All Hail Saint Bono: Rocker finds friends in unlikely places

Today, the National Association of Evangelicals awarded the title of “honorary evangelical” for the first time. The recipient? Rock icon and AIDS activist Bono.

“Not even Jean-Paul the second earned this one, and he was our buddy!” exclaimed excited NAE member Debbie Marsh, who had eagerly awaited the news after coordinating a national letter-writing campaign pitching the idea to the organization’s leaders.

Her husband Wayne was somewhat less excited. “I just went along because it’s been getting embarrassing,” he muttered. “I mean, the guy’s been on the cover of more Christian magazines lately than

Roaring Lambs: the book that changed (part of) the world

My recent foray back into the heart of the Christian subculture got me thinking … things have changed lot in, for example, the Christian music scene in the last 8-9 years. MXPX and Project 86 have gone from being attacked and embattled by the “Christian” side of the industry to being revered as pioneers, while bands like The Chariot and He Is Legend and Emery (who were at this festival) not to mention more like Anberlin and Underoath, have gained cross-market appeal making music that I simply don’t think would have made it into CBD a few years ago.

"Man in Black" by Johnny Cash

You wonder why I always dress in black,
Why you never see bright colors on my back,
And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.
Well, there’s a reason for the things that I have on.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he’s a victim of the times.

I wear the black for those who never read,
Or listened to the words that Jesus said,
About the road to happiness through love and charity,
Why, you’d think He’s talking straight to you and me.

Well, we’re doin’ mighty fine, I do suppose,
In our streak of lightnin’ cars and fancy clothes,
But just so we’re reminded of the ones who are held back,
Up front there ought ‘a be a Man In Black.

I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,
I wear the black in mournin’ for the lives that could have been,
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.

And, I wear it for the thousands who have died,
Believen’ that the Lord was on their side,
I wear it for another hundred thousand who have died,
Believen’ that we all were on their side.

Well, there’s things that never will be right I know,
And things need changin’ everywhere you go,
But ’til we start to make a move to make a few things right,
You’ll never see me wear a suit of white.

Ah, I’d love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything’s OK,
But I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
‘Till things are brighter, I’m the Man In Black

The Centrality of the Kingdom of God

Here’s a link to the message I preached at church on Sunday – dealing with the centrality of the Kingdom of God in Jesus’ teaching and in our lives.
http://www.livinghopeconcord.com/downloads/6.24.07.mp3
The first thing I noticed when I listened to it was the excessive verbal clutter … gonna be working on that.

McCain may have dropped the f-bomb in a meeting, but if so, it was definitely in a gerund.

I’m sorry, guys, but this is too hilarious to pass up. It’s from Fox News … I’ve highlighted what to me is the funniest part. It’s an article about an immigration reform meeting that John McCain was involved in.

You can read the whole article here.

Two Republican aides with firsthand knowledge of the fracas told FOX News that McCain, growing impatient with the presentation, interrupted Cornyn and challenged his commitment to strike a deal, describing the delay with an expletive for chicken feces. McCain even suggested Cornyn just leave the room.

An incredulous Cornyn hit back at McCain by insulting his attendance record at meetings and saying the candidate can’t just “parachute” into the room, the aides recounted. According to the aides, McCain then lobbed the “F” bomb at Cornyn and said he is more of an expert on immigration than anyone in the room.

A McCain spokeswoman vehemently denied that the senator had used this highly-inflammatory phrase, suggesting the senator might have used the profanity in a gerund to request that the meeting just move forward. The aide said she had never heard the senator use such a phrase in her year on his staff.

Don’t tell me that’s not funny …

thoughts inspired by the death of Jerry Falwell

I was surprised at the depth of my own reaction when I started hearing and reading about Jerry’s death last week. (As an alumni of Liberty University, I reserve my right to refer to him only by his first name.) I was moved … my eyes have gotten moist a time or two watching tribute videos and footage of the announcement of his death. The reason this is surprising is because of my own feelings about the man. If there’s one thing that almost kept me from going to Liberty in the first place, it was the fact that it was “Jerry Falwell’s school.”

A Savior on Capitol Hill

Since Scott so kindly pointed out that you can get these lyrics online already anyway, here they are if anyone is interested. These are from www.derekwebb.net, which is apparently the hardcore fansite.

A Savior on Capitol Hill
Appears on: The Ringing Bell

Lyrics:

I’m so tired of these mortal men
with their hands on their wallets and their hearts full of sin
scared of their enemies, scared of their friends
and always running for re-election
so come to DC if it be thy will
because we’ve never had a savior on Capitol Hill

you can always trust the devil or a politician
to be the devil or a politician
but beyond that friends you’d best beware
‘cause at the Pentagon bar they’re an inseparable pair
and as long as the lobbyists are paying their bills
we’ll never have a savior on Capitol Hill

[Bridge]
all of our problems gonna disappear
when we can whisper right in that President’s ear
he could walk right across the reflection pool
in his combat boots and ten thousand dollar suit

you can render unto Caesar everything that’s his
you can trust in his power to come to your defense
it’s the way of the world, the way of the gun
it’s the trading of an evil for a lesser one
so don’t hold your breath or your vote until
you think you’ve finally found a savior up on Capitol Hill

Derek Webb: The Ringing Bell

So guys …

get this album. It’s amazing. Derek Webb is going to make more people mad than ever.

