Last Sunday we kicked off Paradox – A Series on Faith at Antioch. My good friend Ben Larson wrote and performed this song about Joshua and the battle of Jericho for special music. I love how so many artists have poured into this series! Click here to see the rest of the poetry, design, and artwork from last Sunday.
Ben Larson :: Jericho from Antioch Church on Vimeo.
“Mature people deal with differing temperaments or personalities maturely and usually enjoy some success.”
How do we reconcile conflicting personalities in relationships? from :redux on Vimeo.
The annual map of Antioch Summer Interns is out!!
Below is are the 2013 interns and where they are coming to us from on the US map. The energy levels at the Antioch offices are about to go through the roof!
I had the privilege of guest lecturing this morning for a Westmont College May Term class at their urban campus called “The Clunie House,” a restored Victorian Mansion in Downtown San Francisco.
Twenty amazing students doing a one month intensive before heading to Cambodia and Thailand.
Also good to catch up with my friend Rachel Goble, Founder of The SOLD Project.
One of the most pleasant surprises of The Justice Conference 2013 for me was Brenda Salter-McNeil’s keynote from Friday night.
I dare you to watch this one and not be moved!
Brend Salter-McNeil from The Justice Conference on Vimeo.
Guest Blog by Keith Wright
A funny thing happened when I went to help change the conditions of the poor in Africa. I was changed.
Twenty years ago, I moved to post-war Uganda to do my part to help. What I came to realize was: God’s call for me to meet the needs of the poor also involved His desire to transform my life.
When we respond to God’s call to care for “the least of these,” we discover something that we have always known, if we are honest — that we are broken as well. No, we don’t often wonder where our next meal is coming from or mourn the loss of another child taken by a preventable illness.
However, we struggle with issues of contentment, relationships and identity that can leave us harried and unhappy. In Isaiah 58, God promises us that when we “spend ourselves in behalf of the hungry…our light will rise in the darkness…and our healing will quickly appear.”
My experience over the past two decades has been exactly that. God is standing by to meet our needs as we respond to the needs of others.
Last week, I was in Ethiopia and visited a teenage-led household. Gibril, a 14-year-old boy, is the oldest sibling of four who were orphaned when their mother died. They live in a small rented room with all of their belongings neatly placed in three small plastic bags. Their father had abandoned the family years ago.
I first met Gibril and his siblings three years ago, and they were inconsolable. There was no hope in their eyes or their future. This past week, I was thankful to see that joy and hope were back in in their lives.
Through child sponsorship, Food for the Hungry (FH) staff work with Gibril’s household, and thousands like it, to provide teaching, training, counseling and basic resources to inspire hope. I left my time with Gibril last week with a renewed sense of gratitude for my own family and the protection He has given us – but also with a sense of awe in how God can use people like us to inspire hope in such difficult circumstances.
FH is committed to what I will call mutual transformation. The impact of our work is not directed only at the poor of this world – but recognizes that we as responders have needs to be healed as well.
Feeling bewildered and lost in today’s fast-paced world? Start by giving your life away and engaging with those in need relationally and materially. I know you will be blessed as you do your part in ending poverty.
Guest Blog by Melissa McCreery
A week ago, I wrote a post [Education by the Numbers] highlighting some (slightly alarming) statistics about higher education in America. Through those numbers we saw an education system with some serious issues to address. Issues that Kilns College is tackling head on.
While student loan debt is hovering frighteningly near the one trillion dollar mark, at Kilns College not a single student has graduated with debt from Kilns.
On a national scale, only 11% of students from the bottom income quartile hold a college degree. Fifty-six percent of our students admit they did not plan to go to college due to financial hardship… until they discovered Kilns College. With undergraduate tuition at only $85 per credit, students can afford to attend without taking out loans or placing a financial burden on family.
Currently in Oregon, only 28% of residents hold a 4-year college degree. Kilns College is a progressive start-up institution offering an innovative academic model and a great option for students who didn’t think college fit into their lives.
