There is so much rich sound bite in this its hilarious. You can tell the writer has been involved in small groups. Okay sound off.

I love exceptions because there are always exceptions.  To every rule we create there is always some situation that stretches the bounds of our thinking, and makes us wonder. (with the exception of love). And of course this week I came across a wonderful exception to rule of women in ministry.

Ed Stetzer, noted researcher on church life, calls out a distinct exception on women in ministry in his Monday is for missiology post. Ed profiles the work of Ruth Tucker, author of Guardians of the Great Commission which explores the role of women in missions. It turns out that most of the missionaries in the world are women, which is in itself so great on so many levels.  Why are we okay with women as missionaries (over there) yet not okay with women as pastors (over here).

I’m just going to quote Ed’s content because it’s so rich with tension on the exception.

——————————————————————————-

From Ed’s Post:

Every mission board I know says most of its missionaries are women, yet I see less writing and teaching on the unique role and situation that women have faced in the mission endeavor.

Elizabeth Elliot Leitch wrote:

What is the place of women in world mission? Jesus said, “You [and the word means all of you, male and female] are my witnesses. You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” And there have been countless thousands who, without reference to where they came from or what they knew or who they were, have believed that Jesus meant exactly what he said and have set themselves to follow.

Today strident female voices are raised, shrilly and ad nauseam, to remind us that women are equal with men. But such a question has never even arisen in connection with the history of Christian missions. In fact, for many years, far from being excluded, women constituted the majority of foreign missionaries.

She explains her own story later in the article:

When my husband was killed by Indians, I found myself in some indefinable positions. There wasn’t one missionary man left in Ecuador who spoke the jungle Quichua language. There was no one to teach the young Quichua believers, no one to lead the church, no one but women to carry on where five missionary men had left off.

The door to the Auca tribe had slammed shut for those men and was, to our astonishment, opened to two women. It didn’t look to me like a woman’s job. But God’s categories are not always ours. I had to shuffle my categories many times during my last eight years of missionary work. Since coming back to the States I’ve done it again. I’ve had a career of sorts, I’ve been a wife and housewife once more, and again I’m a widow.

But it is the same faithful Lord who calls me by name and never loses track of my goings and reminds me in a still, small voice, “Ye are my witnesses, that ye might know and believe me, and understand that I am he.” (Is. 43:10). There is our primary responsibility: to know him. I can’t be a witness unless I’ve seen something, unless I know what it is I am to testify to. And it is the Lord of the Universe who calls you – you women, you men – and offers you today a place in his program. Your education or lack of it, your tastes and prejudices and fears and status or ambitions, your age or sex or color or height or marital status or income bracket are all things which may be offered to God, after you have presented your bodies as a living sacrifice. And God knows exactly what to do with them. They are not obstacles if you hand them over.

——————————————————————————-

Reality has a way of slapping us in the face. If Elizabeth Elliot had listened to the basic rule of women in ministry, she would have been precluded from presenting the Gospel. Yet in that moment, who could argue that women were the only one’s possible with presenting the Gospel.  And she chose to do so.

I for one think that one of the most significant shifts we will see in the next 20-50 years is the full inclusion of women in true leadership roles in the church.  When we exclude women’s voices we exclude half of God’s voice from our midst.

Ed ends with a rather ironic question.  He asks, “So, here is my question again: why are there so few evangelical women missiologists (while most missionaries are women) and what is the best way to address that?”

How would you answer him?

A good friend of mine Neil Christopher is planning an upcoming youth network and conference called Evo.

Dates: Feb 24th-25th, 2011 | Price: $20.00 | Location: Northway Christian Church
7202 W. Northwest Hwy, Dallas TX 75225

Evo is a gathering FOR youth workers, BY youth workers. If you want to come and dialog with other leaders who are passionate about youth… this is the event for you.

We are denominational and we are non-denominational. We are Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, DOC, C&MA, Catholic, Presbyterian, and none of the above. We are missional, emergent, progressive, orthodox, mainstream and everything in-between. We are those who simply care about youth more than we care about labels.

Being a pastor is hard, especially when you don’t believe what you’re selling.

My recent post, which shared a story about a friend wrestling with the universal nature of grace, stuck a chord in so many people.  What do you do when you no longer believe what you are selling.  For my friend it was incredibly hard.  He was a rock star pastor, leading a rock star church. His rise was meteoric and profound.  And yet he was captivated by the very thing he no longer believed.  At the time, I couldn’t really process that fact.  I was too immerse in my own judgments to see his captivity.  To leave meant giving up virtually everything he had been trained for, worked in, believed in for the last 20-30 years.

