The White Western hegemony of the Gospel and how that is ending.

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Speakfaithfully

A picture of Amerigo Vespucci, bringing civilization and Christianity to a savage new (to Europeans) world. (Sidenote: This did not end well for the Native Americans.)

Recently the first WeekFOUR event took place.  WeekFOUR is the student group I started with Matt Schuler as a platform for student voices at Fuller Theological Seminary to be heard and as a space for the incredibly diverse and experience-rich Fuller student body to impact, shape and challenge each other more intentionally.

My motivation for starting this group came after I watched a panel discussion hosted at Fuller and some elements of this discussion were actually found in the WeekFOUR talk that I gave (it will be uploaded and available soon).

As a prelude to a much larger post on race that should be coming out in a couple of weeks I wanted to write on something that I have been thinking about for some time: the White Western hegemony of the Gospel.

First, you may want to watch their talk here:

To begin I must explain my belief that the Gospel is always transmitted through and expressed by a culture. But what do I mean by this?

In regards to the Gospel being transmitted by a culture…

Whenever God has interacted with humans, God has done so in understandable terms.  God did not speak to Abraham in English or Italian, nor did Jesus use parables that had to do with industrialization or computers.  God meets people in their culture in their time and space in history. People then retell the stories and record them in some fashion in an effort to transmit these encounters and their meaning to other people or future generations.

Throughout this entire process culture plays an important role.  Cultural values, views, understandings, idioms, language, expectations, social conventions, etc. color this process both in what was originally received from God and in how it is transmitted. This is why people from another culture can often fail to understand the stories or parables of another culture. This is why we must study the original culture, the ancient social and political context, and the ancient languages the Bible was written in to really figure out what is going on. 

The Gospel (by this I mean the sum total of the Biblical witness, the story of the Creation of the world, the covenants made by God, the history of the people of Israel, the fulfillment of these covenants in Jesus, the redemption of humanity through Jesus and the future fate of the world and humanity) has always been and continues to be transmitted through culture. Jews explained it a certain way to Jews, Romans explained it a certain way to Romans, Europeans explained it a certain way to Europeans, etc.

In regards to the Gospel being expressed in a culture…

Hand in hand with the fact that the Gospel is always transmitted by a culture is the fact that the Gospel is always expressed in a culture. Whenever humans respond to God or respond to the Gospel we do so in ways that make sense to us. A Spanish-speaking Christian does not pray to God in English or Swahili. A culture that has a robust value on embodied expression of emotion in dancing and singing does not naturally worship God, expressing emotions such as gratitude and happiness, by standing completely still and reading in unison from a hymnal. The specific practices, theology and daily life of any given Christian community will be the Gospel as understood and expressed by that culture. What we actually see, think and do as Christians is not the Gospel per se but ways our specific culture has seen fit to express the Gospel as we understand it to the world and embody that Gospel as people and individuals.

Two grave and persistent dangers: forgetting and assuming.

Problems arise when we mistake the cultural expression of the Gospel from a culture to be the Gospel. This often happens naturally over time as the stable Christian community transmits the Gospel to the next generation. The next generation is raised in a cultural expression of the Gospel and knows nothing else.  They naturally assume what they experience is the one right way the Gospel should be expressed and responded to. They assume what they know is Christianity, with any alterations being heresy or sub-standard. They assume what they know is Christianity, with any alterations being heresy or sub-standard.

As the generations roll on we come to think, consciously or unconsciously, that how the Gospel has been expressed in our culture is how it should be expressed in all cultures. When we do this, whether we realize it or not, we forget the distinction between the Gospel and our culture. We then show up on the missions field in another culture and do not just tell them to believe in Jesus, we tell them that to believe in Jesus they have to look like us. This is a situation that some might call cultural or theological imperialism/colonialism.

But why do I bring this up?

Phyllis Tickle has suggested in her book The Great Emergence and at the panel discussion at Fuller that Christianity goes through an identity crisis and dramatic changes every five hundred years or so.  This happened first in the Dark Ages, second during the Great Schism in 1057 (where the Western and Eastern Church divided), third during the Reformation in the 1500’s and now in what she would call the Great Emergence.

At least since the Reformation, and most likely for several centuries before that, the Gospel has been in a state of captivity to White Western culture and the White Western imagination and understanding of faith. What I mean by that is the cultural expression of the Gospel within White Western culture has had a hegemony on how the Gospel should be expressed. In other words, the “Christianity” many are familiar with is actually the Gospel as it is has been understood and expressed within White Western culture. As the Gospel has spread throughout the centuries everyone has been expected to understand, express and respond to the Gospel in the ways White Westerners have understood, expressed and responded to the Gospel.

Evidence of this hegemony and part of the reason this hegemony has been so complete and powerful is that White Westerners have had an near monopoly when it comes to holding positions of power, authority and influence in Christianity. Across the various Christian churches, denominations, sects and communions, for centuries the most prominent and influential theologians, leaders, speakers and Christian communities have been White Westerners, most of them male.

