[Ed. note: published in the October 2011 issues of Tristate Voice and Love Express.]

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” – 2 Chronicles 7:14

What if the antidote to a self-obsessed, hyper-branded, me-first culture isn’t more mega-ministries?

What if it’s not customer service desks in church lobbies catering to consumer-driven church shoppers?  What if arena preachers and sub-culture rock bands fuel the look-at-me virus rather than compel us to look at Him?  What if, rather than stem the tide, churches have become propelled by it?

In the last thirty years, American evangelicalism has manufactured more larger-than-life personalities, corporate marketing, and self-improvement hype than ever before.

We parallel a cultural narcissism that accelerates at a dizzying rate – 140 characters at a time on Twitter and elsewhere.

What if the Church became countercultural instead?  What if churches and church leaders embraced a dose of old-fashioned humility?

Like the humility described in the oft-quoted passage from 2 Chronicles 7:14 promising national forgiveness and healing.  The kind marked by associating less with logos and egos, and more with a God who calls and brands us as his own.

Often overlooked in the Chronicles passage is the conditional nature of its promise.  Forgiveness and healing are not guarantees – even when we pray and seek his face and turn from wickedness.

The underlying condition: church people who HUMBLE themselves, exchanging their names and brands for His, seek His face rather than promoting theirs, and turn from wickedness, including cultural obsessions with self.

On the eve of the tenth anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in our nation’s history, New York City glimpsed what this kind of humility looks like.

The gathering to commemorate 9/11 was simple. Reaching Out: A Sacred Assembly was organized in six weeks by a visionary associate pastor from a neighborhood church in Manhattan’s lower east side, and a team of selfless volunteers.  Three years earlier, just after his ordination, he envisioned his congregation and others in the neighborhood uniting as one Church to lift up one Jesus in their shared community.

As they would reach out to each other, Pastor Louis Carlo of Abounding Grace Ministries reasoned, in humility they could reach up to heaven and out to their neighbors.

He let the vision germinate for two years, then presented it to his senior pastor and three neighborhood colleagues in the fall of 2010.  Two prayer and worship gatherings followed.  The third was overdue.

On July 28, Pastor Lou and a friend were praying in an otherwise empty, seldom used amphitheater at East River Park along the FDR Drive.  He left with a sense that the next Reaching Out prayer and worship gathering should be there, where church people could gather in a public space and declare with one voice the Lordship of Jesus and His selfless love for New York.

He was also persuaded to invite other churches from the city, not just his neighborhood, and to convene on the eve of the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

Some members of his team called the idea insane, because how could any right-minded pastor expect to produce a citywide event in six weeks, when four and a half of those vacation-filled weeks were in August?  His response: if one man or ministry couldn’t pull it off, then maybe God would be glorified.

Undaunted, he led, and the pieces fell in place.  Neighborhood, city, and even national ministries embraced the event’s nameless, faceless vision.  Sixty ministries showed up, and thirty-five ministers – many of them “legends” within evangelical Christendom – led prayer, read scriptures, and reflected from the platform.  They were given the pulpit for 60, 120, or 180 seconds.  Almost all of them stayed on time.  Not one of them was introduced.

In their obscurity, God’s name and face was the only one that mattered.

What if the antidote to cultural narcissism is a Church that reflects and promotes Christ alone?

Imagine the possibilities.

- Jeremy Del Rio is trying to figure out what this kind of humility looks like. He still blogs (“in pursuit of authenticity”) at JeremyDelRio.com and tweets @JeremyDelRio. For info on future Reaching Out gatherings, visit reachingoutnyc.com.

How Did 9/11 Change Urban Ministry?

[Ed. Note: Published on UrbanFaith.com on September 9, 2011. Go here for the full story.]

By Christine A. Scheller 

With the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in mind, Christian leaders Jeremy Del Rio, DeForest Soaries, and Shane Claiborne reflect on how 9/11 changed urban ministry in America.

Sunday marks the tenth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and Flight 93, so we asked three urban leaders who will be participating in memorial events how the attacks impacted urban ministry.

Here’s what they said:

Jeremy Del Rio, Esq., New York

Jeremy Del Rio is executive director of Community Solutions, Inc. a faith based youth and community development agency in New York City. On September 10, Del Rio will participate inReaching Out, A Sacred Assembly, a prayer and worship service in New York City.

