Soul struggle

I am struggling with two ways of what I feel are the current "new" ways of being Christian.

The first is the voice which advocates using all the cultural tools at our disposal for the building up of the kingdom of God. So we blog, podcast, text, have websites, wireless capabilities, iPhone, twitter, facebook/myspace, etc. We meet at coffee bars and pizza places to have conversations and dialogue what it means to be Christian and what the nature of God is. We find specific outreach opportunities which have stories connected to them (such as adopting a family or drilling water wells in Africa). We read books by Leonard Sweet, Tony Jones and the like. We talk about emerging and the postmodern shifts in our culture. We seek out third places and look to highlight the sacred in these places. It is building relationships with strangers we meet in the places we go to. We call this incarnational.

The second is the voice which advocates the removal of things which can be distracting from the kingdom of God. So we move to abandoned places of empire or live in community. We seek to live simply and have few possessions. We share economic resources and constantly discover new ways to limit our use of resources such as energy, water or food. We find ways to struggle with systemic sins (such as poverty, racism, and economic injustices). We read books by Shane Claiborne, Tom Sine, and Chris Haw. We talk about cycles of nonviolence and nonviolent resistance. We seek out those in the margins to live with them. It is building relationships with the homeless in places which we would not normally go. We call this incarnational.

This is not a new struggle for Christians. How do the people of God relate to culture is a question as old as time, and I am beginning to be beat down by this struggle.

9 Needed Fundamental Shifts of Christian Living

Presented by Gary at the Young Adult Summit

We need to shift from:

1. Being Church focused to Kingdom focused
2. Maintenance leadership to Missional leadership
3. Fear of failure to embrace failure (fail often to succeed sooner)
4. Codependency (people have needs, we need people to keep the institution alive) to worship (aka: giving) and service
5. Talking at people to Talking with people
6. Counting money and people to counting relationships and missions
7. Dualistic worldview (there is sacred time and there is secular time) to sacred worldview (all time is sacred)
8. Judge and savior to Cultivator
9. Attractional (church growth model) to Missional (ministry with people)

YA Summit observations

The Fall Summit of the CTC in 2008, focused on young adult ministry. I met D.G. Hollums who is a "Cultural Architect at Th3 Waters" in Kentucky. He was a fascinating fella and I learned a lot from him. I cannot begin to type all that I learned but I know that his influence in my life (for the day it was) will shape my future. He has several blogs (the one to the left is his) and several podcasts (they guy podcast and praxis podcast are the ones I am most interested by). He and his Sr. minister, Gary, told me that if I had to read one book I should read:

The Shaping of Things to Come: Innovation and Mission for the 21 Century Church by Michael Frost

So I want to read that (I think that I added that to my goodreads book list, as well as organic church, and if the Buddha dated).

In another line on this summit, I ran across some quotes from people:

"I think altar calls are crazy. Asking people to come to the front and give their life to Jesus in one moment. I have never had a single relationship begin that way in my whole life."

"We live in a world of best guesses and not yets."

"For the word of God among us. For the Word of God within us. Thanks be to God."

"Third places are thin places"