We're studying a Christian financial book in Sunday school right now in between my lessons from the amazingly insightful Ray Vander Laan Faith Lessons Series. It's by Larry Burkett of Crown Financial Ministries. I was really concerned when I saw that it was published by Moody, and in some respects that concern was well-founded. There is some good information in it so far. It's just that the whole book is written with a worldview that is completely colored by a premillenial dispensational bent on eschatology. I think that it suffers from the belief that we are the pinnacle of what God intended for there to be on earth. We're friends of Israel, so when we go under, that's a sure sign that the end is near. The decline of American civilization has to mean it's the end of the world because we're so important.

When I put together my study on eschatology a few years ago, one of the best ideas I came across was this: has the church been poisoned by the lie that it will be defeated? The end point I make with my study is that you don't have to have the Left Behind worldview in order to be a Christian. It's not the only interpretation about the end times. In fact, it's only really become fashionable in the last several decades. And yes, we should be prepared for the bridgegroom to return, but that doesn't mean that we give up trying to be the body of Christ in the world (which means more than just being concerned about the state of someone's soul—it's about being concerned about their entire situation, economic, political, etc.).

So the book gets into the idea of a Mark of the Beast UPC code kind of thing after making some sound points about our economic system.

Ever since I got into Ron Paul, I began learning more and more about our economic system, and what I've learned is not all that comforting. There's probably a reason that our schools don't teach how the system works. People would lose all confidence in the system, and it would fall apart if they realized what a magic trick the whole thing is.

"The process by which banks create money is so simple that the mind is repelled." - John Kenneth Galbraith, Economist

Jamie grew up working in a bank, she works for a major mutual funds manager and most of what I've learned is news to her too. On an intellectual level, I guess I just always assumed that banks lend money from deposits of other customers, but that's not really what happens. The reality is that if someone deposits $1111, then the bank can then load out $10,000. Where does that money come from? It's just conjured into existence. Money does not represent value, money represents debt, and it has no real value aside from the fact that the government says it does. This video series is highly educational. I don't agree with the proposed solutions, but it does a good job of explaining how the system evolved into what it is today.

Hmm.. guess I did have something to say today after all.

Tuesday - Called to be Loved

MSG
31-39So, what do you think? With God on our side like this, how can we lose? If God didn't hesitate to put everything on the line for us, embracing our condition and exposing himself to the worst by sending his own Son, is there anything else he wouldn't gladly and freely do for us? And who would dare tangle with God by messing with one of God's chosen? Who would dare even to point a finger? The One who died for us—who was raised to life for us!—is in the presence of God at this very moment sticking up for us. Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture:
They kill us in cold blood because they hate you.
We're sitting ducks; they pick us off one by one.
None of this fazes us because Jesus loves us. I'm absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God's love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us.

Romans 8:31-39

When I started thinking about this day's theme, I immediately thought of a service that I had put together back when I was helping lead The Door service. It was inspired by a camp program that I saw growing up where we took the story of the Prodigal Son and set it to music and did sing-alongs that told the story. I'm pretty sure that it was a program put together by Reggie Holder.

My take on it was influenced by a sermon I read on the Emergent Kiwi blog, but for our program, I put a bit of a twist on it that wasn't originally included in my Door service.

I originally put together a video for the younger son, the father, and the older son using some images I found on Google, some of the stock photo sites. I set them to music and used the Ken Burns effect for drama. But this time around, I was going to redo them and make them more edgy, but then I discovered Animoto, which pretty much did all that for me. And originally, I basically read straight off the sermon that I referenced on the blog originally, but I never liked how that flowed.

