Rapid City, SD

Well after about 13+ hours of driving today Kate and I made it 900 miles to Rapid City, SD. It was quite nice to just sit in the car and relax. It was a crazy week packing up life and saying goodbye to everyone. Kate and I were just so blessed by our friends and family this week. They were generous to us in so many ways.

Next Stop: Butte, MT.

Moving!

Well right now I am in the process of moving to Seattle. You might be wondering "If you are in the process of moving, how do you have time to blog?" Good question! Well let me tell you about the beauty of paying someone to move your stuff for you. It is awesome! I am sitting here typing on my laptop as three burly young men move all of my stuff into a truck. I am not going to break a sweat today, my back will not ache, I won't curse underneath my breath. Just thought I would share that with everyone.

A week in the mountains...with 28 junior highers!

It is not too often you can spend a week with 28 junior highers and come home refreshed; but anything is possible when you are in the mountains. Kate and I took the youth group to Ravencrest Chalet in Estes Park, CO last week. We went rock climbing, caving, mountian biking and hiking. The weather was perfect, the views were spectacular and the kids did awesome. After a little over a year with this group Kate and I really saw fruit to the ministry. Numerous kids were responding to God in new ways. Thank you God for the Rocky Mountains.

The role of the church is to not be in charge...

I just finished reading the book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond. Jared was in Papua New Guinea and a native man asked him this question: "Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?" This book attempts to answer that question specifically and broadly. By that I mean the question could be asked a hundred different ways. Why is Bolovia the poorest country in South America? Why is Sub-Sarahan Africa so poor? Why didn't China colonize the Americas? Why didn't Native Americans colonize Europe?

Through the book Diamond attempts to prove that the answers to those questions most often lie within the geography of a country rather than the people themselves. There is much more to be said about all that, but as I finished the book last night some things came to my mind about the role of the church in society.

This book reveals that the history of humankind is a story of people attaining advantages and then using those advantages to take over other people. The history of humankind has been a fight for survival. Often times religion has played the role of justifying one group's survival over another.

We see this in the history of Christianity: Constantine, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the persecution of Anabaptists by Lutherans, the exploration of the New World, and even today with the Moral Majority, the War on Terror, Evangelical lobbyists in Washington, our Christian President, the list goes on.

I have always struggled with the idea of the soveriegnty of God. Mainly because I find that many Christians use the idea to justify people spending an eternity in hell, or one groups "blessed" state of existence compared to the "cursed" state of others.

And then last night it hit me, to believe in the soveriegnty of God is to assume the role of not being in charge of the world. The rest of the world is fighting tooth and nail for survival. The role of the Christian is to entrust one's survival into the hands of God.

What are the outcomes of this posture:
1. A Christian cannot use the sword to enable their survival.
2. A Christian cannot assume roles of political power to enable their survival.
3. A Christian assumes the role of stranger or alien in any land that they inhabit.
-Thus abandoning any idea of a Christian nation
4. A Christian believes that Jesus is the Messiah, and it is his role to bring about a new heaven and a new earth.
5. A Christian is a suffering servant.
6. The Church is a minority group.
7. The Church is a fellowship of people who freely assume this role.

The Fat on My Belly....

My time in the western suburbs of Chicago is coming to an end. Looking down at my belly reminds me in many ways what a good year it has been. When you live close to family and friends one thing that is sure to come your way is big meals. And this year has been no exception. Now in general I am quite the skinny guy, and many of you probably think I am delirious to think that there is fat on my body, but believe me on this one, I have put on a few pounds around the mid-section. So I thought I would take a moment to reminisce about some of the great meals I have had this past year.

1. The Prague restaurant with Kate, Sarah, and Scott, celebrating the good news of my scholarship at Northern. Mouth watering, pleasure inducing steak and lots of good Czech beer.

2. The Park Grill with Kate on our one year anniversary. Again, an orgasmic piece of red meat, a couple of Blue Moons, a delightful glass of red wine, my beautiful wife beside me, and the Chicago Skyline in front of us.

3. Fajitas at the In-Laws. If you haven't had Cathy's Fajitas, you are haven't eaten fajitas.

4. Fried Green Tomatoes in Galena, IL with Kate, Mom, Brett and Lauren. Once again a beautiful steak and red wine. We also got dessert. I think it was Creme Bruele, but I remember I could barely walk out of the restaraunt.

4. Steaks at Quincy's in Leadville, Colorado with my Dad following our ascent of Snowmass Mountain (14k ft). After a week of pain on the trail, there is nothing like a big beautiful piece of cow to satisfy your cravings for protein.

5. Christmas Eve at Nineteen in St. Charles with Kate and my mom. Filet Mignon that melted in my mouth, and a big glass of red wine to wash it down.

6. Christmas Day at the In-laws. Cathy goes all out with the Beef Tenderloin. Oh my goodness was it good.

7. Dos Xious Amber and Nachos at Front Street Cocina. I am going to miss that place.

8. Every Monday night with our friends. Maybe we should change our name from Community Nite to Overeaters Anonymous! I love you guys, and I am going to miss our meals together.

Celebration is an incredible thing, and there is no better way to do it than with food and drink. I look forward to the day when all people every where sit down together and enjoy the feast that is to come.

On Creeds....

For several reasons I have been thinking about creeds lately. For example, pressure on the Emergent Church community to write a statement of faith, to my own church's decision to write a position paper on women in ministry, to my recent introduction to Anabaptism in my theology class at school (Anabaptists tend to be non-creedal). Even today my church began to corporately go through the Apostles Creed so as to clarify what all Christians have believed for all time.

So to get to the point, (I am guessing people will probably stop reading if they are forced to scroll down), I question what are creeds good for? To illustrate my point I will use my church as an example. Last Wednesday the elders held a town hall meeting to present their position paper on women in ministry. They have been working on the issue for a year now, and now came the time to let the congregation in on their decision. To make a long story short the elder's decision seemed to equally upset the complementarians and the egalitarians. The way that they read scripture is that there is obvious hiearchy in the Bible, but in the NT we can see an elevation of women's status and involvment in the church, therefore the church must uphold hiearchy, yet at they same time encourage significant female contribution in the church. Practically this will work out in women being encouraged to lead adult sunday school, small groups, and to participate in an elder advisory board. The position of elder and senior pastor will continue to be for men, furtermore, only men will be able to teach from the pulpit on Sunday mornings.

If you are familiar with the debate you can probably see why this decision would upset both groups: it seems really abritrary. One attendee (a complementarian) said "the only difference between men and women in this theology is 50 feet" (the distance from the pulpit and the adult sunday school classroom).

Anyway, back to the original intent of this post. What good is this position paper? Will it spur on further engagment of the issue or will it simply close the book? Will this position paper allow for the diversity of beliefs in the church to continue to exist? Is this position paper just another example of our constant need in the church to nail our beliefs down? Why must we constantly determine who is in and who is out?