The hypocritical hypocrite is hypocritical (Long Beach Grand Prix)

So... there are many reasons to point out my hypocrisy.  I am no where near where I desire to be in my discipleship.  But it was interesting my reactions to some stuff this last weekend during the Grand Prix of Long Beach:

I live in Long Beach, as many of you may know.  And I hate that damn race, for many many reasons.  Some of the less consequential ones are that it makes traffic bad, even further away where I live, as people need to come down through my neighborhood to get out of Long Beach.

The noise, all day long the screaming of engines.  I am two miles away and it was this constant droning noise, I hated it.

But the more serious issues:

The incredible waste of fuel for what really is no more than entertainment

The incredible damage to our environment for again, what is actually no more than entertainment.

The celebration of sponsors and the plastering of logos everywhere as we worship at the altar of consumerism.

But the worst part is the displacing of homeless people.  To  their credit there are many organizations that try and help these friends of mine during this weekend.  But the common practice is to give them tickets at every opportunity all year round.  Guess what, they cannot pay the tickets, and often do not have the ability to even show up at the court.  They turn into warrants.  Then during the Grand Prix, or the Marathan, or July 4th they go round them up and put them in jail for the weekend so they don't put our city in a bad light.

This race does bring business to our city, and provide at least temporary jobs, but over all I hate it.

As I was sitting in my self righteousness, smoking a cigar and reading a book in the sun I realized...

If someone asked me if I wanted to drive one of those cars...

I would be in that driver seat faster than you can say, "what a f'n hypocrite"

rev

How therefore shall we live? (last question in my series)

4) Finally, I wanted to ask what it means to live this stuff out.  Are there different approaches for Kingdom living?  How do we work on becoming a part of God's Kingdom?  Any thoughts or advice you have would be great.  

Well this is the issue isn't it?  How do we do this?  If you ask me how does my community live this out I would have to answer honestly... not very well, but we are trying to get better.

There are many different approaches, and many different avenues.  What we have decided to do is to go down a weird hybrid of the house church network, and the intentional community path.  Others have chosen to focus on intentional community and monastic practice, while everyone attends different churches.  Some have chosen to stay completely committed to their denominational church, or the Catholic church while practicing radical community and social justice like the Catholic worker communities.  Some have decided to continue their work in the midst of the city, or the suburbs.  Some have decided to move out of the mainstream and try to live off the grid.

The issues are so very complex, that it is never easy to make a clear answer to what should anyone do.  We can hardly figure out what we should do, which makes it very ridiculous to give much advice to others.  But we have learned some principles that have helped us along the way.  The first is that we need to realize that we are stronger, wiser and more complete as a group than as individuals.  We should spend the time to talk, to discuss, to sit in silent waitfulness, and then to make a decision as a group.  I even let my group decide which speaking engagements I should take, or even if I should take a long vacation.  Why? because I can figure out lots of reasons to make my own desires sound the most efficient and credible path, I need others that are just as committed to the path to help me figure it out.

A perfect example is worship.  We meet on Monday nights for a communal meal, and a discussion or some kind of reflection upon the scriptures.  There are mostly Christian people (though from radically different perspectives), but a few non-theists that are with us regularly.  So we talked about worship as something we would like to consider a part of our regular practice without being alienating towards those that don't recognize a personal deity.  We talked about it, and came up with this idea:  We can all realize the good that comes from being thankful, and from appreciating the wonder and beauty we see in life.  So let us take time to reflect and share about things we are thankful and in awe of as a regular part of our time together.  It is all about learning to grow together.

The best advice I could give is that we first need to recognize the upside down nature of all Jesus says.  Don't take revenge, forgive.  Don't seek for security, but trust.  Don't seek fortune, but be stupidly generous.  Do not accept injustice, but resist it non violently even if it means your death.  It is not the people that are most talented, wealthy, or holy that are blessed but those that learn to serve the poor, the marginalized, the sinners the heretics, the sick, the imprisoned ect. is completely at odds with how this world operates

Secondly we need to recognize we have a whole system that is built to teach us, to pull us, to push us and threaten us to continue in the hierarchical structure of oppression.  Whether it is the lies of consumerism, or the fear of violence from bad men, everything in our society is designed to support the structure of power and hierarchy.

