The University of Wisconsin-Madison topped a list of the nation’s best party schools released Monday, despite a decade-long effort by the school to reduce its reputation for heavy drinking.

(read more…)

Go have a good time!

Discipleship is a funny thing. I’ve been working to develop a way for people at First Baptist to get into the discipleship process and to gain the skills and perspectives they need to follow Jesus Christ in a way that will lead them into increased Christian maturity.

I’ve been developing this thing that I originally called “Discipleship Basics” but now I’m calling “Discipleship Discovery” to help people learn how to approach discipleship and then to get into it and involved in the process of following Jesus Christ.

So I struggle with a few things as I develop this material. I struggle with the content: what should be involved in a first, basic introduction to discipleship? How should we approach it? How much “study” and how much “hands-on” need to be involved? How do we build in both parts to the system without bifurcating them?

Right now, I’ve got the following outline I’m working with. Comment, please!

Section 1: Discipleship Essentials

• Session 1: What is Discipleship, and What is a Discipleship Discovery Group?
• Session 2: What is Discipleship, and Why is it Central to the Christian Faith?
• Session 3: What did Biblical Discipleship Look Like?
• Session 4: The End Result of Discipleship is Maturity. So What Does That Look Like?

Section 2: Means for Spiritual Transformation

• This section is a bit foggy still but will include D. Willard’s Golden Triangle of Spiritual Transformation, Discussion of Spiritual Gifts and Fruit, Discussions of Spiritual Disciplines, Discussion of how Common Life integrates into transformation, & Conversations toward Disciple-Making

Section 3: Implementation of Means

• Studying about who Jesus is and what he came to do
• Common Service experiences where we practice what Jesus did

I think SS 2 & 3 can be combined practically, but I’m not sure how to work it all through together as one coherent piece. On the one hand, this Discipleship Discovery Group stuff intends to meet a congregational need – to see discipleship as central and transformative to common life. On the other, this looks to replace the traditional “Baptism Classes” or “Membership Classes” the church has used previously as it emerges toward a more organic model.

I found this via Odyssey:

Darth Vader is Ordained by the Presbyterians

and then there’s this:

Darth Vader’s Ordination is Questioned

And now… (drum roll please…) for the explanation:

There’s a pirated copy of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith out there. It’s been dubbed into Chinese, and then the Chinese has been translated back into English for the subtitles.

Therefore, “Jedi Council” is translated into Chinese, and when it is translated back into English, it ends up translated back as “Presbyterian Church.”

A lot more of the images can be found here and here.

By the way, the title of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is “Star War The Third Gathers: The Backstroke of the West”.

This is just too funny!

Sermon 21 August 2005
14 Pentecost Proper 16, Year A
Isaiah 51:1 – 6

Title: Living like the Saints

What does it mean to be a saint? For me, growing up, the word “saints� was usually prefaced with the word “senior,� designating a certain kind of elderly person, typically female, who upheld a certain grace and dignity that was a mark of Christian maturity.

But we also used saints in a lot of other ways. “He’s no saint!� was an exclamation made of men of dubious reputation or of teenagers generally. It was a way of saying that this person had some serious moral failings. Sometimes these people were affable enough; other times they were common criminals.

Yet we also used the term “saints� in an entirely different sense – one that was more expressly theological. The saints were seen to be inaccessibly holy people – typically historical figures – people of such levels of godliness that we could never attain to their level of perfection. Whether these were Biblical figures, such as Peter, Paul or Mary, or historical figures – people like Francis of Assisi, John Bunyan, Athanasius, Martin Luther or a host of others, we typically see their level of holiness and godliness to be far beyond our reach.
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Yesterday I walked to Canada.

Granted, I walked from the US side of Niagra Falls to the Canadian via the Rainbow Bridge, but I did, in fact, walk to Canada.

I had a lot of fun there. It was a great time to go be by myself in a crowd of people and enjoy a famous place.

I’ll post pictures when I finish the roll of film off.

By the way, I also saw Lake Erie and Lake Ontario in the same day. I’d glimpsed Lake Erie at night from the Cleveland harbor a few weeks ago, but yesterday was the first time I actually saw the lake for real. Same with Lake Ontario.

