I’ve already let my opinion on Legislating Morality be known, so I won’t rehash it now. The time has come for Christians to shift from talk and reliance on governance to take action and really make an impact on sin.
Our hope is not with the Republican Party, nor is it with the Democrats. But we have an opportunity with Barack Obama, a professed Christian whether you believe in his views or not, and a Democrat-controlled congress.

Opportunity to Reduce Abortions

While the Pro Life movement has focused on trying to reverse Roe v. Wade and enacting laws which push the limits of the High Court’s decision, many Pro Choice people have repeatedly emphasized a desire to reduce the number of abortions. Two of those persons would be Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

But the Religious Right does not take any statement on reducing abortions seriously unless it is accompanied by effort to make abortion illegal. There is extreme mistrust whenever a pro choice person says they don’t like abortion but believe it should be a woman’s right to choose.

It is time to call them on it. But doing so requires setting aside the primary focus of the Pro Life movement to repeal Roe v. Wade and replacing it with assisting women in unwanted, unplanned pregnancies. I personally believe President-elect Obama and Mrs. Clinton when they say they do not like abortion but believe it should not be made illegal. If they are lying to try to lessen the impact of their pro choice position, we will find out if we try to team up with those who are pro choice and try to help women deal with their unwanted pregnancies in other ways.

One of the more liberal shows on network television, Boston Legal, recently had an episode nearly entirely about abortion. The power of the episode was in the lack of propaganda. It told a story which brilliantly displayed the complexity of the issue. A young teenage girl sought a court order to allow her to get an abortion. One of the liberal attorneys, Shirley Schmidt, did not want to represent her because she had an abortion when she was young.

When Shirley spoke of how it haunted her and stayed with her forever, you could not help but to feel her pain. Shirley is pro choice, but she did not want to interfere with the mother’s desire to refuse an abortion, because she believed there was no way a teen could fully understand the ramifications of having an abortion. And she strongly suggested that although she thought abortion should be legal, no woman, under normal circumstances, should choose to have an abortion for the horror will stay with her for her entire life.

There are many, MANY pro choice people (if not even a majority) who would work side by side with pro life Christians to help pregnant women who may desire to choose an abortion.

Will it be easy? NO! Of course the pro lifers will want to keep abortion completely off of the table and the pro choice persons would not. There would have to be compromise in both camps for a partnership to work. The issues are numerous, but the benefits are tremendous: fewer abortions.

Maybe even fewer pregnancies.

At some point, focusing on overturning a court decision for 35 years rather than engaging the issue at ground zero brings responsibility for abortions on those who are so opposed.

I really believe that. If the pro life movement had even split the efforts evenly between the legal solution and building a support network for women, the number of abortions which have taken place over the last few decades would be dramatically less in number.

When a group in Colorado Springs consulted a film production company for continuing their advertising and expanding into tv ads, they were convinced to steer from the “abortion is murder” mantra and move towards helping women. What happened? The number of abortions went down. I forget the exact numbers my friend told me, but my understanding is the number of abortions were more than cut in half.

Not just abortions

The opportunity with Obama goes far beyond the issue of abortion. He claims (and I, again, believe him) he wants to work with the 47% who did not vote for him. If evangelicals take the high road and team up on other issues, Christians will have the chance to shape the policy and programs enacted by the Obama administration.

That doesn’t mean they will look like conservative Republican plans, but the finger of Christ can be involved in deep ways as Christians humble themselves and shift from fighting for a legal system which exacts their morality to exemplifying the care for the oppressed, the fight against injustice, and the love for all people modeled by Jesus Christ.

This post is already longer than I planned. The opportunities are vast for the Church to shift from political agenda to getting their hands and feet dirty with the downtrodden, the castaways, the broken. The current political and cultural climate has yielded us a chance to get back to being Christ to the world. Will we take it?

Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, has some great tongue-in-cheek sarcasm about the Gospels.