And then realizing these first two, we must also realize that we need a community to both live an alternative to this hierarchy, and to see clearly how we must address the needs of our current world, thinking both globally and locally if possible.  It is in these communities that we practice the ideals that the world needs in order to move past the hierarchy of power and wealth.  But it is also in these communities that we figure out how to live as a community to address some of these issues in ourselves and our neighborhood.  It would be my goal in our "network" that we would have many small groups that have different flavors of the revolution.  Some might be more concerned with economic justice, some with restorative justice through the penal system, others might be focused on racial reconciliation, others might have radical anti war and non violence activists, ect.  That we would all support, and encourage one another in all of these kingdom tasks, as well as be educated by each other as to how our everyday lives can help us to address these concerns.

I have an amazing vision of several community houses that take in those in need, that share food, and that grow it as well.  Of small groups that meet in homes to eat together and learn how they can begin the journey towards a new way of being human, living in this kingdom of God.  Of places where people can come to learn trades, good work, work with integrity and value.  Building things, growing things, helping people rather than just making money for its own sake.  Of studios where we can practice the creativity that is in each of us, making art and healing in the process.  I have a vision of a group of people that are as committed to each other as they are to changing the world.  I am a dreamer, I have lived 45 years, suffered much failure, little success, and quite a bit of ridicule, yet I still believe.

rev 

Question 3: Kingdom of God?

3) Another thing that's come up recently is what the Kingdom of God means.  I used that phrase a few times in my blog, and didn't realize that others might hear it very differently than I do.  What does the Kingdom mean for non-believers?  How do people who are trying to set it up here on earth share the Kingdom, or even the Kingdom work, with those who don't believe in God?  Should the goal of Christians be to convert them so that they can be saved, and share in this Kingdom?

So... this really is one of the most important parts of this whole discussion.  What does the kingdom of God, or the kingdom of heaven mean?  It is the essence of almost everything Jesus said, it is what the parables are meant to illustrate.  A good friend of mine suggests that from a marketing stand point, if you were to break Jesus' message down into a bumper sticker it would be "the kingdom of God is in your midst".

Now there have been countless volumes written about the kingdom of God, or heaven (Matthew uses this phrase more often).  I could not and will not come close to touching all of the intricacies of exactly what it means, and how it effects us.  I will offer up some very basic understandings of what I have learned over the years, and what I believe to be true.

First off it is important to look at the word kingdom.  The word kingdom doesn't have a very modern ring to it.  When we think of kings and queens we are just as likely to think of knights and dragons and damsels in distress, as we are to think of the royal family in England with all of their scandal and opulence.  But for us the understanding of kingdom would not really have a very concrete meaning.  It would have had a more concrete meaning when it was originally translate into English however.  But what is interesting is the word used for kingdom in the scriptures, was not the word kingdom, it was the word empire.  And in Jesus time, this word would have had huge implications.  As the empire was quite literally the oppressive super power government that was in charge of the known world at that time.  Jesus begins talking about an empire that belongs to God, not Caesar.  An altogether different political reality than the one that existed.  And what is even more revolutionary is Jesus seems to say that this kingdom is here in His person, but is also to be lived out, and also coming.  We will get to this a bit more later

Now we have to contextualize things.  What exactly would Jesus mean in our day and age?  We don't really talk about kingdoms, nor is the idea of empire really one that we understand much since the hey day of the English Empire (though many rightly point out the empirical nature of the United States).  If Jesus were speaking to us today what word would he use instead of empire? As an American I would suggest two different terms.  Those of you in other countries can apply your own contextualization.  I think nation, would be a possible word in America.  Since America as a nation is a cultural melting pot to some extent it could work.  So Christ could talk to us today about the nation of God.  But I think a better phrase in todays world, would focus on the worldwide global economy.  I think that the global economy actually is more of the "powers that be" than even the mega power US.   So Jesus would speak to us today about the "economy of God"

So Jesus comes into the world speaking of the economy of God, he then explains it and lives it.  It is not a future tense destination, but a journey towards the ultimate reality.  It begins in Him. It is looking at the way God means things to be, and beginning to live like God's will is reality, even in the phase face of the economy of the world.  And it affects everything.  Economy is essentially about power, and value.  In todays world the stories of Jesus would be incredibly subversive.  They would speak about the idea that in God's economy it is those that are undervalued, that have the greater value in God's.  It would talk about the injustice that keeps those that are more powerful on top of those that have no resource to grasp power.  And just like Jesus quite literally did in his time, would say in our time, "you cannot live in the worlds economy, and in God's, as God's economy does not value the same things, so get rid of your economic comforts and follow me into a new world of sharing, and forgiving, and loving even those that might try and harm your economic status through an oil monopoly"  What Jesus tells us is stories that explain how Gods desires for our world, can and must be lived out here and now, as a prophetic act of faith.  It's ties to the future is simply this, in the redemption of all things, this is how we will live... so believing this is true we will start living in this reality here and now.

