Jamie’s Big adventure

Revolution

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:42:28 -0500

God not only calls the redeemed to live in radical community in order to model justice and reconciliation; he also calls us to engage a needy and divided world proactively with the gospel, bringing the light of God’s reign in places of darkness where people live in despair, poverty, oppression, inequality, and violence.

“This is the original revolution: the creation of a distinct community with its own deviant set of values.” John Howard Yoder

(This blog entry is from a book called Linking Arms, Linking Lives by a collection of authors -- Ron Sider, John Perkins, Wayne Gordon and F. Albert Tizon. It is about wealthy, “suburban” churches partnering with poor “urban” churches for the purpose of seeing the fullness of God’s Kingdom come to poor communities. I’m reading this book to learn how to do this well, as God is blessing us in Valleybrook with a partnership with Lifechurch.tv. We are learning together how to bless one another and minister effectively. It is a road fraught with hazards and potential pitfalls, but one that is worth the risks, as we attempt to see the unity of the Body of Christ expressed in His Kingdom. I highly recommend this book if you are are in either an “urban” or a “suburban” church. Well, I think that includes all of us. :-) Here’s a link: (It’s really cheap right now!!)

My Current Thoughts on Being Born Again

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 21:26:37 -0500

Being “born again” means starting over and coming into the world as something new, something different. It's a total overhaul, an extreme makeover that gives us a completely new outlook on life. It means a revolution of values

“Perhaps the best picture of what God’s church should look like is painted in Acts 4:32-36, where it tells of the followers of Jesus sharing everything in common. There were no needy among them. This is an absolutely remarkable statement because if we reflect on the Jewish society at that time, according to some scholars and depending on where you draw the line, at most only 5 percent of the people were classified as rich. Again, depending on where you draw the line, there were 10 to 15 percent considered middle class. On the other hand, 75 to 85 percent of the people were working poor or dirt poor. But the Spirit of the Lord moved so greatly on these people that the rich voluntarily sold their surplus land and houses. At least for a while, the power of the Spirit so moved God’s people that poverty was abolished within the church.” - John Perkins

In the Pentecostal condition that was the early Church it was simply understood that to be a follower of Jesus, to be a participant in the Community of the King was to live from Kingdom values, to care for the poor and the needy, to share the blessings God had given. This seems to be a direct result of both the modeling of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (which is the Spirit of Jesus) in Acts 2.

Today, as Christians fret over the spiritual condition of our nation and cry out to God for revival, I wonder if this is what we are seeking—if this is the picture we are desiring. My own past experience and the evidence that I see in many revival-seeking Christians points more toward a desire to see widespread repentance from the moral sins of our nation.

However, I wonder if rather than revival coming as a “sovereign act of God” or an “act of the Spirit,” that propels us into a more moral condition, it begins by Jesus Followers being “born again” in an old-fashioned sense—adopting Kingdom values and beginning to live by them. Isaiah 58 suggests that the the “then” of God’s presence is conditional upon the “if” of conformity to God’s heart for the poor and the needy.

I wonder if the experience of genuine, loving, caring, community—a Community in which every need is provided—correspondingly then creates an environment in which the “moral” sins are annulled. They are no longer craved, desired or “needed.” There is acceptance, security, peace and love and a desire for God’s very best—not only for oneself, but for each individual in the Community.

I wonder if we have the proverbial chicken before the egg. Well then, that would take us back to needing to be “born again.”

Elisa Padilla says it strongly here:

Thu, 3 Jun 2010 21:25:12 -0500

“If your gospel is only about yourself, your spirit, your converts, and your words, and in practice your highest loyalty is to your flag . . . you can easily live in peace, accumulate wealth, and call it a blessing from God. In your naivete and passivity you can support racism, land expropriation, inequality, abuses of power, wars for oil, nuclear build-up, economic exploitation, contamination, and all kinds of injustice, and still remain a good Christian, because your too-small gospel has nothing to say to the issues of the times.”
-- Elisa Padilla

Repentance IS Social Justice

Wed, 2 Jun 2010 21:22:09 -0500

"Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." 10 So the people asked him, saying, "What shall we do then?" He answered and said to them, "He who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none; and he who has food, let him do likewise." Then tax collectors also came to be baptized, and said to him, "Teacher, what shall we do?" And he said to them, "Collect no more than what is appointed for you." 14 Likewise the soldiers asked him, saying, "And what shall we do?" So he said to them, "Do not intimidate anyone or accuse falsely, and be content with your wages."
Luke 3:8-14

Amazing revelation to me this morning... repentance, by John the Baptist's definition, means to give to those in need and to treat others with justice/fairness/kindness.

