Road trip hell and Christian anarchy conference

When I heard about the South Pacific Christian Anarchist gathering I immediately wanted to go. Two primary reasons: the first, I am a Christian anarchist and I wanted to hang out with some others. the second, it was being held in Brisbane, hosted by the Waiters Union and Dave Andrews would be there, meaning I could spend some time with one of the people most inspirational to me, and my view of community and leadership. But there was also a desire for me to bring a number of people from my faith community. I thought it would be great for them to meet some others that are trying to do some of the things we are doing, and to hear some of the ideas that inspire the way we are trying to do community and church. But I also thought a long hard road trip might be just the thing to help us grow together as a community. Many hours trapped in a car with each other, on an adventure, might just be a great bonding experience. Or it might just destroy our community!

Things started off pretty well, we left close to on time. We made good time. There were some issues of flatulence that needed to be addressed, but things were going reasonably well. We were getting to know each other even better, and I was happy. The toilet stops were kept short, the lunch break was reasonable. There were a few hold ups with the weather, but we arrived in Sydney at a decent hour. But then we ran into some whereis.com problems. I think they should change their name to howtogetgoodandlost.com, I was however not too upset, just went with the flow and called our host for some help getting to their house. Peter and Gillian are wonderful people, with very generous hearts. As if offering their home to house 10 people wasn't enough Peter drove to where we were and had us follow him home. Then served us a wonderful dinner, and made sure we were all sorted for the night.

The next morning we all woke up long before dawn and were on the road by 5:30 am. And this is where the problems started. We got completely lost leaving Sydney. Typical issues really, streets changing names every other suburb, streets ending for no apparent reason, forks in the road and the most frustrating of all, there are no street signs. Sure there are occasionally a tiny little unlit sign hidden back away from the street, but coming from SoCal where every intersection has a huge lit up sign telling you what street you are crossing, well they might as well not even be there. Now, I have anger issues, and I started to say words that were not polite, I yelled at my wife for no apparent reason, and basically started to insure that no one in my church would ever love me again. Now lest I seem the typical man, I will add that I will always stop for help or directions (infact I yelled at my wife for not stopping so I could get directions), so we stopped. I ran up to some men working on the street and asked for directions to the fwy to get to Brisbane, and these wonderful hospitable Sydney men gave me directions. Which were wrong. So we got lost again. And I asked someone else, who was wearing a bright flouro yellow vest so you know he can be trusted and he gave us proper directions, but then told us to turn left when we should have turned right. While taking the necessary u turns the other car almost got smashed by a rubbish truck. I was at this points so far from Jesus, the way of non violence, and any suggestion of civility, that I should have been excommunicated on the spot. But the good news is, I now knew what to teach for the next few weeks...

forgiveness.

There were so many road work sections where the speed limit dropped to 60 so we could carefully drive by witches hats and barriers that served only to show that at some time in the near future or past, there might be people actually doing something in the basic vicinity, but were obviously not there now. So we were falling way behind schedule. Now, before you get all cute and suggest that anarchists should not worry about speed limits, I will just point out that we are Christian anarchists, which means we prayed about whether we should break the laws or not. :) Unfortunately the overwhelming majority decided God wanted us to keep to the speed limits, with one dissenting opinion. :)

So understanding that we were now at the risk of missing dinner, which we were all by this point longing for, and suffering from the horrible disappointment regarding the giant banana (was not really that giant at all) we were not in the best head space for yet another version of whywouldyoueverlookupdirectionsonline.com fun. And yes my dear friends I cracked the shits again. Two turns that were obviously very important were not listed on the page, and after much driving around, two stops for directions, one mutiny, and three permanently damaged bladders we found ourselves on a right path. And we arrived at the conference. We knew it was the right place because of the blue van with the words "CHRISTIANS AGAINST ALL TERRORISM" painted on the back.

We cheered, broke into laughter, singing, and tears of joy immediately followed by a race to the toilets. We entered the hall where thankfully dinner was still being served, and fell into our seats with joy, and perhaps a bit of pent up bitterness towards me. The forgiveness sermons will have to be very very good I am thinking.

Over the next few days i will post more about the conference, and some of the great things we experienced there, but I will just say now that this was not in any way a gathering of angry, wacko lefties, but rather a wonderful group of people honestly trying to see what following Jesus means in their lives. We met two of the Pine Gap four, we met Ciaren O'Reilly, we met Dave Andrews and his family, and the most wonderful people from communities in Australia and New Zealand. There were many stories shared, and much inspiration gathered.

