The River Church

Ash Wednesday

Ash Wednesday began on Feb 17^th a period of preparation for Easter. Lent happens for 7 weeks - 46 days – between now and Easter which is April 4^th.

This isn’t meant to be a religious exercise. Of course what determines that is a matter of the heart. Lent is all about making our journey to Easter more meaningful.

Essentially it is all about calling us into a new and fresh experience with the healing reality of Jesus.

One of the prayers for the Lenten season could simply be “Create and make in us new and contrite hearts.”

Lent calls us back to the basics, to God’s love for us in Jesus, and to our response to that love.

One practice for Lent is to remove something in your life in order to make more room for Jesus.

This might mean you drop an activity – and in that space you journal, be quiet, read scripture, pray etc..

Some also take this time for fasting a meal per week so during that time they leave greater room to listen to Jesus.

What might that look like for you?

Just some ideas. If you have never added this in your preparation for Easter you might want to consider it. At least pray about it and see what you hear.

Here are a few suggestions that might get you started.

A Lent Reading

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Psalm 103

My friend from Simple Churches in North Vancouver sent me these meditations during Lent. If you feel drawn to participate in Lent this year, this would be a great place to start. Here are your personal INSTRUCTIONS.

TO OPEN THE

Meditations during Lent

SITE

The good LORD, has prompted me to write 50 meditations for Lent.

All the mistakes are mine, and everything good is HIS!

The daily meds are a look in the Book of Job,

and how JESUS is on every page,

some conclude with a personal illustration

Every Sabbath, has a graphic illustration of a verse

that has tickled the inside of my architectural heart.

So to access the site, go to the web

Type in: simplechurches.ca

On the home page: find the “Venite” ikon

(venite means “Oh Come” in latin )

at the bottom are two options,

the first gets you the 50 day outline

the second gets you the first week

the series start on the first sabbath, February 13^th

ASH WEDNESDAY is February 17^th.

Concludes on Resurrection Sunday.

(Excerpts from the whole article found on www.christiancentury.org/article.lasso?id=1195)

Philosopher Albert Borgmann, a Montana neighbor of mine, is our most eloquent and important spokesman in exposing the dangers of letting technology determine the way we live, dictating the means by which we, in his phrase, “take up with the world.”

Borgmann is not antitechnology. In fact, he’s very respectful of it. He just doesn’t want it to ruin us, and it is ruining us. In great and thoughtful detail, he brilliantly answers the question Walker Percy raised in several novels: “How does it happen that we know so much and can do so much and live so badly?” This is the concern motivating the contemplative life, and it is a concern of spiritual theology: to focus attention on the way we live, the means that we employ to embody the reality and carry out the demands of Jesus who became flesh among us.

Two areas are conspicuously in need of attention these days regarding ways and means, areas in which we’re doing the right thing the wrong way. And because we’re doing it the wrong way, the wheels are coming off the wagon. The two areas are our approaches to congregational life and to scripture.

The congregation is not about us. It is about God. God calls a people. Jesus named 12 disciples to be with him. The Spirit descends upon 120 praying men and women filling them with itself. The people we gather with for worship each Sunday and work with as salt and light are not of our choosing. God calls and forms this people, whom the Hebrew prophets are bold to designate “the people of God,” and St. Paul was unembarrassed to call “saints.”

God means to do something with us and means to do it in community. We are in on what God is doing, in on it together. We become present to what God intends to do with and for us through worship. In worship, we become present to the God who is present to us.

The operating biblical metaphor regarding worship is sacrifice. We bring ourselves to the altar and let God do to us what God will. We bring ourselves to the eucharistic table, entering into that grand fourfold shape of the liturgy that shapes us: taking, blessing, breaking, giving—the life of Jesus taken and blessed, broken and distributed; and that eucharistic life now shapes our lives as we give ourselves, Christ in us, to be taken, blessed, broken and distributed in lives of witness and service, justice and healing.

But this is not the American way. The major American innovation in the congregation is to turn it into a consumer enterprise. Americans have developed a culture of acquisition, an economy that is dependent on wanting and requiring more. We have a huge advertising industry designed to stir up appetites we didn’t even know we had. We are insatiable. It didn’t take long for some of our colleagues to develop consumer congregations. If we have a nation of consumers, obviously the quickest and most effective way to get them into our churches is to identify what they want and offer it to them. Satisfy their fantasies, promise them the moon, recast the gospel into consumer terms—entertainment, satisfaction, excitement and adventure, problem-solving, whatever. We are the world’s champion consumers, so why shouldn’t we have state-of-the-art consumer churches?