September 11, 2001 exposed gaps in urban ministry in ways that could not be ignored any longer. The church’s response to those gaps demonstrated grace and hope and provided a glimpse of what might be one day.  For me, here are three lessons learned over the last decade:

1) The magnitude of the attack and the scope of its impact required a Jesus who was far bigger than any one ministry or personality to heal. It forced the Church to confront the sad reality that we were too disconnected from each other to be a useful partner to our city during a crisis. It’s impossible to mobilize 7,000 churches quickly when they aren’t already connected and coordinated, so the city didn’t call us initially for help. Pastors and church leaders had to repent for being lone rangers and intentionally link arms during the common crisis in order to respond effectively and be Christ to a city that was collectively grieving in unprecedented ways.

2) September 11 also exposed fear and bigotry among many Christians towards our Muslim cousins. Suddenly, many who professed a love for Christ and people were parroting suspicions about our immigrant neighbors and perceiving threats where none existed. The Church had to embrace that Jesus’ imperative to love our neighbors as ourselves includes those individuals and communities we might otherwise fear, and wrestle with how to build bridges during and beyond the crisis.

3) The inertia of normalcy has obscured the need to remain vigilant in nurturing the kind of relationships that build trust across denominations and congregations, and with neighbors regardless of their faith and cultural traditions. My prayer for the Church on this tenth anniversary is that we would recapture what it means to love each other in such a way that the world will know we are His disciples.

To read more about how Jeremy and his father Rev. Richard Del Rio ministered in lower Manhattan post-9/11, go here.

The Willow Creek Association’s Global Leadership Summit features 20/20 Vision for Schools this week. Summit speaker Michell Rhee (former Schools Chancellor of Washington, DC, and founder of Children First) will explore how educational inequity robs inner city children of the skills necessary to complete college, compete in an information economy, or even conduct an inductive Bible study.

The Summit asked me to provide a case study demonstrating how churches and ministries can provide leadership around these issues. Below is the article I wrote for the conference notebook that will be distributed to an estimated audience of 100,000 ministry leaders. The Summit also features the “20/20 Vision for Schools: Transforming Public Education within a Single Generation of Students” workshop curriculum, originally written for Reload 2008-2009, and “Why Public Schools Matter to God (and Should Matter to You Too)” among its Digital Resources.

_____________________

Leading Education Reform Where You Are: One Church’s Story

[Originally published by Willow Creek Association in the conference Notebook for the 2011 Global Leadership Summit. Download article pdf here.]

In September of 2008, Pastor Paul Curtis’ relationship with the public school system fit the profile of many New York City pastors. That is, he didn’t have one. Public schools seemed to him so resistant to help from churches that they were the last place he considered to begin making a difference.

Then he heard about 20/20 Vision for Schools and felt God stirring him toward a vision for people of faith to lead the effort to restore justice to public education – to level the playing field for all students regardless of neighborhood, race, or economic status. Staggering numbers made the problems feel intractable.

Despite 1,700 public schools, 1.1 million students, and a $21 billion annual budget, graduation rates in the city hovered near 50%, and reading and math proficiency lagged at or below 40%. But next to 7,100 self-described Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Charismatic churches in NYC, 1,700 schools didn’t feel so large.

“What might happen if five churches actually prayed for one neighborhood school?” Curtis reasoned. “Dare we expect God to answer?”

And what if God already positioned his church to be salt and light within those schools? Between students, parents, teachers, staff, and relatives, more than 85% of his attenders already had direct or indirect relationships with schools. Might they become answers to their own prayers, or the prayers of others?

He registered Crossroads Christian Church to adopt a school through 20/20 Vision for Schools. In spring 2010, Crossroads organized a prayer walk of four neighborhood schools. He leveraged his pulpit to launch a three-week sermon series the next Sunday, including a panel discussion with educators, administrators and students around the topic of educational justice in the public school system.

Several of Curtis’ church members took the challenge. The next month, the youth minister and five teens from the church volunteered at a local school event. Then the next fall, another of his members volunteered the church’s Storefront Art Center to lead a mural project in the refurbished schoolyard. The changing demographics of the neighborhood meant hundreds of immigrant children at the 1,200-student elementary school, and a parent from Crossroads proposed creating a welcoming environment by celebrating the diversity with a public art project.

