more from Mike Frost
Some more notes from Forge National Summit - Dangerous Stories 2
mike frost - last session
Forge events are like a gathering of the clan, it is great to be among family.
Luke 14 - Eating with the Pharisees
Henri Neuwen talks about reaching out.
One of the movements, if we are serious about following in the footsteps of Jesus, is about moving from hostis to hospis, that is hostility to hospitality. Our world is governed by hostis. Suspicion, anxiety, and anger all impinge on your own life. It is standard operating procedure for our society. Hostis guards one’s own space at the expense of others. We need to fashion it into the space of others and allow them to truly be themselves and what God intended them to be in the first place.
Daryl Gardiner spoke about the sanitised Jesus of contemporary Christianity versus dirty Jesus of the Bible. The presentation of a sanitised Jesus is hostis. It is what the world expects and involves a vengeful and an excluding God. The dirty Jesus is the hospice Jesus, who fashions space in which people might blossom and grow.
We need to recommit ourselves to the process, to the costly and hard work of hospis.
Luke 14:1 ¶ One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched.
Luke 14:2 There in front of him was a man suffering from dropsy.
Luke 14:3 Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?”
Luke 14:4 But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him away.
Luke 14:5 ¶ Then he asked them, “If one of you has a son or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull him out?”
Luke 14:6 And they had nothing to say.
Back in those days, when the Pharisee threw open the gates to invited guests, it was not unusual that if someone snuck in when all the guests invited arrived, that the host was obliged to feed them. These uninvited freeloaders were called the umbra, the shadow, as they shadowed the invited guests.
One day I was at a casino, and was looking around because I had never been in there before. I approached the High Rollers room, but was prevented from entering by the bouncers there. Just then, a group of people came in from behind me. And they were asked whether they were part of Uncle Cedric’s party, they said yes, and I also nodded and went in. I became one of the umbra. and shadowed the others inside. It was nice inside, you got good food but eventually I left after I had looked around.
In another story, Jesus was invited to Simon’s place. And there was a woman who was an umbra at the party. She slipped in, and she was a freeloader. All the guests were kissed and had their feet washed. But at that party, Jesus was treated as an umbra even though he was an invited guest. The woman eventually kissed his feet and washed it for him.
There is lots of evidence that Jesus was often an umbra at parties, one of those that lurks at kitchen door.
In this story, Luke 13, it says that the Pharisees and lawyers were watching him closely. Looking to criticise him, an example of hostis.
1. Jesus, the shadow man, always prefers people over religion.
There are laws and requirements that people need to follow. One of those were the adherence to the sabbath. Now, there were many legitimate reasons to keep the sabbath. But there were also reasons in this situation where adherence goes against the intent of the sabbath.
Jesus highlights the ridiculous extent to which adherence to sabbath would lead.
Many in the emerging church find they are set free from the rules of traditional church rituals, but then get caught up in the paraphilia of what is emerging church. Don’t get too busy to not engage with the umbra, or healing the sick because I spent too much time in the maintanence of religious practice. You can spend so much time trying to put on something cool, and miss out on spending time with people. I recently asked clergy how much time they had for the umbra in their lives? How much does maintaining what they do suck us from the umbra of our situation?
1stly, people not religion.
2ndly, when he noticed the seating pattern. If you invite Jesus to dinner and he says he wants to tell a story, you know you are in trouble.
Luke 14:7 ¶ When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable:
Luke 14:8 “When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited.
Luke 14:9 If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this man your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place.
Luke 14:10 But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all your fellow guests.
Luke 14:11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Jesus said wouldn’t it be embarrassing if you had to be moved down, after having put yourself in a more important position than you should. It sounds like he’s giving practical dinner party etiquette. He turn hostis into hospis by preferring humility to personal honour. Additionally, when you start at the bottom, you have a completely different perspective of any situation.
I can’t tell you how the church has fashioned hierarchy in so many areas, such as in conferences. Can you see Jesus doing that?
Ash Barker talks about the film “Titanic”. Jack is a shadow person on the Titanic. He’s not meant to be on the ship, and through a quirk of circumstance, he meets Rose. He then takes her under and opens her eyes to a much different vision of the world than if she had stayed above.
That’s what Jesus does for us. Come with me into the steerage, and the mess and music… You will see something the likes that you have never seen before.
