I was on Facebook today and browsed a Manhattan Declaration thread. I saw almost every mistake a Christian can make, when dealing with unbelievers, being made over a stretch of about 100 posts. One person posting, rallying to the banner of homosexual marriage, was John. The rest were posts, from mostly Christians, that spanned the spectrum from bible throwing to name-calling to insults and sideways personal attacks… it struck me as I read the whole of it that John was having the time of his life and remarkably, with only about 6 posts among over a hundred, he owned the discussion. Why? Because he deftly pushed the buttons; then he sat back and watched Christians do what we seem to do best. The foolishness was nauseating.

I finally could take no more and commented on the thread as follows:

“The idea of debate as being applicable to this discussion is ludicrous. Imagine a contest, if you will, of a water-balloon battle. Both side launching salvos the likes of which make both sides cheer in anticipation of the next round….but never realizing that neither side has been hit with a drop of water.
In this ‘debate’, one side battles for their passion and love for God and a desire to honor Him in all things. The other side battles for a passion for self and for ones right to live in the manner one chooses.

Faith is the central issue behind all of this clever nonsense in this thread. And faith is the wall separating and shielding one side from the other. Faith in God and all that requires or faith in self and all that implies.

Christians: God is THE judge… not us… our faith tells us that we are sinners and we are no better, no more deserving of God’s mercy than any other, including homosexuals; but that it’s by God’s grace we are saved. Our mandate is to love as Jesus loved… not to throw scripture like a weapon at unbelievers. We need to stop making the Kingdom of God look like a bunch of idiot war-mongers and instead nourish a yearning to understand the scripture we read… ALL of it…. not just the parts we are comfortable with. Then we need to start living it. Then natural curiosity to know that peace that we all feel and reflect each day as Christians will be more powerful than any words.

We signed a declaration of our faith here. Now let’s trust God to do His work.”

We all struggle. I don’t care who you are. And if you say you don’t, you’re struggling with self delusion. It’s the struggle to maintain a ‘connected’ relationship with God that most Christians face today.

I have this burden on my heart for those who accept Christ, ride the spiritual high of the burning hot Holy Spirit moving in them and giving them new eyes and a new heart for everyone and everything around them and then kind of plop into the middle of a mud-puddle called the church.

Now everyone around them (the new believer) has their own view and the newbies begin to realize that they don’t seem to be lining up with other believers and they start wondering ‘what gives?’ then they begin to be swayed by the views of the others who are hopefully more mature and leading through love. Sometimes it doesn’t go so well.

I spent over 20 years away from the church and organized religion. Legalism, intolerance, and judgment of other believers was at the heart it. For all that time I deluded myself into believing that the church was the core of the relationship with God. And from what I had seen and experienced, I wanted nothing to do with it.  But I was missing something pretty big.

Fastforward; I’ve come to understand in recent months, and I’m still learning, that a relationship with God, from a strictly conceptual perspective, is no different than any other relationship. It thrives or dies on one pivotal element: communication.

If you are so involved in yourself and what’s important to you, then you may be the person whose friends or spouse or kids or coworkers come to you with something important and you are vaguely aware that something is being said to you and you sort of nod and say uh huh. But over time they just stop coming to you because they know you’re not listening and not interested in them. This is how families disintegrate, marriages fail, jobs become miserable, and life becomes onerous.

Any successful relationship, at its core, exists because of communication. When someone talks to you, you are focused on listening… actively hearing what’s being said. And in that same relationship the other person is equally focused on listening to you when you speak. The deeper the relationship the deeper the content of conversation… you get it.

So when you’re a Christian, you have committed to a relationship with Jesus Christ. And what happens so often is that we get caught up in the teaching at church and the guidance of fellow believers (not saying that’s bad stuff) that we forget about the most important part, a one-on-one, down to the core, deeply intimate relationship with our Creator. We stop communicating with God and we just ride the train.

Do you remember that fire in your heart when you accepted Jesus as your Savior? That’s was the Holy Spirit at work in you. The more we communicate with God, the hotter that fire burns. It’s like this: how much did it hurt to be away from the one you love when you were so in love and so ready to spend your life together with that other person? To be away from each other for an hour or a day was unbearable. Your heart would ache because part of you was gone.

God aches for us that way when we stop talking to Him. And our soul needs that connection to Him as well. And when that fire cools, that’s our clue that we’re ignoring God. The relationship is like any other in that you have to commit to it and work at it. And it can be a struggle. Some inadvertently replace their relationship with God with Sunday morning services or small group or service to the church and then get frustrated when emptiness creeps in.