It was also my first trip to Canada. I bought a flag.

I have received several comments regarding my “Discipleship Lost” post from a couple of days ago. They deserve some attention.

First, an apology:

I apologize for the way I insulted some and talked down to many in the previous post. My language was strong, my tone was angry, and much of what I said didn’t need to be said. Some have rightly taken me to task for my judgmentalism and condescending tone. They have rightly stated that humility is one of those essentials of leadership (and, for that matter, of discipleship) within the church. In many ways, humility was far from present in the “Discipleship Lost” post. I was wrong to do that, and I apologize for it.

Moreover, I apologize for sweeping up many in generalizations who did not deserve to be. Placing blame on people to explain how systems developed as they have packages up a lot of people together that don’t deserve the blame. I begin to get the sense that since most of my “leadership time” is consumed in solo activity (reading, writing, etc.) or with a few people, I get a distorted view of who people really are. When that distorted view comes out, people get hurt. I was wrong to do that, and I apologize for it.

Furthermore, I apologize for letting my anger run roughshod over my good judgment. There were some things going on that were the source of extreme frustration for me, and I kept comparing those situations to the ones I saw in the scriptures and that only served to fuel my anger. Violating the anger commandments, I spewed enough venom to knock a horse senseless. I was wrong to do that, and I apologize for it.

Second, an explanation of “Discipleship Lost”:
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This is NOT good news for the M Squared T site right now.

“The popular Mambo CMS developer team has severed its ties with Miro Corporation, the copyright owner on the GPL’d Mambo CMS. You can read more about the renegade dev team.”

(quote from Slashdot)

This probably means that further development work at this site will take a different turn in the coming months. Not sure what that’s going to look like, though. I’m still not sure what to make of it.

UPDATE: The following post is a “rant”, and has been followed by an apology and explanation here.

If you hadn’t gathered, I am developing a study-and-action series for First Baptist Church called “Discipleship Basics.” The development is still in preliminary stages; the work is largely done, but it needs some organization and structure.

As I wor to develop a tool to teach discipleship, I begin to wonder: how did we ever lose our sense of discipleship in the first place? How is it that we have fallen so far? Why is the discussion of discipleship and the Kingdom of God such an epiphany for those who have participated in church all of their lives? How is it that our theology has obscured, rather than illuminated, this central aspect to Jesus Christ – all he is and all he does?

I need a history lesson here.

Something must explain why discipleship has moved from “the essentials” through “optional” to “complete and utter incomprehensibility” in the church as a whole.

Reading the New Testament (especially the Gospels and Paul) it is impossible to miss the centrality of the term “disciple.” In the New Testament, the term “disciple” occurs 261 times; the verb “to learn” (related to “disciple”) four times; the word “to follow”, an action commonly related to the term “disciple”, 90 times (most of which are in the four Gospels). By contrast, the term Christian is used 3 times.

Three times. That’s it.

One of those references to “Christian” explicitly states that in one town the disciples were called by the peculiar title “Christians.” Ergo, “Christian” was, at that time, a subset of “disciple.”

Yet, these days, people somehow feel free to call themselves Christians without any intentions of discipleship. People claim to be “Christians” without being “disciples of Jesus Christ.”

That’s backwards.

If we dare to actually get to know Jesus Christ; if we dare to discover what his lifestyle was actually like; if we dare to actually do the things he does and says – were we so bold – we would meet with incredible resistance: not so much from outside the church, (although that would surely come), but from within the average local congregation.

When I have the audacity to say “it’s not all about you, it’s about God and all those people in your own neighborhood that would jump at the chance of participating in God’s Good News if they actually heard it coming from you,” more often than not I get dismissive comments. Whether I am dismissed for my age (in the name of God, how old do I have to be before people take me seriously and not as some joke!), or for “moving too fast” (do people not realize the level of crisis we are actually in), or for “we don’t have [x, y or z resource] to fulfill your hare-brained scheme” (do people not realize that in following Jesus Christ we have all of what we need now, and all of what we will need because God will provide), or for “you’re expecting too much of older people, they’re set in their ways” (as if they were dead already and rigor mortis has possessed their limbs), I realize that actual discipleship to Jesus Christ is so far from many people’s operating paradigm as to make what I say COMPLETELY UNINTELLIGIBLE.

