Reality

Heh Heh. I can't believe that I am writing a post on reality.

I think it is very hard for most Americans, including American Christians, to accept the reality of reality. It is much more fun to create our own.

Calvin, from the Calvin & Hobbes comic series, said, "Reality continues to ruin my life."

Adam Savage, of Myth Busters fame, said, "I reject your reality, and substitute it for my own."

That pretty much sums up the view of reality for most people I know. Instead of dealing with reality we seem bent on creating our own. And we do it with utmost seriousness at times.

I recently watched a news report that told the story of a Somali family who walked 24 miles to reach help at a famine relief camp in Kenya. The mom died on the way and the father and children were very weak when they arrived. That is the reality of the world we live in. That's some serious stuff. Funny how we can turn a lot of other aspects of our life and elevate them to "most serious" status.

Sometimes I hear Christians saying that the end of the world is near because of the bad things they are reading about in their communities. I used to go to church with a guy in Africa who didn't have any ears. They had been cut off by rebel soldiers. I bet he thought the end of the world was long past due. We probably would have given up on church if that happened to us. I guess "How bad things are" is relative.

I don't mean this post to be a downer because we have so much to be thankful for. But I think the more we truly grasp reality the more thankful we become. A book title that really helps me (You can tell I am a deep thinker, can't you?) is Eugene Peterson's "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction." Now there is a dose of reality I can relate to.

Complaints Blessings

Well, it is really hot. I usually don't run air conditioners in the church sanctuary unless there is an event taking place but I did turn it on this week to try and keep some of gear from melting. I don't worry about the electronics since it's all turned off but I do worry about drums and guitars and other stuff made of wood. It's hot.

My son will be going off to college this fall and he happened to be lucky enough to get stuck in one of the few dorms that has no air conditioning. He complained to me about it the other day. Big mistake. I grew up in Africa and went to boarding school where air conditioning was just a dream. I don't think he appreciated my lesson on evaporative cooling. You sweat for a reason, you know. But it is hot.

It just so happens that the assignment for our small group this week is to list all of the blessings we have been blessed with. All of them. No matter how small. That list gets pretty big in a big hurry and after awhile complaining seems kind of ridiculous. I guess that was the point of the exercise.

So it doesn't matter how hot it is, how stupid the politicians in Washington are being, what the terror threat level might be, how bad my tomatoes are suffering from Blossom End Rot, or how worried I might be about how my kids might turn out (My brother says his biggest fear is that one of his daughters will be the next Lady Gaga.) I won't complain because I am blessed.

Defining Missional

I still haven't gotten my head around this topic so here it is again. If I wanted to get in touch with a group of people around a common interest I would need to define that interest so that people would know if they fit in the group or not. We see this on the web all the time. Some people start groups based on a particular sport. Others refine that even more and create groups around a specific team. And still others start groups that revolve around a specific cause regarding their specific team. (Fire The Coach!)But it gets a lot more difficult when the group is based on a word that has several meanings. This problem is not new.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/march/16.56.html

http://www.friendofmissional.org/

http://futuristguy.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/frank-violas-three-questions-on-the-meaning-of-missional/

http://subversiveinfluence.com/2008/07/50-ways-to-define-%E2%80%9Cmissional%E2%80%9D-ix/

So how would I define "missional" if I wanted to create a group of leaders who wanted to encourage each other along that path? What would I throw out that would help people know what I was talking about and what kind of a group I was looking for?

As I look through the notes I have from listening to Reggie McNeil I come up with a lot of ideas.

"The People of God...partnering with Him...in His redemptive mission in the world."

"Moving from church as a "what" to church as a "who"."

"Moving from a noun to a verb. i.e. 'I church at work.'"

"Inward focused to outward focused."

"From program development to people development."

"From church centric to Kingdom focused."

All are good thoughts but how do you put them together in a definition that makes sense? I was at our denominations national conference recently and I heard a guy talking about establishing missional communities. I had a conversation with him afterwards to try to determine exactly what he was talking about. I think he is on a similar path but who knows.

Maybe it is best not to worry about it. My guess it wouldn't take long for people to discover if they were thinking along the same lines or not. Then they could decide if they were in or out. Maybe it should be a word that covers a lot of ground and can't be defined in a sentence or two.

Drills

When I coached soccer I was always trying drills that I came up with in my head. I had an idea of what I wanted to strengthen in a player or the team and would develop a drill that I thought would appropriately address that weakness. The majority of those drills bombed. It was very apparent that they weren't going to work after just a few minutes. They were de-motivating and neither the players or I could see any hope for success. A few required significant tweaking and kind of worked. And a an even smaller number worked spectacularly. Even if they were hard players liked them because they could see how they were helping them be the players they wanted to become.

All drills fall into broad categories; passing, shooting, defending, transition, switching the point of attack, etc. But simply telling my team to go do a passing drill wasn't enough. They needed specific drills so if I did tell them to go do a passing drill, without any specifics, it was up to them to come up with something that would work. Most of my players had come from teams with decent coaching so they would come up with something most of the time. But what would happen if they hadn't had that kind of background?