You could get a lot of wrong ideas reading the Gospels too much. You could start thinking that Jesus is in favor of some kind of social gospel where people give away lots of things, live in community, get in trouble for their radical compassion and stand outside of the religious establishment much of the time.

In fact, really….the Gospels have some good stories, but wouldn’t we be better off to study things like Romans 3 more often, so we really know what the Gospel is about?

Spending a lot of time in the Gospels could make you a person who is confused about discipleship as compared to grace. We should go to church, hear about grace, and leave much happier. If we read the Gospels too much, we’ll get the idea we’re supposed to do a lot of things that we really don’t have to do to be saved.

Let’s be careful with the Gospels. Don’t go overboard with them. They could mess up your whole religion.

I love it!

Update: Embedding has been turned on and off on this short, and it seems now it is back on. If you can’t get the video to play, click the link in the comments.

“Literalism is a false means of interpretation (hermenuetic) and is a vain attempt to democratize the Holy writings. If they can be read on a literal level, then everyone has equal access to them and everybody has equal authority to interpret them. Thus certain forms of Protestantism, caught up in the various modern theories of the Reformation, sought to do to the Scriptures what many sought to do with their governments. Kill the princes! Kill the priests! Everyone can be his own king, his own priest. Smash the images and any claim to authority. Of course these extreme forms always failed quickly, to be replaced by some version of moderation.

“Thus the Scriptures are not purely democratic – some interpreters are more equal than others.”

This touches on an issue for me, which is that all of our understanding is based on experience. All of our understanding about anythying is based on our experience. God speaks to us through the Scriptures, but it is not in a vacuum.

Justin Baeder makes this observation and shows how difficult it is to balance our own wants and desires with understanding the Bible in his post, Armchair Theology vs. Compromised Theology.

For example, Jesus criticized the man in his parable who tore down his barns to build bigger ones. If I move from an apartment to a house, or buy a nicer car, you could say I did the same thing. One you’ve done something, you tend to rationalize it, particularly if you benefit from it and enjoy it.

Justin surmises,

I say this to point out that we can’t depend entirely on ourselves to judge our own actions, and we can’t just judge others and expect our judgment to be fair. We need to make these determinations in community.

I’ve felt for quite awhile that our understanding of Scripture must be lived out with others striving to follow Christ. Jason brings up a good point in the comments of his post,

Many in the emerging church have argued for the local faith-community as the center of theological reflection and life. But my experiences over the past several years have left me feeling disconnected from anything larger or historical. I feel my attempts have contributed to splintering further Christ’s Body. In many ways, it’s simply been hyper-individualism in a small group form.

Alan, while I am wrestling with some of the Orthodox Church’s claims, your comment raises the question for me about the practical nature of living and experiencing the Bible’s content. If the Scriptures are the Church’s Scriptures, then experiencing and living the Scriptures must be the Church’s reality as a community, not as individuals. The more I think about it, while there is definitely a personal (not necessarily an individual) aspect of living Scripture, it must be in the greater context of the Church’s reality with Scripture. And this has to be more than just a local church’s or denomination’s reading, studying and interpretation of Scripture. And yet, the idea of the Church universal is too vague. The Church universal is too fractured to provide any real context for life in the Scritpures.

On the one hand, I see the need for a greater body of believers for being the community of understanding. Small groups are still easily swayed by shared interests which can jade them in their understanding of the Scriptures.

But that isn’t to say that large groups do not share the same flaw. For me, it is the willingness to learn from the interpretations of those who are not like us that help us better understand the Scriptures. So embracing a large, historical church for the sake of Biblical understanding could discount other communities. Unless the Church honestly should have always existed as the institutional structures we see in Eastern Orthodoxy, we should not expect to find a more perfect understanding by only looking at one segment of the Church.

There are aspects to the Scriptures, especially as it applies to living day to day in the Kingdom of God, which I think are best learned in small groups, while deeper theological questions are best understood within the context of the varying interpretations of the Church universal.

