we're in this together

"Get yourself some haverim." What in the world does that mean? Haverim is the Hebrew words which is plural for haver, which means a "friend". Havruta is a gathering of students to study Scripture, or the Torah. This is an interactive gathering divided up into various discussions over the text of Scripture. Sometimes vigorous debate going on as to the meaning and application of the text to life. Challenging questions to think and wrestle through the text are welcomed and encouraged.

Enter our western individualism mindset where my interpretation is as good as yours. Out of that comes some dubious interpretations, not to mention all the factions even within single groups. Though in the postmodern influence of today the differences don't matter. But sometimes they do. We see this when we understand the background and setting in Jesus' day, and his differences and confrontations with religious leaders of his day such as the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Zealots. Jesus amazed the religious leaders in the Temple at the age of twelve with his questions and understanding. And he attracted the crowds with his teaching and authority, even as he ended up repelling them and many of his disciples over his hard teachings which he taught were a fulfillment of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament.

I believe God has been working on me lately to take the time and make the sacrifice to interact more with other believers in gatherings. This is already built into my schedule once a week in a half hour of "devotions" at work, in which we are now working through the book of Ecclesiastes. In this is not only the need to grapple with the text of Scripture, but to grapple with it in terms of our lives, whether or not we're really beginning by grace to live it out. The haver gather in the havruta as disciples. They learn from their Rabbi, or Master Teacher, and then they venture to work out together how that applies to life. This suggests to me that our following of Jesus is to be worked out both in us individually seeking a close relationship and walk with Jesus, and seeking to do so together with others.

And we are to identify with each other in all of life. That includes past and future generations, but where the rubber may meet the road for us, the people we are around and know now. So that we see ourselves in participation with others in some way, at least by being able to identify with them, rather than seeing ourselves as a cut above them, which of course is not really the case.

And there is the need for transparency. Only as we are honest with others about our own struggles and God helping us through them, will they have any hope that God can help them, also. This is about being real and about life. And life in Jesus is meant to be lived out in community with others. And with all our differences, we're to work on the meaning and application of Scripture together. Do we believe we're all in this together, or is it each person for themself?

Do I really believe God wants to work in my life through others? Do I believe that we believers are in this together, each of us having our part? Do I listen well to the stories of how God has worked in their lives? Am I wisely transparent about who I really am and my own struggles? Do I share my own testimony of God's working?

More wisdom than briefly mentioned above is to be found in this chapter and book, Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform Your Faith, by Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg, chapter 5, "Get Yourself Some Haverim." Next week chapter 6, "Rabbi, Teach Us to Pray."

a better name for this blog?

When I first started this blog, I entitled it, "the community of Jesus." Later I changed it to "the Jesus community, " and then simply to "Jesus community." I just don't find this an apt title for this blog anymore, at least in one important way. But I just haven't come up with a name to replace it.

"Jesus community" ideally for me means that there is blog interaction in a way that shares our lives, and what God is doing in them, insofar as this media can do that. In that sense this is certainly not happening. I've been too tired to do blogging justice, and for hours during a day I have no access to a computer. Of course this involves visiting each other's blogs, not just interaction on one blog.

I still like the title in that it represents for me something of what is central to us in Jesus and in our mission in this world. It's a mission centered in Jesus and lived out in community. So with that in mind, I can still happily keep the title, while being open to a better one.

What might Jesus community mean to you? How do you live it out? Or maybe better put, how is God moving you along that path over the months and years?

As the fine, helpful poem by Marcus Goodyear, "Stumbling out of Heresy", found here, points out, God's work takes time, indeed a lifetime.

blogging and community

A good post on blogging. Definitely worth your read, and see the comments.

Blogging has me in a kind of quandary. I like it, and I dislike it (love and hate, too strong).

Real community is both what we all need in Jesus, and what the world needs to see from us. It's to be a community not turned in on itself, a missional community, like Jesus welcoming all the outsiders in. Allowing for the fact that conversion normally (and probably always, even if we can't see it) involves a process.

