on vacation, but as to my regular writing schedule, I needed to step back from it for a few weeks.

If my blog was allowed to continue making demands of me and my time, I would have wearied of it and treated it like a chore and not a joy.

The thing about seasons of rest is that we often don’t realize we need them until we immerse ourselves in the peace of silence and stillness. I have learned to recognize when my mind is spinning too fast for its own good, but I can only detect that if I stop long enough to diagnose what’s going on.

We take seasons of rest on faith, trusting that we need them and that God can work on us if we stop long enough to ask for his wisdom and healing.

I tend to be on the more suspicious end of things when it comes to trends in the Christian blogging world. If I want to make myself sound virtuous, I’ll say that I’m discerning. If I want to confess I vice, I could say that I’m critical and a tad grumpy.

When I heard that a bunch of people were choosing “one word” as a kind of resolution for the coming year of 2011, I confess that my discernment/critical nature kicked into high gear. I can’t say why I was suspicious. I knew very little about it. I just saw that it was becoming a trend.

There are enough “trends” in the Christian world that I think you can’t help becoming suspicious. So many trends are based on flawed theology or at least an imbalanced perspective of discipleship. Need I mention the “me first” prayer of Jabez that Americans love?

I can’t remember the exact details, but one day in late 2010 I was praying and God started to work on my critical attitude. In fact, God gave me a word for 2011: redemptive. At first I was a bit miffed at the Holy Spirit. “Dang it! You fell for this trend too?” As I reflected on what that word could mean for 2011, I realized that God was converging a bunch of stuff that had been accumulating for years.

I realized that God wanted to use me to bring healing, growth, and hope. I began to look at everything I did through the lens of what lead to “redemption.” Were my words and actions helping someone heal or grow into a place of restoration and wholeness?

That really messed up my year in the best way possible. I had to delete a lot of potential blog post and book ideas. My arrogance and selfishness appeared over and over again.

I could tell all kinds of stories about the past year, but two significant projects arose out of that word: “redemptive.” One is my series of guest posts in 2012 called the Women in Ministry Series. I hope to offer an alternative to the women in ministry debate by sharing the stories of women who are actually in ministry.

Rather than slinging scripture at one another, I think it’s time that we just acknowledged that we’re divided on this one. While we all serve the same Lord, it’s time for those of us who believe in the role of women in ministry to find ways to encourage more women to pursue God’s calling for their lives. I also hope that those with a more limited view of women in ministry will be challenged to reexamine scripture after reading some stories in this series.

Along similar lines, I also began rewriting a series of blog posts on unity and exploring some practical principles of Christian unity. I have been putting these practical thoughts on Christian unity together in an E-book titled Divided We Unite. It will be released this January. A lot of our faith-fights can be traced back to trying to force unity where there can only be division, while also losing sight of what truly binds us together as followers of Jesus.

In an extreme understatement, my one-word for 2011 radically changed my ministry and work.

Is There a Word for 2012?

I don’t want to just “think” of another word for 2012 just to have one. Perhaps that was my skepticism of this project at the outset. We’d all just think something like, “Ooooh, this is cool! Let me think of a word… How about ‘awesomeness’?”

However, there is something to this format that really works. I think God likes to speak to us in simple ways, and just listening for one word can take a lot of pressure off us, making it easier to hear the Spirit speak.

The One Word website talks about the power of the word: “if you let it, your word will shape you and your year. It will guide your decisions and help you grow.” I think really does miss something. Like I said, I’ve got that critical edge to me. What you or I choose for ourselves doesn’t mean all that much in terms of life change and discipleship. The power here comes from focusing on what God wants to do in and through us. To that end, God can use this One Word project to help us focus on what he wants to accomplish in our lives.

Setting aside “skeptical me,” I asked God if he had a word for me in 2012, and I sensed that he certainly did: freedom.

In an election year, we’ll be hearing a lot about “freedom” and “liberty.” Most of the time these words will mean being able to do whatever we want. Freedom is often linked with individualism and individual rights. It can mean that, but I think God wants to teach me about freedom with boundaries and interdependence on others.

God’s freedom restricts us in some ways so that we are truly “free” to be the people he made us to be. One practice that has already started is the practice of saying a simple prayer each morning where I “offer my day” to God. He’s been impressing on me that living as a disciple who is free from sin and who is able to serve God means taking an intentional step at the start of each day. Paul often writers about “offering ourselves to God.”

This exploration of freedom is both exciting and challenging. The results are tantalizing, but the road forward will no doubt be filled with restrictions and struggles.

Who knows what could happen in 2012 with a word like freedom…