And I was reasonably well behaved all the way home.

rev

The state youth games SYG

Well I had the honour of speaking at the State Youth Games this year. This gathering of 2,500 young people plus staff and chaperons, happens every year. In the evening they gather for some fun and some spiritual type stuff, but in the day they are locked in intense sporting competition.

The first night we did a letterman style evening, we had some music, some crowd interaction, a top ten list, and some interviews. They interviewed me about some of the crazy stuff I have done, the bullfighting, and the cage fighting. They showed some video clips, and then I did a demonstration with digger at the end of which he challenged me to a wrestling match. I of course smashed him with ease, but in the process hurt his little toe, please pray for him. Over all it was a fun night, and it allowed me to skip the getting to know me part of my message the next evening.

On Sunday night, they did more of the same, but after a few worship songs I got up to give a message. I read from Matthew 25 where Jesus talks about the judgement of the sheep and the goats, I told a few stories about how I attempted to live this out in my own life. I challenged everyone to take a piece of newspaper (they had been given before the service) and wad it up, and then place it in their shoe. This would be an irritating reminder that they must go into their world, their neighborhoods, their schools, and be part of the kingdom of God, seeing Jesus in all people, but especially the unwanted, and unloved.

Afterwards I had many wonderful conversations with young people, and even a few oldies. We discussed just what this would mean for them, and how they could put it into practice.

I missed the closing ceremonies, as I was helping my friends from Urban Seed pack up the Sacred Space.

Thanks to all who came, and put on this incredible event, lots of work goes into these things, and I appreciate it all. Thanks to UNOH, who worked with me to develop the commitment response, and who have organized a myspace page for those that want to interact called go_stand and were there both nights to talk to people.

Anyone who wants to talk to me about what I said, or better yet, what you are going to do about it can email me at johnj at forge.org.au

rev

The Mainstreaming of Punk and Christianity

PUNK AS W

Exploring the
main
streaming
of
punk and
C
H
R
I
S
T
I
A
N
I
T
Y

This will be a multimedia history of two revolutionary movements, and their domestication.

...with Jarrod McKenna

Wed June 13th 7pm at:

the Den
116 Little Burke St.
Chinatown Melbourne

Jarrod McKenna is a member of
Peace Tree Community he is an award
winning activist and non violence
trainer, and picks his nose when no one is looking. He is not cool enough to be a punk, but loves the culture.

Entrance fee is the commitment to give up something that hurts the environment for one week.


Jarrod is a wonderful guy, someone who legitimately loves people, and lives on the radical edge. I am looking forward to this night, and hope you will join us as well. If you need more info, please feel free to email me at johnj at forge.org.au

rev

The centrality of Jesus in scripture

Am reading a book by Athol Gil called the fringes of freedom, and this paragraph explained my personal beliefs better than I ever could:

In theological terms this raises the question of the canon within the canon- if the bible is the measuring stick, or canon, by which we may examine various contemporary theologies, what is the measuring stick y which we may examine the various theologies within the bible itself? As readers of this collection of studies will readily recognize, I have sought to use the life and ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth as the measuring stick for the rest of scripture. This is the theological centre of the bible as I read it, and from this centre I seek to draw a line backwards through the Psalms and the prophets to the revelation of God in the liberation of the people of Israel from bondage in Egypt. From the life and ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus I seek to draw a line forwards through the writings of Paul, the gospels, I Peter and the book of Revelation. Jesus of Nazareth remains at the centre of theological reflection.


I have long argued that as followers of Jesus, it is Jesus that is our starting point, and from our understanding of who Jesus is, we are able to interpret the rest of scripture. He is our lens, and informs our view of scripture. We are not to take scripture and make Jesus fit into it, but rather the other way around. We can not do otherwise, it is Christ we follow.

I am really enjoying this book and will most likely be back with a few more insights.

rev

We need some help!!!

Any of you courageous souls that are up for some ministry opportunities, please let me know.

Our ministry at the Cave in Ascot Vale is growing, and the number of extra grace required people is sometimes daunting. If you have ever wanted to be in a church that is committed to small communities of care, working with the marginalized, and committed to empowering your dreams, not staffing programs perhaps you might consider joining our overworked band of radicals.

rev

A dream

Had a dream that I was working construction again. That there was lots of different groups all trying to get their particular trade done, there were accidents, there were inspections. Everyone was a bit stressed and overworked. I was loving the energy of it all. I felt like I was actually missing the job site.

Now, there are some things I do miss. I miss the feeling of completion and accomplishment. When you finish hanging drywall (plasterboard) on an entire office, you can see what you did, and sense the accomplishment. And I do enjoy the sensual nature of hard physical labour. But four decades of hard work and stupid play have created chronic back pain, and other aches, which makes this longing a bit quick in passing.

