This video was shown at the 2012 conference in Philly and released on the DVD that World Relief sponsored for Micah, which also released at The Justice Conference.

Pretty powerful stuff… check it out!

Thank God For Evolution from The Justice Conference on Vimeo.

————————
Hey Ken,

I just wanted to send you a quick note of thanks. Over the last few years you have delivered some powerful messages regarding the topics of “giving your life away” and “see a need, meet a need” I really enjoyed your recent message “encouragement is contagious”. I know for everyone who hears these messages it will mean something different. For some it may mean taking a meal to someone who is ill, for others it may be donating their expertise to something. I wanted to share with you about how these concepts have presented in my life.

As you know I was adopted from Calcutta, India and Mike and I returned to India last year and adopted a little girl from the same town. Being in India, seeing the need and processing what my life could have been has encouraged me to do something. I wasn’t sure where to start but I knew God had called me to respond. It has taken about a year but I have co-founded a 501(c)3 organization that works toward helping impoverished children in India. We do this by providing basic essentials such as food, clothing and medicine as well as therapeutic and supportive resources. We are partnered with an orphanage in Calcutta and right now our efforts are focused on helping 23 special needs orphans who will most likely never be adopted. We have provided them with special chairs so they are able to sit upright and we have just funded a physical therapist to work with the children for an entire year.

I wanted to thank you for your messages over the years. I think your messages have helped to plant the seeds and in God’s timing he has shown me how to “give my life away”. I have struggled over the years with why God chose me out of all the orphans to come to America and lead such a full life. I truly believe it was for me to be a mother to my daughters and to now pay it forward to others who have been orphaned as I was.

I am not sure if you are aware that Mike and I had to relocate to southern Oregon a few months ago. We miss Bend and Antioch and hope to visit often. I am writing you with hopes to encourage you to continue delivering messages that call people to action because you never know how God will use that for his work.

There is a local Christian tv/radio station here ( K-Dove) http://thedove.us/radio/8am/brie-mahar-illuminate-india that invited me to share my testimony and one of the people involved had attended the justice conference.

Mark Portrait who is a board member of K-Dove was blown away by the conference and is interested in connecting with you/the justice conference. He asked for your email information, so you may hear from him at some point.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend with your family, please wish Tamera a Happy Mother’s day for me. Thanks again for the words of encouragement.

Take care, Brie

I can’t wait to see the impact on Antioch and the Bend community.  This place is about to be hopping!

Also, check out Leroy’s new book, Everyday Missions!

How do I build relationships with and minister to people that are homeless? from :redux on Vimeo.

The Justice Conference was never designed to become a big business or be run by a national event company as some conferences are; rather, the vision was to be an organic movement of passionate individuals giving our time and energy and life away with the hope that the Justice Conference could somehow make a difference in the world.

Therefore, since day one, we have always operated on a shoestring budget, with few staff and making use of hundreds of volunteers.

The Justice Conference is convened by two non-profit organizations with no person, or for-profit business benefiting from The Justice Conference should there ever be a surplus in finances. Our prices are simply designed to cover our expenses and as we educate, expose and serve.

Since beginning as a simple idea, The Justice Conference has grown into the largest international conference of its kind with attendees from 44 states and over two dozen countries. It has become an annual pilgrimage for thousands, has given rise to scores of similar local and regional conferences by churches, schools and organizations and is helping to clarify the relationship between theology and justice.

In all that has and is happening, however, our desire remains the same – to operate with volunteers, to connect individuals and organizations around shared passions and to impact a generation for justice.

Check it out and see what you think:

How do we know if dark art and films like Harry Potter are okay for our kids? from :redux on Vimeo.

THE MARA’S JOURNEY from SRO Productions on Vimeo.

Is skepticism good or bad? from :redux on Vimeo.

Sen, Amartya. “The Boundaries of Justice: David Hume and our World,” The New Republic, December 14, 2011, Books and Arts Section, online edition.

