Disqus - Latest Comments for Richard_Lopez

Re: The Discipleship Struggle

Richard_Lopez — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 11:27:41 -0000

Frank,

Thanks for the post. It's up bro!

Happy New Year!

Re: The Discipleship Struggle

Richard_Lopez — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 19:27:27 -0000

James,

If you want help to experience more freedom from the modern mindset, I would very much enjoy walking along side with you.

Thank you for daring to continue to reason this out! Don't stop the dialogue regardless of how difficult this may become for all of us as we all continue to move forward meeting with God through this major transition that is ahead.

Blessings to you brother.

Re: The Discipleship Struggle

Richard_Lopez — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 15:56:55 -0000

Dear Emergent Nazarenes,

Yesterday I posted a sincere apology to Gene and Jeff and today I notice that it has been removed. This selective maneuvering is totally a modern-move. Is this blog-huddle really trying to embrace post-modern relevance?...Well, I see that we are, once again, caught in our tendency to control and restrict information out of our own fears and our compulsion for self-preservation. This is how the modern era distorts and tempts us to insert our agenda into the message of freedom perverting its intention to offer grace and compassion. Didn’t we all struggle with the Wesleyan via-media position at some point?

Emergent awareness is not ideally represented by utilizing these same modern methods that have made the church powerless in today’s society. We need to be able to be free from our fears and even risk our own reputation for the sake of others to come to the reality of knowing Christ in this day and age.

Today I received this e-mail from James:

“Thanks for your compassionate response to "Gene and Jeff", as you probably can see I tried to do the same just yesterday right before you.

Here is my concern though, I am not convinced that Gene and Jeff are for real. To be honest the comment seems fake, perhaps written by someone trying to entrap people into saying something that would make people angry on one side of this issue or the other. I don't want us to be drawn into these kinds of things.

I suspect the comment for several reasons. First, because they talked about getting a district license. This is an insider term, yet the email presents themselves as outsiders. Secondly, most homosexuals that claim a Christian faith I have encountered would not likely participate in the gay pride parade because it does not necessarily promote monogamous gay relationships. I suspect that comment is really from a really right leaning Nazarene trying to bait those of us our blog to see how we would respond to his scenario.

Of course, I did leave room for being wrong and I wanted to respond compassionately. I would like to just wait and see if this person responds again and see if we can get a better idea if they are for real before we give the comment to much attention.

Thanks again Richard for your compassionate response. I was worried that the comment would have drummed up hate speech. This would be tragic if the comments are genuine, and even if they are fake.”

James, while I appreciate your sincere concerns, I believe this tone of voice still replicates the theological sinking that occurs from yielding to the matrix of modern thought. Your e-mail represents to me a reaction of self-preservation lurching to save the face of the church from further embarrassment. The real concern for "hate speech" needs to be turned inward of which our American contingent of the church is guilty over all.

We must leave the security of the church in God’s hands and get back to the book of Acts and risk all; an unrestrained ransoming of our own lives, fears and reputation, thus casting the genuine mission and vision of Christ’s freedom into society.

What did Jesus risk for us? What scandal was erupted by his life? The scandal of the modern church is mostly damage control and does not share in the same suffering or privilege of outrage that Jesus created when he was sentenced to die and that, death by a cross.

Whether Gene and Jeff’s issue is fake or not, our response to this issue, regretfully, remains the same. Being on the outer rim of modernism means that we must go beyond our unflattering skill of typical modern-understanding and break free from our casual pretense of “hate the sin, love the sinner” tolerance. Our act of listening must be risky, even to the end of our reputations, thus getting out-of-the-way in order that the love of Christ may flood in.

Emergent Nazarenes Website Limits Forum

You can read this again here if need be at.....

http://safe4space.wordpress...

Re: The Discipleship Struggle

Richard_Lopez — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 16:29:51 -0000

Actually, I am grateful to serve in a church community that has several ministries and recovery outreaches that are focused to help our local populations. At first it may seem that the tone of my vision may appear to be one of past hurts and be symptomatic of tragic experiences received from the church machine. And yes, I’m positive that we all have our Christian horror stories, and yes, there are some bright lights out there establishing their presence to truly represent the message of love and enduring movements of Christ-like discipleship.

However, there is indeed a great denial that we are protecting that is paralyzing our efforts to practice love and to be the living message of Jesus that we are called to portray in our society.

A greater portion of the American evangelical church, while erecting a fashionable image of Jesus, has moved into and is vigorously pursuing a skillful plane of superiority and pride that has caused us to become numb to our present denial that is hypnotizing us from knowing our own error.

You had mentioned in an earlier post, “I would think that real discipleship would be messy and hard and different based on what contexts it was happening…”

Is it really? I see the New Testament model of discipleship as energizing, informative and exciting…transforming!

Where I see the “messy and hard” is being more related to the wasteland of souls that have been run-over by the gospel of political ideology; the post-modern-day modern-evangelical church (eeek!) has now adopted a convenient hypocrisy as the truth of the day. We have heard many times before in the last few decades, this fact, as an example, that the most racist day of the week is Sunday. Why must this still be a reality (among others) in our contemporary Christian witness?

Most of my frustration lies with seeing our church-corporations turn their backs on the “come as you are” virtue while re-traumatizing vulnerable people walking into our front doors who come to us for help, and then, we insist they receive a list of do’s and don’ts if they want to look like us….yuck!