So for camp, I rewrote the sermon as a series of monologues, the first of which was played beautifully by one of our long-time campers, Leah:

The Younger Son’s Story
I was such an idiot. Where do I even start?
I went to my father—my father, who is still living—and asked for my inheritance. I didn’t know how good I had it. I didn’t appreciate what I had. I was selfish and foolish.
Not only did I want my inheritance, I wanted to spend it. That’s like asking your father for his retirement funds while he’s still around. I might as well have told him, “I wish you were dead.” When I told him, his face turned white as all the blood drained from it. I was so convinced that I was missing out on living the high life, that I didn’t care how much I hurt my father, I just wanted out. I was sick of my family, sick of my life.
And what was that inheritance? It was our family’s lands, our livestock. What we had to live off of. It was our lifeblood. It usually takes years to negotiate the sale of that much land and livestock, but I was so selfish and greedy that I sold it off in a couple of weeks, just to get the money quickly and start my new life, on my own. The people in the town called me names and shot disapproving glances when I walked through town. Childish, despicable they called me.
In our culture, in order to do something like this, you had to publicly say that you were cutting yourself off from your family and your city. So, I choose to be cut off forever. The only way I could undo that is to buy back all of the stuff that I sold. I was now, for all practical purposes, dead to my family, to my city, to friends I went to school with, played with, grew up with. I wanted nothing to do with them anymore.
So I left. I went off to live life for ME. But you know, there are some things out there that want to own you. And I willingly let them.
→ Younger Son Song Clip Plays Here →
At first, I thought I had found what I was looking for, but I soon realized that in my quest for the ultimate freedom to do whatever I wanted, I ended up in bondage. A slave. Flush with all of that cash, I had everything money could buy. I soon had all kinds of new friends, and we lived it up. I was throwing cash around like it was going out of style. But then, the economy tanked. A drought hit, one of those once in a hundred years kinds of events. In your time, when some kind of catastrophe hits, you have WorldVision, and all these charities that come to help. There was no Doctors Without Borders, no NBC or CNN, broadcasting live to mobilize the world to come to help. I was completely on my own. My so-called friends abandoned me once the money dried up. I was far from home, I had no real friends, no family to bail me out. I abandoned my family. I went through the ceremony that cut me off from my hometown. I was on my own, just like I wanted, but I was hungry. Even if I tried to go home, the people in the town would hunt me down and kill me before I even got home. In our tradition, once you leave, you’re an enemy, an outsider. What could I do? I was hungry, broke, and homeless. I ran across an ad in the local paper. There weren’t many jobs available, but there was at least one… a pig farmer. Wait, I forget… you don’t understand about my people and pigs. I am a Jew. Pigs are considered unclean in our culture. You don’t eat barbecue, you don’t even touch pigs. The Rabbis say, “cursed are those who feed pigs.” There I was. A Jew, in a pigsty. And this job doesn’t even pay a living wage. I couldn’t even afford 2 meals a day, let alone 3. As I looked at the pigs eating the slop, I realized that even they were better off than me. How much lower could I get? I started thinking… my father’s servants are even better off than me. I could go home, and beg to become one of his servants. But then there’s my having been cut off from the town. I’d have to get past the townspeople if I was going to make it to my father alive. I would be a hired hand. Not part of the family, just an employee. At that time, I wasn’t even really sorry for what I had done, I was just hungry, broke, and scared. I didn’t know if my father would even welome me back as a son. I had squandered it all. I didn’t even deserve to be called his son. I wrote this whole long speech down, ready to beg for mercy from my father, and headed towards home.

The Father's Story (performed by his eminence, the honorable Franklin Slaton)

I was speechless, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Surely, I had heard him wrong. I could feel the blood draining from my face. I could feel the knots in my stomach. One of my 2 children, the youngest, my daughter came to me to ask me to let her take her share of our family’s wealth, our lifeblood. We make a living off our land and our livestock, and let her go ahead and have it.
I felt so rejected. Even though it would completely humiliate me in the eyes of my friends in town, I gave her the freedom to go, to live on her own, apart from me.
For years, I waited to hear word from her. You see, we had no email, no phones, not even a post office. I would describe my daughter to strangers who were passing through our village to see if anyone even knew if she was alive or dead.
In our culture. When you marry and have a family, we add onto the house, and keep building and building. Families live together all their lives. I know that you don’t typically live with your grandparents and aunts and uncles, and cousins. In our culture, you stay with your family. When my daughter left us, she had to go through the cutting off ceremony willingly. She had to say that she wanted nothing to do with me, her brother, the rest of our family, her friends. It broke my heart.
But one day, while I was out in the fields, I saw her, from a long way off. I don’t know how I even knew it was her. I just did. And then I remembered the cutting off, and what the people in the town might do to her. And I took off running.
Wait.. I forget, you don’t know about that part of our culture. Running is for the children. Middle Eastern men in my day don’t run. Usually I’m wearing this long robe that stretches to the ground. If I run, I have to pull it up. Exposing your legs is humiliating for my people. But I don’t even care. I run to her.
→ PLAY RECONCILIATION CLIP HERE ←

