**** Editor’s Note - I just updated my podcast with a sermon on Joseph and trying to understand how dreams play a role in our relationship with God****

There are too many things to talk about from the Olympics to delve into them in any depth, so here are some quick thoughts and then some Jesus.

The Chinese give out the most awkward high fives I have ever seen

The Russians are graceful in every sport in which they compete, why is that? It took a Russian in America for their to be a graceful US gymnast.

Usain Bolt’s theatrics don’t bother me for some reason. All sprinters are prima donas I think he is more of a free spirit ala Manny Ramirez than a jerk ala Barry Bonds

Even though the basketball team can only account for one gold medal and at the Olympics, no one can carry the star power of Lebron, Kobe, and Wade. When they show up at a swimming or volleyball match those athletes are awed by their presence. It is very cool that they have acted like real people at these Olympics, however, and actually mingled with other athletes.

If you want to spark a really interesting debate with a man ask him who is more attractive Misty May-Treanor or Kerri Walsh. I had this conversation with my wife and it was very humorous.

I am amazed at how easy it is to see whether an athlete will compete well or not before their events. You can just see it when an athlete doesn’t believe they can win. You can also see the other side when an athlete has that cold stare of confidence. You could see it with the swimmers, Larsen Jensen already had lost before he entered the pool, Kosuke Kitajima had won before he got into the pool.

Michael Phelps can now take his place atop the Mt. Rushmore of the ultimate winners. His head can go next to Tiger, Jordan, Armstrong, and Russell as those athletes who just had a higher will to win than anyone else. The win be one one hundredths of second in the butterfly sealed his entrance into the highest pantheon of sports legend. He is as great a swimmer as there has ever been an athlete in any sport.

Now for some Jesus

This summer we have preached through Genesis, paying particular attention to the lineage of Abraham and God’s covenant. It has been an awesome and challenging series. It wasn’t until this year, however, that I began to see Joseph as a foreshadowing of Jesus. In Joseph’s story there are so many foreshadows of the coming of Jesus and his sacrificial work on the cross. Joseph makes this especially stand out in Genesis 45 where 4 times he tells his brothers that God sent him ahead of them to save their lives.

This is really the first time that God’s promise to Abraham to bless all nations through him begins to be fulfilled. Joseph is a small blessing compared to Jesus, but I think that is the purpose of foreshadowing. I had never connected Joseph to Jesus before. In many ways, of course, the twelve sons of Israel who begin the twelve tribes, are precursors for the 12 disciples. It was such a blessing to go through the story of these families this summer and to find Christ in them. The fullness and the connectedness of our story in God is such a beautiful thing to behold.

The other day I was hanging out with my good friend Maggie, when the thought occurred to me, Maggie is a free range chicken. Now I know what you are thinking, I wish I was friends with Greg too, but seriously that is a great analogy for my friend. Why?

Well as I have spent time getting to know Maggie and helping her through the process of understanding her call. But, one of the concerns I have for her is that she is a free range chicken, and most denominations have no place for such people.

If you think about the process that churches, as institutions, use to create and form leaders and to create churches, often it is a lot like the process of raising chickens. For the record let me state that I am not crusading against chicken people. In fact, I have a deep appreciation for chickens. The worlds largest producer of chickens and protein solutions put my food on my wifes table growing up, paid for college, and continues to bring many blessings to my family. So yeah protein solution providers!

(In case you didn’t pick up on it, protein solutions is part of the insider slang they are using these days. I think that it helps us forget that protein comes from animals, but I digress)

We love efficient processes. We love to take something that works, make it duplicable, and mass produce it. Mr. Henry Ford helped us find our love for that! Unfortunately, this love has carried over to the church. We create processes that we believe lead to success. Whether it is growing leaders or building churches, we have processes. Processes can be good. Many of the patterns and beliefs emphasized through the institutionalization of the church have brought about great benefit. There becomes a problem, however, when we don’t make room for ideas, people, and churches that don’t fit our patterns.

This summer at Christ Church we started a new worship service called Green Chapel. More specifically, Maggie dreamt up the service, and we have helped her facilitate its creation. It has been a huge success. It has organically grown into a service where people, especially those in our immediate community, who otherwise might not feel comfortable entering our sanctuary, are gathering for worship and interacting with our church body. I preached there, outside under the beautiful (although hot) sun, and met at least 30 people I had never seen before. It has been a place of great encouragement. The immediate struggle, of course, with us as a Church staff, has been to take this free flowing, simple, and naturally growing and shaping service and to institutionalize it. We want to grab it and make it something duplicable and permanent. But, to do so would remove the very things that have made it successful.

That brings me to the problem of free range chickens. Many of the most important voices we have in the church right now belong to people who will lose their vitality, go crazy, and experience nothing but heartache if they are placed in a cage, pumped full of growth hormones, and put on the shelf next to all of the chickens. This makes us feel in control of the process of growing and using chickens, but it does not necessarily make for better chickens.

As the church we need to find room for prophets, entrepreneurs, mavericks, black sheep, free range chickens, visionaries, and contrarians. Why? Because without them we lose a vital voice for change and accountability within the church. We lose their innovative and transformational practices. We lose a part of the body, that while it may be messy and hard to control, and scary sometimes, it keeps us whole and healthy and headed in the right direction.

So this is a encouragement to Maggie, whom I deeply love and am inspired by, and all the other free range chickens out there. Don’t let them put you in a cage! Go, run, cluck, peck, lay eggs and be who God has called you to be. Most of us won’t get it. Most of us will be freaked out and scared by it. Most of us won’t understand how important you are. But, your life, lived into the abundant fullness of who God has called you to be, will ultimately help us figure out what it means to be the church.

