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Starting a New Church

By Jeremy Myers
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Starting a New Church

Scientists always get excited about seeing new stars being born on the other side of the galaxy. Well, I get excited about seeing new churches being born. Or maybe I should say, the church expanding in new ways.

Anyway, Sol Stallings over at Looking for Church has recently started meeting with a group of people in his home, and has been making posts about it and getting feedback from several other bloggers I read and follow.

If you are looking at starting a similar group, you will enjoy reading these posts. They answer questions such as:ย How do you gather people? Who do you start with? Where do you meet? What should you do? Who should lead?

Here are some of the links, as well as some of the other bloggers who have been in the discussion. If you have posted about this on your blog, and I forgot to mention you, post it in a comment, and I will add a link.

From Sol Stallings at Looking for Church:

  • Starting with a Meeting
  • We Want To Get Together
  • Familyโ€ฆ Not โ€œChurchโ€
  • A Familyโ€ฆ With A Purpose
  • Donโ€™t Over Think It

From Alan Knox at The Assembling of the Church

  • Starting together

From Arthur Sido at The Voice of One Crying in Suburbia

  • Starting Something Special

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Discipleship

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Dropping your Pants to Enter Church

By Jeremy Myers
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Dropping your Pants to Enter Church

There might be a reason circumcision lost it’s significance as a sign of covenant membership…there’s only one way to tell who is “in.”

Temple Inscription warning Gentiles to keep out of Court of Israelites
A Greek script inscription from Herod's Temple, late 1st century BCE. It warns gentiles to refrain from entering the Temple enclosure, on pain of death.

Herod’s Temple, which was the one Jesus and the disciples would have used, had several different courts, a court of Gentiles, a Court of Women, a Court of Israelites (for men only), and a Court of Priests. One of the duties of the temple priests was to make sure that only the right people got into the right courts. Anyone could be in the Court of Gentiles, and it was easy to figure out who could enter the Court of Women, but how could the priest stationed at the entrance to the Court of Israelite men keep out all those who were not Israelites? There was really only one way to distinguish them from everyone else, and that is through their circumcision. It’s possible that all they did was post a warning sign (like the stone inscription on the left), but it’s also possible that they took other measures to keep out all who were not Gentiles… After all, the Jews were known to do everything necessary to maintain the purity of their temple.

This gives new meaning to the handshake of welcome you receive from the greeter when you enter some churches. Sometimes they even hug you. As forced and as awkward as that is, it could be much, much worse.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Discipleship, Theology of the Church

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Creativity: The First Christian Act

By Jeremy Myers
17 Comments

Creativity: The First Christian Act

There is nothing more needed inย Christianityย today than creativity.

We don’t need more doctrinal precision and biblical knowledge, more conferences and programs. We don’t need more cookie-cutter youth groups copied from the megachurch down the street. We don’t want to hear another worship song with the same beat, the same tempo, the same words, and the same three chords as every other worship song.

Christianity suffers from the pandemic disease of just copying each other in what we do, what we say, and how we look. As the world struggles with the ethical dilemmas of whether or not we should allow clones, Christianity should just be shrugging our shoulders; We’ve been making clones for hundreds of years, from the way our buildings look to the way our people look. Sure, there are “cooler” versions out there, but they still gather at the same old places at the same old times to do the same old things for the same old purposes.

When are we going to break out of the mold and do something that shocks, surprises, and amazes?

Let me back up and start from the beginning. The very beginning.

In the Beginning
Christianity must be creative because first and foremost, we follow a creative God. The very first act of God recorded in Scripture is creation. An eye-popping, universe-exploding, noisy, colorful,ย cacophonyย of creative power unleashed into darkness and chaos.

But when we see darkness and chaos all around us, all we can think of doing is gathering together in our huddled masses, circling the wagons, and praying for the soon return of the Lord Jesus Christ who will ride in on His white stallion with thunder in his footsteps andย lightningย in his fist, and cast down all our foes, restore peace and justice, and finally set all things right. Then He will rule and reign and wipe away every tear.

Doesn’t that sound great? Of course it does. But I sometimes Jesus is watching all this, shaking His head and saying, “What do they think I left them there for?”

And we cry out, “But what can we do? There are so few of us against the gathering storm! We are weak; they are strong! We are few; they are many!” Hmm, that sounds an awful lot like some cries I’ve heard out of Scripture in various places. I’ll let you find them on your own.

Jesus, I think, tells us the beginning place. The way to find the solution is not with refortifying our defenses, preaching longer, or singing louder. When chaos and darkness descend upon us, the first step toward light and order is creativity. This is what Jesus meant when He said that we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless we become like little children.

Like a Child
One of the things that characterize little children is creativity. They do not think about what they can and cannot do. They do not tally the forces arrayed against them. They simply imagine another world, a place where people never die, where nobody goes hungry, and the lion literally lays down with the lamb. In their creative world, dreams become reality.

Does imagination make the dreams become reality? Of course not. It’s naive to think so. But this does not mean we should not creatively imagine. Without creative imagination, we will continue to tackle age-old problems with dreary and decaying solutions: “Bomb them!” “Tax that!” “Hoard this!” “Sell those!” “Gather the wagons! Get out the guns!”

There has to be a better way. A way of light and love, peace and unity, healing and service. A way of flexibility and freedom, wonder and imagination.

What is that way? Honestly, I don’t know. But we’ll never find it, until and unless we begin with creativity.

