Categotry Archives: food for thought

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Creating Community, or Finding It (part 2: Community Happens)

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Categories: community, food for thought, Meanderings (look it up)

In part 1, I started a stream of thought about my changing picture of community, how it used to be so tied to the institutional structures (which are essentially created communities), and how I’m seeing it as more of an organic, naturally occuring thing. I talked about the feeling of alone-ness that so often happens to…oh, heck, just go read it. Sheesh, I’m sitting here writing the dang thing all over again… 😀

So for us believers who have found ourselves outside the walls, if the solution for our alone-ness is not (necessarily) to create new communities with others who share our experience, how can we re-think it? We know it’s important, we see it as a need; what, if anything, do we do about it?

This is a preview of Creating Community, or Finding It (part 2: Community Happens). Read the full post (770 words, 2 images, estimated 3:05 mins reading time)

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Creating Community, or Finding It (part 1)

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Categories: church, food for thought

One of the most profound paradigm shifts I’ve had over the past few years is my understanding of community, particularly the community of believers and individual communities of faith. It goes right along with the realization that the church really is the people, not the building with the steeple. (See, I made a rhyme! Do it all the time!)

Anyhow…ahem.

This is a preview of Creating Community, or Finding It (part 1). Read the full post (651 words, 1 image, estimated 2:36 mins reading time)

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Misunderstood Nuns and Not Seeing the Forest for the Trees

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Categories: food for thought, link love

Over the past two evenings The Wild One and I watched the classic movie A Nun’s Story starring Audrey Hepburn–first time we’d seen it. (Long movie, so we broke it into two parts watching it from our DVR.) It was about a young woman, the daughter of a famous doctor, trained as a nurse, who entered the convent with a sincere desire to serve God and care for the underprivileged. We watched as throughout the nearly three-hour-long movie she stumbles over the legalistic rules of her order that stop her from making common sense decisions for the people she is treating–epitomized by the requirement that she must leave off treatment of a patient (no matter how severe) when the bell calls her to prayer and communion. Their explanation for such requirements? “Your medical service must be secondary to your religious life.” After years of suffering from inside politics and constantly finding herself guilty of breaking one rule while trying to keep another, she finally decides to renounce her vows and is shunned by the order. The thing is, she is the one who is acting most like Jesus throughout the film. It is a classic example of people missing the point, of not seeing the forest for the trees.

This is a preview of Misunderstood Nuns and Not Seeing the Forest for the Trees. Read the full post (326 words, 1 image, estimated 1:18 mins reading time)

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Bigger Than Our Minds

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Categories: food for thought, Meanderings (look it up)

You can probably tell I’ve been thinking again… 🙂

As I’ve been watching people grapple with different ideas here in recent posts, I’ve been thinking about how we grapple with the Scriptures, particularly with those concepts that are more troublesome to us. There are many examples I could cite, but in light of the previous post, let’s talk more about the judgments of God expressed in the Old Testament. There’s no doubt that the very idea of God either killing people or telling people to kill other people really messes with our logic about a loving God. For that matter, the idea of a literal hell and eternal judgment does the same kind of thing. How could a God of love do that kind of thing? we reason to ourselves.

This is a preview of Bigger Than Our Minds. Read the full post (885 words, 2 images, estimated 3:32 mins reading time)

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The Significance of the Son of God

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Categories: food for thought, theological questions, Things I Should Probably Not Be Telling You

As a disclaimer/hat-tip, the thoughts I’m about to process began from some things I’m reading in Brian McClaren’s A Generous Orthodoxy. In one of the early chapters, he reflects on some of the issues and controversies raised by Jesus being referred to as the “Son of God”–including some of the concerns it raises in our culture about the presumed “male-“ness of God, or reinforcing the male-dominant theme many have taken from the Scripture–all of which could be debated and discussed into the ground as to what it actually means.

This is a preview of The Significance of the Son of God. Read the full post (1133 words, 1 image, estimated 4:32 mins reading time)

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Getting Personal: Excerpt

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Categories: food for thought

Below is an excerpt from my post today on Communitas Collective:

My personal journey began in the instutional church. I showed a seriousness about my faith at an early age, as well as a gift for music, which garnered me a lot of attention. By my early teens, I had felt called to ministry, and stayed on that trajectory through most of my adult life. The institutional church, and church leadership in particular, was my comfort zone.

This is a preview of Getting Personal: Excerpt. Read the full post (168 words, 1 image, estimated 40 secs reading time)

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The Cross-Cultural Gospel

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Categories: food for thought

A few days ago I posed the question (well, several questions, actually…but they basically boil down to this):

What could faith and Christ-following look like without the cultural baggage we put on it?

I’ve really noticed in recent years that there is an awful lot we classify as “church” that either is not mandated by the Scripture, or is unsupportable by Scripture. Yet these are so often the things we cling to the most.

This is a preview of The Cross-Cultural Gospel. Read the full post (762 words, 1 image, estimated 3:03 mins reading time)

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Sunday Meditations: It’s Alive

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Categories: food for thought, Sunday meditations

For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intents of the heart. -Heb. 4:12, NASB

Taken in the context of the passage, this verse really seems to be talking about how the word of God tests and proves our obedience and trust, challenging us with truth–thus, the judging of thoughts and intents, and so on. But I am thinking in particular about the idea at the beginning of the verse–that the word of God is living and active.

This is a preview of Sunday Meditations: It’s Alive. Read the full post (1652 words, 2 images, estimated 6:36 mins reading time)

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Removing the Restrictions

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Categories: food for thought, Rantings

In my process of deconstructing, not just from institutional church but from institutional thinking… 🙂

…I’ve been realizing that there is a common thread or theme running through it. It could be worded several ways, but all convey the same basic question:

  • What does true Christ-following look like without all the extra trappings we have attached to it?
  • How can we be more life-giving in the practice of our faith?
  • What does a true Christian look like?
  • How do we get back to the basics of living the example of Jesus, and shed all the unnecessary stuff loaded onto us by the Christian subculture?
This is a preview of Removing the Restrictions. Read the full post (734 words, 1 image, estimated 2:56 mins reading time)

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Reverse Prejudice

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Categories: food for thought

Oh, boy, I may be stepping into some thick crap today…but it wouldn’t be the first time… 🙂

From my “tween” years through high school, I grew up in a racially integrated environment in California. My friends at school included people who were white, black, Chinese, Filipino, Latino (European and North American), Portuguese, Vietnamese…the list goes on. We played together, had fun, even sometimes joked about our differences. It just wasn’t a big deal to us. Also, most of my friendships were within the churches I attended, which added to the sense of brotherhood/sisterhood with all of us. The diversity I lived in felt so normal that I honestly thought racism was dead in this country. And especially in the church.

This is a preview of Reverse Prejudice. Read the full post (1329 words, 1 image, estimated 5:19 mins reading time)
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