First Post

I had a lot of thoughts for what this could be about, but I think the most authentic thing to do would be to pursue what's on my mind at the moment.

You've been warned.

I've given a lot of thought lately to church and culture, and how the two interact. This is due in no small part to my wife, Elise, who challenges me pretty frequently to think harder about a lot of things. Somehow this morning while we were both getting ready for work, the conversation drifted to how I feel church interacts with western culture, which in turn has taken me into a whole new thought! And it's about this:

Do you actually know anyone who has ever suddenly just realized God doesn't exist?

I mean, stop and think. When I was a youth pastor, I dedicated endless resources to making sure that the teens in my youth group knew how to think. The big trend in a lot of churches these days, thanks in no small part to Focus on the Family, is "Worldview." A lot of people are investing a lot of money, time, and energy into making sure that their young people (and a lot of their old people!) are learning how a Christian should view the world. This typically, but not always, begins with learning creationism, moves to making sure the Bible can be trusted, and then lands somewhere around why you should vote Republican. (That last one's a joke. Sort of.)

But how much is it helping?

Stop and think really hard...I'm not saying it's impossible, but how many people do you really know that just one day realized that God doesn't really exist, or if God does then its as some sort of distant, uninterested deity that wouldn't possibly deny us heaven (as if that's the point) as long as we tried really hard to be a decent person the majority of the time. How many people went to a biology class, learned about the theory of evolution, and walked out convinced God is a myth? I'm not saying those people aren't out there, but I'd be shocked to learn that they're the majority.

A quick survey of former Christians I know, and of confirmed atheists doesn't turn up many people who had an intellectual crisis. The vast majority of people who find the Bible and its tenets so unbelievable are people who watched Christians behave contrary to the Bible.

At the end of the book of John, Jesus, in his last recorded prayer, drops some extreme wisdom on us. (John 17) He prays, "May they be united, just as you and I are united, so that the world will know that you have sent me."

Chew on that. Jesus didn't pray that we have the right worldview, or that we have a stellar understanding of the Bible, or that we operate a flawless outreach program. He prayed that we'd be united. That we'd love each other. And that through that, the world would believe. Maybe the thing that an unbelieving world needs isn't a lecture on the outlandish claims of Darwin, the immorality of modern lifestyles, or the importance of trickle down economics. Maybe what the unbelieving world needs is to see believers who live out what Jesus said, who don't treat, "Love thy neighbor," as a suggestion, or a secondary doctrine to be debated after things like order of worship or who can speak at what time.

I could rant and rave all day, but I'll close simply with this: It's not that the things we emphasize in our churches are wrong; it's that they're not right enough. This isn't a matter of right thing, wrong thing, it's a matter of Christ's priorities or our own. My prayer for you, dear reader, is that you will prioritize the things of Christ this week, and focus on loving others, and letting that speak loudest about the reality of a God who loves you.

Revenge of the Blog

Been a while eh? I'm back, and changes are a-comin.

I took a hiatus a couple months ago from the world of internet publishing, because to be perfectly honest, this blog was a waste of everyone's time.

In the beginning, Jake had a blog, and he saw that it was good. The blog was fulfilling to write, and occasionally friends would contact him telling him it had helped them as well.

But one day, Jake looked on all he had created, and saw that it had become contrived and boring. It was no longer creative or even heartfelt, but rather something that he just felt like he had to do. So he said, "I will destroy what I have created, and if a better idea comes up, I'll get back to this."

A better idea has come up.

This first post will hopefully be an explanation of the goals that I want to have moving forward. Stick with me, I'll try to keep it interesting.


Essentially, the idea can be summed up in one word: Incarnation. Jesus was God among us, and as a result, called us to be Jesus among the world. In theory, if we're living out our faith and our ideals, we should be the lens that focuses people on Jesus, who is in turn the lens that focuses people on God. Fully God, and fully human. We in turn need to be fully Christ, and fully us. It's tough.

See, to be blunt and to be concise, I've spent the last 26 years drifting between two inseparable but distinct realities of the Kingdom of God. On the one hand I've attended and worked at very, very traditional, conservative, evangelical churches. (Loved some, didn't love others. Another blog, another day.) On the other hand, I've spent the last 8 years trying my hardest to escape the USA for increasingly longer and wilder trips. All of this seems to have culminated in my current job as short term programs coordinator for Word Made Flesh.

There's a tension in me that seems to define my faith over the last 26 years. I've lived my life unsatisfied with what we have no choice but to call the "American Dream." With apologies to Joel Osteen, the prosperity gospel just doesn't click with my understanding of the real gospel. The idea that we can fully cooperate with an economy, a political system and a general way of life that objectifies and dehumanizes others while still singing, "All to Jesus I Surrender," is completely and totally obscene to me.

Yet I've often said to myself and those I minister alongside for the last several years, "Jesus didn't deal with how thing should be. He dealt with things as they were." I can dream all day about leading the church on a new exodus out of the materialism of our day, but the simple reality is that most Christians aren't ready for that kind of thing. Heck, I'm not ready for that kind of thing most days. Jesus didn't demand from day one that people start healing the sick and baptizing thousands; he met them where they were, dwelt among them. That's the whole idea of incarnational ministry!

And so here I am. I'm still not sure what all God has called me to, but it is increasingly apparent every day that I'm called to be incarnational. I live in West Omaha, an upper middle class part of a pretty nice midwestern metro area. I work in downtown Omaha, surrounded with the less affluent, with more economic and ethnic diversity than anyone in my home neighborhood has seen in the last year. I work with both churches and people who've chosen to live overseas among the poorest of the poor, incarnating God's love there.

The focus of this blog will be the record and discuss the blessings, struggles, and issues that arise when we try to live incarnationally, when we dwell in that place of tension between God and man. Some days it will deal with my grocery shopping or exercise, other times it will explore theology.

I hope you'll join me, and if nothing else, hold me accountable and see my crazy psyche bared for all to see!

(Side note: There's some layout and presentation work to be done. Don't freak out if the title and appearance of this blog shift some in the coming days/weeks.)

Renovations Underway

I'm currently rethinking a few things about how I handle this blog, so that I don't just become another self-important self-publisher; patience is appreciated, hopefully I'll have some good new stuff to share in the very near future!