OrganicJesus.org

"Consumerism" is a blanket term describing a social ideology in which individual identity is constructed through the purchase of goods and services. This ideology has a death grip upon America, and many heads in the church nod with approval. With parking lots full of SUVs and plasma screens dotting our narthexes, this one's hard to deny.

But I'm part of the problem.

[This is an extended bit of my speech given at Saturday's Faith and American Values Summit. I'll follow up later this week with part two, which attempts to build a theology to buttress the directions of this article... --BDR]

As many of you know, I work for an environmental-Christian non-profit. Our goal is to foster a cultural shift in American Christianity by making it culturally and theologically safe to love, serve, and protect God’s creation.

In our work, we find that some Christians affirm that creation-care matters biblically, but say it cannot be second to mission and evangelism, or are afraid to take it to the political step because of preexisting political allegiances. We try to correct both of these positions.

[On Monday I talked about the next generation of evangelical Christians becoming increasingly "politically ambidextrous." This is underscored, but not contingent on, some bigger re-evaluations of the faith. Please bear with me as I submit some of my own theological musings to bring into clarity what shift is really going on in the Emergent Church movement. Some of this is what the Emergent Church is waking up to, and as someone in that movement, it’s particularly what I am waking up to. For more on what I’m talking about, I’ll now point you toward the writings of N.T. Wright, Brian McLaren, Shane’s book, and the online community at www.opensourcetheology.net. -- BDR]

This generation is reconsidering what the gospel is, exactly, and from there, how we “do” the gospel or “be the church”. The consensus has been growing for many years now in theological circles that the gospel isn’t only “how to get into heaven after you die,” but more prominently how to share little bits of heaven here on Earth before you die. To put it in the vernacular of the Lord ’s Prayer, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in heaven.” So we’re realizing that the gospel of Jesus is that the kingdom or reign of God is at hand, among you, among us. For those who have been raised to believe that “the gospel” or “evangelizing” is all about fire insurance, preventing people from going to hell, this is a pretty radical shift. The gospel suddenly becomes much, much, much bigger. It’s now also about getting hell the hell out of God’s Earth.

On Thursday, Rev. David Williams noted that Christianity has become a target demographic for advertisers, pointing the finger at FoxFaith.com.

So, I took a look at FoxFaith...and frankly, I'm disappointed. Seriously, go there. And see how shallow Christian consumerism has become.

I mentioned earlier that I work in graphic design and dabble in the shady world that is advertising. Companies market what sells...and if something doesn't sell or an ad campaign brings in a poor return, it gets pulled. Sometimes things get messy.

Anybody remember that racist Sony ad from this summer?

So here's what troubles me:

Many Christians are responding positively to corporate media's demand that we identify ourselves according to the goods that we consume.

But I see hope.

Shane Claiborne tells a lot of great stories in his book, The Irresistible Revolution. One of my particular favorites involves him attending to the needs of a man afflicted with leprosy in Calcutta, India.

During his time serving those marginalized in a region already ravaged by poverty and sickness, the two grew very close. One day, Shane's friend looked him in the eyes and said simply, "Namaste" ("nah-mah-stay").

"Namaste."

We don't have a word like it in the English language, and I suspect that this may be the cause of much of our hardship.

Roughly translated, it means "I honor the Holy One who lives in you."

There is no target more fun for evangelicals of my generation to take potshots at than Organized Religion. We're sick of it, and yet our love for Christ and community keeps us in a local congregation.

And to be sure, Organized Religion is nothing new to me. I was raised attending charismatic churches of moderate size, until in third grade I attended a mega-church of several thousand. I won't exhaustively catalogue its shortcomings, except summarily that I was not well nourished there, and left it in 2002 nearly undiscipled in the Way of Jesus.

So now I float around in youthful angst, wondering where the Way became the Church, when God's people became God's sheeple. And what in the world am I doing at a bloody evangelical seminary?!