My daughter weeps in shame, telling me that she is no longer worthy to be called my daughter. She told me later that she had a speech she had written about begging to become a hired hand. She’s my daughter. I didn’t care about the cutting off ceremony, it’s time for a ring and a party. And not just a small party, I invited the whole town to see that my daughter, who was dead, is alive. We are cooking up the fattest cow we can find. That’ll feed about 200 people. We are going to have a massive party, and everyone in town will know that my daughter is forgiven.

And then we broke into groups to process it, because this is a heavy subject, and I've always believed that while our time with the campers is limited, there's freedom in being a part of a community of believers outside of your hometown. It gives campers the freedom to process some things that they might not normally process. And even if that's only done internally, that's ok. We had them spend some time in their groups and emulate the younger son in the story by writing a letter of their own to God, saying whatever they need to say. Here's the instructions I gave out:

In one way or another, we can all relate to the Prodigal Son (or daughter). Give campers about five minutes to write their own “speech” to God, like the prodigal daughter wrote for her father. It’s essentially a personal prayer of confession. Tell them that they don’t have to include their names, and that no one will read what they’ve written. Have them seal their speeches/prayers in envelopes. When the group time ends, they should carry the envelope into the Assembly Hall.
Use the remaining time (about 15 minutes) to reflect on the following questions as a group …
•    What makes us feel like the prodigal son or daughter?
•    What makes us feel unlovable?
•    What makes us feel unworthy of God’s love?
•    What does it mean to you to be a child of God?
•    Can you relate to the father’s love for the prodigal son/daughter? How does that feel, or how do you imagine it would feel?
•    What does it mean to you that God has such extravagant, no-holds-barred, no-matter-what love for you?

Then when they returned to the Assembly Hall, we did it in a very solemn manner. They came in and sat down on the floor and I got up and told them that in a few minutes they would have the opportunity to come up to the front and take their letter and shred it, because just like in the story, God doesn't care about what you did, He just wants you to come home.

My favorite programs are the ones that pull the rug out from under the campers. The unexpected twist. In 2007, we did this. So as I finished explaining what we were going to do, I yelled out the cue for the next phase of the evening: "Somebody get me a DJ!" We had bought a Disco ball, camp already had some strobes, and we already had the blacklights up, so all we needed was some dance music (and if you've never been to a camp at Sumatanga, you don't know that we love to dance). We brought in refreshments, started rolling the place with streamers. I had wondered how the campers would react after all that serious time with such a hard break from serious to silliness, but it went over really well. It was like exhaling and letting it all out. We let that run on for 20 minutes or so. And then we completed the story by having the older son show up outside in the dark. Paul, another of our veteran campers, did an amazing job getting across the pissed off and jealous older son. We had him look in the windows and just generally make a scene. He was mic'd up, so we could hear him and we asked Franklin to go out and take care of it. It was really hillarious because the campers treated it like a fight at school, they all crowded at the back windows to see what was going on.

The Older Son
Paul: Hey… what’s going on in there?
→ Franklin comes out to talk
Franklin: You’re not going to believe this! Your sister has come home!
Paul: What do you mean she’s come home? She cut herself off from us. She CHOOSE to leave. Nobody forced her. She humiliated me. She humiliated you. She humiliated our entire family, and you let her.
And what about the land she sold, she can’t come back unless she returns what she threw away.  That land was part of our family. It was my birthright too.
Don’t you realize that these people that have shown up for your party were all laughing at you just a couple of years ago? Don’t you listen to the rabbis? They say it’s better than someone be thrown into a furnace than to put someone to shame in public.
Franklin: Son… all is forgiven… come in.
Paul: All these years I’ve been working like a slave for you and I have NEVER disobeyed, yet you never even gave me a small party with my friends, but she goes off, blows half of YOUR lifesavings and you have the party to end all parties for her.
-- walks away --