Given the conditions prevailing in our culture, we have the best and most effective way ever devised for gathering large and prosperous congregations. Americans lead the world in showing how to do it. There’s only one thing wrong. This is not the way that God brings us into conformity with the life of Christ. This is not the way that we become less and Jesus becomes more. This is not the way in which our lives become available to others in justice and service. The cultivation of consumer spirituality is the antithesis of a sacrificial, “denying yourself” congregation. A consumer church is an anti-Christ church. It’s doing the right thing—gathering a congregation—but doing it in the wrong way. This is not the way to develop a contemplative life, a life in which the Jesus way and the Jesus truth are congruent, where “kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame.”

Scripture is not about us, either. It is about God. God has revealed God’s self to us in scripture so that we might know and respond to God, understand where we are in God’s creation, what it means to be called into a life of God’s salvation. We do not primarily read scripture in order to develop a better self-image, or to discover the hidden treasures in our lives. Scripture is not about us. Basically, we are listening to God revealing God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

We do, in fact, find ourselves included. We are addressed, we are invited, we are commanded, we are promised, we are immersed in a world where God rules and saves and blesses—us. But there are no secrets here on how we can rule and save and bless. We are not the subject and we do not supply the action.

So what is the way in regard to scripture? How do we receive this text? Here’s how: by listening and responding and submitting. “Let it be to me according to your word” is the way I read this text. Our reading of this text is a personal listening to a personal God. We listen to God speak our lives into being. We listen to the story that provides a narrative shape and meaning to a life of following Jesus in the conditions of the world. It is a prayerful, relational, obedient listening. But that’s not the American way of reading. Too many of us read only for information, for know-how, to better ourselves, to prepare for a job, for a profession. When we need a break from that, we read for diversion, for entertainment.

American spirituality has an indiscriminating love of technology. We like getting things done, no matter how. Use the fastest and most efficient means at hand, but get it done. Fastest and most efficient almost always means impersonal. People ask questions, act stubborn, make mistakes and get in the way—so bypass the personal. Under the influence of technology, we have acquired the habit of reading the scriptures technologically, scripture depersonalized into information used to get things done more quickly.

But we don’t get a say in how God runs this world, this grand creation, this globe-circling salvation, this heart-stopping beauty. We don’t get a vote in the work that’s set for us each day, the work of witness, compassion and justice—healing the sick, working for peace, welcoming a stranger, having babies, burying the dead.

And we don’t get a say in how we do it. Our scriptures train us in this how; skill and attentiveness are required in order to read scripture the way it is written, which is personal and submissive. This entire area of ways and means requires far more attention and practice than we are used to giving it. How we say and do whatever it is we are saying or doing is on par with what God does and the work we do at his command.

Until we care as much about and are as careful with the means as we are the ends, virtually anything we do makes matters worse. Spiritual theology is primarily about means. Life is contemplative when the means become congruent with the ends.

So here it is again, doing the right thing (reading scripture) but doing it in the wrong way (reading it impersonally for information or for principles that I can use to get ahead). Using impersonal ways and means will never bring about any congruence between the text and our lives and, of course, nothing remotely contemplative.

The contemplative life, growing toward congruence, is slow work. It cannot be hurried. It is also urgent work and cannot be put off. Life is deteriorating around us at a rapid pace, and the life at the center, the gospel life—with the elements of congregation and scripture as major pieces—is being compromised, distorted, degraded at an alarming rate. In the American way, slow and urgent are not compatible. They cancel one another out.

But in the Christian way, they are joined together. Urgent as this is, there is no hurry. Impatience cancels out contemplation. Patience is prerequisite. Formation of spirit, cultivation of soul, developing a contemplative life, realizing congruence between the way and truth—all this is slow, slow work requiring endless patience. Human life is endlessly complex, intricate and serious. There are no shortcuts to becoming the persons we’re created to be. We can’t pump contemplation on steroids.

Unfortunately, patience is not held in high regard in American society. We get faster and faster and we become less and less; our speed diminishes us.

Talking at length about the contemplative life under American conditions seems just absurd. It seems such a fragile way of life in this culture of massive technology, arrogant leadership, pushing and shoving, insatiable consumerism. Contemplation? Kingfishers and dragonflies? Stones . . . tumbled over roundy wells? It’s so inefficient, so ineffective. Yet Jesus tells us to do it this way.

My friend Linda Graham believes in miracles, but her faith was stretched beyond her wildest imagination last week when she arrived in Haiti with three other women from Durham, N. C. They were on a routine mission to deliver blankets, clothing and medical supplies to an orphanage in the town of Carrefour.

They had no idea they were walking right into one of the worst natural disasters in modern history.

Their American Airlines plane touched down on Jan. 12 at 4 p.m.—15 minutes ahead of schedule. A Haitian pastor met them at the airport, loaded their bags in his vehicle and prepared to drive them to Carrefour when everything began to shake. At first Linda thought people were pushing the car until she noticed the trees were shaking too.