Here’s Leroy Barber from Mission Year!

How do I build relationships with and minister to people that are homeless? from :redux on Vimeo.

I wrote a whole blog post on the topic a while back so I thought I’d repost it below.

What do you think? If we question God’s existence when we face injustice, doesn’t it make sense that in the presence of Justice it would lead to a greater understanding of God? If God’s grace makes us just (the book of Romans), wouldn’t it follow that justice is a way of experiencing or knowing God?

If “theology” means the study of God or how we know God, then we can say justice – although not the only way of knowing God – is certainly a theological necessity.

Check out the post below:

Over the past several months, I began to have the realization that I had accidentally done a great disservice to the folks at Antioch.

Somehow, I had allowed the idea that “justice is a good thing, one in the mix of many other good things,” grow in people’s minds and understanding of Justice.

I stewed on this and prayed about it for a very long time.

You see, justice, like truth, is not just “a good thing.”

They are universal things or absolutes.  They exist everywhere and every subject touches them somehow.

Most people get this with truth.  What is is and what is true corresponds to reality, whether we believe it, understand it, follow it or know it.  Truth is a rightness or a certain rectitude between a concept and what exists in the fabric of reality.  It is governed by the laws of logic etc.

Justice, likewise, corresponds to what ought to be in the fabric of relationships.  Oughts and musts exist whether we believe them, understand them, follow them or know them.  Justice is a rightness or certain rectitude between people and societies, structures, policies, cultural norms and laws.  Injustice is the breakdown of what ought to be and justice is the existence or the promotion of what should be.

Truth and justice are universals. They are hallmark aspects of creation.

Justice, therefore, is not just a good thing.

Rather, justice is a lens by which we look at and evaluate other things.

I tried with the message below to express what I believe is a paradigm we need to hold with regard to justice – that it is a theological necessity.  Our understanding of God should compel justice.  And that understanding justice is one of the ways by which we are meant to understand God more clearly.

As the Psalmist writes, “The Lord is known by his justice.” (Psalm 9:16)

When a child walks with, cares about and acts in something the Father does, cares about and works for there is a degree of “like-mindedness” that comes that otherwise couldn’t be there to the same degree.  We know God better as we understand justice. ”For the LORD is a God of Justice.” Isaiah 30:18

I’ve never tried to swing as hard at a concept in a message before and it turned out to be very provocative, but I feel a strong burden that God desires for us to reconnect the first and the second great commandments.  That love of God implies love of neighbor and that love of the orphan the widow and the alien is one of the primary means by which we demonstrate love of God.

“If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” 1 John 4:20

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27

“He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

There certainly are other things in addition to justice, but justice is, I believe, a theological necessity and more than just “another good thing.”

“Kingdom people seek first the Kingdom of God and its justice; church people often put church work above concerns of justice, mercy and truth.”

Justice as a Theological Necessity from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

Love these guys and couldn’t imagine working with any other group of people!!

“Institutions can never conserve without betraying the movements from which they proceed. The institution is static, whereas its parent movement has been dynamic; it confines men within its limits, while the movement had liberated them from the bondage of institutions; it looks to the past, [although] the movement had pointed forward. Though in content the institution resembles the dynamic epoch whence it proceeded, in spirit it is like the [state] before the revolution. So the Christian church, after the early period, often seemed more closely related in attitude to the Jewish synagogue and the Roman state than to the age of Christ and his apostles; its creed was often more like a system of philosophy than like the living gospel.” H. Richard Niebuhr

One of the constant struggles I have with Antioch and The Justice Conference is the tension between creating an effective and efficient structure on the business side and keeping the raw energy and loose vibe of the movement side.

If these endeavors ever stall out and settle into only institutional frameworks, I don’t want to be involved.

If the Spirit of God is moving and people are being changed and influenced there has to be an element of spontaneity, randomness, big thinking and huge risks. The movement leads to passionate people giving their lives and time away as volunteers simply because they see God’s hand at work.

