Reminds me of Einstein’s observation: “In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.”

HT: Christian Monzon.

My latest article, co-written with Pastor Louis Carlo of Abounding Grace Ministries, was published today at UrbanFaith.com. Here’s an excerpt.

… At its core, the Gospel is a story about a loving God who reconciles humanity into loving relationships with Himself, themselves, and each other. Justice fits into the story as Christ rights the wrongs that prevent those relationships. Worship as both music and lifestyle should reflect this. But does it?

… Sadly, 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.

… How can worship leaders help navigate oceans of justice within congregational gatherings? First, in the music and expressions of worship we embrace; and second, by facilitating worship as lifestyle, not just musical ritual.

Marvin Gaye’s opus reminds us that music ennobles ideas, emotes passion, and defines eras. Because we feel it, music penetrates hearts and stimulates a response. Combine inspired notes with well-crafted lyrics and the results can be liberating. Or lethal.

In Call and Response, a 2008 documentary about sex trafficking, Dr. Cornel West describes music’s power to accentuate and ultimately eradicate injustice: “Music is about helping folk … by getting them to dance. Getting them to move. Getting them to think. Getting them to reflect. Getting them to be themselves, to somehow break out of the conventional self that they are.”

As musicians use that power to draw attention to injustices, people cannot help but get involved, West contends, because “justice is what love looks like in public.”

Read the full article here (or cataloged here).

Lionell Ritchie performs “Jesus is Love”

Michael Jackson’s Memorial Service, 7/7/09

Even in death the King of Pop mesmerized us. But what struck me most of all during Michael Jackson’s memorial service was how the King of Kings was magnified.

Here are my real-time reactions to the service, courtesy of Twitter.

++ “The King of Pop must bow to the King of Kings”: the epilogue to a memorial that will reverberate for HIStory. Thank u pastor 4ur prayer #MJ3:49 PM Jul 7th from web

++ Paris, Prince, & Blanket: The Love your daddy pursued fathers the fatherless. It’s a Love that never fails. Never ends. Never dies #MJ3:47 PM Jul 7th from web

++ We can’t get enough of Jesus at this funeral; evn the politicians invoke his name. Why? No longr dead, he still comforts those who mourn #MJ3:11 PM Jul 7th from web

++ MLK’s kids can preach. The apples don’t fall far.2:59 PM Jul 7th from twidroid

++ Loving that even as we celebrate the King of Pop, the King of Kings is getting air time on CNN. “Jesus is Love.” And #MJ pursued love2:37 PM Jul 7th from web

++ RT @darellano Rev. Al shld tell the truth: Jesus was the ultimate feeder, bridge builder, broke the race barrier, etc. Jesus taught us2:33 PM Jul 7th from web

++ Al Sharpton sounds like Christianity Today? “It’s not about mess; it’s about the message of love.” See CT’s Scandal artcl http://is.gd/1lCZO2:32 PM Jul 7th from web

++ #MJ: exhibit A tht genius, fame & wealth aren’t enough 2bring peace, meaning, or community. Grasp love if hands arent holding othr things2:16 PM Jul 7th from twidroid

++ Lionel Ritchie sings “Jesus is Love.” Why don’t we live Jesus’ love while alive rather than just sing about him in death?2:00 PM Jul 7th from twidroid

++ The outpouring for the flawed genius that was #MJ: Love tht forgives all things? Revisionist HIStory? Idolatry? Grace & mercy? Somthin else?1:57 PM Jul 7th from twidroid

++ RT @lensweet Michael Jackson was a genius. But Michael Jackson acted his life and lived his performances. For MJ, RIP=Rest In Performance.1:20 PM Jul 7th from twidroid

I posted four new topics at the Love is an Orientation Virtual Book Club today, one each from the Premise and Introduction, and two from Chapter 1. I’m going to also record them here for my own archival purposes, but please add to the discussion here.

C-1: A third way?

[Sorry this post is so long, but it's too late to edit for length right now.]

In Chapter 1, Marin retells specific stories of men who grew up as Christians agonizing in secret for years about their sexuality before finally coming out to very painful consequences at their churches.

He describes their prayers for God to take away their same-sex attractions, only to wake with the same attractions day after day, and suggests two possible explanations.