Technorati Tags:
church structure, ecclesiology, emerging church, bible study

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” – Ephesians 2:8

There’s a disconnect in the common Evangelical doctrine of salvation between faith and works. Perhaps disconnect is not the right word, but there’s a one-sided view of “works.” While we are saved by grace through faith and not by “good works,” there’s certainly a belief, whether stated or not, that bad works can definitely cost you your salvation. Or perhaps, that if you do bad works, that’s a sign that you really don’t have any faith at all.

So perhaps a better way to describe the doctrine of salvation in the Evangelical church is that you are “saved by faith and what you don’t do.”

A confession of belief becomes quickly called into question if you do certain things which are deemed unacceptable by most Evangelicals. Drinking to the point of drunkenness – even on an irregular basis, sex outside of heterosexual marriage, supporting a candidate who wants to keep abortion legal (even if said candidate does more for women in troubled pregnancies and practically reduces the number of abortions by their compassion rather than legislation), or divorcing a spouse without biblical grounds (or in many circles even with biblical grounds).

You can’t have it both ways. Either you are saved by faith and your actions have nothing to do with it, or our actions are central to our faith, both good and bad. Yeah, that’s where things get sticky, don’t you think?

I take issue with those who put all the weight on actions as well, because they seem to put all the weight on the good works and neglect the bad. If someone is actively involved in service to the poor and oppressed, who cares what sins they may be enslaved to? I know that’s an oversimplification. I really do.

The tension really comes into play when defining salvation. It has been so ingrained in us that salvation is eternal life (meaning when we physically die we go to heaven and live eternally), we only give passing consideration to another element in our salvation: empowerment to live and move in the divine image.

The empowerment we receive by the Holy Spirit does not mean total and complete victory. Sin is not a sign we have not accepted Jesus’ invitation to enter the Kingdom of God. At the same time, the fact that we will sin is no excuse for that sin. We are to put to death our sinful desires, progressively, as we are transformed into the image of Christ from one empowering moment to the next.

Our faith is an active faith. Works have everything to do with salvation, but not necessarily prior to salvation. Certainly, our actions and choices prior to following Jesus factor in our development as persons, but we are not earning or rejecting salvation in those actions. In the same way, our works are not earning or rejecting salvation after following Christ.

But…

There’s always a “but” when trying to work out theology.

Continually rejecting the empowerment to overcome our sins and strive to become like Christ could certainly deaden our faith. Our development can be stunted or even reversed by a continual insistence on living in the filth of sin.

In the same way, continually striving to overcome and be developed into the image of Christ will strengthen us and draw us closer to God.

So, I guess I’m saying you aren’t saved by what you do. You aren’t damned for what you do. But salvation for us in the here and now is all about what we do.

These are all issues we must be concerned about.

Do you feel a “but” coming?

But…

There’s a danger in big ideas. The danger is we transfer one cause for another. This is especially dangerous in the emerging church. Many of us have come out of church situations where we the primary focus has been the exaltation of ideas. For many, the danger to switch one big idea for another is too much to overcome.

I see that working in a lot of emerging churches today, at least how they are described by those running them (let’s be honest, very FEW of us have actually experienced most of the emerging churches we are familiar with, it all comes from personal conversation or what we read on the internet or emerging literature). The big ideas of theological reconstruction, focusing on the poor and the oppressed, care for the world we live in–these things can become just big ideas.

In a nation where free speech is touted as one of our greatest freedoms, we have become inclined as individuals to think we are actually doing something when we exercise that freedom. When we associate with others who are talking about the environment, talking about poverty, talking about corruption in politics, talking about (insert big idea here), we feel as though we are doing something. Simply by identifying with the big ideas which often are extremely important, we find an identity which justifies, to the big ideas’ detriment, just being passionate about something without actually doing something related to the big idea.

