Goin' Mercer…ramblings and rants!

I read a great book last summer by Andrew Root, “Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry”. A synopsis about the book is that we should build relationships with students for the sake of knowing them, not what we can encourage them to do, namely convert, be baptized, or change some awful behavior. I agree with Root.

I was in Half-price book store this past week during my vacation and noticed that within the religious section the author with the most copies of his book on the shelf was Joel Osteen. I tweeted at the time that, “what does it mean when your once best-seller won’t budge from the half-price shelf? Good cover/title: lousy content!” I know harsh, but it does make some kind of statement, right?

Many preach that if we follow Jesus and have a personal relationship with our savior that our lives will be blessed with great jobs, homes, wealth, wonderful health, hope for our future, and maybe even reconciliation with loved ones. Still others preach that if you follow Jesus and have a personal relationship with our savior that you will be saved a stave off the fiery flames of Hell. Or maybe we even preach that by following Jesus and having that personal relationship with him, our savior, we will live a life here on earth that is so righteous that it will prepare us for the real goal, heaven!

What if we preached that we should learn to have a relationship with Jesus by reading scripture, learning history, understanding tradition, prayer, worship, gathering with other Christians, having relationships with non-Christians and people that we would consider less, and then we would understand who we are following and why a relationship with Him is important in the first place? The truth is we love to use Jesus! We have a relationship with Him only for a means to an end. That end could be heaven or it could be peace on earth, or it could be a new yacht. It doesn’t matter how Holy you make the end, it is still a selfish and consumeristic notion of our relationship with Jesus.

Turn the Tables
Let’s take a moment and turn the tables. How do we know Jesus in the first place. We know Him because He came to us. However, He didn’t come and enter into our world to brag about his perfect life, with his virgin birth, and his wise actions/ways. He didn’t come to know the twelve and the thousands that followed so that they could all overthrow the leaders of their time. Jesus did come in order to establish a relationship with humankind. He was in the beginning with God and came that we might have life to the full. Of course its not the full we think of necessarily. He came to relate to us and be in relationship with us. What was his reason?…Love! Love! Love for humans and creation! Love for saints and sinners! A love so boundless that his own death and resurrection would become the redemptive work for such a dark and broken world. Jesus has a relationship with people. He has a relationship with priests/pastors, parishoners, poor, wealthy, republicans, democrats, black, white, male, female, straight, gay, Christian, Buddhist, Islamic, Hindu, Jewish, Wiccan, Gnostic, and Atheist. Jesus doesn’t have these relationships so that they will follow him or so they will live for him or so that they will thank him. He has these relationships because they are his creation and He is Love! He doesn’t use us for his message, his message to us is His love!

Can we change the way we treat Jesus? Can we change the way we preach Jesus?
Can we change the way we approach Jesus?
We should challenge our churches to learn to love Jesus and begin a new relationship with Him that doesn’t ask anything of Him or expect anything from Him.

However, our relationship with Jesus no matter our approach or expectation is designed to change us. When we become honest with ourselves and with Jesus we will be changed through our relationship with him. Our relationship will go from using Jesus to get what we want (physically or spiritually) to knowing him and understanding His love for us. Our prayers will change from constant petition to ceaseless conversation. Our teaching will change from sales pitch to invitation. Our service will change from pity to empathy. Our disappointment will change from abandonment to lament. Our perspective will change from selfish desire to divine consideration. Our purpose will change from attraction to transformation.

It is a process and journey and we gladly share in it together. Let’s dive in to relationship with God, Jesus, Spirit for simply knowing them.

-Mercer

A Rant for Christians

Why does everyone get so upset about churches and their imperfections? I have yet to meet an individual that is perfect and that is what the church is made up of; many imperfect individuals. In whose mind does it make sense that hundreds or thousands or even tens of imperfect people create a perfect organism? Really…it’s nonsense. Christians aren’t following Christ because they are perfect. If they were perfect, they would be Christ. They are following Christ because they are trying to make sense of such a broken world through the lens of the perfect light.

Look everyone! We aren’t perfect and we never will be! In fact, it’s not even the point of following Jesus: to be perfect that is. The point is to follow close enough to get a sense of what He is calling us to be in this world until we reach the ultimate Kingdom. And even when you follow closely there are still those times when you stumble or get off track. We sin! We fall short! But then again, “It’s not the well who need a doctor, but the sick.” Thanks Jesus!

And Christians! Let’s stop playing the role of the martyr in a country where we are able to meet for worship whenever, wherever, and with whomever. We are in a nation that fights for our freedom to assemble peacefully. It should not be our expectation that the nation bow to our belief system. If we truly believe in a Trinitarian power, then let’s quit our fundamentalist whining when the government of this country (not one of the Trinity) fails to meet our religious expectations or provide policies to protect our values. We can rise up by being the people God has called us to be regardless if it matches up with the Nation’s bureaucracy.

