For those who think we who see Jesus moving in incredible ways beyond the traditional congregational model must have had a ‘really bad church experience’, read this. I got this email last week from someone who is struggling with the system in the midst of great success within it. I disguised a few of the details so as not to give him away. Except for the pay, this is how I felt even when I was trying hard to make that model work—

My life is full and wonderful. I have everything I have ever wanted. I have the job that I have always wanted. I am an associate pastor in a Midwest mega-church. I oversee all education, small groups, women’s and men’s ministry, and new member involvement. This particular church is ranked among the 50 most influential churches in America by the recent rating gurus. In my particular denomination I have reached the pinnacle for my calling (since I don’t want to be a Sr. pastor). I make more money than I ever thought possible in ministry and I’m not yet 35 years old.

To professional ministers or clergy in the institutional church, I have it all…seemingly unlimited resources, prestige, state of the art facilities, big numbers, etc. There is only one problem: I don’t see church the way I used to see church. God has shown me that we have the “church” that we built and not necessarily the church Jesus builds (not that there isn’t a little overlap if you know what I mean).

I am having huge issues of conscience and I need to talk to someone. I have tried to broach the subject with others only to be told that I am crazy for even thinking these things.

I spoke with this brother last week and appreciate fully the dilemma he is in. He loves what he does and enjoys the financial security, but in seeing what the system does to people he is now caught between the lives he can touch there and what else God might ask him to do. My heart goes out to him, but am confident that God will make the way clear.

I love it when people start to respect their conscience even beyond their perception of self-interest. The system of religious obligation doesn’t just chew up those it exploits or abuses; it chews up most those who find themselves successful in it.

When this kind of revelation comes, I encourage people to embrace it, not to retreat to the comfort of their own self-interest. Even if you don’t know what to do yet, holding the tension of a conflicted conscience in the presence of Jesus will allow him to keep transforming you. Embrace the unsettledness instead of pushing it away in fear and you will come to know whether Jesus wants you to remain, still loving those who are there, or whether he has a freer path ahead for you.

I don’t know how you fared last night. I was exhasted from a recent trip and not real excited about having our doorbell ring all night with trick or treaters from the neighborhood. But we put our game faces on and passed out candy anyway as we greeted the scads of kids that came to our door.

Then this morning, Christopher from the Portland, Oregon area, sent me a wonderful story of his Haloween. He’s a listener of The God Journey podcasts, and wanted to share how God was helping him think outside his boxes. I know this isn’t everyone’s answer for the day, but I sure see Jesus’ voice and grace evident as this story unfolds. It renewed my heart in the ways he works as we simply respond to the nudges on our heart…

Since it was your book (the Jake story) that has helped my wife and I to embrace the liberating truth that God speaks to us individually rather than just within the framework of the system, I wanted to share this amazing story with you about our experience last night. I’ll call it reverse trick or treating.

Historically, we’ve always felt that as Christians, we shouldn’t participate in Halloween in any way. Most people in our former fellowship were adamantly opposed to it. In the past, we usually would either go to a church alternative (where our kids would receive candy and have fun), orturn off all our lights and retreat to some room in the back of the house for a quiet evening.

Last night however, I felt really convicted when I came home from work, shut my garage door and turned out the lights while there were kids trick or treating just one house away. I felt like I was turning my back on them.

As I sat there for a moment, I asked the Lord “What do you want me to do?” And I felt like he was saying to me “Did I ever ask you to completely avoid others on this night?”.

So I went and told my wife that I’d rather not be hostages in our own house and that we should go ahead and turn on the porch lights and let them come. Her first response was that we didn’t have anything to hand out. When I mentioned that our own kids have an abundance of candy in their own stock from previous birthdays and holidays, we both quickly discounted it as a bad idea to take that from our kids and give it to others’. However, my five year old (who was busy peeking out the window at all the other kids), overheard me and became excited at the idea of giving other kids his candy. Although we were shocked (he treasures his candy), we decided to let him hand it out.

As kids came to our door (some of them teenagers with deeper voices than mine), they were greeted by my two kids (ages 2 and 5) eagerly serving them “treats” and having fun doing it. Some of the kids had puzzled looks on their faces and some of them were clearly touched by it (I could tell by the adoring “oohs”).

There was a concern about whether we had enough or not, but I told my son that if God wants us to give out candy, He’ll provide enough. Not only did we have enough before the night was over, but our neighbor across the street came over with her bowl of candy to give some to our kids. I thought it was an awesome lesson to them of God’s provision in a language they could understand (candy)!

I’ve never seen him so excited to serve others and give away his own things before. It was a great opportunity to talk about kindness as a fruit of the Spirit and the joy of giving that God puts in our heart. I probably didn’t even need to explain it*he was experiencing it!