I think this happens a lot with spiritual disciplines. We tell people they should practice spiritual disciplines but we just give broad categories. If we do go beyond that, the "drills" we give them are often inappropriate for their "skill level" or just bad drills to begin with. They don't motivate and they offer little hope for growth.

It turns out something like this. "Go develop a prayer life (broad category) by finding a quiet place where you can spend 20 minutes each day in prayer (probably a lousy drill)." The person is frustrated because it is is hard to find 20 minutes of quiet time because the kids are always wanting something and the actual praying part felt very much like a one sided conversation that was going nowhere. Day two lasted only 12 minutes and the actual prayer seemed an awful lot like day one's.

It's no wonder that thousands of people commit to reading the Bible, praying, practicing solitude, fasting, etc. only to fall off the wagon after a few days or a few weeks. Spiritual mentors need to learn to develop "drills" that inspire, motivate, and give hope for growth. It's not about making it easy, it's about giving the proper motivation.

It also seems that this needs to be customized. When coaching, I got a lot of ideas from coaching books, magazines, chat rooms, and other coaches themselves. But most drills had to be customized for the players I was working with. I had to simplify some drills and make others more difficult.

The problem for spiritual mentors is that such customization takes time and attention. But looking at the current state of North American Christianity I don't think we have a choice. It is time to let the creative juices start flowing.

Rest

In his book "The Good And Beautiful God," James Bryan Smith uses an excerpt from Dr. Siang-Yang Tan's book, "Rest," where he quotes Arch Hart. (How is that for a source trail.:)) I'm too lazy to write out the quote but the key stats where that in 1850 the average American averaged 9.5 hours a sleep/night. By 1950 it was 8 hours of sleep/night. And today it is less than 7 hours of sleep. Smith also states that researchers say we need an average of 8 hours of sleep to maintain health.

The 8 hours of sleep is an average so that means that some people can get by with less but some people NEED more than 8 hours. I suppose this means that most people feel they are part of the average that needs less than 8 hours and apparently all those who sleep longer didn't wake up in time for the survey.

The real problem with sleep is the public opinion of it. If I see someone who is disciplined enough to eat a healthy diet I admire that person. The guy who can turn down a huge bowl of ice cream, or at least severely restrict the serving size, is to be commended. I am amazed when I see a guy with a whopping large salad, a hefty helping of green beans, just the "deck of playing cards" sized steak, and a miniscule helping of cheesy potatoes.

Of course we may hold in our enthusiasm when it comes to pasty pale vegan extremists, but for the most part we applaud those who eat their fruit and vegetables and show restraint with the breads. Eating healthy, if you can manage it, is a great way to win the admiration of those around you.

Not so with a healthy amount of sleep. It starts out with teenagers who we rant and rave about when they don't get up before noon. We make sure they know they are worthless slugs for being so slothful. By the time a person is an adult anything more than 7 hours of sleep is thought to be lazy.

I spent a lot of years in a developing country, living in a town that didn't have electricity. It was close to the equator so the length of the days only varied by about 45 minutes throughout the year. Every day, sometime around 7 AM, it would get light, and sometime around 7 PM, it would get dark. Not having electricity really puts a damper on a lot of things that keep us up at night. Locals would stay up talking around a fire or visit by candles or oil lamp. But everyone was very aware that night had arrived and by 10 PM everything was pretty much shut down until 7 AM when it would get light again.

We had solar panels which gave us a little more light but with no TV we were stuck with visiting or reading books. I like to read but after 3 hours of reading I was about ready for bed at 10 PM too. All this to say that this probably represents a cycle that is much closer to what we were created for if we are going to be healthy.

I could go on and talk about all the different reasons why we stay up late and get up early or are labeled as lazy. But my conclusion is that I am going to start celebrating sleep. I won't lecture my kids about sleeping too much. I'll congratulate anyone who tells me they got 10 hours of sleep last night. And I'll give a look of suspicion to anyone who tells me they only need 7 hours or less of sleep. I need to work on my suspicious look.

Understanding

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him and he will make your paths straight." Proverbs 3:5,6

That is an often quoted and well known scripture to many Christians but it occurred to me recently how difficult it is. It is of great importance when dealing with theology because I think it is easy to only believe what we can understand.

In the past decade there has been a lot discussion about theological issues like the fate of people who have never heard about Jesus, God's ability to know the future, and, most recently, is hell a real place. I'm not choosing sides for any of these in this post. I'm just saying that there has been a lot written and discussed on these issues.

What I have noticed is that in each of these issues I have heard that an alternative explanation was needed because the logical outcome of the orthodox version was incomprehensible. I understand the frustration with that and I think it is good that people discuss these issues. I think we should push hard for understanding. I just don't know when the "incomprehensible argument" became the litmus test for truth.

Didn't God yell at Job and his friends about that?