This is not just an assumption but a fair assessment of history. All of the titans of the Reformation, all of their peers, and all of the leaders of new and old expressions of Christianity that went out from Western Europe into the Americas, Africa and parts of Asia have been for White Western Europeans, again most of them male. This trend has continued rather consistently throughout the last several hundred years. Surveying all of the “big names” (or as I like to call them, “super-apostles”) in the contemporary Christian culture in the the United States and in Western Europe, one can see that they are almost exclusively White Westerners. Shane Claiborne, Rick Warren, Mark Driscoll, Bill Johnson, Jim Wallis, John Piper, Pat Robertson, the late Jerry Falwell, Donald Miller, James Dobson, Tim Keller, Randy Clark, N.T. Wright, Tony Campolo, John and Carol Arnott, Brian McLaren, Rowan Williams, Heidi Baker, Michael Horton, Mike Bickle, Kevin DeYoung, Rob Bell, the late Billy Graham, Bill Hybels, Joel Olsteen, and others are just some of the household names that represent a variety of expressions, movements and theological streams that are prominent in the U.S. right now…and they are all White Westerners. Beyond Protestant circles, while the U.S. has finally seen a black President, the Roman Catholic Church has still not seen a non-White Pope even though the Catholic church has existed and thrived in many non-White contexts for centuries.

The consequences of this have often been that what it means to be Christian has become blurred what it means to be a White Westerner and many of our past missionary endeavors and our current missionary practices have been thoroughly guilty of cultural and theological imperialism.  We think we are communicating the Gospel but we are really communicating our cultures understanding and expression of the Gospel. In this we are not just presenting a pure Gospel and trusting the local followers of Jesus to respond to it, but we are forcibly remaking them into our image.

Only in the last hundred years or so in the West have we seen non-white Western theologians, pastors and leaders come to prominence, though they have still been heavily marginalized and are still the minority. Black, Latin American, Asian, and female theologians, leaders and speakers have indeed been gaining traction very slowly but arguably some have only risen to places of influence by adopting the Gospel as it has been expressed in the White Western culture.

Why this hegemony is about to end.

One of the greatest areas of risk and opportunity in the Great Emergence is that Christianity is breaking free from this cultural hegemony of the Gospel. The balance of power is shifting away from White Western Christians to non-Western and non-White cultures in Latin America, Africa and Asia. Numerically, especially with the rise of Pentecostalism and the Charismatic movement, the balance is shifting drastically even as Christianity in Europe is seen as culture more than an actual faith and Christianity in the U.S. is in decline, division and disarray. Soon, theological prominence will shift as a rising tide of leaders and theologians who grew up outside of White Western culture, will attend non-Western seminaries, and begin producing and disseminating their works that will be instantly available to the global village. This is in some senses already happening as many Christians are now increasingly aware that non-Western and non-White churches have existed, they are coming into contact with them, and coming into contact with their thought and theology through the internet. I would suggest the interest in the Eastern Orthodox Church is just one example of this.

The loss of control over Christianity and the prospect of large changes in Christianity frightens some White Western Christians. Used to their cultural expression of the Gospel being privileged above all others they are quick to accuse and label others expressions as poor misunderstandings of the Gospel, misreadings of the Bible or even heresy. In the Fuller discussion, Tony Jones very transparently admitted that this was his own reaction in regard to the rise of Pentecostal Christianity in the Global South. However, even many White Western Christians are beginning to recognize this cultural hegemony, the problems with it and the need for change.

This may be a very good thing and a very bad thing for the Gospel and the Christian Church as a whole.

On one hand, I want this cultural hegemony to be broken. It is culturally and theologically imperialistic.  It also has limited our understanding of God, the Gospel and what it means to be a follower of Jesus in this world.  I expect the diversification and proliferation of thought and leadership to other cultures to bring greater depth to our understanding of God. I think Christians from other cultures will be able to see the many problems with our cultural expression of faith that we are blind to, and will eventually have equal footing from which to speak those truths into our lives. I think Malawian Christians and Vietnamese Christians and Chinese Christians and Iranian Christians and Mexican Christians, etc. will also have a lot to teach us from how they come to understand, express and respond to the Gospel from their own culture, not replicate or adopt the ways White Westerners have done so (or how these understanding will be given a voice). If the Gospel is understood to be a diamond, for the last several hundred years we have only been looking at one side of it, and to see the true beauty and majesty of the Gospel, we need to look at the other facets as well.

On the other hand, White Western Christianity is by no means monolithic.  The story of Western Christianity in the last five hundred years has been a story of endless schism and we now have over 30,000 different Protestant denominations.  Will breaking free from the cultural hegemony of White Western culture produce 30,000 more different denominations in the African Church and the Latin American church as well?  In the Reformation people broke away from the Catholic Church and refused to accept it as authoritative so the Reformers really could not stop people breaking away from their teachings or refusing to accept their authority.  After all, if the Roman Catholic Church could be wrong, so could Luther or Calvin. In the same way, will we see endless fractures as people break from the hegemony of the White Western culture find they too are unable to stop people breaking away from them?  Probably.

