The word “repurpose” came up on TV as a substitute for the word recycle and reuse. I heard the word and thought of the emerging church movement that wants to adapt to a post modern way of doing things in worship.
The word repurpose touches something in me that says that maybe the emerging church movement should step back and look at the original purpose of Jesus and his gospels and look less at institution(s) that have in fact emerged around Jesus and his message over the centuries.
Indidvidually, people should decide what is needed in their hearts in response to the message of Jesus. Then institutions should recycle tradition around repurpose together with the individual and grow into the next centuries long phase of the Christian Spirit and Church.
Showing posts with label Christ. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christ. Show all posts
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
Anne Rice Continued...
Anne Rice Continued…
I am not a fan of the author but she is saying some really heart felt emotional statements about religion.
This follows my own thinking in that you should follow the teachings of Jesus first before you serve any other purpose including organized religion that sometimes only gives lip service to the words and meanings of Jesus.
I am not a fan of the author but she is saying some really heart felt emotional statements about religion.
"When does a word (Christian) become unusable?" she asked. "When does it become so burdened with history and horror that it cannot be evoked without destructive controversy?"…Interesting fodder for thoughts in a faith that has so many sects that it seems sometimes not to be a coherent faith but more of a cultural label.
Yesterday, the author reiterated that her faith in Christ was "central" to her life. "My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me," she said. "But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become." Guardian UK, July 30, 2010, Alison Flood
This follows my own thinking in that you should follow the teachings of Jesus first before you serve any other purpose including organized religion that sometimes only gives lip service to the words and meanings of Jesus.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Community Christian Capitalism at work
I have been watching a travel show on PBS for years and hosted by Rick Steves.
I ran into his bio on Wikipedia and I was just floored by one item listed there at the bottom.
The simplicity of the idea and the scope and depth of an idea of how someone could use their retirement funds as a relatively safe, conservative way to serve mankind, the community and in the spirit of the Christ. I am dumbfounded sometimes by creativity or the random acts of seeming kindness I sometimes run into in this world.
The idea is simple. You get a lot of volunteer organizations like the YMCA and Rotary Club involved to house homeless mothers. Your initial investment is the investment of your retirement fund to buy an apartment building. You are not giving it away. You are leasing it to a community need for a decade or two. With insurance and maintenance your investment is tangible and safe.
You give a pathway for a flow of semi-charitable good works and outside the realm of direct organized religion or government. Religions have a tendency to become bureaucratic and sad to say in some instances corrupt in the distribution of alms and charity to people. Government is government.
Why not do charity and or good works on your own and after fifteen or twenty years take back your investment plus accumulated unearned equity. I do not want to put a label on this such as passive good works or compassionate brotherhood. Compassionate conservatism as a term in the secular sense has perhaps failed terribly and gotten us into two wars overseas.
In 2005 Rick and Anne Steves purchased a 24-unit apartment complex in Lynnwood, Washington and fixed it up to serve as transitional housing for homeless mothers and their children. The Steves invested much of their retirement nest egg and are allowing free use of the complex for 15 years--leaving management responsibilities to the local YWCA Pathways for Women, while Rotarians in the Edmonds Noontime Rotary Club help maintain the buildings, do grounds upkeep, and provide everything from the furniture to the flowers. In addition, the club raised USD $30,000 in donations to build a play structure for the children of Trinity Place. About 100 mothers are expected to ultimately live there.
Steves is an active Lutheran, and has written and hosted educational videos on subjects such as Martin Lutheran and the European Reformation of the Church. He also raises funds for Bread for the World. -- Wikipedia
Think of all the secular no-religion Americans who have seen their 401ks shrink and pension funds evaporate. Think of the bemoaning of “my individual piece” of Wall Street melting away.
Think of all the mutual funds invested in China and Aluminum mines with people making slave wages. Think of the returns on investment of China put into U.S. Treasury notes to feed our national debt and our insatiable godless consumerism. Think of a China that individually dominates or dictates out national policies, really a country we are afraid to challenge at the moment. Think of a godless China that sits on the United Nations Security Council that will veto any humane actions on Darfur to protect its very real national investments in Sudan.
