We certainly can look at ministry from a number of different vantage points.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/buildingleaders/ministrystaff/determineyourministryage.html

Jim’s book has been well received and advances the discussion of how to be the church in contemporary American society.  President Richard Mouw will lead a Question and Answer segment.

If you are in the area, please come. For more information contact me at KurtF@fuller.edu

Belcher Flier

This video has been around for a while. Still it is quite whimsical.  A few people begin to dance in a train station. It is met with curiosity and suspicion.  But they continue to dance, and other dancers join in. Soon even more in the crowd catch the joy.  There is something wonderful and viral about joy. It spreads! The very best news is always like that. It can’t be contained.

This is a great class exploring ways in which real, tangible, local congregations can contribute to the good in their neighborhoods. This course is about taking the gospel into the streets. It is about being a different type of church.

TM710 SL 2009

TM710 Fred-hirsch 11-09 email[1]

But there is another side to suburban living. Where we live, how a community is fashioned affects the way we think and act. This is the dangerous side of the suburbs.  While suburbs are looking more and more like urban settings, there is still something insidious about the suburbs.

The suburbs are a place of escape–away from more urban settings with crime, and noise, and traffic, and messiness. So when the messiness appears in the suburbs, we do all we can to ignore it hoping it will just go away. We get uncomfortable with lawns and people who do not conform, who are outside the norm.  We wish the untidyness would disappear.  It doesn’t

I get saddened when we who live in the suburbs, including me, turn a blind eye to the messiness. We don’t like hearing or knowing about homeless people, kids sleeping on the street, kids going to school without a shower, clean clothes or a meal. So we ignore.

When we hear that good middle class kids can’t find the money for musical instruments, or police officers need more canines to fight crime, or the arts need a boost—we do fundraisers, and money flows. We like to give to good middle class, increase our standard of living causes.

But when we hear about kids not being able to get proper dental care, or the underemployed not being able to get adequate medical treatment, or the working homeless not being able to find affordable housing, we turn away.  That just isn’t an exciting way to spend money: we don’t want to have those sort of issues in the suburbs.

This is the danger of living in the suburbs. We forget about the marginalized, the “least of these.” Yet this is our task, as human beings–to reach out to others, even the messy. And for the church, this is our obligation–to do the messy work, the hard work and extend ourselves to others in the name of Jesus. We are to be about doing good—even when it is hard.    Maybe this is more difficult in the suburbs.  The church can lead the way.

I begin with a blog post by Dave Gibbons

The Most Dangerous Place in America

Yes, the situations in Iran and North Korea continue to give concern to us and our government, but when it comes to our own backyard, where is the most dangerous place in America?

New York City.

Detroit.

Baltimore.

Chicago.

Los Angeles.

Large cities such as these have received a lot of attention as havens of crime, disorder and mayhem. I don’t want to argue that. Sure, violent crimes and societal concerns seem common in our concrete jungles.

But how about cities like these:

Irvine, California

Lake Forest, Illinois

Plano, Texas

Ellicott City, Maryland

Irvine, California was recently given the title, “Safest City in America” (over 100,000 people) by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on June 1, 2009. I would like to submit that suburbs just like this may actually be the most dangerous places in America.

The Burbs
The suburban enclaves with their middle class citizens and well- manicured lawns, gates, and guards protecting our Orwellian lifestyle and toys, Starbucks a few minutes apart from each busy intersection, and boasting some of the best schools in the country may actually be the most dangerous locations to live. Okay, we may not have the high murder counts or robberies, but I wonder if the suburbs have become breeding grounds for the accessible and shallow thrills of drugs and alcohol abuse, extravagant parties and proms, and mere facades of happiness and the American Dream. Just ask your local city drug dealer about his primary consumers. . . suburban teenagers and college students.

Okay, I’m not a researcher, but my gut impression from my travels and intersection with youth in the major cities of the world as well as the suburbs and rural communities is that they are all equally dangerous but just in different ways.

The dangers of the suburbs entail the lack of imagination (where do you find real art museums, innovative music venues and creative opportunities to explore nature. Sure there are exceptions but it’s not the norm); materialism; greed; isolation behind cookie-cutter neighborhoods and homogeneous clubs and churches; boredom: apathy; the fascination with the relevant more than the real; a love affair with popularity more than loving the poor; and a thirst for excitement superficially satisfied in the Friday night party. This takes precedence over a dangerous ride with God on the frontlines of His movement.