In this time of great change no one can predict the future, but several hundred years from now I think what it means to be a Christian will probably be very different than what we think it means now and we will be better for it.

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Did I just walk by the next Trayvon?

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Speakfaithfully

Trayvon Martin

As I was walking on Fuller campus the other afternoon a young black man in a hoodie was walking by. I had never seen him before and assumed he was just on his way through to Colorado, the main street near campus.

I noticed the pang of racism and bias in me that would profile him as a youth up to no good just because of his race and clothes. I fought it and managed to look him in the eyes and smile as we passed.

I was happy for about two seconds.

After I got past him I noticed the white armed security guard that was casually shadowing the young man.

Hundreds of people walk through campus every day of all different shapes, sizes, races, genders and levels of wealth and poverty. At least fifty or so we in the immediate vicinity.

Apparently being black and being dressed in a hoodie was all that was necessary to single him out as most likely to be up to no good and therefore in need of shadowing.

All I could think in the moment was, “Did I just walk by the next Trayvon?”

The brief scene was for me symbolic of the larger issue as a whole.  By being black and wearing clothes that are the hallmarks of a certain type of sub-culture this young man had done enough to set off prejudice in both myself and in the security guard, representatives of personal prejudice and the judicial prejudice in our society.

I have two questions surrounding this whole issue:

  • How do we as a society combat racial profiling and systemic racism both in ourselves and in our society?
  • Does the celebration of violence, criminality and misogyny in certain aspects of Hip-Hop culture feed racial profiling? In other words, is BlogXilla right to invite black culture to introspection over this issue?

Thoughts?

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Three thoughts regarding Western aid and non-profits…

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Speakfaithfully

This is the happiest picture of Zizek I could find. "He who increases knowledge, increases sorrow."

Recently Invisible Children’s “Kony 2012” campaign has been met with a lot of arguments and criticisms. Rachel Held Evans has compiled a series of links that summarize the arguments for and against this most recent initiative by Invisible Children.

This is part of  a much larger trend to think more critically about Western non-profits, aid and activism in general. While much has been said I thought I would offer three thoughts on this larger topic for discussion.

First: I am incredibly skeptical and pessimistic about current Western non-profits and aid programs because they are run primarily by Westerners who are still very paternalistic and imperialistic in their attitudes. 

Several centuries ago Westerners (mostly Caucasians) went around the world destroying, raping, and exploiting everything they touched.  In their minds they were “civilizing” the world by bringing (Western) education, medicine, technology and practices. Many of the world’s problems today, from environmental destruction to genocides and wars, are a direct result of the expansion of Western culture.

Now a new generation of Westerners (mostly Caucasians) are going around the world and attempting to fix the very problems their predecessors created. In their minds, they are “helping” the world by bringing (Western) development strategies, money, experts and practices.  It has been said by many others, but I too fear that the same paternalistic and imperialistic attitudes that fueled colonialism now fuels the new hip social activism and in this Western aid is simply an extension and evolution of “The White Man’s Burden” which caused most of the problems in the world in the first place.

Even in more progressive strategies, such as those that focus on development, we are still going into a country that is not our own and telling them what is best for them. How arrogant.

Second: I fear that much of this “self-less” giving is actually thinly veiled self-centered altruism. Much of our Western aid is about us; it helps us feel good about ourselves and alleviate our guilt at having destroyed the world.

I agree with Zizek. Pay special attention to his discussion of Toms and fair trade coffee at Starbucks.

I am especially skeptical of non-profits started by my peers (Christians in their 20’s and 30s) because many of us were raised with the infantile notion that by participating in short-term poverty tourism (a.k.a short-term missions trips) we were being God’s gift to the world.

Speakfaithfully Public Service Announcement:  All short-term missions trips are incredibly wasteful and for the most part pointless. We do them because they give us “warm-fuzzies,” and because the exotic stories they generate help us pretend we are better Christians than we actually are. However, they do little if anything to help the people we are going to serve and the money, time and resources could be much better spent in other ways. 

Third: I think the best thing we can do is to as thoroughly as possible stop exploiting other countries, stop bombing them and stop destroying the earth. 

Many indigenous communities were self-sustaining and living within the limits of their environment. Westerners came in, destroyed their way of live, and then remade them into our image.  Our cultural imperialism is going to bite us in the ass incredibly hard when other countries with higher populations begin consuming and wasting resources at the rate the U.S. does.

In one of the greatest jokes in history, the Westerners who are recognizing that our entire way of life is unsustainable are now advocating for practices that indigenous communities exhibited before we destroyed them, often as if these practices are novel innovations put forth by the incredibly wise and insightful Westerners, again here to save the day.

Thoughts?

P.S. Some additional food for thought…

An interview with Kenyan economist James Shikwati who famously said, “For God’s sake, please stop the aid!”

An article by Tad Delay regarding the Kony 2012 campaign.

Another blog about the Kony 2012 campaign.

