I wet the bed until I was 13.
I smoked tobacco and weed in the 6th grade.
I’ve used church for self interests.
I judge people without even knowing them.
I’ve been pulled over 24 times.
I was exposed to porn when I was 6.
I’ve made countless mistakes.
I’ve been fired.
I’ve let down people who looked up to me.
I’ve made bad choices with friends and girlfriends.
I don’t connect with God like I long to.
I get bored in church.
I consume a lot.
I’ve made poor financial decisions.
I have fractured family relationships.
I’ve resented my family.
I pulled f's in junior high.
I've dropped f-bombs when I was mad.
I’ve been desensitized to my cultures lack of morals.
I’ve been drunk.
I love my self more than others at times.
I’ve found asking for forgiveness hard.
I’ve found forgiving even harder.
I get to work and can’t wait to go home.
I’ve taken the lower road before.
I’ve been the smaller person at times.
I’ve prayed that God would remove my thorn…

but His grace is sufficient.
His faithfulness is written throughout my life.
His strength is best shown in my weakness.
His plan is wholeness.
His painting of my life is in progress.
His Spirit calls me beyond my past.
His grace is sufficient.

Okay, so it sucks finding out about a cool tid-bit of news 5 years late - but this is so cool I have to blog it. Sorry if you already heard this, but if you did, it was probably 5 years ago and you forgot.

Lauryn was invited to sing in a Christmas concert held in the Vatican. She paused in-between songs and shocked the audience by condemning the numerous "allegations" of child molestation against Catholic priests in America. What she said was powerful.

"I am sorry if I am about to offend some of you. I did not accept my invitation to celebrate with you the birth of Christ. Instead I ask you why you are not in mourning for him in this place? I want to ask you, what have you got to say about the lives you have broken? What about the families who were expecting God and instead were cheated by the Devil? Who feels sorry for them, the men, women and children damaged psychologically, emotionally and mentally by the sexual perversions and abuse carried out by the people they believed in? Holy God is a witness to the corruption of your leadership, of the exploitation and abuses which are the minimum that can be said for the clergy. There is no acceptable excuse to defend the church."

Yes, I'm still on this 'Church without a box' stuff.

Last night I was reading a book I've been trying to finish for a long time (I occasionally pick it up, and just read random parts - anyway) called 'The Church in the Emerging Culture.' In the opening chapter Leonard Sweet is setting up the analogy for the book and references that sociologist suggest that during a paradigm shift in a culture, everything goes back to zero. The changes in our current culture from Modern to Postmodern, is nothing less than a paradigm shift. People are questioning all that Modernity gave us and redefining every aspect from community to truth. And it struck me, maybe our response as a church, maybe the answer is to return to zero ourselves. Not zero, like disregard church history and all the doctrine it’s given us, but as Leonard Sweet said, return to the origins of our faith to build the answer. Return to the origin of what Jesus was doing and work to cut out all the extra’s we’ve added over the years.

So it is like if we could boil the church, the bible, the mission down to it's most basic elements - what would that be? What are the basic elements that make the mission of Jesus and now the Church? It is easy to get stuck arguing over semantics and the dangers are to grossly simplified the bible and it’s meaning. But, by forcing God's story to us into simple elements, it pushes us to get beyond personal preferences, denominational specific doctrine and come to terms with what is essential to the story of Jesus and God redeeming us.

Returning to origins, to me, means forgetting what we know about church today. Forget buildings, Sunday mornings, Sunday school, worship bands, outreaches and all the other culture constructs we have that make church what it is today. What would be it like if we had no knowledge of church and just came to the story of God and His people, of Jesus in the flesh and the church acting out His mission after his resurrection? How would we see church, community and worship? What would jump out as necessary for being the church in our culture?

I thought this poem was good - pardon the 'f' bomb.

Not sure creepy cool is a valid phrase, but it does capture my initial thoughts of this 19th century oil painting by Leon Joseph Florentin Bonnat. The painting is of Job at his lowest point - and again I say creepy cool.

Here's where I find my thoughts lately - between Modernity and Postmodernity. I can't stop thinking about and trying to define an answer for the churches current predicament. There’s plenty of opinion on the matter and I know some don't like the term post-modern, but I believe it provides enough of an umbrella for the changes we see going on in our culture. And I refer to the churches predicament, because I believe it is just that, a situation from which extrication is going to be difficult.

And when I refer to the church, I'm referring for the most part to the church of North America. It is the 'church' I was raised, schooled, molded, empowered and most importantly came into my own relationship with Jesus in. And if it weren't for the years I worked menial jobs through high school and college, where I encountered people with no interest in the church I loved, I would probably not think it was in any kind of predicament. In fact, I would probably turn a cold shoulder to the 'worldly' critics and knock the dust off of my shoes and leave them to their own demise. Why? ‘Cause that's the church education I received. There's the world and there's us, there's non-believers and believers - it's black and white. But the problem was I loved these people, some of them the best friends I've ever had. How could they hate what I love? How could they refuse to even enter the doors of a church where I had some of the most amazing experiences of my life?

I intend to dedicate a lot of my blog space to dialoguing, challenging and working towards an answer for this. An answer that needs to be pioneered for the church. How will the church and it's mission to love the world continue to exists between the fading absolutes of Modernity and the blurred, pluralistic, relative lines of Postmodernity? I want to be a part of that answer - and God help us to draft an answer that doesn't just create new sacred cows and dogma. God help us, help me to see the world the way you see it. Help us to not only see outside of the box, but to question who created the box in the first place – help us create a church with no box.

This is an amazing sculpture made by a group of artists from Mozambique in 2004. It is called the "Tree of Life" and resides in the atrium of the British Museum, which I love, because you wouldn't expect the post-Christian celebration of art in Europe to house Christian art, let alone spotlight it.

But what is more amazing is to think of the profoundly theological implications of this piece of art. The sculpture is created entirely of decommissioned weapons from the Mozambique civil war. It is a very real picture of Isaiah 2.4, which says, "He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore." I'm not going to lie, I don't do a lot of devotionals in Isaiah, but I do often dream of what it would be like to have God’s peace and justice reigning in our current world. From our countries war in Iraq, to genocide, starvation, AIDS, we all wrestle with the evil of this world and long for peace. This piece of art, to me, embodies the voice of humanity from artists, followers of Jesus and non-followers alike, who yearn not just for peace, but also for unity. Because we were all created, because we all bear the image of God himself, and so we all desire that peace.

It is amazing how that desire transcends language, culture, up-bringing and time. But that desire alone is empty without movement. Like any gift from God, it must move us to action. A blessing from God is to be shared and so a desire for peace should prompt us to strive for peace. But how? How do I become a person of peace? Or the church a movement of peace? How do we become a movement that makes a difference?

Love?

This piece of art is a beautiful picture of what is to come. In Revelations 22.1-3, it says, “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb, down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him.”

But how can I be that image or expression of peace today?

Love?