Then I take a deep breath, calm down, find the reset button, and say, “did Jesus arrive in the world to find things any different?” No, he didn’t. (He got killed for it, too. Ouch.)

Then I take another deep breath, calm down again, and reflect: the vast majority of people I’m working with do, in fact want to follow Jesus Christ. They’re not sure how. They are following, cautiously – some at a distance, others saying “why the heck not,” others needing a little more explanation of the “whys and hows”, but they’re following. They’re giving it a go. They want the life that God has to offer. So I help them access it. In thought, word and deed, I demonstrate Jesus’ life, the best I know how. I know no other way to lead a congregation.

So in that, I see myself attempting to live out Jesus’ lifestyle – which shows different faces to different groups. With most people, I teach and I heal. I attend their wild parties. I answer their thick-headed questions (such as the disciples were always asking). I point them to something so beyond what they have experienced that they come flocking around seeking more. It is to them that the vast majority of my sermons are directed. It is to them that the messages are “good news.”

Then, with others, I strike a “Woe to you, Pharisees and Scribes, you hypocrites” pose. This, too, is Jesus’ pose. And the people with whom I use that stance can’t stand it. Especially when I’m 26 and half their age or less. (Lord God, do they have any clue how old that excuse gets?!?) I’ve had only one or two (parts of) sermons that have really developed this pose. Usually, this comes out more in meetings.

With still others, I start flipping over tables and driving people out with whips. Yeah, they absolutely hate that. But that crap really hasn’t hit that fan yet. People may think it has, but it hasn’t. Its time hasn’t come. I hope its time never will come. It is, however, part of the story, part of the lifestyle of Jesus. I haven’t preached one of those kinds of sermons yet.

All the while, I look to the cross. I know that the old self in me must be done away with through the cross so that the new self may be raised to new life. So I march in that direction. The whole self, the whole cross, every day. At least that’s what I’m trying to do.

With me, and with First Baptist as I lead it, it’s going to have to be “discipleship or bust.” If not discipleship, then what are we doing? Discipleship or bust was Jesus’ perspective, and I pray that it is mine.

I’d like some feedback on something I’ve been writing:

What is discipleship?

Discipleship is the process of becoming a master teacher of a certain way of life by living with a master teacher of that way of life. Discipleship occurs as a group of students gather around the master teacher and begin to live the master teacher’s way of life. They learn not merely through the reading of books and the studying of texts but primarily through doing what the master does as the master gives them opportunities relative to their ability. Eventually, the master tells the disciples that they have achieved mastery over the master’s way of life and sends them out to live the master’s way of life as masters, which, of course, includes the training of new disciples.

This process of discipleship can apply to any career, trade or lifestyle where people are trained to do a certain kind of work in a certain kind of way as the “secrets of the trade� are passed down from generation to generation.

Christian discipleship, then, is the process whereby people become masters of Jesus Christ’s way of life by living with him and learning how to live his kind of life. Christian discipleship occurs when groups of disciples gather around Jesus Christ and begin to live his way of life – not merely through the study of the scriptures but through doing what he did. Thus we see that Christian discipleship is the radical notion that people can actually live like Jesus Christ if we choose to follow him and shape our lives like his. This is further coupled with a second radical notion that we can mature enough as followers of Jesus Christ to disciple others to actually look like Jesus Christ.

Why is discipleship central to the Christian experience?

Discipleship is central to the Christian experience because it is the means God uses to affect the salvation of the world through participation in his Kingdom. This “salvation of the world through participation in his Kingdom� is, in a nutshell, the meaning of the term “Good News� or, more traditionally, “Gospel.� Jesus participates fully in the Kingdom of God; in some mysterious way, in fact, he is the Kingdom of God. Throughout the Gospels, (which Paul reflects in his letters), he tells his disciples that the way they are going to experience the new life in the Kingdom that God has promised is to follow him. They, too, can experience his resurrection, if they are willing to participate with him in the cross.

