Joe found this site so we are going to Evernote a try. It collects and remembers everything for you and its best feature is probably the image to text recognition, so it will along everything else index all my pdf files full of quotes I have which is great. (ht)
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Primer on today's Mission church full of links and good information on the idea.
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Brian Walsh and David Fitch both wrote good bits on the Obama election.
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Meeting House did an interesting experiment on Sunday about AIDS.
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I like this and wish I could do it in Canada.
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This is ridiculous. And will probably be useful in a post I'm working on called Protecting Yourself is Bullshit.

Here are some pictures that go along with my trip from the previous posts.

The Dream Center (this maybe gives you a picture of half or so of it)

Angelus Temple

The warm-up rappers

The 3 set drum solo

San Diego

Mosaic

Kairos

Santa Monica

When you are in Los Angeles, you are not short for one moment options for churches to attend or be part of. This week I attended three different gatherings. Spent Thursday night at Angelus Temple with Benny Perez, then Sunday at Mosaic with Erwin McManus and Kairos with JR Woodward and Greg Larson. I basically succumbed to the epitome of church hopping while I was here, not building relationships barely at all with anyone, but trying to experience the event of church in an hour of observing. Not the best way, but nonetheless my only choice. So take these experiences as a grain of salt, because I don't really know anyone at any of the gatherings.

I'll give you a quick breakdown of the three experiences.

Angelus Temple, I already gave a pretty detailed breakdown about my experience there. So you can read that there. Benny Perez talked about Joshua and the Israelites being told by God to walk through the river. Then he took our present "rivers or floods" of financial crisis, miscarriages, and whatever else makes us unhappy and encouraged us to step out into the middle of our floods because that's where God will work his miracle. Because only in the midst of struggle and floods will God bless us. There wasn't much more to the message than that.

Kairos, was a completely different experience. They are in an older church that they have renovated to suit their needs. There was probably only 100 or so people there (compared to the thousand or so at Angelus Temple). The building was built more to look like a cafe, with the second floor classrooms blown out to look out over the meeting space. The options of couches, cafe table and chairs or rows of chairs were all open to sit in. There was also snacks and drinks to grab to give it a much more relaxed and living room feel. The music was driven but simple and the sound was pretty much perfectly mixed. The band was tight and the lead guy sounded a lot like David Crowder. Then Greg got up to teach and he taught out f the first few chapters of 1 Peter. Basically it was a message of perspective trying to remind us that joy comes through perspective in knowing Christ and knowing that he is working through the hard situations. So when times are hard, financial crisis, parking tickets, deaths in the family etc...then we should trust God to give us strength and perspective in the midst of it. He talked about Victor Frankel and how when he was in the concentration camps that he observed people and how they responded to the oppression and that only a very small minority of people could have a proper perspective amidst the oppression during the Holocaust. Some were able to have a perspective that no one could take away from them and eventually gave them enough strength to endure what was happening. Imagine if Christians could adopt this perspective? He then did a question and answer but the cool part was that people sent him questions via cell phone which kept it anonymous, which was a great idea I thought. It seemed to work very well.

Then Rob and I jumped right into a car and headed to Mosaic which was held at the Mayan Theater. This theater was pretty awesome. You walked in and felt like you were in a cave, Mayan drawings carved into all the stone and a dim atmosphere that left dark corners to your imagination. This by far was the experience that the most thought and energy went into. The band was remarkable. It was basically a mix between Explosions in the Sky with a girl leading the band that sounded like an angel. The sound again was a perfect mix. The two round canvases on the side served as a projector screens for the video art that was happening throughout. Underneath the one canvas was two DJ's playing along with the worship and under the other was a girl doing t-shirt art to the theme of the night. The music was moving (probably because it is closest to the style that I appreciate) and I could feel myself getting that feeling I feel when I'm at a good show. Then the music was over and a bunch of girls walked on stage all mimicking daily routines that we find ourselves in a repetitive pattern. Turning on TV's, jogging hard, sending e-mails etc etc. Then they did a dance to an Imogen Heap song and it was beautiful, all about getting out of routine and being set free. Then they showed a short film which was also great about a super-hero car mechanic, amazing short that was entertaining and had a good message.