Curtis and the school agreed. Eight months later, 450+ volunteers from eight community groups (including five churches) and five sponsors joined the principal, PTA, students, and staff to execute an 875-square foot mural for six weeks. They celebrated with a schoolyard block party on June 4, 2011, attended by 1,500 neighbors of every age, race, and religion.

Now, Curtis is hooked. Welcoming neighbors from the Middle East, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and Asia, by empowering their academic success no longer feels overwhelming.

It feels, and looks, like Jesus.

- Jeremy Del Rio, Esq. co-founded and directs 20/20 Vision for Schools. Free how-to resources and practical next-steps, including the PS 102 mural case study, online here: 2020schools.org/wcagls. Visit the PS 102 Mural website here to track the project from beginning to end.

Missing my friend Cub. Today would have been his 16th birthday. Instead we celebrate the ten-year legacy of a life well lived. Prayers with Matt and Katy Stevens today, and their sons Josh, Micah, and Jacob who carry Cub’s legacy with them everyday. Love you guys!

RELATED

Caleb’s Promise: A Father’s Day Tribute and a Dilemma for 24 Million Children

The scene was gory and tragic, every father’s worst nightmare. The mini-van carrying Matt Stevens’ two oldest sons had flipped on a gravel strewn country road and ten-year-old Caleb was thrown underneath the wreckage. Big brother Josh, himself just eleven, comforted “Cub” by encouraging him to hold on until dad arrived.

Giant Slayers

The Stevens family, Matt and Katy and their four boys, were in the midst of a summer of service, traveling to four cities from the Mid-Atlantic to New England with six interns and another family for Chain Reaction mission trips. That fateful morning of August 5, 2005, they were on the back end of a retreat in Western Maryland, near the West Virginia border, preparing to lead forty youths in compassion ministry in downtown Baltimore.

Matt arrived at Cub’s side as he slipped into and out of consciousness. Cradling his son in his arms, Matt told him it was okay to go home to Jesus. Cub closed his eyes, gasped seven more times, and breathed his last.

Something happened on the way from that roadside to the gravesite. Hundreds of lives touched by a ten-year-old came from eleven states to celebrate the legacy of a giant slayer in the tradition of his Biblical namesake. It’s a tradition that had previously been passed on to me from my own father just as Caleb had learned it from his.

Full article here.

Crossroads Church‘s December sermon series has unpacked the values of the groundbreaking Advent Conspiracy movement to reclaim Christmas from materialism, consumerism, and narcissism: Worship Fully // Spend Less // Give More // Love All.

Great series! I recommend both it and Advent Conspiracy to everyone curious about the real meaning of Christmas.

Reflecting on the messages — especially the value to worship fully — I was reminded of the kind of worship demonstrated both in the life of Jesus and in the music that accompanied his birth, what I’m calling here, “Advent Worship.” The following excerpt from “Singing and Praying Justice” more fully describes that reflection.

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Too often our church music is directed inward as a distorted, selfish facsimile of worship. We long for God to meet personal needs and mediate justice on our own behalf, radically reducing our songs to individualized laundry lists of wants. Consider these popular contemporary worship song lyrics:

• “I can feel [the 'presence,' 'spirit,' and 'power' of the Lord] / And I’m gonna get my blessing right now” (from “The Presence of the Lord is Here,” by Byron Cage).
• “In my life I’m soaked in blessing / And in heaven there’s a great reward / … I’ve got Jesus, Jesus / He calls me for His own / And He lifts me, lifts me / Above the world I know” (from “God Is in the House,” by Hillsong United).
• “(I got the) anointing / (Got God’s) favor / (And we’re still) standing / I want it all back / Man give me my stuff back / Give me my stuff back / … I want it all / … I want that” (from “I Want it All Back,” by Tye Tribbett).

Contrast those with the three recorded songs that accompanied Jesus’ birth. While the melodies have been lost to time, the lyrics reverberate through history.

The first, a spontaneous soulful utterance by a pregnant virgin, marveled about the Mighty One who miraculously conceived His child within her. “He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:52-53). What of the Rolls Royce-driving, private jet-flying, multiple mansion-dwelling, high fashion-wearing preachers and modern Christian subculture profiteers? What about the good life to which their songs and sermons aspire? What fills them?

