'I must be an acrobat, to talk like this and act like that...' -Actung Baby,U2
I am Jacob Bailey. I have been writing here for a while now. I am 27 years old, on the brink of moving to Spain. I love my wife and two beautiful children. Glad you stopped by - please let me know you were here by posting a comment.
leading with QUESTIONS
Wednesday, August 27, 2003
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
the coffee cups are stacking up around me...
The question of the day: Am I being inspired in writing this sermon by the Holy Spirit or caffine?
Could God use the caffine to do his thing through me? It's possible...
Monday, August 25, 2003
Yesterday was Sunday. The morning felt like a blur of frantic and disjointed activity - like watching VHS fast forward. But the afternoon got better. Tania and I took a long walk on the Chehalis/western bike trail with the kids and things slowded down. The weather was just right, we sat down and enjoyed chatting about the morning under the shade of a canopy of pacific northwest trees. Kaleb rode back and forth on his new bike. I enjoy those moments with the family more than anything these days.
This week will be about sermon construction. I have to preach on Sunday. I'm really dreading doing it this time. I feel the like the state my heart is so unstable. The pulpit is such a dangerous place these days both for the speaker and the listener. I know God can use it but...
Oh yah! One of my best friends called all concerned yesterday that I had joined (or was going to join) a cult. How about that? That's a first! But it's proof to me that I am right where God wants me to be - living outside my "safe box." I truly feel called to make mistakes right now. I guess that's what makes me nervous about preaching Sunday. If only Coach would let me punt. But I don't think that His plan.
Thursday, August 21, 2003
I just noticed something. I was (just a second ago) reading an email reply that is negatively critiquing some of the things i have been thinking/believing/living lately. As I read the opening lines I felt something...a fear, a dred, deep in my chest..."What the hell am I doing?" "What if word get's out?" "I'll lose my job!" "What if I am totally wrong?" For a second the feeling took shape in those words.
As I sit here the feeling still lingers. The email window is minimized below. Do I have the courage (faith) to read on? Oh Jesus I want to trust you even if into the darkness we go. Here we go...
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
My door
My door’s been broken down.
The rush of stuff is pouring in.
Although at first I feared its entrance
Now I’m feeling comfort. Sin?
My life I lived with guarded door,
For nothing else I knew.
But sudden storms of questions overwhelm
And every effort slips.
Flooded room, the water rises
Like the tide. I am hiding,
But I am finding, in the midst of drowning
I am not dieing.
My door’s been broken down.
The rush of stuff is pouring through.
Strange that For so long I guarded things
that now seem to renew.
TAn and I viewed Bowling For Columbine last night. An ironic film by Michael Moore.
Very interesting. It was fascinating actually. In the film Moore interviews Marilyn Manson before a show and asks him about Columbine (because many blame his music for the students horrific actions). Manson's reply to the question "What would you say to the students and parents affected by the Columbine tragedy?" litterally dropped my jaw. Wow! the film is worth seeing just for that interview alone.
Marilyn Manson's grip on reality may be a bit tighter than most of us - and definately - than most of us would ever admit.
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
I've got the cheapy so I can't post pictures. Bummer...
Anyway, so I want to decend out of the philosphical clouds of "what if?" and talk normal. Today was a busy day. I was a good boy and get too distracted in my work. My friend Mitch popped in as he usually does unannounced. We each had a double shot of Kingdom encouragement and then his lunch break was over. Lord bless Mitch today!
I've been so stoked because lately the msn groups I am apart of have been yeilding friends left and right people I never knew were out there. And old friends are blogging along with me.
Back into the clouds...what if...what if the best place to look for evidence of a life changing relationship with Christ was in my most intimate human relationship? What if by looking at how I love my wife and how I don't often love her as I should...
I think there is something there to discover.
I am one of the "littlefaiths" (Matt. 6:30)...
Monday, August 18, 2003
What the hell do we do with hell? I don't have answers but really just more questions. First of all I wonder can we or should we seperate our emotional response from our Biblical response? Or should we listen for Truth in both? I am just wondering...
Second...has modern systematic theology got it all figured out? In our own "falleness" can we really trust our own interpretations of Holy Scripture? Do those interpretations lead us to make a judgement call about who is obviously going to hell and who is not? Do our judgement calls then lead us to ignore the apparent "unresponsive" and move on to other "reponsive" people? Shouldn't we get beyond this? Shouldn't we (Christ followers, missionaries, pastors, airplane mechanics, stray-at-home moms and mailmen) just love the hell out of people to our dieing day? Can we do this wether or not somone responds?
Obvioulsy you can see I am taking a journey that probably looks dangerous, but what do we say do the people of Papua New Guinea? How do we respond to their qeustions? When missionaries first arrived with the "gospel" in the 1950's the people were blown away. "Why if such eternal realities were at stake had Christians waited close to 2000 years before they ever came this island?" they asked. Good question, and I wonder. Are they to believe that every one of their ancestors in the past 20 centuries has gone to hell? Who out their can honestly say yes?
Of course systematic theology would lead us to say yes. But that elaborate theology is a combo meal of both Holy Scripture and our interpretation of it. What if it is tainted with our own falleness and leading us to assume too much? Am I playing devil's advocate? I love Christ - and their is something more for us to be doing that trying to figure out who is in and who is out? If hell truly exists, and I believe it does, we should stop trying to figure it out, stop talking about it from our comfortable office chairs and climate controlled offices. We should stop talking and start loving because words mean all too little today.