In Maryborough, a Victorian country town, there lived a guy with a mental disability called Wal Richards. He sat on the main intersection and said hello to everyone that went passed, and that’s all anyone thought he would be capable of doing for the rest of his life. When he was a teenager, someone gave him camera. He turned up to every wedding in Maryborough and photographed, uninvited. He would jump into the bridal car, uninvited, and just get in the way of things. He was considered a nuisance to the people. People avoided putting announcements about their weddings in the local paper in order to make sure he wasn’t there. He couldn’t drive, so he rode a dragster pushbike to photograph the weddings. When he died, they were surprised to find at his house hundred and hundreds of photos. People assumed he didn’t have film in his camera. And these photos showed an entirely different perspective of the town’s weddings than any of the professional photographers did. Not all of them were in focus, but after he died - the city ran a photography exhbition of his best photos. In the printed guide to the exhibition, it said “He was a gift to the town and he had shown us in a way that we never ever would had seen.”
Don’t tell me you are a missional church unless you have gone to the bottom of the table and helped people see things they can’t see themselves.
When we, as conference, sent out Alan, I saw a united tribe. My wife saw the same scene but said she saw a leadership without women. In male dominated circles, it is women who have a vision that the men can’t see.
Get out. Take your camera and photograph the world as it is seen at the foot of the table. Prefer people over religion, and prefer humility over honour.
Thirdly:
Luke 14:12 Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid.
Luke 14:13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind,
Luke 14:14 and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
This is logical. Invite those to the table that can’t repay you. This is a key plank of hospis. We should practice a ferocious form of hospitality.
In “Hotel Rwanda”, the main character as a hutu creates space and practices hospitality to Tutsis. There was nothing physically stopping death squads walking into the hotel except for one man’s devotion to hospitality, one man’s moral integrity. He does anything he can to stop them.
We are called to invite those who can’t, the marginalised, the shunned and the poor. The merging church is not about cooler worship, or pissed-off and cynical evangelicals.
Alan once said that hopefully we will look back and say that at the end of the 20th century, at the turn of the 21st century, there was the decline of the church, but when the fathers and mothers embraced mission as their defining purpose and were propelled out and went to the margins, they turned the tide.
I don’t want them to look back and say, yeah there was a group of cranky evangelical - they were lazy and self-focussed and wanted things their way, and something flared up. But all it did was create a little blip in the declining trend of the church.
Those people…
preferred people over religion;
launched people that practised humility over honour - they were selfless, they were generous, and denied their own self-interest.
they moved out like a wave of shadow people, and turned the hostis of Australian culture into the hospis of Jesus.
Do you want to be part of a movement that isn’t about new innovative structures, new worships, etc, but follows the shadow man to the bottom of the table to share lives and photographed the umbra.
We need to embrace dangerous Christian disciplines, selfless generosity, and build spiritual muscle. Stories will kick off something, but it is our discipline that will be the dangerous impact on this wide brown land.
Let us go and love, to serve and empty ourselves into the lives of others, the umbra, the lurkers of kitchen doors, and the hungry ones. And all because we follow the most marvellous umbra of all.
April 12th, 2007 at 11:55 am
****PLease refer to the thread “Experimenting, Pioneering, Blazing new paths” to reply to the below*******
Would someone like to explain to the Gay Christian contingent of this site why a supposedly socially progressive emerging church organisation like Forge is throwing its lot in with an ex-gay program like Liberty Ministries?
http://www.libertychristianministries.org.au/images/stories/docs/conference_280407.pdf
Or at the very LEAST why a pro gay-christian such as AVB or someone else will not be present to offer the opposite point of view to Simon Riches, whom believes no-one is born gay & whose personal testimony is that he had to make a decision to be Christian & NOT gay (but not both)?.
http://your.sydneyanglicans.net/sydneystories/self_destructive_life_ends_in_light/
I may be over-reacting due to shock, i never thought the Emergent movement would be so intellectually dishonest as to try this on without offering both points of view. I actually feel betrayed & offended.
ANY suggestion that a Gay Christian is not sexually whole or the result of abuse is presumptuous & offensive, make no mistake.
How could Emergents be so imbalanced in their approach to this issue?
How far has the apple really fallen from the tree? How far removed is the Emergent Church from its birth-roots of established denominations. Not too far we think. If Riches is a Sydney (Jensenite) Anglican i am even more shocked.