Even as I write this, I think, well, I recycle! I also drive a Z3 which doesn’t get quite the gas mileage I thought it would…

I do look the homeless persons in the eye when talking to them or passing them on the street, whether I give or not, but I don’t do near what I am able. I could truly help, but I don’t. Somehow, being amongst people who care about the poor makes it easier for me to shirk my responsibility to actually help them.

I don’t want to discredit the ministries which are talking about the big ideas, that is not my intent at all. Being aware, however, of the danger big ideas present, is necessary to overcome the very real possibility (or even probability) that our churches are more about talking up the big ideas than dedicating resources towards them.

And to beat a dead horse for long-time readers of this blog… as long as our primary focus for church life is a meeting with a half-hour or more sermon, big ideas will always be our focus rather than actually doing something about them.

She brings up a reasonable observation that it seems both pastors and politicians have an aversion to admitting they’ve changed their minds about something. I, for one, am not so worried about what Huckabee preached, as I am concerned with his political views. Having been a pastor myself, I wouldn’t want my sermons to be a factor on which acting gig I get or which website I develop. He has entered a different career.

Decisions about Huckabee should mostly be based on his political views and not his religious beliefs. Certainly, we cannot compartmentalize to the point where we do not consider something as important as religious faith, but it would be very easy to pull the focus on what matters most for politicians… how they vote and what they plan to vote for or against.

I hope no copies of Huckabee’s sermons come to the surface. I don’t want them to be torn apart, taken out of context, and abused by the media and his opponents. As far as whether he still believes them or not, I don’t really care a whole lot. I’m not voting for him, any way, and if I were, I’d be concerned with other things first.

I’ve listed to old sermons I’ve preached… let’s just say time changes a man.

So I recently subscribed to Lainie Petersen’s blog, and this post: Walking the Underdog, or The One Ring (Another Missive from my Atheist Husband) presented an idea had never really considered. Or at least I can’t remember thinking anything remotely like this.

Her husband wrote the post, evidently, and if I can summarize in a nutshell it would be that when a religion with such a strong rooting in persecution throughout its history becomes the predominant religion in the area, the adherents of the religion will divide themselves to be different and draw the ire of others… to feel persecuted.

That’s a very simple way to explain an eloquent post. So go read the whole thing here.

John MacArthur on The Emergent Church:

“This gives us the chance to say that we are so committed to unity in the Body of Christ that we are willing to hang with MacArthur, even when he thinks we are part of a different story. Rather than stooping to divisive rhetoric, we can help interpret the message of Christ by claiming MacArthur in our family, even if he is our crazy Uncle Phil.”

(Via willzhead.)

One of the most difficult things for me in leaving any type of established church is the feeling of being disconnected from the Church universal. Mostly, it’s a game in my mind, as I was no more connected to the church universal by attending an institutional type church than I am gathering with like-minded house-church types. But in a very real sense, I am disconnected in that they no longer see me as a healthy member of the body of Christ. I used to be able to reach out to even MacArthur’s students (I was a pastor in the city where the Master’s College is), and most of them would at least acknowledge I was a Christian (though certainly misguided ). Now, I feel like I can’t even engage them on a level where my faith is recognized as genuine.

And that does break my heart. Sure, I can explain how hyper-fundamentalists divide and tear down those who don’t fall in line, and I can tell others they are poor models of Jesus (though I don’t think I’d want my own life put under a microscope in that regard), but if I truly believe in the gracious God I love and serve, I must see them as family. Family who are not just the “crazy Uncle Phil” types, but the type of family who have disowned me, don’t want to speak to me, and put all of their effort into making sure no one else does either.

I love the Church. I wish I liked her a little more right now than I do. And I wish most of her liked me more than right now, too.

Scot McKnight got me thinking about the term “flesh” to describe Jesus’ humanity. Normally, we think of the flesh as something we are fighting against. While the word may be used differently, Evangelicals have too strong a bias against our human form. Perfection, more often than not, is seen from a Greek philosophical perspective. When Jesus is angry, that’s not his divinity, that’s his human nature… or it’s some special kind of divine anger we are incapable of. When Jesus needs his friends, the disciples, that’s not an indication of God’s longing for our companionship, that’s just Jesus’ human nature.