The problem with being a pastor is that once you step out, you suddenly discover you’re not very prepared for anything else.  It’s a very narrow path that doesn’t translate to other things very well.  I have two very good friends who have made that journey and it’s been hard.  It takes a long time.

I got several emails from people expressing this very problem.  One person shared that if he were honest about seeing things differently, even exploring a little outside the bounds he would lose his job.  His very income was dependent on believing a certain way.  It wasn’t in his job description, but is really was.  Another person lamented that if she were honest as a wife of a pastor, it would ruin his life.  She had to believe a certain way for his sake.

I long for the day when we can have an open conversation of doubt that leads back to faith.  But we’ll never get there until we’re comfortable with the process doubt requires.  And if we can’t have that in leadership circles, we’ll never really have that in those that are listening to the leaders.

What is the very best you’ve seen in the community that you are involved in, meet with, see on a regular basis, or even have left.  I don’t want this blog to consistent be a critique.  I want to call out that which is awesome, good and sound too.  So fill me in.  What has been the best the church has revealed to you?

This post was inspired by Chad Estes who explores an evocative response to pastors who have affairs.  Chad’s post stirred something in me.  Why is it so hard to get over a pastor who has an affair?  If the Gospel is true then the pastoral affair should be one of the deepest tests that proves our capacity to overcome the event. But in most cases, it languishes in the netherworld as it gets swept under the rug.

I’m also not immune to affairs.  When I was growing up my mom was the Director of Women’s Ministries at a very large church.  And one day she was counseling a woman who admitted to an affair with the pastor.  Needless to say my mom was shocked and troubled.  Over the next two months the woman went public with it and the church that I had grown up in crumbled.  For close to twenty years, the church went into a downward spiral going through pastor after pastor in search of the glory it once held. It never really did.  Many people who knew the history of the church knew that the church as a whole never got over the one event that came to dominate the internal culture.  Trust was never in long supply.

Pastors are in many ways like parents.  So when something like this happens, its easy to get really mad and wonder why.  And if the culture is not prepared to deal with it, if it has never really practiced forgiveness as a central component of learning, if it has never practiced stepping into the space of suffering and truth, it will likely never live into it when it really matters.

And I’m not denying the pain and suffering that comes from an affair. I get the pain it produces.  My parents divorced because my dad had an affair. And my parents divorce became one of the dominated wounds of my life.  But to understand the context of that pain, it becomes important to understand a few details that followed.  In the interest of protecting me, a 9-year-old boy FROM pain, my parents never told me what happened.  They swept it under the rug believing it was in my best interest NOT to know.  But as most children do when they experience trauma, without a real story about what happened, I invented one.  I told myself that I was the reason. And over the next fourteen years I fell into a downward spiral that produced an intense amount of pain from self-condemnation.

And then an interesting thing happened.  Knowing that something had to change, my mom sat us down on the shores of Lake Tahoe and proceeded to tell us about the affair.  She pulled the rug up and dug it all out. And I can’t tell you how much it hurt and felt good all at the same time.  She gave me the truth.  It washed over me like a warm rain.  The truth set me free from so much of my own invented stories that I had deeply developed for so long.  I’ve come to believe that we may not like the truth, but we can handle it.

So I wonder how much of our problems with pastors having an affair is really our inability to handle it. We live in a culture that practices right and wrong, not love.  We fail to practice the one thing needed when it really matters most.  So when love is really needed, it is nowhere to be found.  We sweep it under the rug because those in power think we can’t handle it, or the culture is not defined by the practice of overcoming.

My hope for the future is that we can begin learning from these types of conversation and begin having new ones, ones that says no matter what happens, we can overcome it.

Chad ends his post with a great point.  He says, “What do you think? Let’s dialog. Let’s move towards freedom.”  How would you suggest moving towards freedom in this regard?

Let me begin, with a title like that, by saying this is a very serious post.  The intent is to ask a very intentional question, not throw stones.

Over on Facebook, my friend Julie Clawson, author of the book Everyday Justice, said out loud…

It’s what I love about Julie.  She’s not afraid to speak her mind.  As someone who grew up an evangelical and had virtually no experience outside my own circles, let me just say that I’ve had the same thought. I didn’t understand what I had never experienced so it seemed foreign to me.  Asking questions about it was a natural response to the unknown.

Over the last ten years I’ve been actively studying other forms of worship, and my family has even been participating in an Episcopal church from time to time.  I found liturgy to be exhilarating.  But Julie’s post set up what followed to be a great point. Another friend, David Henson grabbed my attention when he said:

“I was mostly being tongue in cheek, though the rhythms of divergent worship services feel awfully similar to me. They all move and build toward a moment of ecstasis. When I look at the form of a typical Pentecostal service and a typical liturgical service, I don’t see significant difference, personally. But tha’ts a more sociological take on worship.”