* * * * *

This blog post was part of a Synchroblog on Creation and Creativity. Here are the other contributors:

  • Bethany Stedman โ€“ย How God Creates
  • EmmaNadine โ€“ย Creativity and Christianity
  • Bill Sahlman โ€“ย Created, Continued Creativity
  • Heidi Renee โ€“ย Synchroblog Creativity and Christianity
  • Annie Bullock โ€“ย Old Things are New
  • John Oโ€™Keefe โ€“ย What is Half of 11
  • Tim Nichols โ€“ย Artist-Priests in Godโ€™s Poetic World
  • Maurice Broaddus โ€“ย The Artist and the Church
  • Steve Dehner โ€“ย The Divine Projectionist
  • Ellen Haroutunian โ€“ย Creativity and Christianity: It Matters
  • Tammy Carter โ€“ย His Instrument His Song
  • Steve Hayes โ€“ย Creativity and Worship
  • Martaโ€™s Mathoms โ€“ย Mythos and Create-ivity as a Spiritual Act
  • Peter Walker โ€“ย Creativity and Christianity?
  • William Lecorchick โ€“ย Heaven and Hell
  • Jacob Boehlman โ€“ย Godโ€™s Magicians

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Discipleship, Theology of Salvation

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Gay and Christian

By Jeremy Myers
23 Comments

Gay and Christian

Washed and Waiting by Wesley Hill

Free Book Offer! Read Below…

For people who are gay but who also want to follow Jesus, “coming out” to church people probably feels very close to what lepers felt in the days of Jesus when they first found out they had leprosy. A gay Christian often experiences the same rejection. People who used to love them now fear them. People who used to be friends now avoid them. People they don’t know condemn them.

And frequently today, just like then, after all the rejection and pat answers, gay Christians experience deep loneliness, shame, and fear. Sometimes they wonder if the religious people are right…maybe God is judging them. Maybe God is angry at them. Maybe God does hate them. Maybe they really are lepers.

Wesley Hill struggled with all of this. He is a gay Christian, and recently wrote a book called Washed and Waiting about the struggles and experiences he has faced. I don’t know what your viewpoint is on someone being gay and a Christian, but let me suggest that you read his book before you talk about the “choice” Wesley Hill made to be gay (he didn’t), or how his father was abusive or absent (he wasn’t), or how Wesley should just “man up” and fall in love with a woman (he’s tried), or get “cured” by reading the Bible and praying more (he probably reads the Bible and prays more than you or I).

He shares his story in the book, explaining how he struggled with living according to the Gospel as a gay person, and how he experiences deep loneliness and shame in nearly all of his relationships. I think that every person struggles with these same issues, whether or not we are gay, but from reading the book, it seems such struggles are amplified and magnified for gay Christians.

I’m not sure his answers will satisfy everyone (gay or not), but Wesley came to these conclusions:

  • The call of the Gospel is that he not fulfill his homoerotic sexual desires. Celibacy is the route Wesley has chosen.
  • The loneliness he feels can be alleviated in the same way it should be for all Christians: in a loving and trusting community of other followers of Jesus.
  • His homosexual orientation is not something to be ashamed of, but is a gift from God. God uses Wesley’s homosexuality as a way to love and bless other people–especially gay people–who do not know where they stand before God.

If you know someone who isย gay and trying to follow Jesus, or simply want to understand the fear, pain, loneliness, and struggle that gay Christians feel, I highly recommend this book.

FREE BOOK OFFER: If you post a thoughtful reply to this post (not just “Nice post, Jeremy!”), or share a story about yourself, or how you are showing love and acceptance to gay people, I will enter you in a drawing on February 14 for a free copy of Washed and Waiting.

For everybody else, here is a Free Preview PDF.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Discipleship, Theology of Salvation

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Name Calling Christians

By Jeremy Myers
9 Comments

Name Calling Christians

I got called a name today by another Christian. I did not especially like it. I was called an agnostic.ย  I looked at him kind of weird when he said it, thinking he was joking. But he wasn’t. We have known each other for about two years, and though we agree on many basic doctrines of Christianity, we don’t agree on everything, and we definitely do not see eye to eye on some central Christian practices like baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and church attendance.

So today he called me an agnostic.

Given the context of our conversation, I was not sure he knew what the word meant, so I tried to get some clarification. ย “What do you mean?” ย I asked. ย “Agnostics do not know whether or not God exists.ย Atheists believe God does not exist. Agnostics are open to the idea, but unsure. I believe God exists, so I am not an agnostic.”

But he persisted. He countered that even though I believed God existed, he held several beliefs about the attributes and actions of God about which I was uncertain. Therefore, in his mind I was an agnostic.

It’s odd, isn’t it, when we use our own beliefs to determine the orthodoxy of someone else?

Anyway, it soon became evident that I would not be able to convince him that I was not an agnostic. All I could do was chuckle to myself and walk away. If he wanted to call me an agnostic simply because I didn’t believe the same things he did with the same certainty, let him.

Later on, I realized that for him, agnosticย  is probably equivalent toย  unbeliever. If so, I guess that would also make me a backslider, and possibly even a heretic. He is probably praying for me right now to “return to the fold.”

Do you ever notice how many names we Christians like to call people? Adulterers, heathens, pagans, unbelievers, unchurched, the list goes on and on. (I wrote a post about this a while back.) I wonder if they dislike it as much as I disliked being labeled an agnostic. Maybe they don’t care. Maybe they don’t know.

But one thing is for sure, labeling others in such ways affects how we view and interact with them. So I propose a label that everyone can except.ย Let s stop the name calling, and just call people what they are. Let’s call them “people.”

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Discipleship

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