I personally believe that the disciples did not believe all of the things we say are essential Christian doctrine until much later.  But they began to walk with Jesus, and take part in that ideal of the economy of God.  They were called disciples for beginning to walk in "the way" so why do we think conversion is the necessary first step?  Lets walk together and live out this kingdom (which by the way is pretty much the teachings of all the major religions, and thoughtful secular humanism) and leave conversion up to God.  It is my hope that everyone believes as I believe, as I find much comfort, and joy and challenge in it, but that does not mean I cannot work with others, nor does it mean that my ulterior motive is to convert them.

Ultimately I think we need to follow the example of Jesus.  Jesus pulled together a community of very diverse people, and began to live out the kingdom.  His words and teachings had power and authority because of the integrity of his life.  When you live what you say, it matters.  Jesus lived, in this community, an ethic that said the people who are considered least valuable... these will be our friends, and focus.  The people that are not only considered most valuable, but hold that value with deceit and violence we will call to repentance.  We will care for the sick, we will share our resources with each other, we will not engage in us and them mentality.  We will practice non violent resistance towards oppressors.  And most of all we will live a life of love.  It is my belief that we need everyone who is willing to join us in this new economy, regardless of "spiritual" belief system.

rev  

Question number 2 in my interview with Larry

2) Another question people have asked, and that maybe ties in, is the idea that Anarchy means chaos, lawlessness, and rebellion against the established order.  A few people have asked me how that can be compatible with the kind of communities you've been a part of, which seem to be about loving and serving those who have been marginalized by society.  

There is a difference between a Christian anarchy and a non Christian one, though not always, and I will get into that.  But before we do we must look at what anarchy is and isn't.  Anarchy, as a word, means against the powers.  It does not mean chaos, lawlessness or no order.  Anarchy means simply a stand against systems and structures of power. 

There are many different ways in which this belief is manifested.  There are some that believe we need to go back to more tribal, live off the land nomadic lifestyles.  There are some that believe we should have a communistic, or socialistic economy, with an anarchic structure of governance.  Some would say that true democracy (as opposed to representation democracy) is anarchy.  But the idea is that the power resides either in the individual, or in the community, not in certain individuals whether elected or chosen in some other manner.

Then we get to the manner in which this should come to pass.  There are in an oversimplified view three ways:
Overthrow the established order
Work within the established order for change
Ignore the established order and become "off the grid" as much as possible

Which brings me to my beliefs about a Christ centered, and biblical anarchy.  I believe that Christian anarchy focuses on a few ideas that address the above comments in a unique way.  This does not mean all forms of non Christian anarchy cannot address them in similar ways however, nor that we have a different practice.  

As I have followed Jesus, and studied the scriptures I find that we are called to live in a covenanted community.  One that is covenanted to the ideals of Jesus, and the belief that love, and the holy spirit can guide us towards correct living.

That we are to live in a tension that says we are not here to overthrow the powers that be, but to basically live an alternative to them.  To stand against the injustice and pain caused by them.  And to offer a refuge from them to those trampled under its machine.

As a covenanted community we are told that withing the community dwells the power to "bind and loose".  Which in ancient times was the application of laws, punishment, retribution and forgiveness.  This means that the power does not reside in a hierarchy, in "the professionals" or the "leaders".  But that small groups, of people covenanted to look out for one another, to follow Jesus, and to stand against the powers, can through discussion, and action/reflection, support one another in "figuring it out".  That we provide a mechanism for working out issues between members, and living a life of forgiveness and mercy, rather than punitive justice.  This is not disorderly, nor is it always efficient, but it is good.  This recognizes that some might actually be gifted leaders, but these leaders are situational, not positional. And that these leaders would be just as submitted to the covenant as the others.