 

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Worth Reading: H. Richard Niebuhr and the Church Against The World

Posted on February 20, 2012 by Speakfaithfully

As part of my church history I have been reading a lot of writings from other Christians.  Some of these are gems and I wanted to share them with some Worth Reading posts.  They are further proof that I believe the sum total of humanity is having the same arguments over and over and over…

In a time of great crisis H. Richard Niebuhr wrote profoundly on the state of the church and asked what the church needed to do in order to be true to itself. He wrote about how the church goes through a predictable cycle that leads towards compromise with culture.  One thing that struck me was his words regarding the church’s captivity to capitalism, which is a conversation I think we need to have more as we ride out a global economic crisis.  (Or should I say I think we need to have this conversation again as he wrote these words in 1935.)

…The church is in bondage to capitalism. Capitalism in its contemporary form is more than a system of ownership and distribution of economic goods. It is a faith and a way of life. It is faith in wealth as the source of all life’s blessings and as the savior of man from his deepest misery. It is the doctrine that man’s most important activity is the production of economic goods and that all other things are dependent upon this. On the basis of this initial idolatry it develops a morality in which economic worth becomes the standard by which to measure all other values and the economic virtues take precedence over courage, temperance, wisdom and justice, over charity, humility and fidelity. Hence nature, love, life, truth, beauty and justice are exploited or made the servants of the high economic good. Everything, including the lives of workers, is made a utility, is desecrated and ultimately destroyed. Capitalism develops a discipline of its own but in the long run makes for the overthrow of all discipline since the service of its god demands the encouragement of unlimited desire for that which promises — but must fail — to satisfy the lust of the flesh and the pride of life…

I really appreciated how Niebuhr highlighted how morality and ethics become based on financial bottom lines.  This is why in our society the elderly, the handicapped and children are incredibly undervalued because they cannot produce goods and services. It is like the only people time that you matter are between the ages of eighteen until you retire.

It also has forced me to ask a number of questions. How has the Christian Church’s complicity in the idolatrous capitalist system contributed to the global economic meltdown and all the injustices associated with it? How many of our new non-profits and justice ventures are simply trying to clean up the unintentional consequences and by-product of the lives we have led and for the most part continue to lead?

The full document is worth reading and can be found here.

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Forty days without…

Posted on February 19, 2012 by Speakfaithfully

This week marks the beginning of Lent.  Lent will be from Ash Wednesday, February 22nd, to Holy Saturday, April 7th.   This forty day season is a season of fasting that draws us closer to God and commemorates the forty days of fasting and tempting Jesus endured after His baptism and before His ministry.

I am going to be fasting during this time and am encouraging anyone who is up for it to join me. What you fast from is up to you. I encourage everyone to consider doing an actual food fast, such as a juice fast, a Daniel fast, or a fast from one or more of your daily meals. These types of fast are more serious, will seriously disrupt your regular life, and you will be physically weak by the end of it.  These factors tend to heighten your awareness of your fast and your dependency on God. Some of you may want to fast from other things, such as Facebook, sweets, music, video-games, etc.  However, whatever you do, I encourage you to take this seriously and ask God what He would like you to fast from.

I myself am going to be doing a very different fast.

Around two years ago Dr. Dale Ryan shared how his wife Juanita fasted from shame during Lent.  The rationale was simple if unorthodox.  Why not give up something that steals joy from your life rather than something that gives joy?

Around that same time I gave up music for Lent. I listen to music all the time so those forty days were deafeningly quiet. However, at the end of that time I felt God say to me, “That was nice but what I really need you to give up is fear.”

God’s call for me to give up fear makes perfect sense. Fear and I are old friends. While I have done some fun and amazing things that other people would be too scared to attempt fear has always been an underlying thread throughout my life. Fear has limited and at times crippled my life. Over the years fear has held me back from many life-giving opportunities, experiences, and relationships.  It has taken many forms and hid under many disguises but the bottom line is this…

Fear has held me back from my destiny.

One simple example of this is in regards to worship.  While I have helped lead worship in the past, for the last several years I have adamantly refused to lead worship and only rarely performed music in front of other people.  Fear of performing in front of other people, fear of being prideful, fear of hypocritically leading worship to a God I feared hated me, fear of not measuring up to other worship leaders, fear of triggering old wounds tied up with performing in order to be loved and many other fears have been the root and rationale of this self-imposed limitation. This is all despite years of musical training on multiple instruments and countless people encouraging me and telling me I have a great singing voice.

Several months ago I started pushing myself to do the things I am scared of and as part of this push I recently auditioned and began helping lead worship at Pihop as a backup vocalist. This and similar experiences have encouraged me to go even farther.

So for this Lent I am taking the words of my professor and the words of God as literally as possible: I am going to attempt to live forty days without fear.

There are a few fears that I have identified that I will very intentionally engage with during this time.  Beyond this anytime I identify the feelings of fear or anxiety about something I will make myself do whatever it is I am afraid of.