What I realized is that our church (es) are actually much like the job site now. Many people, doing many tasks, and enjoying the relationships and difficulties involved in the task. What we are building is the kingdom of God, the problems mainly come from our lack of time spent with our superintendent, and lack of following His plans. But for the most part its an ever changing adventure, and I am enjoying the task.

rev

I love footscray

So I went to the petrol station, and the guy taking my money was Indian or Pakistani. After exchanging money I say in a very American accent, "thanks mate"

And he replies, "you are welcome mate" in a deep Apu like accent.

The American and the Pakistani both trying to be Australian, it brings a tear to the eye.

rev

Christian anarchy (a definition)

A friend from Jesusradicals.com wrote this, and I thought it was pretty good, please go to his link and look at his sight, he desperately wants company :)

Jason Barr wrote: I may be a bit of an oddball, because I actually came to my anarchist views through my religious studies (as I mentioned in a wall post).

I have written somewhat more about my views on my blog, http://propheticheretic.wordpress.com (though I've neglected it as of late - I need to do some writing), but here are some thoughts.

It is impossible to deny that the dominant function of religion in the history of human culture has been to maintain an oppressive status quo, whether that was through ancient Mesopotamian myths re-enacted in festivals that placed the king in the guise of the creator god, through the abuses of the Jewish Temples that led to the critiques of prophets like Amos and Isaiah and then later of Jesus, in the Roman imperial cult that solidified the Emperor's status as god-king who maintained order through the use of his Legions, through Islamic conquests, through the conquests of people like Charlemagne, through the alliance of pope and kings in the Medieval period to entrench the feudal system, Luther and Calvin's use of civic authority to crush their religious opponents, the Protestant work ethic in America that justified poverty as the fault of the poor, religion as criticized by Marx and many of the classical anarchists, and the Religious Right today.

But is this the necessary function of religion? While the common modern perception of Christianity is that it's a "pie in the sky when you die" arrangement, that leaves this life to the oppressors and sterilizes resistance from the faithful ranks, this picture of Christianity is neither congruent with its origins in the context of the Roman empire nor with the practices of a number of people throughout history who have claimed Christian inspiration for their subversive practices - often meeting with wrath from the state and, as Christianity as a whole became more aligned with the powers, from within the ranks of the church.

While I could cite a number of radicals such as Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin, Oscar Romero, Dom Helder Camara, David Lipscomb, numerous Anabaptists, and others, instead perhaps it will be more illustrative to talk about the Bible itself, which if taken in context might be among the most politically subversive anthologies of literature ever collected.

Rene Girard argued that the Bible is unique in that, unlike the foundational texts from other ancient societies, the Biblical stories tend to tell the story from the position of those who are suffering and oppressed, rather than the oppressors and doers of violence (while the stories related to the conquest of Canaan provide prima facie difficulties for this reading, at most they seem to be exceptions, not the rule). God is a liberating figure who desires justice and requires the construction of a society much different than anything else that existed in the ancient near east, challenging the status quo more than upholding it. In particular throughout the Old Testament is a voice OT scholar Walter Brueggemann calls "the prophetic imagination" in a book of the same title.

The main point of the book is that the Biblical texts reflect the perspective of communities struggling from within the confines of an empire that sought to totalize the whole of life, to consume the reality of Israel (and later the church) within its dominant story of reality as it pertains to legitimating the power of the official kingly worldview. The texts reflect their efforts to capture among them a sense of a world fueled by an alternative imagination, that of Israel as the covenant people of God according to a worldview focused on the love and justice of that God embodied in their community practice. He also takes steps in some places to relate this analysis to our life today in Western society, discussing how the sense of this prophetic imagination can fuel our countercultural communal practice (which is, after all, what the church should be) in the face of this monolithic McWorld (Benjamin Barber’s term, not Brueggeman’s) empire of global technopolistic consumerist USAmerican culture.