So a Christian anarchy would say that any system or structure, (including the religious or church structures), that holds power over others, is to be rejected and stood against.  That we live an alternative based upon the teachings of the non violent, and liberating Jesus.  That we practice anti hierarchical living, which prioritizes those that are on the bottom of the powers hierarchy.  That we see the spiritual force behind those powers that seem invisible, like greed, and consumerism, and retribution, and amidst those powers we stand firm in opposition.

Please feel free to ask any questions, or help me to clarify what I have said so that it can be more widely understood.

rev 

Celebrity Christianity

Despite having been written over three years ago my post was very angry with Chuck Smith from Calvary Chapel yesterday was the number one viewed page on my website last month.  Number two was my letter to Pastor Mark Driscoll, which is almost a year old.  Now granted, I haven't been writing much so that is part of the reason why they are at the top of my most viewed list, but the truth is, no matter what, they would have been in the top ten, and most likely the top five.

Why?  Because people google search these people.  They are big names, who have done big things, and people want to know more about them.  They are Christian celebrities. This is however not a new issue, its just a different mechanism.

Paul, sees this as a problem and addresses it in his letter to the Corinthians.  "One says he follows Paul, another Apollos, and another Cephas and another Christ".  And then he gets to the core of the matter... "Is Christ divided?  Did Paul die for you? Were you baptised in the name of Paul?"

Is Christ divided?

What is interesting to me is that Paul seeing the celebrity thing going on, addresses it in this way:

This causes division
I must put myself in the problem and address my part in it
I must be humble and point others away from me, and towards Christ
I must explain that no man is above another man

This does not seem to be the way with Christian celebrities these days.  It is usually some form of "well I am being blessed for not compromising the truth"  While the others compromise and are "being followed by people with itchy ears,  There is usually a subtle, sometimes a direct refutation of the other leaders.  And the statement "follow me while I follow Christ"

The question we must ask ourselves in a world that worships celebrity, is, how are we to respond? 

I think the church needs to stop building celebrities.  I think the ones that are there need to give serious thought to their ability to deflect that position, and work for unity within the body.  I think we who are not celebrities need to stand up and be who God called us to be, to hold even the big shots to the same accountability we submit to in our body. 

But what do I know, I don't even have a weekly podcast

rev

Question number 1.

1) Rev, a question that has come up a few times after the blog I posted, and after I put a documentary about you up on Facebook a while back, is what you mean when you say that as a Christian Anarchist you "submit your life to the teachings of Jesus, and not to anything else."  Aren't Christians taught to submit to the leaders of the Church?  Didn't the early church have Bishops, Apostles, Elders, and Councils?  


I am gonna give you the medium length answer on this one.  The short one is probably too short, and the long one is a book or two.


Let me clarify something at the start, if I said I do not submit to anything else then I misspoke.  I do in fact submit myself to others, and I think it is right and correct to do so, and in fact it is impossible to do otherwise.  What I believe is that we should submit ourselves to one another as a community of people.  This is clearly taught in scripture.  "Submit yourselves to one another".  I have found this very helpful in my life, as I realize that I am not always able to see my own weakness.  In addition, if we are all submitted to one another, than one person cannot become above others.  This keeps us all in loving service to each other.


Which works perfectly with the actual concept of anarchy.  Anarchy is not Chaos, nor is it disorder.  Anarchy means, literally, against the powers.  What I take that to mean in a Christian context is that we are to resist the "powers".  The structures that are oppressive and hierarchical.  The social, political and religious structures that keep certain people at the top and others at the bottom.  These structures are to be rejected.  This does not however mean that we cannot have laws, rules, and covenants with each other.  What it does mean is that we do not create a structure that empowers people to have power over others.


Does the church teach submission to the church leaders? Even the doctrines of past leaders? yes it does.  Is that the teachings of Christ or the bible? They say so, I am not so sure.  What we must remember is that what we see as the church now, is much much different than what we saw for the first few hundred years.  In my opinion we see a very significant change in the church with the "conversion" of Constantine, and the legitimizing of Christianity in the early 300's.  It was at that time that church became part of an unholy alliance of church and state.  Where leaders in Christian community became men of power, and riches.  Where the faith was codified and that codification was enforced.  We have adopted a system that has mimicked government ever since.  In this system, you obey in the chain of command, but this was not the early way.