If we take seriously God making humans in his image, and that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, we should not be so quick to discount those things we see as “just human.” Certainly, we can learn more about the divine from the life of Jesus than our preconceived notions of deity flowing from our Western philosophical roots.

This Advent season, consider how the man Jesus is the image of God.

I haven’t been able to get his widget to work just yet, but hopefully the posts will soon start appearing in my sidebar.

There seems to be more of a buzz about “advent” this year. Perhaps it is the inertia stemming from the “advent conspiracy” movement?

When Christians start to seriously consider the reason for the season, many questions come forth about exactly what we should be doing or thinking about. Sure, it would be simple enough to say, “Think about Jesus, dummy,” but really… Advent offers us an opportunity to examine, meditate, and absorb the incarnation.

Since other person’s perspectives are extremely valuable in our own personal formation, I recommend checking out these advent bloggers as you await the coming of Jesus this season.

Advent Blogging 2007

So, our waiting now is a liturgical waiting, a waiting of reminder. Our waiting now is also a mystical waiting, a waiting on the inside for God, for Jesus, for our Savior as the Holy Spirit gives Him to us, in many different ways. We hear this, perhaps, during Advent, that we are to be awaiting God as He will choose to enter our lives. I’m not sure we always get that though. It’s a little esoteric. Mystical things are like that – a little weird. God, to us, is a lot weird most of the time. He describes Himself in many ways in the Scriptures, using quite a number of analogies. None of them quite nail Him down – nailing God down, yeah, not going to happen. I’m convinced we will understand Him even as He understands Himself one day, but there’s a lot between then and now.

(Via alancreech.)

I just can’t leave alone one smart-ass comment… as Christians, don’t we believe God was nailed down at one time?

Okay, it’s worth reading Alan Creech’s whole post, but the paragraph I quoted above really stood out to me.

To a point, we can control our knowledge of God that is intellectual. It’s directly related to how much time we spend studying and the methods of our studying. However, it’s they mystical elements, those things which are “a little esoteric,” which are not so easy to control. We can enter the Advent season as just another holiday season to come and go, or we can wait on God in this mystical sense. We can use it as a time to commune with God in a unique way with a specific part of Jesus’ story.

These are the aspects of Spiritual Formation which are not as easy to control. Results will vary drastically.

I caution you to not assume, especially if you have more of an analytic brain, that this mystical waiting during advent does not do you any good. I challenge you to dig in and spend time meditating not on precepts or doctrines but on simple thoughts of God coming to earth as the man Jesus. I challenge you to not be frustrated and try to look for the simple, pat answers. The types of disciplines which stretch us and change us the most are those most uncomfortable.

So to take my own advice, I should now go do some in-depth study, since I am much more drawn to the mystical. There was a point when I was not so inclined, but that is definitely my preference for communing with God at this point in my life.

The Church Marketing Sucks blog recently did a series on “Church from a Visitor’s Perspective.”

“Church is uncomfortable … Where else do you sing songs while staring at a trippy powerpoint with people you don’t know, eat a cracker, take a shot of juice, drop money into a crushed velvet bag and listen to one dude talk about events we weren’t at and worlds we can’t see… -Aaron Marshall on Church from a Visitor’s Perspective

Overview Post

First Post in the Series

To add a little humor to my day some months ago, I let my fingers stroll back over to the now defunct Emergent No blog. Reading some of the posts and comments over there, besides giving me more than a hearty chuckle a few times, reminded me of some of my college philosophy classes. We discussed paradigm thinking quite a bit.

What’s good to remind myself is that I too am in a paradigm. While mine has dramatically shifted over the past five years, I’m still working out my ideas and thoughts within a paradigm. Things that seem self-evident to me are not necessarily so. Obvious truths may actually be grossly misinterpreted due to my paradigm. I have no problem recognizing that possibility. It does not shake my faith, and admitting I might be wrong about things I hold dear does not tempt me in any way to abandon my faith.