April 12th, 2007 at 2:03 pm
Are you suggesting that they are not intellectualy honest?
Unwanted is I think the key word in the sentence. Is it not ok for Christians not accept that homosexuality is fine? Explain how they are being unbalanced? Have you heard them speak? Have you attended anyworkshop that Alan, Debra or Simon have spoken at and heard an unbalanced message?
Just as it isok for Christians to accept that Homnosexuality is a part of likfe - it is also ok for people to not want to have feelings of attractoin to others of the same sex and want to work trough those issues - and this is what I think these people are on about.
April 12th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
sorry I shgould have posted in the other thread - don;t double post Reve it get’s confusing for those of uis with limited white cells! - I mean grey matter - gees and I didn’t even edit before postin just to maintain intilectual integrity!
April 12th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
Greg,
I know i will get shot down for saying this, but, in my opinion : -
There is no such thing as unwanted same-sex attraction, there is only un-accepted same-sex attraction.
Please note that situational / circumstantial homosexuality (Gaol, Armed Forces, Same-sex Boarding schools & seminaries) are to be looked at as a separate issue.
April 12th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
Hmmmm…Reve, I get what you’re saying, as long as it’s confined to *attraction*. Now that I’m married, I certainly hope I can resist any urge to act upon attraction to other people - male OR female!
Even if one accepts same-sex attraction, people might engage in behaviours they do not wish to engage in. I see this as a different issue (though related) issue.
April 12th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
Why should situational same sex attraction be considered a separate issue? I suggest that for the married man who struggles with wanting to get his nob blown at the local beat by other men and loves his wife and wants to be faithful to her most definitely struggles with unwanted same sex attraction! I am not talkiong here about gay men who avhe married but are not attracted to their wives and are feeling stuck. SWhat about the other way round - men in smae sex relationshipos who struggle with their desire for women?
April 12th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Greg - surely there’s a difference between attraction/desire and action?
April 12th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Greg, what you have mentioned in 6 would in my opinion be un-accepted bisexuality, or sexual addiction disorder, or a combination of both. Not exclusively “unwanted same-sex attraction”. And i think un-accepted bisexuality is actually far more common than un-accepted homosexuality, for the record.
April 12th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
OK let’s call it un-accepted bi-sexuality - how does the man who wants nothing more than to be faithful to his wife (and I think this is most definitely a biblical and moral imperative) not see one of these attraction as un wanted and why not attend programs like Simons in order to facliitalte this?
April 12th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
Unwanted flows into un-accepted,
Un-accepted flows into repression & depression,
Repression & Depression is eventually worn by that man’s wife (it always reveals in some way).
And that’s not fair on her.
She never really knows him, trusting intimacy is faked.
Consider the alternative: -
Complete unashamed honesty. Everyone is set free to react as they will with their eyes open & can make decisions about their lives based on real & true information.
Sometimes loving someone is the sacrifice of setting them & yourself free.
And there is NOTHING in the Bible or said by God or Jesus about how to deal with an established marriage when you find out you were always something you couldn’t have accepted back when you got married.
So we do the best we can.
And the best we can, is telling the truth about what you, in your heart or hearts know, ……won’t change.
April 12th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
Reve, neither Greg nor I are talking about people who are ONLY same-sex attracted and who are in a hetero marriage.
April 12th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
its interesting that I found the morality I’d yearned for all my life by accepting my same sex orientation, embracing my homosexual self I’d hid in the closet and loving every single part of me.
Not wanting it, suppressing it, rejecting it in Jesus name and hating it actually created a sexual addiction that made me fail constantly and be unfaithful to the women I should never have married in the first place.
through emails from readers it is becoming very obvius to me that this not and uncommon expereince.
April 12th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
and I reach out in love to all ‘exgays’ and not condemn them. How could i? I was one myself for 22 years. the only difference between them and me really is that I didn’t always win the battle with temptaion……but inside our head the gay wiring still exists.
Long term research showed that of all those who believed they were cured by aversion therapy and got married……..not one was still married 20 years later.
A christian belief system will keep you there longer and if you are in the ‘exgay’ ministires then you have an additional motive to stay on the straight and narrow…….but inside in your very heart of hearts you are not heterosexual.
anthony venn-brown
http://www.anthonyvennbrown.com/book.html (shameless plug for my book as Koorong it seems was too scared to stock it)
April 12th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
avb, do you not think you might be confusing issues as well? I’m not gay, but I’ve certainly got friends who would share your experience of finding the morality they’d yearned for only by embracing who they were.