Read His word everyday in a focused and committed way. (That’s you listening to God). Pray to God everyday in a focused and committed way, (That’s you talking to God) The more you do this, the hotter the fire burns.

“You will seek me and find me. When you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, declares the Lord.” Jeremiah 29:13 -NIV

I’m a little frustrated with God right now. And it’s not why you would think. It’s because I want to serve Him in this way that I believe he has gifted me to; through song. But these days I feel like I’m packaged up and tucked away in a corner. I’m fighting it for all I’m worth. And I think that’s the point probably; or rather God’s point.

I’ve spent so much of my life waiting… waiting for everything to come to me. I’ve just never felt like I was the go-out-and-get-it kind of guy. I’d been content, for the most part, to let my talent take me where it would and enjoy the ride.

Things started to change for me when I came back to God. In some ways it’s been a whirlwind and in others, it’s been like trying to run with my feet super-glued to the ground. I’ve learned, and understand fully, the everything-in-His-time thing. And that is important stuff…. Important because God knows when we’re ready far better than we do.

But I’m afflicted with this thing called humanity… and I’m screaming GOD! I’M READY! USE ME! And then I’m embarrassed at my own arrogance. But now I don’t want to wait anymore; I want to DO!

You can recall, I’m sure, a time when you’ve hurried off to do something and then you realized you forgot something. I’ve rushed my wife to get her make-up done so we can go to Starbucks, (cause that’s important stuff) and in her flustered frenzy to get ready she fails to bring her purse which has the money in it…. Uggh! Or my daughter rushes out of the house to make dance class in time and forgets her ballet toe-shoes. Or did you ever go to office and realize you’ve left your key-card at home? The list can go on forever. But I think you get the point.

There isn’t a single servant of God who hasn’t had to work through this very thing. Why should it be any different for me? Or You? I struggle… I’m chomping at the bit… even though I know intuitively that I still have things to learn. But it doesn’t make it any easier. I’m in waiting mode. Some call it a season of waiting… whatever it is, it’s tough.

But listen… this part is important… it is only through prayer and time in the Word that the challenge, and frustration, and impatience that comes with waiting doesn’t consume my passion for serving God.

Have you stopped to think about why God might be making you wait? Have you stopped to pray about it?

Have you ever thought to yourself: why do all the folks in the bible get these great moments where God or Jesus or beings in shining clothes show up, in person, and do amazing things followed by very specific instructions on what they should do next?

I have.

Recently, I have been straight up attitudinal about it. I’m reading in the book of Acts right now. And the “special appearances” were really starting to tick me off. I found myself saying to God; Why do they get off so easy… they weren’t wandering around hoping they were getting it right because you were showing up and doing things like Blinding Saul who became Paul or dropping visions of sheets from the heavens, creating tremendous winds followed by tongues of flame as your Holy Spirit indwelt some of the first Christians. And how ‘bout Moses? Yeah! A burning bush?!? Holy Ground? I mean…. I could use that God! I could use the certainty that comes with the kind of tangible, visible, amazing things you did to start the engines of the early church.

Ok. So Moses is a little outside the timing of the book of Acts… but it’s the same thing… God showing up in a big way to get His work rolling.

SOOOO… ironically I break one of the 10 commandments because I’m reading the bible and find myself coveting the God experience of Moses and Paul and so many others. Well… not even the God experience so much as the clarity and certainty of the call. When those guys walked away from those respective experiences, they had no doubt in their minds what God wanted from them. None! Zilch! Zip! It was a slam dunk.

Today I pray and read and read and pray and still can’t help but wonder sometimes if what I’m doing is God ordained. Can anyone relate? The time I spend rationalizing the expenditure of time and resources to achieve the mission I feel called to achieve can be debilitating.

So I was venting in rant form a few days ago and something amazing happened. I was complaining loudly wondering: where’s my burning bush? Why can’t I have one? And I was on a roll when a thought ripped through my brain with such stunning clarity that it stopped me mid-sentence and I was forced to completely abandon my rant because I realized something in that moment that to me was pretty powerful.

I realized without any doubt in my mind that with every open door presented to me since I committed my life to the Lord, I could match it to a life changing lesson. I’m not talking about titanic stuff. I’m talking about my walk of faith, and connections to people, lessons in leadership (those are the one that stung… still do a little), the building of a ministry, and so many little things that suddenly dropped into place in my mind and that’s when I saw that I’d had not one, not two, or even three, but many burning bushes.

I believe that when we are in communion with God, when our hearts are aligned with our Lord and Savior, and we are grounded in His Word, and committed to prayer, every door that God opens to us is without any doubt a burning bush. Next time I see a door open, I’m telling you right now…. I’m taking my shoes off.