Therefore, our experience of salvation is predicated on our willingness to participate with him in the Life of the Cross. On that day when we first answer Jesus’ invitation to follow him, we begin to live the life of the cross with him. Every day thereafter, we continue to choose to follow him to the Cross. Jesus provides us with what we need on a daily basis to be able to follow him.

Thus we see how central discipleship is to the Christian experience: Jesus invites us to follow him, in order to experience God’s salvation of the world through his Kingdom. Jesus brings our salvation about through living among us and going to the cross on our behalf, and then rising from the dead by the will of God the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit.

As we follow him as his disciples, as we form our lives to his Cruciform Life, we begin to experience now the salvation that is to come through our participation in the Kingdom that is now, and is coming.

Comments welcome…

NCSA made the headlines today refuting Yahoo’s claim to have an index nearly 2.5 times larger than Google’s. (In other words, Yahoo was claiming to be able to find 2.5 times more stuff via their search engine than Google could.)

So in a joint project between NCSA (where I worked from 1996 – 1998) and ACM (whose offices I walked by nearly daily for a decade in DCL), they determined that, in all likelihood, Yahoo’s claim is spurious.

Which is what we all thought anyway, of course.

via Slashdot.

Funerals are one of the more difficult parts of this whole pastor thing.

Not because I don’t know what to say during the funeral – no, that’s pretty clear-cut: resurrection of the dead for the followers of Christ, we get new bodies, God’s got the last word, etc.

No, it’s more the meeting people I don’t know and I’m supposed to be serious and caring and well… I have a problem being serious and professional with people I don’t know. I’m usually so goof around and have a good time – especially to break the ice and get to know people, that when I meet people whom I don’t know and need to do a funeral for their relative, I don’t know how to act. I get nervous. I get “stiff”. I get quiet. I get uncomfortable. I don’t know how to begin conversations. I don’t know how to end conversations. I can’t just say my normal stuff because my normal stuff assumes that life is good.

And they aren’t assuming that in this kind of situation.

So it was a good thing today that at the graveside chapel, right as I began to read Psalm 46, a window slammed shut and we all got to laugh. Everyone. Even the funeral director. I was so relieved. We could be solemn, respectful and dignified, without being stiff.

How do I find that balance next time?

Sermon 14 August 2005
13 Pentecost Proper 15 Year A
Isaiah 56:1 – 8

Many people have asked me, “Ok, Pastor Matt, now that you’re here, how are we going involve new people and younger people in the life of our congregation?� You may have seen how part of my answer to that question has come out over the past few months from this pulpit. On the other hand, it’s been a bit of a struggle to preach directly on that subject, since I’ve been following the lectionary for the texts from which I preach.

What is the lectionary? The lectionary is a three-year cycle of scripture passages which have been read in Christian worship, year in and year out, for over a thousand years. This is the source for terms like “Advent� and “Lent� and “Easter Season� and “Pentecost.� Following the Lectionary means that each week I have four passages to choose from: Something from the Old Testament, one of the Psalms, a selection from the New Testament Epistles, Acts or Revelation, and a reading from one of the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. That way, it is theoretically possible to preach for 12 years and never use the same passage twice.

While this passage doesn’t directly answer the question “how will we get new and younger people involved here,� it does point out a significant step that we will have to take, and more importantly, an attitude we will have to espouse, in order to accomplish our goal.

One of the important pieces of preaching is to make the passage of scripture come alive every week – one way or another. To that end, we’ve had concrete-block altars, boats, Gatorade containers, “open mic,� prayer times, and opportunities to come forward publicly, among other things. Today, we’re going to illustrate and get into this text a little differently.
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There’s a play on words in Isaiah 56:3-5 that I can’t really use in the sermon this week, but I find it so funny I’ve got to put it up here.

I hope it’s self-explanatory.

Isaiah promises that the eunuchs, once excluded from the worship of God, will be given more than they ever imagined possible: their name shall not be cut off. (see 56:5, NIV, KJV, NASB, ESV).

(Unfortunately, the TNIV, the Message and the New Living Translation are a little less literal here, probably realizing the implications…)

Get it?