The second, a choir song performed by heaven’s finest angels for an audience of outcast shepherds, proclaimed: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests” (Luke 2:14). The peace of which they sang is shalom, and favor refers to “the year of the Lord’s favor” embraced within Christ’s mission (Luke 4:18-19, quoting Isaiah 61). More than the absence of strife, shalom is what the Prince of Peace came to reestablish: The interdependency of vibrant communities; the vitality of healthy bodies; the manifold mysteries of parental love; and the majesty of the cosmos. The condition of sin robs shalom, but Jesus’ justice restores it. When the most affluent people in recorded history attempt to co-opt Jesus’ favor as a rationale to get more stuff, we cheapen everything the gospel represents.

The third song, by an old man long past his prime, declared Jesus, “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.” He then explained the lyrics to Jesus’ parents: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:32, 34-35). Not much touchy feely hoopla here either.

Not one of these songs celebrates the themes that predominate our weekly worship services. No mention of “me,” except in the context of calling and responsibility beyond oneself. No focus on “blessing,” except as it relates to our ability, empowered by God, to bless others. No pursuit of personal comfort; rather, the promise of a sword to pierce one’s soul.

Indeed, the soundtrack that accompanied heaven’s lyric — the Word made flesh and dwelling among us — bears little resemblance to popular songs we sing in our churches. When that timeless Word “moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14, The Message) his manner of doing so invited shame and ridicule, not material bounty. He lived among us as a child of poverty (born in a barn); political refugee (in Egypt); social pariah (survivor of unmarried pregnancy, a capital crime); ghetto immigrant (“What good comes from Nazareth?”); and blue-collar subject (carpenter) of an imperialistic colonizer (Rome). He was a friend of prostitutes (such as the woman who anointed his feet with perfume), crooked bureaucrats (tax collectors like Matthew and Zacchaeus), and terrorists (including his disciple Simon, the Zealot, a card-carrying member of a first-century Palestinian terror organization).

If He actually showed up to one of our stylized worship experiences, He may well sing a different tune, one that sounds more like the warning He gave through the Old Testament prophet Amos:

“I can’t stand your religious meetings. I’m fed up with your conferences and conventions. I want nothing to do with your religion projects, your pretentious slogans and goals. I’m sick of your fund-raising schemes, your public relations and image making. I’ve had all I can take of your noisy ego-music. When was the last time you sang to me? Do you know what I want? I want justice — oceans of it. I want fairness — rivers of it. That’s what I want. That’s all I want” (Amos 5:21-24, The Message).

Taking Amos at his word, if all God wants is oceans of justice rather than egocentric noise, then the needs of a broken world must reclaim center stage from personal blessings during corporate worship experiences.

Download: Advent Worship Devotional slides

Description

Explore how the musical set that accompanied heaven’s greatest lyric 2000 years ago contrasts with modern Western worship, and how we can refocus and realign worship from “ego-centric noise” to oceans of justice.

PowerPoint slides (file type): .pdf

Note: the “Advent Worship” talk is based on an article by Louis Carlo and me previously published by Charisma magazine, Sojourners, and Urbanfaith.com (unedited).

“For God so loved the world…”

Growing up the son of a preacher man, I understood John 3:16 as a declaration of God’s unfathomable love for people. The familiar refrain expresses God’s love for the world that whosoever would accept the gift of God’s son would not perish but experience everlasting life. Whosoever is a person, with the potential for becoming many people.

But the world God so loved is more than the people who reside there. It’s a place God created “in the beginning” for the people shaped in God’s image to cultivate and steward (Genesis 1, 2). When the first people sinned, the place suffered, and the place has groaned ever since along with the people who cause it pain, awaiting its redemption (Romans 8:19-22).

As youth workers, we love young people; it comes with the territory. If you don’t love youth, consider finding a new ministry.

But do you love the places your youth reside? Does it cause you pain when those places are broken, dysfunctional, and unjust? How does your calling proactively work to redeem those places?

Active youth ministries – those with at least a weekly youth service, Bible study, or small groups – might engage students for four hours a week. Contrast these weekly averages:

• Chronically dysfunctional schools engage students for 30 hours, mostly with lousy results. Fewer than half of city public school students graduate, and average graduates read at an eighth grade level.

• Increasingly broken households – half of children live without either or both biological parents – occupy students for up to 80 hours.