While we exist largely to serve the Central Oregon community, three distinct countries are represented in our student population—showing a need for a reformed college system not only in Oregon, but around the world.
For more information on Kilns College, visit http://www.kilnscollege.org!
A good friend once sent me this quote from J.I. Packer on Worship:
“If worship services are so fixed that what’s being offered fits the expectations, the hopes, even the prejudices, of any one of these groups as opposed to the others, I don’t believe the worship style glorifies God.”
I really like it. It’s been a while since I’ve found myself in the theological debates about “what is worship?” “should we use music to worship?” “what style of praise and music is most worshipful?” etc. etc.
When I was in grad school with a bunch of other single guys who had nothing better to do than read Nietzsche, debate Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology and circle back endlessly to conversations on the modern church — we talked about worship stuff all the time.
With Antioch growing up from a tiny church plant of 30 folks to a pretty well established church, however, I find these questions and conversations coming back up in my mind more and more.
“When does a progressive church plant need to step back and look at what silly things it is doing that need to be re-envisioned?”
“Do we do the same things other churches did that we reacted to when we dreamed of Antioch in the beginning?”
“Does our use of music and the arts really keep God at the center — does it aim at the glory of God and the reconciliation of us to Him?”
That is why I love Packer’s quote above — if our prejudices… if our fixed routines… it we fit lazy expectations… if we favor one… then our style probably isn’t broad enough or rich enough to be God’s style of worship.
Thinking about worship isn’t about solving a problem like a math equation — it is much more like making an adjustment as in steering. The value is in the repetition. The value is in asking the question. The value is in recalibrating.
Anyway, below is a Redux answer to a recent question wrestling with many of the same themes on Worship.
Is Singing at Church Worship? from :redux on Vimeo.
Guest Blog by Melissa McCreery
Since being hired at Kilns College, I’ve had the awesome opportunity—blessing, really—to be a small part of The Justice Conference. It’s truly amazing to see the conference staff, Kilns students, and countless (seriously, countless) volunteers come together to pull off this awesome event. I’ve honestly found it difficult to sleep all week because The Justice Conference is in Philadelphia this weekend. Here are my top 10 reason why I’ve been looking forward to this event all year!
1. It’s the single event where thousands of people who care about justice gather together. That’s a lot of awesome people in one place!
2. Kilns College co-sponsors the event with World Relief so I get to spend 48 hours meeting people and talking about Kilns College and why it’s a place that’s revolutionizing higher education. If you’re coming to the conference come check out the Kilns table and say hi!
3. Micah Bournes will be performing. This guy is seriously talented!
4. You get the opportunity to meet representatives from hundreds of nonprofit organizations
5. I was honored to ask to speak during a pre-conference session. If you’ll be at the pre-conference check out my session on education! While you’re at it, check out all the pre-conference sessions on The Justice Conference website
6. My dear friend Erin Lytle is Director for this conference and works tirelessly 365 days a year to make it an awesome experience for all the attendees, exhibitors and speakers.
7. This year’s conference is in Philly! After living for a few years in New England, I’m excited to be back on the East Coast, even if just for a few days.
8. It’s a great networking event!
9. Kilns College President Ken Wytsma’s new book Pursuing Justice will be available at the conference bookstore
10. This year, Kilns College has a HUGE announcement to make at the conference… can’t wait to share it with everyone!
Here’s another thoughtful and honest review of Pursuing Justice from Pastor Glen Woods.
******************
Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Pursuing Justice: the call to live and die for bigger things by Ken Wytsma with D.R. Jacobsen agitates the consumeristic American status quo, showing us how to move toward tangible expressions of dying to self to benefit others for God’s glory. It’s not for readers who prefer to compartmentalize their lives so that their involvement in justice does not conflict with their desire for comfort. Or, maybe it is… Maybe this book is the right prescription to break comfortable hearts and captivate imaginations so that we will get a glimpse–albeit veiled–of what God hears, what God sees, what God is about around the globe and close to home.
