Andrew Sullivan has made interesting observations in his Newsweek Easter article. Really, he's saying out loud what a lot of people are thinking.

When speaking of the traditional church structures, practices, and patterns, both Catholic and Protestant, sometimes made notorious through the media’s reporting, Sullivan fingers an important reality.

Something has gone very wrong. [The church reacts in] impulses born of panic in the face of modernity, and fear before an amorphous “other.” This version of Christianity could not contrast more strongly with Jesus’ constant refrain: “Be not afraid.” 

He makes a good observation here.  The MO of the church appears to be aggressive and reactionary (the “religious right”) or controlling and evasive (the Catholic child abuse scandals) as if God needs to be protected or defended.  No matter how “bad things may get,” I believe we can trust that God will continue to be God and continually be at work for his purposes.

As the people of God, we really can relax, take a bit longer view, even as we contend for truth in the public square.  The more thoughtful our expressions, after all, the more likely we will be heard, even if rejected.

The writer of Hebrews extends to us a wonderful invitation,

So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has  entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.  Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort  of disobedience.  Heb. 4:9-11

I long for the day when the public face of Christianity will look more like humble, open hearted confidence than a strident campaigner or an evasive bureaucrat.  

Kyle

Kony 2012 is up to 52.5 million this morning, four days after launching onto the web..

Produced by Jason Russell of Invisible Children Inc, in a high production quality, documentary style, Jason and his team's goal was half-a-million viewers by the end of the year.  Their aim was to “make Kony famous,” (Joseph Kony, very bad guy from Uganda, now in Congo). 

 Their vision is a world without Joseph Kony, built upon the eternal value of justice.

The moment has caused quite a stir.  Some simple observations:

1. Kony 2012 highlights the potential of social media to move masses of people.

2. Kony 2012 focuses on a clear villain with a clear vision: "Stop him!" 

3. The true story isn’t as easy to convey and would have never gone viral.  (See Kevin's comment from yesterday's post.)

4. Kony 2012 offers a sense of unity for the emerging generation, giving a sense of purpose, meaning, and identity around a perceived justice issue with easy ways to get involved: post the video, wear a bracelet, donate a few dollars.

5. Commend Russell for his passion, but why Joseph Kony? As evil as Kony is, he is a spent force,yesterday's news, if the Ugandan's are to be believed. There is much more in the world to be concerned about. For example, many more children die of starvation than are affected by Kony's LRA. clean water, sex trafficking, energy issues, Chinese labor practices, economic disparity, godless consumerism, are greater evils.  Oh yeah, and billions without Christ.

6. Where is God in all this?  Without a shared commitment to Christ and his kingdom with the discipline of participation in a discerning community, what we see are millions touched by the media savy of a effective team, yet lacking the discernment to track with truth and hear what the Lord would have.

The Kony Craze gives us a great opportunity to pause and ask, What are the best ways to process this kind of viral intensity? 

Remember the old Burger King commercial, "Where's the beef?"  That's a great question for discipeship and the work of Multiplication as we take a close look at our lives.  

Our fellowship supports a missionary team working in the Middle East.  Formerly in Baghdad, they are now in Lebanon.  They have moved to a Christian part of Beirut.  It is reportedly safer than other places in the city.  Here is our friend sharing about the new “security” they enjoy in “Christian” Beirut.

Now, back to how safe we are in the Christian area. Tex and Cal popped into a local cake shop to purchase some things delectable a couple of mornings back. They noticed an armed guard at the door. An armed guard for a sweet shop seemed strange (even though it was filled with chocolate, and if you have ever seen the way the Sisses here go after chocolate, well...). Tex asked the woman sales person why they have an armed guard. She said, "It is because of the fast." Tex had to inquire further. She explained that "all" Christians fast from cheese during Lent. Their shop, however, sells cheese goodies during Lent and they need a guard to protect them from Christians who would try to forcibly stop them from selling cheese during the fast. Besides striking us as very cheesy (and funny), we all agreed that there is not a huge difference between the Hezbollah bullies we left and the Christian bullies that now surround us. Come to think of it, where is that cheese burger?

Our missionary friend is commenting on the cultural Christianity in Lebanon.  We shouldn’t be surprised that it looks a lot like, well, the culture in Lebanon.  People naturally conform to the world around them.  We get that.

The need is great.  Easy it is to “conform to the pattern of this world,” simply falling in step with how others live.  The kingdom call to discipleship necessitates the hard work of prayer, truth-telling in community, and transformation.

One of the challenges for us in the US is not to cluck our tongues at cultural Christians in other places, but rather to look close to home and ask the question, "In what ways does our Christianity conform to our dominant American culture?"

Be gentle in your response.  "Speak the truth in love...."

