Extreme Makeover: Papal Edition

Wednesday night we were reflecting at dinner on all the free television coverage the Roman Catholic Church received as a result of its search for a new leader. I noted that in American terms, this was much like the ‘bump’ the U.S. political parties get after the Republican National Convention or Democratic National Convention. An infomercial that is broadcast free of charge for the parties and seen by the viewer free of any other commercials.

But Mrs. W. pointed out to me that much of the commentary up to the point where they announced the new Pope was actually somewhat undermining what was taking place. The talking heads on the major networks were pontificating (couldn’t resist that one) about how what was needed was a younger leader and someone who would address the changing role of women in society as it affects the church.

And then, switching analogies, she said, “It’s like you’re watching Extreme Makeover and Ty Pennington says, ‘Move that bus;’ and the bus moves out of the way and you find yourself left with the same house you started with.”

In a way, that’s what happened. The older white gentleman who was the Pope was replaced by another older white gentleman, albeit one is from another continent who up until this week insisted on cooking his own meals and taking public transit. Perhaps Pope Francis would bring some major changes and leave an impressive legacy, but on Wednesday evening things looked relatively unchanged.  

…

By Thursday afternoon however, the first-day reporting on Pope Francis’ tenure was offering some most positive signs. Things that make you go, “Hmm.” Could it be that things are really going to change? And then, this item on Mark Shea’s blog at Patheos concerning “then-Cardinal Bergoglio, chewing out some of his priests for refusing to baptize children of single mothers.”

“In our ecclesiastical region there are priests who don’t baptize the children of single mothers because they weren’t conceived in the sanctity of marriage,” Bergoglio told his priests. “These are today’s hypocrites. Those who clericalize the Church. Those who separate the people of God from salvation. And this poor girl who, rather than returning the child to sender, had the courage to carry it into the world, must wander from parish to parish so that it’s baptized!”

Perhaps it is, indeed, a makeover.

Wednesday Link List

In the first link today, I want you to join me in a promotion project for a deserving songwriter and embed the video on your Facebook page, your blog, or whatever it takes to spread the word.

• Our first link today is the above video. I’ve been corresponding with the creator of this for some time, but it couldn’t go public until now.  “An uplifting song that furnishes a concept of peace and oneness for humanity in deliberate contrast to John Lennon’s iconic anthem, ‘Imagine’.”  Here’s the story behind the song. I want to encourage you to share this with everyone you know! 
• Here’s an article I wrote for C201, that I may yet reblog here. It’s about Jesus’ last words to his disciples, and they may not be the words you’re thinking of right now. 
• And another C201 post that is both packed with scripture and introduces the new Chris Tomlin song, Whom Shall I Fear.
• Essay of the week: Canadian Dave Carrol explains his faith, his faith journey, and his ‘conflicted’ Protestant and Catholic sides to a largely secular audience in his city’s newspaper.
  
• The Harvard Theological Review is postponing publication of a major article on the papyrus fragment in which Jesus seems to refer to his wife, raising further doubts about a discovery that was set to turn Christian history on its head. More at Religion News. 
• Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove critiques a PBS special on the abolitionists; noting what the producers missed and what he is pleased they included.
• If you’ve been following the Jack Schaap story, you’ll want to know that First Baptist Church in Hammond (IN) has hired a new pastor, John Wilkerson. More also at the church website.
• Meanwhile in another casting call, how about Brad Pitt as Pontius Pilate?
• Would Brian McLaren be a good fit to replace Louis Giglio at the Presidential bash?
• And what if a letter from Barack Obama to Louis Giglio looked something like this letter?  Plus, I couldn’t overlook a piece that Gabe Lyons wrote on how Louis was ‘bullied off the stage.’
• Pushing past the controversy, Christianity Today reported on Louis Giglio’s signature event, The Passion Conference. Between Passion and Urbana, it’s easy to see what American Christian youth were up to over the holidays. So why does a search for Urbana at CT turn up nothing?
  