A 7.0 earthquake had just hit the city, but Linda and her friends, Kellee, Lisa and Julie, had no access to news broadcasts. All they could see were buildings collapsing and people running into the streets. Many people were covered with blood and white dust. One naked woman stood in the street with a stunned expression. Linda and her friends gave her some clothes.

The devastation was horrifying, yet the sound of praise soon filled the streets. Haitians were on their knees with their hands raised. “So many people were praying and praising God,” Linda told me. “They were saying, ‘Jesus is Lord’ and ‘Thank you Jesus,’ in Creole.”

Unable to drive to the orphanage, the pastor took the women to a church where about 2,000 people were singing and praying in a crude shelter that had survived the quake. Later that evening the women relocated to a soccer field where people were sleeping on sheets under the stars. Injured people were everywhere, but still the sound of praises filled the air.

“I’ve never felt the presence of God in such a tangible way as I did that night,” said Linda, whose husband, Wayne, and their two young children were back home in North Carolina—wondering if Linda had survived the disaster. “They were singing songs like, ‘Our God is an Awesome God.’ People were praying in small groups, and then a wave of God’s glory hit us around 2 a.m. Everyone was shouting praises.”

The next morning wounded people lined up in front of the four white women, assuming they were nurses. Linda felt completely inadequate to help them, but she remembered they had Band-aids, antibacterial medicine, alcohol preps and $500 worth of underwear in their luggage.

Amazingly, they also had packed 25 pounds of rubber gloves. The women sprang into action. They began praying for people and applying bandages and Neosporin.

“I am convinced there was a loaves-and-fishes kind of miracle going on,” Linda told me after she was airlifted to Florida on a private plane over the weekend. “All our supplies were multiplied. We even used Band-aids on an amputated leg.”

Linda Graham with one of the two babies she helped deliver after the Haitian earthquake.

The biggest test of the women’s faith came later that morning when two Haitian women went into labor. Linda was asked to deliver the babies—in an abandoned hospital. There were at least 300 dead bodies piled near the building’s entrance, but Linda was determined to see life triumph over the misery she saw all around her.

“It was an awful place,” she says of the Ministry of Health Hospital. “The three rusted tables in the maternity room were covered in bodily fluids. There was no electricity or running water in there. All I had was a pair of scissors and some fabric.”

Linda swallowed hard, prayed in the Holy Spirit and called on the Lord for help. She prayed harder when she realized that the first baby was in a breach position.

“I just made a declaration,” she said. “I prayed, ‘You will move into the right position and you will be born in Jesus name!’” A healthy girl was born in a few minutes.

A second pregnant woman then demanded attention, and her Christian husband translated Linda’s English instructions to his wife. To help the mother breathe properly, Linda told her to say “Hallelujah.”

When a baby boy was born the overjoyed father asked Linda to name the child. It was a prophetic moment that helped Linda gain insight into what God is doing today in this ravaged nation.

“I told him to name the boy Judah—which means praise,” Linda said. “I told him, ‘We have to praise our way through this.”

When Linda shared her story with me I realized God was working a million small miracles in Haiti that we will probably never hear about on CNN. Even in the mist of unimaginable horror and pain, many Haitians cried out to Jesus when everything they knew crumbled. And He has been answering them in a million different ways.

A newborn boy named Judah is just one of those miracles. He is a tiny testimony to the fact that there is a future and a hope for Haiti—a hope that is built on God’s unshakeable faithfulness.

J. Lee Grady is editor of Charisma. You can find him on Twitter at leegrady.

A few friends introduced me to Mark Buchanan a few months ago. I have also been blessed by a number of his books. This past week Mark wrote a great little e-newsletter to their people on the topic of “Labels”.  It was too good to miss so I pass it along here for your thoughtful reflection and engagement (though I can take no credit for it’s authorship).

I receive a lot of questions from people wondering about the Emergent Movement. Lots of things that resonate and lots of things that concern. I think this article addresses these questions well. I hope you appreciate it as much as I did. Enjoy!

The reason I post this on our website is because this word so resonates with us (me) - just so fitting with where God has us right now. I take this as such a confirmation from God’s Spirit, that we are where He wants us, as I believe this is God’s message to the broader church as well, not just The River.

As far as background. I appreciate Mark’s teaching. His book “Holy Wild” was instrumental for my wife and I in obeying God’s “Call” to come plant a church in Squamish. As well, through a close friend, I had the privilege of going on a Mt. Bike ride with Mark a year ago. So I feel justified to post his pastor’s notes on a couple of levels ;-) Thanks Mark!