But again, I think Greg and I are talking about something different…or do you not believe that there is any such thing as bisexuality, or some kind of scale with people who are “very gay” on one end, and “very straight” on the other?
April 12th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
AVB you appear to be saying what I said most gay males end up saying - if you like penus’ at all or ever have had one other than your own in close proximity to some part of your own body - you are and ever shall be gay with out end amen!
Aint so Mr 7.
I accept and support your positoin, howevfer hold to mine that is not all men who avhe had sex with other men are gay and than many struggle with wantring to be faithful to their wives.
April 12th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
I thought a sliding scale that accepts that most of us are not one hundred percent straight, or one hundred percent gay but most are more towards one end or the other, with people being in the 4,5,6 category being those that usually identify with bisexuality, was universally accepted now, is this not true?
I find certain men very attractive, but Greg is not one of them.
rev
April 12th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
That is because you are threated by my manliness
April 12th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Tossers.
April 12th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
ha - don;t get in between two Alpha Males duking it out Bec - just sit back and admire one of us (I suggest that would be me) and pity the other (that would be rev…poor ol rev!)
April 12th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
“Would someone like to explain to the Gay Christian contingent of this site why a supposedly socially progressive emerging church organisation like Forge is throwing its lot in with an ex-gay program like Liberty Ministries?”
Because the emerging ‘missional’ church in Australia is just the local conservative church trying to re-brand itself to hide the conservative bits..in the same way that Hill$ong has re-branded pentyism …to hide the speaking in tongues and other wacky stuff.
Once a conservative, always a conservative. They’ve just found new jargon to obscure what they really believe.
It’s funny reading back through all the Liberty Christian Ministries stuff again; the false promises of ‘healing’, the failure to proclaim the true gospel of justification by grace through faith in Christ……oh….it’s all flooding back…
Good to see Forge is assisting gay people on the road to depression and mental breakdowns.
April 12th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Lance!! I’ve been waiting for you to turn up!!
April 12th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
Ok but how about the things Bec and I (and rev…belatedly) have brought up - how do they fit into the equatoin?
April 12th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
yeah, the Rev just copied what I said.
April 12th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
Ah actually I think he copied what I said Bec
April 12th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
oh yeah?
so where did you, like, refer to a sliding scale? huh? HUH?
April 12th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
I merely asked if it was accepted truth, which I had assumed it was. I think I am a five.
rev
April 12th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
Sorry Bec…..I did jump into a discussion that has been going on for a while so I may have been off track a little.
to answer your question…I do believe in bisexuality……research tells us it exists. What it also tells us is that is much more common in women and rare in men. (if we understand sexual orientation being different to sexual behaviour)
I also know that I classed myself as a bisexual for a period of time. With a new understanding and very much at peace now with my life and my sexuality it seems this is way i’ve journeyed.
1. Orginally my sexual orientation was towards my own sex. I fell in love several times and had sex with a number of guys in my teen years (mostly not really knowing what it was)
2. After much prayer and and exgay program I got married and had sex with a women. One woman (my wife). I would call that ’situational heterosexuality’ (the opposite to heterosexual men who become ’sitational homosexuals’ in prison. When they come out of prison they no longer engage in homosexual sex)
3. Because I was able to have sex with men and women then I thought I was bi-sexual for a year or so. it helped to explaing my expereince and behaviours.
4. Finally, when I came out I realise today that I am same sex oriented, have alwasy been, will always be and wouldn’t want to be anything else actually.
So thats been my journey…….
April 12th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Hey Greg the explorer.
I have mixed quite a bit in the bi community in sydney. Up till that point I think my view was that guys who said they were bi were only in denial about their homosexuality.
Meeting many men who said they were bi and observing their behaviours I think I feel now that there are very few genunley bi man. There are however a lot of very horny hetersexual men who don’t really mind who is on the end of thier willie……and there are some that have a sexual addiction. Niether of these it seemed were healthy places to be. But it is there life and not my place to judge. Just made a few observations.
April 12th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
BTW…..how come homosexuality is being discussed in three threads. Bit of over kill isn’t it.
April 12th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
I am trying to talk about anarchy
rev