Erwin McManus proceeded to talk about a lot of the same things that the previous two speakers I had head shared (or yelled) except he did it in typical motivational speaker style that Erwin delivers all his stuff. His message was all about approaching difficulty, failure and obstacles with optimism, knowing that the things that happen to us and the things that we go through don't define us, rather something else does, namely being created in the image of God. Funny enough, he also referred to Victor Frankel in speaking of his observations with people with optimism in the Holocaust compared to those that gave up.

I can't tell you how odd it was to walk into three different church, completely different churches over the course of a few days. Mosaic is the type of even that I would love to attend. Creative, artsy, beautiful, filled with people my age with my type of music. If I was to plant a church when I was seventeen, I would have wanted it to look exactly like Mosaic. And then Angelus Temple which was basically the goal of my upbringing. Huge, loud, exciting, emotionally driven and charismatic. Angelus Temple would have been the church I would have planted when I was seventeen. Kairos was probably the gathering that most resembled theStory and how we gather. Small, food, conversation, Q&A, comfortable seating and relaxed.

So that was my experiences with all the churches this week.

It's been an interesting trip so far to the Dream Center. I find myself going through ups and downs about how I feel about almost every issue. It's beautiful to see so many people rallied together for the cause of taking care of their surrounding community. The parts that continue to fascinate me are the church services, the conversations and the overall approach to this kind of ministry. I just don't resonate with any of it. I feel like I'm back being seventeen again. However, every connection with a family and every life I see transformed I'm blown away at the impact they are having here.

I spent the morning of yesterday working in the kitchen, helping get the food prepared for all the 300 or so people that eat here every day. It's a pretty cool setup because they have one head chef that basically makes menus out of all the food that is donated to the center. They don't spend money on food at all really. It's wild to think of how many people are sustained purely off the excess of food in the food industry. Then in the afternoon I went around with groups and dropped off food to different Spanish families in poorer neighbourhoods. We probably gave food to about 200 families overall and we go right into their communities and set it up for everyone to come and grab it. It's wild to watch that many families come out of the same area that all need and depend on this food.

Food is a major service of the Dream Center, trying to feed and keep people alive by feeding them all over the city. Their hands spread pretty far with this work and its great to see. This afternoon I went and dropped off groceries to a family of sixteen people who needed food to survive and to not have their children taken away by aid services. This is what affected me the most because I saw relationships being built with this family, so it was cool to see that happening.

Last night on the other hand was a entirely different experience. We went to Angelus Temple (pics to come) and Benny Perez was the special speaker. It's been a long time since I experienced a service like this. We went almost an hour early so I watched as all the youth gathered around the front, usually good looking guys and girls dressed up in their hipster/emo look chatting to each other. It felt remotely like a concert the way everyone was dressed, interacted and looked forward to the upcoming act.

Then came the two black dudes to warm everyone up for the main show. Saying things like "let's put your hands together for Jesus and purple shoelaces" and a bunch of other incoherent stuff that got the crowd excited. Then the lights dropped and for the next forty-five minutes I watched a concert. Different musicians, perfect sound, unbelievable lighting...complete with drum solos (where three drummers played at once), guitar players jumping off their amps and smiles that stretched across the stage. I tell you, it was perfect in every sense of the term. It was everything I hoped for in a worship experience when I was younger at the Pentecostal church times a hundred.

Then Matthew Barnett came up on stage and gave a little offering pep talk. He told us things like our money should go to the church if we want to see good things done with it and not the government because 700 billion dollar bailouts is a waste of our money. He told us that the hope of the world is found in Jesus and the local church and service to the people around us. It was odd for me to hear, the typical offering sermon jargon mixed with truth of justice and generousity. He said a lot in sermon number one of the night.

