I was talking to a pastor today in the bookstore about Purpose Driven Church. He had asked me my opinion about it and I said quite honestly that I wasn’t a fan of its heavy “marketing” language. That growing a church has more to do with “tapping a market” than cruciformity for Warren (at least in PDC). We talked a bit about the church with Starbucks inside or Joel Olsteen’s Mega-Mega Church in Houston. These churches are competing with popular culture to entertain and “serve” the felt needs of their targeted market group. Dennis, my pastor friend, joked that Olsteen’s sermons were like eating Whipped-Cream for dinner.

I’m re-reading Yoder’s Politics of Jesus for a summer class and in it Yoder points out that Jesus moves away from the crowds (or they move away from him) because way of the nature of the Kingdom he preaches (38). I don’t think that cruciformity tastes like Whipped-Cream. And churches who stop trying to compete with pop-culture for people’s attention (because let’s be honest, as big as Olsteen’s church is now, they’re not going to “beat” MTV) and start journeying towards cruciformity may just find themselves “growing” numerically, because they’re inviting others to an alternative culture (not a Christianized pop-culture one), and perhaps not, perhaps churches that do so will soon find themselves closing their doors, but the mission of the church is immitation of Christ’s self-giving love, not the “survival” of the church itself. The intentional following the crowd to get its attention is not the tactic we see in Jesus, but even in Jesus’ withdrawl from the crowds many found the path of cruciformity to be the life-giving path of following Christ.

I was over at macrumors.com today and saw this. If it’s real and this is the next big things for apple (along with movie downloading from iTunes)… sweet.

While taking a break from school I checked the apple site to see that they’ve got a new batch of ads. Funny… and true. Check ‘em out here.

There’s been a lot of talk about immigration in the United States thanks to the president’s pushing for immigration reform and today’s “Day Without an Immigrant” Day. Some of it has been downright sickening as a follower of Jesus Christ. Everyday I see someone on TV furious about “those” immigrants “stealing our _______.” The whole protest against illegal immigrants has been based in fear, and some people are really afraid. I have pity for people whose lives are just dull enough that they need to get off work early to harass migrant workers and call INS to come “deal with the invasion of the 3rd world.”

Aside from that however, I have many theological issues with the obsession over “protecting OUR borders.” To begin with, this continent was founded on literal invasions and outright genocide. What gives anyone the idea that this land somehow eternally and essentially belongs to YOU is beyond me. This is stolen land, Mexico is stolen land. That the United States physically resides where it does today is not an eternal fact.

The next and most important objection to this mentality is that there are few theological borders that are really important, national borders not being one of them. In fact national borders are a worldly illusion. The kingdom of God is open to ALL (remember that whole “neither Jew nor Greek, Slave nor Free, Male nor Female” stuff… yeah that). For Christians to admit that, but say that national borders are not open to all, but belong to US says a few things. First that we don’t really believe God is the creator, and if we do he apparently only created spiritual things (gnosticism) because this world belongs to nations not God. Secondly it says that governments and not God may determine on what part of the created world one may reside on. And lastly it holds all things national and patriotic as more important (and more real) than things Godly and good.

When “US” becomes Americans, and “THEM” becomes anyone else, we’ve forgotten our baptism.

I’ll leave you with a line from Derek Webb’s A King and a Kingdom

Who’s your brother, who’s your sister
You just walked passed him
I think you missed her
As we’re all migrating to the place where our father lives
‘Cause we married in to a family of immigrants