Faith is where the rubber hits the road. If your faith comes strictly from your paradigm, you must hold to words which describe your beliefs at all costs. For if they are wrong, your entire foundation has been demolished beneath you. However, if your faith does not rest on your understanding perfectly, you can relax and trust in what you cannot see perfectly or know entirely.

More and more I am concerned that many abandoning the established church adopt a paradigm where their views are determined more by the world than their life of faith with others. I am concerned that this has happened with myself to some extent, and God has been correcting me lately.

The current paradigm in the culture I find myself in exalts a plurality of ideas and the opinions of others. There is valuable insight to be gained by listening to other’s ideas, but a paradigm in which you can say nothing definitively does not bode well for me.

The problem comes in communicating ideas to those who are not in your paradigm. The definition I like the best for communication is “creating shared meaning.” In order to create shared meaning, the parties communicating must have a sufficient understanding of the other person’s perspective. They do not have to have the same perspective, nor could they, but they do need to have at least a basic understanding of what the words used mean to the person using them. Without this, shared meaning is impossible to attain.

Here’s a portion of what Dan had to say:

I stressed how we don’t want to focus on hell and punishment as something we dwell on, but at the same time we must not ever forget it. It seems easy for churches and Christians to forget or because it is uncomfortable not talk about it or teach on it. – Full Post

I confess not wanting to delve too deeply into the topic. For some time, my position has been that if someone asks me how to avoid hell or get to heaven, I would share about salvation in Christ… a salvation which has the goal of saving you now so you naturally go to heaven when you die. Not salvation as a means to avoid hellfire. At the same time, I would not answer questions about whether someone is going to hell or not. That is for God to know. Basically, if you ask me how to avoid hell, I’ll tell you a way I believe in 100%, saving faith in Christ Jesus. If you ask me if you’re going to hell or not, well, that’s not up to me.

I appreciate Dan taking this issue on and in a way which a lot of his peers may not agree. Though I do think there’s more conservative theology in the emerging church than currently believed by Evangelical critics, there are certainly a lot of varying views which seem to, if not completely in reality do, negate any concept of hell.

This post is definitely worth the time to read. It’s lengthy, but go through it any way. Dan Kimball on Hell

The post goes on to talk about practice being more important than belief. This has been a contention of mine for awhile, that Jesus focused more on practice than belief. Of course, there’s not a neglect of faith or belief in the teachings of Jesus, but Evangelicalism have tended to favor a skewed interpretation of being saved by grace through faith and neglecting the place of works in salvation.

The question is, are we saved to heaven or are we saved to a new life? This is a serious question. A new life implies a change in our actions and deeds. I’m reminded of Dallas Willard’s teaching that grace is not opposed to effort, it is opposed to earning. We cannot earn salvation by doing good things, but doing good things is a part of our salvation and continued transformation into the life of Christ.

My only complaint with his post is the title. “gathering-centered” to me evokes the idea of what many in the church already have, which is meeting-centered churches. I think he’s just saying spread-out gatherings that aren’t tied to a unique congregation, but I just don’t think the title does his concept justice.

I’ve been thinking lately about planting a church again. Well, planting of sorts. You see, when I lived in Covina and even Anaheim, I had a house church I was a part of. Many of you know it as The Offramp. While I am still emotionally connected to the group, I’ve moved and honestly haven’t made near the effort I should to stay in any sort of relationship with the church.

Also, it kind of defeats the purpose of a small intimate house church to drive 45 minutes to come to a meeting.

So, I’ve been considering just connecting with a couple people I know that live close who have expressed an interest in a simple church structure. The thing is, I don’t want to be a pastor again. At least not right now. I’ve been hesitant to take on a role I have no desire to fill, and I’m not sure a truly simple church structure would be beneficial without any type of pastoral leadership.

