theo|digital

“The fact that early believers followed a “crucified Messiah” (the ultimate oxymoron for both Jew and Greek) meant they aligned themselves with a religious sect whose founder had experienced ultimate shame (hence Paul’s saying to the basically Gentile congregations at the heart of the empire that the gospel is not a matter of shame for him [Rom 1.16]).

To follow Christ and thus experience cultural shame and isolation were not negotiables for Paul; this is the way God had chosen…”

Page 181, Gordon Fee writing on Gal 3 in Discovering Biblical Equality: Complementarity Without Hierarchy

I’m sitting at the edge of Washington, DC, listening to Alan Hirsch, Australian missiologist and church planter. He’s got a great accent, and has some sweet quotes.

Like these:

“Jesus says ‘die.’ You put that in your seeker-sensitive pipe and smoke it.”
~ Alan Hirsch on the recovery of discipleship as the church’s core task.

“You can do with 12 disciples what you cannot do with 12,000 consumers.”

“Two things I hold against Luther. One – his anti-semitism. But two – he discovers the priesthood of believers, but then he quickly covers it back up again. He retreats from it in order to maintain the status quo.”
~ Alan Hirsch on removing the clergy-laity split.

There’s Middle Class Jesus, Bearded Lady Jesus, Sunday School Jesus, Jesus is My Boyfriend, Buddy Jesus. And then Spooky Jesus. You know, he only seems human. If you scratched him, he wouldn’t bleed blood, he’d bleed light. Spooky. If you see him walking down the street, I suggest you take a quick photo and then run away like mad (sell the photo on eBay).”
~Alan Hirsch on ways we’ve remade Jesus.

I’m at a gathering with Ecclesia. More later.

My roommate Mark shot it a few days ago (click to give a closer look). Talks, doesn’t it?

ps – my seminary note: for the the first time since I started classes, I might be willing to admit I’m overwhelmed. Over 300 pages behind in reading, I’ve already started asking for extensions, and I’ve got paper due in 24 hours that I haven’t read for, much less begun writing. It’s tough, because I love the material. But I’m buried in it. Phew. To bed for now. Just had to put up Mark’s photo when he showed me.

At the bottom of lots of our problems is a “gospel” problem. Students of mine that grow up in Christians homes often admit to me that the gospel they grew up was this: Jesus came to die for my sins so I could go to heaven. This parody of the biblical gospel, I contend, is at the heart of many of our problems.
…
Now a definition: The gospel is the work of the Trinitarian God (a community of persons) to create the community of faith in order to restore humans (made in God’s image) through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ as well as through the empowering gift of the Holy Spirit to union with God and communion with others for the good of the self and the world. And all of this to the glory of God.

This is a good summary of the way my views on the gospel have transformed (widened, perhaps) in the last six years. It has affected my personal maturity, my role in ministry, and definitely my storytelling and teaching.

Read the rest of the post at the Out of Ur blog. Scot’s blog is Jesus Creed.

This is the recorded audio from my last talk at I-Life’s Saturday Night Grace entitled: Why iWorship iPhone (mp3/9.1megs). It’s part of the series Ty and I have been working on called Why I Wear Clothes – how Adam and Eve happens in our daily lives. Feel free to check out the other related talks at www.illinilife.org/study

ps – If you weren’t there live, you could probably better start about at 0:06 minutes in (my mic wasn’t on before that and then there was a poor five minute recovery, and then I demonstrate the Nintendo Wii all onscreen… just not quality audio really).

Lovie Smith, our hometown Bears coach, and Tony Dungy, Smith’s former mentor, will meet later this afternoon, spearheading opposing teams in Super Bowl XLI.

Both are not only making news as the first black pro-ball coaches to make it to this final game, but both are trying to create a stir around their faith as well: both apparently evangelical Christians telling their story on an Athletes in Action (Campus Crusade) sponsored website: www.beyondtheultimate.org.

“The inspiration from my coaching model comes from Jesus himself”

the website says in bold.

This is awkward for me to comment on, because as a Christian, I don’t always like finding myself on the critical side of the fence towards my brothers. But, here am I again. Just really: it’s tough for me to imagine a middle-aged American male – super bowl fan stereotype A – not laughing aloud at the Jesus-covering-his-mouth-to-call-the-play image the evangelistic website conjures.

The overall tone is hard for me. As you browse the site, two themes appear the biggest: a) God will give you inner strength to make it day to day, and you need a b) personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Possibly these are presented in reverse, with (a) being the reward of sorts for (b).

Waving aside my protests that “personal relationship with Jesus” is so stale a phrase that stand-up comedians regularly use it for laughs… I think my deeper concern is that the pitch is too small. Where are the central themes of Jesus being the origin and end to the universe – the unquestioned King? Where is the kingdom as a place for new citizenship, remaking fear into hope, hunger into health, anger to forgiveness, death to life?

The difficult side to the individualistic gospel message is that the gospel isn’t – at core – individualistic.

I do appreciate the section of the site that addresses the human problem of insatiable desire: “After you have reached your goals, then what?” This is a human condition that naturally leads us to God… and humbles us simultaneously.

Well, those are my spiritual musings on culture (Christian or otherwise) for the day. I spoke on Why iWorship (iPhone) last night at I-Life, and when the recording goes up on the web, I’ll link it up.

For now: da Bears!