So I finished the book by Shane Claiborne called “The Irresistible Revolution”. His passion for the church and specifically the homeless and poverty stricken is what motivated the actions that filled my most recent blog titled "To Thine Own Self Be True?" .

There is another book I read about a year ago called “Crazy Love” by Jackie Chan… okay… Francis Chan… but it hit about as hard and fast as good ol’ Jackie does…. Throws in a couple round-house kicks here and there too. So why do I bring this up? Because Shane Claiborne is Jet Li man. Holy Smokes!

“The Irresistible Revolution” takes you on a ride through the rural American Christian Church youth programs that most folks will relate to on a painful scale, to college days protests, to a summer in Calcutta with Mother Teresa, then to the startling contrast of Willow Creek as an intern, then on to Iraq in direct protest of the war and with the intent to aid the victims of Iraq in what many have called treasonous actions, and finally to the ghetto’s of Philly where he and several others run a organization called “Simple Way”.

The premise of the book is actually simple. Claiborne challenges his readers to address his observations that the modern Christian Church has very little in common with the Church of the New Testament. This is primarily due to the “Highlighter Mentality” that Claiborne says so many use today. In other words… Christians today highlight the parts of the bible that work for them, arguably spending very little time if any at all on the sections that are the foundation of Christianity. (See ‘Sermon on the Mount’)

Now I have to explain that this book took me for a serious ride. And I’m not the same for it. And I dare you to pick it up and read it. Claiborne’s call is a radical one and coins the phrase ‘Ordinary Radical’ to describe himself and other like him. There were times as I read the book that I had to stop and pray to God and ask Him why he has me reading this because reading it was the equivalent of shoving me through a spiritual cuisinart. Many times I stopped and thought, ‘if this is the definition of Christianity, then what am I?’

In the end of the experience I can tell you that I have been moved to change my attitudes toward the homeless and poverty stricken. I will truly never be able to help but look for the face of Jesus looking back at me when I encounter them and act accordingly. It also gives me a sobering lens through which to view today’s church.

I’ve never been one to be divisive. So I won’t go into all the gory details, but rather I’ll leave you only with my ‘at-a-glance’ perspective on the book.

Though I will recommend it to anyone willing or brave enough, I will say that though I agree with almost everything Claiborne is saying, I believe that he may be guilty of bit of ‘highlighter mentality’ himself.

Read it. Be moved by it. Learn to love God and people better through it.

Happy Reading.

Subject matter: ‘The Irresistible Revolution’ by: Shane Claiborne

I spent this past weekend in Cincinnati Ohio. I had a singing gig with the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra located in Newport KY just across the river from downtown Cincy.

One of the things I’ve always hated about downtown Cincinnati was the beggars and the homeless everywhere you turn. Some have a memorized story they use to try to play at your heart-strings, some look so destitute that they don’t need a story. And some look so gross, quite frankly, that people like me with borderline OCD have proximity alarms that start going off the closer these folks get.

When I used to live there in Cincy, I hated going downtown for that reason alone. Well parking had something to do with it too… but that’s another blog.

So the gig was Saturday night. It went fine.

The next morning my wife and I got up and went to Crossroads CC for church (love that place), then we went to eat and then to the book store. I decided to go to the Religion section of the store. I never do that. And I was drawn to a book by Shane Claiborne call ‘The Irresistible Revolution’. I was ruined inside of about 7 chapters.

Now Shane is a pretty radical guy. And a lot of what he is talking about is would create a significant level of culture shock for most anyone who would read his book. I won’t get into the core of the book’s message, but I will tell you that it moved me to change my perspective on the poor and the homeless. Which, by the way, is no small task.

So it's now Monday morning … my wife has gone off to see business clients and I’m left to my own devices. So I take a deep breath and head out the doors of my hotel and run to the nearest Starbucks. As I near the entrance of the shop I see a straggly man in a ball cap sitting on a bench holding a cardboard sign with the words ‘I’M HOMELESS. PLEASE HELP’ scrawled in his handwriting. I go into automatic – I completely ignore him and walk in to feed my chai latte habit.

But I keep looking over my shoulder while in line… and the guy is still sitting on the bench. He might as well be a statue. And I’m in line berating myself for being the pathetic self-centered snob that I am. I think, what good is it to just give him money? He’ll just spend it on cigarettes of worse… then the war within ensued and I finally capitulated with the internal understanding that I was going to do the previously unthinkable. I walked out the door, put a smile on my face, locked eyes with him, and sat down right next to him on the bench and said ‘good morning, how’s your day going?.’