The early church recognized people with giftings.  Some people were good at leading, some at teaching, some at starting up new faith communities and so on.  These individuals were sometimes but not often taken out of a "normal" life to be allowed to focus on these things.  But in the church their opinions were just counted with double honor.  They werent even "elected officials"  The church community was to submit to the church community, not bishops or elders.  But bishops and elders had a few more miles on their tires so their opinions held a bit more weight, which is all fair and good.  The church did not submit to the Bishops and elders, the bishops and elders submitted to the church.  Though like I said their opinion had extra weight, it was the community that was entrusted with power, not people.


We see this played out very well in the first council.  There was a little controversy around circumcision.  Those that were not born in the Hebrew culture were being pressured to be circumcised. Understandably, they said, "um... I like this Jesus dude, and I want to follow in the way, but is cutting off a piece of my junk really necessary?"  Everyone got upset.  So all of the churches sent some representatives to the church as Jerusalem.  Why?  Because they were the most well established and had the most people that actually had walked with Jesus?  Nope, it was because the people causing the problems came from the churches in Jerusalem.  They talked and argued.  Now look at who was on the guest list?  Peter, the rock of the church, James the actual brother of Jesus, Paul the guy who started most of the churches around the world and wrote most of the new testament, as well as a number of other apostles, bishops, ect.  And what is the response?


"we the church at Jerusalem, (recognize that in this time the first mentioned person or group had more weight) and the apostles that are here with us want to clear this up.  Sorry that these people from here made things all messy.  But the church here would give you this advise" Now look at what we have, not hey we need to go to Jerusalem and appeal this all the way up to the supreme head honcho Peter the rock, work through the hierarchy and have an official proclamation that this is the Christian perspective on the matter! If you do not believe and practice this Peter declares you will not be going to heaven and are not "really" a Christian.  No, we all got together and talked, in the end our community would give this advise to your's.


to me this is a different way of life, not hierarchy, but relationship, and empowerment.  Not power over, power alongside.


rev

Bio part 2

So while all of this was happening I got married to the best woman in the world, Raquel, and we had two beautiful daughters.  The interesting thing is that we didn't pull away from our world, or our ministry to focus on our family.  We made sure our children were part of our lives, that we didn't neglect them, but we also wanted them to grow up knowing that the world is too big for it to revolve around them. Remember this is a summation so as blunt as that sounds it was lived out in the midst of caring, compassionate love.

Buddy Suitor at the leading of many people decided to move to another city and start a new church.  Raquel and I went with him and were his youth pastors.  Only there weren't many youth.  We would hang out, get sodas, and talk.  Slowly we wound up attracting a group of about thirty young people many if not most of whom did not have parents at the church.  We did normal church stuff, went on church camps, and learned to love each other.  This was very formative for us.  When we had thirty kids in our group 27 came from broken homes.  We were learning the healing power of community, and we were also learning what it meant to have an "open house". 

I began learning about "cell groups" and "house churches" and how they were important because they taught community, involved everyone, and were the best mechanism for growth.  (I will address this later, but at that time we still believed it was our call to convert everyone so they would not burn in hell forever, or the more pleasant way of looking at it was so they could go to heaven)  I also realized that the man up front talking, while everyone else sat and listened was not a very healthy model. 

Through much scheming we came up with a plan.  We would start a church service that had "cool worship music", had a Christian rock band play a set, and then I would teach a very short message that is applicable to anyone whether they were Christian or not.  The idea was to make a very fun night, where non Christian people would enjoy hanging out, and then through relationships with people in the group, not any altar call from the stage, people would be drawn into a relationship with Jesus and join our real church which was the small group.

It kinda worked.  It wasn't long before we had a church full of people.  Sometimes as many as 150 kids rocking out.  Thing was they were all Christian kids from other churches.  Took a lot of pain and soul searching before I realized that most Christian young people don't really want to hang out in church, why would someone who is not a Christian want to?  So we shut it down for good.

We then took our youth group and started a church with them.  It was a good thing, the church realized we were becoming something different, and they wanted a more traditional youth ministry.  They helped us and blessed us, it was not a church split at all.

It was around this time I started understanding a bit more about how this all worked, why community was important.  I began to understand that what Jesus was on about was more than just fire insurance, but teaching us a way of living that could change things in the here and now, not just later. 

There were two major influences in this way of thinking.  The first was the book "Anarchy and Christianity" by Jaques Ellul.  This book really resonated with what I had seen and lived.  It made sense, and seemed biblical to me as well.  The other book was by Jan Hettinga, I think its title was Follow Me.  This talked about the idea of the kingdom of God being the focus of Jesus message.  Now Jan might be a bit upset at where I took all of that... but seeing that Jesus was talking about the kingdom of God as a present reality not just a future destination that really got me on a radical path.