Then came Benny Perez, who gave a message out of the first bit of Joshua. Typical Pentecostal message of hype and excitement about how God is going to bring us out of everything we are going to and to not be discouraged but be hopeful. The louder he got on his rants of excitement the louder the crowd got cheering him on. He told a story about his own struggle (or flood) about a miscarriage his wife had and how it was hard to deal with but with Jesus he can walk through the middle of any storm or flood. Matthew Barnett constantly jumped up in applause when his rants were at the climax, it was entertaining to watch nonetheless. That's the thing with these speakers, they are captivating. Their stories are dead on, they are funny and they keep you in tune with their constantly lowering and highering of voices. My issue is that they all say the same things and there is never any depth to anything they say. It's the same messages of power, joy, faith and how God will get us through our difficult times and bring us to better times and then we leave it at that. There is no exegesis, no contextualizing, no historical approach to the scriptures....nothing but hype. I still wonder to this day if Pentecostal preachers like this prepare for messages at all or if they just get up and preach. It's not like what they are saying is untruthful, but it just doesn't transfer into people's lives practically. If it does it only lasts for a little while soon do be drowned out by real life. Heck if every day existed inside a beautiful theater with amazing music, emotionally driven preaching and everyone my age, it probably wouldn't be so bad, but it isn't and everyone walks outside and only takes with them the bare essentials to the mystery of the kingdom of God.

For lunch today I grabbed lunch with JR Woodward who is a church planter here in LA of some churches called Kairos. It was a random connection I made through David Fitch, but it was cool to be able to sit down with him and here about what God was doing in his communities across LA. It's always encouraging to hear stories like his, new church plants that God is doing good things through. Seems like we connect on a number of levels with how we see church, the empire and our place within it.

I'm enjoying my time here getting a different taste of what the Dream Center is doing and other people here in LA. Can't say I feel anymore drawn to LA as a city (like my friend Rob who I came with does) than anywhere else I've visited but I'm sure the things I'm experiencing here will help me shape better what a community could look like in Sarnia.

Yesterday I flew to LA to come and spend a week at the Dream Center. I came with my friend Rob. Basically the Dream Center is a place where a church bought out an old hospital and have transformed it into a massive (and I mean massive) rehab/discipleship/justice center. It really is quite beautiful in every sense of the word. Apparently at one point almost everyone who lived in LA was born at this hospital so it has some historical significance.

This morning we helped setup for a food drive that they are doing and this afternoon we are helping alongside of some food trucks a few minutes from here. There is people everywhere all taking part in different projects. There is a massive discipleship program where people who have been struggling with drugs, sex, alcohol, gangs or even who have just had enough of the grip money has had on them all live on the campus here, serve here and work towards their own rehabilitation and their communities.

I came for a number of reasons. One of the major reasons though was because over the last few years I've become very disenfranchised with Pentecostal, charismatic, conservative, prosperity type ministries, churches and people. I never wanted to get to a point where I couldn't see Jesus working through people that I disagreed with. There is no doubt in my mind that the Kingdom of God is moving forward here and people's lives are being changed, even if I don't agree with their theologies and chosen lifestyles. It's difficult to see Jesus through the worship leader's Porsche I tell ya. Thursday night at Angelus Temple (the church that runs the Dream Center) is having Benny Perez as their speaker, and then next week Bishop TD Jakes, so it is stretching for me. I'm just learning that amongst all the things I disagree with and are so easy to be upset about, Jesus is moving and it is beautiful.

I also came because I see the potential of stuff like this in Sarnia. Vineyard does some amazing things right now with the marginalized in Sarnia, and hopefully theStory can join forces with them to be able to reach more people. Being at a place like this gives me hope and inspiration for the future of what could be.

We have a new website for theStory. This one is a lot more functional and user friendly. The website will now manage our library that we are trying to start that will host everyone's books and not just books in a central spot. The site will also manage all the ATIC things we are trying. We also have started to incorporate forums for our lead team. I'm pretty excited about this one and hopefully will help us do what we are trying to do down here.

Best quote I've read to date on universalism, and beautifully sums up what I have been trying to describe for the last for years and usually get someone mad at me.

"I am and I am not a universalist. I am one if you are talking about what God in Christ has done to save the world. The Lamb of God has not taken away the sins of some — of only the good, or the cooperative, or the select few who can manage to get their act together and die as perfect peaches. He has taken away the sins of the world — of every last being in it — and he has dropped them down the black hole of Jesus’ death. On the cross, he has shut up forever on the subject of guilt: “There is therefore now no condemnation. . . .” All human beings, at all times and places, are home free whether they know it or not, feel it or not, believe it or not.

"But I am not a universalist if you are talking about what people may do about accepting that happy-go-lucky gift of God’s grace. I take with utter seriousness everything that Jesus had to say about hell, including the eternal torment that such a foolish non-acceptance of his already-given acceptance must entail. All theologians who hold Scripture to be the Word of God must inevitably include in their work a tractate on hell. But I will not — because Jesus did not — locate hell outside the realm of grace. Grace is forever sovereign, even in Jesus’ parables of judgment. No one is ever kicked out at the end of those parables who wasn’t included in at the beginning."