If we are going to fight for something, fight for social justices. Let’s fight for peace and when I say peace I mean reconciliation. Let’s fight for an end to genocide, molestation of children, healthcare for the poor, and food to feed the hungry. Let’s fight for the unity of the family and for people, whether living a Cruciformed life or not, to be released from oppression, judgment, and freedom. Let’s fight sin, starting with our own log-in-the-eye and then with gentle love and care fight sin in those with a small speck of sawdust. In fact, let’s change the language from how to fight, to how to love. Let’s love people whether Jew or Greek, slave or free, man or woman, gay or straight, atheist or Christian, fully capable or challenged, old or young.

Maybe when we pull our eyes more upward we will see God, Jesus, Spirit in a way we never intended nor envisioned. Maybe we will love recklessly. Maybe we will judge less and accept more. Maybe we will teach less and exemplify more. Maybe we will boast less and humble ourselves before God more. Maybe we will speak less and listen more. Maybe we will be less interested in the country becoming the church and more interested in the church embodying itself in the cross.

When we’ve embodied the cross, then we will die to ourselves and rise up in His glory. And then we won’t have to fight so much for our stance and defend so much our right and denounce so much our competitors, but we will look so much like Christ that those who don’t know Him will be more intrigued in who He really is and less what we have mis-portrayed Him to be.

However, I will end as I begun. We are imperfect individuals, following the footsteps of a perfect savior, for the purpose of finding our calling in order to work in His Kingdom here on earth so that we will understand better the Ultimate Kingdom of Heaven.

-Mercer

I like to think of myself as a pretty logical guy and one who appreciates reason. I have become quite a thinker since my undergrad college days and graduate school has just encouraged the behavior. In making decisions I do best when I have time to contemplate the effects of that decision upon many different groups. Sometimes the result of the decision is for the greater good and sometimes it reflects the kind of person I am or want to be. In decisions regarding faith I have been brought up to consider highly the view and perspective of scripture when making a faith-based decision. While that is not the worst idea, in fact it is a great idea, I have realized over the years that it is impossible to make a faith-based decision from scripture alone. Because while I’m reading that scripture I come with a lifetime of circumstances, environments, and persuasions. In other words I am biased. These biases will then play into how I read that certain text and interpret for myself, my family, or my faith group.

Logic and reason are co-conspirators in making a faith-based decision, along with prayer, contemplation, communal discernment, tradition, history, and culture. When placing all of these up against scripture we find ourselves in a terrible fix and indecisive or wrongful interpretations. However, when we align these into a coherent mix we find ourselves treating all of God’s gifts with great humility and respect. God not only has gifted us with scripture, but also with logic, reason, community, time, space, etc.

I guess I lean more to logic and reason which make discernment and processing important to me when making a faith decision.

I would rather not be rash or jump to a result or answer. I would rather think of how the decisions made would affect all in the community of faith. God has breathed into man and made him in his image, while at the same time breathing into scripture. May the breath of the Spirit rest in all areas of our lives!

-Mercer

but then I realized that through my use of technology I really was precluding verbal and face to face interactions. Through prayer and serious reflection I went for the no email, no blogging, no facebook, no texting Lent.
The first few days were really rough. Not the withdrawal as much as it was the fact that I had a retreat for the youth group that weekend and I was the organizer. Almost all the details were done by then, but people still needed information from me and things were a little tense. The following week was spring break and that seemed to go really well. Because of my phone I cannot help but see text if they arrive, but I would respond through a phone call. I had turned my email function off my phone and never opened the entourage application on my computer. I just avoided facebook and obviously blogging.

After spring break it seemed that my lent had become others’ frustration. My office door had become a makeshift bulletin board where people would tape up their emails to me on my door. Needless to say I felt my experience was beginning to fail. My goal was verbal communication yet no one wanted to play along. On my email automatic response I put my phone number. Hardly anyone called that would normally text or email. It was really crazy.

I felt somewhat guilty that my decision had caused others more work, time, and inconvenience. I kept following my guidelines and reflecting.

Reflection and prayer seemed to calm me most days and allow me to see a bigger picture. By the fourth or fifth week I had begun to hardly turn my computer on. I was getting so much done in much better time and my experience with people was becoming so much richer.

My sacrifice of the technology that was blocking relationships was actually beginning to open my up to new things and helping me to rely upon “real” interaction with people rather than virtual.