Think how we as individuals do not have to invest in some godless macro Wall Street ponzi schemes in the future. Think about taking the time out to touch and research the needs of your community. Think about investing your money, your nest egg, in the future of the welfare and best interests of your community.
Think of what Jesus would do with your investments.
While you would like to give away everything to the poor, why not just share with them for a while and make the world a tiny bit better. The world is better because you touched the world and the world seems to matter right in front of your eyes.
I would label this as Community Christian Capitalism because it is capitalism. It also serves the community. It most definitely has a Christian flavor.
You are making a cash investment to get back a cash return. Instead of instant millions in immediate return, you get a safe old fashioned rate of return on cash investment which also serves the needs of the community. There is something about this scheme that touches upon the things missing today in over-organized religion or failed government. It has to do with people and community needs and meeting the needs of the less fortunate in a humane and dignified manner. Churches and religions used to touch the earth and communities.
In an abstract dominant secular world “we have to touch people” again. We need to serve others in order to serve our own spiritual selves and needs. This is humanity. This is Christ!
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Christ - the homeless man.
“...
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
- Martin Niemoeller
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/all-churchclosingphotos-0713,0,6083684.photogallery
The Christian Church was founded by Jesus of Nazareth, a homeless man:
Matthew 8:20
“And Jesus said unto him, a scribe, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.”
It is kind of fitting to talk about Jesus as being homeless as the R.C. Church is having a going out of business fire sale with the closings of so many churches, schools, hospitals nationwide. Of course we know about the altar boy fund to pay for expensive lawsuits and clergy misconduct. But that more or less has reached a zenith and leveled off or has it?
It seems to me that this fire sale and liquidation of assets is a ploy to hide assets, to launder the money through the Vatican or elsewhere, but definietely not park it here in the USA where it was created by the sweat of the brow of laborers and immigrants. Day laborers. Jesus knew about day labor.
With this epidemic of church closings and the R.C. Church getting out of the religion business, where do you park your assets? I don't know. Tell me. There are good rates of return on capital in the new godless global market place and no accountability to anybody, not even to God –
- that is if you still believe in Him or the Son of man, Jesus, who sits at his right hand in the heavens above and over all of the universe.
This is the cynic in me speaking. You hide your assets because you, with all your dark secrets, know what’s coming down the pike? What is it? What spikes on what graphs and spreadsheets predict more unthinkable horrors in the male only R.C. Church hierarchy club?
The R.C. church is like big business. Incompetent cronies covering up the incompetence, corruption and kinky habits of fellow male club members. I've seen it all my working life. So it goes and then the cash flow stops. The party ends.
I think of all the big monster corporations I have seen wither and die on the vine, past, present and ongoing into the future.
Why not put a hockey rink in Saint Peter’s Basilica? That’s the modern business sense of things – everything and everybody must constantly provide more income.
More income! More capital! More profits! More change! More global misery!
Where is man or God in any of these new global economic equations?
The homeless man’s equation - his words - will never die.
- even with the skirts in the Vatican continuing and scurrying around the money changing floors and global exchanges via the Internet.
Jesus wrote something once in the sand to deliver a sinner from her fate. I know what he wrote. He wrote his favorite word. “Hypocrites!”
Take your money you money changers. Take your churches. The first Christians celebrated the early church in private homes. They prayed, they broke bread, they felt the spirit of God within and surrounding them.
The church, the People of God, will not only survive this disgraceful epic in the history of God’s church. The People of God will endure and prosper in the faith and grace and love of God here and forever.
God forgive you - you bureaucrats - and your abominations that have caused this desolation - by your total lack of simple humanity or common horse sense!
- -
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.”