Bruggemann states that the task of empire (what he terms the "royal consciousness") is to eliminate a sense of past and future, encompassing all the reality that matters into an eternal now. No past is imaginable that did not contribute to the now, and no future can be envisioned that does not spring from it. The task of the prophetic community, then, is to present a radically different imagination, the imagination of God, rooted in symbols from the larger community’s past and animated by the hope of a future that is brought about not by the continuance of the oppressive machinations of the royal regime but rather by the decisive acts of God (such as the New Exodus themes found in Isaiah 40-66 where Isaiah uses Exodus imagery to describe the return from exile and coming of the Messiah) so that the people are freed from the imperial imagination into the vision of God - a vision of peace and justice based on liberation, not coercion (see also http://propheticheretic.wordpress.com/prophetic )

Jesus embodied a countercultural existence with pretty much his every act and word. This is getting kinda long, so I won't go into great detail, but the early church clearly portrayed him as the antithesis of Caesar and as victorious over Caesar - not through violence, but by "making peace through the blood of his cross" (Colossians 1:20). In fact, in the passage from which that statement is drawn, Paul makes a number of explicit parallels between Christ an Caesar's propaganda, the purpose of which was to show that Caesar is at best a pretender to authority and that his violence has been defeated by the one over whom it appeared he had victory - Jesus the crucified one, executed as a rebel against the state. And just as Jesus is presented as the anticaesar, the church is in a very real way presented as the antirome. Instead of having relations based on exploitation and the collection of power through the heirarchy of society, the New Testament prescribes radical equality and sharing citing the words and deeds of Jesus as an example, and the Resurrection as proof that the way of peace ultimately defeats the violence of the authorities of the world.

Or, as I've written elsewhere (http://propheticheretic.wordpress.com/anarchy ) perhaps one could frame the Resurrection in the light of God committing an act of civil disobedience: the governing powers said to Jesus, "Die!" but God said, "Live!" And the church exists to live out in this world the implications of that disobedience.

It is my belief that modern anarchist theories are potent ways to express a concern for radical equality and liberty that is congruent with the implications of the life of Jesus and the practices of the early church as recorded in the New Testament, congruous with the general trajectory of ideal social practice throughout the whole Bible. It seems to me that the violence of Rome, opposed by the early church, and the violence of today's empire of global capitalism (and the relationship between nation-states and corporations) have much in common.

Now, the whole Bible is very complex and contains many diverse viewpoints expressed by various forms of narrative and poetry, so there is plenty of room for disagreement and discussion, but if the contrasting relationship between the peaceful Genesis creation story, which establishes humans as co-equals and as in relation with God and creation, and the violent Babylonian Enuma Elish, which legitimates the conquests of the king and the lowly status of peasants (and particularly women) within the Babylonian social order, sets the tone for the whole canon that follows then it seems that ideas of equality and justice are central to the overall Biblical story (for more on Genesis and Enuma Elish, as well as other thoughts on Genesis, equality, and anarchy, see http://propheticheretic.wordpress.com/tag/genesis/ ).

rev

State Youth Games

I have been invited to speak at the state youth games

http://www.stateyouthgames.com/syg/index.php?type=page&ID=4

Should be a good time, I will be there the whole weekend, so hopefully I will have a lot of time to actually hang out with people, and have some great conversations.

rev

Mark Driscoll, and me

So I was on this website evangelicalright.com just looking around, and I run into this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIrIKbCz3n4&eurl=http%3A%2F%2F
evangelicalright%2Ecom%2F

It is a church planting video by Mark Driscoll. In this video Mark uses a lot of in your face type language, and has a very direct style. His message is very male centered, and he says some offensive things about women in my opinion. If you don't fee like watching the video, which takes a bit of time to download and then view, I will give a few of the lines I didn't appreciate:

60 percent of the christians today are women, I am glad the ladies love Jesus, but if you want to win a war you need the men

Men want to know about real issues, like how to have sex with your wife, atleast once a day!

The mission is to get the men, because if you get the men you win the war

I found myself getting a bit agitated, and I wanted to engage mr. Driscoll in some debate. If I am truly honest I remembered that Mark is a big fan of mixed martial arts, and I wanted to demonstrate some of my mixed martial arts training on him. I was not only angry at the things he said, but in this arrogant, in your face style of his. Why does this guy think he is so right? And his whole demeanor is so macho, so tough guy, so male.

You know that old expression, when you are pointing at someone three fingers are pointing back at you?

Well at that moment I had a pretty intense revelation. I am just like Mark Driscoll. The difference is ofcourse that I am right!!! :) So if I dislike that so much, then what does that mean for myself? What does that mean for a guy that prides himself on not pulling any punches? What does it mean for a guy that takes pride in being someone who will say what everyone else is afraid to say? What does that mean for a guy that is a former cage fighter, bullfighter, repo man, bouncer ect.?

To be honest I don't know. Perhaps some of you may have an idea. I don't want to be a jerk, but sometimes I feel like someone has to be, and it might as well be me.

How does one be like Jesus and know when to turn over the tables, and call people sons of the devil, but also know how stop to minister to a broken woman, or distract the gaze of a hateful mob to spare the shame of an adulterous woman?

I sure don't know, but wouldn't mind the sex with my wife atleast once a day part.

rev