Tag Archives: Church

Male & Female

Posted on by



For the last several weeks, I’ve been prepping for a series on ‘being male & being female” – exploring how God’s has put us together & created us; to me, this means understanding what it means to be male/female, & also how our identity, role assumptions, life choices, & ultimately every one of our relationships are greatly affected by sin/our fallen nature. BTW: the symbol at left is historically the one used for male – (& Austin Powers, but I digress) & originated from identification w/the little ‘g’ god, Mars… which is why the arrow points to the NE, & is supposed to remind us of Mars’ shield & arrow.) The symbol at right is the historical symbol for female & originated from identification w/the little ‘g’ goddess, Venus – the little cross is supposed to represent Venus’ hand mirror… (so, no, John Gray & Barbara DeAngelis didn’t come up with this Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus idea…)

In some ways, this study has been like descending a spiral stair case that seems like it couldn’t REALLY go any farther down, only to find that every ‘floor’ that is descended exposes yet another flight of descending stair. It would be easy to get lost in this topic. Some of the things that I’ve been sorting through:

-God’s intended role for Adam/Eve in Eden.
-what it means to live as a godly man/woman, & how much of who we are/what we become is unique, often not fitting too well with preconceived stereotypes
-how people w/infomation & education (often men) have used their info/education to exploit others
-how role expectations affect our behavior; whether it be how we embrace certain behaviors as “things men/women do” & conversely then, “don’t do” & how we can intentionally choose an opposite role of what we “should do” in order to protest/rebel/avoid not measuring up to an expected role we’re ‘supposed’ to fill.
-men & women: equal but different
-using/misusing the Bible for selfish purposes; in many ways, this has meant justifying sexist (or at least anti-woman) practices ideas, esp. when it comes to spiritual leadership.
-the emasculation of men as an overcorrection to the above behavior
-the effect of the curse on our lives, choices, actions, & behaviors – esp. in our relationships (see Genesis 3 – on the serpent, Eve & Adam)

I’m hoping to see great freedom, wholeness, restoration, & truth in our personal lives & interpersonal relationships as a result of where we’re heading… & at the same time, feel as though I’m heading into a minefield.

Colbert commentary…

Posted on by

“I love my Church, and I’m a Catholic who was raised by intellectuals, who were very devout. I was raised to believe that you could question the Church and still be a Catholic. What is worthy of satire is the misuse of religion for destructive or political gains. That’s totally different from the Word, the blood, the body and the Christ. His kingdom is not of this earth.”
–Stephen Colbert in TimeOut New York

post-easter musings…

Posted on by

My sleep habits have returned to just about 90% of normal – right on schedule – 2 weeks post-travel. Hooray.

Painful transparency: I wrestled with a lot with new emotions on Easter – 1st service Chris actually prayed something that seemed to hit it on the head for me – He said, “Jesus, let us not fall into forgetfulness about the meaning & power & impact of the cross & resurrection.” That summed it up: falling into forgetfulness – coming close to missing the power of the event by slipping into church holiday mode. It was wearying almost like walking through deep snow is wearying…

Made me wonder if its just me that feels this – kinda like this at Christmas too – fighting the ‘going on autopilot” feeling.

I ponder… . if having a different kind of service on Easter (like a party) would be more appropriate or at least an appropriate response to the resurrection… not to go counter-culture for the heck of it, maybe even doing a ‘regular’ service, but also have an alternative – a celebration of life. Just my musings on it so far…

Somebody’s downstream…

Posted on by

My behavior, thoughts, actions, choices have consequences: not just for me, but downstream – the people who’s lives I directly impact & influence, as well as those that I may not know, but may be equally affected.

My old district Supe, Robby told me a story before I came to Reno to pastor:

The “Keeper of the Spring,” was a quiet forest dweller who lived high above an Austrian village along the eastern slope of the Alps.The old gentleman had been hired many years earlier by a young town councilman to clear away the debris from the pools of water up in the mountain crevices that fed the lovely spring flowing through their town. With faithful, silent regularity, he patrolled the hills, removed the leaves and branches, and wiped away the silt that would otherwise have choked and contaminated the fresh flow of water. The village soon became a popular attraction for vacationers. Graceful swans floated along the crystal clear spring, the mill wheels of various businesses located near the water turned day and night, farmlands were naturally irrigated, and the view from restaurants was picturesque beyond description.