The sacrifice was tough. At first many people made jokes about how giving up these things was not a sacrifice, but a blessing. And as I have told people my story I have heard bondage language when referring to technology. People really believe that there is no way they could give up email and survive. I believe that you can give it up and thrive. You have to be willing to look beyond the tools to see a better purpose.

-Mercer

I realized some things about my proposed Lenten experience. 1) I would need to let some others at my church know what I’m doing in case some questions arose about my work ethic. 2) I would need to have email for my graduate school in order to turn in assignments. 3) There were certain bills that I needed to pay and some of that correspondence was through email

One of my mentors challenged me to think about no web activity. Well due to my need to pay bills online and graduate school that was not something I could do this year. It did make me think of the rationale for my giving up email. The rationale was to engage in more verbal communication rather than hiding behind electronic means. I was a blogger, facebooker, and texter as well as an emailer. I decided that to push myself to more verbal communication I would need to not only give up email, but texting, facebook, and blogging as well.

After considering these options I discussed it with my wife and we had a great conversation, mostly about how I was easily neglecting her through spending “our” time accessing facebook. I was convicted and made it my mission to give all of these up.

The Sunday leading up to Ash Wednesday I was trying to talk myself out of this lenten idea and doing my usual and give up Dr. Pepper, but then…

(to be continued)

-Mercer

The thought of giving up email for lent hit me in November of last year. I had hit a wall with facebook where I couldn’t pull myself away and felt distant from my family. Leah was constantly encouraging me to put down my iphone to engage with her. I’m not sure how those conversations morphed into giving up email, but I remember using my solitude time to reflect on what life would be like with using email.

I wanted to give it up right then, but knew that Lent was a good time because many Christians around the world would be challenged to sacrifice. Since it was heavy on my heart at the time, I chose to begin then in prayer and meditation for whether this was the right thing to do or not. At this point I was only considering email.

I had read an article in Oprah’s Magazine (lame I know), but it was on this very topic. A professional business woman discontinued her use of email for 30 days The article is at http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200803_omag_email

I had read this article just months previously and wondered if I would receive the same enlightenment.

Needless to say that my mind was made up in November that when Ash Wednesday rolled around in February I would sacrifice email.

So for the next few months I prayed and meditated and struggled with this decision.

(to be continued…)

I am back to the world of communication. I was off of email, blogs, facebook, and texting for the season of Lent. I have come to the conclusion that technology is good and necessary within our society, yet eroding our understanding of the importance of verbal and face to face interaction. So I have decided to be a blogging contradiction and use my blog these next few weeks to share my experience of 40 plus days without these things and other conclusions and implications.

-Mercer

Blessed are the Merciful, for they will be shown mercy. (Matthew 5:7)

This beatitude is one of the most straightforward of any.  The idea of mercy here is in direct contrast to justice.  Not that justice isn’t something Christians should desire, but personal justice so that someone else gets there’s is not our goal.  The pursuit of justice follows with the pursuit of punishment, while the pursuit of mercy follows with the pursuit of forgiveness.  As Christians we should be consumed with not just receiving forgiveness, but extending it as well.

When someone shows mercy there is no better blessing than to be able to receive mercy back.  We give not to receive, but when we become people who practice extending mercy, we will be blessed with God’s mercy.

As Communal Christians when we stand on our “rightness” and our ability to prove others wrong we stand along with justice and we will stand alone from God.  When we stand in our pursuit of mercy with other Christian denominations, other religions, and others not seeking God we stand with God.  It isn’t that we choose a different way than Christ.  It is that we choose to extend mercy over retaliation.  Jesus humbled himself and took accusations and punishments for things he didn’t do, thus choosing mercy even while on the cross with the criminal and the crowd.  What will we choose?

-Mercer

This beatitude builds from the previous three, but really ties to those that mourn.  The idea is that Christian believers will have a hunger in other words go after the idea of righteousness.  That righteousness isn’t just merely the idea of being “right.”  Stott says there are three aspects to the righteousness being discussed in this beatitude; legal, moral, and social.  The legal an moral are most comfortable to us and what we have traditionally spoken of before.  Legal is simply having that right relationship with God and would tie to law and standards very well.  Moral is about the conduct and character we have.  Social is the seeking of people’s liberation from oppression.  I agree with Stott and see how Jesus came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it.

In the end we use our time of mourning to weep for the sin in the world and this proves us meek and in need of God which leads us to a hunger for that oppression of sin to be liberated into righteousness.

Try this activity:

As you pray before your meals, pray not only for your food and its blessing, also pray for a hunger for having that right relationship with God, conduct and character that honors God, and the liberation of the oppressed.

Answer this Question:

How do you personally hunger and thirst for righteousness?  How does your church hunger and thirst for righteousness?