• While it doesn’t have a Christian message, this 3-minute public service announcement from the Australian government should give you good reason to slow down in all areas of life.
• As the countdown begins to the Big Game in the U.S. (February 3rd, if you’re wondering) poet Greg Asimakoupoulos: laments that these sports extravaganzas now routinely happen on Sundays. As game day approaches, you might want to copy and paste this to the American football fans you know.  [HT: David Fisher]
  
• The issue of prayer at civic events switches this week to a debate about the subject at West Point Academy.
• Mike Duran is closing in on 300 comments for a piece he wrote about websites that put evangelicalism under the microscope or simply put it to ridicule. Some of the language is edgy, but if you’re okay with that, check out, The Anti-Evangelical Hate Machine. Later, in an effort to better understand one of the bloggers, he interviews Darrel Dow of Stuff Fundies Like.  (SFL is also the source for today’s lower graphic.)
• A few weeks ago we attended a New Year’s Eve-Eve night of ‘clean comedy’ with Timmy Boyle, and learned that a number of comedians in Canada are creating a family-friendly comedy circuit. Here’s a story of Matt Falk, a similar entertainer whose debut album topped the iTunes comedy category on its day of release. 
• Also for my Canadian readers, next Monday night at 8:00 PM on CBC TV’s Mr. D., history teacher Gerry Duncan wades into religion with this line, “Jesus was Jewish and even he was Catholic.” Sigh.
• Ending with a video since we opened with one: Cindy Jacobs tells an interviewer about the ‘miracle’ of her shoes not wearing out.

The Go Deep Link List

The Go Deep List Lynx

It’s like the regular link list but for people who want something they can really chew on.

• If you read the Wednesday list here, you saw a brief reference this week to Becky.  Becky is a fictional prototype of the ideal listener to Christian radio who, according to Sean Palmer, is more than just a media marketer’s target, but she is also setting the agenda for the modern church.  And then there’s this damning statement:
  

  Every element in a church worship service; each program or each new area of ministry has to pass the Becky-test. This means milk toast, predictable, and less engaging worship experiences. The depths and riches of Christian experience go ignored because Becky has no framework to understand them and Christian sub-culture is happy to allow her her illusions of faith provided those illusions are accompanied by her patronage.

  No wonder the article is called Killing Becky.

• Although youth ministry guru Mark Oestreicher — I’m getting to where I can type his name right on the first take — wrote this with youth ministry in mind, it has much broader implications for church ministry as a whole. Mark had me from the first paragraph:
  

  I see the Kingdom of God in less black-and-white frames these days. To say it’s a full gray-scale doesn’t even do it justice. The Kingdom of God deserves a color palette so broad, deep and rich that we don’t have names for all the nuance and variation.

  And also

  In the U.S. church, we want so desperately to be independent mavericks, a Christianized version of the Marlboro Man, riding through the landscape of culture, needing no one, emulating no one. But if we look carefully at the American church in the last 40 years or so, we’re really not all that original. Most of the time we are acquiesce-ers, copiers. We copy culture, and convince ourselves we birthed it.

  The article is actually the first in a series. The main link here is to Presence in Youth Ministry Part One, but there’s also a part two and a part three.

• And then there’s this one, which connects to the graphic below. Basically the idea is that rock hard empirical evidence can only take you so far, and beyond that, whether you choose Atheism or Theism, it involves a major step of faith.
  

  …the relationship between strength of belief and theism/atheism could be visualized as independent variables in a bivariate function, and that doing so might shed some light on my own perspective.

  And this insight

  …Although it is not a linear relationship, I would say the inclination of the individual to proselytize–that is, to attempt to win others to camps that occupy the same region on the curve–increases proportionally with the level of certainty.

  While he uses words like ‘bivariate’ this is a very concise article that is quite easy to follow, and has implications for your next conversation with someone who you’ve seen as having an opposing worldview, but who you now know shares more in common with you than you thought.  Check out Dan Martin’s The Belief Matrix.

Where is Pro-Choice Protest over Royal ‘Baby’ News?

