Viral Faith

  There are six things that the LORD hates,  seven things detestable to him:  snobbish eyes,  a lying tongue,  hands that spill innocent blood,  a heart set on wicked plans,  feet that run quickly to evil,  a false witness who breathes lies,  and one who causes conflicts  among relatives. (Proverbs 6:16-19 CEB) Culture has become the buzzword in leadership circles for the past 30 years. Leadership Guru Peter Drucker is quoted as saying, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." What he meant was that an organization's culture (the assumed, spoken, and unspoken roles, responsibilities, and relationships within an organization) is a better indicator of its success than a particular strategy or methodology.   Culture, according to Mosaics Church Pastor Harry Li is the assumed understanding of "how things get done".  The culture of an organization or a society is shaped by what is celebrated and prioritized.  For instance, a...

  "Ignorant desire isn't good; rushing feet make mistakes" (Proverbs 19:2 CEB) Yesterday, the candidate for Secretary of Defense, Peter Hegseth had a congressional interview for the position.  It was clear that he is clearly unqualified for the position.  Mr. Hegseth has a history of poor leadership in businesses, disturbing ethics, and, most importantly, ignorance regarding the complexity of the Department of Defense, its mission, and the high level of skill required for international strategy, negotiations, and oversight of the massive defense complex.  Mr Hegseth has experience in the National Guard, which was activated to active duty during his tenure. However, that is a far cry from understanding the complexity of the US military. This would be like asking an autoworker who worked for Ford for 3 years on an assembly line to be the CEO of Ford.  Additionally, He has not been recommended by our current military leadership. During the hearing, he was questione...

  "Healing the soul-wounds of abuse requires new images of God that can comfort, nourish, sustain, and empower."--Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan Shaw in Surviving God.     God heals the brokenhearted      and bandages their wounds.      God counts the stars by number,      giving each one a name.      Our Lord is great and so strong!      God’s knowledge can’t be grasped!      The LORD helps the poor,      but throws the wicked down on the dirt!      Psalms 147:3–6 (CEB) I typically read several books per month and do a quick review of most on various social media.  However, this month, I read Surviving God by Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Susan M Shaw and cannot limit my comments to a paragraph.  Before I begin, I must share my bias.  I am a huge Grace Ji-Sun Kim fan and have read most of her writings.  I have read her book on intersectional theo...

  "So Jews othered non-Jews, Greeks othered non-Greeks, and Romans othered non-Romans.  Each divided the world into us and them, where them is always wild, violent, unmanly, dirty, stupid, lazy, horny and yet scary.  That was, of course, because they were not actually wild, violent, unmanly, and so forth, but they were actually scary... All this ethnic othering had to do finally with trying to put a finger on that fear factor.  Why are we so afraid?"  -- Stephen Patterson in The Forgotten Creed Throughout history, cultures develop narratives to understand their identity and root that identity in community values, informed by the experiences of a people.  The narrative or myth may be based entirely on a true rendering of historical facts or can be a carefully crafted multigenerational account of fictionalized stories that support a culture/nation/people's preferred understanding of themselves.  It should not be surprising to most to acknowledge that is ...

 "We cannot let narrow religious forces highjack our moral vocabulary, forces who speak loudly about things God says little about while saying so little about issue that are at the heart of all our religious traditions: truth, justice, love and mercy." -- Rev Dr William Barber II & Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove It is always difficult to discern whether you are a trailblazer or simply a token.  Many people of color take positions where they are the "first Black/Brown/Asian/Indigenous" who has ever been in that position.  Or maybe, you are the first woman to reach a particularly coveted position of authority.  Most do so not as personal gain, but to fundamentally change the corporate culture and mission so others who have been ignored, excluded, and passed over would have an opportunity to participate and lead.   Trailblazers are those who lead into unfamiliar environments in order to change the culture and to lead others who have been excluded into leadershi...

"Living out God's love challenges everything"         --Terry Linhart Jesus entered a synagogue and found a man who was suffering with a deformed hand.  The writer of the Gospel of Mark, sets up the drama-filled encounter by sharing that religious leaders of Jesus' day were specifically watching for Jesus' response to the man. There were religious/political rules of the day that forbade any kind of work on the day of the Sabbath.  While the Sabbath was set up to establish the centrality of God in our lives, it had become a burdensome religious and political rule that made its reality significantly different than its purpose. Jesus wastes no time in asking the Religious leaders if the law permits doing good on the Sabbath or doing evil.   He challenges their sensibilities by boldly asking: "Is this a day to save life or to destroy it?" Those who were listening to Jesus' challenge could not and would not respond.  Yet, in our sancti...