Rug pulled. :-)

I concluded by basically taking the direct thoughts off of that sermon I referenced earlier:

And that’s the end of the story. There is no resolution, no reconciliation.
The musicians wait, the guests watch, the servants are poised with more food and wine.
People wonder: what happened to the older son? Did he let himself be persuaded by his father? Did he finally enter the house and participate in the celebration? Did he embrace his sister and join in the celebration? We simply don’t know. The story ends.
What happens next? What does the elder son say? What does he do?
The younger son or daughter was lost, but now she is found. The older son is lost, even though he never left. What’s his next move?
Maybe the next move is really ours? What will we say and do, because we too have seen love. Jesus left the house of his father to become the prodigal son for us, not as the rebellious son, but as an obedient son. Greater love has no man than this that a man lay down his life for a friend. And Jesus has run toward each of us. Jesus has endured shame and humiliation for each of us. And he returned to his father’s house to save us from ourselves and from sin.
We have see the unexpected, undeserved love of God the father. We know that was in Christ putting the world square with himself, and giving us a fresh start.
Will we act like the older son and remain outside of God’s party? Refuse to accept the love of God for other people? Do we choose to trust or not trust God’s endless forgiveness?
Will we be like the younger son, setting boundaries in our relationship with God?
Serving God as servant or hired hand?

Or will we accept the gift of God, and join God’s party?
I think most people remember this story in terms of the younger son. It speaks to where they are.
However, now, years later, when I read this story, my fear is that we have become/will become like the heartless and self-absorbed older brother.
Our culture is the young son who has runaway from home. The biggest challenge in the parable is not to the young son, but to the elder son, to accept the outrageous grace of God. The shock is that the parable has no ending, the guests wait, the musicians pause and God asks each of us what we will do in response to grace.
Sin is broken relationships, our living selfishly, apart from God and our community.
God is the compassionate father who gives us freedom and who runs to us in humility and shame.
Repentance is accepting the fathers love. God’s love is offered to all, those who go and those who stay to those not yet Christian and those who have labored for many, many years.

Monday - Called to Faith

There's been a lot of talk about atheism vs. belief lately. Every few years there seems to be a new crop of books that pop up about how religion is an evil influence on society. This year, I discovered Tim Keller's The Reason for God. I saw a clip of Keller giving a talk at Google summarizing part of his book and I was intriqued. I added his book to my Amazon wishlist and in a happy coincidence, it happened to be part of our assigned summer reading for work.

My goal for Monday was to explore the relationship between faith and reason and to generate some discussion about issues like evolution and atheism. The teenage years are crucial to the development of a real, lasting faith. It's the time of life where you make the decision for yourself—is this for real? We had a speaker one year who made a comment that stuck with me: for some of the campers, our camp may be the last religious experience they have for 15 years, or ever.

The Premise of Tim Keller's book
Is it ok to have doubts? The premise of the atheism books used to be religion is bad. Now it's gone so far to say that respect for religion is bad. It used to be a common belief among scholars that the more technologically advanced a society got, the less religious it would get. The more economically developed, the more "enlightened," the less religious it would get. Now we know that's not so. Orthodox faith in America has actually gotten stronger, though mainline denominations like the Methodists are in decline. But at the same time, secular thought has gotten stronger as well, leading to this conflict of differing viewpoints. Is it possible to reconcile faith and reason?

I handed out some materials ahead of time to get the leaders thinking about some of the issues that might come up that evening (much of which comes from The Reason for God:

- 1 3 basic kinds of reasons to believe/disbelieve
- 1.1 1) intellectual reasons
you read the arguments and you say, these are compelling
arguments I do/don't
- 1.2 2) Personal reasons
people don't just believe/disbelieve because of intellectual
reasons, they do so because of personal reasons. Something
bad happens to them. Some people take this and say, I need a
God, some say, I don't need a God who would allow this.
Success, some people say they can do it on their own, some
feel hollow
- 1.3 3) Social Reasons
you tend to find most plausible the beliefs of the people in
the community you most want to be a part of
- 2 It takes as much faith to disbelieve in God as to believe
- 3 Evil and Suffering - Look at all the pointless and senseless
suffering in the world, given all that, there may be a God who's
good, but unable to stop it, or there may be a God who is powerful
enough, but not good enough to stop it
- 3.1 How do you know it's pointless? How do you know it's senseless
and that there's no good reason for it? The only answer we have
is "I can't think of a good reason"
- 4 If there really is a God, how can so many bad things have been done
in his name
- 4.1 Out of Christianity came the crusades, out of Islam came
terrorism. But look at atheism -Stalin. If you believe there is a
God, it's easy to twist that into, I believe, you don't and you
must destroyed. But if you're an atheist, you can think: if I can
do this and get away with it, I won't have to pay for it. You can
twist anything into violence. It's a tie.
- 5 I don't know if there's a God or not, but no one can really know for
sure
- 5.1 Agnostics: elephant and blind man: 6 blind men grab the elephant
in different places and come to different interpretations of what
an elephant is like, and that's how religion is.
- 5.2 Newbigin: In that story, the real point is constantly overlooked,
It's told from the point of view of a person that isn't blind,
but sees what the blind men are missing out on. The only way you
could see that is if you think you're not blind. You're assuming
you have the knowledge that you think no one else has.
- 6 Until you prove there's a God, I don't have to believe in God
- 6.1 Problem is that's a big leap of faith: why would you assume that
God would be something inside of the world and provable?
- 6.2 The russians sent Yuri Gregoran into space. He said, we sent
someone to heaven, he didn't see God anywhere.
- 6.3 CS Lewis: If there is a God, you don't related to God that way,
it's more like Hamlet trying to prove there is a Shakespeare.
Shakespeare would have to write himself into the play (much like
Jesus did).
- 6.4 I can't prove to you that I'm not a butterfly dreaming I'm a man.
- 6.5 Moral convictions, humans have rights. How can you prove that?
- 6.6 If you are living as if there is no God, that's an act of faith
- 7 It makes more sense to believe than disbelieve
- 7.1 Fine tuning of the universe
- 8 Why would a good God send people to Hell?
- 8.1 Hell, says Keller, “is the trajectory of a soul, living in
self-absorbed, self-centered life, going on and on forever…hell
is simply one’s freely chosen identity apart from God on a
trajectory into infinity.”
- 8.2 Story about Lazarus and the rich man in the Bible. The rich man,
doesn't even ask to get out of Hell. He's still so selfish and
self-centered, he still thinks that Lazarus should do his bidding.
- 8.3 Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in
your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become
oneself, to get an identity, apart from him….[sin] is not just
the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into
ultimate things.” Everyone no matter if they’re Joe Blow or
Madonna has to find some way to “justify their existence.” And
when you and I turn to anything other than God we Sin.
What are the personal consequences of Sin? One consequence is the
loss of your true identity, and with that any sense of personal
stability and peace. Ultimately “A life not centered on God leads
to emptiness. Building our lives on something besides God not
only hurts us if we don’t get the desires of our hearts, but also
if we do.” Sin’s consequences don’t stop there, the consequences
of sin are not just personal, but social and cosmic.
- 9 Yeah, but aren't Christians just hypocrites
“If Christianity is all it claims to be, shouldn’t Christians on
the whole be much better people than everyone else? This
assumption is based on a mistaken belief concerning what
Christianity actually teaches about itself.” You don’t clean up
and then come to Christ, you come to Christ because you’ll always
need to clean up and his Spirit more than your good intentions
makes all the difference in the world. To mix metaphors the
church is a hospital ward full of sick people, of course its
going to look worst than the world outside.

And then some questions they might share with their group:

1.    What does the word faith mean to you?
2.    Is it ok to doubt?
If you had all of the answers, you'd be God. Being a mature Christian is sometimes about accepting that there are sometimes no good answers.
3.    What do you believe about the way the universe was created?
4.    We were taught that there were rules that govern the physical universe (think of Newton and the apple), but now we know that this isn't necessarily so. How did hearing about some of the weirdness of the bigness and the weirdness of the smallness affect the way you think about God and faith?
5.    How does the circle vs rectangle example affect the way you look at the arguments between Christian denominations? (Make sure your campers understand the concept first) Predestination vs. Freewill?
6.    Make sure the campers understand the flatland example. Flatland is all we have (reductionistic) vs. There's more - nudges, feelings, perception of the greater truth
7.    You might discuss thin places. In Celtic spirituality, certain locations - especially islands, mountains and springs - became sacred and were visited by people on relevant occasions. They were called "thin places", because here the division between heaven and earth was said to be at its narrowest. A lot of us think that Sumatanga is a thin place.
8.    How does the theory that there are 11 dimensions affect your understanding of God?
9.    A Samaritan woman once asked Jesus where her people should worship God - on Mount Gerizim, as had been their custom, or in Jerusalem.