“The first possibility is that there is no God because he has not answered the one prayer they ever prayed. …

“The second possibility people come to is that if there is a God, perhaps He is not answering their one prayer because they are already condemned to hell for their same-sex feelings.”

Is this a false choice of only two irreconcilable explanations? What about a third possibility?

The Apostle Paul writes about his own “thorn in the flesh” at least twice. He offers this in 1 Corinthians 12:7-10:

“… There was given me a thorn in my flesh … to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

And this in Romans 7:15-25:

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

“So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Both passages seem to suggest that God may not remove struggle or pain or even the propensity toward a particular sin, but rather He invites us to experience grace in the midst of that struggle. They also underscore the idea that sin is sin no matter its form, and reject the tendency of many Christians to classify sexual sin, and more particularly homosexuality, as especially “bad.” On the contrary, they invite Christ followers into a place of confidence that notwithstanding our particular sin struggle — whether with pride, greed, gluttony, laziness, unbelief, lust, sex beyond the bounds of marriage, worry, or anything else “not of faith” — we experience his love when we stop pursuing works righteousness and instead receive his grace that abounds despite sin.

Marin suggests that the solution is what Martin Luther King called “the constructive, nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth” in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Perhaps that constructive tension can finally occur when heterosexual sinners accept that they are no better or worse than homosexual sinners, and their job is not to convince someone of their sinfulness or to deliver them from it. Instead their commitment as Christ followers is to receive and manifest grace despite their own sin struggle, what Jesus called removing the log from one’s own eye before worrying about the speck in someone else’s.

What say you?

Chapter 1: Unsafe Spaces

In Chapter 1, Marin summarizes nine fears both secular and religious GLBT people perceive about evangelical churches:

“1. How can I possibly relate to Christians in a church environment?

“2. Will Christians always look at me as just gay?

“3. Will I be able to be like everyone else in church activities and groups?

“4. Do they think that homosexuality is a special sin?

“5. Do they believe that I chose to be like this?

“6. Do they think that I’m going to hit on them?

“7. Do they think that I’m going to abuse their children?

“8. Are they scared that I’m going to infect them with an STD or HIV/AIDS?

“9. When will I be rejected and kicked out?”

How are churches responsible for creating these perceptions and fears? If “perfect love casts out fear,” how can churches overcome them?

Introduction: When friends come out

The raw emotion of the decisive summer when three of Andrew Marin’s best friends came out to him over a three month period (retold in the introduction) is palpable — and instructive.

I can think of no one, at least not anybody from a big city, who cannot relate on some level to the emotions evoked when a loved one reveals oneself to be gay. But Marin’s response to the emotion is unique. I can similarly think of no one other than Marin who made such a concerted effort to immerse himself in the gay community to understand and love them well.

He describes an evolution from Bible-thumping homophobe to “gayest straight dude” on the planet in an effort to build bridges between evangelicals and homosexuals.

Is this kind of immersion necessary to build bridges? And where should the bridges lead?

Preface: Deliverance from the “Judgmental Lifestyle”

Brian McLaren’s Preface to the book offers a parable on the “Judgmental Lifestyle” and then concludes: “The orientation and lifestyle of love is the right and only way for true followers of Jesus. … [This love] isn’t elicited by the loveability of its object, but flows from the all-generous and holy, holy, holy orientation of its Subject, God.”

Discussion questions:

1) Is it possible to discern truth without being judgmental?

2) Is it possible for truth, once discerned, to be simultaneously holy and loving?

3) If no, why not? If yes, how so?

4) John 8:3-11 tells the story of when Jesus prevented Pharisees from stoning a woman caught in adultery, by challenging the Pharisee who was “without sin” to cast the first stone. When the Pharisees left her alone, he turned to the woman and says:

“‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’

“‘No one, sir,’ she said.

“‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and leave your life of sin.’”

What does this passage teach about the relationship between love, holiness, and judgment?

Please weigh in on these and other topics here, and please do not hesitate to add your own topic on the Discussion Board as well.

Thanks!

Confessions of a Youth Pastor Hypocrite on Loving the Least of These: Meeting Jesus on the Lower East Side

[The following is an excerpt of Jeremy Del Rio's latest article originally published in the May/June 2009 issue of The Journal of Student Ministries. Read the entire article here, or subscribe to The Journal here.]

