Life with limits. What's next?

As Craig and Nancy Goodwin spoke this last weekend, I keep thinking about that old 80's song by Sammy Hagar "I Can't Drive 55!" The Goodwin family spent an entire year with self-imposed limits on their consumption. They consumed/purchased only things that were local, used, homemade, or homegrown. Craig has written about their adventure in Year of Plenty. The Goodwins spoke about their experience at CLPC this past weekend.

Craig and Nancy discovered a freedom of connection in their family life, with their neighbors, and in their relationship with God through these limits. It wasn't always fun or easy. But listening to them, you got the clear idea that they would not trade the year for anything. Sammy Hagar "can't drive 55" but we can live within limits - and in doing so we find meaningful connection with our God and with our world.

The season of the church year called Lent is an invitation to live within limits. Lent begins with Ash Wednesday (Feb. 22) and ends on Resurrection Sunday (April 8). For centuries, Christians have used this season to impose self-limits as a means to greater connection with God and others.

What self-imposed limits might you choose this year for Lent? Perhaps something as simple as driving the speed limit (the actual speed limit, that is) or choosing to drive in the slower lane of traffic. Maybe a limit on the amount of time spent with email, Facebook, or watching TV? I'd love to know what ideas you're considering. Post a comment here and join the conversation.

Day #2 Fellowship of Presbyterians Covenanting Conference

John Ortberg told us this morning that, while he's relatively new to the Presbyterian Church, he thinks it has been a long time since we've dreamed. Perhaps it takes a converted Baptist - someone joining us from beyond the ranks of the predestined - to help us see ourselves better.

The Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians (ECO, not ECOOP) is an attempt to begin dreaming again, to imagine a movement - more than an institution - that is "in love with the church that Jesus started," as Ortberg put it. He said that our current denomination is dying from "internal strife and external irrelevance." ECO hopes to create an environment of 'high trust and low control.'ECO and the Fellowship of Presbyterians have the singular purpose to "build flourishing churches that make disciples of Jesus Christ."

ECO is the name for the new Reformed body that the Fellowship of Presbyterians is attempting to birth tomorrow evening. The Fellowship of Presbyterians will stay in place as a connecting organization but ECO will be a separate and distinct Reformed body which churches can join when they leave the PCUSA. It's unclear to me still, if churches that do not wish to leave the PCUSA can also formally affiliate with ECO. It sounded to me today like ECO is only for those who want to be part of a completely new denomination (albeit with close relationship and working partnerships, where conscience allows, with the PCUSA).

Clear Lake Presbyterian Church is not alone here. There are plenty of congregations represented who, like us, are not feeling any immediate need to disaffiliate with the PCUSA. But there are some here who are very anxious to depart. In fact, they are not sure they can wait around much longer for the ECO to take shape. They may need to choose another existing denomination instead.

I love these people here. The vision being cast is compelling. I want to make disciples of Jesus Christ. I want to lead my congregation in taking the wildly-alive Gospel to our neighbors and our world. Practically speaking, for us, I think that has very little to do with the denominational name on our church sign but everything to do with who lives in our hearts.

Orlando - Fellowship of Presbyterians

I will try to post some comments here about my experience with the Fellowship of Presbyterians Covenanting Conference in Orlando, Florida. You can learn more about the Fellowship of Presbyterians at http://www.fellowship-pres.org/. Basically this is a group of Presbyterians who share varying degrees of concern about the state of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. Some are hopp'n mad about our denomination and are convinced, not without reason, that it has abandoned core essentials of the Christian faith. Others simply have a concern that our denomination lacks vision and structure relevant for today's world - the world we actually live in. (If you're keeping score, I probably fall more into the second kind of concern than the first.)

On the way down here I listened to a podcast of Rob Bell's December 18 farewell address to Mars Hill church. (It's a better listen than a read, by the way.) I was intrigued by this part of Rob's letter in light of this Covenanting Conference I'm attending. Rob writes...

i write this to you because of how many of you have been challenged about your participation in the life of this church, often with the accusation: but what do they believe over there at mars hill?

as if belief, getting the words right, is the highest form of faith.
Jesus came to give us life. a living, breathing, throbbing, pulsating blow your hair back/tingle your spine/roll the windows down and drive fast/experience of God right here, right now.

word taking on flesh and blood.

and so you've found yourself defending and explaining and trying to find the words for your experience which is fundamentally about a reality that is beyond and more than words.

so when you find yourselves tied up in knots, having long discussions about who believes what, a bit like dogs doing that sniff circle when they meet on the sidewalk, do this:

take out a cup
and some bread
and put it in the middle of the table,
and say a prayer and examine yourselves
and then make sure everybody's rent is paid and there's food in their fridge and clothes on their backs
and then invite everybody to say 'yes' to the resurrected Christ with whatever 'yes' they can muster in the moment and then you take that bread and you dip it in that cup in the ancient/future hope and trust that there is a new creation bursting forth right here right now and then together taste that new life and liberation and forgiveness and as you look those people in the eyes gathered around that table from all walks of life and you see the new humanity, sinners saved by grace, beggars who have found bread showing the others beggars where they found it and in that moment
space
place
remind yourselves that
this
is
what
you
believe.

remember, the movement is word to flesh.
beware of those who will take the flesh and want to turn it back into words

Bell seems to delight in tip-toeing right up to the line of orthodoxy and then deliberately trampling over it. However, I can't help but wonder if there's some appropriate caution for us here as we carry on about what ails the PCUSA - as we respond to challenges about our "participation in the life of this church, often with the accusation: but what do they actually believe over there...?" It's not that I think doctrine and orthodoxy do not matter matter. They do. But they matter only because of the One to whom we belong. It's easy for me to forget that I am not my own. It's easy to forget that I, and my church, and my denomination, have been bought at a price and that Jesus did the purchasing, not me (1 Cor 6:19-20). His blood does the owning, not mine. I don't keep the church, the church keeps me.