Monday, November 09, 2009

Missional Monday: Verge, LA

I'll be heading out to LA this Friday for Verge, LA: where the next BIG idea meets UNconference. If you are near by you should check it out.

DETAILS:

DATE
Friday, November 13th – 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Saturday, November 14th – 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

PLACE
The Fountain Room

HOST
The Ecclesia Network

COST
Free

RSVP
Please RSVP to the event on Facebook, as we need an accurate estimate for lunch on Saturday.

EXPLANATION
We will be thinking imaginatively about the future of the church with others in an open-source gift economy way. The next BIG idea is about giving time to interact about innovative ways to partner with God in the renewal of all things. Unconference is about freely sharing creative ideas with one another without putting anyone on a pedestal. It is more participant oriented than personality driven, which is why there will be no lists of speakers. There is also no cost, because people share their gifts and knowledge freely.

TOPIC
Within a 24-hour period there will be twenty 14-minute presentations by 18 – 20 different speakers from 18 – 20 different churches on innovative ways to think and live missionally. Some of the missional themes that people may talk about include:

Colonialism and Mission
Leadership and Mission
Worship and Mission
Strategy and Mission
Sabbath and Mission
Incarnation and Mission
Prophetic Ministry and Mission
Unity and Mission
Social Justice and Mission
Anthropology and Mission
Jesus and Mission
Community and Mission
Hospitality and Mission
Spiritual Leadership and Mission
Spaces and Mission
Neighborhood and Mission
Economics and Mission
Pacifism and Mission

In addition, we will have interactive times with those who share as well as informal conversation at different venues around Hollywood.

Verge LA 2009 Smaller

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

The Sounds of Silence

There are at least two levels of silence, if not many more: the silence after the audible sounds have left, and the silence after the accusers and justifiers have left.

The first is just getting to a place or a space, of solitude, of quiet, of silence. This is where physical, or audible silence, or at least something close enough to it to give the mind room to listen. Only utter silence works if I have ear plugs in, because mere stillness still has creaking floors, stepping cats, or distance cars to distract (they actually startle me, which is worse). Often I just use a fan or something that lightly covers over those other noices, something consistant and non-discript. But this is all merely technique preparing for silence by getting rid of the exterior sounds.

The second level of silence I often do not achieve. This is occurs when all the sounds of the accusers and justifiers have left my mind and my soul. Some struggle more with silencing the accurser, other the justifiers. The accusers all the thoughts and memories of what has gone wrong in a day or week, or last five minutes, and the recounting of your responsibility, of your guilt, of your shame within those moments. These voices are infinitely varied for each person because of our different families and contexts. The voices might accuse about failing to love someone, or being responsible for someone else’s failure, or you being the cause of relational problems, or you not raising your children right way, or you saying something just like your mother. It could almost be anything, and often is everything you have done, said, or left undone or unsaid. These voices often take on the persona of someone else, or God, a parent, sibling, spouce, friend, of some other authority in your life, shifting between these persons depending on the situation or infaction. The accuser slips into silence and proclaims that you are unworthy and unacceptible.

The voice of the justifier is usually given your own voice. It is you trying to explain, argue, convince others that you are right about something, that you didn’t mess it up, that they are the ones who don’t understand, that they are the ones in sin and causing all the problems. This is the voice of self-justification, or self-satisfaction before others, knowing that you are superior, but needing to tell yourself again just so that you feel better about yourself and your situation, about your effort, about your life. The justifier replays that past argument at work, and changes it so you come out looking good. It anticipates that future conversation you need to have with a friend about how they were wrong to treat you so poorly and how it offended you. The justifier mulls over a perceived social slighting by another, and dreams about how it might be reciprocated. In all these ways the justifer slips into the silence and proclaims that you are essentially right and good.

But in a sense, both the accuse and the justifer are addictions which we hardly know about until we enter silence. They are manifestations that we are addicted to ourselves, either in condemnig ourselve or approving of ourselves. And don’t be fooled, while it might seem transparent that self-justification is of course odious for Christians, self-loathing is equally as bad. While the former trusts ourselves for approval, the latter does not trust God in his approval of us.

But in any case, passing into the second level of silence is to silence these voices, which is a mental struggle all its own. It is here amid the warring voices heard most clearly in silence that we can turn toward the grace of God, the approval of God, the truth of God spoken in Christ. And this voice of Christ is only heard after the sounds of silence have ceased.