Ancient stories being rewritten

Two stories from yesterday. Both true.

story the first

I sat in my office talking with a guy about the Bible. We have been meeting almost daily for a few weeks, working our way through a book with lots of blanks in it. We looked up verses and filled in the blanks and talked about the answers, me talking a lot about some of the answers.

Yesterday we started a new thing, reading our way through the book of Matthew. The reason? At the end of Matthew, Jesus says that we are to make disciples (apprentices), teaching them to obey everything that Jesus commanded. And so I thought, start reading from the beginning of the book of Matthew and see what Jesus commanded. And that’s what we started yesterday, just reading through Matthew.

We looked at the geneology, noting that there are only four women listed, each one associated with men who failed in big ways. We turned back to the book of Genesis and looked at one of those stories. As we saw the 28 year gap in the story of Jesus, we turned to Luke for the one story we have of Jesus being 12. We talked about why there are four different stories in what we know as the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John). We talked about why Matthew wasn’t written until 40 years or so after Jesus went into the clouds.

When we got to John’s baptism in Matthew 3, I almost failed. My friend asked a question about baptism and I almost said, “I’ll look that up and let you know.” And then I said, “let me tell you about commentaries.” I showed him another tool for understanding the Bible. I showed him how to use it. I let him take the commentary for Matthew with him.

I came so close to doing the learning for him, so close to keeping him from becoming a disciple, so close to doing what I do every day.

And then I started laughing, because I realized that he and I are involved in the very ancient process of discipling, of, if I may be very bold, of me being a rabbi. We are working our way through scripture and life, looking for understanding, not rushing, forging in him an understanding and a way of understanding, forging in me a new way of thinking about teaching.

Which is, of course, the ancient way that actually works.

story the second.

I sat next to Nancy last night, watching for the first time “thoroughly modern millie”, a stage musical done by students at a local high school. We sat in the balcony, and because we didn’t have a child in the show, we could just watch.

I won’t tell the whole story. However, just read this.

After having bumped into a girl freshly arrived in New York and telling her to go back to Kansas, the lead male character sees her again and this time really sees her. He sings “Oh, the places I would like to show you, although I hardly know you, I’ve a funny feeling we make a perfect pair.”

I sat next to my wife of 24 years and thought “I agree completely. With every clause.”

In the second act, we wanted to see something in the playbill. It was, of course, dark. Nancy took out of her purse a little flashlight/credit card thing she got for Christmas. I’m not sure whether she has ever used it. She squeezed it and it seemed as if a floodlight had been turned on. She quickly let go, we looked at each other with surprise and delight and at least one of us giggled.

And once again, I was feeling part of an ancient story, one that starts with, “for this reason, a man….”

Twice in a day. What wonderful grace.

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Work Day

A bunch of people got together to work on our church building today.  They had fun and, while working on the building, I think they did some building of the church as well. Some people who didn’t know each other before today fixed that. Some people who had worked together in Gulfport, MS, brought those relationships back to Fort Wayne.

Thanks, everyone, for your work together. And for your work on the building.

underneath

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Originally uploaded by jon.swanson.

just a little catching up to do.

1. The 2 hour video story project works like this. I give myself two hours of working time. I have to have the idea and start shooting pretty quickly. I give myself permission to do the capture, editing, music selection, saving, and uploading on the same day as the shooting but at a later time. However, the total time on the project itself has to be two hours or less.

As I said in the first video, the point behind two hours is that I want to create something in the same time I would spend watching two episodes of evening drama. I make no claims as to the comparative quality between my work and theirs. From a technical quality point, they win. But as to the content….I’m not the judge.

So far, I have used Hipcast once and YouTube once. I’ll keep thinking about that. And if you have an idea for one of these, shoot it yourself. Just tag it 2hourvideo (as I did with the YouTube)

2. I’m reading about simplicity in several places these days, and one of the books today was talking about the need to figure out the most elemental ways to talk about God. How simple can we be in defining and describing church, Jesus, faith? How removed from church language and abstraction?

I think that this question may be what is driving the video project and my conversations with people and several other things right now. What are the barnacles that humans attach to God and how can we scrape them off on our way to just knowing Him?

3. Recently, I was talking with some people about church. I mentioned that I find lots of people who struggle with all the human rules. One of the people raised his hand, indicating his own struggles with those issues. The other two people missed this and started talking about the importance of one of those rules. I think they missed his hand. I love them all. I pray for us all.

Sometimes it isn’t all that pretty underneath. Nothing is painted, there are salt deposits, and rust. But we’ve got to work on the foundations for the rest of the work to have stability.

2 hour video stories - episode 2

My goal is to do the whole project in only two hours. This time, we tied in driving practice as well.

Enjoy.

On the road

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go somewhere else.

A couple days ago, Rick Dugan started a wonderful conversation about simplicity and simplifying life, ministry, church. As of this writing, there have been 16 comments from three continents. Here are a couple more and then go read the conversation at Rick’s place.

1. Five of us know each other, and four of us see each other regularly. This conversation is flowing out of and into face-to-face conversations, email conversations, conversations with God (individually and in twos and threes), and conversations with authors dead and living. Ironically, then, as we are seeking to understand simplicity, it is happening in an incredibly complex technological/interpersonal mileau. And yet, we don’t think about the complexity because we aren’t trying to understand the internet, we are trying to find the heart and mind of God as it applies to our daily lives.