Salvation

I often wondered why God sent me back, why God valued the delay on my walk to work. What really happened that day? Did anything change for her?

Maybe. Maybe not.

But something changed for me. That day God saved me from myself, and in the process reacquainted me with God’s kingdom. Hopefully, she experienced it, too.

Salvation visited me in the person of a homeless runaway who forced me to confront my tendency, even as a youth pastor, to live for myself instead of those around me. My tendency to gravitate to people, places, and partners that could add value to my ministry. To pursue relationships for what I could get rather than what I could give. The most marginalized and vulnerable among us, like smelly teenagers who act out or hide out or check out, are easiest to overlook. But they are also the very ones God most desires us to love. …

Why Love the Least of These?

Why does Jesus require us to love the “least of these”? Is it because he needs us to save them? Or is it because we need them to save us?

During my thirty-something crisis, I rediscovered that when all else fails, Jesus can be found within arms reach. Not only does he live among inner-city kids, but also he similarly identifies with the ADHD student that interrupts a youth pastor’s sermon. He sleeps beside the homeless teenager and burned-out stoner. The latchkey kid is Christ’s constant companion. He’s sitting next to the loner who attends youth group because mom makes her, but she hasn’t said more than two words to the youth worker, ever. Jesus weeps for the thug teen’s heartache. His broken body, which hung naked and exposed, can be seen among the disabled. His visage reflects in the Goth kid’s mirror. He accompanies the bicurious and the “out loud and proud.”

The good kids, the pretty ones, the smart and talented ones, the cool ones—we’re told that they bring the most bang for our youth ministry buck. They’re the influencers, the ones with the greatest perceived potential. So why not invest a disproportionate amount of our time and energy in them?

For the same reason that Jesus hung out with prostitutes and sinners, the racially despised and socially outcast, the broken in body and spirit: Christ’s kingdom belongs to such as these. If young people have been labeled, rejected, disrespected, or otherwise demeaned by those around them, God chooses to reveal himself through them.

The Kingdom’s Agenda

As we learn from them how to love God and others well, God’s kingdom advances.

There’s no formula for how to love well, no three steps to make it easy. Being kind demands sacrifice. Being available demands inconvenience. Extending grace, mercy, and forgiveness is painful sometimes. Pursuing justice for others may require paying for it ourselves. Being among them necessitates forsaking what’s comfortable.

Salvation brings with it a cross.

[Read the rest of the article here.]

Psalm 91

1 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High
will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.

2 I will say of the LORD, “He is my refuge and my fortress,
my God, in whom I trust.”

3 Surely he will save you from the fowler’s snare
and from the deadly pestilence.

4 He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.

5 You will not fear the terror of night,
nor the arrow that flies by day,

6 nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,
nor the plague that destroys at midday.

7 A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.

8 You will only observe with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.

9 If you make the Most High your dwelling—
even the LORD, who is my refuge-

10 then no harm will befall you,
no disaster will come near your tent.

11 For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways;

12 they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

13 You will tread upon the lion and the cobra;
you will trample the great lion and the serpent.

14 “Because he loves me,” says the LORD, “I will rescue him;
I will protect him, for he acknowledges my name.

15 He will call upon me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble,
I will deliver him and honor him.

16 With long life will I satisfy him
and show him my salvation.”

Enjoying Crossroads Christian Church‘s 30-Day Adventure sermon series about urban poverty and how churches can respond. Eavesdrop (download, for free) the messages here.

February 22 to March 22 we will be focusing on the topic of urban poverty. In addition to Sunday morning services, daily reflection journals, small discussion groups, and service projects will be made available. Here are some promises we’re making to you. During these 30 days…

- you WILL learn some things about urban poverty that you didn’t know.

- you will NOT be made to feel guilty. Guilt is not the emotional response God is looking for.

- we WON’T treat a complex issue simplistically. We don’t pretend to have all the answers.

- you WILL be given practical opportunities to make a meaningful difference.

We would love for you to help us wrestle with this huge topic. Come asking God to stretch you!

Related

Proverbs 31:8, the theme verse for this series, along with its companion verse 9, kept me in law school when I forgot why I was there:

“Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves,
for the rights of all who are destitute.
Speak up and judge fairly;
defend the rights of the poor and needy.”