--Robert Farrar Capon

Best line - But I will not — because Jesus did not — locate hell outside the realm of grace.

This video cracked me up.

Here is the rough transcript of the message I gave on Sunday. It's pretty quote heavy, but it ended up working out pretty good because of the amount of people we had, the discussion was great for it.

Today is our intro week to the parables. So I’ve taken it upon myself to prep us to be prepared for what these stories consist of. Hopefully we can understand better why they are there and hopefully to prepare our hearts for what these little stories are going to tell us. Parables are difficult to read and talk about, and even harder to live out because they aren’t a list of rights and wrongs like we would have read in Leviticus. Parables rather tell a fictional story that offer some sort of deeper meaning than just the story. This is why they are annoying because you can’t look at this story and say oh ok, looks like I have to do this now. And if I do this, and I do this, then this will happen. Jesus would walk around all day and speak constantly with these stories and it must have got annoying after a while. At least the disciples felt that way. We can read here in Matthew when Jesus tells yet another parable and the disciples finally have enough, so here is his response.

Matthew 13: 1-17
At about that same time Jesus left the house and sat on the beach. In no time at all a crowd gathered along the shoreline, forcing him to get into a boat. Using the boat as a pulpit, he addressed his congregation, telling stories. "What do you make of this? A farmer planted seed. As he scattered the seed, some of it fell on the road, and birds ate it. Some fell in the gravel; it sprouted quickly but didn't put down roots, so when the sun came up it withered just as quickly. Some fell in the weeds; as it came up, it was strangled by the weeds. Some fell on good earth, and produced a harvest beyond his wildest dreams.

"Are you listening to this? Really listening?" The disciples came up and asked, "Why do you tell stories?"
replied, "You've been given insight into God's kingdom. You know how it works. Not everybody has this gift, this insight; it hasn't been given to them. Whenever someone has a ready heart for this, the insights and understandings flow freely. But if there is no readiness, any trace of receptivity soon disappears. That's why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they're blue in the face and not get it. I don't want Isaiah's forecast repeated all over again:

Your ears are open but you don't hear a thing. Your eyes are awake but you don't see a thing.
The people are blockheads! They stick their fingers in their ears so they won't have to listen;
They screw their eyes shut so they won't have to look,
so they won't have to deal with me face-to-face
and let me heal them.
"But you have God-blessed eyes—eyes that see! And God-blessed ears—ears that hear! A lot of people, prophets and humble believers among them, would have given anything to see what you are seeing, to hear what you are hearing, but never had the chance.

Jesus doesn’t offer much of an explanation, at least not a satisfying one to normal ears. Basically he says that he is talking this way because he doesn’t want to make it easy. Parables demand that you actually think about them. They demand that you engage with it and wrestle with it. They cause a certain level of discomfort because you know there is something in there but upon first reading it you have no idea. So to know, you have to want it. So Jesus is here saying that whoever wants this bad enough is going to be the ones that get something out of it, for those that don’t care or refuse to dig well it’s just another story.

This is why we jump into these stories and this is why we read the Bible the way that we do. This is why many Sundays you may leave her frustrated or hopefully at the very least challenged to a point where you can’t stop thinking about it for the week. It is impossible to be indifferent to life. You know those movies you watch, where that guy leaves the girl and goes with that sleezy girl at the end and you are just so upset. Or when someone horrible or amazing happens in a movie and you are equally as excited or depressed. So we leave movies angry or happy thinking that our emotions somehow could have affected the decision. We’ve all seen someone yell at the TV screen to “LOOK OUT.” Parables are like this. They are stories that we have no control over and that have been laid out in front of us and we all are hearing about it from a specific author with his own twist and we have no control over the ending, whether we like it or not. It could cause us to love or hate the movie in the end.

The kingdom of God demands that we wrestle with it and struggle with it. To not want to, or to not means that we won’t hear or see what is really going on. These parables are for people that desire to know and desire to struggle and wrestle with the kingdom and what God is about. We live in a culture that worships at the throne of superficial, and Jesus refuses to give in to that. It will be frustrating, because it will provoke you to think, and it will provoke you to rethink about things you thought you knew. So I ask, are you ready to be provoked? Are you ready to be challenged and to actually dive into these stories where anything at all is possible? Where the things you have assumed are put at the mercy about a story of a guy and his son.