The lesson for me was that God is big enough to reveal Himself even on a day that doesn’t bring glory to His name. It’s amazing how much easier it is to hear His still small voice when there’s not the constant mooing of sacred cows in my head. I’m enjoying listening to your podcasts. Thank you, and keep up the good work.

As I have traveled around New England these past two weeks, one thought keeps vibrating in my brain with ever-increasing conviction.

Not since the Middle Ages has the practice of Christianity as a religion been more at odds with what it means to live simply and freely in the life of Jesus.

That conclusion comes with no small taste of sorrow because so many people, in and out of the faith, have no idea that is so. What they call Christianity today, and what some toil in with such passion, bears little resemblence to the faith that was once delivered to the saints by Jesus himself.

But in this I also take great hope: The Spirit is on the move in so many places and people to once again let the life of Jesus be known in the earth. May it grow even greater!

On the last blog I made some comments about a book I’ve just finished reading titled Chasing Francis . I’ve appreciated what others added to that discussion about the emergent conversation. And I for one would be thrilled to find out I’m misunderstanding that conversation and that the ever-present Jesus is more at the center of it than I can see and it is not just a recreation of another system.

Be that as it may, I wanted to share something from that book that I thought was incredibly incisive. The author refers to Simon Tugwell as the source of this perspective of difference between the heart of a disciple and one schooled in religion.

The first is the radically, unprotected heart:

“It’s to live dangerously open, revealing all that we genuinely are, and receiving all the pain and sorrow the world will give back in return. It’s to be real because we know the Real.â€

The second is the defended heart:

“It’s a guarded and suspicious spirit that’s closed to the world. It sees everything and everyone as a potential threat, an enemy waiting to attack. It shields itself from the world.â€

I love that contrast. I think Jesus wants to transform us to the radically, unprotected heart so that we can live authentically and freely in the world. The flesh and religion seem to produce a defended heart that tries to protect ourselves at all cost. But as people become more transformed in their relationship with Jesus the radically, unprotected heart emerges with such grace and beauty and profound impact on those lost in the world.

Please don’t think you can choose the first over the second. You can’t. I don’t want anyone to think that an unprotected heart is how we’re supposed to act. It isn’t It is the fruit of Jesus changing us on the inside that frees us to live more like him in the world. The radically, unprotected heart is the fruit living in him until we know with increasing certainty that we are safer in him than we are protecting ourselves. I want more and more to know the dangerous beauty of living in the world with an unprotected heart, because of my certainty that it is in his hands every day that I live.

A couple of days ago, I quoted from Chasing Francis, book I’ve just finished reading. It came highly recommended to me, but honestly I found it to be a bit of a mixed bag. In the end, howeiver I was grateful to have read it. It encouraged my personal journey as well as helped me understand a bit more of the emergent conversation.

It is not truly a novel. It is the story of a fictitious pilgrimage by a disillusioned mega-church pastor who is forced into a leave of absence by a crisis of faith. He ends up in Italy with his uncle who is a Catholic priest who guides him on a process to rediscover his faith though the teachings, life and example of the person who became known as St. Francis of Assisi. Though the story does degenerate into preachiness at times, it is a creative way to tell the story of St. Francis in a way that readers today can engage. And St. Francis’ story and impact on the church of his day is a great read.

I found the first three quarters of this book to be engaging and a great encouragement to my own journey as he discards his institutional objectives for a clearer understanding of God’s work in the world. But I found the last quarter to be as disappointing as the first part was encouraging. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth reading. Even the ending was enlightening as an example of the Christianity I don’t want to get caught in again. The uptake of the story is that the pastor’s crisis of faith is resolved, not in a newfound relationship with God but a new set of five priorities derived from his time in Italy. In the end he and those he influences are more enamored with chasing Francis than they are following Jesus. I doubt even Francis would have approved.

But it did help me understand what has bothered me about what is becoming increasingly known as the emergent church or the emergent movement. The publicity of this book identifies it with this movement and Brian McClaren has a quote on the cover declaring this part of that conversation. I say that because the ending of this book solidifies some of what has concerned me most about this movement.

I’m often asked what I think of the emergent church movement and in answering I’ve reminded people that I’ve had very little firsthand touch with it. Thus my conclusions have come from reading some of its authors and what others have said so that my conclusions can’t be construed as definitive. But I have said that I think the movement is asking better questions than many traditional congregations and in many cases has a better message that focuses on relationships with each other and a more relevant engagement with the world.

On the downside, however, they seem to be compressing that into the same institutional structures that will eventually subvert their message. They are still caught up in building, leadership and services. Also, I’ve not found that the ever-present Christ is an important part of the conversation. It is more a movement driven by principles and ideology that find identity in the movement and its leaders, rather than finding a deeper intimacy with the Father, Son and Spirit. Certainly God is referenced a lot, but it doesn’t seem to me to be the language of a growing relationship with him, but an exploration of ideas and practices that might be more relevant.