Reader beware: this volume is not the typical social justice fare. There is not a comprehensive list of social injustices around the world. Nor are there definitive solutions for the problems the author does address, some of which are not well known. Instead, he seeks to inspire and challenge readers to become more aware of social justice issues which may be glaring at them in their sociological blind spots, something which most of us have.
The author has done his research. From first hand experiences and interviews to extensively documented narratives, both domestic and international, Wytsma weaves a simultaneously heart-breaking and joyful web of stories.
But he doesn’t stop there. He infuses into the narrative theological, sociological, historical, philosophical, and ecclesial depth. Pursuing Justice is a serious, weighty book on one hand, and a heart-compelling work of compassion and inspiration on the other. Truly, it is an enjoyable read with potentially dissonant consequences for future prospects of comfortable living inoculated from the messiness of human suffering. Although it is not a comprehensive text book, colleges would be served well by adding it to their reading lists in relevant courses.
It would have been easier for me if I had not read Pursuing Justice. Now I feel convicted to examine the motives and content of some of my prayers. On page 188 he reflects on the contrast between the prayer lives of two teen girls, the first in a wealthy American home, praying for a new car; the second crying alone in a brothel, enslaved in the sex trade, praying to God for help. He then writes
“I was shocked to realize that my prayers, that I’d always thought of as spiritual, might in fact be discordant noise in the mind of God, who is attuned to the urgent pleas of the vulnerable– my requests in one ear, their cries in the other.”
Rather than picking a ideological slant and demonizing the political, religious, and philosophical enemy, Wytsma helps us navigate the consequences of ideas, acknowledging strengths and weaknesses within conservatism and liberal progressivism. Conservatives will be happy to know that he writes from a strong theologically and biblically evangelical perspective. Liberals will be happy to know that he breaks new ground in the social justice conversation, not least by offering a robust, cutting edge treatment of the topic which honors social justice pioneers, but also captures the imagination of the growing numbers of conservatives who are gaining a fresh perspective on what it means to take up our cross to follow Jesus. Wytsma writes, “That’s one of the lessons about living and dying for bigger things: the call to give your life away is more about the small and faithful over many years than the grand and exciting” (p.144).
Lest any evangelical reader have any lingering doubts about purchasing a book devoted to justice, let me assure you that he does treat the connection between the gospel and justice. It is a thorough, constructive, and redemptive study which embeds the entire volume within the rubric of the nativity, the cross, and the empty tomb, reminding us that God intervened on our behalf as an act of justice. He now calls us to intervene on behalf of the vulnerable and oppressed all around the world, and right where we live daily.
Question is: will you?
Will I?
Come, let’s take up our cross and follow Jesus, learning to live and die for bigger things. But be advised, this isn’t some pie-in-the-sky guilt trip to motivate people to tackle projects exceeding the scope of realism or God’s call on their lives. It is, on the other hand, a prompt to become alert to how our daily choices affect others, and to engage in helping others where God leads us, whether close to home or on another continent.
We all need a break sometime
We all could use some comfort food
We all can use a breakthrough every now and then
We all would like some change
We all have books we wish we had read or could read
We all have places we’d like to travel to
We all wish we could go back and relive some things… spend more time with kids or choose a different path
We all hate the feeling of being misunderstood
We all have good days and bad days
We all tend to forgive ourselves quicker than we do others
We all have blind spots
We all find it hard to be perfect and live up to everyone’s expectations
We all struggle with finding the time or energy to pursue God more
We all have doubts
We all have fears
We all –deep down- want the approval or respect of our father
We all want to know secrets
We all want to know what happens next
Guest Blog By Ben Larson.
This post is the third in a series on Church and Social Media. Click here to start from the beginning.
Okay, you’ve got a grasp on the Big Picture of social media and your strategy is in place…now what? Here are some basics of social media management that I’ve picked up from my friends, mentors, mistakes, and reading.
Good luck, and have fun!
Guest Blogger: Melissa McCreery
When I began my typical social media ritual this past Monday morning, I found my Facebook and Twitter feeds overflowing with some of Martin Luther King Jr.’s most popular quotes, in observation of the MLK holiday.