From a hardcore pro-choice position, it’s not a baby. Not yet. But absolutely everyone is caught up in the celebration. And at least one blogger at Flagrant Regard had the courage to point out the resulting double-standard in an open letter to pro-choicers:

You rant and scream at your rallies, on your blogs, in your liberal-leaning newspaper columns and directly at your detractors that abortion – especially if performed on a woman prior to the 24-weeks-pregnant mark – is okay because the creature, the ‘it-thing’ inside that woman’s body is a fetus. ‘Fetus’, in your minds, being a word for a disposable type of developing life-form that’s not, in fact, a little human person.

Really? ‘Cause you wouldn’t know it today.

Every news server this morning broke the story that Kate Middleton, the internationally admired, beloved Dutchess and wife of the future king of England is about 12 weeks pregnant.

Websites have already been created in homage to the ‘baby-to-be’, throngs of royal-watchers are passionately discussing what the baby’s name might be if it’s a boy or a girl, women everywhere are gushing and/or vicariously ‘glowing’ over, with or for Kate Middleton in anticipation of the newly expected ‘child’ who will be 3rd in line to the royal throne (as if he/she had the job in hand already).

Is the issue here the celebrity brought on by pure celebrity or because this is a ‘royal’ pregnancy? Maybe there would be fewer abortions if all women felt they were carrying a child in line to a royal throne.

So if I am understanding this correctly, a woman has the right to call something growing inside her a “zygote, blastocyst, embryo, or fetus” (thank you for the terminology, Pro-Choice Action Network) and then rip it out of her body if she believes it to be anything less than a prince or princess in the making?

And that’s just the beginning. Our anonymous blogger has just begun his well-placed rant.

Continue reading here. I’m sure some of you will want to comment, too; so I’ve shut comments off here so you can leave them with the author. You know you want to.

Ravi Zacharias Predictions Ring True

I’m currently in the middle of one of those extensive cleanups where you find all sort of things from the past, in this case Connection,  a 14-year old newsletter from Tyndale University College and Seminary in Toronto.

In the spring of 1998, author, speaker and Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias received an honorary doctorate from Tyndale, and the newsletter summarized his address on the front page:

Five Changes In This Century That Will Change the Future

• the “God is Dead” movement, begun by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
• religious pluralism
• the power to inform through the visual
• the loss of center for cultural molding
  
• the shifting power to a youth culture

Zacharias then suggested that Christians need an apologetic that:

• is seen and not just heard
• is felt and not just argued
• rescues the ends, not only the means

Today, 12 years into that new century we see:

• the rise of militant atheism and a political correctness devoid of God
• pluralism and demographics shifts in Western nations that will move to change laws, political structures and education systems
• the power of screens, visual learning, info graphics; text has been reduced to bullet points or less
• a fragmentation in media that means culture is shaped by a seemingly infinite number of influences
• a world where, even in the modern church, 40 can be too old; though overall power hasn’t shifted to the young so much as to those who can think young, especially in their mastery of the new technologies

While we face challenges Ravi didn’t mention — particularly issues of gender and sexual orientation, the European economic tensions, political instability in the middle east — his words to the Christian university audience were certainly prophetic.

Read some of Ravi’s popular quotes here at C201 and learn more about his ministry at RZIM.

To My Skeptic Friend

Dear __________,

Here’s an idea.

There’s nothing I can say or do today that will convince you that God exists, that the Bible can be trusted, or that Jesus has a legitimate claim to be God. But humor me for a moment.

All I’m asking today is that you begin with a God-exists hypothesis. Not the Bible. Not Jesus. Just that there is a God, in the more or less traditional way that’s understood.

Now then, ask all your questions, and frame your answers along the lines of the hypothesis. In other words, “Why is there so much evil and suffering in the world?” becomes, “If there is a God, why does he permit so much evil and suffering in the world?”

And so on.

What possible answers might you come up with to your various questions? Maybe some fairly crazy ones!

