I’m a bit more than half way through teaching a small group of adult learners about Evil, God’s Justice, Love, Mercy, Reconciliation, and Kingdom of God living with great guidance of a slew of videos from Tom Wright.
When we decry Evil we mustn’t stop there for we are the remedy for it.
God’s Kingdom is made manifest through us. We exact justice by helping those who are suffering rather than through the power games a godless world endorses and implements.
It is not about self-interest, but self-sacrifice.
Our fuel is the knowing that we are indeed image bearers and creations of God made from the outpouring and overflowing of his great love. We are God’s Beloved and we offer that gift to the world, that they too, each one is Beloved as well. We especially find the ones that are overlooked or oppressed or unhealed.
We do more than associate with these outcasts, the ones that others find embarrassing or scandalous, we suffer with them and enter their pain.
Sometimes simple seeing and hearing someone fully and taking them into our loving kindness will well convey that they are God’s Beloved because we’ve treated them with such honor. An honor that is due them because they are God’s children.
I made up this slide and it may be a good poster too, so I offer it up to you. (click the image) Pin it if you’d like.
And now a question for you.
What particular group of misfits holds a soft spot in your heart? Send me a voicemail or leave a message.
Cool cats used to say, “See you on the flipside.” Apparently when you flip a day onto its back you get another day, not the nighttime.
A cat (yes, I’m talking felines now) works the same way. If you flip a cat over it doesn’t hit its backside, but it’s flipside. The right side. The same side it should be on. A dog? Forget it. It’s a trip to animal hospital.
The flipside of a coin doesn’t work the same as a cat. The flipside of the coin is the other side. It’s the head or the tail: the opposite. Most people want money and not cats.
Is the flipside like the Kingdom of God?
I went to my first Special Olympics to cheer on my son in the swimming event. Backstroke and freestyle. I saw the flipside. The Kingdom of God is like the Special Olympics. Those who are always last in life get a chance to be first. It’s actually fierce competition, in case you’re wondering.
Athletes train for months. 70% of the swimmers would have bested me in the pool despite possessing Downs Syndrome, mental retardation, autism, and so forth. Counted out in every other point, but no more. It was a day of winning and accomplishment.
Athletes are grouped according to skill level, and sometimes, age. Poor swimming form meets with disqualification. Did you get that? You can be disqualified! I was stunned.
So, not everyone gets a medal in S.O.? Nope. Only one athlete gets first place. This makes the victory legit. A first place medal really means something. It really means #1. It really gives an athlete something to fully celebrate and gives a family something to truly cheer about.
The huge difference between the Special Olympics and the typical Olympics and most other sporting events, is that each athlete is treated like a winner. Everyone is acknowledged. No one is a loser. No one puts a mic in their face and says, “What went wrong?” If one flounders in the water…well, like a cat…one still gets a participation ribbon. Everyone is accepted no matter how they do.
This is how we can enact the Kingdom of God right now. Find someone who’s usually last. Economically, socially, culturally, mentally, and then find a way to make them first, to offer and enact true acceptance. It’s the flipside. It’s the righted way of the world as God’s wants it to be.
Will I see you on the flipside?
What are some ideas to reveal the Kingdom of God flipside?
Rachel and Mark will launching books on the topic this fall, under the same publisher. Don claims he uses his blog to float book ideas and topics, so he’ll likely take a crack at it too. He’s been asking girls “why they give up sex” (sic.), and guys “why they hook up”, in separate posts, this week. He’s deleted 2 controversial gender-themed posts that he cranked out (his words), also.
Most often this issue is termed (generally) “gender issues” or “gender roles in the church”. We find words like “leadership”, authority”, “power”, “ordination”, “justice”, and “equality” used. A lot.
Here’s the trouble. These decades-old (or worse) labels (i.e. egalitarian, complementarian) don’t work well anymore. The popular writers discussing it right now haven’t tried to leave the worn out and confusing labels behind. We need a new model. We need more accurate descriptions, which is what labels try to do.
But, WHY Label? ugh.
I’m not a big fan of labels in the first place. I find them quite constricting. Yet, even if we don’t like labels, we have to agree that this sort of position makes us an “anti-label person”…this is, obviously, you guessed it, a label. Run everyone, a circular argument!
Categoriesare limiting and inadequate, and yet they are also necessary. We can’t hope to communicate without them. Keeping that in mind, I don’t want to be under the choke hold of worn out labels, as I enter this “hot topic”.