“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Even President Obama alluded to Dr. King throughout the inauguration ceremony and during his speech on Monday, saying,
“We the people declare today that the most evident of truth that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still… just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth” (as transcribed in the Washington Post).
While King is remembered by most for being a voice, leader and symbol of equality in a time in history when equality was largely absent, his life was a symbol of more than the mark he left on the civil rights movement. He cared passionately about injustices of all kinds—be they global or domestic—issues of healthcare, malnutrition, violence, war, or transportation. It is his methodically astute voice on the purpose of education that has me writing this post today.
Nearly two decades before King led the March on Washington and delivered his infamous “I Have a Dream” speech, he was but a humble undergraduate student at Morehouse College in Atlanta. There, King was an ardent and articulate advocate for what he believed to be the true purpose of education. He championed the important dual role education plays in society.
True education, King said, is more than memorization, grades, writing and acquiring information. Yes, education must teach its students to think critically and with reason, but it is responsible for so much more than that. Education must also teach a set of morals and speak to the development of students’ character. Education should challenge students to think critically and with moral reason; to live life by a set of ideals and moral standards; to decipher right from wrong and truth from untruth. Teaching the next generation to be men and women of compassion and integrity.
Below is an excerpt from a 1947 article King wrote in the Morehouse campus newspaper, The Maroon Tiger, when he was a junior there.
“The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals… Education without morals is like a ship without a compass, merely wandering nowhere. It is not enough to have the power of concentration, but we must have worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. It is not enough to know truth, but we must love truth and sacrifice for it.”
I admire Dr. King for an abundance of reasons, certainly for his bravery and fortitude in the face of racism and hatred. Yet, as an educator, what has always stood out to me is King’s intensely pronounced belief that education is the gateway to creating a just, equal and free society. In essence, education is the single entity from which truth, compassion, courage and justice are born. Perhaps if the world had taken Dr. King’s educational views to heart, he would not have been known as America’s greatest voice of freedom, for it would not have been necessary.
Below is a short video featured on ChurchLeaders.com the other day.
The institutional vs. relational side of church is something I struggle with on a continual basis. Hopefully, we get it right more of the time than wrong at Antioch.
Would Jesus go to church? from :redux on Vimeo.
Guest Blog by Ben Larson.
Now that we’ve talked about why churches need to have a social media presence, here’s my list of things you can do to begin building your own social media strategy. It’s by no means comprehensive, and my first recommendation is actually to go and find more material to read. This information is heavily indebted to conversations with Kemi Ingram and Bobbi Steward, as well as books by Claire Diaz-Ortiz and Michael Hyatt.
Here are some great books I’ve read that have shaped the way I approach social media: Twitter for Good and Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. Keep your eye on rising trends, apps, websites, and strategies.
———
This post is Part 2 in a three part series. In case you missed it, check out Social Media Part 1
By Guest Blogger: Melissa McCreery
I recently read an article about the decline of Liberal Arts colleges in America. It appears that administrators at many liberal arts schools may be bailing on their mission statement—to provide a classical approach to education that teaches students to question, analyze, and think critically—in favor of adding vocational and professional programs to attract students who are interested in gaining more “practical skills.”
Victor E. Ferrall Jr., president emeritus of Beloit College and author of Liberal Arts at the Brink, states that the largest problem (and reason many schools are moving in the direction of career preparation) is because Americans fail to see the true value of a liberal arts education.
In my opinion (and you’re certainly welcome to disagree with me… many people do) liberal arts colleges are critical to the future of education, as the knowledge gained at such institutions speak into students’ character development and education as a whole. Such an education provides a valuable college experience and can certainly be applied to any profession or career path upon graduation.
I invite you to read Scott Jaschik’s article— Disappearing Liberal Arts College—in its entirety and weigh in on the debate surrounding the liberal arts today. Share your thoughts in the comments section. How do you fee about a liberal arts education vs. career/professional preparation? Do liberal arts colleges still play a crucial role in American society? Or are they antiquated?