So why parables? Where do they come from? Well, parables as you probably aren’t surprised to learn, aren’t new with Jesus. Parables were a form of communication that rabbi’s had been using for years and years before Jesus ever stepped onto the scene. In fact, some of Jesus’ parables have roots from previous Jewish rabbis before him. In the 1st century C.E., there were two great Rabbis in Israel. They had very different understandings of religion, one considered more theologically conservative and one more theologically liberal for that day, one more “letter of the Law” and one more “Spirit of the Law.” Rabbi Shammai (50 B.C.E.- c. 30 C.E.) taught a strict adherence to every jot and tittle of Torah. Rabbi Hillel (c. 70 B.C.E.- c. 10 C.E.) taught that one should discern the meaning behind the letter and live according to intent whenever intent and letter seemed to disagree.

Many of the arguments brought to Jesus were common theological/philosophical/social disputes of the day, and much of it could have been framed as asking if Jesus agreed with the school of Shammai or the school of Hillel. It’s interesting to note that Jesus nearly always sided with the Hillel (spirit of the Law) school of reasoning (a prominent exception to this was when Jesus sided with the more conservative Shammai on the issue of whether or not divorce and remarriage was acceptable). Yet many times, instead of picking a side, he answered with a parable. (got a lot of the rabbi information from here) A story. So it’s hard to say or to pinpoint Jesus to one side. A book by John Dear does a study on the answers of Jesus, and he says that Jesus only answers directly 3 questions of around 200 of them asked. So what did he do all the other times? Well he usually used a parable. Over one-third of Jesus’ teaching is in parables. In Jewish terms they would call this agada, which means storytelling to illustrate a message. Jesus creates word pictures so that everyone around can understand what Jesus is like. The Hebrew word is mashal which basically means that it is defining what is unknown by what is known.” A mashal begins where the listener is and then pushes beyond into a new realm of discovery.

“The stories of Jewish agada inspired listeners to view God and his relationship to each individual created in the divine image in a fresh way. Agada engages the intellect but pushes beyond the mind to reach the heart and imagination. “
– Brad Young

The problem with how we’ve read parables is that we’ve given them answers and meaning and then left it at that. We have given parables titles, and many of these titles usually already embed summaries of what we think these parables mean. For instance like the parable of the prodigal son, this titles not only ignores the elder son but also summarizes the younger son’s behavior. It gives us an already definite perspective on the parable and leaves no room for a fresh meaning. In reading about these parables, almost every scholar has renamed the parable in how they are interpreting it because they don’t feel like the NIV (or any other translation or title) does the parable justice. So you may realize that we will not stick to the traditional titles because we don’t want to limit where these stories could take us.

“Story entertains, informs, involved, motivates, authenticates, and mirros existence. By creating a narrative world, stories establish an unreal, controlled universe. The author abducts us and –almost god-like – tells us what reality exists in this narrative world, what happens and why…there, to a degree we cannot do in real life, we can discern motives, keep score, know who one, and what success and failure look like. Life on the outside virtually stopsl we are taken up in the story. The storyteller is in control so that we are forced to see from new angles and so that the message cannot be easily evaded. ”
-Klyne Snodgrass

However, these stories aren’t just stories that we are going to be reading. They are parables. Parables presuppose something. I remember my first week of New Testament class and Professor Stephen Thompson asks the class what the entire coming of Jesus was all about, why was he here, what was his purpose. Hands started going up with answers about salvation, grace, to die, to live a good life. After listening to everyone, he said, while all these things are important, the central message of Jesus was proclaiming the Kingdom of God. This is what the parables are mostly doing. He takes these stories and these stories are full of meaning only because these stories mirror something greater and bigger.

