Taking a Break

My spiritual journey is going off the public airwaves for awhile.  I need to take a break from speaking out on topics, and simply live my faith for awhile.  But I want to summarize some of the topics that have come together for me lately.

Jesus' Gospel vs Paul's Gospel: I believe both Jesus and Paul preached a Jesus centered gospel.  Jesus preached Jesus, and Paul preached Jesus.  Both proclaimed that Jesus was Christ, messiah, king, savior, and Lord. 

What Must I Believe (a 6 part series): Looking at Scripture passages related to what we must do or believe to be saved, it seems we must place our trust in the person of Jesus.

Unity is Essential : This has been my starting point on this journey.  I recognize a value for theological discussions when it leads people to mature in their relationship with Christ. Unfortunately if we focus too much on correct theology and take our focus off our relationships with the person of Christ, we often recognize we are not united in our different sets of essential beliefs.   I suggest a solution is placing Christ central, and elevating Him above our different understandings about Him.

My Role with Church: Church is people, followers of Christ and whenever they get together. Period (see Church Etymology).  Scripture teaches that we are to meet together with the purpose of building each other up to become more like Christ. It makes sense that we practice the One Anothers (another 6 part series) when we get together. 

Love is Essential: It is the greatest commandment.  The greatest of these is love. If I don't have love, I have nothing, all of this is pointless. God's love working though us helps others recognize we are disciples of Christ. If there is one command of Jesus I want to get right, it is this one.

My Cyber Pulpit

If you've read enough of my blog you'll know I question the over-use of monologue, one directional sermons.

But as I took a look at my blog stat's I realize in a way I have my own cyber pulpit.

On average about 200 people each week suffer though reading some of my posts.  I know it's not huge, nothing to brag about, but I think that is a decent audience size.  With larger audiences it makes it tough to connect with everyone.  However, most people may not want to really connect anyway.

There are some differences though:

• I don't know how many of them drift off to sleep half way through my cyber-sermons and leave the page without getting the whole message.
• I don't mind if people get up and go to the bathroom, take a phone call, or reply to an email at any point.
• I welcome and encourage feedback. I love it when people comment. Even if it is just something short, and even when they disagree with me.
• I don't pass the plate before or after the message.
• I don't have to get dressed up in a suit.
• I regularly speak in tongues as this blog gets translated into many different languages around the world. I wonder if I make more sense in those other languages.

But I really don't want to view this as my cyber-pulpit. I'd rather view this as adding my voice to the conversation others are having.  I don't claim to have more authority than anyone else on these topics.

And I really appreciate feedback and dialogue - here, on other blogs, other social media sites, and with real people in real life. :)

Please participate in the conversation somewhere.  By doing so you will personalize and internalize what you believe. 

And thanks for reading. :)


Related Posts:

• Interactive Teaching in the New Testament
• Learning Triangle
• History of speaking up in church
• My 95 Thesis - Point 11 - Sermon Centered

Running Out of Sacred Cows to Tip

I may be running out of sacred cows to tip.

"A literal sacred cow or sacred bull is an actual cow or bull that is treated with sincere reverence. A figurative sacred cow is something else that is considered immune from question or criticism, especially unreasonably so." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacred_cow_%28idiom%29

No, I'm not talking literally. I've heard of cow tipping, but I'm not into that.  But in every religion there are certain beliefs you are not supposed to question.

But what if Jesus and the writers of Scripture never wanted Christians to have these sacred cows in the first place? I think Jesus was a bit of a religious cow tipper himself.

A big cow that I've been struggling with has been the structures typically referred to as church. I see many plugins, extensions and add-ons in today's Church., from special buildings, staff and programs, to the structures supporting everything.

Infallibility of the Bible is a sacred topic I suspect most Christians would rather leave untouched.

I've had some fun thinking about The Lord's Supper in different ways. Should we pass the potatoes for communion, or would Jesus say today "I am the pizza of life".

I have questioned the use of the title Senior Pastor, or other titles for church leaders. A simple study  on Elders, Overseers, and Shepherds does not need to produce the leadership structures 'churches' often have today.

I had fun with my Vacation and Beer Tithe post. But there are likely some that won't get my sense of humor.

I even had the gall to question Holidays and Holy Days, it takes guts to question our Christmas traditions.  I love many traditions, I'm just not sure they should all be considered holy or defended as Christian.

My Gospel in the Gospels Summary sees 'the gospel' in a different light than what is commonly preached today.

Does Scripture say Hell is Eternal Punishment? - Well there was another hot topic.

You wouldn't think a post that states that Unity is essential would challenge the status quo. But when you ask if unity can be found without agreement on essentials, we get closer to the heart of the issue.


So have I run out of sacred cows to tip?  I'm not sure.