I would be interested, though, if there are people in Los Angeles who would be interested in embarking on a journey towards a church community like Justin describes. More specifically, the west side of the san fernando valley, west l.a., or Venice/Santa Monica (where my heart is and I hope to move back to very shortly).

For me, since most of my conversations now fall outside of the Evangelical world, the use of the term has been quite handy. It’s a term those outside of the bubble do not recognize, and they usually ask what it means. While I consider the emerging church a movement, I do not believe it is an organization or an organizational movement. So identifying with the term emerging church is more a way of describing how I feel part of what God is doing in the body of Christ through the transformation of local churches and conversation across different segments of the body. I am part of that, and I do not mind it when people identify me with the emerging church movement.

Of course, I’m still on the outs with those who really want to call it a “conversation,” but as I’ve said before, that’s just a word game that does not make any sense. Really, if the emerging church is just a conversation, than the emerging church is not doing anything at all. Especially “emerging.”

I understand why some would want to distance themselves from the label, but I think for most, it’s paranoia about how people who are truly insignificant to the life of your local community of faith. Most of the people who are part of an “emerging church” probably are not even aware there is much of a controversy going on amongst Evangelicals regarding the structural, philosophical, and theological questions and changes occurring due to this movement.

For some, it may be a concern of funding when the old guard does not get it and thinks you believe exactly whatever Brian McLaren, Spencer Burke, or Doug Pagitt writes. If you find yourself in that situation, don’t talk about the emerging church at all. Really. Is it necessary? Can’t you just talk about a more organic church structure, a missional vision for your church, an openness to difference of opinion especially regarding nonessential beliefs?

In short, if the label is a problem for you. Drop it. Who cares?

If it’s not a problem, you should consider explaining your views by using the term. It helps aid in the conversation. At least it has for me.

Technorati Tags:
emerging church, church structure, ecclesiology

Occasionally, I enjoy doing a google blog search or using other blog search engines to find content. Frequently, blogs which are not currently on my radar screen for one reason or another come up and provide interesting content.

Someone named Carman (I couldn’t find an About page or Bio or anything, though I only did a quick look on the site) wrote this about faith and works during the holiday season:

We’ve entered the holiday season when people are more prone to kindness, reaching out to those in need. While that is good, the question we must answer is “Why doesn’t that continue throughout the year?” Do we salve our conscience with a few kind deeds during this season thinking we’ve fulfilled our obligation for the year? We should remember Jesus words, “For the poor you always have with you.” Thus we will never run out of opportunities to exercise our faith. In doing so, we bring the kingdom of heaven to earth just that much more as we enable our faith to work through love. — From the post, Faith and Works

Faith and works has been a tricky subject for Evangelicals. It will continue to be teaching stumbled over as long as “faith” is seen merely as intellectual assent to a set of doctrines or a belief system. Faith has intangible elements which go far beyond believing in something. Faith is almost a state of being. It’s part of our more than our thought lives.

When I question my own faith, I am rarely, if ever, questioning my belief in Christ. I am questioning whether I am truly living faith as part of my very self.

My article, “Church Restructure” appears on page 153. This is the first time I’ve been published in book form, though I’m close to completing a proposal which should get accepted rather quickly.

Of course, you could scour The Ooze on your own and read all of these articles online. Call me old-fashioned, but there’s still something nice about holding a book in your hand and turning the pages every once in awhile. Then, of course, there’s the nice benefit of highlighting which I don’t suggest you try on your computer screens.

There’s a great collection of articles from the first few years of the website. It’s at the same time nostalgic and profound. I really enjoyed flipping through and even seeing titles I read before I was the General Editor of TheOoze! That means they’re more than five years old…

It wasn’t until I opened the book that I realized there’s a volume 2 slated for publication already. If you’ve had an article published on TheOoze in 2007, you may just find yourself a book published author.

Out of the Ooze: Unlikely Love Letters to the Church from Beyond the Pew