I’m not saying assume anything or commit to anything. I’m just saying take your toughest questions, your philosophical questions, your metaphysical questions, your ethical questions; and instead of framing them within a vacuum, frame them within the hypothesis.

Oh yeah, one more thing: For 48 hours. Do this for a couple of days, not a couple of minutes.

You might even want to say this — don’t think of it as a prayer, but more as a role play to get you in the right head space — “God, I don’t believe you exist, but for the next couple of days, I want to see how the world adds up if I were to believe you’re really out there.”

Think of this ‘let’s pretend’ game as meeting me halfway.

~Paul

God’s Will But Not God’s Desire

Several days ago at Christianity 201, I shared an audio clip of someone reading  C.S. Lewis on the subject of free will. Lewis talks about that are freedom actually is God’s will, but within that freedom we can choose wrongly, or choose the thing that God would not necessarily desire.

Rob Bell approached this subject in a chapter titled, ‘Does God Get What God Wants?’ in his controversial 2011 book, Love Wins:

In the Bible, God is not helpless, God is not powerless,

and God is not impotent. Paul writes to the Philippians that “it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”

Once again, God has a purpose. A desire. A goal. And God never stops pursuing it…

…God in the end doesn’t get what God wants, it’s declared, because some will turn, repent, and believe, and others won’t. To explain this perspective, it’s rightly point out that love, by it’s very nature, is freedom. For there to be love there has to be the option, both now and then, to not love. To turn the other way. To reject the love extended. To say no. This perspective allows that while God is powerful and mighty, when it comes to the human heart God has to play by the same rules we do. God has to respect our freedom to choose to the very end, even at the risk of relationship itself. If at any point God overrides or co-opts or hijacks the human heart, robbing it, and us, of our freedom to choose, then God has violated the fundamental essence of what love even is.

So here, with all its British flavor, is the 3-minute C. S. Lewis reading.  As I stated to C201 readers, this was posted on YouTube on the ‘Islamic Worldview’ channel. I’ll leave it for you to ponder that one.  (For those of you reading on mobile devices or dial-up or limited data plans, this takes mere seconds to upload.)

I’ve watched this several times now, and would love to memorize this so that I could present it others.

The version of this at C201 also contains a full video clip from Ravi Zacharias.

Wednesday Link List

A different approach to links this week.

• Some happy music to start, here’s a lyrics video for Shooting Star by Owl City.  Wish we could get the song lyrics to look like this on Sunday mornings.
  
• Does anyone besides me have to look twice at a sentence that uses the phrase, “multi-sensory worship experiences.”? I mean, I know what they’re talking about, but…
  
• Kevin DeYoung unravels the approach we use and the words we choose when speaking to (or about) gay Christians:

If we are speaking to cultural elites who despise us and our beliefs, we want to be bold and courageous.
If we are speaking to strugglers who fight against same sex attraction, we want to be patient and sympathetic.
If we are speaking to sufferers who have been mistreated by the church, we want to be apologetic and humble.
If we are speaking to shaky Christians who seem ready to compromise the faith for society’s approval, we want to be persuasive and persistent.
If we are speaking to liberal [or gay] Christians who have deviated from the truth once delivered for the saints, we want to be serious and hortatory.
If we are speaking to gays and lesbians who live as the Scriptures would not have them live, we want to be winsome and straightforward.
If we are speaking to beligerent Christians who hate or fear homosexuals, we want to be upset and disappointed.

• Here’s a link all the way back to May, where N. T. Wright offers a different view of heaven. The heaven we understand he says would sound foreign to people in Jesus’ time. He also proposes we think more of heaven as overlapping or intersecting with the here and now.
  
• Perry Noble joins the ranks of megachurch pastors with books released through major publishers. Unleash is, from what I can tell, largely the story of New Spring Church and about God helping you unleash your vision. Here’s a sample chapter.
• Another Mars Hill (Seattle) horror story. This one describes an exorcism. There’s no happy ending:

Why do you think Mark [Driscoll] claimed that your “demons” were “sexual”?