We are more for what we’re against which evidently exposes our inner fears; we actually see the glass as half empty and we cave-in to a self-preservation mode of denial, and demonstrate for all, the spirit of the accuser at all others who are not like us. The poor media-report of who we are across the spectrum of communities IS the image we represent because it is the loudest voice/image we promote in the public forum. We need to take notice and not hide in our quick-n-easy excuses that are cloaked in church-ianity.

Most of the churches that we designate among ourselves as “wonderful” are mostly frozen in omission and out-of-fear (again) we stand aside. Our convenient exceptions allow us to continue to destroy the hurting souls around us and through our non-action we perpetuate our error by being silent.

Just this morning, I was reading Galatians 5 with my daughter and I am so glad that Paul did not pull his punches regarding the politics of the church. His language and tone is vibrant and intentionally pointed to pinpoint, identify and offer crucial guidance to help keep us on-track. Trading warm-fuzzies with one another in the post-modern era is going to drift us further deep into the quicksand of denial. Who will stand-up and call the church back into the wrestling match of truth and love?

Re: The Discipleship Struggle

Richard_Lopez — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 14:12:33 -0000

When I said, “fully invested, hard-hearted...,” I was actually being nice. I think we have left the true spirit of discipleship long ago and have traded this process for a lie of ideology that switches one kind of slavery for another. Peter and Paul have both made numerous statements to the church that repeatedly shock our nervous system to keep us from drifting astray into a powerless form of Christianity, that spirit that Jesus warned us about.

Not only are we fully invested but we have sold our souls to the spirit of the Sanhedrin to sweetly promote a cruel legalism here in America; a dark shadow of religion complete with a creative series of new looks, as we’re pursuing awesome website designs, and we offer convenient Sunday services, sporting multimedia wonder shows that are borne from our yearly church-luxury staff retreats.

Instead of practicing and/or sacrificing our waking moments for the sake of mentorship and pouring our lives into deep discipleship, we’re increasing our pastoral salaries in the church, buying nice houses and then keeping the rank and file in-line with the oracles of the denomination and then dispatching the masses for political warfare.

In our own local communities there are the marginalized, the homeless and the destitute that need advocates (usable representatives of Christ) who are touching and serving the least-of-these and the who-so-ever(s) of our neighborhoods. These spaces are ideal training grounds for seasons of discipleship and mentoring. Instead, we have hijacked this holy process of discipleship in order to create neat forgeries and even then, entire kingdoms of ideology that neither carries the heart of God, nor has the compassion to open our hearts for those unwanted souls of our society that Christ died for.

Re: Advent and "End Times"

Richard_Lopez — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 22:36:20 -0000

John 15:25

“Interesting - they have verified the truth of their own Scriptures where it is written, 'They hated me for no good reason.'”

It is interesting that much of contemporary “end-times” rhetoric focuses on what society will look like in terms of sin; the usual accusations or warnings of false doctrine, coupled with media-wide portions of blatant and open practices of debauchery, blanket our traditional dialogue with regard to how we ought to identify these signs to come from up our “in-the-know” watchtower. Yet Jesus directed us to point our eyes specifically to the organized religious establishment “so that when the time comes” we will not be led astray.

“Led astray”….eh?

While living here in the same town where, government rule, fanatical conservatism and humanistic ideology seem to all converge on a regular basis, Olympia, Washington sure has its banners of end-times rhetoric.

If you have seen recently from the supremely delightful FOX news authority on balance and righteousness, the Olympia Capitol has once again contributed to ignite the rank and file conservative in their two-step maneuver of fear-casting and gang assembling, all in the name of holiday cheer and the Prince of Peace. This time it is the state’s “negligence” and/or good practice of actually and appropriately interpreting our First Amendment of Freedom of Speech by giving atheists equal time on the capitol campus next to the seasonal nativity scene that has incited the religious establishment’s tantrum.

In the joyous occasion of the Christmas Spirit, we have this kind response from a very prominent clergyperson from Seattle saying, and I quote the Rev. Ken Hutcherson accusing the Governor Gregoire, “You have led the state of Washington to be the armpit of America. And I'm afraid that our governor is the one adding the offensive odor to the armpit…”

Oh, how wonderful it is to have our sanctified leadership of the Christian church respond with such warm-hearted good tidings.

Perhaps we need to get back to the end-times narrative of what being led astray is really about: legalism. There is much more warning about being led astray by the false-Christ of legalism in the New Testament than there is about “sinful behavior.” Indeed, we have a well-journeyed practice to overlook what Jesus was really warning us about regarding these signs and evidently, who were really the ones bearing the bad fruit of the end-times.

Regardless of how high our advanced skillfulness for aggressive apologetics becomes, there is much more warning to us in the end-times to be free from the doctrine of pride and hate within the church walls than the call to have an answer for your faith by destroying our neighbor’s social environment with crafty proof-texting. However, because we’re really good at finding ways to avoid this problem of ours by attacking our neighbors, we do it because we can. Merry Christmas!

So which of us might truly carry the markers of discernment in the DNA matrix of warnings, being watchful and alert of our current landscape?

Perhaps…just perhaps…this holiday season we can celebrate the foretold arrival of the Wonderful Counselor by being counselors of peace instead of bowing down to worship a king of war who is fashioned by our own political ideology.

John 16:1-4

"All this I have told you so that you will not go astray. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. I have told you this, so that when the time comes you will remember that I warned you…”