Tebow is a more conventional  phenom, if there is such a thing.  He led the Florida Gators to two BCS National Championships (2007 and 2009) and was the first sophmore ever to win the Heisman Trophy.  College football fans certainly had Tim on their radar screen long before he grabbed national attention with his “miracle wins” this year with the Denver Broncos and his “Tebowing,” taking a knee to acknowledge the Lord of his life “in front of God and everybody.”

Jeremy Lin is different.  Jeremy appeared out of nowhere.  Without a scholarship coming out of high school and undrafted after playing for Harvard, he burst onto the scene with the New York Knicks in February.  You can catch up on the narrative at Wikipedia.

What’s fascinating to me is that Lin is an “ABC,” an American Born Chinese.  Mondy Chen, pastor of the Chinese Christian Church in Davis, CA, focused my attention when he mentioned him at a recent Global Impact Celebration.  Not only is China rising and the Chinese church booming, the ABCs are rallying with a passion for the harvest and a burden for the land of their forebears. 

Catch a glimpse of the fire at KC Liu’s Passion for the Nations missions conference, happening March 17th in LA.

“Marriage has become a luxury good,” says Frank Furstenberg, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, quoted in the New York times article headlined:  “For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage” 

Part of the reason identified in the article is that boys just aren’t growing up.  They make plenty of babies, but they are not fathers.  The mothers of their children recognize that raising a child is going to be plenty hard.  They don’t want to take the time to raise their child’s father as well. 

Amber Strader, 27, was in an on-and-off relationship with a clerk at Sears a few years ago when she found herself pregnant. A former nursing student who now tends bar, Ms. Strader said her boyfriend was so dependent that she had to buy his cigarettes. Marrying him never entered her mind. “It was like living with another kid,” she said.

­Commitment seems to have gone the way of the typewriter.  It was something our parents used, but we don’t really need it today, do we?

Almost all of the rise in nonmarital births has occurred among couples living together. While in some countries such relationships endure at rates that resemble marriages, in the United States they are more than twice as likely to dissolve than marriages. In a summary of research, Pamela Smock and Fiona Rose Greenland, both of the University of Michigan, reported that two-thirds of couples living together split up by the time their child turned 10.

Is it possible to thrive in a culture populated with people who don’t understand the place of promises?

Came across an excellent article by Gordon MacDonald here,  entitled, DNF, Many in ministry Did Not Finish. What can we do about that?  I'm giving the "Finishing Well" talk at the ILI Regional Conference in Santa Clarita, Feb. 19-21, 2010, so it caught my attention.

What money is to the financial folks, and power is to political people, and knowledge is to intellectuals, intimacy—deep connections with people—is to those of us who are in the people-care business....

When we gets this "up-close-and-personal" with people, we come within sight of behaviors that cross the boundary into the inappropriate. The so-called temptations of the flesh become prominent under such circumstances and among people who operate in a world of intimacies.

A preponderant percentage of those of us drawn to [Chrisitan] leadership have a higher-than-normal urge to engage with other people. We love to get below the surface of people's exterior lives: to understand their dreams and their burdens, to urge them on to higher possibilities, to sympathize with their feelings and fears, to show them grace and mercy when they fail. The word close is operational here.

No kidding.  Wouldn't it be great if we had the Robinson family robot from Lost in Space blinking his lights and making noise, "Danger Will Robinson!" following us around and watching our backs. Later in the article, he writes,

I find it hard to put into clinical words what I intuit. Simply put, I am not confident that many young men and women entering public ministry with all of its privilege and demands are emotionally (and spiritually?) ready to face the subtleties of human relationships on their darker side.

I am not sure that many midlife men and women appreciate all the pressures bearing down on them that make it easy to seek illicit ways to anesthetize the growing discomfort within. Saying good-bye to children, adjusting to a now childless marriage, caring for aging parents, facing the inexorable aging process with its health issues: pressure, pressure, pressure! For the less vigilant, escape into something simpler, more exciting, seemingly more fun can be exceedingly attractive.

In ending, MacDonald gives the obvious "how to's," accountability groups, inquisitive mentors, et. al.  Read the article, it's good.  I really love his finish:

In our contemporary Christian culture, let's frankly admit the fact that we are—most of us—starved for healthy intimacy at every level and, when we do not experience it, are likely to turn toward the sexual to find it. We need to surface this, find ways to identify the drives and desire and then talk about how to prevent it.

DNF: did not finish. Among the saddest of all epitaphs for a leader. Moral failure: among the most serious and tragic of the reasons. You'd think we'd talk more about this and what can be done to prevent it.

Our radically individualisitc culture tied to a "superman" picture of leadership is a set-up for failure.  What are some good practices to keep us from "being stupid?"

Kyle Phillips

Read a good book recently by Senator John McCain and Mark Salter: Hard Call: great decisions and the extraordinary people who made them.   In it McCain and Salter explore the lives and decisions of twenty people divided into six areas that the authors see as critical in making the “hard call.”  The six areas are awareness, foresight, timing, confidence, humility, and inspiration.  The lives and stories shared capture well each of the qualities identified. 