"God offers all of us the amazing opportunity to join in this sacred work.  We have the great privilege of being the hands and feet of Christ in a hostile and hurting world, and there are countless ways to participate.  We can work with joy in the face of difficulty, speak the truth in a place of deceit, choose integrity when corruption is the norm, offer comfort in a time of grief, challenge injustice to protect its victims, and offer forgiveness in the midst of brokenness."         --Richard Sterns in Unfinished Jesus begins his teaching on the parable of the sower by the command "Listen".  He would later tell his followers to pay attention to "what" (Mk 4:24) and "how" (Lk 8:18) they hear.  This listening theme was important as he was about to teach one of the essential truths through parables.  Parables are allegories and metaphorical explanations of reality. Jesus then says "Listen! A sower went out sow.  And as he sowed, s...

"The Spirit who inhabits us is not mute, restricting himself to an occasional nudge, a hot flash, a brilliant image or a case of goose bumps."           -Dallas Willard in Hearing God I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me, just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. So I sacrifice my life for the sheep. I have other sheep, too, that are not in this sheepfold. I must bring them also. They will listen to my voice, and there will be one flock with one shepherd.   John 10:14-16 NLT One of the most misunderstood roles of pastoral ministry is that of leading congregational discernment.  This is Biblical practice of seeking direction and vision from God.  Even just reading this, causes some leaders discomfort because we have been taught that to seek this kind of direct communication from God is far too mystical for contemporary followers of Jesus.  It is best left to the "few" who we (the church) oft...

" Maybe the deepest tragedy of the Rwandan genocide is that Christianity didn't seem to make any difference" "It's too easy for Christianity to have no consequence in our world."  ~Emmanuel Katongole and Jonathan Hartgrove-Wilson in Mirror to the Church When the foundations are being destroyed,cwhat can the righteous do? Psalm 11:3 I have been reflecting on the dynamic between God and evil.  Specifically, the extension of God into this world: The Church and the manifestation of evil called suffering.  The question that continually comes into my mind in multiple different varieties is "Does the Authentic Church have redemptive influence on the world and its evil?".  Or sometimes I ask "just how much light is required to dispel darkness?" I have struggled with these thoughts for many years as I thought about the Civil rights movement of the United States and although it had a wide variety of self-identified Christians as its adh...

"I refuse to believe the "isness" of humanity can not reach up to the "oughtness" that forever confronts him" Martin Luther King, Jr, 1964 in his Nobel Prize reception  He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new! Revelations 21:5 Today, the United States celebrates the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  There are so many things that could be said about him, that a blog entry can not even begin to skim the surface in describing his impact.  So, I want to share five ways that his life, his legacy, and his death have impacted me: 1. King demonstrated that faith was at the core of changing a society.  Rev. King never backed away from the moral outrage prompted by his faith while advocating for changes in a secular society.  In his writings from "A time for Freedom" in 1961, he quotes an elderly woman who walked several hours to work in sweltering heat instead of taking the bus durin...

John 15:1-3 "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.  The life of a church community is not static but always changing, always evolving or decaying.  There is a certain ebb and flow that is inherent in the life of any living organism.  Times of development, times of growth, times of strengthening, times of disease, times of reproduction, and ultimately times of death.  A church body is a living thing.  Despite church growth experts opinions, I do not believe a local church body was created to last forever, but like our lives, has an unique lifespan that is created for the purposes of demonstrating the Kingdom of God in its socio-historical context.  I have seen some wonderful and powerful communities of God that had relatively short life cycles, but were beautiful in their creation and fruitful in their ...

"Contamination-based reasoning, being governed by a unique set of rules, is often immune to reason and rationality"~Richard Beck in Unclean: Meditations of Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality Matthew 9:10-11 While Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" came and ate with him and his disciples.  When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" Researchers have shown that the revulsion or disgust we feel towards things is a deeply embedded, psychological and sociological reality.  In a particular study, people were offered juice and just prior to receiving it, watched as a roach was dipped into the juice and removed immediately.  Most people kindly refused the juice.  The juice was then placed in filtering process, boiled, filtered again to so to prove by scientific method, it was free of any bug-related contaminants.  Most people...