So, for the sake of discussion and mutual understanding, I’ll start very differently than all the others I’ve seen covering, or dancing around, the topic. I’ll propose some new terms and categories. Innovation moves us forward. Yes, we are living in very exciting times, my friends.
This is what brought me to this point: In the red corner, we have Rachel Evans. She claims to be an Egalitarian. In the black and blue corner, Mark Driscoll flexes his Octogon man muscles, and puts the smack down on the issue with his version of the Complementarian view of gender roles. Is Donald Miller in the yellow corner? He might assist Rachel in a tag team sort of thing. We shall see.
Where does that leave us? I. don’t. know. But, I’m seeing very little positive progress.
CH- ch-Ch-Chan–ges! When it comes to these issues, most recognize that change is afoot. Authors are taking it on. People are making statements, and firming up their positions. Still, nobody can really define where we are going, or where we should be.
For instance:
Conservative churches who have women leading ministries rarely dare call these females “ministers” or “pastors”*. Oh, no. They are “directors“. Is this satisfying? What’s going on, here?
I think I can hear some of the inner monologue now…
“Darn those working women of the last 30 years. Things have gotten confusing once we operated on the assumption that women were capable. Why can’t they just stay in line? Hurry, hurry, define what male and female is! The sky is falling.”
DeLayian Thought: Simply put: I’d like to propose a new term and viewpoint. Let’s try the word and idea of “Capacitarian”. Yes, my friends, a new word for a new time.
If you noticed that the root of this word, I just made up for the purpose of coining it and creating a new term of engagement, is capacity, give yourself 28 points. (It’s like Shrute bucks.)
You want Biblical backing? No problem. It’s based on Paul’s admonitions, no less. That’s right, the big leagues. 1 Corinthians 12-13. More on this later.
(You probably thought I’d go with Jesus being the first Rabbi to have female students, right? Or God allowing the scandalous idea of Jesus’ Resurrection to be validated by females. Nope. Why drag Jesus into this? It’s uncomfortable territory many complementarians aren’t ready for quite yet, anyway.)
The Capacitarian Axis:
Rather than look to gender, the garden of eden, body parts, or middle-eastern morays of 2 millennia ago, to pick up on the conversation (as usual), how about a Kingdom of God vantage point, which, by definition, transcends gender and culture both? See Galatians 3:26-29. It’s so crazy, it just might work. It’s a fresh starting point.
In the next post:
Defining “Capacitarianism”
pronounced: <CAP-pass-it-Tarry-ann-is- uhm>
It’s long overdue to create new and fresh smelling dialogue and definitions for how we operate and cooperate in community and within the church. In the next few posts I (and I hope we) will deal with moving toward a recoup of the way we follow Jesus.
Here’s where you come in.
This is no place to go it alone (I don’t plan to).
Share your thoughts on the issue. Do you feel comfortable with the typical labels that relate to doctrine on gender?
Please, chime in, interact, and contribute to finding a more abundant path–together. A pathway for communion and fellowship with each other, at a better spot, where we don’t use our labels as crutches or bullets. And, a spot where power and agenda isn’t part of the equation. A precious place where we enact and embody the gospel of grace in and through our interactions.
Begin with me, please. Thank you for your help.
–Lisa
Endnote:
*A quick look at the word and context of the word “pastor”, indicates a shepherd vocation. So, a helper, servant, and guide, not a kingpin. Just saying…
This Sunday is my final lesson in the Route 66 Series (Adventures in Spiritual Formation). I will be reviewing the last 11 weeks (briefly), and then capping it off with an examination of the passage of what has come to be called, The Lord’s Prayer. And we will pray it communally as well. It’s a Christian unity thing.
Do you have any questions or concerns about the Lord’s Prayer?
Here’s a tiny excerpt from a seminary research paper I did of the theology, literary structure, and message of The Lord’s Prayer.
…The Lord’s Prayer comes as the centerpiece in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7:29) in which Jesus lays out what is vital for citizens in the Kingdom of God. Early in the Christian movement, the practice of saying the Lord’s Prayer before Communion (weekly) and [typically] praying it three times per day is documented. It formed a “token of their identity as Christians,” and was also called, the “prayer of believers”.1
The elements of adoration in The Lord’s Prayer propel us to appreciate God’s immanence and transcendence: a theological fundamental. God is hallowed, his kingdom heavenly, his earthly kingdom is both current and imminent. His kingdom will be forevermore.