This difference is not small. If our journey isn’t leading us to a fuller engagement with Jesus and a more complete identity in him alone, then we just end up with another man-made movement that results from our efforts rather than his working. I don’t know if that’s where the emergent conversation is going, but if this book is any indication, building institutions off a new set of priorities isn’t going to get it done.

Will we ever learn that Jesus didn’t start anything like that nor encouraged his disciples to do so? He said he would build his church an framed that reality in the language of family, not the structures of a corporation. In the end, if the still-present and still-active Jesus is not at the center of the conversation and the goal of that conversation, we’re still missing the best this kingdom has to offer,

I have just arrived in Maine for the tail-end of fall color. I love fall! I got in on the beginning in upstate New York, and am getting it on the finish here in New England. I’m sorry I’ve not written here in awhile, but this is a very busy season for me. I only had two days to turn-around from my trip to College Station, Texas and this eleven-day trip to New England. (If you want to hear more about the Texas trip, check out today’s GodJourney podcast. And I had a ton of things to do just to catch up on email and to get the Jake book read onto CD. I wanted to get it done before this trip, but didn’t make it. I still have some editing to do on the audio files and they should be ready shortly after my return from this trip.

Over the next few days I’ll be meeting with six or seven different groupings of people from Maine to Massachusetts to New Hampshire and back to Massachusetts. I have been looking forward to this trip for some time because I have so many dear, dear friends in this area and have not been back here for almost five years. I’ll also be meeting a lot of new people, some of them just starting on a fresh journey of intimacy with Jesus. This will be fabulous.

I’ll leave you with this quote I read the other day in a very strange book. I want to write more about it in a future blog. For three-fourths of the book it chronicles a fabulous journey that is incredibly challenging. And then the last quarter totally misses the point for the last fourth. Very sad. Some great insights, though, including this one:

“A truly great preacher isn’t someone with a seminary degree who explains the gospel. It’s someone who is the gospel.”
Ian Morgan Cron in Chasing Francis

Well, I’m off to College Station, Texas for the weekend. No, I’m not going to the Texas A&M game. I’m going to meet with a group of believers from the area that have been reading some of my stuff and wanted to talk with me. We’ve also got some folks from a wider region coming in as well. I’m really looking forward to it.

This all means I had to put up our latest podcast a bit early, since I will be traveling tomorrow. Oh well! It can’t be helped.

And let me leave you whit this wonderful uplifting letter. To be honest, I’ve been shocked at how broadly our little podcast has found its way around the world. I got an email the other day that was a real encouragement. If this is what people are getting out of our podcasts, then it is well worth the time and expense of doing it.

I just wanted to drop you both a line and tell you how much I enjoy your weekly podcasts. I am currently serving in the US Navy as an intel specialist and I can tell you that after a grueling week your podcasts lift me up with humor, honesty, and a freshness that I rarely receive in the bowels of the “dungeon” that we work in.

I have to also tell you that I have been feeling about the church what you and Brad discuss, for quite some time. and all this time I have been feeling a real sense of guilt that I haven’t wanted to attend church, or play their game of “you come, we manipulate you, you leave, you come back for repentance, we manipulate you”, and on and on and on. After I graduated from college and interned overseas at a church, I returned to the US feeling even more torn on the subject than ever, and even more torn seeing college and high school students struggling with the same inner turmoil. I had no answers for them, much less myself, and when I would go before the Lord on a daily basis I felt like I had to hide from Him these feelings of not wanting to attend church and play “the game”.

The church did a great job of making sure I felt that condemnation too, and I grew more and more resentful of them, all of them. however, now in my mid 20’s, and still madly in love with Jesus, I came to peace with it, and really took Jesus’ hand to walk my own journey and not that of what someone else told me was right. Thank you for getting the word out about this magnificent freedom. I deploy for iraq in a few months and I plan to still be listening to you both from the sand box, laughing along with Brad poking and smacking the bear. Have a great week, and thank you again.

You’re more than welcome. And our thoughts and prayers are always with the troops wherever they are stationed around the world. May God’s light shine through you to others around you in the simplicity and joy of just being his child in the earth.

What does a Hip-Hop artist, Waffle House waitress, tire salesman, and disabled girl have to do with discovering spiritual truth? What if embracing authentic Christianity is a journey of unlearning? Welcome to Jim Palmer’s world!

