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Schools For Conversion

It's a shame that a few conservative evangelicals have had a monopoly on the word conversion. Some of us shiver at the word. But conversion means to change, to alter, after which something looks different than it did before - like conversion vans or converted currency. We need converts in the best sense of the word, people who are marked by the renewing of their minds and imaginations, who no longer conform to the pattern that is destroying our world. Otherwise, we have only believers, and believers are a dime-a-dozen nowadays. What the world needs is people who believe so much in another world that they cannot help but being enacting it now.

Then we will start to see some true conversion vans - vehicles that run on veggie oil instead of diesel. Then we will see some converted homes - fueled by renewable energy - and laundry machines powered by stationary bicycles and toilets flushed with dirty sink water. Then we will see tears converted to laughter as people beat their swords into plowshares and weld their machine guns into saxophones, and as police officers use their billy clubs to play baseball.

For even if the whole world believed in resurrection, little would change until we began to practice it. We can believe in CPR, but people will remain dead until someone breathes new life into them. And we can tell the world that there is life after death, but the world really seems to be wondering if there is life before death.

There is a kind of conversion that happens to people not because of how we talk but because of how we live. And our little experiments in truth become the schools for conversion, where folks can learn what it means for the old life to be gone and the new life to be upon us, no longer taking the broad path that leads to destruction. Conversion is not an event but a process, a process of slowly tearing ourselves from the clutches of the culture.*

*Shane Claiborne, "The Irresistible Revolution: living as ordinary radicals" (Zondervan, 2006), pg. 150-151

Quote of the Week

"One of the fundamental issues of misunderstanding that leads to corrupt churchmanship in our generation is the failure to distinguish between a crowd and a church. The failure to distinguish between a crowd and a church is ...to misunderstand everything about preaching, everything about ministry, everything about our task. If we think our business is to build a crowd, frankly any of us can do it. There's always a way to bring, draw and attract a crowd. . . . Let us never mistake a crowd for a church or think our business is to draw a crowd."

- Al Mohler

Quote of the Week

"There are, no doubt, passages in the New Testament which may seem at first sight to promise an invariable granting of our prayers. But that cannot be what they really mean. For in the very heart of the story we meet a glaring instance to the contrary. In Gethsemane the holiest of all petitioners prayed three times that a certain cup might pass from Him. It did not. After that the idea that prayer is recommended to us as a sort of infallible gimmick may be dismissed."

C.S. Lewis, The World's Last Night and Other Essays, "The Efficacy of Prayer"

Community

I am lacking in my own creativity in thought lately. Strangely I welcome this and know that this is a good space for me to be in right now. Only because I believe that there are some unresolved learnings that God keeps bringing me to. Therefore, I do not want to move out of this space, but rather try to live within the tension of discovery. A lot of these revolve around community right now.

I wanted to share some thoughts about community that my Father has brought me back to recently. These are a couple excerpts from John Eldgredge's book, Waking the Dead:

Be kind, for everyone you know is facing a great battle.

A true community is something you will have to fight for. You’ll have to fight to get one, and you’ll have to fight to keep it afloat. But you fight for it like you bail out a life raft during a storm at sea. You want this thing to work. You need this thing to work. You can’t ditch it and jump back on the cruise ship. This is the church; this is all you have. Without it, you’ll go down. Or back to prison.

Suddenly all those “one another’s” in Scripture make sense. Love one another. Bear one another’s burdens. Forgive one another. Acts of kindness become deeply meaningful because we know we are at war. Knowing full well that we are all facing battles of our own, we give one another the benefit of the doubt. Leigh isn’t intentionally being distant from me – she’s probably under an assault. That’s why you must know each other’s stories, know how to “read” one another. A word of encouragement can heal a wound; a choice to forgive can destroy a stronghold. You never knew your simple acts were so weighty. Its what we’ve come to call “lifestyle warfare.”

We check in regularly with one another, not out of paranoia (“Do you still like me?”), but in order to watch over each other’s hearts. “How are you doing?” But be careful about what you are looking for from community. For if you bring your every need to it, it will collapse. Community is no substitute for God. I left our annual camping trip absolutely exhausted and disappointed. As we drove home, I realized it was because I was looking to them to validate me, appreciate me, fill this aching void in my heart. Only once in ten days did I take time to be away with God, alone. I was too busy trying to get my needs met through them. Which is why community cannot live without solitude.

(Waking the Dead, 199, 200)

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Church is not a building. Church is not an event that takes place on Sundays. I know, its how we think of it. “I go to First Baptist.” “We are members of St. Luke’s.” “Is it time to go to church?” Much to our surprise, that is not how the Bible uses the term. Not at all. When the Scripture talks about church, it means community. The little fellowships of the heart that are outposts of the kingdom. A shared life. They worship together, eat together, pray for one another, go on quests together. They hang out together, in each other’s homes. When Peter is sprung from prison, “he went to the house of Mary the mother of John…where many people had gathered and were praying” (Acts 12:12).

Anytime an army goes to war or an expedition takes to the field, it breaks down into little platoons and squads. And every chronicle of war or quest will tell you that the men and women who fought so bravely fought for each other. That’s where the acts of heroism and sacrif ice take place, because that’s where the devotion is. You simply can’t be devoted to a mass of people; devotion takes place in small units, just like a family.

We have stopped short of being an organization; we are an organism instead, a living and spontaneous association of individuals who know one another intimately, care for each other deeply, and feel a kind of respect for one another that makes rules and bylaws unnecessary. A group is the right size, I would guess, when each member can pray for every other member, individually and by name.

This is the wisdom of Brother Andrew, who smuggled Bibles into communist countries for decades. It’s the model, frankly, of the church in nearly every country but the U.S. Now, I’m not suggesting you don’t do whatever it is you do on Sunday mornings. I’m simply helping you accept reality – that whatever else you do, you must have a small fellowship to walk with you and fight with you and bandage your wounds. This is essential.

(Waking the Dead, 192)

Quote Of The Week

"On the one hand Death is the triumph of Satan, the punishment of the Fall, and the last enemy. Christ shed tears at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane: the Life of Lives that was in Him detested this penal obscenity not less than we do, but more. On the other hand, only he who loses his life will save it. We are baptized into the death of [Jesus] Christ, and it is the remedy for the Fall. Death is, in fact, what some modern people call "ambivalent." It is Satan's great weapon and also God's great weapon: it is holy and unholy; our supreme disgrace and our only hope; the thing Christ came to conquer and the means by which He conquered."

- C.S. Lewis, Miracles

Quote of The Week

"The church has been (and still should be) a revolutionary community attempting to subvert and redeem the culture around it. " - Mike Erre

Quote of the Week

"The process of living seems to consist in coming to realize truths so ancient and simple that, if stated, they sound like barren platitudes. They cannot sound otherwise to those who have not had the relevant experience: that is why there is no real teaching of such truths possible and every generation starts from scratch."

- CS Lewis (exploring truth in a letter he wrote in 1939)

Quote of the Week

IN THE END THERE ARE ONLY TWO POSSIBLE ATTITUDES WHICH CHRISTIANS CAN ADOPT TOWARD THE WORLD. ONE IS ESCAPE AND THE OTHER ENGAGEMENT. - JOHN STOTT

Quote of the Week

"CHRISTIANITY BEGAN IN PALESTINE AS A RELATIONSHIP, MOVED TO GREECE AND BECAME AN IDEA, WENT TO ROME AND BECAME AND INSTITUTION, THEN CAME TO AMERICA AND BECAME AN ENTERPRISE!" - RICHARD HALVERSON