We began to take steps in this direction.  We tried to have less hierarchy.  Less issues of power.  We tried to see Jesus in community, in our neighborhood.  It was a wonderful experience.  Our first church plant was called the Belonging, and the name has set the tone for our whole life.  We should be a community that allows people to belong.

I then began reading more and more Christian anarchist stuff, writings of Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker, Tolstoy's the kingdom of God is within, and most influential to me was Dave Andrew's books "Christianarchy" and "Not Religion but Love".  These latter two took all of the theory, and showed us how to live it out... well atleast how to fail gloriously trying to live it out :) 

During this whole period of time we also were continually confronted with the fact that Jesus seemed to base his time on earth among the dispossessed, the poor, the marginalized.  He talked about a down is up way of living.  We began to see that a call to follow Jesus is a call towards downward mobility.  Living sustainably on less, in an economy of enough.  An economy that says there is enough for our need but not our greed.

Two more big influences on my life happened while we were in Australia.  The first was a young man named Jarrod McKenna, who took me down the road of non-violence.  I added to his voice the voices of Dorothy Day, Shane Claiborne, and Fr John Dear, as well as the crazy revolutionary activist Ciaron O'Reilly  To love your enemies, and do good to those that do bad to you takes away the possibility of violent reaction.

The other was the works of Walter Wink in Engaging the Powers that speak much about non violence, but also the idea of spiritual warfare as seeing the spiritual behind the physical.  This is very powerful because we begin to really see the corrupting influences of things like consumerism, individualism and nationalism. 

Now we are living in Long Beach California, trying to sow all of these fragments together.  How can we be an authentic community following Jesus, by entering into the plight of the oppressed, living simply, and non violently as we stand against a world system that is bent on destruction.  Ched Myers is currently my mentor, and he seems perfectly suited for tying this all together, and we are so thankful for Ched and his wonderful wife Elaine Enns.

Things learned in part two:

the importance of community to growth as a human being

we weren't supposed to call people into the church, but live out the church in our neighborhoods

That just as Christ prioritized the marginalized, we should be found with them, standing for justice.  Not reaching down to help, but climbing into solidarity.

That we are called not to have power over others, but to empower others

That we are called to be non violent resisters

that the kingdom of God is now and not yet, and we must be the change we want to see in the world as Gandhi put it

And that there are powerful forces in the world that shape policy, and even our own thoughts, and that these must be seen, and resisted.

Anyways, that was abrupt as could be, please feel free to ask any questions

rev

My bio part 1

Here is the bio portion part 1,

John and Raquel and a couple of kids

Decided the make this in two parts, and to make it fairly brief.  If anyone has any questions, please feel free to ask them.  The truth is, the 27 year journey from born again, Pentecostal evangelical, conservative to post evangelical, house church, pacifist, Christian anarchist, is hard to "sum up".  But I will do my best.

I was raised as a Easter and Christmas Catholic.  We really didn't have that much to do with the church, but we did the minimum.  Both of my parents were concerned that I got a good education however, so I went to Catholic Jr. and Sr. High School.  Net effect on my spirituality?  Not a whole lot, I learned a lot about church history, both the good and the bad, I learned the bible pretty well as we were tested on this, but as to how it effected how we lived our lives... well it didn't really.  Even in our morality class the practical application was pretty void.

While I was in high school my mother started going to a pretty conservative, but a bit out there church.  Every once and a while, to get in her good graces I would go, but again, not much impact.  Then one Thursday night a gal from the "sister" church in Pasadena came out.  I thought this girl was not hard on the eyes, and my mom saw a golden opportunity.  She hosted a few "young adult" meetings at our house, and I asked this girl out.  She said yes, and on our second date something very different happened.

It was a New Years Eve party, there were thirty to forty people there, and I was just amazed at the way they seemed to genuinely love and care for each other.  And not only that, but they seemed to love and care for me as well.  I liked that.  Then at midnight they sat in a circle and talked about how they had seen God work in their lives the previous year.  This was sometimes joyous, sometimes painful, and always honest.  I was blown away.  This actually was spiritual, it was real, it had practical implication, and I felt a "tugging" at my heart.  By the time it was my turn to share, I had decided whatever they were into I wanted in on it.  And that was my "conversion" story.

