imagining how the church can reorient around mission

I love the book which this excerpt comes from. It is by Cole Arthur Riley and is entitled, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation and the Stories That Make Us.

“Perhaps the more superior we believe ourselves to be to creation, the less like God we become. But if we embrace shalom – the idea that everything is suspended in a delicate balance between the atoms that make me and the tree and the bird and the sky – if we embrace the beauty of all creation, we find our own beauty magnified. And what is shalom but dignity stretched out like a blanket over the cosmos?” read more

Desert father Abba Anthony said,

“A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, ‘You are mad, you are not like us.’ ” read more

Here is a talk a gave a month or so ago at Life Center, here in Spokane. Immanuel is partnering with LC in our new church plant. The text for the talk is taken from Ephesians 2.

I wanted to put this out before it moved from the front of my thinking. A few of us have been very concerned about the increase in violent activity in our city (here is a different recent post about this). The question I have been grappling with is what is the church’s response to such issues. To be honest, the complexity of urban violence is beyond me. What can be done? What can I do? I am not sure.

Liv Larson Andrews

One thing we (Eric Blauer and Liv Larson Andrews) arrived at was we did not want to become desensitized to how these brutal acts fractured shalom. I believe many Americans are becoming fatigued by the constant cascade
of news of this kind; that they are in a way de-selecting it for their possible choices of issues to be concerned about.

What we concluded was we wanted to publically grieve and
passionately intercede. In real time, that meant that we would go humbly stand in front of “The Hop” (the location of a recent murder) and do a Liturgy of Peace. It wasn’t against anyone or even to gain some attention for our
activism. It really was for us (because our hearts are broken) and for God
(because we believe that prayer is more than just aligning ourselves with God’s
way – it actually is efficacious). We wept…we interceded and we marked the spot with the sign of the cross.

I have to admit, I am a person of great inner tension. Sometimes I come from some activity and wonder what it was for? Was it for me or for Jesus? Was it healthy or stilted. In short, I’m a bit of a tortured soul. But I want to testify that praying for our city on Monroe St. on Friday at 5:30 with two fantastic ladies might have been one of the “purest” acts of Christian service I’ve been involved with for some time. I’m grateful.

Christ have mercy! May shalom rest on Spokane.

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I just got back from a conference in Chicago that specifically dealt with how Christian congregations can sow shalom into their local contexts.  It was fantastic.  Almost simultaneously, I came across this new site by CT.  It is worth looking at.

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In the Bible, the word shalom is usually translated into English as “peace.”  So when I think of shalom, peace is the first idea that comes to mind.  Although there are some rather bloody moments in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, I do believe that God wants His people to be peaceful, and he wants peace for them.  So when I think of God’s shalom, I usually tend to branch the idea out of peace.  In Jeremiah 29:1-7, God instructs His people to live among the people of Babylon.  He doesn’t want them to become like them; but he does ask them to live peacefully amongst them.  He tells them to plant gardens, build houses, and marry their sons and daughters.  These are not things people tend to do when they are in a state of war; on the contrary, these are things people do after the war, when peace reigns in the land and they are free to go about their lives once more.
 
I’m beginning to realize that tension is a major theme with God.  He wants us to live peacefully in the culture He places us in, but He also wants us to be separate and not actually be part of the culture.  That creates a major tension, and I really think it will look different in each individual life  It would be so much easier to just make a choice between living completely separate from culture or completely immersing in culture and ignoring God.  But that is not what we are called to do.  And now we have to figure out, each person for him or herself, what that will mean in their individual lives.
 
– Diana C.