It’s how I often feel after leading weekend worship for the 300-1000 people at either of our two church campuses.  I plop down in my car, peel off my nametag, and rehash all the mistakes that happened during the worship experience.  “What a mess that was today,” I think, wondering if anyone could have possibly encountered Christ in the midst of my failed cues, mispoken words, and flat jokes.  But as I turn on some Remedy Drive/David Crowder/Miles Davis to drown out my sorrows, I remember the person who came up to me after service and shared with me something that they were struggling with and how the music/Scripture/message/communion really encouraged them today.  In the midst of this ‘Perfect Mess’, our God – Father/Son/Holy Spirit – came to them and built them up.

That’s the way it is, isn’t it?  God comes to us in the midst of this perfect mess!

If you’re looking for a short read to help you reflect on God’s presence in our chaotic mess of a world, pick up Lisa Harper’s A Perfect Mess.  Lisa uses the greatest of Scriptural music, the Psalms, to remind the harried and time-starved among us that God is continually using all of our imperfect pieces in His perfect plan.  Picking out 12 of the greatest Psalms, Lisa weaves spiritual truth in between hilarious stores and Scriptural study.

I was a bit reticent in reading A Perfect Mess because of its soccer mom packaging, but Lisa’s stories and reflections on the Psalms are too funny to pass up.  As my wife and I read this book together, we often said to one another with a knowing smirk, “Did you get to the ____ story yet?”

Give A Perfect Mess a shot.  It’s short, light-hearted, and soundly Scriptural.  It’s a perfect summer read!

I would highly recommend this book to small groups looking for a fun, light read.  Inviting discussion questions are included at the end of each chapter (I’d recommend 3-4 chapters per session).

]]> http://www.faithemergence.com/2009/07/a-perfect-mess/feed/ 0 http://www.faithemergence.com/2009/05/webjesus-whats-truth/ http://www.faithemergence.com/2009/05/webjesus-whats-truth/#comments Thu, 14 May 2009 14:23:16 +0000 Dan http://www.faithemergence.com/?p=707 So that’s a pretty big title and this post won’t take on a lot of pieces raised by that question.

The piece that comes to my mind is that as I watch videos on the web the line between reality and fiction often gets blurred.  Go ahead and check out some of the videos MSN posted.  Look for the “shark surfer” or the “skater ollies car” videos there.  Then look at the “baby preacher” or the “man eating bricks”.  Some are crazy but true and some are fake videos done to amuse or confuse.

It’s the same with forwards.  You’ve seen some different forwards come around that even though they’re fake take on a reality of their own.  Just the other day I was forwarded one talking about a “gay Jesus” film coming out.  I checked it out on Snopes and soon found out that this was an urban legend, but that thousands of petitions were still floating around the web and government officials were still getting calls on it.

It’s interesting to see how the lines of reality on the web are blurred and it reminds us as Christians to be careful.  While it’s good to tell story, we must always remember that our truth, our faith, must be grounded not simply in nice stories or forwards, cool videos or illustrations, but in the truth and history of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  This is something that separates our faith.  We ground ourselves in this as truth.

Completely to the side of this, but I’m curious, any “Lost” watchers out there.  Talk about trying to figure out truth, now that show is sending me in some different directions.

Have you seen this painting yet?  It’s definitely causes some uproar.  An artist, Michael D’Antuono created the piece to mark Obama’s first 100 days in office and he titled it, “The Truth”.  If you want to hear a little more, check out this story.

Due to a storm of controversy on the blogosphere and beyond, the artist canceled the unveiling, but obviously this story and this painting live on.

I’d be curious as to your reaction on a couple of issues.  First, how good of a place is the web for such conversations.  How much should the web influence decisions about these types of things? Also, what is your reaction to the painting?  What do you think it communicates?  Is it a satirical and truthful declaration of the way many have treated Obama?  Is it a blasphemous image?  Does it simply show that many see Obama as bringing truth and hope where they didn’t see any before?

I must say that my first reaction is that the artist is being intentionally vague to allow the conversation to take place.  All of the above are likely to be reactions and I can kind of appreciate an artist who can take what’s going on in culture and some of the undercurrent of religious themes, whether he agrees with them or not, and then place them within an image to get people talking.  There’s definitely a line where a person can start to mock or blaspheme and this painting starts to play in dangerous territory, but for now I guess I’ll apply my own take to it and recognize some satire that reveals a truthful take on people’s reaction toward Obama.

That site is NotReligion.com – It’s not about Religion–it is about a Relationship.”

I checked this site out and definitely found that it’s got some good stuff.  It speaks in a way that communicates to today’s emerging generation.  As you can see from their byline, “It’s not about relgion, it is about relationship”, it understands that people come with a bias against church and institution (in fact, that’s the focus this week on their website), but it communicates about relationship in a number of ways.   It’s focus is on the things that drive a person to think about God more- depression, family, anxiety, suffering, abuse, etc.  If you can help a person figure out how God fits into those, then you can start to connect them to faith.  I like a lot of the Bible studies on these topics. 

I do have a couple of criticisms of the site.  First, it does do the relatively standard evangelical steps into choosing relationship with Jesus.  Thus it falls into some of the pitfalls of decision theology, focusing people on their personal choice rather than God’s grace of seeking them out and bringing them to faith himself.  At the same time, it is prompting them to reflect and give the Holy Spirit space to work, so that’s good.