It’s always his go-to topic. Ironically, my husband had more “demons” than one could imagine. But his demons were of no consequence and unimportant to the church. It was somehow my fault because “maybe I wasn’t the godly, providing wife” I was supposed to be.

That said, Mark was also aware that my husband and I had sexual troubles from day one. And regarding our sex life–because I was essentially grinning and bearing it most of the time–Mark concluded that I was a terrible wife to my husband. Even when my husband looked at porn, Mark blamed me because I wasn’t doing my “wifely duty”. I felt violated when sex was expected of me. I was intensely miserable and neglected throughout my marriage, but Mark deemed that irrelevant because I was the wife and my duty was to serve my husband sexually.

• A church choir made up of seniors answers the question we’ve always wanted to ask: How hot is it under those choir robes?
  
• Craig Keener guests at Huffington Post Religion and suggests that young earth creationism, in an attempt to defend the truth of the Bible, does more harm than good.
  
• James MacDonald addressed the Southern Baptist Convention last week on the subject of active faith versus inactive faith, and they got to hear this poem:

One night I had a wondrous dream,
 One set of footprints there was seen,
 The footprints of my precious Lord,
 But mine were not along the shore.

But then some stranger prints appeared,
 And I asked the Lord, “What have we here?”
 Those prints are large and round and neat,
 ”But Lord they are too big for feet.”

“My child,” He said in somber tones,
 ”For miles I carried you alone.
 I challenged you to walk in faith,
 But you refused and made me wait.”

“You disobeyed, you would not grow,
 The walk of faith, you would not know.
 So I got tired, I got fed up,
 and there I dropped you on your butt.”

“Because in life, there comes a time,
 when one must fight, and one must climb.
 When one must rise and take a stand,
 or leave their butt prints in the sand.”

• Daniel Jepsen goes to the movies: “I saw the SF movie Prometheus last week.  I won’t review it or summarize it here except to note that it featured a creature far rarer than aliens in Hollywood’s universe: a practicing Christian.  She is even portrayed in a positive light, and is, in fact, something of the heroine of the story.”
• Darrell Dash notes that material benefits, combined with intangible benefits, added to future rewards equals the situation that pastors are well compensated, thank you.
  
• Timothy Kurek has rewritten the playbook on incarnational, choosing to identify as gay even though he says he isn’t in order to understand their persecution.  His adventure could fill a book:

Facebook: Timothy Kurek is an aspiring writer, proficient drinker, laudable instigator, and recovering Pharisee. 

YouTube video description: From bigotry to empathy, this is the true story of a conservative Christian attempting to find the answers. And it all begins with two words. “I’m Gay.” (Jesus in Drag, The Book Trailer; linked above.)

MSNBC Interview: “I was pretty immersed in that experience.”

• Author Karen Spears Zacharias debriefs the Jerry Sandusky trial: “When it comes to the abuse of a child, silence is hurt denied. When it comes to the abuse of a child, silence is responsibility deafened. When it comes to the abuse of a child, silence is shame misplaced. When it comes to the abuse of a child, silence is evil granted access.”
  
• It’s 431 .pdf pages, but Bible aficionados — or perhaps people who have never read an interlinear Bible — might enjoy the Mechanical Translation of Genesis.
  
• As CNN’s Belief Blog put it, “She went from atheist to Catholic in just over 1,000 words.” Leah Libresco announces her conversion on her blog:

Libresco says one of the most common questions she has received is how she’ll deal with atheists now.

“The great thing about a lot of the atheist and skeptic community is that people talk more critically about ideas and want to see proof provided,” Libresco said. “That kind of analytical thinking is completely useful and the Catholic Church doesn’t need to and should not be afraid of because if you’ve got the facts on your side, you hope they win.” 

• When Benny Hinn remarries his former wife Suzanne, Jack Hayford will perform the re-nuptials. Hinn said, “We never broke the covenant. Our marriage has been restored. We just want to make sure that we don’t repeat the same mistakes.”
  