Yet I cannot escape that we know that our God has instituted Organized Religion, that it could be counted among the Principalities & Powers, and that though even God tires of it, He has instituted some formality and organization to his Saints. But what should or could that look like?

In Romans 12 (vv. 9-21), Paul unpacks a beautiful model for prayerful community among citizens of the Kingdom of God.

Life under the lordship of King Jesus demands that people pray for each other. I really can't say it any simpler than that -- and these words convict me as one who has often neglected this obligation.

Paul calls us to "[continue] steadfastly in prayer; distributing to the needs of the saints" (Rom. 12:12). We're also to "restore [a man overtaken] in a spirit of gentleness" and in the same breath, to "bear one another's burdens" (Gal. 6:2).

In these verses, Paul identifies prayer and action as necessarily concomitant. It is essential, he argues, that believers lift up each other's concerns to God and simultaneously strive to meet the needs of their brothers and sisters with the resources given to them.

On Sunday, I took a critical look at my own prayer life and recognized some dangerous trends. Tongue planted firmly in cheek, I have created a system for managing relationships and prayer requests.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Form 6431PR: "Prayer Request for Individuals Desiring Intercession on Behalf of Themselves or One Other Individual."

Apologies for the delay in completing this series. If you're catching up, check out parts [1] and [2].

Here are a few concluding thoughts:

1) Prayer is effective.
2) Prayer is implicative.
3) Prayer tenderizes.
4) Prayer is transformative.

Read on for a little explanation and a few stories.

God, of course, has seen Peak Oil and all its consequents coming for a very long time. He has a plan for His children through all this, and has had plenty of time to begin preparing His church for it. There appears to have been a stirring of the Holy Spirit among those who listen, and it has sparked a couple trends in Christianity which seem to anticipate petrocollapse. God’s purposes are, as St. Paul wrote, being fulfilled “in the fullness of time.”

Hey everyone. We're back and blogging here at OJ. Sorry for our hiatus.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the options before me as the consequences of peak oil approach my own life and community. As is evident in my previous posts, I have felt strongly about staying in the city as long as possible during petrocollapse. But since November I've been seeing a woman who has a considerably more nomadic heart than I do, and it's caused me to rethink what strategy I'd like to take for being part of God's counter-cultural insurgency amid so trying of times as peak oil seems to present. Should things go well between this gal and I, I'm wondering what path we should take.

To be sure, there are a few options on the table. I'd categorize them as "the Shire," "Solidarity in the City", "National Flight", and "Nomadic Wandering". Could some of these be more biblical than others. Are some outright wrong? Are some more viable than others.More on these options under the fold.

[This is a minimally updated excerpt from an ethics paper I wrote last year. I'll follow up soon with a comparison to other ethical systems. I share it here because I think that the ethical framework with which I engage and anticipate the Age of Less is both illustrative for my other articles here, and could be an important contribution to the broader "missional" conversation. -- BDR]

This article will attempt to charter a system of missional ethics by hybridizing several other ethical systems together with the emerging theological themes of the missio dei, narrative and narrative truth, and the centrality of the Kingdom or Reign of God. It is very similar in form to narrative ethics, affective faith ethics, and kingdom ethics, but differs by painting it with gentle hues of inaugurated eschatology, and by its central incorporation of the missio dei in its interpretive schema. Missional ethics is teleologically oriented toward the inbreaking eschatological Reign of God, deontologically honed by following the model and teachings of Jesus Christ, narratively lived out in a particularly faith community partaking in the broader missio dei, and birthed out an affective response to the delivering God of the biblical accounts.

[This is a continuation and conclusion to my last entry, "Toward Missional Ethics". You might want to breeze over that before going through this one. -- BDR]

As stated in my last post, missional ethics is a hybrid of several competing systems of ethics, but which insists that each system is a mixed bag of good and bad, and each needs correction from the others. Missional ethics is therefore teleologically oriented, deontologically honed, narratively embodied, and birthed out of renewed hearts.

More of this heady nonsense under the fold...