Back to blogging. I guess I'm in kind of a mini-identity crisis, and naturally that involves everything, including my blogging. I'm just not sure what I'm going to do, or how it matters. Having my own blog benefits me in thinking through some thoughts, sharing with others from what God is teaching me, and in having an outlet for writing. If there are any readers, and among them some commenters, that's a bonus. I am thankful for each of you. I do have at least a couple commitments, so I will fulfill them through this blog.

But I'm wondering if I haven't been too taken up with friendships online, to the neglect of friendships in my face to face, everyday world.

But go to the link, above. A most interesting read.

community's place in Jesus

I am enjoying and being edified in reading Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus: How the Jewishness of Jesus Can Transform Your Faith, written by Ann Spangler and Lois Tverberg who both live in our area (I will review it later). I was hit yesterday by a number of things, but especially by the Jewish insistence, carried on in Jesus' day and continued to this day, that the best study of Scripture is done in group, communal settings. And how, while solitude does have its place, and an important one, community should be the normal rule of life.

Like the authors point out, it's in community that we learn to love and get the rough edges knocked off.

I'm finding this book to be quite an insightful read, and I look forward to reviewing it later. Ann and Lois do a first rate job of helping us back to Jesus' time with a view of how to better read Scripture, and better understand God's call to our lives in Jesus. Written quite clearly, and no fluff.

But back to community. I have studied in seminary, and like to read at least some scholarly (and at times, difficult) books, along with books written for the entire church. But I've noticed time and again how God has spoken to me and to us in a group setting through the words of just any of God's people over a Bible passage, or with regard to God's working in our lives. Sometimes I share, and I think I'm sharing too much. But there have been times when I was mute, or largely so, and have been blessed in so being.

I too have been a part of an individualistic culture, and there's nothing I like more in an evening than being with my wife in the living room while we both read books with some classical music playing softly in the background. This thought was a good, even if a bit jolting reminder to me that I need to be open to what God wants to say and do as I rub shoulders with others in community. We need to think of ourselves as those in community in Jesus, not as individuals in Jesus who happen to engage in community activities here and there.

What would you like to add to this?

commitment

Related to the recent posts on repentance is the importance of commitment. During Lent these are good things to be considering and pondering in an inventory of our lives before God. 

True commitment has a power from God if it is truly a commitment to God. Related to this is the Biblical truth of covenant. Covenant in Scripture starts with God, but it needs to be reciprocated. In other words, returned to God. Of course this is all of grace, a gift from God, something we wouldn't do on our own. But since God takes the intiative in grace, I take it that we can respond in faith. Of course there is mystery in this. 

But to get back to the point I want to make, commitment if made sincerely to God has a power in God. This is a commitment that like repentance is of little if any value at all, if after it is made it is not lived out. One has to seek to live it out by grace day after day.

Within a commitment is an entrusting of oneself to God through Christ by the Spirit. This is intensely personal, but must be lived out in community. God gives us community in Jesus in order to help us live this out. This is where that commitment is tested (beginning at home, by the way) and in a true sense maintained, through ongoing confession of sin, and accountability, as well as sharing our faith in each of our unique, gifted ways, to each other. 

Of course commitment looks beyond one's own benefit, to following Christ in mission in this world. Loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves is at the heart of all of this.

This was at the forefront of my thinking and praying yesterday. Life goes on for all of us. We need to ask ourselves about our commitment to God. Is is just one to get us through this life into the next? Or is it truly a commitment by grace everyday to really seek to follow Christ in everything? To do so in community and for mission to the world?

What would you like to say here?

saved into a community

When we are converted to Christ, we become members not only of Christ, but of his body the church. Our experience from Christ is not only in terms of our own relationship to God, but it comes as well, through our relationship with others. As Byard taught us yesterday, salvation while personal is not a private affair. But it is into relationships in Christ. Into a body, a supernatural family. And in that family we begin to experience Christ's care through and to us from others. So that hurts suffered in our natural families can begin to be healed from this family.

And this community is not made up of people we'd naturally hang out with. Or with those who agree with us in everything. God puts unlikely people together in the body, people we often are not comfortable with. The oneness we have is in Christ and by the Spirit, not over a common, club-like kind of existence and fellowship. One that is part of a new fellowship found in God through Christ by the Spirit.

I find this week after week in our church gathering. Yesterday I went largely out of duty, and found the testimony time (a different service) as well as the time in God's word in the class referred to, afterward, just what I needed. Christ was present with us, and was touching us through others and our time there.