Last spring the publisher sent me an advance copy of a book titled , Divine Nobodies, hopeful I would find it worthy of passing on to others. I mentioned it on one podcast and have just been notified that the book has been released. The author used to be a mega-congregation staff guy and is now discovering life beyond the big-box with greater joy and reality. I think many of you will enoy this book and the stories it weaves of the most unlikely characters God uses to teach you more about him and what it means to live an authentic life in him.

I wrote a blurb for the publisher that expresses as well as I can what this book meant to me. I understand they used it on the back cover.

“You hold in your hands an amazing story of a broken man finding freedom in all the right places-in God’s work in the lives of some extraordinarily ordinary people around him. You will thrill to this delightful blend of gut-wrenching honesty and laugh-out-loud hilarity, and in the end you’ll find God much closer, the body of Christ far bigger and your own journey far clearer than you ever dreamed.”

Last week a local university hosted a Hunger Banquet in association with Oxfam America, a nonprofit international development and relief organization with the mission of creating lasting solutions to global poverty, hunger and social injustice. Only a handful of those who attended came away well-fed. Most went home hungry and that’s exactly what the organizers wanted.

The dinner was designed to highlight the vast inequalities that exist around the globe in the distribution of food and wealth. Sixty people attended the banquet. Fifteen percent were given a three-course meal on a linen-covered table, complete with silverware and utensils. Twenty percent were given ‘middle income meals’ consisting of some beans, rice and a glass of water. Like their wealthier counterparts they had chairs, but no table. Most of those attending, sixty-five percent sat on the floor and were fed only some rice and water. They had to eat with their hands.

Think about that the next time you sit down to eat. The vast majority of us reading this blog are in that 15% that has way more than we need. And we probably spend more time frustrated by things we want rather than concerned over those who are starving to death or being slaughtered in tribal genocides. Especially for the U.S., where we are only 5% of the world’s population yet consume over 25% of the world’s resources.

When you wonder why people in impoverished countries overseas are angry at the U.S., this is much of the reason. How would you feel if you put your children to bed each night watching them suffer in malnutrition and disease if your neighbors were were feasting on steak and running around in their Hummers?

I don’t think such inequities exist in our world because the wealthy are so callous, but because we cannot maintain a grasp on the disparity of our world. It can only exist because we don’t eat every night in the same room and have no sense of the incredible abundance we have and the desperate need that exists elsewhere. And when we do, we don’t have the foggiest idea what to do about it.

But maybe this is something some of us can have some prayer and dialog about. I know my heart is increasingly touched by my awareness of my abundance in the face of the hunger and violence in the world. Undoubtedly it is a result of the fruit of the chaos of creation due to the sin and selfishness of humanity, but that we doesn’t mean we should blindly enjoy our own good fortune while ignoring the plight of brothers and sisters around the world.

And I’m talking way beyond charity here for the poor. I love this quote by Eduardo Galeano, a journalist from Uruguay:

“I don’t believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal. It respects the other person and learns from the other. Most of us have a lot to learn from other people.â€

The events in Lancaster County, PA this week were as gruesome as one can witness. A deranged man took ten Amish elementary school girls hostage, ties them up with plans on molesting them. But police arrived sooner than he expected and he quickly shot all of them in the head, execution style, before he killed himself. Five of the girls are dead and the others are in the hospital.

Throughout this week my heart has broken for those little girls and their family and friends. How could someone do this to such innocent young girls, no matter how deep their pain? What a world we live in!

But as much as I have grieved through this tragedy, I’ve also been wonderfully uplifted by the demonstration of God’s forgiveness that this community is demonstrating to the world. As I’ve watched news reports about them and heard them talk, this does not sound like forgiveness-as-denial and a false covering for pain, but a real desire to find the way of Jesus to be real even in a tragedy as crushing as this one. They have even reached out to the family of the man who killed their children, offering forgiveness and help to them. Can you think of any similar situation where you’ve had the opportunity to even consider the pain that the family of the perpetrator are going through as well? They’ve helped me pray there too!

I have been in Lancaster County a number of times and seen the Amish farms there. When I see their horse-drawn carriages and farm equipment, I can’t help but wonder what kind of legalistic time warp they got trapped in. While it allows them to live simple, family-centered lives, how relevant can they be to the world around them?

It turns out extraordinarily relevant when you consider the conflicts of our world where anger and rage fester and grow generation after generation until the only solution they can see is to seek out ever-grander schemes of death and destruction. As these Amish brothers and sisters have struggled with what it means to walk in forgiveness even before the emotions of their own loss have had time to settle, I have been freshly encouraged and challenged myself to embrace forgiveness in my own life so deeply and so immediately. I have been brought to tears numerous times watching the news as they talk of what it means to forgive and act on it with such conviction.

And in doing so they have demonstrated more of life and reality of Jesus in our world than anything else I’ve seen in the media this year. May God grant them great grace and comfort in this season and to the family of the killer as well.