• The virtual world created by digital media – social networks, video games, smart phones and the like – loot billions from teens while consuming average American teens for 72 hours.

How do you love those places?

Consider again John 3. The love that compelled God to give His best to effect radical redemption required God first to be born of flesh to inhabit the world he so loved. The same God who in the beginning created heavens and earth became fully human to live in the place he created for humanity.

Jesus inhabited that place for thirty years before opening his mouth to preach. He never started a youth group, planted a church, published a best seller, or raised millions to produce a crusade. Instead he lived among those he hoped to reach.

He picked twelve to do life with. He became acquainted with their suffering not by observation as an outsider, but from experience as an insider.

As you express your calling to youth, are you a drive-by or do you live among them? How have you become acquainted with their suffering? How does your love for them promote justice and redemption within the places they reside?

Therein lies the key to advancing God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

- Jeremy Del Rio encourages youth ministries to adopt schools through 20/20 Vision for Schools.

While away, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Youth Ministries Today revived an article I wrote for National Network of Youth Ministries in 2008, before the launch of 20/20 Vision for Schools.

Why Churches Should Adopt Public Schools

Sometimes a good idea takes a while to generate traction. But then a combination of timing, people, and Providence inspire enough hearts and minds to action that it transforms society, in what Malcolm Gladwell calls a “Tipping Point.”

Consider, for example, the idea that churches should love youth in their communities by adopting public schools. The Campus Alliance has been saying this for years, even creating a website to help promote the idea and track its progress (www.EverySchool.com). But a review of the EverySchool database suggests that the cry has fallen on many ears that are unable, or unwilling, to hear. Many schools still wait to be adopted.

Recently, things began to change in NewYork City.

Article

[Ed. note: Originally published in August 2010 issue of Tri-State Voice]

Goliaths fall when adults like Saul get out of David’s way.

For the last twelve months, student leaders from greater New York have proven this truism time and again. Now some are organizing a citywide prayer walk of 1,600 public schools the weekend of Halloween and inviting the city’s 7,100 churches to participate.

Imagine that: students leading congregations as together they intercede for 1.1 million public school students — on a weekend long symbolic of darkness and mayhem.

This second I Am My School effort, spearheaded by student leaders from God Belongs in My City and 20/20 Vision for Schools, expands a May 15 pilot that included ten walks in four boroughs covering twenty-five schools.

The students will pray, “I am my school,” because “I am,” the name God calls Himself, has sent them to love and serve and transform their schools. On the Monday following the walk, students will wear I Am My School t-shirts to school in an effort to identify other Christians on campus. They will also encourage their churches to adopt one school within walking distance for ongoing prayer, advocacy, and service.

This kind of catalytic student leadership is exactly what Latino Pastoral Action Center hoped to inspire on September 12, 2009, when they produced “Kickin’ it Old Skool,” the first student leadership conference in collective memory that was actually led by students. Most “student leadership” events involve adults teaching students, or adults teaching other adults how to lead students. Rarely do adults voluntarily play a supporting role to students leading the event.

LPAC empowered twelve student organizers from four boroughs defy the stereotype and design a leadership event that they and other students would lead, armed with a budget to pull it off. Sixty-eight of their peers gathered for the conference at Washington Irving High School in Manhattan, and 175 enjoyed the evening concert as well.

At Kickin’ It, LPAC’s President Rev. Dr. Raymond Rivera called students, “essential to efforts to transform communities.” Then he charged them, “Share your story. Declare your future. Inspire other students. Remember, tomorrow needs you. Prepare for it today.”

Little did he know that less than two months later, three of the Kickin’ It student organizers would rally a dozen or so other students to coordinate God Belongs in My City, the largest student led prayer walk in New York City. Fifteen hundred marchers walked a total of eight miles in Manhattan culminating in a Times Square rally and silent prayer “flash mob” in the main lobby of Grand Central Station.

In May 2010, those same empowered students organized the I Am My School pilot that provides the basis for the upcoming effort.

Another recent manifestation of authentic student leadership occurred at Reload 1.2.3, the groundbreaking multi-state, multi-site youth training event on June 12 that required every adult involved in the program — from musicians and singers to trainers and general session speakers — to integrate a “Plus-1? student protégé into their content delivery. With live music and workshops at all three venues, this strategy created a platform for more than fifty student leaders to provide meaningful leadership at a premiere training event for more than five hundred youth workers. Kickin’ It student leaders presented the “Student Led Student Leadership: Pipe Dream or Possible?” workshop that was simulcast to all three venues.

