Shift Happens...Leaving No Paradigm Unturned!

The Jewish people celebrated the Festival of Shelters by living in tents for a week. It was a reminder of their homeless days. It must have been something like a combination of Tent City and Family Camp!

The brothers of Jesus thought it would be a perfect time for him to go public in a big way. They goaded him to put on a spectacular show to drum up a greater following. Jesus preferred to fly under the radar but he still rocked the festival. He seemed to be intent on leaving no paradigm un-shifted.

Jesus subverted the “will to power” – even in himself! (John 7:16-18) He wasn’t pitching propaganda to enhance his own political leverage or social position. He wouldn’t resort to manipulation and intimidation. He chose kindness at every turn. Even his confrontations with the religious elite were acts of bold kindness, intended to liberate them from frozen legalisms.

Jesus recalibrated the metrics of righteousness. (John 7:24) He measured his own character in terms of doing what he saw the Father doing. He was more interested in right relationships than heartless adherence to a code of religious conduct.

Jesus collaborated with the calendar. (John 7:6, 8, 30) He worked with time as a creative medium like a musician or an athlete. Music depends upon the skillful use of slow and fast, of pauses and rests. Great athletes understand when to accelerate and when to wait for a blocker, when to pace for a marathon and when to kick into a sprint. Jesus sensed when the time was ripe for him to stir up redemptive controversy and when it was time to disappear into the crowd, when to linger and when to make haste. He didn’t fight with time, he worked with it.

Jesus decentralized the Fountain of Life. (John 7:37-39) His Holy Spirit became an engine of life-energy, equally available to everyone everywhere. He showed that there was no particular place, person, or religious system that controlled the source of spiritual life. This was a radical affirmation of the dignity of common humanity.

Jesus deconstructed unbelief. (John 7:5, 47-49) He engaged different types of unbelief differently;

• His brothers might have been unwilling to believe because they were too familiar – too used to him in their everyday lives. Maybe they grew dismissive of the wonder of his presence. Jesus didn’t try to prove himself to them.
• The religious elite were unwilling to believe because their closed system of thought was too precious to them. They weren’t interested in being surprised. Jesus persistently messed up their tidy categories.
• The desperate dad of an epileptic boy confessed, “I believe; help my unbelief.” (Mark 9:24) His unbelief was honest and humble. He knew he was literally unable to believe hard enough on his own. The sort of faith Jesus was calling for required divine assistance. Jesus responded by instigating a miracle.

Jesus liberated Nicodemus from the matrix. (John 7:50-51) Nicodemus was open to new perspectives after his conversation with Jesus (John 3:1-21); so much so that he was willing to lob a loaded question into the middle of his religion. He had become dis-illusioned in a very redemptive sense. The shrunken world of closed beliefs had been exposed as inhospitable to persons infected by the truth.

Scott Burnett

Are You Ready?

I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. Revelations 3:8

Today there are forecasts of a coming storm. As I left the house I reminded my girls to fill their cars up with gas, put chains in their car and carry their winter supplies with them. I talked to a friend at the coffee shop and asked him if he was ready. He said, “Yes, I have a generator and a back up generator.” I spoke to my doctor and she said they were making preparations because even when the area is down people still need medical services. Pastor David and I planned together how the church will stay warm and open if we have to go without power. Worship will always go on come snow storm, power outage, or earth quake. There will be a tremendous need for a great caring network in times like that. This might seem like a bit of an over reaction but last winter’s power outage was quite the experience. Let me ask you another question about the future. Are you ready for the possibilities? It may be easier to get ready for the disasters than the successes. Are you ready to publish that book, launch a new Tiny Little Church from the one you currently pastor, invest your bonus, enjoy a happy marriage, or take pleasure in a growing friendship? Have you mentally and spiritually prepared yourself for the good health you hope for, the fruitful ministry you have dreamed of and financial blessing that you pray about?

I believe that only God knows the plans He has for us – plans to prosper us and give us a future. Recently, I have commissioned Pastor Linda and Tim Magee to take a month and rewrite our church policy manual to prepare us for the explosion of ministry and opportunities that we are going to face with our new building. The last time I sent Pastor Linda on a well deserved sabbatical (and this is no sabbatical but a concentrated working task), I gave her the book, Sabbatical Journey by Henri Nouwen. Later she emailed me and said that it was a terrible book to give her because he died at the end of the sabbatical. So this time there is no book, but it is a time of preparation for blessing.

Are you ready for the wonderful blessings that God is preparing for you?

Your friend for the rest of my life,

Tim White

"The Collaborative Method!"

They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary,the mother of Jesus, and his brothers. Acts 1:14

One of the greatest lessons that I am learning in my Christian walk is the growing discovery of the collaborative method. This is one of the hardest lessons I have ever learned in my life, and I still have a lot to learn. When the Marine Corps take a recruit, they have 12 weeks on Paris Island to turn those recruits into a team. Their lives and success depends on them beginning to learn thislesson. In sports, we say we can accomplish more together than we can apart. And in the church we have the example of Jesus Christ in his teaching. The promise of a coming helper, his death on the cross which gives us forgiveness of our sins (everything that holds us apart from him and each other) and then he told his followers to stay together for Pentecost. Pentecost was when the Holy Spirit fell upon the diverse group of gathered believers and they were empowered to be a team that would impact the whole world. This was the birth of the “collaborative method.” The word “together” is mentioned 390 times in the Bible. Every marriage has a lot to learn in order to workcollaboratively. Every family has a lifetime of lessons to learn. There are so many lessons to learn for a little league soccer team or an office sales team, but in a church we have no other optionbecause we want them to know we are Christians by our love.

• Long-term commitment is essential.
• Learning and re-learning how to communicate with one another is vital.
• Being able to put our projects on the table for the team to work on is really hard, but its an important step of trust.
• Everyone looking for God’s will, beyond seeing each issue as “us against them”, is maybe the most important ingredient.
• Discovering that great teamwork takes time – so lets keep working on it. This is a really big deal.
  
  Your friend for the rest of my life,
  
  Pastor Tim White
  

Overcoming Unfaith

Mark 9:17-27
In the 9th chapter of Mark’s Gospel, a helpless father desperately implores Jesus to rescue his son. He stands uneasily yet candidly at the crossroads of belief and unbelief. Jesus meets him there.

This kind of faith is not an unquestioning allegiance to ideology. It isn’t reflected in bumper-sticker quips like, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”

The simple, soulful confession of this kind of faith is, “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.” This kind of faith exhibits the virtue of skepticism.

In the field of philosophy there are two types of skepticism: Academic and Pyrrhonian. Academic skepticism asserts the impossibility of truly knowing anything. Its fatal flaw is its own logic: How can we truly know that it is impossible to truly know anything?

But Pyrrhonian skepticism accommodates an open-minded pursuit of truth. It acknowledges the severe difficulty of apprehending ultimate knowledge while allowing the possibility of knowing truly.

“Christian faith in God is not a naïve basic truth.
It is unfaith that has been overcome”
Jurgen Moltmann

Scott Burnett