However, the biggest fear I want to overcome and surrender to the Lord is this: the fear of success.

This might sound odd but when I was deeply marred by self-hatred I believed I did not deserve to have things work out for me. This led to me basically quit life and refuse to attempt things I was certain would simply fail. Over time several subtle self-imposed limitations, such as my refusal to lead worship, have been created. While the self-hatred is for the most part gone some of the old self-sabotaging patterns of fear still exist.  God has put gifts in me (just as He has put them in everyone) and many of my friends recognize them, but I am still not really using them because I am unsure of if I am allowed to be amazing.

I am certain I am not alone in this fear and I feel I should share the words of Nelson Mandela on the subject.  In his inaugural address in 1994 Mandela said…

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

So fast with me. Go on a food fast or fill in your own blank to the phrase “Forty days without (blank).” Or pray for me. Or do both.  May my breakthroughs in this area bless others and free me to do what I was made to do. I will be posting regularly on Facebook a variety of thoughts, memes, quotations, and updates as I move forward starting on Ash Wednesday.

*Burial services for fears I have overcome in this season will happen the week following Easter and a memorial service will be held in the form of a community night with food and fellowship. I will be helping lead worship. Message me if you would like to help out.

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Bethel (Part 2)

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Speakfaithfully

[In this post I am going to talk about was my experience of the Bethel culture.]

The last several months I have been involved in a Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry run in conjunction with Pihop.  This has been part of my exposure to and first hand involvement in Revival/Charismatic/Pentecostal/Holy Spirit teachings, experiences and communities. For the most part this has been a season of repenting of old beliefs, considering and adopting new ones and developing an entirely new language and grid for understanding my faith. While of course I have encountered some errors and problems in the sea of new names, new teachings, new doctrines and new churches, this has been an overwhelmingly positive experience.

Considering the fact that this is a Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry it is not surprising that a lot of the names and teachings that I have been exposed to have come from Bethel, a church in Redding, CA. Bill Johnson is the head pastor and I have enjoyed a number of the sermons, worship music and books that have come out of this church.  Many of my friends have made trips to Bethel, some even go regularly, and it appears for all this is almost a quasi-spiritual, semi-pilgrimage experience.  So part of the reason I headed up to Bethel was to experience this church first hand.

My experience can be boiled down to two words: underwhelming and convicting.

Underwhelming: The whole experience was underwhelming.  I am not talking about any disappointment with not getting healed,  nor am I suggesting that Bethel, its leadership, and its church family are not doing amazing things.  It was underwhelming primarily because I have been at least partially acclimated to the Bethel culture and my experiences in the last several months.

So when supernatural healing broke out on Sunday morning and we celebrated it, this was not really a big deal to me because I expect signs, wonders and supernatural healings to follow followers of Jesus.  When people lined the front of the church to pray over people at the end and we prayed over a prophetic word given by Shawn Bolz about that Sunday a year ago I did not blink because I am used to prophecy in the church and in the regular life of believers.

Now when you take a minute to stop and really think about this, it is incredibly amazing.  When was the last time you gathered for church on Sunday morning and people were supernaturally healed by God?  This has never happened in my involvement in Christianity in over twenty years, but now it is almost something I take for granted. A year ago my trip to Bethel would have offended or amazed me or maybe both, but I’ve been walking this path for some time now and it was not as eye-opening or radical as I had hoped.

Convicting: The my time at Bethel was also very convicting.  Hearing Bill Johnson preach and seeing him walk around a gathering on Saturday night and passing Eric Johnson on his way into the bathroom I was coming out of drove home a point that I had been working to for some time.

These are just men. These are men who are being used by God but these are just men.  I was reminded of the scriptures in Acts where Paula and Barnabus are walking in signs and wonders to the point where they are being worshipped as Zeus and Hermes and they have to insist, “We are just men like you!” If I ever was tempted to put the leadership of Bethel or the Bethel church experience on a pedestal, this trip put a categorical end to that temptation.

Because Bethel family are just men and women hungry for God, this means that the amazing things going on in the Bethel family are possible wherever I go.  Certainly God is using Bill and the other leaders there, but God is also using many other leaders.  Certainly God is moving in Redding, but God is also moving in Pasadena.  I came back with a renewed conviction that I needed to take seriously my influence as a leader, a desire to honor and support the leaders that are over me, and pay attention to what God is doing here in Pasadena.

I am convinced that if I want what Bethel has in my own life, in my church family, in my communities here in Pasadena, I do not need to make road-trip after road trip. I need to pay more attention to what God is doing at the local Ralph’s than I do what God is doing in Redding.

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Bethel (Part 1)

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Speakfaithfully

[I just got back from my trip to Bethel church in Redding, CA. I went to Bethel primarily to receive prayer for my arthritis.  I also went partly to experience what was going on at Bethel firsthand.  The last several months I have been exposed to the teachings, values and testimonies that have come out of Bethel and I felt like I should go at least once in this season. In the next two posts I am going to share about the most important things that happened for me on the trip.]