The worship and adoration of God is crucial in prayer, and in this Prayer, not just because God is most worthy of it, but because we are spiritually formed by our saying, believing, and embracing those truths. We commune with God, and know him more fully as this reality is further congealed in our minds each time this is lived out.
Theologian Kevin Vanhoover contends that in praying the Lord’s Prayer we together experience our Father, our common sonship, and common our inheritance with Jesus. It is precisely the communal aspect of adoring that helps us to be ordered rightly. Furthermore, Vanhoozer states that when praying in this manner with Jesus, we participate in the family of God, and acknowledge God as Lord, while acknowledging oneself as contingent in the filial relationship made possible by the Son of God and the Spirit of adoption.2
1 Jeremias Joachim, The Prayers of Jesus. Studies in Biblical Theology, Second Series 6 (Naperville, IL: Alec R. Allenson, Inc., 1967), 63, 78.
2 Kevin J. Vanhoozer The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), 225.
Literary Structure of the Sermon on the Mount (proposal) Literary structure/pattern and use of the Lord's Prayer Matt. 6:9-15. (proposal)
Jesus as Servant (Upside Down Leadership)Peter Upside Down, by Sherry Camhy
Jeffrey Roop
Thank you to Jeff Roop(not to be confused with Jeff Roop, Actor: Vampire High; born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, Canada) for weighing in on Leadership today with this article.
Servant Leadership
Servant leadership is a common theme within Vineyard churches with the emphasis on function rather than position or title. With mega-churches to simple church networks covering the spectrum of faith communities in the Vineyard, how the function works out will vary depending on the size of the church. I have reservations with churches adopting business models of leadership. The church is not a business with a CEO but the Body of Christ with Christ as the head.
The life of Jesus is the oft cited example of servant leadership. Some have raised the question though of service over leading [TheJesusVirus.org] Authority is often the issue under consideration regarding matters of leadership. Jesus puts it to rest as far as hierarchy goes: not so among you, the greatest is the servant of all. He presents the upside-down view of the Kingdom of God regarding authority.
Kingdom authority is different than the leadership offered in the business world. The world system is (often) beastly with no worries of serving others (although this is changing on some fronts). Those within the Body of Christ are called to submit to one another and to Christ. This would seem to include those in leadership.
Now with this level playing field of mutual submission, what of Hebrews 13 and other references to leadership? If we interpret these passages in light of the example of Jesus Christ, I believe authority and leadership will look different from commonly understood. Consider the following:
1. Recognize those in leadership as gifts to the church. (Eph 5) We often recognize the manifestation of certain grace gifts (charisma) in practice so why not recognize those people as gifting the church?
2. Reflect on their influence. As I’m seeing leadership, influence and persuasion are key. The words shared by them are not ultimate but should lead us to contemplate on the final Word, Jesus Christ. The ultimate authority is in Christ and any other authority is derivative of Him and reflecting His character.
3. Look to their example. In a few places the Apostle Paul encourages an ‘imitate me as I imitate Christ.’ I’m sure such imitation will not be 100%, yet we should be able to see something of Christ reflected and modeled in their life.
3. Help them and befriend them. Often in traditional churches, those in leadership face crushing loneliness and spiritual fatigue. If the opportunity presents itself, be a friend and support them as a friend, not as a leader. Allow them to be a simple brother or sister in Christ.
4. Reserve judgment. Too often when someone in leadership falls for whatever reason we tend to rush to judgment. Remember, they are frail human beings like the rest of us. They too can stumble and fall. They are not out of reach of grace. If you face this in your congregation, help to lovingly restore them in a spirit of gentleness.
5. Always look to Christ. Any leader in the church should point others to Christ, who is the True Shepherd. If the leader creates dependence on themselves rather than Christ in the church, the authority of Christ is being subverted. I’ve heard too much talk of leadership, authority and submission lead to fear and control. Those in leadership are to be a sign to others, guiding them to freedom, love and service found in Christ.
Questions
Only Jesus Christ is the head of the church, the question before leadership is this, are you willing to give up control for the sake of an authority found solely in service? When did ministry become means of authority rather than the place of service?
Thanks, Jeff!
Well, friends, let’s continue the discussion. What are your thoughts on Leadership, and servant leadership? Do you embrace the “Upside Down model” Jeff mentions?
