MEMO TO MYSELF, 20170330

NEVER ask someone, "How are you?" if you're not fully ready for an honest answer. If you simply want to express cordiality, say, "It's good to see you!" or "It's good to hear from you!" Those things can always be true.

Only ask "How are you?" when you really want to know.

Notes Toward A True Gospel Of Prosperity

I haven't decided yet whether to make this an essay, a book, a video, or an outline for a discussion group. But while I'm figuring that out, fell free to rattle these bones:

1. God is infinite. 
2. God is generous.
3. God created the material world to reflect His infinitude through abundance.
4. God gave humans the capacity, and the mandate, to manage abundance for greater abundance.
5. Sin has made everything harder, but there is still enough of everything we need for everyone.
6. When the Holy Spirit quickens faith in Jesus Christ, humans receive the life of God in all its fullness.
7. God really, really wants to use His people to show off.
8. Christians in particular should manifest the wisdom of God in cultivating the abundance of creation, and the generosity of God in distributing that abundance.
9. Christians are to provide for themselves, their households, their extended families, fellow members of the ecclesia and the poor generally.

That's my view. What's yours?

Three Priorities For 2014 - And Beyond

My mini-bio at the right ends with the slogan, "Christ, commerce, community." Those three words distill so much of my life and so much of what I want to do that my thinking about my priorities for 2014 has come down to three categories of action, related to those three words.

Given my beliefs, abilities, interests, position and location, it seems that as of now, the best uses of Elwin Green in Homewood will be:

• Encouraging fellow members of the Body of Christ,
• Growing businesses, and
• Redeveloping Race Street

Christ, commerce, community.

Theoretically, I could do an infinitude of other things - or at least, try to, venturing limitlessly into other areas. But those three are enough to occupy me, perhaps for the rest of my life (indeed, I intend to have the first two occupy me for the rest of my life, wherever I am. I expect some variation of the third to do so also, as I expect to remain on Race Street for the rest of my life; but that is less certain than the first two).

Christ, commerce, community.

Why write a blog post about this, rather than just noting it in my journal? Because all three of those priorities will require considerable involvement by other people, and because for all I know someone reading this may want to be involved.

Over the next week or so, I will outline specific projects and processes related to each category of action. So come back tomorrow if you'd like to learn how I plan to encourage the Body of Christ in Homewood in 2014.

Christ, commerce, community.

So let it be written. So let it be done.

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Three Priorities: The Complete Series
Three Priorities For 2014 - And Beyond
Three Priorities For 2014: 1 - Encouraging The Body Of Christ
Three Priorities For 2014: 2- Growing Businesses.
Three Priorities For 2014: 2.5 - Why Build Businesses?
Three Priorities For 2014: 2 - Growing Businesses - Legal Shield
Three Priorities For 2014: 2 - Growing Businesses - Homewood Capital Partners
Three Priorities For 2014: 2 - Growing Businesses - Luminaria Productions
Three Priorities For 2014: 3 - Redeveloping Race Street
Three Priorities For 2014: Closing Thoughts

If I Were A Pastor, I Would Not Preach Today. Instead, I Would Say This.

Good morning, brothers and sisters.

I am not going to preach this morning. Instead, I am going to ask all of you to join me in an experiment.

For the next 30 days, I would like all of us together to play, "Let's Pretend."

To begin the experiment, I ask you to put away your Bibles, your notebooks, and your pens or pencils. You won't need to read anything or take any notes for the next few minutes. Just get comfortable, and prepare to listen.

Okay, now close your eyes for a moment, and imagine that it is no longer January of 2014. Travel into the future. Five years...ten years...maybe even 20 years...

Many changes have occurred - in technology, in business, in politics.

One of the biggest changes has been the replacement of several members of the Supreme Court. And today, as I take the pulpit, it is not to preach, but to speak regardings two rulings that have come from the Court in recent months.

Now open your eyes, and let's pretend.

Good morning, sisters and brothers.

The recent months have been a difficult and confusing time for many of us, as we have sought to understand two rulings issued by the Supreme Court of the United States.

I am not going to preach this morning. Instead, I am going to try, as briefly and simply as possible, to help everyone understand what these rulings mean for us, right here, right now.

First, the Supreme Court has ruled that if government shows favor to churches, it helps to establish churches. Therefore, exempting churches from paying real estate taxes violates the establishment clause of the Constitution.

This means that churches must now pay real estate taxes.

More than that, the Court made the ruling retroactive, requiring churches to pay so many years' of back taxes by a certain deadline.

We have missed that deadline, and the government has taken possession of our building. It is now their building.

We can't meet here any more.

In a second decision, the Court has defined - some would say created - a right to non-proselytization, meaning that the non-religious have a right not to be preached to in public. To protect that right, the Court has prohibited public gatherings of a religious nature. They have defined a public gathering as any meeting of more than four people in a public space. 