Antioch’s mission statement (although a little unorthodox as missions statements go) is “to be an authentic expression of Christianity in Bend, Oregon and to have a shaping voice in global Christianity.”

Crazy thing is… that movement is underway!

Here’s a piece we wrote on Institutions vs. Movements when we first started Antioch 5 years ago:

————

Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.
Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

Martin Luther, the great reformer, never asked for the mission he took part in. Similarly, the great civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. never asked to be a part of the larger civil rights movement. These tasks found the men. They didn’t choose the environment they were born into or the causes that needed to be championed. What they were willing to do is respond and accept the missions as they came to them.

The world is not perfect and changes need to happen. The difficulty is that to do something about it means we have to give, to sacrifice or take the hits we are naturally given to avoid. It reminds me of the game we played in the front yard growing up. Today I think it’s called “Jungle Ball.” Whoever had the football was the guy that everyone had to catch and tackle. To hold the ball meant to be dog piled and buried. When the group got bigger and the older boys started playing, I remember wanting to get rid of the ball… to get rid of the threat. Being the focal point became less desirable as the potential for pain increased.

We do the same thing with the Christian message or “gospel.” It’s like the football that’s so fun to hold and run with. We talk about it, praise it, act like we’re sold out for it, but when the threat of pain increases we rid ourselves of the burden. We throw the football away. Taking up the gospel message is not supposed to be a choice though… somehow the sharing of the gospel for the church has wrongly become all about choice. We’ve come to think that it is something we teach or we share. It is separate from ourselves. And since it is separate, it is easy to separate from it when the going gets tough.

The gospel, however, was never meant to be something external. It is not something we are supposed to share but rather something we are supposed to participate in. The gospel is God’s grand story of redeeming a people to himself. The story began thousands of years ago, reached a climax with Jesus’ life and death, but still continues today as people around the world find and receive God. It is our story. We live in it. We don’t just testify back to a part of it, we play a role in its current form. We are characters in this drama. We are active participants.

I cannot separate myself from the gospel message anymore than I can separate heat from fire or reflection from a mirror. It is an essential property of who I am. When such a realization takes place we no longer throw the ball away. We no longer shrink from our role as witnesses of Christ. When we realize who we are and what the gospel is, we look much more like Frodo, Martin Luther, Harriet Tubman, Nelson Mandela or the Apostle Paul. We find ourselves with a mission and despite the threat of pain we carry out our role. We play our part in the story.

John Adams once wrote to Thomas Jefferson, “We have lived through serious times.” I believe that my generation, like many before it, is living in serious times. I remember the night I saw the movie Hotel Rwanda about the genocide that took place in Rwanda when Hutu extremists slaughtered 800,000 of the Tutsi minority. I walked out of the theatre, drove across the street and bought a bunch of books on genocide right before Barnes and Noble closed for the night. I remember thinking that “If Jesus were alive today… he’d be somewhere other than America… somewhere where pain abounded.” (I’ve since realized that there is plenty of pain and suffering in America as well – most of it, however, we choose to ignore).

The needs and the hurts are so very real and messy in this world. Television, newspapers, the internet etc. bring so much of that pain right to our front steps. We either numb ourselves to the graphic nature of the images and stories or we begin asking, “How do we keep living insulated lives in the face of such great need and suffering?” “How do we keep spending all our time and money on improving our image and reputation and not on the care of the orphans and widows and persecuted and abused?” “How do we allow our churches to be called good when we toss the football… separate ourselves from the issues and the hurts that we were called to address?”

In the end what we need is a paradigm shift. The church was never meant to be a country club or an institution. It wasn’t supposed to be a building or just a series of programs. It wasn’t designed to be an organization with nice and neat mission and value statements.

It was designed to be a movement. It was designed to be more like the Civil Rights revolution in the 50’s. Ask a marcher or volunteer during the civil rights movement what the mission or values were and they would have looked confused. If you had cut them, though, they would have bled justice, equality, and the end of racial discrimination. They were involved and they sacrificed because they could not separate themselves from the cause. It was a part of them. They were unable not to act.