Kick it till it bleeds grace - reminds me of a Bruce Cockburn’s - “…kick it till it bleeds daylight!” And U2 “Get on Your Boots!”

Yes, I’l like to borrow some of that rope and boots.

My Inner Pharisee (Friday October 23rd, 2009)

What’s the difference between a Christ-follower and a Pharisee?
Motive.
Pharisees have been described as the “evangelicals” of the First Century. They tithed (which is better than most evangelicals today). They gave regularly to help the poor. They practiced a whole suite of spiritual disciplines – prayer, fasting, Scripture-reading and memorization, confession, theological reflection, and more. They loved to talk about God.
Pharisees were laymen who took their faith seriously.
But Jesus rarely met one he liked (there were a few – Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and many unnamed ones). He found most of them proud, priggish, self-righteous, hypocritical, judging, nit-picking, hair-splitting. In a word, they were legalists.
Now here’s the rub: Jesus liked what Pharisees did. He just despised their reasons for doing it. Most Pharisees he met were motivated by self-promotion. They wanted to look good to others. They wanted to feel superior to everyone else. They believed they earned God’s favor by their good behavior. They thought knowing Scripture was the same thing as obeying it. They thought obeying rules was the same thing as walking with God. They judged those who needed God rather than sought ways to show them God.
Well, actually, here’s the rub: I have to deal almost daily with my Inner Pharisee. There’s a part of me that would operate out of Pharisaical motives at every turn. I need to tie that part of myself down (usually several times a day), and kick it ‘til it bleeds grace.
Then I need to make sure I don’t feel proud and superior for doing so.
Do you have an Inner Pharisee? Do you have a part of you that does good things, holy things, righteous things, but for all the wrong reasons?
Want to borrow some rope and steel-toed boots?

“Earlier that same year I had a conversation with my friend Omar, who is a student at a local college.  For his humanities class, Omar was assigned to read the majority of the Bible.  He asked to meet with me for coffee, and when we sat down he put a Bible on the table as well as a pamphlet containing the same five or six ideas Greg [another friend] had mentioned [i.e. man was a sinner, man was separated from God, Christ died for our sins, etc].  He opened the pamphlet, read the ideas, and asked if these concepts were important to the central message of Christianity.  I told Omar they were critical; that, basically, this was the gospel of Jesus, the backbone of Christian faith.  Omar then opened his Bible and asked, “If these ideas are so important, why aren’t they in this book?”
“But the Scripture references are right here,” I said curiously, showing Omar that the verses were printed next to each idea.
“I see that,” he said. “But in the Bible they aren’t concise like they are in this pamphlet.  They are spread out all over the book.”
“But this pamphlet is a summation of the ideas,” I clarified.
“Right,” Omar continued, “but it seems like, if these ideas are that critical, God would have taken the time to make bullet points out of them.  Instead, He put some of them here and some of them there.  And half the time, when Jesus is talking, He is speaking entirely in parables.  It is hard to believe that whatever it is He is talking about can be summed up this simply.”
Omar’s point is well taken.  And while the ideas presented in these pamphlets are certainly true, it struck me how simply we had begun to explain the ideas, not only how simply, but how nonrelationally, how propositionally.  I don’t mean any of this to fault the pamphlets at all.  Tracts such as the ones Omar and Greg encountered have been powerful tools in helping people understand the beauty of the message of Christ.  Millions, perhaps, have come to know Jesus through these efficient presentations of the gospel.  But I did begin to wonder if there were better ways of explaining it than these pamphlets.  After all, the pamphlets have been around for only the last fifty years or so (along with our formulaic presentation of the gospel), and the church has shrunk, not grown, in Western countries in which these tools have been used.  But the greater trouble with these reduced ideas is that modern evangelical culture is so accustomed to this summation that it is difficult for us to see the gospel as anything other than a list of true statements with which a person must agree.
It makes me wonder if, because of this reduced version of the claims of Christ, we believe the gospel is easy to understand, a simple mental exercise, not in the least bit mysterious.  And if you think about it, a person has a more difficult time explaining romantic love, for instance, or beauty, or the Trinity, than the gospel of Jesus.  John would open his gospel by presenting the idea that God is the Word and Jesus is the Word and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  Not exactly bullet points for easy consumption.  Perhaps our reduction of these ideas has caused us to miss something.”

Read a text, one from the previous CWG or from what a few others might have brought to the table that evening or morning.

Here are the open questions.

 1) What did you like about what we just read?

2) What didn’t you like? In other words, what did you find unsettling/challenging?

3) Was there anything you didn’t understand?

4) Regardless of where your faith is at right now, if you were to apply what we learned about God to something in your life this week, what would that look like?

 Talk, share, pray as the Spirit leads.