John 4:20. The underlying question was whose religion was correct, stated in terms of the proper place for worship. To this question, Jesus replied:

Woman, believe me, the hour comes, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, will you worship the Father. You worship that which you don’t know. We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshippers. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

How does this video affect your understanding of this scripture?
10.    What's wrong with thinking that God is only being in a certain place, a church, at camp? There is no word in Jesus' language for spiritual.
11.    What difference does faith in God make in your

For the actual program, we showed part of Rob Bell's Everything is Spiritual video. I went through the video and outlined it and then cut out parts of it to get it to fit within our time frame. I wish I had a picture of how we projected it, because it was a neat set up visually. The setup of the video is Rob Bell on a plain stage with a big whiteboard. And we set it up so that it was us watching it on a plain stage of a white drop cloth. Anyways, Bell ties Genesis and creation to quantum physics and string theory. It's really fascinating stuff, and it really makes you see things in a whole new way. We got a great response from it, and the counselors felt like it really set up some really great discussion for that evening as we broke into groups.

When we came back from groups, we showed another 20 minutes of the video, and then at the end of the clip, I spliced together the music from the video into a loop so that I could drag out the end of the video. He essentially ends the video making the point that everything that you do is spiritual. There's no word in the Hebrew language for spiritual. It's ALL spiritual. And that there's a lot more going on in our world than we can perceive. Scientists believe that there are at least 11 different dimensions. Unbeknowngst to the campers and most of the counselors, we replaced the light bulbs in the front part of the room with blacklights. Through some experimentation, I found that you could pretty much hide messages on the walls in plain sight  by taking brown grocery bags and writing messages on them in highlighter. Because they were the same color as the walls in the rooms we were in, they blended nicely.

One of the more vivid examples in the video is of flatland. So we had some folks act out that illustration as a closing. The video ends, the techno music loops, the screen goes dark. We flip on the blacklights. We had marked all of the campers with a Jesus fish logo with highlights (that we disguised, so it wouldn't be obvious that it was a highlighter), and on the walls is written the message "this isn't all there is... there's more" which suddenly is visible, when it wasn't there before. On stage, we have a dramatization of the flatland example. We had 2 people go up and pick up a bedsheet on which we had masked out the 2 stick figures. At a certain point we have them drop the sheet and then we have these 2 figures dressed in white playing the stick figure roles and then a dancer comes in from the back who is wearing a black shirt with a cross on it (I wanted to use the trinity triquetra symbol, but we were afraid it wouldn't translate). The dancer interacts with the stick people and then on a cue, after the dance is finished, they pick up the sheet again (it's actually a 2nd bedsheet), on which we have written "God is near" in glow in the dark ink. We cut the lights and now all you see is darkness and the words, "God is near."

I read the book a few months ago, and it was a fascinating read. It does challenge a lot of what we do in our churches these days. Witherington pretty much lets them have it. Take a look.

Incidentally, the reason my notes from Rob's sermons have stopped is that Rob is on sabbatical from teaching, though they're having a great list of guest speakers during that time. So that will pick back up once he's back in the pulpit.

Steve Carter's message, Out of Egypt from a few weeks ago is definitely worth a listen as a primer on the Jesus is the new Moses line of thought. He's on our list of folks to look into for future Encounter weekends in Gatlinburg.

Great quote from that article:

I suspect that Bell frequently rouses two useless responses among church leaders. Some will sit on the sidelines, buy his stuff, marvel at his ability, and applaud his efforts. Others will sit in the peanut gallery, heckle his success, and condemn him for what they deem poor theology or inappropriate this or that. I'd encourage church leaders to find a third response: learn what we can from Rob Bell, then get off our keisters and do something. After all, perhaps the best lesson from Bell is that he's attempting something for the kingdom.