As someone who used to use drugs, I think David is on to something. If we look at the range of experiences from Pentecostal, Vineyard, Litrugical, and even big production mega church services, they all lead to creating moments of ecstasy.  Ecstasy is a very powerful experience that creates a story of experience. And it is story that propels us into action. We end up going to church for the purpose of experiencing that story over and over again.  It becomes entirely possible to continue seeking out not God but that experience of ecstasy.

In college I participated in the Vineyard movement, and the worship experiences were intoxicating. I went because I felt “the presence of God” as ecstasy.  And I’m not doubting the movement of God in those experiences.  I’ve had those same experiences in Pentecostal and liturgical services as well.  Some of my friends would call it a mystical union with God.

But is it possible manufacture those experiences that create ecstasy?  Can churches become like a drug that we manufacture to keep people coming back? It’s easy to see in the Pentecostal and liturgical churches, but even the Catholic experience treats communion in much the same way as administering a drug by placing the wafer on the tongue.  The ritual serves as a physical experience. When does the point cease to become growth, but instead the experience of ecstasy?  And once the experience ceases, its easy to move on to other churches seeking out the experience. Have you ever wondered this, or am I just on my own here?

The flip side of this is that much of the religious experience is ecstatic.  Both communion and worship are rituals that can be intoxicating in a profound way for me.  Jesus created a profound experience in the act of communion with the wine and bread.  I can’t and don’t, and even won’t, deny the power of the Spirit in my life to create and experience that propels me into action.  Looking back I think its why I used drugs.  Drugs produce a manufactured experience that is very similar to the divine. I wanted that experience.  But…it was manufactured.

I’m thinking out loud here so, what say you?

So I just finished the Bit Tent Christianity Conference.  And I liked it.

Big Tent Christianity was arguably the first mixed tradition conference I’ve been to put on by the traditional emergent crowd (Doug and Tony).  Over half the speakers were not traditional emergent speakers. Many were from traditional denominational structures including the Reformed Church of America.  I liked seeing this broader conversation.  I attribute this to Philip Clayton, Justin Heinzekehr, and Tripp Fuller for expanding beyond the border to “create a bigger tent” conversation.  Well done.

In some ways the conversation was deeply academic.  Many of the presenters were Presidents of Seminaries.  Yet I couldn’t help but be inspired by some of these academic voices, which are often missing from events like this.  The caliber and content of some of the voices, created a great new mix to the conversation. Yet the same element could be lobbed as the one big criticism of the conference.  The conference was still largely a white male voice.  There were great voices of racial distinction, such as Anthony Smith, Bruce Reyes Chow, and Stephanie Spellars.  But I just hope for a larger participation.  In some ways, it can also be said that this is the white male conversation, which is fair given that the five organizing voices are white and male.

But Big Tent was about expanding the tent. The early conversation included a spirited conversation around the limitations of the metaphor of the Big Tent. In trying to expand the tent are we losing what it means to have an identity, or are we breaking down the barriers of relationship.  I would argue the latter but many people were uncomfortable with it.  Anthony Smith had what I thought was one of the better responses when he tweeted: “how can a tent have boundaries when there are no walls nor doors?”

A large part of the question of denominations seems to be a search for identity.  The tent is important to people because it informs and grants identity.  When we stand under it it helps inform our own understanding of who we are.  It gives us something to stand on. To lose that identity can feel like death.  So to leave that identity can feel like suicide. I can’t recount how many times I heard someone (in some form or other) say, “I’m trying to understand who I am.”  But one thing really stood out to me.  About half the crowd admitted switching denominational identity at some point in their life. That suggests that our desire for permanence is often sabotaged by our own realities.  We sometimes can’t stand the tent we are born in or even choose.

During the first day, the second panel was on theology and the following was on the Bible.  These two panels provided a strange dichotomy between our discovery of God, which we call theology, and our codified conclusions about God, which we often call “Biblical”.  The panel on theology was exploratory and fairly open.  The panel on the Bible was tense yet invigorating. Jo-Ann Badley and Peter Rollins verbally sparred with each other over opposing stances.