“The primary stance in interpreting is the willingness to hear and respond appropriately, a point made specifically by the parable of the Sower, but even the willingness to hear froes not guarantee objectivity and right hearing. I will be the first to grant that objectivity when interpreting the parables is difficult. Parables are not lists of information they are stories, but they may not be the stories we think they are. Each much be approached and dealt with on its own grounds, not with some pre-determined view as to what parables must look like and do. Stories create worlds. By reading a story we, at least temporarily, inhabit that world. If we bring too much of ourselves into that world, we reshape it and rearrange its landscape. But if we do that, we have created a world other than what the story portrays. Further, parables mirror pieces of reality and sometimes mirror the lives and histories of their readers. They may contain a plot we have already lived. They reveal us and at the same time call us to embrace plot in order to be taken up in the plot (or, if negative, to choose another plot.) We are asked not to be objective and distant but to embody the parable’s intent.
-Klyne Snodgrass

These parables mirror the kingdom of God. One of the books we are reading for this series is called Stories of Intent, and that’s our goal in listening to these stories is to dig to figure out his intent, anything else says this book is to be rewriting Jesus’ parables. The question that we should be asking is “How did Jesus seek to change attitudes and behaviors with this parable. “ There are all sorts of things that come to the surface when we ask this question. We need to understand the culture of Jesus and who he was talking to, they need to be read in context. We need to know if Jesus is telling/re-telling a story that has already been told. We cannot read into the parables our own theology or what we think this parable is about (which we will see when we get to the parable of the talents especially).

Here are some of the things we will be doing and questions we will be asking when looking at these parables. (go through them quickly)

• Analyze each parable thoroughly, especially if it appears in more than one gospel
• Listen to the parable without presupposition about the former meaning (this could mean that we pay particular attention to people who have never heard the parable before).
• Keep in mind that parables are oral instruments in an oral culture, all these stories would have been retold, with different variations.
• If we are after the intent of Jesus, we must seek to hear a parable as Jesus’ Palestinian hearers would have heard it. (OT and Jewish metaphors, breathing the air of first century, understanding biblical culture)
• Note how each parable fits within the larger goal of the author writing the book (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and remember that they are retold because of their significance in understanding the larger story
• Do not impose real time on parable time
• Pay close attention to the rule of end stress (the most important material is at the end, for most parables this is crucial in clinching the meaning of the intent)

We need to approach these stories carefully, creatively but with the proper tools and heart. Because these stories are messed up. These stories are uncomfortable. You can’t just read the story and pull a meaning off the top of your head and apply it. These stories are the modern equivalents of those movies that you watch and feel anguish and surprise at the end because they don’t end like they should. In fact Jesus’ parables flip everything on its head. If these parables are truly telling stories about what the Kingdom of God is like, then we better look out because the Kingdom of God is going to take us for a ride. Everything that comes naturally is pushed aside as the first become last and the last become first. Are we ready?

Can we handle stories that seriously take the people that we have pushed aside and make them into heroes? I don’t just mean like feel good stories where the un-achieving guy gets the girl, but I mean stories where the pedophiles, murderers and sluts are actually the ones that are central to the story because it’s who Jesus comes to save. Can we handle that? Can we handle stories that actually make us seem as bad as these people or in as much need of grace? Can we handle stories that are going to flip on its head everything we have known and believed about relationships, money, time, sin and grace? That is what these stories do, they reverse the empire’s belief system, and as we will soon find out most of us still have very similar belief systems of that of the empire, and these stories are going to stand up right against them.

Jesus was the first world leader to inaugurate a kingdom with a heroic role for losers. He spoke to an audience raised on stories of wealthy patriarchs, strong kings, and victorious heroes. Much to their surprise, he honored instead people who have little value in the visible world: the poor and meek, the persecuted and those who mourn, social rejects, the hungry and thirsty. His stories consistently featured 'the wrong people' as heroes: the prodigal, not the responsible son; the good Samaritan, not the good Jew; Lazarus, not the rich man; the tax collector, not the Pharisee. As Charles Spurgeon expressed it, "His glory was that He laid aside His glory, and the glory of the church is when she lays aside her respectability and her dignity, and counts it to be her glory to gather together the outcasts."
-Philip Yancey

Jesus is the universalist par excellence, always making the outsider the heroes of his stories: the non-Jews appear as those with more faith and more compassion, the sinners become those who are saved, the women better than the men, and as he continually puts it, 'the last will be first'."
-Richard Rhor

Since they frequently seek to reorient thought and behavior, in keeping with Jesus’ teaching elsewhere parables often contain elements of reversal. Not all parables implement reversal, but when they do, they are among the most powerful instruments for change Jesus used. When parables cause reversal, they force unexpected decisions and associations. The tax collector is righteous, not the Pharisee; the Samaritan is neighbor, not the Jewish elite; David is the guilty party, not some terrible person anyone would condemn.”
-Klyne Snodgrass

What comes out of this I hope is that we as a community can learn to enter into these parables properly. That we start to see them and wrestle with them for what they are and we stop reading our own biases into them. I hope that we can answer the call to wrestle with these stories and that we begin to see the heart of Jesus and the Kingdom of God be revealed through them.