- Martin Niemoeller
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/all-churchclosingphotos-0713,0,6083684.photogallery
The Christian Church was founded by Jesus of Nazareth, a homeless man:
Matthew 8:20
“And Jesus said unto him, a scribe, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.”
It is kind of fitting to talk about Jesus as being homeless as the R.C. Church is having a going out of business fire sale with the closings of so many churches, schools, hospitals nationwide. Of course we know about the altar boy fund to pay for expensive lawsuits and clergy misconduct. But that more or less has reached a zenith and leveled off or has it?
It seems to me that this fire sale and liquidation of assets is a ploy to hide assets, to launder the money through the Vatican or elsewhere, but definietely not park it here in the USA where it was created by the sweat of the brow of laborers and immigrants. Day laborers. Jesus knew about day labor.
With this epidemic of church closings and the R.C. Church getting out of the religion business, where do you park your assets? I don't know. Tell me. There are good rates of return on capital in the new godless global market place and no accountability to anybody, not even to God –
- that is if you still believe in Him or the Son of man, Jesus, who sits at his right hand in the heavens above and over all of the universe.
This is the cynic in me speaking. You hide your assets because you, with all your dark secrets, know what’s coming down the pike? What is it? What spikes on what graphs and spreadsheets predict more unthinkable horrors in the male only R.C. Church hierarchy club?
The R.C. church is like big business. Incompetent cronies covering up the incompetence, corruption and kinky habits of fellow male club members. I've seen it all my working life. So it goes and then the cash flow stops. The party ends.
I think of all the big monster corporations I have seen wither and die on the vine, past, present and ongoing into the future.
Why not put a hockey rink in Saint Peter’s Basilica? That’s the modern business sense of things – everything and everybody must constantly provide more income.
More income! More capital! More profits! More change! More global misery!
Where is man or God in any of these new global economic equations?
The homeless man’s equation - his words - will never die.
- even with the skirts in the Vatican continuing and scurrying around the money changing floors and global exchanges via the Internet.
Jesus wrote something once in the sand to deliver a sinner from her fate. I know what he wrote. He wrote his favorite word. “Hypocrites!”
Take your money you money changers. Take your churches. The first Christians celebrated the early church in private homes. They prayed, they broke bread, they felt the spirit of God within and surrounding them.
The church, the People of God, will not only survive this disgraceful epic in the history of God’s church. The People of God will endure and prosper in the faith and grace and love of God here and forever.
God forgive you - you bureaucrats - and your abominations that have caused this desolation - by your total lack of simple humanity or common horse sense!
- -
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Blessed are the Seekers of Truth - Whoever and Wherever You Are...
I recently called an old friend that I have known for decades. The conversation got around to her granddaughter who was going to grade school at a Greek Orthodox school. Her granddaughter was learning Greek at a very young age. “That’s great.” I said. I then added “that’s one of the things wrong with America these days. They don’t teach the classical languages, Latin or Greek anymore...”
Well the way I think, I remember that Jefferson, among others, knew at least a half dozen languages including Latin and Greek.
So when I hear a typical carnie evangelical talk about this being a christian nation and the founding fathers meant this or that and so on and so forth about the U.S. Constitution, I get a little bewildered.
This strange logic is in keeping with the Bible being the exact and unerring word of God, foregoing any explanations of translations from Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, Greek into English (17th Century) to English (20th Century) to go on and on.
I find it annoying lately about these telly evangelicals living in their eighteen thousand square foot homes telling the audience that Jesus meant this when he said that and he meant that when he said this...etc.
Having been an elder in a small congregation, I understand the need to raise funds. Selling a New York Times best seller for seven or eight dollars above retail to the congregation is an acceptable means to me to get some chump change together to help pay the church's electricity bill.
There is one book that comes to mind that I never could read or understand. The title is The Purpose Driven Life. I am not totally knocking it. Success has many surprising parents. I think that there are a dozen or so concepts and the author pushed “word search” on his word processor using a biblical data base. The word search categorized the concepts with tithing at the top of the list as to what God and Jesus wants us to do to have a fulfilling life.