To these few scattered thoughts, what might you like to add?

For Better, For Worse: 5 Ways Blogging Changed My Life

L.L. Barkat tagged me with a meme she invented herself. Here are the rules which she herself cheerfully broke:

1. Write about 5 specific ways blogging has affected you, either positively or negatively.
2. link back to the person who tagged you
3. link back to this parent post (L.L. Barkat is not so much interested in generating links, but rather in tracking the meme so she can perhaps do a summary post later on that looks at patterns and interesting discoveries.)
4. tag a few friends or five, or none at all
5. post these rules— or just have fun breaking them

How blogging has changed me:
1. Through Scot McKnight's blog, Jesus Creed, I have been challenged theologically both in mind and life. I found his blog and found some friends through it. But especially his writing and my participation on that blog were teeth cutting for me in learning the art of blogging. Allan R. Bevere, himself a pastor, professor and writer, has been a big encouragement to me, and his blog is a great one, as well.

2. Rusty Peterman urged me to consider starting my own blog. I pondered that and then I think to my surprise, began.

3. I can't recall exactly how I met everyone in the blogging world, but it was primarily through connections. So I can't recall how I met L.L. Barkat, except my guess is that she found me over at Jesus Creed, came over to my blog, and began dropping comments there, especially it seems (according to my memory) when no one else was at least on that particular post. So I began going to her blog and found it intriguing- she is quite creative and good with words, but oddly enough, for the longest time, I thought she was a man! I think it was something of a shock when I learned that that is not the case! I've been blogging through her book- ponderously in the eyes of readers, I'm afraid, but I do think through that, the book has gained at least a couple of readers. It has been a great book for me to work through- wonderful writing and challenging in its application to life, L.L. sharing continually from her own story and life.

4. By and by, and maybe through L.L., I met Halfmom, AKA, Susan. I found her blog intriguing, and good in exalting the sovereignty of God in our lives and how we can trust him. And she, being a scientist wrote in an intriguing way. She also was painfully vulnerable in being open about her life both on her blog, and as I recall on other blogs. What she said connected well with me and my own struggle ongoing for years. And finding out she is a counselor I believe beforehand, I emailed her and shared my own story. She has helped me immensely through her gift, and God has done and is doing a work which only God can do. So this has certainly been a life-changer for me. And Deb and I are now friends with her, though we haven't yet met in person.

5. I've made other new friends, and continue to do so. I like the balance between fellowship and learning. I'm not only into thinking through God's truth in Jesus for life, but wanting to do so with others, and getting to know others. Generally, I think guys seem to be more into sharing truth as they see it, while gals seem to be more into sharing relationship- with truth in that. Not to say I blog with Christian bloggers only, because not all the blogs on my sidelinks belong to Christians. I like a balance between sharing our lives and truth in Jesus with each other and the world. And simply getting to know others through their blogs.

6. Okay, especially early on I spent too much time blogging. But that was better than the one NFL football season I spent playing fantasy football, and I put alot of effort in that and made it to the championship game which I lost (my recollection is that it was the final championship game, though it may have been the championship game in my league; my memory sometime flatters me, unfortunately). But still, though more to my liking (though fantasy football is amazingly fun, at least it was for me that one season), I've learned to cut back. Reading and thinking through words is a big part of who I am, and in a pastoral way trying to be responsible theologically. Now Deb is reading my blog and likes what I do, and is helping me towards better balance in it, and in life, I think. :)

7. I have to end on a good note. Lately I've thought about pulling the plug on my blog, or curtailing it. I tend to do only what I do most everyday, barring Sundays. But it occurred to me, especially through this post over at Not Ashamed, that this is kind of a spiritual discipline for me. I have thought of that before, but being reminded of Bonhoeffer's thoughts on prayer in private and in community in a disciplined manner, helped me see that this is the closest I come to that kind of experience, at least for the most part.

Now I will tag some friends, and this won't be easy because I could tag alot more. But here goes, in alphabetical order:
Allan R. Bevere
Andrew Hall
Bill Williams
Crowm
Every Square Inch
Halfmom, AKA, Susan
Nancy
Preacherman