I was going to post lyrics to one song, but I figured that might be premature, since the street date isn’t til May 1. So if you want it, you’ll have to go to www.derekwebb.com and preorder, at which point you get an immediate download in mp3 format.

Get it. Seriously.

… and the firstfruit of religion is emptiness

I like to think of myself as a pretty tolerant person when it comes to my faith … I see lots of room for diversity in how people relate to God, the ways in which we worship, etc. You don’t have to do it my way — even if you attend my church. As a matter of fact, much of the time we won’t do it my way, because I know that what works for me might not work for the people I’m worshiping with. Feel free to worship God in your own way.

But there’s a strain of Christianity that I find myself becoming much less tolerant of lately. Throughout my life, I’ve seen it expressed well. It ruled at the bible college I attended, the churches I used to go to … in the lives of many, including myself. The following of Christ has been turned into a maze of rules and regulations. Loving Jesus has been reduced to following a set of laws. And my peers and friends have reaped the consequences.

Don’t get me wrong … I know they/you/we meant well. (I am talking about the conservative evangelical/”independent fundamental” tradition) I know the goal was to be the most sincere, most devoted, most right Christians we could be. But somewhere along the line, we got so obsessed with a particular culture (perhaps, ironically, the one ingrained in a certain generation’s mind as the ideal time in America’s history) that we lost any hope of keeping our faith connected with the rest of our lives. This is probably not as true for my parents’ generation, and certainly not for my grandparents. That’s because they still had a connection with the culture they were so bent on preserving in the church. But the rest of us were faced with very limited options… we could leave the church, or we could be one person there and another person the rest of the time. Or, we could completely disassociate ourselves with the rest of the world and only function in that highly churched environment.

But it gets worse … because of the disconnect between the church and the rest of our lives, a whole generation has grown up in these churches with no concept of what it means to have a God who who is relational — who interacts with them and who loves them and is present in daily lives and who likes rock and roll and loves a good party. Church is a thing people do. God is someone who is out there. Jesus died on the cross for our sins. But it doesn’t do anything in our gut, and we’re not exactly sure how it ties in with the rest of our lives. And so, this religion of hymns and suits and skirts and good behavior has succeeded not in developing vital spirituality, but in producing a spiritual emptiness in the lives of its children.

I haven’t always felt this way … even after deciding that culture wasn’t the place I wanted to be. I knew that different people need to worship in different ways. But now I am pursuing the call God has given me to minister, and I am doing damage control. Thanks be to God that he has given us the chance to make a difference in people’s lives, and to pursue true spirituality in community with others. I believe there is life after religion … and it gives everything that religion ever falsely promised and much, much more. It’s found in authentic relationship with God and with each other. And I want it more and more each day.

Courage: being who God has called us to be

Willow Creek. Saddleback. Mars Hill (Seattle). Mars Hill (Michigan). Thomas Road Baptist Church. The Crystal Cathedral. Coral Ridge Ministries.

What do all these ministries have in common? Not much, in some cases. They’ve all taken a lot of flack for various reasons. If you like one of them, you don’t like all of them. They’re all huge. They’ve all been effective in different ways, reaching different people.

This may sound overly simple, but before Willow Creek, there was no Willow Creek/seeker sensitive movement (at least not on that scale.) Before Saddleback, there was no articulation of the Purpose Driven principles and pastors did not preach in obscenely ugly Hawaiian shirts. Before Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Seattle, fundamentalists didn’t cuss while talking from the pulpit about drinking beer. Before Jerry Falwell and Thomas Road … well, I’m going to leave that one alone.

The point is, all these ministries and their leaders have had the courage to figure out where God was leading them, and go there. There’s a part in the movie About a Boy where the boy tells Hugh Grant’s character that he might have a shot with the woman he loves, if he doesn’t bugger it up (or something like that). Then he comments in narration that he wasn’t trying to be excessively negative — he just doesn’t think that couples are the wave of the future. You need more people in your life; you need back-up.

Well, being like Saddleback is not the wave of the future. Being like Mars Hill (either one) is not the wave of the future. Ad infinitum, ad nauseum. What men like Jerry Falwell and Bill Hybels and Rick Warren have been showing us for years, men like Rob Bell and Mark Driscoll and Brian Mclaren (love them or hate them) are showing us now. God blesses us, and we are most effective, when we have the cojones to listen to God and find out his unique vision for us and our communities and then go for it. Our world doesn’t need a “next Billy Graham,” or a next anyone. Our world needs people of God who are courageous, who are willing to risk it all by learning from others yet not following anyone’s blueprint but God’s for their lives and ministries. True ministry effectiveness cannot be prefabricated and sold in a pretty package. It can only come as we humble ourselves and step out in faith towards what God has for us.

I am encouraged that I see this being worked out in the lives of churches and men of God whom I know and respect and, in some cases, love as close brothers. I see it in new churches like River Ridge and plants like The Dialogue Church. We are seeking to put it into practice at Living Hope. And I see this process taking place in the lives of friends like Scott, Matt Bruns, Tim and beaNie, and others whom I know but not as well, like Jared Byas and Steve Jesmer. (Actually, the genesis of this post lies in some wise words from Steve.)

Carry on, brothers. Go full out. Don’t be scared into taking the “safe” route. Cause in 20 years, I want to look around and see the amazing things God has done in our lives and ministries as we’re sown across the country and maybe the world. God has a plan, he is moving, and he will be glorified as we seek his will.