Sunday, August 17, 2003
I am sitting here and the first thought is "how honest should I be?" I want to talk about the church service I just experienced but I don't know if I can. What if I hit the tether ball and it comes all the way around and hits me in the face? Maybe later...
Anyway I will let this speak for itself. While I was sitting in church today I have revolutionary thought about how to make money: I've thought of a great logo to sell - for hats, t-shirts, and bumper stickers. What is it? ===> The fish symbol with the words TRUTH in it turned upside down. <=== What a sick thought for a pastor to have? I don't know? I think I would by one?
Thursday, August 14, 2003
A conversation with a friend of mine:
"Are we overreacting and therefore losing in the process, how should i say...our message?" It's one I am wondering about too.
Here is one thing though..."offensive styles of evangelism" are not a thing of the past. Just yesterday I was with a friend of mine at a main intersection in Olympia that had been overtaken by a youth group armed with t-shirts bearing holy slogans and signs proclaiming "the gospel". I looked at my postmodern friend Jason and said "man I hate that kind of crap!" - that just wasn't the way to share Christ - too many stereotypes, too much bull. It was absent of concrete love.
The term "christian" has come to mean to many the wrong thing. It should bring to mind pictures of radical love, grace, forgiveness, and much more - for everyone - but we all know it doesn't for most.
This is what I think. I think it is time to proclaim the gospel unapologetically and with words to a postmodern world, yet never absent of authentic relationship and real love. What does that really look like...I am not sure yet but I think God will show us.
I don't know...
Here is one more thought. Jake for me in my life the pendulum of evangelical church has been swung so high up to the right that I feel like to get it to move at all I have to really dive into the other side...does that make sense. Just looking for a more healthy approach to evangelism and hoping to find the center?
Monday, August 11, 2003
I was writing to a old friend of mine from College who is headed to France in a few days with an evangelical missions organization...some of my thoughts:
For me the central issue that the book pointed out what that the shift from a "modern world" (1500-2000AD) to a "post-modern" world (2000-?) is more monumental than I think we evangelical ever might have dreamed or expected. When you get the book you find a helpful chart that highlights the massive changes that propelled the world into the modernity (chap. 2 or 3?) and the results that followed from 1500 - 2000. The author then points out that the same changes are afoot today and are bringing radical change to our modern world. The crazy thing is post-modernity may well be just a door mat into the ???? future...
What it comes down to is just as the Christian faith morphed completely in the modern age (largely because of the divinely inspired Martin Luther and many others) it will again or is again, in whatever age we are entering into. For instance the modern age organized and analyzed the faith, the church, and the theology (ex: systematic theology). Our modern mega churches and mega denominations and mega doctrinal statements and distinctives reflect this.
If the Christian faith is going to survive (which we know it will) then it is going to have to be re-shaped for the postmodern and post "that" age that is becoming. It will take divinely inspired men and women.
Thursday, August 07, 2003
I am beginning to think more and more that maybe…
~ Vision isn’t such a good thing after all. A five year plan, clear concise action items just may lead us away from trust.
~ Canning Hunger (see Walk Thru the Bible) is dangerously tricky and unnatural. If the Mormons ever worked their way into my life that way I would be ticked off. Open honest, equal dialogue over time must be a better way.
~ The church/world distinction that we throw around is kind of nasty because it assumes too much. It assumes we in the church have it together, which we all know is not the case. It assumes the church is a sacred place and anything/anyone outside of it is secular. The two may blur a lot more that we would like to admit. Maybe by drawing lines we have excluded some who should be in and included some who should be out. Or maybe the lines just aren’t helpful.
~ Holy Scripture can be dangerously misinterpreted by anyone to mean anything at any time. Maybe individual study/interpretation is dangerous. Maybe we should begin to let scripture read us in community. Maybe we should apply it in community rather that isolation.
~ The church is not something we can do or go to, but something we simply are when we are together. Therefore structuring a church service cannot be as rigid as, as static, as predictable we have made it out to be.
~ The true distinction of Christ follower should be someone who’s life is marked by love rather that someone who affirms belief in a certain set of doctrinal statements or someone who has “prayed the prayer.”
~ The Kingdom of God exists way beyond the borders of our local congregation.
~ The proclamation of the gospel doesn’t have to be done through the pulpit. Maybe it is more effectively done today over coffee or one on ones or relationally. Maybe it is more effectively done through art, through community, or through our lives.
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Youth group was pretty swell man...Well, at least i thought that it was. I really like listening to what other people have to say about life and other things like that, ya know? But yeah, i still don't really understand how this whole "blog" thing works, but i don't really care because i will probably figure it out later, some other time....
it 3pm. I hope that youth group will go well tonight??
How many will show? That is the question or is that the question? Does it matter no...probably not..
Whirlpool / toilet...i'm going down. He looks at me funny/ idont know how
Can't figure it all out/ give it some time/ pomo pomo shaking my world
who am I why?
Yeah, so, i am in the church with jacob, which is you... We should probably start setting up the church right about now for when the people come for " YOUTH GROUP".... but what ever right? anyways, later man...
Hey, yah so this is new stuff. But it seems like I'll be left in the dust if I don't figure out how to blog soon!! Just hanging out with Giac at church....uhhhh