Ironically, guess what consistently is the hottest selling music in the suburbs? Hip Hop! Seriously. . . check out this article from Wall Street Journal in June of 2005. http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB111521814339424546.html

Why do you think Hip Hop is so popular among Suburban youth?

Hip hop is a voice to which suburban kids want to relate. Perhaps some wannabe has a type of connection to reality through Hip Hop while others envision radical change and revolution, inspired to be at the forefront of a new generation of leaders who will not remain silent. It’s a type of music that breathes with the vibe of danger and rawness.

My concern is that our children are missing out on one of the greatest moments to live in the history of humanity. These are the times of global shifts and crises and once-in-a-life time opportunities. Our generation and the next can be so focused on our own survival and the satisfaction of pleasure that we miss out on one of the wildest adventures. Hip Hop music has become the voice of our youth. It describes a thirst for danger and a rawness that is wild and out of control. It’s filled with angst and cynicism. These elements are the seeds of revolution found in the cities. My prayer is that the intrinsic frustration and boredom in the suburbs and rural cities of America will find its purpose in a radical revolution of love.

Perhaps instead of a one-week mission trip, the next generation will commit to a lifetime of roaming the earth in the power of the Holy Spirit like has never been seen before. Sure, our cities have been the focus of the church, but let’s not forget the quiet suburbs– the current breeding ground of potential zealots who are looking for something more to awaken them out of their boredom.

In response to what I wrote above my teammate, Dave Brubaker wrote: The verse I love for this (if you want one)—Luke 12:13-21. It really could be about the suburbs, the guy is so rich, he’s afforded the luxury of ISOLATION. He’s so alone in his gated community that when he needs financial council he has no one to confer with but himself (verse 17); he’s so out of touch with the poor and needy, he can’t think of a single person to share with when he’s got extra. The only idea that comes to mind is to make bigger barns (verse 18). Apparently God finds this so detestable, he kills the guy (verse 20), the words “your life will be demanded from you” are actually a financial term re: collecting a loan; in the case the “loan” that God is collecting is “life.”
Easy to judge this guy as a “fool” but the truth is, isn’t he “successful” by suburban standards???

This Declaration of Independence, that too often we yawn through or simply take for granted, is a catalytic document which defined and energized a political movement. Words matter! We must read this document with a sense of awe and gratitude:

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness….

From this document, a new nation was birthed, founded on principles of liberty and the rights of individuals not kings.  “We the people” is the phrase that begins the US Constitution. It clearly states a new way of governing and being governed: a democracy, a government built upon the consent of the governed.  This is a principle that has been advocated for,  fought for and defended through marches, and wars, and legislatures, and courts.

No country is perfect, and this country is still learning and will always be learning how to be a democracy for the common good of its citizens, its other residents, and for the good of the world. Today as every day, I am proud to be an American.

Happy Birthday to my country, our country: the United States of Amerca.  Happy Fourth of July!

When you love the work you do and the people you do it with, you matter.
When you are so gracious and generous and aware that you think of other people before yourself, you matter.
When you leave the world a better place than you found it, you matter.
When you continue to raise the bar on what you do and how you do it, you matter.
When you teach and forgive and teach more before you rush to judge and demean, you matter.
When you touch the people in your life through your actions (and your words), you matter.
When kids grow up wanting to be you, you matter.
When you see the world as it is, but insist on making it more like it could be, you matter.
When you inspire a Nobel prize winner or a slum dweller, you matter.
When the room brightens when you walk in, you matter.
And when the legacy you leave behind lasts for hours, days or a lifetime, you matter.

See Seth Godin’s blog at http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

I am wonderfully amazed that people from a variety of faith communites and religious beliefs are coming together around the issue of homelessness. Even some more doctrinally rigorous evangelicals who often do not join hands unless theological issues are squared away, are coming together around this issue.  It seems that reaching out to the marginalized, which touches the Lord’s heart, draws people together.

if your city is involved in the One City, One Book program, encourage those who organize this to use The Soloist by Steve Lopez as a discussion book. It will be very helpful in promoting issues related to reducing and preventing homelessness.

Here is a great article on the proactive stance of faith communities to the homelessness issues. It describes Imagine LA…and has  a few quotes from me as well.christianity-today-imagine-la