White Man

Music by Michael Gungor Band. Video by Eden Martinez

One of my former youth leaders Eden Martinez produced this amazing video for Abounding Grace Ministries‘ Youth Sunday service last week. It’s caused quite a dust-up on Facebook. Enjoy.

Related
+ “Losing Races: A Dream Deferred“

• Prepping breakout for the Pastors Prayer Summit: “Change We Can Believe In: Rediscovering ‘Real Religion’ for our Churches and our Children” #
• The Leader’s Orientation, Josh 3:2-4. “Follow [the ark of God]. Then you will know which way to go.” #
• Pete Scazzero, “Waiting upon the Lord: Preparing for a Silent Retreat.” Most church ppl live off other’s spirituality (no time) #
• PS: We live life on the run. Scattered, fragmented, un-centered, overloaded, distracted. Superficial spirituality #
• PS: mostly, we have lots of head knowledge, but not deep heart experience with Jesus. Surfaces under pressure. #
• PS: Lots of spiritual shallowness; 1-inch deep spirituality. Even our intercessors don’t pray much. Needed: Life of communion with Christ. #
• PS: most ppl are not very intentional in pursuing Jesus. At best, they follow church leaders. Shld be following us, AS WE FOLLOW CHRIST #
• PS: Most ppl live in a state of partial inattention. Multi-tasking distractions. Hard to focus on one thing at a time #
• PS: Most Americans are in a state of exhaustion. Violent hyperactivity. Frenzied business. #
• PS: The judgmentalism and narrowness of the evangelical tradition has robbed us from learning from other traditions. #
• PS: Stop judging other traditions when we have so much baggage in our own. We need to integrate the contemplative tradition into our own #
• PS: If your yoke is heavy, it’s not Jesus’ yoke. When we don’t do it His way, ministry sucks life from us. #
• PS: Mary & Martha (Lk 10:38-42). Martha is “distracted, worried and upset.” Her prayer was classic: she told Jesus what to do. #
• PS: Our challenge is balance contemplation (being with God) with activity (living for Christ). #
• PS: Need to rediscover silence and solitude. 3rd – 5th century model: The desert fathers, who removed selves from Rome to rediscover God #
• PS: We cannot bring people where we are not. Sin of overactivity and exhaustion. #
• PS: Most vital gift to bring ppl is God. Cannot bring what you don’t have. #
• Challenge of church leadership: contemplation vs. activity. Busyness comes from the sin of sloth: too lazy for silence #
• PS: rediscover the rhythms of contemplative spirituality: 1) The daily office; 2) the sabbath; 3) a personal “rule of life” #
• PS: we must flee “the American church.” I love the church, but our traditions are sick. Must change church culture #
• PS: The daily office not just quiet time. QT underestimates the world, the flesh and the devil, and our interior tendency to rebel #
• PS: “Your will be done” is a scary prayer for a leader. The daily office: pausing throughout the day to remain in His presence all day long
• PS: David’s rhythm was 7 times a day (Ps 119:164, Ps 92:2, Ps 55:17); Daniel’s was 3x. The one thing I seek: dwell in the house of the Lord
• PS: Our first job is to be a seeker of God, a contemplative. Once a day not enough. Develop rhythm. Stop playing church & live for Christ
• PS: Rediscover sabbath. Stop work for 24 hr period each week. It’s a spiritual formation discipline, one of the 10 Commandments.
• PS: We don’t keep sabbath so we can save money to go to Disney World.
• PS: Sabbath is stopping; resting; delighting; and contemplating. Practicing Sabbath is like getting of crack.
• PS: “I’m done carrying people spiritually.” Moving church membership to practicing Rule of Life: http://tinyurl.com/d3q7w7
• PS: Next 45 minutes, we all unplug to practice contemplation. (I’ll blog the instructions later.) Paz
• “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for Him.” Ps 37:7
• PS: Sabbath is a snow day – no obligation days – every week! The point is not legalism. Integrate rest, delight, etc the other 6 days.

Life Without Limbs

For all the times we’re tempted to whine or whimper in 2009, remember Nick Vujicic. Born without arms or legs, at 24 he’s already spoken live to more than 1,000,000 people around the world, inspiring them with: “No arms, no legs, no worries,” and “Attitude is altitude.”