The only thing more amazing to me than having done what I’d done up to that point was how completely shocked the guy was that I had done it. He immediately started into a coughing spasm. Once he’d regained composure, he turned to me and said in a slow southern drawl, ‘it’s going good!’ and his eyes sparkled a little and his mouth split into a grin that was in need of serious dental attention. But I refocused and got down to business. I had no clue what I was doing. But I was determined to get to know this person at some level. I wanted to know his story as best I could in the few minutes I was about to spend with him.

We engaged in meaningless small talk and then I got down to brass tacks…. “so Robert, (that was his name. not Rob, Robby, Bob, Bobby, or even Bobbo…. Robert, he’d said and his chest even puffed up a little when he’d said it) “so Robert, Tell me your story.” At this point Robert is probably thinking, ‘dude just give me a quarter and go away.’ But I was on a roll! Robert was good enough to tell me a story about working with horses and doing other things I honestly couldn’t understand due to his drawl. But I listened intently and then he told me about his plywood walled and tarp roofed house in the woods just off the I-75 N. corridor. He told me about his roommates and how they help each other in a pinch and that things are pretty good. At that point I asked him if he was hungry. He smiled again and said he could eat something. I asked him what he wanted and he pointed to several establishments and told me it was my call.

So I got up to get Robert some breakfast. Mind you I hadn’t touched mine yet. And as I walked away he called out ‘Sir!’ you left your book! Now I’d introduced myself as Stuart, but he stayed with Sir the whole time. I told him to keep my book with him and I’d be back for it in a few minutes. He slid it over closer to him and patted it a few times and just grinned.

By the time I got back with breakfast, Robert had turned back into the statue and I had to call his name out to snap him back out of it. I handed him a sandwich and coffee and something for later and then I sat down next to him and we did breakfast together in front of Starbucks. At one point I asked him about the bible. He smiled and said he liked the King James Version. I told him about how I try to have a conversation with God as much as I can and explained how I do it by praying (or talking) to God and by reading the bible (or listening to God). I encouraged him to go to any of the missions there in downtown, I assumed he knew where they were and get a bible. Robert just smiled at me and assured me he would do just that. After some more small talk I said my goodbyes and left him behind and then it occurred to me that Robert may well be illiterate.

There were 2 more interactions that day with beggars that I spoke with and helped out as best I was willing to in the moment. But the experience left me with a hole in my heart. Helping these people truly is commanded by God. And I’ve always been too good for that. The strange thing was that when I went out and did it, I wasn’t good enough.

Everyone starts somewhere. This is a very tough thing for me. But I’ve learned that when you open your heart to God’s prompting, it always changes you. Sometimes in little ways, sometimes in huge ways. But always, there is change.

To thine own self be true was my mantra for a very long time. But in the last few years it has been To the Lord God be True… it feels like I fail more than I succeed in that. But I assure you that it is a pursuit full of priceless reward.

~Stu

I have been thinking about faith recently. How often do you actually think about faith? I mean if you’re a Christian, you might say “what’s to think about?” And that would be a reasonable question, at least on the surface. But when I wrote the song ‘Come To Me’, it came from my reading in the new testament in Matthew 9:18-26; Luke 8:40-56 and I found myself responding to the deep emotional connection between the faithful and Jesus.

In this passage, a woman who has been afflicted with a bleeding disease for 12 years believes that Jesus is her only hope. She has unchallenged faith that Jesus could heal her when nothing else could for all those years. Jesus was so popular that it was difficult to get near him and if you were frail to boot? Forget about it. But this woman had faith greater than all those surrounding him and when she was able to just touch the base of his robe, knowing that this act alone would heal her, Jesus felt the power leave him. He stopped immediately and found her and told her that her faith had made her whole.

She didn’t ask Him, she didn’t pray to Him, she didn’t even know Him beyond that which she had heard. But her faith in who He was and His Word she’d heard was enough!

And what a stunning exchange! For her astonishing depth of faith, he gave the very thing he promises all of us if we take on the burden of faith and life in Christ and learn from him, we will find him gentle and humble and comforting.

Faith for so many is simply a word. It is so much more than that. Faith is the first step, it is the foundation, it is the cornerstone, it is the keystone, it is the glue, the nail, the cement that holds you to Jesus Christ. All Jesus ever required was to believe, because if we truly believed with all our heart and all our mind, then we would come to realize His grace. And when we come to Him in our faith, and we lay our burdens at his feet, He brings us rest.

The woman in this story knew 12 years of affliction that defined her. In a single act, her faith, her faith defined her. 

How does your faith define you?