The church… or the Christian community must recapture this same passion. It was the heartbeat of early Christendom and has been the driving force behind the movements and periods of positive change throughout history. It doesn’t matter so much whether someone can recite a mission statement or values. What matters is that if you cut them they bleed the good news of Jesus, justice, equality, concern for the environment, the plight of the poor and certainly the orphan and widow in their need and despair.

You may think of the demands of being a witness for Christ and the potential of pain in these serious times and say with Frodo, “I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” But the answer remains, “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

And so it is with us – the church. We have received a calling. The mission has found us. We are participants in God’s redemptive story. We have to decide what to do with the time that is given to us…

May we “make the most of every opportunity” and “live a life worthy of the calling [we] have received.” May we see the church as a movement of change and not an institution of comfort. May we hold the ball regardless the cost. May God use us to change the world.

———

Here is Niebuhr again: Institutions can never conserve without betraying the movements from which they proceed. The institution is static, whereas its parent movement has been dynamic; it confines men within its limits, while the movement had liberated them from the bondage of institutions; it looks to the past, [although] the movement had pointed forward. Though in content the institution resembles the dynamic epoch whence it proceeded, in spirit it is like the [state] before the revolution.

For more on how we plan on staying behind God and allowing Him to lead us toward His vision (not ours), here is the Antioch 5 Year Anniversary Message: “Antioch’s Vision (not to have a vision)”

Antioch’s Vision (to not have a vision) from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

Check out this second in the 7 Letters to the 7 Churches Series as special guest, Ed Underwood, shares from the book of Revelation and from his own decade long bout with cancer.

Smyrna | The Suffering Church (The 7 Letters to the 7 Churches Series) from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

Are there substitutes for charcoal in Africa? from :redux on Vimeo.

First Church, Ephesus.

First issue, losing our first love.

What is it when we lose our first love?  Who is at risk for that?  What does it look like when religion begins to overtake relationship and purity begins to overshadow passion?  What do we do to recapture our excitement and desire for God?

Check out the video below and hopefully the look at these 7 churches and their all too human issues will be profitable as we go through the series.

Ephesus | You’ve Lost Your First Love (The 7 Letters to the 7 Churches Series) from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

Chris Beland is a good friend with a huge and sincere heart.  He loves God, loves people and it shows in the lyrics he writes and the manner in which he carries himself.

He’s one of my favorite worship leaders and his music has played a thousand times in the CD player in my wife’s car.

Like most artists, he lives for the art and makes due on shoestring budgets.

His newest project is hopefully going to be funded through a Kickstarter campaign.  As the saying goes, “many hands make light work.”

If you don’t know, however, if you don’t hit your goal on Kickstarter you don’t get any of the money.  The five thousand pledged toward his goal of eleven thousand evaporates if the total goal isn’t pledged by the due date.

You can learn more about Chris and his campaign here.

Below you can check out one of Chris’ songs performed at Antioch.

If you feel like a random act of kindness… take a few minutes and see if you can’t help Chris and his family by contributing to their goal.

Chris Beland :: Come Back Home from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

While in DC, we had the chance to visit the new Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.

If you haven’t been there yet, it’s quite an experience.  The monument is rather large – certainly as big, if not bigger, than the Vietnam Veterans Memorial – and sits right on the edge of the Tidal Basin on the Northeast side of the Potomac and across from the Jefferson Memorial.

The King Memorial is a sculpture of King emerging from a rock, two halves of a mountain behind and flanked on both sides by extended walls bearing quotes from MLK over the years.

The whole memorial is quite impressive and makes one think hard about the plight of African-Americans and the contribution King (and many other civil rights leaders) had in shaping the fabric of our country.

The quotes, as well, made me think deeply about the ongoing story of justice, injustice and race in America.  Each one of them could give rise to a whole lecture or even college course.