The panel on sexuality was the most intriguing. I firmly hold that we need a vigorous dialog in the church around homosexuality, and this panel provided it. Ian Markham gave a remarkably simple review of the historical understanding of Catholic pro-creation, which set a great stage for entering into a broader conversation.Kimberly Knight then shared her experience with hope in the midst of family judgment, and then reminded us that we are a collection of stories.  A critique by Frank Green, who was on the panel, suggested the panel was too male.  A hum of agreement filled the room and I agree. But it was Brian Ammons who stole the show for me. As a practicing monogamous homosexual, he took on some really serious sacred cows within the homosexual culture, the most important being that as human beings we “don’t” have a choice.  Brian called that a political lie and essentially said, “Its bull and victimizing.”  When we remove choice we remove our own humanity.  Very new approach to the conversation.  Brian brought out an intriguing point in that we are searching for an understanding of sacred sex in healthy relationships.  I agree.

We often talk about homosexuality as one of the defining conversations of the emerging church.  But this panel made me think the question is broader.  Sexuality is at the heart of what it means to connect with another human being.  It’s the space where we are terribly vulnerable, yet at the same time are rewarding for that vulnerability with one of the quintessential pleasure experiences: the orgasm. Perhaps God is telling us something in the act of sex that when we demonize it, we miss the deeper meaning.

If there is one common criticism of these types of conferences (having a LOT of speakers in short segments) it is the information overload.  I felt really bad for the last group because I just couldn’t take anymore and my brain largely shut off.  Yet the last speaker Tom Oord closed with an absolutely great confession.  He shared his conflict of living in a denomination that probably wouldn’t commonly participate in gatherings like Big Tent, yet deeply felt that the one thing that must inform his faith in God is love, which is I would suggest is the heart of emergence.

As always, the best part of being at these conversations is meeting new and old friends.  I find the hang time with people who can engage a healthy dialog around God, even in the midst of conflict can be very healthy.  Much love to all of you who got to hang.  Thanks Brandon, Connie, Amber, Julia, Christina, Nadia, Zhina, Steve, Anthony, Rich, Sara, Troy, Mike, Tripp, Travis, Jon, Bill, Doug Tony, Kimberly, David, Chad, Dan, Rachel, Jan, Spencer and so many of the people who shared your heart for God.  May we all live into God’s love in extraordinary ways.

Today’s post is my contribution to the Eighth Letter project, which invites participants to compose letters to the North American church in the spirit of John’s seven letters of Revelation.  A handful of these letters will be chosen for public reading at the Eight Letter conference in October.

—————————————————————————————

To the Church in North America,

Much love you my brothers and sisters.  Our journey is about remembering.  It’s about discovering what has always been true.  As we enter a new age, one defined by media, social networking, and a longing for life, we’re beginning to see a change in culture that is unprecedented. People are beginning to question everything, including what it means to be a follower of Jesus in a unstable world.  In the midst of this doubt, people are longing for answers to the most fundamental questions of the soul.  What does it mean to be human?  Who am I?  And, what am I supposed to do?  But deeper than that, we’re all wondering, is there anybody out there who will love me?

The answer is yes.

I invite you to return to love. Return to the beginning of time, to the words that inform your soul and define your dignity. Return to the declaration that is imprinted on every human mind, “It is good.”  These are the very words of God, and inform the heart of love.  Love is simply a judgment of good.  These words inform our judgment of each and every person we encounter. Love reminds us that there is nothing we can do to lose the love of God?

God’s love can’t and won’t change because it was never dependent on circumstance.  We can’t change what was true.  But we can forget what is true.  We can judge ourselves as outside of God’s love and create a reality that blinds us from God’s love.  Much of the problem we encounter is biological.  As human beings created in the image of God, we do what God does.  We create and we judge.  But unlike God, we’re bent towards seeing ourselves as unlovable because we assume God is like us.  We’re bent towards seeing love as dependent on tangible things, as conditional. Once we enter into the space of doubt, our minds are biased towards thinking God can’t love us.  So we run.

Thank God for the cross.  I implore you to remember that the cross is not defining God’s statement of love. Grace was always true, from the beginning of time. The cross is God’s defining statement that reiterates the love that was always there. Thank God that Jesus was willing to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that God will always love us.  God never loses site of good.  God never forgets his own words.

So we embrace love because it is the defining act of humanity.  To be human means getting the judgment right.  This is wholeness. When we love we are remembering who we are. It strips the blinders off to the one thing that gives us peace, what is true.  We know its true because it produces something valuable. It allows us to rule over the body in a way that produces life.  Love allows us to step into the spaces of pain and suffering, and remained undefined by it.  It allows us to give without the necessity of obligation or receiving.  It allows us to see past the constructed identities of black or white, Muslim or Christian, American or African, or homosexual or heterosexual, to the one true identity that informs the soul, one of child of the living God. It allows us to rule over the self in a way that produces Shalom.