Matthew 11:28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. 29 “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. 30 “For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

Todd Agnew is a Christian Recording artist that I saw in concert for the first time a few months back. A great story teller and a simple yet powerful approach to music. He posted a story on his Facebook Fan page about waiting for his young daughter to stop and tie her ‘velcro’ shoes. And resisting the urge to step in and do it for her. Drawing a correlation to God and His ability to wait and let us struggle through what is so elementary to Him so that we can get better and better.

Todd ends his entry by saying:

“He (God) can’t just rescue me each time. I have to walk the steps. And

maybe then, someday, giving cheerfully, loving the unlovely, evangelism,

holiness, all will be as easy as Velcro. But not today.”


I never know if I should or shouldn’t, but I felt the need to comment with the following:

Todd - thank you for this glimpse into your life and into your relationship with God. It's a good feeling to know that amidst so many seemingly failed attempts to live up to God’s expectations of his children, that there are others who are so much further along, from all appearances, but yet even they struggle daily to get it right.

OK… so it’s not a ‘good feeling’ but commiseration seemed an over-the-top word. Like you put it in your Velcro story: God waits! He loves us that much. And with each small victory we draw closer to Him and He to us.

What I’ve heard from you since my first experience with you in Waukesha a few months back is that it seems like no matter how intentional we are, it’s impossible for an imperfect creation to achieve perfect holiness. I mean we could nail it all down and then grow a tumor-sized stress-zit at the 11th hour!

I struggle with that same thing so many of us do; the full acceptance of God’s grace. I mean… what is Stridex and Noxema if not tangible grace? Really! But my biggest struggle is to BELIEVE the truth of God’s grace.

I think you talked about Adam and Eve and the serpent when you were here. Great telling of that story Todd. There are so many stories in the Bible of folks who knew the rules and then, while God waited, they proceeded to screw it up. Adam, The Prodigal, Jonah… and how many times did Jesus say to his disciples “duh… are you daft? “ Stu Translation

I believe that if we are intentional about pursuing an intimate relationship with God through reading His word, praying, and serving, we will grow to understand more intimately the fullness of His grace and view the imperfections along the way, not as something to beat ourselves up for, but rather as humbling opportunity to have God further shape us into the children he intended us to be.

I subscribe to a blog by Craig Groeschel from LifeChurch.tv called ‘Swerve’. One recent blog in particular got my attention because I had noticed this phenomenon in our own church and had challenged the staff to define why we are here if not to lead souls to Christ. The consensus was that we were indeed focused on leading souls to Christ; but that an alter call was old-school and created potential discomfort to the folks in the audience. So the challenge became: ‘how do we do this without freaking everyone out?’  in other words...  how do we freak them out and make them feel safe at the same time?  


Here is Craig’s Blog entry from Swerve:

Dangerous Churches
Posted: 30 Mar 2009 03:30 AM PDT

I was talking to a guy on a plane about God. When I asked him if he went to church, he explained politely that he wasn’t interested. I asked him why he wasn’t and he said matter of factly, “Because I’ve already been and nothing happened.”
Maybe he went to a “safe” church. In a safe church:

 The message makes you feel better.
 You’re never confronted about your sin.
 No one rocks the boat.
 You don’t have to change.
 You may never truly encounter our Holy and Life-giving God.

When I read about the New Testament Church, it was filled with people with a dangerous faith. While we certainly should make our environments welcoming, our message should remain dangerous.

 We’re called to leave everything to follow Christ.
 We’re invited to believe God for the impossible.
 We’re told to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.
 We’re told that to find our life we have to lose it first.

There is nothing safe about that message. May our churches become a safe place to encounter a dangerous message.
What are some of the ways you offer a welcoming environment while presenting a dangerous message?

I'm coming off the heels of being let go from the church staff at my home church. This happened in early February and I said ‘OK God, what’s next?’ and I found myself heart-focused on writing and recording what is amounting to my first worship CD.

So even though it hurt to be let go, I found myself rapidly redirected into the creation of my own ministry. I also poured myself into scripture and spent a lot of time in prayer. All good stuff right?

Sometimes I’m my own worst enemy…. I sit here and second guess myself and wonder if there is such a thing as a rebound ministry… weird thought.

Up to now, I’ve been very excited and optimistic about this project. Yesterday, after having taken a break from the church here at home, by the pastor’s recommendation, and taken time for me and family to heal, I went to meet with him and talk about things in hindsight.

It was good meeting, uplifting and full of forgiveness. But, in the end, I walked away uneasy.

It’s easy to say ‘what’s next?’ to God, but sometimes the answer creates conflict between heart and mind.