Here is a picture of one of my favorites – a short concise statement on justice.

In follow up, he sent me this paragraph… I love it!

You asked me yesterday how to move people toward reframing quality of life from consumption toward shalom. Thinking a bit more about it, I realize I gave only a partial answer (not that I have a full answer): relationship. Another piece of the puzzle is, I think, learning. Here’s the logic behind that: we take care of that which we love; we love that which we know; and we know that which we learn. And the best way to learn is in relationship–whether it be relationship to a text, a person, a place, etc.. It’s the relationship (the experience) that moves knowledge from head to heart, and it’s the heart that leads to change.

For what it’s worth….

(A Rocha is engaged in Christian Conservation ministry in almost 20 countries worldwide – check out their work by clicking on the image below)

Do we package Easter along cultural or consumeristic lines?

Do we make it all about experience and entertainment?

Do we make Easter about gratifying self or about the promise of a new self through life in Christ?  Is Resurrection radical?  Does our preaching of it cause the same reactions it did for Paul and the other Apostles?

I love the Resurrection.  I love the church that was born of the Resurrection.  I love the idea of the Body of Christ living on as we all share in this covenantal life together.  I love the idea of witness.

Ultimately, I love the idea of being a part of the King’s Kingdom, enacting the King’s will and knowing we’re faithfully administering and stewarding the King’s resources.

For me, Easter is all about The King.

Jesus and His Church (Intro to The 7 Letters to the 7 Churches Series) from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

A ton of amazing questions asked to some of the most brilliant and capable individuals in their fields.

Click on the image below and browse the videos!

Her latest, A Silence of Mockingbirds, is a very personal memoir of a child abuse murder and a look at the epidemic of child neglect and abuse in America.

Child abuse is arguably easier to spot in other countries and in such horrific things as trafficking and child soldiers. The problems and the injustices of child abuse, however, are just as prevalent in America.

There are many injustices related to children in America that we either don’t see or choose not to see… fatherlessness, the foster system, the plight of the children of illegal or undocumented immigrants, the health of inner-city children (where it’s easier to get strawberry soda than a fresh strawberry), neglected children and young girls at risk for being trafficked or pimped, and, as in the case of Karly, direct emotional and physical abuse at the hands of parents, guardians, or boyfriends and girlfriends.

Child abuse is an uncomfortable reality.

As Zacharias quoting Flannery O’Connor says, however, “Truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

Read this well written memoir where Karen Zacharias wrestles with one story where we failed to protect a child, her own connections to such a twisted story and ultimately the broader narrative of our collective culpability in not giving voice to the voiceless in so many instances of child neglect and abuse.

[See also the short video trailer on A Silence of Mockingbirds below]

The Justice Conference 2012 from The Justice Conference on Vimeo.

The nominal charge covers video processing costs and is a per download fee so viewers can watch the videos as many times as they want.

Give it a look!!

The series will be on the 7 Letters to the 7 Churches in the Book of Revelation.

Nothing helps us separate culture from Christianity quicker than hearing Jesus’ thoughts on an authentic church and authentic faith.

This week: Jesus and His Church

Here’s a short note from someone who found me on Facebook:

Hey Ken,
I just got done listening to your talk at the Justice Conference and I want to thank you so much for putting this event on. For one, your message was on point…and your humility shines through. Just last month, my wife and I moved to Dhaka (then to Kolkata) to specifically work on justice issues (likely partnering with IJM) and to live in solidarity with the poor in slums. I think my biggest struggle in the last 5 years or so that God has been working on me, was that I felt so isolated (by and large) from the greater Evangelical community that didnt understand what God was doing in my life and the world…..wow, now we have a whole generation being called the Justice Generation. Anyway, just wanted to share my story a bit and give you some encouragement from a fellow follower of Jesus and the Way and to ask you to keep it up…its conferences like these that give this central characteristic of God/Jesus and theological imperative momentum for the common good of all.