There are other positive topics that I also want to blog more about like kingdom secrets, Holy Spirit, love, and participation.

If I run out of sacred cows to tip, does that mean I am at a place where I am free from religion?  I think I'm OK with the end of religion too (depending on what we mean by religion).

Feeling Alone

I'm feeling alone today. I know that I am not.  But I can't help feeling that way.

I know it's largely my fault.  I'm not surprised.  I put a lot of different thoughts out there. Sometimes I am pretty blunt.  I doubt there is anyone on the planet that agrees with everything I write about.

So I think people respond to me with a bit of hesitation at best.

But I know I'm not alone. On every topic I discuss, I know there are others that are coming to similar conclusions.  Many of these people are highly respected writers, theologians and brothers and sisters.

Yet in my world, I feel alone.

I have enough good friends that I am thankful for. In that way I don't feel alone.

However when it comes to the matters of faith that I am sorting through, I don't think most of my friends understand me.  I've gotten enough blank stares and silence. So I tend to avoid talking about these things in public.

I put myself out there. I am open to dialog.  I am not judging you, or assuming you need to agree with everything I say.

I don't even think everyone needs to engage in these topics. If you have a simple faith - keep it and guard it.  In many ways my simple faith is growing... I am seeing a lot of things simpler... but the journey there hasn't been simple.

I blog my journey for myself - it forces me to work through topics with some level of credibility.

I also blog to to encourage those who are students of Scripture to take a second look at the teachings of Jesus.

That is mostly what my journey has been about, and I have found it to be overall good for my soul.


But I know that it's not good to be alone.

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet

A moment of tweekness? I'm tweetking the way people can follow my blog.  Supposedly this fad has caught on and a few people are using twitter to follow each others random thoughts.  I can be random. So I can tweet.  Tweet this! 

I even added a nice follow by Twitter button. 

My Two Top Posts

When I look at my blogger stats, there are two pages that consistently get the most page views. Both posts were written in 2009, but they still get more views each month than most of my current posts.

My top post of all time is really not my work at all. How's that to keep me humble. :) I simply shared a video by Graham Cooke - Inheritance and typed up the words to read along with the video. I found what Graham Cooke says in this video refreshing and encouraging, and I'm thankful I've been able to share this message with others. God really does love you.

The other top post is a hot topic. I put a fair bit of work into it, and it is by far my longest post ever. In hindsight I should have broken it into a series of posts. Does Scripture say Hell is Eternal Punishment? Yes there are some verses that are used to support this position. But there are also many more verses that say the wages of sin is death, perishing, being destroyed, a second death, or not getting to live for eternity. There are many verses that don't sound like everyone receives eternal life - that not everyone will live forever. I tried to look at most of the related passages on this topic. I'd encourage you to study this topic for yourself.

So those are my two most visited blog posts. However, if someone wanted to know what my blog is about I'd direct them first to posts like My 95 Thesis or my Secrets of the Kingdom Summary. But it seems these visitors are not asking. :)

Favorite Topic

If you spend enough time with anyone you should eventually clue into what their favorite topics are. Christians are no different, we all have are favorite topic we like to emphasize. I know different Christians who are known to focus on different things.

For example I know many who focus a lot on the cross and Penal Substitutionary Atonement.

I know others who focus a lot on church.

I know others who really want to focus on God's holiness, and others focus on our need to live holy lives.

I know others who focus on creation, spiritual gifts, prosperity, end times, love, justice, grace, specific mission organisations, charity project, politics, or evangelism.

I really think it is good and great that we are all wired differently. And I acknowledge these topics can overlap and support each other.

However... how can I say this without sounding proud....

I am thankful Jesus has placed His favorite topic on my heart.

What was the favorite topic of Jesus?

When we read the stories of Jesus in the gospels, I think it is safe to say His favourite topic was that of the kingdom of God.

This blog started off focusing a lot on Church unity. And I still think that is a great topic worth looking at.

Right now I notice I have now written more blog posts about the Reign of God (kingdom of God) and kingdom secrets than any other topic. Those two labels are really the same topic. I just want to go verse by verse through all kingdom related passages, so I've separated these posts into a kingdom secrets series.

I will still blog about many other topics.

And I'm OK with people focusing on other topics. But I think I've found the best topic to focus on, and I'm glad to share what I'm learning here.

When Will I Shut UP?

If you are wondering when I'm going to get off my soap-box blog...

I sometimes wonder if I will run out of stuff to say...

We'll see. If the trend of this graph continues... It looks like I'll go back to being quiet in about 2 years.

After we took the Scriptures into our own hands

"Just as our forefathers fell away from the true God and the knowledge of Jesus Christ and of the right faith in him . . . , so today, too, every man wants to be saved by a superficial faith without fruits. . . . In the same error we too lingered, as long as we heard and read only the evangelical preachers. But after we took the Scriptures into our own hands and consulted them ourselves on many points, we have been instructed"

Who said this? Sound like a some current blogger?