Katherine Bushnell

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 12:08:08 -0500

In Sister K’s country there is a booming business in forced prostitution. The local police protect it and even hunt down girls who try to run away, often returning them to the stockades where they are held. Sister K. is personally aware of almost sixty brothels where she has found hundreds of young girls kept in subjection by “whip, fist, boot and bulldog”-some girls only thirteen and fourteen years old.

A state appointed investigator assigned to look into the issue visited a single brothel and concluded that there was “no necessity for state interference in the matter.” But Sister K. knows differently, and the brutal reality is beyond comprehension. She learned that one of the women held in prostitution was actually murdered by being soaked in oil and burned alive. The coroner’s report of her death even named the perpetrator. It read, “Burned to death by W. H. Griffin.” But the man was never charged with a crime. Local politicians prevent any legal action from being taken against the forced prostitution rings because they owe their position and influence to the wealthy business interests behind the brothels.

In the face of such injustice what can Sister K. do?

Kate Bushnell: Abolishing Forced Prostitution
A hundred years ago Dr. Kate Bushnell served as a national evangelist for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in the United States. A devout evangelical Christian, Dr. Kate Bushnell was heartbroken by the plight of girls victimized by white slavery in America. Hard as it may be to imagine today, the dens of forced prostitution described earlier were rampant in the logging camps and mining communities of northern Wisconsin and Michigan in the 1880’s. It was in Ashland, Wisconsin, that Dr. Bushnell encountered the murder of the woman who was burned alive with impunity.

While in some cases police responded to the peas of women who were seeking to escape their bondage, other times they didn’t listen and even returned runaways to their brothels. The existence of these dens and dance halls of rape was largely supported by the local community. The owners and patrons of such establishments exercised enough political power to prevent legal action against the brothels. Local doctors supported their existence because their frequent examination of the women provided a source of additional income. And local businessmen found that brothels provided a boost to the local economy.

Dr. Bushnell looked in vain for someone to properly investigate these conditions. Finding no one willing to take the risks, she did it herself. Facing tremendous personal danger, she infiltrated scores of brothels and interviewed hundreds of women held in bondage. “She would search for reliable witnesses having personal knowledge of an involvement in the case under investigation. She insisted on talking to inmates, viewing the situation herself. One side of the story, from one witness, was not enough . . . Having penetrated the brothel by one excuse or another, she was able by various pretexts to obtain proof of the conditions that existed there.”

Dr. Bushnell reported her findings at a Chicago convention of the WCTU. The state of Wisconsin vehemently denied her findings, and the state inspector even attempted to discredit her by accusing Dr. Bushnell herself of “unchastity.” When she appeared before the Wisconsin state legislature, she had to be escorted by police because of threats of violence against her. Standing before the hostile assembly, she initially felt overwhelmed as the only woman in the room. But

being a woman of prayer, she lifted her heart to God, “whereupon the door opened quietly, and about fifty ladies of the highest social position at the State Capital filed in, and stood all about me. There were no seats for them; they stood all the time I talked-and I had plenty of courage as I realized how good God was to send them.”

Despite the attacks on Dr. Bushnell and her study, “the whole country was agitated on the white slave question by the disclosures” she had made. Her findings were substantiated by subsequent studies conducted by both public officials and private researchers. The result of her work was the passage of the bill in the Wisconsin legislature that finally dealt with the scourge of forced prostitution in a serious way. The bill was appropriately labeled “the Kate Bushnell Bill.” Later Dr. Bushnell took her Christian witness to India and China, where she and other Christians challenged the complicity of British colonial officials in the rampant trafficking of women and girls in forced prostitution.

Excerpt taken from: Good News About Injustice by Gary Haugen