A valuable surprise, however, comes in the Afterword.  Senator McCain shares a mea culpa during his 2000 run for president.  In his own words,

I took a position I knew to be wrong on a controversial public issue that had a moral component because I thought it might help me win the primary in the state the issue concerned.  That…I regretted.  For in addition to the fact that it did me little political good, it caused me to be ashamed of myself, and it’s a little late in life to bear that kind of burden.

…I lacked humility and an inspiration to some purpose higher than self interest, which proved the cause of my error….I have learned by painful experience…that those two are the most important qualities of a good decision, and all the more so when it is a hard decision.

“Humility and an inspiration to some purpose higher than self interest” are key notes in the life of integrity. 

McCain and Salter define humility as “the quality of a decision that has as its primary objective the well being of others” (p. 285.)   Humility aims primarily not to benefit self but others.  It is not a quality of self-abasement, but, in the words of Paul, “in humility count others more significant than yourselves” (Phil. 2:3).

I really like how they define inspiration:

The quality of inspiration we refer to is found in those decisions whose authors have felt beckoned by a sense of duty or the demands of justice simply to do what is right, who use just means to secure just ends; and who are prepared to suffer whatever price they incur for their faithfulness.  They are decisions made by those who feel and act upon a perceived moral obligation to a cause, to their conscience, or to God.  They are rare in history and sublime in the eyes of humanity.  They summon their witnesses to greatness as they reaffirm the potential within us all to rise above our nature and serve a cause greater than our self-interest.

Very cool.  Put these notions of humility and inspiration together and you have the power of integrity.  We are not the center of all that is, and, truth be told, not even the center of what we are doing, of what we are about.  Christ alone has that place.  If we can be mindful of the simple truth that others are at least as significant as ourselves, and that our Christ-centered actions always hold the potential to "lift others to greatness" we have a chance to be a part of something far bigger than ourselves, a chance to participate in a glory not our own but a glory in which we share.  

Integrity takes root in this paradox of God's divine partnership with humanity.  On the one hand, we really are not all that important in the great scheme of things.  We really can relax and simply be who we are with all our burdens, confusions, foibles and foolishness.  On the other hand, the miracles God works through  surrendered hearts reveals Him and inspires awe and wonder, not least in ourselves.

Integrity is not a work or our own doing.  It is the simple fruit of living from what God can do with one more forgiven sinner.

Kyle Phillips

“Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour”. 1 Peter 5:8

It sometimes comes as an unpleasant surprise to many in the faith that Satan actually does have them on his radar screen. Your vision is in place, your plans for ministry to the lost and captive are moving forward and all is right with the world…until Satan makes his move, that is. As those who are experienced in ministry and missions will tell you, it’s not a matter of if Satan will strike; it’s a matter of when Satan will strike. 

Now, I have an acquaintance who is convinced that Satan is personally responsible for every untoward event in her life. Flat tire on the way to work? Satan trying to get her fired. Child only gets a C+ on his chemistry final; Satan ruining another young life. Hair out of sorts – you guessed it, Satan keeping her from finding husband number three!

That’s not what I’m talking about.

Scripture assures us that Satan is on the prowl and anyone with a little time in grade can tell you that Satan stalks those who dare to step out of their personal comfort zone and get busy with the spread of the Gospel. Now the good news is that Satan only has a few signature moves; he isn’t God, after all. The bad news is that, given our sin nature, he only needs a few moves. And if we are caught off guard, he’ll do his best. It’s important for leaders (by my reckoning, all Christians, in fact) to be acutely aware of how Satan works, as a preventative measure.

The Apostle John understood this all too well and his words should be a caution to us all:

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world--the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions--is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.” 1 John 2: 15-17

It is worth noting that Satan even attempted to trip up the Master in each of these areas (see Luke 4) and he’s still at to today in the lives of those who belong to Jesus. I’d encourage everyone to take a closer look at each of these three signature flaws that Satan would love to exploit:

1.     Desires of the flesh – What do we really live for? Are we living for merely material things?

2.     Desires of the eyes – What heart idols have us in captivity, right now?

3.     Pride in possessions – Is our identity mostly wrapped up in who we think we are or is it truly in Christ?

This type of introspection is very difficult, if we are honest in the endeavor. The benefits, however, are enormous if we consciously, deliberately probe our hearts to uncover, as Tim Keller would put it, “our sins beneath our sins”. We all have issues in each of these areas, to be sure, but it is much better to work out our salvation off line with the help of the Holy Spirit, than to be caught unawares as we move forward on mission.

For those who have attended the ILI Regional Leadership training, take some time to review the excellent study resource provided in the Obstacles to Leadership module. For those who haven’t, consider attending our next Regional Conference to be held in the Santa Clarita Valley in February, 2010.

Mike Brown