• Pete Wilson confesses that there are three things he learned early on in ministry — about problems, conflict and giving up — that he later had to unlearn.
• Not a Christian site/blog link, but you have to feel for these two kids who got sunburned when the school refused to apply sunscreen on field day.
  

Wednesday Link List

The fine print: By reading this link list I agree to actually click a few links and check out the stories, and not just scan the summaries and leave.

• On Friday, as Nik Wallenda crossed over Niagara Falls, he frequently said things like “Praise You, Father God! Praise You Jesus!” Did ABC omit or downplay those comments?
• The new Hillsong album, Cornerstone “was birthed out of an international tragedy last summer in Norway when more than 70 innocent victims, many children, were killed.” Reuben Morgan explains, “When there is tragedy, the song of lament wakes up with you…” Read more.
• This one hits close to home if you’re a hoarder: Decluttering is a form of good stewardship.
  
• Evangelism and outreach corner: “If seekers are really seeking that hard, why do we have to put on such a huge spectacle to get them in the door?” Maybe the imagined type of seekers simply don’t exist.
  
• Here’s a great article on what we can learn from atheists. “They force me to examine my deepest convictions and assumptions in a way that religious books do not. They make me a better Christian.” But there are also dangers.
  
• Scroll through this Sunday set list at Sojourn Music to listen to a great song: In The Shadow of the Glorious Cross.
  
• Just finished reading a story that, in six short paragraphs, turns my understanding of the Beatitudes on its head.
  
• Here’s an author who notes that while the sentiments in some worship songs are common, they are not universal; therefore he advocates for more inclusive worship.
  
• You may not think it’s that important, but studying church history adds balance to your faith.
  
• Though it’s not exhaustive, here’s a list of ten top ‘streams’ in modern worship music.   Much depends on your definition of worship.
  
• Women’s corner: Here’s a quick Bible study on the four women who, according to one brazen pastor, “corrupted the line of Christ!”
  
• The giant statue of Jesus on Interstate 75 that was struck by lightning is being replaced in July by an even bigger statue of Jesus.
  
• Missions corner: ““A man in the Sabaot community of Western Kenya prayed aloud in his mother tongue in a gathering. Afterward, another man stood up and apologized to God for him praying in a language God wouldn’t understand; he then prayed in Swahili so God would understand.”
  
• Got a special needs children’s ministry where you worship? Forward this link concerning what works and what doesn’t.
  
• Sending Tweet-sized prayers throughout the day: “Micro-prayers” can be helpful.
  
• Church buildings are built to last, but sometimes that rock solid permanence can be a hindrance to ministry.
  
• Youth pastors are polled on having openly gay students in their ministry:  About a third said yes.
  
• A judge insists that the child of Jehovah’s Witnesses be given a potentially life-saving blood transfusion.
  
• Get Religion analyzes a news story showing that the number of children people in your church have is their statement of faith.
  
• This church waited ten years before adding HD video capacity that was already built into their structure, but then they had one week to install everything.
• Women’s Corner II: Not being female, I can only guess what Christian women want to read, but if that’s you, consider following Coleen York.
  
• Link for “the young people”: Five tips for guys and five tips for girls on dating from Jeff Bethke and his fiancé Alyssa.
  
• For bloggers and webmasters alike, here are ten sites providing royalty free stock images.
  
• Here’s an odd mash up: A four part vocal group and a fiery Fundamentalist preacher on the same video.
  
• A popular football-themed DVD gets pulled from the shelves of a large Christian bookstore chain.
  
• While I can’t fully account for what the animal in the upper picture is doing, it certainly looks like some act of worship. The graphic below was a free download at the end of a North Point sermon, which is probably a good reminder that tomorrow (Thursday) night they are streaming another Night of Worship live from 7:30 to 9:00 PM (EDT) at Northpoint.tv
  

Sometimes, The Christian Life is Just Plain Messy

My life is a mess. After forty-five years of trying to follow Jesus, I keep losing him in the crowded busyness of my life. I know Jesus is there, somewhere, but it’s difficult to make him out in the haze of everyday life. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a godly person. Yet when I look at the yesterdays of my life, what I see, mostly, is a broken, irregular path littered with mistakes and failure. I have had temporary successes and isolated moments of closeness to God, but I long for the continuing presence of Jesus.