It was a great week, yet again. Unfortunately, we lost our administrative director just before the week started, leaving me to serve as the program coordinator and part of the administrative director all at the same time. In addition, we were without a music leader until Tuesday, so I did that too. It was a little stressful, but once we got going, I was honestly a little disappointed that I was going to be giving up the music. It had been a long time since I had a reason to play the guitar. By Monday night, I remembered how much I liked being a worship leader. I'm not overly skilled with a guitar, but I can lead songs.

We had a great group of counselors this year. And a lot of returning campers. It was by far the most balanced group agewise that I can remember in a long time.

Sunday night is the least programmed night of the week, due to the fact that it's the start of the camp, and we need to take care of some business, and do some icebreakers and games. We used Death Cab for Cutie's I Will Possess Your Heart as the background for a dramatization of the busyness of teenage life to introduce the theme. It's about a girl, but the lyrics work great as being spoken by Jesus too. We started the music and cued up some iPhones to ring during the first minute or two, having people carry on a short conversation with an imaginary person on the other end. The rest of the dramatization was involved with all the distractions that we face, while on screen, I had scenes from Koyaanisqatsi playing.

Side note: John Hayes gave me a copy of Koyaanisqatsi last year. He played about 10 seconds of it. I said thanks, and that was it. Saturday night before camp, I was sitting and thinking about what to put on screen to illustrate the pace of our lives. I remembered that video, but all I saw was a silent clip of some cities. Thinking that it was worth a shot, I popped it in. It's an absolutely gorgeous movie. It's like visual crack. I was mesmerized. I couldn't quit watching it. It's a 1983 flim consisting of time-lapse and slow-motion footage from across the United States, set to music. The word Koyaanisqatsi means 'crazy life, life in turmoil, life out of balance, life disintegrating, a state of life that calls for another way of living', and the film implies that modern humanity is living in such a way. It's available from Netflix (as a DVD and as a Watch Now) and is part of a trilogy of films.

The whole point of the evening is to introduce the theme: Listen! God is Calling. The key point we were trying to make was that we aren't usually even listening. I thought about reusing Nooma - Noise, but we did that just a couple of years ago.

We also introduced the concept of selah from the Psalms. A selah is a liturgical note in the Psalms that is a cue to stop and let the weight of the moment settle in. We used it several times throughout the week.

Dave Barnhart from Trinity in Homewood was our speaker and he was great all week at complimenting and setting up things for the program.

Rob continued going through Philippians ever so slowly. Today it was chapter 2, verses 3 and 4:

3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

This was another great message where he breaks down each little piece of this passage which is saturated with good stuff. I don't think I have time to really capture what the whole of the message was in here. I mainly just want to give a synopsis of what I came away with, both for my own records, so that I can refer back to it at some point if I'm teaching something regarding this topic, and so that others out there can do the same.

He begins by talking about the Trinity and goes back through the previous chapter again, looking at all of the ways that Paul references the members of the Trinity both communally and individually. And then talks about how God, the Son, and the Spirit exist in community, each feeding and serving each other.

"God's eternal reality is the love between Father, Son, and Spirit...This is what God is...Union and communion are the goal of all created reality." -- Scot McKnight

And then he goes on to talk about what "looking not to your own interests but to the interests of others" looks like using that example of the Trinity. He quotes the theologian Karl Barth, and talks about those people who just get under your skin. Those people who just do things the complete opposite way of how you think they should be done, and those people who are strange and different.

We discover respect for each other, not on this ground or that, perhaps without any grounds, counter to every ground, simply because we are bidden when looking at our neighbor to think of the "one thing" - Karl Barth

The one thing here being God's grace. Paul is saying: if you want to understand God's Grace: orient yourself around the strange, the different, the coworker you can't stand, the embarrassing relative, the person who makes you crazy. In trying to love and serve them you will begin to get a glimpse of what it's like for God to love you with all of your strangeness, differentness, etc.

the strange, different, unintelligible, subjective aspect of my neighbor is the garment in which the "one thing" meets me. - Barth

Another great message from Bell.