Blessings, brother.

God gave this guy talent and a heart to match.

Chris Beland :: Don’t Leave on Your Own from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

Bob Goff :: Love Does from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

Click on the screenshot below and check it out!

The inspiration for this one is simple… I wanted to preach what I would want to say to my daughter if I could say only one thing.

Encouragement is Contagious from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

That is until this past week when I was able to find the time to read David Oshinsky’s, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice.

It’s a story about the Post-Reconstruction Era South, the plight of the Freedman, Jim Crow Laws and Mississippi, Parchman Farm and the notorious “convict leasing” system that grew to dominate criminal justice throughout the south in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Really, though, it is simply a well written history of injustice or a chapter of America’s ongoing issue of race that most of us don’t know much about.

Jim Crow South, or the Jim Crow Laws, were the laws forcing segregation that were enacted or mandated between 1876 – 1965.  ”Jim Crow” was a synonym for “Negro” based on a populist song in the early 1800s and therefore the segregationist laws slowly began to be referred to as “Jim Crow Laws” about the turn of the century.

Convict leasing, something I knew little about, was a way of exploiting and profiting off of black powerlessness in Jim Crow South.  For two generations, convicts would be leased out, worked harder and treated worse than slaves had been prior to the Civil War.  These black convicts (the few white male prisoners, usually in jail for heinous crimes such as murder, were kept behind prison walls instead of being placed in convict leasing work details) would die at the mind numbing rate of 15-40% per year.

That’s right.

There was a time in America when convicts – held for such things as petty crimes, stealing food or not being able to pay court fees – were being worked to death at 15-40% per year!

Additionally, when new contracts came up, young black men would be rounded up and incarcerated on trumped up charges (loitering, disrespect, gambling, ‘insinuation’ etc.) simply to fill work ranks.  These young men, victims of racial and criminal injustice, would then die at the rate of 15-40% per year.  Can you imagine?

The criminal justice system under Jim Crow also began the disturbing trend of large scale African American male incarceration that continues till today.

“In 1890, blacks comprised 12 percent of the national population and 25 percent of the prison population. By 1910, the figures stood, respectively, at 11 percent and 34 percent.” pg. 95

Share cropping, racial discrimination and the lawlessness of the South (“What made mob violence so terrifying in Jim Crow Mississippi was the virtual absence of opposition.” pg. 105) led to the first of two “great migrations” of African American families to northern cities like New York, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and more.

As Oshinksy writes, “In December and January, the Delta roads were ‘filled with wagons piled high with household goods, the families perched on top. They are hoping to find something better, but they seldom do.’ For thousands of tenants, migration was an act of power: a way of expressing their resentment, exerting their independence and protecting their meager rights.” pg. 119

The Great Migrations, their causes and effects, are another under discussed and under reported aspect of American history.  (For more on these, see Isabel Wilkerson’s, The Warmth of Other Suns, and Nicholas Lemann’s, The Promised Land.)

Many think these issues and injustices are in the past – having been abolished during the Civil Rights Movement and the legislation of the 1960s – but racism and racial injustice continues to exist.  We see it in today’s headlines from the hate crime killing in Mississippi to the shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed African American teen simply walking home from the convenience store.

Few books have undone me as much as Oshinsky’s, Worse Than Slavery.  It is an amazing work rendered through fine research, historical narrative and empathetic storytelling.

I recommend it to anyone who wants illusion shattered that reality may grow in its stead.

I asked her to work with the theme of Giving Your Life Away.

Here’s a reprisal from two weeks back at Antioch of her performance at the conference with the song she wrote called, “Give it all.”

Grace Laxson :: Give It All from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

It’s the title track for Micah’s new DVD/CD project.

Micah Bournes :: The Man without a Name (mature content) from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

Media and the arts seem spiritually bankrupt…can they be redeemed? from :redux on Vimeo.

