church kids of the world, unite!

(I've included the picture to the right as a prologue to this essay, perhaps beacuse it encompasses so much of what I feel regarding elements of the church today.)

I'm a church kid, raised on Petra and Amy Grant since I was negative nine years old. But that's not interesting. What's interesting is how I've survived. Being a church kid is not easy, second only to 'pastor's kids' and 'missionary kids' in infamy. We're strange people who have been raised on every VBS and church program imaginable, people who, saved or not, can quote the entire plan of salvation word for word because they've sat through more revival meetings and youth camps than a Billy Graham Crusade counselor, and people who've spend more time in a church than their own homes. Of course, we rarely travel alone, so since I've spent so much time with my fellow church kids, I've figured out a few things about our species. There are three types of church kids:

• The zombie - the first type of church kid (and perhaps the scariest of them all) is the zombie, a brainwashed, culturally naive child who has spent every waking moment of his/her life in the church. This person has Sky Angel TV, watches TBN religiously, and has never heard/read anything that was not purchased at LifeWay christian stores. They exist in a christian bubble that is usually 'popped' the moment they leave the protective cocoon that they have relied on all their life, resulting in a massive complex.
• The rebel - this type may account for the fate of most of my breed. The rebel was dragged to church every moment of his life just as the zombie was, but unlike the former, the rebel hated everything he heard the moment he realized that his pastor wsn't always right and he enjoyed cuss words. This epithany began a massive conflict in his household, ending as he begins to gain independence for his parents (often in the form of a car and/or college).
• The questioner - me. This third church kid has a connundrum in his life: on one hand, he does believe the message he has been taught, unlike the rebel. On the other, he refuses to believe everything he has been spoon-fed his entire life simply because his church has spoken it. What happens to us? Often, we become bitter - we begin to read the Bibel for ourselves, refuting denominational and doctrinal practices instilled in us since childhood. We look around and fail to see things commanded by Jesus lived out in the church around us. Yep, that's a pretty good description of me.

I lay all that out now as a cross-section of the people within the church, because, in large, these are the kids the church is cranking out. We are producing kids who will probably break when exposed to the culture and have their faith crushed, run away from the church outright in favor of other pleasures, or remain in church but feel a growing uneasiness at the church's practices that evolves over time into bitterness. Wow, that's optimistic.

In his book Velvet Elvis, pastor Rob Bell tells a story of his own experience being a church kid. He and his family were traveling and went to a Sunday church servie. At the end of the service, the pastor gave a compelling presentation of the gospel, calling the congregation to close their elyes and pray if they wanted to recieve Christ, pausing during his prayer so they could repeat it. He then prompted those who had prayed to raise their hands, saying 'Thank you in the back' and 'thank you ladies up front' as people responded. But Rob bell had his eyes open as a 13 year old teenager. No one put up their hand. It was all a lie. He said many years later his father spoke with him concerning the moment, because his father's eyes had been open that day, too, watching Rob, and praying that his faith would not fall when exposed to such manipulation. This is his response:

"I am like you. I have seen plenty done in the name of God that I'm sure God doesnt want anything to do with. I have lots of reasons for bailing on the whole thing. I am also like you because I have a choice. To become bitter, cynical, jaded, and hard. Anybody can do that. A lot have. Hatred is a powerful, unifying force. And there is a lot to be repulsed by.

Or, like you, I can choose to reclaim my innocence. We can choose to reclaim our innocence together. We can insist that hope is real and that a group of people who love God and others really can change the world. We can reclaim our idealism and our belief and our confidence in the big ideas that stir us deep in our bones. We can commit all the more to being the kinds of people who are learning how to do what Jesus teaches us.

I am not going to stop dreaming of a new kind of faith for the millions of us who need it. I am not going to stop dreaming of new kinds of communities that put the love of God and the brilliance of Jesus on display in honest, compelling ways. I am not going to stop dreaming of new ways to live lives of faith and creativity and meaning and significance.

But I can't do it alone. I need you. We need you. We need you to rediscover wonder and awe. We need you to believe that it is really possible. We need you to join us.

It's better that way.

It's what Jesus had in mind."

Thank's Rob; I needed that.

