Talking Theology with James

Jim, Emily and I kicked it today in LA.  We went through echo park, silverlake, los feliz, visiting clothing stores, eating good food, etc.  Then Jim and I went to watch RK play in Hollywood.  we had so much fun watching their new show and hanging with the guys afterwards, got to meet to crazy kids from capitol and then we kicked it at some mexican restaurant in HWood.  i thought about wanting to do ministry again, with people like those guys, with Jim, with people who want to see more of the church being church than doing it.  i had some good talks with matt hoopes – talking theology – about how the church isn’t in mission anymore that we don’t view ourselves as missionaries, instead we started third party organizations to do it.  and how i am worried that some of my thinking may give me a hard time securing the kinds of jobs i may want in the future.  not because i disagree on the basics, but because i disagree on everything else, methodologies, theology, ecclesiology, anthropology, etc.  i just feel like we have packaged this thing up way to neatly that we have left half of the people who God wises to read out on the doorstep, because we don’t have enough room in our own minds for people who are like this, look like this, think like this, do this or that, etc.  at the end of the day, i had great church with my brothers tonight – singing, music out of God-giftedness, laughing, exhorting, and breaking bread and drinking the cup together.    oh and then there was the baptism, with all this rain we got soaked, twice.  as we couldn’t find our car and as we stopped on the side of the highway to check up on an accident that happened, no one was inside even though it i looked like it just happened.  strange, beautiful and lovely.

oh – and the church doesn’t have enough room in it for artists because they think outside the box and the church doesn’t. or as Jim just said, the church has become the box to think outside of. we mean the moder-perverse version of “church” we see today that is based on location/program driven church and not people/authenticity driven church.