In this first post I just want to share about what happened with my arthritis.

Friday night we arrived in Bethel and after settling in several of us went to inner healing prayer appointments and others went to a service at Bethel.  The next morning I went into the “Encounter Room” before it was my turn to head into the healing rooms.

I went in and was prayed over and absolutely nothing happened.  Honestly, I have felt the presence of God more in quiet times in my apartment.

For weeks I had been asking God to either heal me or let me know that He was not going to heal me on this trip and I received neither. So what was my response?

Well, this morning I helped lead a worship set at Pihop, and that is pretty indicative of my response.  My response to not getting what I wanted and have been praying for a long time was simply to continue praying for my healing (I received more prayer the next day), continue with life, and continue worshiping God.

Don’t get me wrong.  I do not want to minimize my very real disappointment.  I have written previously about how praying for healing of my arthritis is a very vulnerable place for me. When I was a kid and prayed for healing and it did not come it really undermined my trust in God and was the primary reason I doubted His love for me and His character.  To be praying for healing for arthritis again and only to still not see it happen is like taking my finger and tracing a scar on my heart.  It was very discouraging to not experience anything, even as people around me were getting healed.

The reason I did not stay there very long, and ultimately have chosen to react the way that I have is that  very quickly after my prayer session I had to take a friend across town to her inner healing prayer appointment and I took the opportunity to spend some time alone with God.  Walking back and forth on a gravel driveway I just talked to God and about how I was feeling.

Then as I looked up I saw the beautiful mountains and bright big blue sky above the dingy buildings that are on the fringes of Redding.  It was mundanely majestic.  In that moment where I was trying to sort out what had just happened and what it meant for my life the sublime beauty around me brought me to the bigger picture of both my life and the world stage and some real basics. I was brought to a place where my heart simply said, “God is good.  God does heal people today even heals people of arthritis.  For some reason, He has not healed me yet and has not told me why, but God is still good.”

God’s goodness was not dependent upon if I got what I wanted, or ever do.  I trust that God is good in a categorical way beyond my circumstances or what I see in the world or experience in life because that is His nature. Even if I took an evidenced base approach to judging God’s qualities, God’s goodness is testified to in a thousand and one ways in my life and my world that the bad things tend to distract me from.  Considering just my personal life, I have an amazing life with a bright future, even with my arthritis, and I love it. Many people in this world would quite literally kill to have it. So descending into despair or doubt or self-pity over this one area of my life would not really make sense.

I also made a choice to try not to “figure out” why I was not healed. God had been speaking to me in the previous week in ways that only made sense after not getting healed.  After I did not get healed my analytical mind started turning and I started to try and figure it out.  I thought, “Well maybe if I had fasted for one more day…or maybe I needed to pray six hours instead of five…then I would have been healed…” and other nonsense. I knew these thoughts were ridiculous and did not make any sense considering only the way Jesus healed people in scripture. Supernatural healing is a gift from God and you don’t earn it. Additionally, I humbly acknowledge my limits that if Holy Spirit does not reveal to me why the healing has not happened yet, I am certainly not going to figure it out.

Later, I realized this whole situation had also exposed a separate answer to prayer. In January I drew up a vision for my life.  This was one of the things that I asked for…

  • I want a consistent healthy relationship with God. I want as many experiences of His goodness and Love that I know that I am loved regardless of my circumstances and I do not let my present circumstances dictate what I believe about His character.

In this moment of disappointment and frustration it was revealed that God has fulfilled this desire of my heart.  In the past, not getting healed would have discouraged me and I would have questioned if God was real, if God was good, or if God healed.  However, after many months and weeks of God shaping my heart over the past season, this is no longer true.  I pray that my rootedness in God’s love and my trust in His character regardless of my circumstances only increases from here.

In my next post I just will offer some thoughts that have been brewing in my mind for some time…

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Meeting Jesus at The Well.

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Speakfaithfully

The Well is a prophetic ministry at the Pasadena International House of Prayer.  At the Well people sign up for prayer and then are prayed over by a small team of trained people.  These trained lay-ministers share prophetic words with the person seeking prayer and later email a recording of the session to them.

This ministry takes its name from a story of one woman’s encounter with Jesus.  In John 4:1-26 (and elsewhere) her story is recorded.  This ministry is truly aptly named because like the woman at the Well people routinely encounter Jesus’ disorienting love for them and prophetic words of knowledge that the servants at the Well could not know without the Holy Spirit and the gift of prophecy.

I have written about my experience receiving ministry and my initial experiences serving at the Well in other posts. For the last several months I have served at the Well almost every single Saturday night and as I have grown in my understanding and experience of the prophetic I am at a place now where what was once shocking and noteworthy to me is now routine.

At least in regards to the prophetic, the supernatural has indeed become natural.

But that is not what I want to write about here.  What I want to write about here is why you (if you are a believer and in the So Cal area) should seriously consider going through the Well orientation and begin serving at the Well.

