Emergent Nazarenes

Busted!

2009-04-18T16:44:00.001-04:00

Statue of Liberty

2009-04-15T22:41:00.002-04:00

Not like the vaulted cathedrals,
Not like the pews with names and reservations,
Not like the hair-sprayed televangelists,
Not like the nice churches who say nice things to nice people,
Here at our doors shall stand a sign: All are welcome!
Open hearts, aflame with the burning love of God,
Open, open, open, to all who come.

Keep, o normal churches,
your nice people,
your beautiful people,
your people who have their shit together and put on pretty faces.

Give us your freaks and your punks,
your hippies and granolas,
your Goths and your bikers.
Give us your homeless and your unemployed,
your job-hoppers and bed-hoppers,
your addicts and your hard drinkers.
Give us your hookers and your strippers,
your gamblers and smokers,
your dippers and your chewers.
Give us your church-haters and your liberals,
your atheists and agnostics,
your fundamentalists and your prudes.
Give us your gays and your lesbians,
your transvestites and transsexuals,
your offenders and your victims.
Give us your polluters and your tree-huggers,
your executives and lawyers,
your tax-evaders and your tax-collectors.
Give us your doubters and your name-it-and-claim-its,
your hypocrites and holier-than-thous,
your skeptics and your relativists.
Give us your seekers and your strugglers,
your lovers and haters,
your saints and your sinners.

Send us all of these, for they are like us.
We lift high the cross of Christ,
Brother of exiles, Friend of sinners.
His nail-pierced hands shout world-wide welcome
For all who long to breathe free,
For all who long to find home,
For all who didn't measure up,
For all who need a new start,
For all who want a new world.

We lift high the cross of Christ,
So that we will all be transformed together.

April 15, 2009 (author's copyright by Josh Broward)

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This poem was obviously based on Emma Lazarus's famous poem, “The New Colossus,” which is inscribed on the interior of the Statue of Liberty.
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My poem should not be interpreted to mean that all of the actions implied in the "send us" section are OK and morally acceptable. Rather, the interpretation should be that all of us are welcome in our brokenness to gather around the cross of Christ (the Statue of Liberty) where we will all be made free, healed, loved, and transformed. A community that welcomes like this is a means of God's healing grace for everyone concerned.
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In two weeks, I am preaching on Acts 3 (the healing of the crippled beggar and his subsequent inclusion into the temple worship - almost certainly his first time to enter the temple in his 40 year life). I am thinking of having one of our church members read this poem during the service.
Any feedback?
I know it's edgy, but the edge is kind of the point. My wife thinks using the curse word will take away from the message, but as poetry, I think it contributes to the message that all are welcome.
I look forward to hearing some of your opinions. Also, if this is not an appropriate forum for something like this, please feel free to rebuke me thoroughly!

Saved by Grace, Judged by Works???

2009-04-12T22:01:00.001-04:00

On my trip to Manila, I finished Brian McClaren's A New Kind of Christian trilogy, with the last book being The Last Word and the Word After That. I liked this book best of all. (However, the first book, A New Kind of Christian, was the book that first helped me get somewhat of a grasp on postmodernism and how huge this shift is.)
In this book McClaren has three basic points. I'll try to summarize them briefly and then talk about the most controversial one.
1. Most of the conversation in the book is about hell. How can a good and loving God send finite creatures to enternal, conscious torment? McClaren doesn't give an outright answer. Instead, he is content to shoot down the traditional answer(s) and to suggest possible alternatives. It seems as though he advocates, overall, a position of humble agnosticism tempered by grace. Basically, we don't really know because the Bible isn't entirely clear, and in the end we have to trust in God's mercy and grace as well as in his justice.
2. As the main character embarks on this study of hell-ology, he discovers that learning and knowing happen best in community. McClaren advocates again and again the importance of a community that we "know with." In many respects the people at www.emergentnazarenes.blogspot.com serve as some of the people I "know with."
3. We are saved by grace and judged by works. Since this is (by far) his most controversial statement, let me quote a section from the voice of one of his mentoring characters:
So I'm not denying salvation by grace, no, no, not at all. It's all by grace. I'm just advocating judgment by works ...
Salvation by grace, judgement by works. There's nothing in the Bible clearer than those two realities. Of course, you have to define salvation in Jesus' way, not just modern Western Chrsitianty's [way]. ...
You thought that if you are saved, you are not judged, right? Yep, I used to think that too. I didn't realize that being judged isn't the same as being condemned and that being saved means a lot more than not being judged. For a lot of lok, salvation still means little more than escaping from the legal consequences of having original sin on your passport. For them, until you have your passport changed, which is what being saved means, you can't get through customs in heaven and you're stuck going to hell. But remember - conventional Western Christianity is the religion of the empire. It developed at a time when the church and the empire were joined at the hip, if not the heart. A lot of us didn't get too good of a deal from Imperial Christianity. [The character speaking here is a black pastor.] I guess you could say some of us have seceded from Imperial Christianity, the theology of the empire. When you secede from the theology of the empire, your understandings of salvation and judgment can change for the better. ...
Try reading through your New Testament and looking for the word judged or judgement. You'll see it as clear as day: we're judged by our works. But that's not in contradiction to being saved by grace - if you define salvation in a broader way.