Philippians 2
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

This was a great message that talked about unity in Christ. One might imagine that it was at least somewhat aimed at what CRNinfo calls the ODMs, the online discernment ministries. Just Google Rob Bell's name and you'll get plenty of bile spewed forth about him being a heretic, etc., from a lot of fundamentalists, etc. Sometimes this bothers me. I listen to his sermons and think, wow this is so great, so thought-provoking. This message has really helped me understand God in a deeper way. And then I read of people online not feeling that way at all and it makes me wonder, "what am I missing here?" But in praying it over, the Holy Spirit reminded me of John 15:1-17: in other words, where do you see the fruit? I have seen a lot of fruit in my life over the last year or so since I've been listening to Rob Bell's sermons each week and learning more and more about Judaism and how it helps us understand Jesus as a first century Jewish rabbi.

The crux of the message is that we're going to have different opinions and interpretations. But there's something bigger going on than our differences... He shared that Robert Winslow had done a study about house churches and that people tended to leave those groups when they found out that their interpretation of scripture differed from their own. Very true. In looking for a church to attend, I have paid a lot of attention to the differences between what I believe and what they believe. Mainly because I want my daughter to be raised in an environment where she is taught the interpretations that I hold to be true. But what Bell is talking about here is more than just biting your tongue, it's about us having a church where we can be together and still disagree on some issues. He talks about us deciding to start with Jesus: "an we agree that the body of Christ was broken and His blood was spilled out for the healing of the world? Can we agree on that? Can we?" Paul isn't saying that we have to agree on everything.

Romans 14:
1Accept him whose faith is weak, without passing judgment on disputable matters. 2One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. 3The man who eats everything must not look down on him who does not, and the man who does not eat everything must not condemn the man who does, for God has accepted him. 4Who are you to judge someone else's servant? To his own master he stands or falls. And he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand.
5One man considers one day more sacred than another; another man considers every day alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. 6He who regards one day as special, does so to the Lord. He who eats meat, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who abstains, does so to the Lord and gives thanks to God. 7For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. 8If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.

9For this very reason, Christ died and returned to life so that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living. 10You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat. 11It is written:
" 'As surely as I live,' says the Lord,
'every knee will bow before me;
every tongue will confess to God.' "[a] 12So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.

13Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in your brother's way. 14As one who is in the Lord Jesus, I am fully convinced that no food[b] is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for him it is unclean. 15If your brother is distressed because of what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother for whom Christ died. 16Do not allow what you consider good to be spoken of as evil. 17For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, 18because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by me.

All of that has a heavy influence on my view of alcohol and wine, exactly the point I was trying to make when I was having the argument with our speaker from the Encounter weekend last year. There are things that are not a sin for me that are a sin for you, and vice versa. Let's stop passing judgment on one another and not look down on one another. Bart Campolo made a great point about this very issue when he shared a story about a friend who became a Christian and gave up cards, because she was told that card are of the devil. That included UNO. He was saying that he believed that God would honor that because it was done in the right spirit, even though he didn't agree with it. He felt like God would be pleased.

One of the habits that I've picked up over the last year 18 months or so is running several times a week. And one of the reasons I look forward to it is that it has become my devotional time. It's during that time that I listen to the weekly sermon from Mars Hill Bible Church or lately to N.T. Wright's latest book, Simply Christian. I get a lot out of that time. I just let my mind concentrate on the material, with no distraction (I run on a track because of my allergies, so it's just running in a circle over and over again).

I've been leading our Sunday School class through the Faith Lessons video series from Ray Vander Laan's Follow the Rabbi site, a great series to check out if you're interested in teaching your group about the Jewish roots of Christianity. There really hasn't been a week of it where I didn't learn something new, or a new way to look at a piece of scripture. The first few volumes are very heavy on the Old Testament and what became of the Jews with the revolts and eventual destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. And all of this was really inspired by listening to Rob Bell. Rob reference's Vander Laan's work was listed by Bell as being an influence.

I'd also highly recommend watching this Authors@Google talk by Tim Keller, author of The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. He said some really interesting things that might show up in a program at camp this summer. We have a night with the theme of Called to Faith, I can see plugging some of this in. I'm definitely picking up the book.