When Jesus simplified everything to the command of love, He was giving us God’s original structure.  Everything came down to the simplicity of love.  We’re free to do anything but we’re guided by love.  To love was a return to God’s rule, to the Kingdom of God.  When we love we’re revealing heaven in our midst.  To love is to see the God image in each and every human being, including ourselves.  Love validates our own dignity as much as the other.

So I invite you to return to love so that you may experience life in its fullest. Much love.

Your brother, Jonathan

———————————————————————————–

Updated: Rachel Held Evans turned this into a Synchroblog.  You can read some of the letters from participants below.

Rachel Held Evans: Lets Build Bigger Banquet Tables.

Michael Mercer (imonk): A Letter to the North American Church

Sarah Askins: Removing the Make-Up of Perfection

Alise Wright: My Letter to North American Churches

Alan Ward: Alan’s Epistle to the Church in North America

Blue Collard Daughter: More Walk, Less Talk

Amanda Mac: To the Church in North America, Canada

David Henson: A Good Death

John Armstrong: My Letter to the North American Church

“1 in 8 Americans consider themselves ex-Christians.” (source)  This is a startling statistic.  Something is broken and the evidence is beginning to build.

One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about the narrative of Scripture is seeing the patterns designed into the universe.  What is true produces life.  What is false produces death.  It’s really that simple.  The mechanisms for recognizing the problem are embedded into our design as human beings.  2+2=4 works.  2+2=5 just won’t produce the same result. We use the fruit as a mechanism for understanding the embedded systems behind the action.  If it works, it’s good.  If it doesn’t, there’s something wrong. Jesus even gave us a rather simple way of understanding this, “By their fruit you will recognize them.”  Jesus understood that the fruit was a byproduct of the system.  If the person thought they were bad, they would produce bad fruit.  If they thought they were good, they would produce good fruit.

When we apply this to the church we can begin to listen to the problem. The fruit of the current form of church isn’t working.  I would suggest the primary story that informs the church has run its course.  In in the presence of an informed and permission oriented generation, the world (and even those in the church) is saying enough.  The immediate temptation in the face of such evidence is to suggest that we’re just not giving enough effort, or that we’re just not understanding the Gospel enough. It’s easy to say that this generation is captivated by iPod’s, texting, and social media.  Their too interested in a 2×4 screen to care.  But this is a cop-out.  They’re not attracted because they’re smart enough to tell it isn’t working.  They look into their parents faces and say, “I just don’t want what you have.”

I would suggest that there are two primary mechanisms that have created this culture.  First, this is the first generation that has grown up entirely wired.  They’re never not had the Internet.  This means that they’ve grown up with the capacity to check EVERYTHING.  Social media has just enhanced it by allowing them to check their friends opinions on it as well.  I’ve said before that a person can listen to a sermon and check in real time whether or not they share the same opinion about it.  They can look it up in the middle of the sermon.  This is an unprecedented level of empowerment the world has never seen. Second, this is the first generation that has grown up without the shadow of ex-communication.  The church no longer holds the capacity to shun in the way it once did.  It not longer has the capacity to control thought.  Emerging generations are empowered with a permission to question.  They’ve been born into families with parents of the sixties who practiced revolution and questioning.  It’s a central part of who they are.

The two factors, and I’m sure there are many more, have created a perfect storm.  The evidence of the fruit of the church is on display and its not working.  And when someone famous leaves the church, as in Anne Rice, it’s broadcast for the world to see in real time.  Everyone knows about it before you’ve had breakfast.

At the core of the problem is not the fruit.  Fruit is simply an indicator.  Jesus even stated this. “Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit.”  The fruit comes from the tree.  The problem is the story that informs the fruit.  The problem is the perception we hold that informs what kind of tree we are.

At the heart of Discovering The God Imagination is the idea that we’ve gotten the story wrong.  And when the story is wrong it will produce bad fruit. 2+2=5 is no longer acceptable. What amazed me is the simplicity of solving the problem.  It call comes down to love.  But what astounds me is our capacity to become captivated by the problem, to continue trying what doesn’t work. Rather than listen to the fruit we try and pick it, not realizing the tree is designed to produce fruit.  It’s just going to grow back.

More effort is not going to work.  It takes a different story.

—————————————————————–

Discovering The God Imagination: Reconstructing A Whole New Christianity explores a profound possibility. What if we’ve misunderstood the Gospel? What if our historical approaches to Christianity have been distorted by the very same problem they are attempting to solve?  Available today from CreateSpace and Amazon. Order from CreateSpace and use code 5GFARGT9 to receive a 15% discount.