Fuzzy Thinking

As I was pondering the account of Joseph (or the story of Joseph) in Genesis 39, I started wondering, what would have happened if Joseph would have given in to Potiphar’s wife’s advances? After all, by not giving in and thus standing up for what was right he ended up in prision. How different would the story be if he had just said, “Sure! Why not? Mr. Potiphar isn’t around, he’ll never know.”

I guess I really don’t want to think about what would have happened. I assume that Joseph wouldn’t have ended up in prision. The bottom line is: The story would have been vastly different. I’m not sure in what way, but, it would have been different.

I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have been as an inspiring story, or a story that sets forth an example . It would have been another story in the motif of Adam and Eve….see the one thing you can’t have, desire it, do it anyway (even though you know it is wrong). Joseph’s story, as is, stands as an example that our actions do matter. Even though we are saved by grace, our actions matter. Our actions have the power to change our story.

So, as I ponder Joseph, I have to ask myself: How different would my story be if I could be more like Joseph? How different would our collective stories be….our story as a people of God, if we, like Joseph, were able to walk (or run) away from that which temps us. It doesn’t really matter if that tempation is sexual in nature, or the desire for power, or recognition, or an easy life.

How different could our stories be…than they are right now?

And here we are getting at the root of the matter. A Jesus who does not look like us, doesn’t talk like us, doesn’t dress like us, and lives according to a different culture is alien to us. He is very hard to identify with. Instead of changing ourselves into an image more like his which requires hard work and not a little imagination, it is so much easier to mentally change him into the image of ourselves. And this domestication of Jesus if taken to an extreme (for instance with the Aryan Jesus concept) becomes in fact idolatry— the attempt to recreate God in our own image. But for most of us, it never goes that far. We just desperately want Jesus to be approachable, someone we could actually imagine emulating.

[Ben Witherington]

This is from Ben Witherington III’s blog. When I read it, I thought of the reports that people seem to like Jesus (when they do polls and such), yet, they have a low view of the church. Whenever I see articles reporting that Jesus is held in high regard, I always ask myself, “What Jesus?” My feeling is that the people responding to these polls really haven’t taken time to know who Jesus is, or what He calls us to. If so, then they either wouldn’t hold in in such high regard, or they would be living a very different kind of life. I believe that Witherinton is right, we would rather change Jesus to match our image, than to change ourselves to match His. For us to match His image means that we too must take up a cross…..

While I believe that what I’ve written isn’t Witherington’s point in the article, I believe the tendancy to create a new Jesus based on our likes and our image (Jesus as my fishin’ buddy) should be explored.

Web 2.0 Show - Episode 8 - Tara Hunt

That is what was said in an interview on the Web 2.0 show. I know a show about the web, isn’t about the church, yet, it seems, like businesses see trends in society before the church notices them.

The comment causes me to think of postmodernism and their focus on small or communities. Big isn’t seen as being better any longer. During the interview Tara Hunt, they talked about how smaller organizations were better able to make changes (being agile) and how they were better able to work with the community.

Now, the questions I have is: how does all of this relate to the church? Does it? Could the church be better served if those of us in smaller church (not megachurches) see our size as an assest rather than working to become what we are not?

One of the problems I have with the church growth movement is that it adopted methods with the assumption that methods are value neutral. This is false: some methods by their very nature distort the message. Focusing on method we bought uncritically into worldly assumptions about how the world works. Most insidious of these were worldly ideals of success (ABCs.. attendance, buildings and cash). In the Enlightenment framework, we were convinced that we could reduce unknown factors sufficiently that we could quantify and therefore control outcomes. We didn’t see our practices as idolatrous.

[NextReformation.com]

I really appreciated this article and makes some of the same points I’ve tried to make in the past…basically, we need to relook at how we, as the Church, measure success. Because the standards we use, will affect how we do ministry. I’ve just included an excerpt above. Follow the link for the full story.

Missional Church - LifeWiki

Ah….Now this is more like it. A pretty good start on the definition of a missional church. Now…how does one transform from a from a traditional 100+ denominational church into a missional church?