Anabaptist Conrad Grebel in 1524.

One of many interesting quotes in a free pdf book Secret of the Strength.

I won

A great personal accomplishment. Nobody else has ever done this before, or will ever do it again. It was a one of a kind moment here.

I'd like to take a moment to thank all those people who made this accomplishment possible. My parents. My wife. My kids. Jesus. And thanks to all my fans out there.

I'll display this prize with honor. (The above graphic was emailed to me as my prize)

And to those others who can only hope of similar accomplishments.... keep dreaming, believe in yourself, anything is possible.

:)

Off Air

Current blog programming on pause.

I need to pause and seek some balance about these topics.

In hindsight we are thankful for the work of the reformers from 500 years ago. It is an understatement to say it wasn't easy in those days to ask questions either.

However I need to seek God for peace to see if he wants me involved in further reform, or if I should leave the dirty work to others. How can I balance building others up to be more like Christ, while I am also focusing on deconstructing. Can I learn any lessons from past reformers?

In the real world, I desire fellowship with others with the goal of building each other up to be more like Christ.

Is this blog helping, or harming that desire?

Maybe now is not the right timing, or I am not the right messenger (or have the wrong message).

Is this really the path God has planned for me? My family and I need to spend some time seeking God on this. Your prayers are welcome.

Really Simple Syndication 101

If you have an RSS or news reader, skip this post, go check the next item in your feeds.

I suspect there are a few people out there who read some blogs from time to time, who may be interested in the benefits of subscribing to an RSS feed.

You may have bookmarked this blog, and/or other blogs and webpages. But you have no idea when new content is posted. So every now and then you click your bookmarks to see what is new. Sometimes nothing is new, and you've wasted a click.

The beauty of using an RSS reader is you will automatically get a list of recent blog or news items listed in your feeds when they are posted.

I use Google reader http://www.google.com/reader/ , this is what it looks like. Notice the recent posts from the feeds I've subscribed to listed on the right. I can quickly scan through them and click on the ones that I want to read.


There are many other RSS readers available. Bloglines is another popular option. I believe Yahoo and Windows Live have similar options. I just can't help you much with them since I don't use them.

Anyways, if you have a google account, it doesn't take much to get going with google reader. Just sign up at http://www.google.com/reader/. You can then add a subscription by clicking 'add subscription' and entering an URL of a blog or website with a feed. Or you can look for one of these icons on the blog or website. Simply click it and follow the directions.




If you want to go a step further, you can also try igoogle. You can look for igoogle in the top right of the google search page. It gives you the option of adding a bunch of gadgets to a page, google reader and many more. I set igoogle as my browser default homepage, and I get my google reader feeds, BBC news, CBC news, Google News, weather, and bookmarks all in one view.


Anyways, I just thought I'd share that tech piece with you. If you have questions about this I'd be happy to help.

Go into all the world

We live in a strange day and age.

I love to travel. I often wonder if I should quit my comfortable job, sell everything we have, and move to some remote place. But I'm not sure where, or what I would do there. And I'm not sure if it's God calling me, or just my mid-life crisis feelings of lack of purpose where I'm at.

It comes down to questioning if God wants to use me here, or if God wants to use me someplace else. If this ever became clear, I'd love to go. But until then I'll try to make responsible choices for my family.

Anyways, today I realized that in a way I am able to preach the good news to all the world through this blog. I thank God if he is able to use me in this way. I've never been much of a writer, or much of a communicator for that matter. But my blog stats counters shows that in a way I am able to share the good news with more of the world than I likely would by simply moving to some remote place.

Speaking in tongues - I know some people even use Google translate to translate my stuff into their language. :)

Unfortunately I don't get much feedback, so I don't really know how it is received. But I pray God can use it for his kingdom.

(Analytics visitors over past 12 months)

(statcounter.com recent visitors)

Thomas on Why I blog

Two verses (from the Gospel of Thomas). Both back to back make me think of why I blog, and also a concern with blogging.


Gospel of Thomas vs. 33 reminds me of my motivation to make my journey public:

Jesus said, "What you will hear in your ear, in the other ear proclaim from your rooftops.
After all, no one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, nor does one put it in a hidden place. Rather, one puts it on a lampstand so that all who come and go will see its light."

Gospel of Thomas vs 34 reminds me of a potential danger of following a blogger (or following anyone for that matter):

Jesus said, "If a blind person leads a blind person, both of them will fall into a hole."

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/gosthom.html

Don't follow me

If you want, you can follow this blog by clicking the 'follow' button near the bottom of the left menu.

However please don't follow me.