This ruling on gatherings hinges on the distinction between public and private space. The Court has said that religion is a private matter, to be practiced in private. Therefore, while no more than four people may gather in public for religious purposes, people may hold religious meetings of any size in their homes.

I hope you understand now why I am not preaching a sermon this morning. These edicts are already in effect, and if I preached, every man, woman and child here would be taken to jail.

Therefore, you are dismissed. Go, and live your faith.

That is the end of the message, and of the first step in the experiment.

For the next step of the experiment, you ARE dismissed. On your way out, each of you will receive a printed summary of the rules under which we will operate for the next 30 days, namely:

1. We cannot meet in this building,
2. Any meeting in any public space must be limited to four people, and
3. We may hold meetings of any size in our homes.

Now go, and live your faith.

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If your church went through this experiment, what results might it produce?

PASTORS: Feel free to steal this - but if you do, please let us know how it goes! Thanks!

Notes on Ephesians - 1

I want to spend the rest of my life living the truths in Paul's letter to the Ephesians.

So short, so dense...reading it many times has convinced me that it was dictated at a white heat, that Paul was struggling with language to describe revelation as he was receiving it.

One reason I believe that is because it appears to explode the standard letter form of the day. Instead of something like this:

From:
To:
Salutation
Doxology to an appropriate god
Prayer for the recipient(s)
Body of letter
Closing

Ephesians is more like this:

From:
To:
Salutation
Doxology
Prayer for the recipients
-Digression
Return to prayer for the recipients
-Digression
Completion of prayer for the recipients
Second doxology
Body of letter
Closing

I just exchanged some texts with GT about Eph. 3.20, in which I said:

I believe that v. 19 concludes the prayer that began in 1:17 - that he digressed in 1:19, and returned to it in 3:14. So when he says in 3:20 that God can do imeasurably more than all we can ask, he's thinking about *all the things he just asked for* - an astonishing list of petitions - and saying, "God can do even more than THAT."

I didn't do this in my text to him, but I want to look at what Paul has asked for:

1) that the Ephesians may receive the spirit of wisdom and revelation, and to have the eyes of their hearts illumined, so that they may

• know God better
• know the hope to which they have been called
• know the riches of God's inheritance in His people 
• know the greatness of God's power toward them;

2) that God may strengthen them through his Spirit within them;

3) that Christ may dwell in their hearts through faith;

4) that they may have power to grasp the dimensions of the love of Christ;

5) that they may know the love of Christ;

6) that they may be filled "to the measure of all the fullness of God." (TNIV)

To which I now add - and how is God able to do MORE THAN these cosmic things Paul has asked for? By the power which is in and among us (trying to describe that power led to the digression of 1:20-2:22). Thus this doxology's short form would be, not "to God be the glory," or even, "to God be the glory in Christ Jesus," but "to God be the glory IN THE CHURCH and in Christ Jesus."

About tithing.

My older sister wrote and asked me if I considered tithing a New Testament practice. I just re-read my answer, and I think it's worth sharing.

My dear dearest older sister -

You're trying to get me in even deeper trouble with everybody we know, aren't you?

Oh well - we're all grownups. So here goes. About the tithe.

Whatever else it may be, it's certainly not a New Testament practice - or more specifically, it is not a Christian practice in the New Testament. Jesus speaks of it only once, when he criticizes people for paying so much attention to tithing when they should pay more attention to issues of mercy and justice. And the people he spoke to were not believers, they were not His disciples.

After the resurrection, during the infancy of the ecclesia, the only other mention of tithing is in Hebrews 7 - that whole passage about Melchizidek. And if you read that passage in context, you'll see that even then, the author is not making a point about tithing, he's making a point about the supremacy of Jesus Christ. And in making that point, at no point does he say that we should tithe.

Neither do any other N.T. authors. Paul, Peter, James, John - in all of their instructions to believers, none of them ever says squat about tithing. As a doctrinal subject, it simply ISN'T THERE.

Not only is there no teaching about tithing; there are no examples of tithing - not one church, not one believer, is ever described as doing it. If "practice" is what people do, then tithing is no more a New Testament practice than is playing golf.

On the other hand, GIVING - without a mathematical formula attached - is very much in evidence in the N.T. : in Jesus' teaching to his disciples (Luke 6.38), in Paul's teaching (2 Corinthians 9), and in what believers actually did (Acts 2.42-47, 4.32-37; 2 Corinthians 8-9; Philippians 4:15-20).

The N.T. offers plenty of reasons to give; I think the #1 reason is this: the God who lives in us is generous. If we paid more attention to His life within us, we'd be too busy giving to think about tithing.