On a very practical level, in recent weeks the Well has been at capacity almost every week.  As the saying goes the workers are few but the harvest is plentiful.  People will line up an hour before we even begin registering people to make sure that they get a spot.  Even with six to eight teams of two to four trained ministers we usually are getting done by midnight and have to turn people away.  We need more servants to fill the spiritual hunger that is being met at the Well.

These are all people waiting for prayer at the Well ministry. Your average Saturday night at Pihop.

On a slightly bigger picture level the prophetic gift is something that all Christians should operate in on some level and it is an amazing birthright for those who have been born again in the Holy Spirit.

Centuries ago Moses cried out, “I wish that all the LORD’s people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!”

Centuries later, Joel 2 famously foretold that this desire would be fulfilled when, “And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.”

Centuries later, in Acts 2, the desire of Moses and the prophecy of Joel was fulfilled and the Holy Spirit was poured out onto every follower of Jesus enabling every follower to prophesy and hear from the Lord, both for themselves and for other people.

In the early church Paul encourages followers of Jesus to eagerly desire the spiritual gifts, especially prophecy because prophecy strengthens, encourages and comforts the church. He does this even when the church in Corinth is not apparently handling these things right and they need to be corrected. We also find major prophetic words being received by the church and foretelling the future.

In short, I would suggest that all believers should become more acquainted with the gift of prophecy. The ability to prophesy is an amazing gift from God that was longed for for centuries. It enables us to supernaturally strengthen, encourage and comfort our brothers and sisters around us.

Going through the orientation to the Well and then serving at the Well is the best way I know how for someone who knows nothing about prophecy or the spiritual gifts to start exploring this gift in a safe environment with wise and gifted people.

However, the most important and perhaps most personal reason I would encourage people to serve at the Well is this: serving at the well has changed how I relate to God. Over the last six months I have practiced a variety of disciplines in order to hear God for other people, and somewhere along the way I began to use these same disciplines when it came to hearing God for myself.  The same way I connect with God to hear from Him for other people I know use to connect with God in my times alone with Him. This has fundamentally changed my “quiet times” from legalistic requirements to read “x amount” of verses and get “x amount” of insights from scripture to a dynamic and engaged relationship with God.  While I do spend a lot of time in the Word, my times alone with God are far more similar to catching up with a friend over coffee than a Bible study.  This is probably the way it should be.

Serving at the Well has released me into a place where I feel like I am building a relationship with God and not just increasing my knowledge about Him by studying the Bible.

[The next Well training is on Saturday, February 18th, from 10:00am to 12:00 noon.  Email thewell@pihop for more information.]

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Arthritis and the Word of the Lord

Posted on February 8, 2012 by Speakfaithfully

I’ve written about it from time to time but I am still suffering from arthritis and have been praying for complete supernatural healing since last spring.

To recap briefly I was diagnosed with arthritis when I was eight years old after experiencing pain sporadically for two years.  I prayed for years for healing that never came and finally gave up.  Some Christians suggested this was something God was asking me to trust Him with, and this fit with the fact that I was not being healed, so I made peace with it and moved on.

Last Spring, around the time of my dramatic inner healing prayer my arthritis pain dropped off the map.  I was so pain free I started forgetting to take my medications. I felt called to receive prayer again for healing and have been off any pain medications since then.

However, around the Fall my arthritis pain started coming back with a vengeance. This has confused me greatly.  I apparently was not healed of arthritis completely.  Were my pain meds, my active lifestyle and the warmer weather really responsible for my lack of pain?  Did I misinterpret what was going on with me?  If so, what is the truth?

A few weeks back I drew a proverbial line in the sand with my upcoming road-trip to Bethel.  Bethel is a church that regularly sees supernatural healings and it is a place of great faith for such things.  I do not want to get superstitious about place, as I believe God is everywhere and could heal me right now in So Cal, but this trip for me is a symbolic and significant step of faith on my part.

As that day has drawn closer my arthritis pain has gone off the charts.  It spikes and abates at times but my lower back in particular is the worst it has ever been.  I am taking pain pills like candy and there are still times where breathing, sneezing, picking things up off the floor, sitting down, standing up, and even lying down are painful. Needless to say I have not been able to work out, run or exercise for a few weeks and not being active is the worst thing for my specific kind of arthritis.

So we are coming down to the wire and I actually have “Get healed from arthritis” in my calendar at 9:00am this Saturday. I have even received a number of prophetic words from people and from God that God wants to heal me.

As I go up I am asking for a complete and supernatural healing of my arthritis.  I do not want to have it go away for a time but then come back later.  I want fire in my body from my head to my toe so that I know that I know that I know that this is done.  21 years of chronic pain is enough. If the testimony God has for me is like others in the Bible who were afflicted for years before being healed I want that testimony now.  I want my healing to change how I pray for the healings of others and I want to experience the supernatural healing of my body not just my heart and mind.

If there is something “blocking” my healing, like resentment or some other issue, I want God to reveal that now or at my Inner Healing Prayer session I have set up the night before.