Most of the moments of my life seem hopelessly tangled in a web of obligations and distractions. I want to be a good person. I don’t want to fail. I want to learn from my mistakes, rid myself of distractions, and run into the arms of Jesus. Most of the time, however, I feel like I am running away from Jesus into the arms of my own clutteredness.I want desperately to know God better. I want to be consistent. Right now the only consistency in my life is my inconsistency. Who I want to be and who I am are not very close together. I am not doing well at the living-a-consistent-life thing. I don’t want to be St. John of the Cross or Billy Graham. I just want to be remembered as a person who loved God, who served others more than he served himself, who was trying to grow in maturity and stability. I want to have more victories than defeats, yet here I am, almost sixty, and I fail on a regular basis. If I were to die today, I would be nervous about what people would say at my funeral. I would be happy if they said things like “He was a nice guy” or “He was occasionally decent” or “Mike wasn’t as bad as a lot of people.” Unfortunately, eulogies are delivered by people who know the deceased. I know what the consensus would be. “Mike was a mess.” 

When I was younger, I believed my inconsistency was due to my youth. I believed that age would teach me all I needed to know and that when I was older I would have learned the lessons of life and discovered the secrets of true spirituality. I am older, a lot older, and the secrets are still secret from me.I often dream that I am tagging along behind Jesus, longing for him to choose me as one of his disciples. Without warning, he turns around, looks straight into my eyes, and says, “Follow me!” My heart races, and I begin to run toward him when he interrupts with, “Oh, not you; the guy behind you. Sorry.”I have been trying to follow Christ most of my life, and the best I can do is a stumbling, bumbling, clumsy kind of following. I wake up mostdays with the humiliating awareness that I have no clue where Jesus is. Even though I am a minister, even though I think about Jesus every day, my following is . . . uh . . . meandering.So I’ve decided to write a book about the spiritual life.

When a decade later people are still raving about a book as though it were published yesterday, it’s a good idea to sit up and take notice. When people whose reading tastes you trust keep talking about that one book that you never got around to reading, it’s a good idea to check it out.

Mike Yaconelli was the co-founder of Youth Specialties, and therefore, by default, it’s magazine, the classic Wittenburg Door, a magazine that was very influential in my spiritually formative years. Sadly, a year after writing his signature book, Messy Spirituality in 2002, Michael was killed in a traffic accident.

I finished reading Messy Spirituality yesterday, and it’s significant to be blogging this fact on a Monday. We’ve all just come from weekend services where we interacted with other members of our  faith family, people who outwardly seem to have it all together. There’s a lot of posturing at church, and you’ll see better acting there on a Sunday morning than at any of the finest shows on Broadway.

But not all of us are perfect. Some of us are misfits. Some of us are tainted by sin. Some of us are broken by circumstances. Some of us are just plain lost and confused.

This is why Jesus came. This is why we needed a Savior.

This brokenness, our messiness, is not something to sweep under the rug or try to cover up with cosmetics; it’s something to celebrate.

Messy Spirituality is a book that reminds not-so-perfect people that we are loved and accepted as we are; we don’t have to clean up first to come to church or to come to him.  Through many anecdotes from Michael’s later career as pastor of a small church, and reminders of Christ’s ministry on earth, Michael weaved a tapestry that brought tears to my eyes several times.

This is a book that will appeal to readers of Brennan Manning, Eugene Peterson, Henri Nouwen, Philip Yancey and Wayne Jacobsen.  This is a book “for the rest of us;” those who find their spiritual life is, at times, simply messy. 

Read another excerpt from the book at C201

Messy Spirituality was published in 2002 in hardcover and released in 2007 in paperback by Zondervan. Unlike some review books here, this one was purchased by myself and is staying a part of my permanent book collection.