Check out the short video below that the team put together this last week.

Antioch is going to two services! from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

In the meantime, here are two pictures of the Acropolis (one of the coolest places on earth for someone who loves history!)

(Top: the ancient library of Ephesus holding over 120,000 scrolls; Middle: the theatre in Ephesus where a mob of merchants once shouted against Paul in favor of the goddess Artemis; Bottom: a 5th century fresco painting of St. Paul (the Greek ‘Paulos’ is visible) in a grotto (cave) above Ephesus. This painting of Paul is one of the oldest and clearest visual instances of the apostle.)

Here’s somewhere I’d like to return some day – the Aegean Sea on the southwestern coast of Anatolia outside of Izmer and near the ancient port city of Ephesus.

I’ve visited several ancient sites and am getting to learn a lot about the classical and biblical worlds.

We’ve been from Istanbul through the unbelievably well preserved Greco-Roman city Aphrodisias, which takes its name from the goddess Aphrodite. Tomorrow we’re heading into ancient Ephesus with renowned classical scholar Mark Wilson.  Saturday it’s on to Athens.

Thinking about the boring buildings in a local strip mall takes on a whole new character when you’re walking the ancient city of Troy – with ruins dating back several thousand years B.C.

Below are a few pictures:

• The mosaic of Christ in the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (one of the iconic images of Byzantium)
• A picture of me in front of the Temple of Trajan
• A floor mosaic from an ancient Jewish Synagogue in Sardis
• Snow capped mountains in the background of ruins at Hierapolis
• Ancient Pergamum

In what ways does Africa surpass the West? from :redux on Vimeo.

I don’t have all the answers and I’m not the expert, so feel free to disagree (you’re probably right!)

Is the American political system failing? from :redux on Vimeo.

Amazing seeing their work all the way into Bend as well as local Bend ministries like Grandma’s House.

If you’ve got a minute watch this story and think of ways to engage the community!

How do we honor people we dislike or who have hurt us? from :redux on Vimeo.

One of the reasons I like Kierkegaard is his deep understanding about the subjective nature of truth. Subjective truth for Kierkegaard, unlike the moral relativism of today, didn’t mean there was no objective truth or that we create our own truth, but that we subjectively live out what we believe.

In other words, beliefs are not isolated theorems that exist in books or only when we’re arguing about them. True beliefs, what we really think, finds its way into how we live. If we are to believe in truth un hypoctrically then, it must work it’s way into our life – we must embody truth, we must incarnate truth. Again, in Kierkegaard’s sense, what is true is not what we say, but what we subjectively live.

I’ve tackled Kierkegaard in a Sermon Biography and in a short Redux answer in the past.

Yesterday I tried to tie together as many strands of the Christian Life under the idea of God’s authority as revealed in scripture. How scripture mandates, commands, authorizes and ultimately calls out our misalignment and need for being reconciled, renewed and redeemed into right standing with God and truth.

I didn’t mention Kierkegaard, but he was certainly lurking around in the background.

If you’ve been beat over the head with truth before, suffered under hypocritical or dictatorial religion or fallen victim to consumeristic Christianity I hope this message will be a refreshing change. I also pray it will be useful in restoring holism to your faith, worldview and life. We far to often struggle to see life with a fractured mirror.

“The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.” Soren Kierkegaard

Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/soren_kierkegaard_3.html#ixzz1oGerm3JR

Truth as Mandate (or The Implications of Scriptural Authority on Life, Love and Happiness) from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

Here is “I am not the future.”

Micah Bournes :: I Am Not the Future from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

Antioch has been lucky to have Rick with us since the very beginning (as someone joked – before Antioch was Antioch). Rick has a sharp mind and is a rare thing in many churches – a scientist.

Check out his sermonette below:

Rick Gerhardt :: The Crux of Cosmic History from Antioch Church on Vimeo.

What is Worship? from :redux on Vimeo.

History of Sex Trafficking from :redux on Vimeo.