Network vs Neighborhoods: Part 2

Starbucks was created with the intention of becoming "the third place". This is a term made common by many sociologist circles, which says people commonly exist at home and work, and we all need a third place where we escape and socialize for socialization's sake. A place where we have more informal public existence! Most non-American cultures have some third place as a common staple to their culture.

There are a variety of reasons these third places are so attractive and beneficial. One of which is their ability to equalize, to level, to bring together those who would not normally do so.

This speaks to a tendency our culture does have toward networks rather than neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are increasingly exclusive, and on a very small level networks have the potential not to be so exclusive.

Of course, by "network", I mean those realms and places we exist most outside of home and work (coffee shops, bars, cafes, etc.)...these are our "third places". Some of these places (far from all) are places exempt of pretense and comparisons. They are havens from the divisions we place on ourselves outside of them.

At this moment, I am at my coffee shop and I see a doctor working next to a dirty hipster, who is next to a man with ragged clothes and an unkempt beard. Its like a living timeline of American success or importance on one couch. This is the allure of our networks.

If even for a matter of moments, status is put on hold and comparisons at an impasse.

For those literate to Christian lingo, this is fellowship.

These networks are where the mighty descend and the lowly rise. That leveled-out place is a stress killer for everyone.

-------------------

LISTENING TO: "The End Is Not The End" by House of Heroes

City Council prayer (w/out "Jesus")

Almighty God, our Father,

Tonight, we thank you for being the God you are. You are bigger, wiser, and far more merciful than we are. Your love and compassion are far beyond our own, and for that reason, we can only aspire to reflect You here and now.

We ask that you bless our city and community. We trust you; help us where we do not trust you. May we see the best way to love You and love people with our actions, our leadership, and our lives. Help us see the best way to serve and share in the common good that YOU intended and designed. May each citizen of our city see and recognize new ways to contribute to a healthy and peaceful community.

Please give to the Council wisdom to lead with humility and to make integral decisions most people would not envy. Bless them with wisdom to lead our city with compassion, generosity, and integrity.

Tonight I ask that you meet us here and hear our prayer. I ask this in the name of One who has ruined me for the normal and comfortable, but changes my life for the better forever.

Amen

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Hated Hateful Christians

Sitting over coffee with one of my student leaders was suddenly interrupted by an escalation...a very sudden escalation at the tables near us. At one table sat 2 young women and a bald man with a Bible. At the other sits a middle-aged man with a mustache and a newspaper. All of them smoking cigarettes!

After overhearing a few comments made by bald Christian guy, mustache guy speaks up with intention. I don't hear the pricking comment into the small group's Bible study, but it is evident the comment was not a pleased one. It certainly was not inquisitive or yearning in nature. In a matter of moments, everything blew way the hell up.

The mustached man mentioned how much the Christian man hated him because he was gay. Christian bald guy tried to explain calmly that he did not, but gay mustached guy went on to tell bald guy what bald guy believed.

It hadn't taken long for me to realize this conversation is going nowhere; especially nowhere good.

It didn't.

All I was able to realize was that we have set a precedent for ourselves. Whether we believe any certain thing about gay marriage, prop 8, or homosexuality, none of it matters because we've already set for ourselves a precursory foundation of hate that we'll have a hard time ever replacing. (if we ever can)

Understanding that this situation began with a verbal attack on an unsuspecting Christian bald guy, I still wonder how that same conversation would have gone down if Christian bald guy and gay mustache guy had built a respectful friendship first.

What if gay mustache guy was friends with quiet college pastor guy in the corner?

How would that conversation have played out differently?

My hope is that....

My regret is that I will not ever know.

---------------------

LISTENING TO: "It's All Crazy! Its All False! It's All a Dream! Its Alright" by Mewithoutyou

Networks vs Neighborhoods

On many levels, the American Church is moving to the way of the "house church", and it has a great momentum to reach many people. We are seeing many Christians learn what it might look like to be followers of Christ as they love and serve their neighborhoods. We are seeing more and more large churches OF small groups instead of churches WITH small groups.

The outreach of the church is now being put in the hands of the church as opposed to the church leaders alone. Smaller groups and house churches are turning their eyes and hearts toward their neighborhoods in order to learn what the incarnational gospel might yield in comparison to the attraction gospel that has been the primary model utilized by the American Church to this point.

While this excites me to see where the American Church is moving the gospel, I fear it STILL misses the mark in reaching a college and young adult population. The move into neighborhoods will certainly serve to reach a postmodern, post-Christian society and culture, but let's not forget that post modernity and post-Christianity is NOT a generation.

This means while college students and young adults most often fall into the postmodern, post-Christian mindset, to reach a demographic I love and my heart breaks for, there is yet another reality to be mindful of.

College students and most young adults don't really have neighborhoods they live in for long. This is a pretty transient period of life where they live in different homes from month to month. This is a time of life lived in semesters as opposed to years. The rest of life is lived outside the house elsewhere. Home is where the couch is!

The sense of neighborhood is lost on the college student and young adult. So a house church mentality works well if your population has a house or spends any significant time in the house they have.

Now again, I love the house church model, and I think the American Church needs to continue moving in that direction for sure, bu my question, as a college pastor, is how do you move this model for a demographic without neighborhoods?

The answer lies in what college students and young adults DO have. Networks!

Thought the idea of a neighborhood may be lost, there is a strong sense of network in this demographic. We still frequent different areas such as coffee shops, bars, campuses, and clubs. These places have become different networks each person is connected to.