Years passed. One evening the town council met for its semi-annual meeting. As they reviewed the budget, one man’s eye caught the salary figure being paid to the obscure keeper of the spring. Said the keeper of the purse, “Who is the old man? Why do we keep him on year after year? No one ever sees him. For all we know, the strange ranger of the hills is doing us no good. He isn’t necessary any longer.” By an unanimous vote, they dispensed with the old man’s services.

For several weeks, nothing changed. By early autumn, the trees began to shed their leaves. Small branches snapped of and fell into the pools, hindering the rushing flow of sparkling water. One afternoon someone noticed a slight yellowish-brown tint in the spring. A few days later, the water was much darker. Within another week, a slimy film covered sections of the water along the banks, and a foul odor was soon detected. The mill wheels moved more slowly, some finally ground to a halt. Swans left, as did the tourists. Clammy fingers of disease and sickness reached deeply into the village. Quickly, the embarrassed council called a special meeting. Realizing their gross error in judgment, they rehired the old keeper of the spring, and within a few weeks, the veritable river of life began to clear up. The wheels started to turn, and new life returned to the hamlet in the Alps.

Last November, the news of Pastor Ted Haggard’s immorality & drug use became public – it was devastating to him, his wife, his family, & to the church he led. This artcle about LAYOFFS details more of the long term consequences that are happening as a result of his choices.

No finger pointing. No accusations. My heart breaks.

Putting it into practice personally…

Posted on by


Today, it hit me. I normally take Fridays off – it hit me that for the next couple of weeks, my Fridays (& all/most of Saturdays) will be occupied with work…

The processing begins… what about my rest day? what about the Sabbath? What do I do now that I have realized that I’ve scheduled away my day off? I have a problem taking a mulligan on this one – part of it is because I believe that the Sabbath is not just a good idea or a suggestion, but an obedience to a way of life that God has laid out for us. Not just going back to the September-December series on a Revolution of the Soul but because there is a deeper issue here: how will I put into practice this principle of obedience? It’s not negotiable, & yet I find myself struggling internally to find a justification for “just this once.” (Though it’s twice actually.) Don’t know that there is a simple, easy, quick answer to this one.

Syndromes…

Posted on by

A report from The Times – London

A 2006 Church of England report warned that disagreeable congregants, together with the pressures of the church’s “feudal system” bureaucracy, were turning priests harshly negative and creating an “irritable clergy syndrome.” One of the report’s authors told The Times of London in December that priests are bothered by “having to be nice all the time to everyone, even when confronted with extremes of nastiness,” such as aggressive and neurotic parishioners.

I wonder what the symptoms of “irritable clergy syndrome” are…

Lies, Damn Lies, & Statistics or Why Christians scare people in this & other countries…

Posted on by

A snippet:

Evangelicals Behaving Badly with Statistics
Mistakes were made.

by Christian Smith

American evangelicals, who profess to be committed to Truth, are among the worst abusers of simple descriptive statistics, which claim to represent the truth about reality, of any group I have ever seen. At stake in this misuse are evangelicals’ own integrity, credibility with outsiders, and effectiveness in the world. It is an issue worth making a fuss over. And so I write…

And

Why do evangelicals recurrently abuse statistics? My observation is that they are usually trying desperately to attract attention and raise people’s concern in order to mobilize resources and action for some cause. In a world awash in information and burdened by myriad problems, some evangelicals may justify the problematic misuse of statistics to get people to pay attention to what they think are good causes. But this is inexcusable. Such desperation, alarmism, and sloppiness reflect the worst, not the best, in evangelicalism…

Read the whole article HERE

You can also revisit what THIS BLOG said about the rampant alarmism last January – if you get lost, read the day one, day two & day three posts.

I thiink I’ll do a series on this one. Alarmism. Statistical abuse. Christian Marketing. Might be fun.

Emergent Church Clone Questions…

Posted on by

I found this 6 month old article on a blog of a guy I like to read. In it, he ‘enters the conversation’ on a trend in emergent churches – when they plant, they franchise (my word, not his…), so that the ‘new church’ looks, sounds, & smells like the sending church vs. taking on the characteristics of the people that end up coming to the church…

CHURCH CLONE

Reminiscent of this one? EVERGREEN

Thoughts? Responses? Does anybody really KNOW what time it is?