I found the following from moby via doug pagitt. While I don’t always find dichotomizing Christ from Christianity helpful, I did find this insightful:

so, do you think that it’s time to invent a new religion?
i mean, i know that sounds absurd and absurdly presumptuous.
but what do we know now that is different from what we
knew ages ago?
that the universe is gigantic?
that the universe is old?
that we are made up of matter that used to be other things?
that our actions are seemingly insignificant from a universal perspective?
that matter, at it’s most basic level, doesn’t do what
we think it would/should do?
i sound flippant.
but really, given what we know about the universe and about ourselves, isn’t it absurd to hold on to conventional ideas about our significance and identity and relevance and so on?
again, i sound flippant.
i don’t mean to.
but it’s hard to describe this in a journal(not blog)entry.
i actually think that the teachings of christ accomodate most of the new ways in which we perceive ourselves and our world.
the problem is that although the teachings of christ accomodate this, contemporary christianity does not.
here’s more seriousness dressed up as flippancy:
christ: acknowledging quantum realities.
christiantiy: depressingly newtonian.
does that make any sense?
well, to me it does.
and to some of you it might make sense, also.
i’m sorry that i’m being light and flippant.
i should just be straightforward.
we know things about our universe and about our world and about ourselves that make our previously held ideas about human significance utterly absurd. in order to move forward we need to accept that how we understand ourselves in the future has to be informed by what we know about ourselves from a quantum perspective.
and luckily, there’s not a christian(or new testament)perspective that compels us to hold on to much of tradition.
many christians might disagree, but i would ask them to cite scripture to support their dissent.
i know, ‘quantum perspective’ sounds nonsensical and nerdy.
but we need to move on(no political pun intended).
we all know better.
we’re all holding on to past conceptions of human endeavours and human significance, and they’re outdated and erroneous and anachronistic.
our human significance is both far greater and far smaller than anything than we’ve hitherto recognized.
that is the truth.
we are paradoxical little creatures.
we need a new way in which to look at ourselves and in which to understand our lives and our significance.
there, that’s all i have to say for now.
thanks for listening.
i guess i’ll write more later if anyone’s interested.
if not: uh, go, uh, team.
moby

(emphases mine)

Given what I said a few weeks ago, I resonate with this quite a bit. The quantum perspective radically changed how we perceive the world; our structures have not yet dealt with that fact – even though quantum’s been around for nearly 100 years. Instead, we’ve told Jesus Christ that he cannot deal with this world, that he’s all about the next. We make going to heaven, i.e., getting the h*ll out of here, the end goal of faith, rather than “love God with your whole being and love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

But Jesus, (as argued by Willard and others) was perfectly content with living in the smallest of quantum probabilities, and somehow knew how to access them – so that water could be walked upon, sight could be restored, the lame could be made to walk, and death could bring new life. Oh, yes, and locked doors could be passed through.

With Newton, these are abberations; with quantum, these are distinct possibilities, however improbable. Nevertheless, we don’t expect these things to occur. We don’t believe that they will happen, nor, to one extent or another, do we really want them to. They’ll stir things up too much.

Jesus Christ will always incarnate in every culture everywhere – living in it while challenging it to greater fullness. Whatever our scientific realities may be, he will be faithful to that.

Wednesday night, it came as I was drifting off to sleep. That was the sermon illustration for Sunday.

This morning, it came in the shower.

I’ve been wrestling with Isaiah 56:1 – 8 all week. Wednesday and Thursday I kept hammering my head against it, trying to get into it, trying to pull a sermon out of it. I wanted the text to speak.

So I kept pressing, I kept trying. Then, yesterday afternoon, I gave up. I said, “I’m not getting anywhere.” I knew that God would give me what I needed before the time I needed it – or, rather, right when I needed it.

So it came this morning. Flowing out over my head and shoulders like the shower I was in, and out of my mouth. I preached to the shampoo bottle and the washcloth. I gestured to the shower curtain – printed with a world map motif. I sketched diagrams in the droplets on the side of the shower liner.

And the sermon flowed out.

I took a long shower.

As I got dressed, I stumbled upon a better opening than I had in the shower. Now I’m looking for a good closing. I don’t know if I’ll type it out like I normally do. For the sake of the blog, I’ll at least type in some notes on Sunday evening. This one will look very ex tempore.

It’s called “The Death of Elitism.”