Dr. Larry Acosta, president of Urban Youth Workers Institute, challenged adult leaders at Reload 1.2.3, “You need to empower youth to lead with real ministry opportunities,” not just “passing the offering plates every fifth Sunday.”

To the Plus-1’s and other student leaders, Larry exhorted: “We need you … to rise up and lead the church into the future. You’re alive at this time in history at such a time as this. We need you to help us complete the Great Commission in the cities, in the … neighborhoods, in the projects, in the parks, in the places where too many from my generation are afraid to go.”

The Biblical character David was an untested teenager, a shepherd boy with no military training, when he simultaneously proved to be the only man among soldiers courageous enough to confront the giant Goliath. For forty days, Goliath’s taunts paralyzed Israel’s army with fear. Then David overheard the mockery, witnessed the cowardice of the adults around him, and was moved to action. The rest, as they say, is history.

Join veteran leaders like Dr. Rivera and Dr. Acosta in creating space for young people to continue making history. For more information on I Am My School, sign up online at 2020schools.net/i-am-my-school.

- Jeremy Del Rio was 13 when his youth pastor invited him to preach, 19 when his senior pastor asked him to start a youth group, and today directs 20/20 Vision for Schools, a movement to transform public education within one generation of students. www.JeremyDelRio.com

Related

• Watch the Reload 1.2.3 General Sessions for free online.
• Watch the Reload 1.2.3 Workshops for free online.

“RELOAD 1.2.3: Innovating Youth Ministry Training in Metro NY/NJ” (June 2010)

Here’s an excerpt:

Interactive general sessions and two featured workshops will originate in the Bronx and be simulcast to the other locations via the internet. More talk show than sermon, the simulcast sessions feature topics such as “Homegrown: The Leader,” “Handoff: The Legacy,” and “Student-Led Student Ministry: Pipe Dream or Possible?” The simulcast will invite participants to catch the “Aha Moments” as youth ministry veterans and their proteges explore themes like indigenous leadership development, inter-generational leadership, and impartation. Regardless of venue, Reload 1.2.3 participants will join the conversation via Twitter, text message, surveys, and camera phone-ography.

Also new at Reload 1.2.3 are what the host committee is calling “Plus-1’s.” Plus 1’s are student leader proteges of the adults involved in the program (trainers, speakers, and worship leaders) who will be integrated into the program and training experience. For years, youth ministry veterans have advocated the idea that youth ministry is not about ministering to youth, but empowering youth to minister. Plus 1’s are Reload 1.2.3’s attempt to model what this looks like by intentionally creating space for younger leaders to actually lead.

Full article here.

The May 2010 issue of Charisma magazine features “The Gospel and Marvin Gaye” about the intersection (or too often lack thereof) between worship and justice. Co-authors Jeremy Del Rio and Louis Carlo are both featured trainers at UYWI’s upcoming Reload 1.2.3 event in NY and NJ on June 12, and Pastor Lou is also leading worship (and justice!) at the Bronx venue.

Here’s a taste of the article.

The soundtrack that accompanied heaven’s greatest lyrics—the Word made flesh (see John 1:14)—bears little resemblance to popular songs we sing in our churches. When Jesus came and lived among us, His manner of doing so invited shame and ridicule, not material bounty.

He lived among us as a child of poverty (born in a barn); political refugee (in Egypt); social pariah (survivor of a capital crime: unmarried pregnancy); ghetto immigrant (“What good comes from Nazareth?”); and blue-collar worker (carpenter) who was a subject of an imperialistic colonizer (Rome). …

Jesus’ mission to bring good news to the poor, sight to the blind and liberty to the oppressed should define our worship, be it expressed in music or lifestyle. Music, because we feel it, penetrates our hearts and stimulates a response. It ennobles ideas, emotes passion and defines eras. Gaye’s opus reminds us of that.

Reflecting Christ’s purpose through our lives will require the courage to break free from convention, perceive the new things God is doing in our midst and zealously pursue them.

Read the full article here.

Register for Reload 1.2.3 here.