"The truth of the story does not lie in the principles that it supposedly embodies, but in the story itself. Truth emerges as the hearers are drawn into the narrative."
-Stanley Grenz

Parables were told to create interest, and various schemes are used to draw hearers in and compel dealing with the issues at hand….the intent of parables is to force thought, usually new and unexpected thought, so as to gain insight and bring about response. A number of parables end with the statement “Let the person who has ears to hear hear” or something similar, which is a call to move past superficial thinking, to discern, and to understand the impact of the parable.”
- Klyne Snodgrass

I hope we can be as excited to listen to these parables as Jesus’ first hearers were. I hope we can dig in deep, ask questions, read books and really try to get at what Jesus was saying. I hope you join us. Today we are going to end with an old Franciscan benediction that I hope will give us a good start into jumping into these parables.

A Franciscan Benediction:

May God bless you with discomfort,
at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,
so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger,
at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

My God bless you with tears,
to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war,
so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and turn their
pain to joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness,
to believe that you can make a difference in this world,
so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.

I showed the poster on our wall here, and finally the Misfits came and have left. These guys are old, they formed in 1977. The place was FILLED with people under 20. I know nothing of them really and didn't know a single song, but I was armed with my camera, and it was a great night. Props to the Sarnia Scene for putting on a great show and for getting me a pass to take some pictures. Here are a bunch of them and a few of my favs below.

This is the church right across the street from me. They just installed a new sign and are having a sign dedication service. I wonder though if they are allowed to use the sign before they dedicate it? I wonder what other things we can waste our time doing? Maybe taking and posting images like this one.

I've never really been a fan of voting, and so I fully understand if you are not. I incline a lot stronger to not voting than I do to voting. However, this year I've found myself a lot more caught up in the politics of everything. Rachel found this amazing summary of all the parties, Green, Liberal, Conservative, NDP and Bloc Quebecois and their stances on different issues for an easy to read quick idea of what you would be voting for if you did vote.

I think if I had something like this in previous elections, it would at least make it easier to vote.

Click here to see the Comparison Charts.

I've always enjoyed Naomi Klein and what she writes. She was recently on Colbert Report here and thought this was a great article on the current financial crisis.
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I'm just starting to read around the Jesus Manifesto site a little bit. I thought these two satire article were pretty hilarious. Hey, I care about those poor people too, and group of white men around the age of thirty challenge everything.
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Heather Yourex made a short video about our stay in Swaziland for us. She was a reporter for Global in Calgary and took off for 6 months to work with Hands at Work. You can check out her Global blog here.
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A big arts festival called Buit Blanche just finished in Toronto. A group set up Pong on the buildings using the lights. Brilliant! I think we are going next year.
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Thank-you individualistic Christianity for adding this to our catalogues.
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I am on a one month trial of a Blackberry for the month of October. I may switch over and cancel my landline and get Rachel a more permanent cell phone, but we'll see how this month goes. The Blackberry is making strides in the mobile market, and I would pick the Blackberry over the IPhone in a heart beat, mostly based on having a keyboard instead of touch screen. However, I sort of would like to try out the Google Phone, because it is the Iphone meets the Blackberry, before I make any decisions.

I spent a good chunk of time watching the Canadian debate between the political leaders. This post may be completely mis-informed and may only seem to highlight my ignorance to politics, especially in my own country but here it goes anyway. I don't like democracy. I don't find it very productive nor beneficial to progressing the way that we should. Dave pointed to a good post by Matthew good summarizing the debate and giving it a review here.