2. We are being a form of a small group, in ways that I can’t decipher but I know to be true.

3. from David Hansen, a book mentioned in this conversation:

“People believe counseling is a great panacea. Yet many are loath to go to a professional counselor. That costs money and real counselors ask hard questions.

‘What I do is a mixture of personal friendship, spiritual direction, and discipleship. I go where people are–yes, I make house calls–visit them and listen to them. They like that part. But when it comes to the solution part of my dialogue, they find out I get real moralistic and even pretty demanding. I tell them what Jesus says about their situation and that they need to repent of their sins and start following him.

‘Of course I am sensitive to men and women who have been subjected to sever mental and physical abuse. Their shattered souls soak up guilt the way acoustical tiles absorb sound. I have referred many such people to competent counselors and continued my pastoral care. But many of the people who come to me for counseling want a quick fix; they want me to give them a way round living a moral life, a shortcut to happiness that skips following Jesus in costly discipleship.

‘Since I do discipleship instead of counseling, I find I have a fair amount of free time on my hands, time I can spend praying.”

“The Art of Pastoring: Ministry without all the answers” 1994 pp71-72.

What is a delight to me is the friendships involved in Rick’s conversation, from people who are NOT interested, really, in the quick fix but who are engaging consistently in the growing process. A great team.

Now, go read this.

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gifts are.

There is this interesting teaching in the Bible that people who are Christ followers are given a gift or two. These gifts, called ’spiritual gifts’ are abilities that a person has that are to be used for the benefit of the rest of the Body, the linked-together community of Christ followers. In fact, these gifts are part of what make us all different, as different as hands and feet and elbows and noses.

The reason they are called gifts is that they aren’t something we have earned or made or anything. They are gifts. These aren’t necessarily helpful for gainful employment, and may not
show up in any other area of the person’s life other than for the good
of the group. Some people have the gift of mercy, of being able to care. Some have gifts of hospitality or teaching or wisdom or creative building or administration.

Yesterday, some of us were talking about the number of people in our congregation who need special care. Some have brain injuries, some have emotional injuries, some have physical challenges. I say with great joy, we are being trusted with a growing group of these people.

Here’s what surprised me as we were asking God how to best love our congregation: In the middle of what we call praying, I realized that anyone who identifies themselves as a Christ follower has at least one spiritual gift. This means that the guy who is developmentally challenged, who can’t reason beyond elementary school, that can’t find a job even with the help of the agency charged with that task-he has a spiritual gift and is needed, not just tolerated by, but needed by the Body.

In the case of this guy, I think his gift is encouragement.

I just was talking about this with an educator from our congregation who said, “so how do we help discover these gifts? Traditional inventories don’t work. Maybe, just like we watch a child to see what skills they have, we watch people to see what gifts they have.”  And I think she’s right.

Too often, I think, we look at people who need special care as opportunities to show how loving we are, how caring we can be. In fact, we can get prideful about our humble service. But I’m thinking that it’s not about how loving we can be, it’s about how much we need to be loved by these people who need care.

I don’t know what this means, this challenge to be consistent with our theology of spiritual gifts. But I think it means we have to think more.

Oh. and pray much much more.

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2 hour video stories [1]

Start to finish in 2 hours of production time. Actual clock time is 9 hours, but the shooting, dubbing, editing and processing is less than 2 hours. And it shows.

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at risk of writing too often

I have time to think right now, and look back a bit. So here, go with me.

1. As Nancy and I were walking around the mall today, I watched the number of phones and wondered, “Are there more words being produced than there used to be?” I mean, what happened to the conversations that couldn’t happen before because there wasn’t a phone available? What happened to the crises? What happened to the affection? Is there a net increase or decrease in relationship struggles now that we can talk more simply (from a technology perspective) but now our inability to communicate is just highlighted more.

2. I shot a couple videos yesterday which are the previous two posts. The first of the two, the one on fear, grew out of a conversation with someone. As we talked, the story from Joshua 3 came to mind. As I read it, I realized that the priests at the front of the line had to get their feet wet. It was a huge trust test.

If you watch the video, let me know whether it makes sense, whether it works as a way to tell stories. I need the feedback, if you will.

3. The second video, about Fort Wayne, celebrates the impending visit of Chris Brogan. After 10 months of talking and writing and blogging and all, we will finally *meet*.

4. A couple weeks ago, I listed several thoughts about my current thinking about being a Christ follower.  Chris Marsden is trying to figure this out, too. He is doing some wonderful reflecting on what church should be and could be. What is cool (and terrifying for him some days) is that he is doing the reflecting with his life, not just his head.

5. A bunch of people from our church, the people who are responsible for the lives of people in middle school and high school, spent Friday night and Saturday thinking and praying and talking about how to do this better. We were up until 1:30 am, and then a bunch of us were talking with God about what to do already at 9:00 am. What impressed me was their willingness to be honest with themselves and God about our own struggles and challenges.
In the interest of full disclosure, we did talk about the struggles with some situations, but this moved into trying to understand how to work with real, individual people rather than the amorphous “kids” and trying to understand how to not just create programs but to develop relationships.

What was so exciting to me was that our kids have these 15 people, from 20-50 something who are willing to weep and to talk to God and to each other. Out of relationship will come relationship.

6. I just realized that all of these have to do with relationship. hmmm. Does that mean something? What do YOU think?

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appearing May 1