This line of reasoning strikes me as intuitively true. The Bible says again that we will be judged according to the deeds we did in our bodies whether good or bad. We just read that yesterday from 2 Corinthians 5. I've had a hard time reconciling Jesus' parables which mostly imply judgment by works with Paul's discussions of being "saved by grace" and even with Paul's comments of being judged by works.
I'm still pretty sure I don't get all of this. It's hard for me as a Protestant, having grown up with the manifesto of "saved by grace through faith and not by works," to wrap my head around a different idea of salvation and judgment and works and grace. (Maybe this is part of what people refer to when they say "post-Protestant.")
However, this seems true to me, and it seems like it is a missing puzzle piece to make sense of the various pieces of the New Testament which have always seemed in tension to me. I'm still trying to figure this out, but I wanted to share with you an idea that is shaking up my theological world, possibly shaking me into a more Biblical theology. I look forward to your comments.

General Assembly

2009-04-11T06:21:00.002-04:00

I've been thinking about General Assembly for a while and wondering if our (little?) group would be planning any kind of get togethers or conversations or forums. I think the NazNet people had a get together last time around.
Do we dare? Do we dare even over the pint of ale so often suggested?
I think several kinds of meetings could be beneficial and/or painful and/or dangerous. Here are some possibilities I'd like to open for dialog.
1. A contributors meeting. I know many of us may not be going, but my family happens to be Nazarene enough that this will serve as a bit of a family reunion/vacation. Nonetheless, it would be great for any of us who will be in Orlando to sit down for some face-to-face conversations.
2. A meeting for emergent-leaning people. I think there are lots more emergent-type folks out there who are not involved in this blog (for many simply because they are unaware of it). Anyhow, a wider conversation about emergent issues among people who are generally on the same page (or at least in the same chapter), could be very fruitful and helpful. (Somehow it would be nice to limit this meeting to people who want to talk seriously about issues from an emergent perspective, so that the meeting doesn't break down into arguments about things most of us would consider peripheral to the issues we would really like to be talking about.)
3. An open meeting for dialog with critics. This meeting could potentially be the most dangerous of all. If we host this meeting, I think we could expect a great deal of heated criticism and maybe anger. Basically lots of people are really scared that the Church of the Nazarene (along with the Church in general) is slipping into heresy (as evidenced by the set of posts below from the beginning of this month). Some basic questions about this type of meeting:

How could we get the word out? (This question also goes for meeting #2 above.)
How could we mediate the discussion? (For example, we might want to invite a compassionate critic, who would be well respected among very conservative circles, to be a joint mediator with an emergent person.)
How could we facilitate lots of discussion without digressing into long arguments that could last for hours or days? (One of the images that keeps settling in my mind - or unsettling my mind - is a group of emergent people surrounded by a group of fundamentalist people who are shouting at them. How could we lay a ground work for discussion that would make this kind of scenario less likely? How could we facilitate a discussion that would be at least moderately satisfying for all participants? For example, maybe a combination would be best: a) small group discussions - with facilitators, b) large group question and answer time, c) maybe even some short lecture time presenting the "case" for each side.)
How would we go about planning and getting approval for a meeting like this?
Is that "petition" cited in the April Fools post for real? Are people really petitioning to get an official statement on the "emerging church" from this general assembly?

I invite your comments and discussion. And for any who will be in Orlando in a few months, I hope we'll have the opportunity to meet face to face.

Good Friday Verses

2009-04-10T10:35:00.002-04:00

Darkness came, evil enveloping the light of the world

No one wanted to take the blame or the credit

You crucify him, no you do it, they yelled back and forth