Tonight I watched while four leaders all gained up on the one leader that was in charge. They ripped into almost every policy and action that his government took. They called him ignorant, stupid and said his actions were unhealthy. Most of the time in the debate was spent trying to convince the viewer (me) not that a specific party was better than another but rather that the party in charge shouldn't be there anymore. What ends up happening is that I am forced to choose who debates the best and who I agree with the most.

I don't really understand this very much. There is no sense of community or team amongst each of the leaders arguing. None of them are really there to support each other in hopes our nation will get better rather make all the right arguments and say all the write things to convince everyone else will remove one from power and replace them with another. It's such a power grab (or hold on to) from every party. I full understand and sympathize with the conversations that are happening about not voting.

I can appreciate a good debate like the rest of them, but I don't understand it when everyone is more concerned about proving failures rather than working to what's right. Our country can have different parties in power over and over again and we are still going to fight and still spend much of our time pulling one party out while putting on party in with another party hanging in behind ready for a sneak attack.

The debate last night aside, whether we like it or not, democracy, like communism is based (or at least ends up at) on who's in charge and how they use their power. Power is at the heart of them both now in a realistic world. There has got to be a better system out there to run a country than to have different powerful parties all competing for spots to make decisions. Anyone have any ideas ;)

This all is just showing me more and more that change can't come from the top. Change can't come from those who want power. Change can't come from those that think they deserve power. Change can't come in forms of systems where ideals replace faces. This is what has been happening though. Instead, change needs to come from real people living real lives and offering a bigger picture for people to be part of. Fancy words and persuasive arguments convince me of nothing. When I see someone make a decision for the sake of someone else though and not themselves, then you got me thinking. When I see someone make a decision that's harder because they know its right, I know that I'm on the right track.

To me, democracy is nothing more than a system to satisfy our desire for a king that will take all the blame and be responsible for all our individual decisions. At the core of who we are we really believe that the government is our religion. If we can change the government to function the way we believe than we’ll be ok. How easy would it be if the government believed exactly what I did? So we all vote trying to get our own way to make our own lives easier. If the government is providing for the poor, then that means I don’t have to.

Lately, I feel that if I’m going to benefit from democracy than it will be because democracy gives me the freedom to not care or be affected by who’s in power. I can still live the way that I choose to live no matter who is oppressing me or supporting me. Can we even under the oppression of opposing beliefs live out our calling? I certainly hope so, cause if not we better be prepared to fall on our sword for the sake of some political party of whose leader we’ve never met.

Do you get way too many telemarketers calling your house? I don't, but I know both mine and Rachel's parents get at least a couple of a day. The Canadian government actually stepped up on this one and made an opt-out website so you can get out of all telemarketers lists (besides a few exceptions). Remove your number now, it takes 10 seconds. We obviously all want off these lists, thousands have already done it in the last few days and overwhelmed their system.
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Here is a little secret. Tickets are available for the Evolving Church Conference as of today. We haven't told anyone yet though. We expect they are going to go fast this year, so you'll want to get them sooner than later if you are planning on coming. So I'll give you a chance to get your tickets ahead of time before we make it public.
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A couple from theStory started up an initiative to give up something this month and give whatever you would save to the Inn of the Good Shepherd. My attempts will be gasoline (besides the already booked things I am going to) and grocery stores (to try and make myself go to only the farmers market). We'll see how it goes.
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Another couple from theStory have started up catering raw vegan lunches twice a week. For $12 you can pick up a packed up lunch (in a biodegradable box) on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I snuck some tastes of their cabbage spring rolls last weekend and this week I had lasagna on Tues and it was awesome! Go to their website for more details.
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I put a Green sign on my lawn for this election. Partly because I really like Elizabeth May, partly because I believe in their cause, and partly because if I'm going to vote, I don't think I could vote for anyone else.
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Cool play on words and cool initiative.
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This was the best trailer I've ever seen. Talk about grabbing my attention. It makes me completely sick though.
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As usual I have no idea what Al's post was about, however there is a picture of them playing settlers (or at least they are playing a game and the post is called settlers), which reminds me that just yesterday I picked up the new extension for the game called Traders and Barbarians and look forward to playing it with everyone here and abroad like we do.
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I wrote this post a while back on who the poor is, and Dan wrote this post this month. Usually he can explain things so much better than I can, and almost always I feel like he is inside my head taking how I feel and giving it some meat and making it sound better and then taking it to the level that I was too scared to take it but then when it's over it still feels right.