All of us questioners respond to the realization that the state of the church is lacking in a different way. Some are quiet and take it, growing inwardly bitter. Some leave to form new communities of like minded people. Some leave the church, period. And some, like me, are attempting to survive within the madness, knowing that we are somehow responsible oursleves, that if the body is sick, we are part of the body, and so we are sick as well. But the vision lives on: a generation of God-worshippers, united in the body of Christ, who care more about reaching a lost world than the things that seperate them, a generation of missionaries who live lives of purpose, that in everything they do they glorify Christ and draw people to Him, a generation of lovers, who see the world as a place that reflects the glory of God if only they would shine...

It's only a vision, but it's beautiful, isn't it?

gladly spent...i think

Come for Me by Charlie Hall

Jesus, today I am tired
I need your music to come and inspire
I give myself to be refined in this fire
But Jesus, today I'm tired

What is the line between following God's call and burning out, between spending yourself for God and missing Him?

I don't know.

"I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls..." 2 Corinthians 12:15a

'la belle et le bete'

'La belle et la bete' is a well known french storytale about a prince that is cursed to be hidious until he finds true love (we know it better as its Disney-fide version, Beauty and the Beast). In the tale, the prince learns that beauty lies within the soul of a person, rather than in their appearence. I think this is HUGE.

Beauty lies within the soul.

I'm in the process of reading Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis, and so far I like what I'm reading. Alot. The part I'm currently reading is discussing beauty and creation. Someone Bell was doing a wedding for commented about the nature surrounding the site of the service, "Something holds this all together." I am beginning to believe that our job in telling people about Jesus is to be the catalyst for the Hoy Spirit to spark within them what already was there: a fingerprint, an echo of Creator God. Somehow, we know that we are all beasts and that there is something simply not right about all the china breaking out into song. But if this were all that we are, we would never know there was a curse, and never know that true love existed at all. Man's attempts at religion are a slap in this philosophy's face. We are wired to seek true beauty - and to fight for it once we find it.

Interesting that a man once told a story that went quite like this. He said there was once a man who discovered a great pearl, the greatest in existence. He went away and sold everything he had, and bought it.

Do I desire true beauty enough to sacrifice all to gain it?

homesick...

So this weird guy to the left? Yep, that's me, in all my 'playing-guitar-for-5-year-olds' glory. But this post really isn't about me - I just wanted a picture of myself on my blog (GREAT, they've already found out I'm narcessistic). Rather, it's about the name of my blog. The name of my blog is "soul's paradox". It comes from a quote by A.W. Tozer's book The Pursuit of God that reads:

To have found God and still to pursue Him is the soul's paradox of love,
scorned indeed by the too easily satisfied religionist, but justified in
happy experience by the children of the burning heart.

When I read this book for the first time, these words leaped off the page at me. Not only found in an old Newsboys song I used to like ("Beautiful Sound", Love Liberty Disco), this quote so embodied my passion, and the continuing events in my life. As we grow ever closer to God, we often find that we have infinitely farther to go. This discovery would normally depress its finder, but for the 'child of the burning heart', it is simply an invitation to continue onward into eternal joy. So many times in my life, I have been confronted by the religionist, whether in the form of the church with its cultural Christianity, judgemental attitude, and lack of urgency, or taking on the form of my own self - the one that rationalizes sin, judges anything not 2 seconds old, and digs wells, searching for satisfaction, in anything but God. This is me: "I am the angry man who came to stone the lover, and I am the woman there ashamed for all to see; I am the leper who gave thanks, and I am the 9 who never came." ("Mystery of Mercy", Caedmon's Call) Somehow, some way, I must continually discover how to live as a man who can be satisfied only by the amazing grace of my Savior, one already redeemed, but not yet home. I guess you could call me homesick.

in the beginning...

So this is my second blog, a product of a bible study I'm teaching giving me renewed motivation to write down things God is doing in the world. Who will read it? I don't know. Who will care? Not me. The purpose is to get ideas into the minds of those who will listen. It's my vision, my passion. I want to see a generation who will rise up and fulfill the great commission in every corner of the globe, who will question the status quo and refuse to subscribe to consumer-Christianity, who will love the world so much that it is compelled to ask why, all the while marveling at a God we cannot begin to understand, knowing that the life we live now is but a precursor to "Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has ever read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before." (CS Lewis, The Last Battle) Above all, I refuse to live a mediocre life - a life that doesn't count. The account of that attempt, like a fish fighting against the very fisherman about to throw him back in the water, is what follows. May you be blessed, offended, encouraged, and changed...and may God bless the journey.