When you frequent those places, you become 'a regular'. Once I became a regular at Tupelo Coffee House, I started to recognize the other regulars. Once I began to recognize the other regulars, I began to notice them outside the coffee shop in other networks I am connected to. I recently recognized a Tupelo barista when I was walking around the monthly art walk downtown.

The whole interest of our networks is watching them overlap. "I didn't know you came here to this coffee shop!"

In order to begin really reaching the college and young adult population, we need to move from the neighborhoods to the networks. House churches need to be in coffee shops and bars and clubs and various other networks.

In a generation that has not yet settled down into neighborhoods, you have to be a neighbor in their networks.

------------------

READING: "The Tangible Kingdom" by Hugh Halter and Matt Smay
LISTENING TO: "Sounds Like This" by Eric Hutchinson

I believe; help my unbelief

Mark 9:24, "I believe; help my unbelief" is one of my favorite verses in all of scripture, because it is so often the cry of my heart. My mind and my heart resonate with this verse more than it does with other verses in all of scripture. I am always in a state of belief, and yet I am frequently in need of help for my unbelief.

Like the disciples in this story, I struggle to pray with enough fervency to claim I am a man of real belief and faith. I struggle to pray for myself or others because a large part me wonders, "What if God does not do those things for this person?" Would it be because I had not prayed with enough faith? Would it be because it was not in God's plan for those things to happen, and I should chalk it up to "questions I was never intended to know the answers to, because God is simply bigger than me"? Then I wonder why you pray with such fervency other than 'because Jesus has commanded us to'.

But I know full well my faith is weak in moments. Because there are other moments when prayer comes naturally. There are moments when I have such a clear glimpse of God, that I hold on to it and squeeze every bit of life out of that moment I can. I need it to last as long as possible because I will drown in my own thoughts and wonder again at some point.

So to hear this man's plea with Jesus in Mark 9, "I believe; help my unbelief" is refreshing and affirming. It is affirming that this pleas is granted and answered. It is affirming that even his admitting a level of unbelief is more important and honorable to Jesus than when you simply don't get it but pretend that you do. Those are the ones who are 'this faithless generation' (vs. 19). Those are the ones who irritate Jesus for their lack of faith.

But you see Jesus meet this person, this father, when he simply admits he does have faith; help me in my lack of faith. Jesus meets you in the honesty.

Sometimes we only need to pray and continue to pray to the God we only half believe in, and he will meet us tenderly in return...OR...we could remain a faithless generation that pretends we have all the faith in the world but see no fruit of it.

------------------

LISTENING TO: "How The Day Sounds" by Greg Laswell

Answers to Questions Nobody's Asking

A podcast I listen to regularly (This American Life) recently told the story of a Texas football coach who encouraged all the parents and fans of his team to cheer for the other team. I originally thought it was going to be some monumental coaching move that would eventually amp up his own players to play harder in order to spite the sudden loss of support from their own family and friends.

But I was mistaken. This team was a Christian high school in Texas, an the other team was a local delinquent school of boys with no family life, let alone fans. So this coach asked all the parents, fans, and cheerleaders to learn the names of the opposing players and cheer them on to victory; something those boys had never known the feeling of.

This coach would quickly know national recognition. All over ESPN! The NFL Commissioner made the coach his personal guest at the Super Bowl. In all the recognition came 100's of emails and letters to the coach, but he would admit only one of them would grab his attention. A lady who is on the radio show tells her own story of seeing all the recognition of this coach and she had to email him.

She writes to him of how she is an agnostic and has rarely seen true examples of Christian love and message, but his example gives her hope that it exists. She was also very glad to see such a great model of God's love for young people.

They began a correspondence through email which shortly leads to a phone conversation that gets recorded for the radio show.

One thing to know is that a very close friend of hers had died of cancer, and she had a lot of hurt to work through. Her main concern was why God would allow this to happen, and she felt like perhaps this compassionate coach might have something to speak to her pain and hurt.

Only seconds into the phone conversation, the coach dives into a very familiar diatribe of theology and apologetics. He took next to no time to listen to her pain and hurt. He was more concerned with getting all his conversion points out there. It had completely shut her down.

She would tell the radio show host that she was basically irritated. She had not wanted to get into the details of God's existence. She wanted to really come to understand what God might have to say to her in her situation. For an entire conversation, the coach had gone into a stream of monologues about Darwin, Hitler, logic, the Big Bang and creation. He never once took a moment to listen to what she might have had to ask. He never once took a moment to listen to her pain and her hurt.

Should would tell the radio host that it was her chance to talk to a man who believes in God and get some answers to burning questions she had been struggling with, but those questions were never heard. They were questions of grief and not of God's existence vs Big Bang.

The host tries to clarify. "So he was trying to argue with you about the existence of God instead of comforting you?"

There had been times when she said she had just about to warm up to him, and that she had some part of her that HOPED he would have been able to put the 'religious message' to her in a way that made sense to her; that "deep down I really wanted to believe again."

The host wondered whether it might have just been the WAY he went about it that he'd turned her away...

She mentions that if someone could have told her why her friend died and then relate it back to God, "I probably would have responded to that better." But they never even got to that point.

The Host says, "What if its as simple as: God takes people at different times, and that doesn't mean that God doesn't have some plan for you?"

She responds, "See! That makes more sense to me than ANYTHING he ever said."

Then the radio host said, "Well that's very sad, cuz I actually don't even believe in God.

---------------

LISTENING TO: "The Long Fall Back To Earth" by Jars of Clay