This is actually very important, as at a foundational point in my spiritual life it was not a traditional gathering, or ritual, but a group of people, meeting in a home, being honest about their lives, that made me take notice.

It wasn't long til I was listening to seven sermons a day on radio, reading countless books, and the bible from cover to cover.  I wanted to be a preacher, and I was gonna be ready no matter what.

For some complicated reasons I wont get into here I wound up going to another church that was a bit more traditional in its structure, but not its ideology.  The pastors there took me under their wing, and started mentoring me.  Butch Pluimer and Buddy Suitor changed my life, they took me in like a son. This was another thing that was very formative.  I was not sent away to bible college, but I was apprenticed.  It was, lets just do it together, until you can do it alone. 

At this church I really learned a lot.  I learned some great stuff.  I learned some not so great stuff.  I learned about church politics, and what happens when people have "spiritual" power.  I noticed it, but didn't understand it.

Then I met another great man.  Dave Everritt was this very quiet humble man who came to me for prayer for his neighborhood.  He lived in a ghetto that served as a war zone between two Latino gangs and three Cambodian gangs.  The gang kids were starting to come to his bible studies and the church kids didn't like it, and he said he didn't know what to do but if he had to choose he was choosing the gang kids.  I liked this guy and asked if I could come and see, and boy did I see.  He had been a commodities broker with a porsche and a high priced condo, and when he became a Christian he sold it all, which caused his wife to leave him.  Now years later he lived in this slum with his new wife trying to care for those most people were afraid of.  He asked me if I wanted him to be my mentor.  I said yes please.

So far in the story I have experienced a few things that are of note:

I experienced a practical, real, spirituality not part of a ritual, but part of community in a home.

I learned that apprenticeship and mentoring were of immense value.

I learned that people actually did take the call to get rid of it all and follow Jesus seriously.

I learned that social outreach need to go in and stay, not try to work from outside.

Part two will be tomorrow, and then we get into some of my more radical ideas :)

rev

I am back with a vengence :)

So a good friend asked me if I could answer some questions on his blog, I figured I could do that, and I could do it here as well since I am writing:

I am going to put up the whole email, but take only a portion at a time, probably once a week.

I thought for the blog I'd give a brief intro about you, for people who don't know, and then ask if you could tell a little bit about how your journey led you to the kind of community you're a part of now.  Here are the other questions I had, stuff people have been bringing up and discussing with me as I've shared you're blogs and other things.  I've had long back and forth discussions with a couple Pastor friends about the first one, and after our meeting this Friday, I spent a lot of time discussing what the Kingdom means with people who were worried I was basically setting them up, or trying to work on them with an agenda to convert them.  

1) Rev, a question that has come up a few times after the blog I posted, and after I put a documentary about you up on Facebook a while back, is what you mean when you say that as a Christian Anarchist you "submit your life to the teachings of Jesus, and not to anything else."  Aren't Christians taught to submit to the leaders of the Church?  Didn't the early church have Bishops, Apostles, Elders, and Councils?  

2) Another question people have asked, and that maybe ties in, is the idea that Anarchy means chaos, lawlessness, and rebellion against the established order.  A few people have asked me how that can be compatible with the kind of communities you've been a part of, which seem to be about loving and serving those who have been marginalized by society.  

3) Another thing that's come up recently is what the Kingdom of God means.  I used that phrase a few times in my blog, and didn't realize that others might hear it very differently than I do.  What does the Kingdom mean for non-believers?  How do people who are trying to set it up here on earth share the Kingdom, or even the Kingdom work, with those who don't believe in God?  Should the goal of Christians be to convert them so that they can be saved, and share in this Kingdom?

4) Finally, I wanted to ask what it means to live this stuff out.  Are there different approaches for Kingdom living?  How do we work on becoming a part of God's Kingdom?  Any thoughts or advice you have would be great.  

so, I will start with a post about the story of mr and mrs rev and how we got to where we are now.  I will post this tomorrow.  And then I will get into those questions.  Hope you will join in, and ask questions of your own as we go.

rev

sorry I haven't posted much

And we were switching to a new host for the domain as well.

I hope to post more this year, but don't really want to write unless I have something to say.  I have been working on my book, and will perhaps post some excerpts here from time to time.  Fight the powers

rev