The second criticism is that in trying to reach people who are biased against the church, I’m not sure it helps enough in getting poeple to begin to move past that, even in the devotions currently on that topic.  We need to help people start to understand that while “religion” and “the church” may seem hypocritical or may have burned them in the past, they’re bigger than those problems.  Religion and church are precisely about relationships, and hopefully as we keep pushing that we can help people understand that some of their negativity isn’t with Church, but with individuals or the history of certain institutions.

Overall though good stuff and I appreciate the effort to communicate in a new and dynamic way.

Have you googled “Jesus” before?

I must say, it’s interesting to see what comes up.  It starts with a Wikipedia entry.  That’s ok.  It’s very encyclopediaesque which means it tries to present facts and all the alternative opinions.  Not with my biases, but not bad stuff.  Then it goes to Campus Crusade and a discussion of how one comes into relationship with Jesus.  Great!

Then, however, you start hitting stuff like “Dress-up Jesus”, which is a program where you put different outfits on Jesus, including ones from the Wizard of Oz, Satan outfits, and BDSM outfits as well.  Not so nice.

After this point, we have good and bad mixed together.  Perhaps the most unfortunate is that when one looks to the side there are the big sponsored links.  What are they?  First comes the Mormons, then come a couple of other websites that are almost as confusing.

It’s sad that if a person is honestly questing for Jesus there’s so much muck they have to search through.  So many people are competing to show him to be less than he is, to paint him as silly, or to make him some kind of mean judge or semi-mythological figure.

So what are we to do?  I guess it means that on the web or in our daily lives, we need to be clear communicators of Jesus.  If there’s so much junk out there we need to clearly communicating that Jesus is the loving son of God.  He has transformed our lives and he wants to do that for all others as well.  Every ounce of us needs to speak that good news.  Not an easy calling, but if I’d want my  name to be held in the right light, I definitely want Jesus’ to be honored as well.

In the first, you’ll see some powerful images combined by choice phrases that help us reflect on the nature of Jesus’ story as he was revealed.  The piece does a great job of playing with the images in an artistic way.

I loved this second one.  It combines a great song with both great cinematography and dance and theatrical elements.  I’ve seen creative dance done well and poorly.  This is done well.  Definitely click on this one.

Finally, if you like pieces where an artistic creation comes to life slowly when paired with song and Biblical thoughts, this one does a good job.

Feel free to share any reflections, or in general the pieces that have most inspired you this Easter.

Anyway, what struck me was I always think it’s interesting to read these lists, not so much becuase I’m going to go to these places, but because it’s interesting to see what makes a store, restaurant, location, etc stand out from a million others that basically offer the same thing.  A lot of it has to do with branding, with marking yourself off as having found a niche and then communicating that clearly to people.

Well, would about the church?  There are millions of churches and we’re all in some way trying to do the same or similar things.  So do we brand?  Does your church brand?  If you came to a service or went to the website, would you get a feel for what the church is trying to say God is doing in the place in a unique way.

What do you think about this topic?  Is this all marketing junk, a product of our information and web age, or is there something good about this?

I’d say that we should be careful to pass it off too quickly.  After all, God is incarnational and uses the uniqueness of his people to communicate his universal truths in culturally relevant and unique ways.  So how does that apply to where you are, or even to your own life.  What is your brand?

It seems whenever you talk to pastors, one of the vices they mention is “buying too many books”.  Indeed, we like to see our bookshelves grow in volume and seem to feel like even if we haven’t read all the books, their mere presence makes us more spiritual.

That might be overstating things a little, but pastors and the “flocks” do seem to be fond of Christian books.  That’s not a bad thing and it has of course, led to the rise of the Christian bookstore both at the mall and online. 

My favorite is Christianbook.  This place has everything and generally for a pretty good price.  Since so many people check this out, you often get good reviews and referrals as you browse the site as well.

This does make me a little curious though.  What are your favorite sites for buying Christian stuff?  What do you think about the rise of Christian consumer products- from books, to t-shirts, pictures, etc?  What’s the good and is there anything not-so-good you see?

It’s a great comprehensive site.  If you want to delve into a Scripture, check out the commentaries there.  If you’re looking for opinions on issues that are hitting the news, they have those.  Maybe you’re curious about a movie that’s coming out, they have reviews (and ones that are concerned about the quality of the movie overall, not only how clean it is).  If you want to take some time to reflect on your faith, I can guarantee you they’ll have an article or two that will challenge you.  There’s more than I can say- videos, blogs, devotions, geared to more interests than I can list.  So I guess I’ll just stop there.

So go check it out and find out.  Yeah, do it now.  Tell me what you liked.

If there’s a character or Biblical text or even just a theme from the Bible you’d like to explore, this is a good place to go.  Maybe your pastor was talking about the Sermon on the Mount and you’d like to explore it more.  Here you can find more in-depth resources that break the text down, but you could also find pictures and movies linked with this theme as well.  (So if you’re curious how Fight Club is linked to the Beattitudes, check it out!)

This is a great resource for people putting together studies or who want to dig deeper.  It’s built through indexes so you can search by Scripture, subject, theme, or go directly to movie and art indeces as well.

Have fun exploring!