If God is not going to heal me in this life and does in fact want me to have faith in Him despite my arthritis, I am actually okay with that, but I want to know that I know that I know this is the situation.  No matter what happens I will go to my deathbed believing that God supernaturally heals people, but sometimes no matter how much faith or how fervent our prayers not everyone get’s healed in this life. And God is still good. 

If I am someone who is not going to experience physical healing I want Him to make that 100% abundantly clear to me. If my testimony is to proclaim God’s goodness despite my continued physical ailment that is what I will live out. I have never heard Him say this to me, but if this is truly the case, I want Him to.  But again, if that is to be my testimony, I want it now and I do not want to waste time worrying or thinking more about this issue.

So friends be sending positive thoughts and prayers for me this weekend.  Either way I want something to happen and to move forward putting this issue to rest so I can move forward.  Either way I want to know how my arthritis and my prayers are to testify to God’s goodness and glory.

At the end of the day my soul echoes the words of Mary when she said, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be unto me according to your word” and I am really, really desperate to know what the word of the Lord is on this issue.

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Why I went back to Church…

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Speakfaithfully

Ten months ago I left Christian Assembly (CA), a church out in Eagle Rock. I simply one Sunday stopped attending and never went back. I did not have a falling out with the church or a negative experience that drove me away.  In fact, my time at CA had been very positive.  CA is a very honest church that deals with real life, has a heart for the poor, and I was touched by the Holy Spirit twice in worship there. (I even wrote a separate post about it.)

The reason I left CA was that I had lost all motivation to do any type of Christian behavior during the darkest of times I’ve ever had.  I did not know if I believed in God, if I believed God loved me, and was considering my exit from Christianity and theism as a whole. Going to church, listening to Christian music, reading my Bible, and praying all were simply out of the question during this time.

After the dramatic healing I experienced in inner healing prayer I came back to a rather firm belief in Jesus Christ, who appeared to me in a number of visions and supernaturally healed a lot of spiritual and emotional wounds in my life. Things like that tend to settle the whole theism debate. However, I still did not know what I thought about Christianity, about the Bible, and about the Church.  I thought I was going to go back to CA but I was re-directed by the Holy Spirit to receive ministry and eventually serve at Pihop. During this time I have thought seriously about what kind of future Church involvement I was going to participate in, if any. The closest thing I came to an official church service was supporting a friend’s ministry or my Potluck and Prayer nights.

I was encouraged to go back to a church by my internship leaders at Pihop but I was just not ready. I think one of my friends said it best and if you are going to join a church you really have to be fully committed to it and not half-in and half-out. The main problem was that the last time I fully committed to a church was when I hurt myself and other people. I was hiding in religious performance and the farther away I got from that church experience the more I recognized all of the problems, tensions and issues that I was perpetuating by my commitment and efforts.  I say with all sincerity that I am for the most part ashamed of who I was in that church, how my faith functioned, and what I supported and led people into.

As I contemplated fully committing myself to CA, it seemed all to similar to my last church.  The biggest issue is that CA, like my last church, is a large church. This fact was underscored after I left. I had dropped off the face of the map and no one noticed and a desperate email I had sent to the head pastor of CA got lost in the shuffle and he never saw it. The church was so big that in one of the darkest times of my life I simply slipped through the cracks.  Now I know part of the reason no one noticed that I had left CA was because I was not fully engaged there, but it is also just par for the course when a community gets that big. So could I ever really get involved at another church again, especially one as big as CA, and hope that this time it would be different?

Around November I started seeing numerous threads in my life and experiences pointing me back towards CA.  I was very hesitant.  I had wanted to go back to CA and the Holy Spirit had stopped me.  Was this now the Holy Spirit calling me back? Was I willing to go back?  By this time I was pretty sure God had never meant for a church to be that big, small groups or no small groups. Things continued to add up and eventually it was confirmed that God was indeed calling me back to CA and was calling me to be obedient despite my reservations.

A month ago I attend my first church service in nine months.

It felt weird.  Two things were highlighted that night for me.  First, I have changed dramatically in the last several months.  My time at Pihop especially has changed how I worship, how I pray and what I think are valuable endeavors. Two, if God is in fact calling me back to CA it is to sow into what is happening there much more than it is to be on the receiving end of things. I’m not saying I don’t have anything to learn from people at CA but I think I will be giving away a lot of what I have received in this last season.

This last week I met with two of the pastors at CA and talked with them about the vision for the church, my story, and where I could fit in.  With the head pastor, Mark Pickerill, we talked about the email I had sent that had gotten lost, my propensity to question things, my stance on homosexuality, my desire to avoid a rebellious attitude and be teachable, and the general direction of my life. Both of these meetings went great and to me really confirmed this is the right decision.

So I am again going “all in” at a local church.  Part of me fears that this is insanity and I am just doing the same thing over again and hoping for a different result.  However, another part of me knows that I am following the Holy Spirit as best I can and I trust and hope that God has not called me back to a local church just to have more experiences that embitter me towards Christianity, Christians, and any sort of organized church.

 

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