So I tell someone that I do not understand this book that is explaining the bible to me and that person says that I should buy the workbook and attend classes to understand what a purpose driven life is. So let me get this straight. I need a workbook to understand the book that explains what God and Jesus really meant about this phrase or concept or that.
Hey, I read my bible and if I don’t understand one particular passage or that, I do some research.
I will in no way tell any other Christian what they should believe or not believe and I will always use the subjunctive tense to say what I think something in the Bible might mean and within the framework of a lifetime’s exposure to a sacred and secular – Christian culture.
Getting away from my frustration of looking at a media circus and snake oil and former used car salesmen explaining what Jesus really really meant - I escape back to something quite simple to get into the flavor and nature of the Christ.
There is a line by the late comedian Milton Berle about how “laughter is an instant vacation”.
Many times a person such as myself wants an instant retreat from the world or reminder of the simplicity of, and want to touch (retouch), the true spirit of Jesus.
With that in mind I turn to the beginning of Matthew 5 and read the Sermon on the Mount which contains the Beatitudes.
I also prefer the King James Version to hear the sometime poetic flow of Shakespearian like English and the spirit of a great many scholars translating from many ancient and dead languages to keep the words of Jesus alive to this day:
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil...
( do you need another book or a workbook to understand the preceding ? I don’t think so. )
God Bless.
- -
Well the way I think, I remember that Jefferson, among others, knew at least a half dozen languages including Latin and Greek.
So when I hear a typical carnie evangelical talk about this being a christian nation and the founding fathers meant this or that and so on and so forth about the U.S. Constitution, I get a little bewildered.
This strange logic is in keeping with the Bible being the exact and unerring word of God, foregoing any explanations of translations from Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, Greek into English (17th Century) to English (20th Century) to go on and on.
I find it annoying lately about these telly evangelicals living in their eighteen thousand square foot homes telling the audience that Jesus meant this when he said that and he meant that when he said this...etc.
Having been an elder in a small congregation, I understand the need to raise funds. Selling a New York Times best seller for seven or eight dollars above retail to the congregation is an acceptable means to me to get some chump change together to help pay the church's electricity bill.
There is one book that comes to mind that I never could read or understand. The title is The Purpose Driven Life. I am not totally knocking it. Success has many surprising parents. I think that there are a dozen or so concepts and the author pushed “word search” on his word processor using a biblical data base. The word search categorized the concepts with tithing at the top of the list as to what God and Jesus wants us to do to have a fulfilling life.
So I tell someone that I do not understand this book that is explaining the bible to me and that person says that I should buy the workbook and attend classes to understand what a purpose driven life is. So let me get this straight. I need a workbook to understand the book that explains what God and Jesus really meant about this phrase or concept or that.
Hey, I read my bible and if I don’t understand one particular passage or that, I do some research.
I will in no way tell any other Christian what they should believe or not believe and I will always use the subjunctive tense to say what I think something in the Bible might mean and within the framework of a lifetime’s exposure to a sacred and secular – Christian culture.
Getting away from my frustration of looking at a media circus and snake oil and former used car salesmen explaining what Jesus really really meant - I escape back to something quite simple to get into the flavor and nature of the Christ.
There is a line by the late comedian Milton Berle about how “laughter is an instant vacation”.
Many times a person such as myself wants an instant retreat from the world or reminder of the simplicity of, and want to touch (retouch), the true spirit of Jesus.
With that in mind I turn to the beginning of Matthew 5 and read the Sermon on the Mount which contains the Beatitudes.
I also prefer the King James Version to hear the sometime poetic flow of Shakespearian like English and the spirit of a great many scholars translating from many ancient and dead languages to keep the words of Jesus alive to this day:
And seeing the multitudes, he went up into a mountain: and when he was set, his disciples came unto him:
And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.
Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.
Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid.
Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house.
Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil...
( do you need another book or a workbook to understand the preceding ? I don’t think so. )
God Bless.
- -
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