One thing I'm almost certain of is that nobody has it all figured out. I'm pretty sure every great theologian, every denomination, and every influential speaker even gets it wrong quite frequently.

Or maybe I'm wrong and it's just me not being able to recognize which of the 1000's of voices is 100% true.

Well... actually I think I am starting to recognize that one voice that is 100% truth, but I'm not always listening, and not capable of understanding it all yet.

Anyways, of the earthly voices, I don't think any of them speak 100% truth.

And neither am I... I don't have it all figured out.

In summary:

• "follow my blog" - Jon
• "Please don't follow me, maybe nothing I say here is true (even this?) :)" - Jon
• "Follow me" - Jesus

Learning Triangle

Came across this learning triangle at a blog post titled "It's Better to Preach to your Pet than Sit through Sermons". It triggered a distant memory from the Faculty of Education... I think I saw some triangle that looked like this before... but I don't remember much about that lecture... ironically likely because it was a lecture. I do remember seeing a graphic though. :)

The point of this triangle is that more information is retained in learning environments where you are more involved. If your ears, eyes, brain, and mouth are involved you will retain the information much better than if it's just your ears and brain.

I think the link above has some interesting points and suggestions as we attempt to do the teaching or instructing one another part of body life - whether in large groups or smaller group settings.



This also got me thinking of a possible value to blogging. At times I've wondered about the value of blogging this journey... but I have recognized that blogging about these things forces me to organize my thoughts and beliefs, and search for answers that I have never searched out before. More than simply listening to, or reading someone else's positions, I have to internalize the ideas before I can attempt to put my thoughts together here.

I'm not sure if this blog counts as being in the "Teach Others" bottom layer of the triangle. I'm not sure if anyone is reading or learning.... but I do attempt to express what I'm learning in a way that may make some sense. :) And I do find that I remember most of what I have blogged about.

Disclaimer

I thought I should put some sort of disclaimer together for this blog.

Please read at your own risk!

• Some of the content on this blog is potentially dangerous.
• I make no claims to having everything figured out. However I do have a tendency to get stubborn about stuff - then years later realize I was wrong.
• Some parts may seem like foolish and stupid arguments that may produce quarrels. Feel free to leave me a comment telling me so, and I may even try to re-word or clarify my thoughts - I don't really want to quarrel about this stuff.

2 Tim 2:22-26 (NIV)

"Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart. Don't have anything to do with foolish and stupid arguments, because you know they produce quarrels. And the Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will."

So why am I still blogging despite warnings like this?

I'm not convinced this verse only applies to me - it may also apply to all those Protestants who are still protesting with their own arguments (or every other denomination that is out there.) And maybe I can say something that will help someone else see the plank in their eye. I don't know.

I also stubbornly believe that unity of Christ's body is Essential, and I don't see most Christians making this a focal point of the faith. There are many issues that are causing divisions in Christ's Church. We must recognize that Unity of Christ's Church is an essential part of our faith. We must look at the large scriptural support of unity and compare that to the amount of scriptural support of an issue that is causing a division.

But yes, I do also get side-tracked on other issues. I've been trying to understand the different traditions and viewpoints on all sorts of issues to figure out how we got to where we are, and what the original good news message was all about. I'm not certain where I'm going with all these side issues. So please don't assume I am the authority on any of it.

Please seek the Holy Spirit and our Scriptures yourself!

God Bless, and read at your own risk!

Faith Journey course change

God has taken me on a bit of a journey in the past few years... not sure where it is all going, but I'll try recording some of it here.

I've identified myself as a Christian since I was a young child. I grew up a pastor's kid. My parents worked with Village Missions, which placed us in small interdenominational churches in very small villages in northern Manitoba and Alberta. Until the past few years my view of Christ's Church was limited to conservative protestant evangelical churches like Baptists, Alliance, and other congregations who refer to themselves as 'Bible believing'. I didn't have much exposure to people following Christ from other church traditions, so I assumed that my limited view was the best and only view.

My journey started changing course with a read of "Exploring Church History" by Perry Thomas.  It explored 20 centuries of Christ's people - highlighting the good and bad that have been done in the name of Christ during each era. I recognized that Christ's church was alive and well long before any current trends in christianity. Throughout history Christ followers have been part of many different traditions and denominations, and much good has been done by the different groups. Perry Thomas also highlighted the current movement that God has been placing on the hearts of many to bring His fragmented Church back into fellowship with each other. 

My journey then continued by trying to gain respect and understanding of some of the other major denominations that I had previously had little understanding of. During these years we struggled with questions like: 

• "which church is best?" 
•  "How can there be 30,000 denominations that share the same core message of Jesus, yet have differences that keep them apart." 
• What can be done in response to Christ’s Prayer for His followers in John 17:20-23 (NIV) "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. "
  

OK... I can see this blogging thing is going to take some time. I'll post more later...