What a great weekend! Between the start of the Olympics, some nice weather, a great softball weekend and a great day in church, it was simply a satisfying weekend. Enough of the pleasantries, let’s get to the ramblings.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!

I have never been so excited about men in spandex. That was the greatest swimming race I have ever seen. The look of pure joy and ecstasy on the faces of the relay team was awesome. After such an incredible comeback against a team that had said they smash them, there are four very satisfied athletes today.

Watching Michael Phelps got me to thinking. What would it feel like to know you are the greatest at something. That you are probably better at it than any human being that has ever lived? That is probably something you can’t really spend too much time talking about or thinking about, but it would have to be unnerving in many ways.

I am trying to find something that I can do better than any human being that has ever lived and I am struggling with it right now. I am thinking about going for something obscure, to help my chances. Maybe I will become the worlds greatest right handed user of left handed scissors. Or I could become the greatest Nazarene preacher in a Methodist Church. Or maybe, I could go Jesus style, and work to be the least in everything and then be the greatest. I will update you as this unfolds.

Costas is the Grill Man

I thoroughly enjoyed Bob Costas’ interview with President Bush. I was surprised when it came on and really thought Bush seemed very presidential. I especially liked how he talked about his direct conversations with the Russians and Chinese about issues affecting them. I thought that Bush was more likable than I had ever seen him. He has had a nice presence here in China. Good for him for coming and adding a nice bit of support to the athletes. At this point he doesn’t have much else to do, but it was humanizing to have him there.

Well done job by Costas as well with the questions he asked. He was direct, asked questions of significance, and quickly followed up the president’s responses without letting him off the hook when he spoke like a politician. This interview was second only in interest to the interview with Bela Karolyi.

Dunk you very much

The Redeem Team had a nice scrimmage against China. One of the factors that can really help the American team is that these games will feel like home games. Kobe and Lebron are more popular in China than Yao! They will have the fans behind them for every game. That can make a nice difference. Kobe is probably the greatest player in the world right now, but not by much. Lebron is the most intimidating, impressive, and mesmerizing player in the universe. In the past couple of years Carmelo Anthony has been the best player on the floor for the US squad, but not so anymore. Now that Lebron has begun to figure out international play, he is the dominant force in the world. He is about to go Phelps on the rest of the field.

I wish I could have been..

As I have been reading the story of Joseph in Genesis I have started to really spend time imaging what it would have been like to live his life. This got me thinking. Of all the Biblical characters, whose life would you live and why? Now we are going to go ahead and eliminate Jesus as an answer for all you smartaleky always bust out the Jesus answer in Sunday School types. Off the top of my head, here are my top candidates in no particular order.

The I’m interested list

Joshua - had the misfortune of following a legend, but was a successful commander and conqueror

David - His life was a roller coaster and he experienced tremendous pain, but he had some magical years in there that almost make the rest of it worth it

Andrew - There are almost no bad references to Andrew. He wasn’t nearly the pain his brother was, and he didn’t get rebuked very often. He seemed to quietly go about his life as a disciple. This is appealing.

Nimrod - Why or why dear writer of Genesis did you not give us more about Nimrod

Noah’s Wife - She never gets a name, but she gets in the Ark, gets all the adventure and blessing of God’s covenant, and didn’t have to actually build the thing, good deal

Ehud - I always wanted to be a southpaw assasin

Solomon - Wisdom, fortunes, and fame sound fun for a while, but all those wives really hurt the appeal

Cornelius - Everyday guy who experiences God in profound ways and gets to chill with Peter

Samuel - Prophets are cool, especially King makers

Zechariah - A simple priest who has a great kid, that is a cool gig

Deborah - She was a judge, she was a prophet, she was simply The Woman

The I’m Not Interested List

Moses - Sure he lived in Pharaoh’s palace for a while, but 40 years as a shepherd, not thanks..

Paul - I can deal with the shipwrecked part and surviving the snake bite is a cool story to tell, but getting beat up repeatedly doesn’t sound awesome

James the lesser - You spend three years hanging out with Jesus and don’t distinguish yourself in anyway?

Jonah - Regurgitated Fish Food

Sampson - I like the long hair and strength, I don’t like having my eyes poked out

Lazarus - when I resurrect, I don’t want to have to die again, especially with the people around me plotting my death, that has to be a bummer

Mary, mother of Jesus - raising God’s son, too much pressure

John the Baptist - Camel hair makes me itch and beheading sounds uncomfortable

I would love to hear your suggestions for the character you would must like to be..

I must say the wife and I are excited about the opening ceremonies tonight. You know there will be ten thousand Chinese acrobats making the world’s greatest human pyramid. I do love the Summer Olympics and can’t let them begin without some predictions.

Men’s Basketball - Team USA will lose… in the group round, and squeak by Spain for the gold medal. This will be the hardest test ever for a US basketball team, but the Doberman and King James will them to victory in the end. Still, why didn’t they bring more size? I wish Duncan or KG was there. KG especially because of the emotional power of his presence.

NBC - I will grow to despise NBC more than ever during these Olympics with the ridiculous tape delay and Bob Costas trying to inject tension and drama into an even that was reported on the internet 15 hours before hand.

Brett Favre - With the Olympics starting we can all stop caring about Brett Favre. That is reason to rejoice.

Somewhere Dick Ebersol is crying - with both of the Hamm twins out, a major marketing avenue filled with human interest stories has been lost. This is more devastating than when Nike ran all of those Dan vs. Dan commercials and one of the Dan’s didn’t qualify for the Olympics.

Urine will dominate - There will be a lot of talks about the results of people peeing in cups throughout the Olympics. Sad that drug testing will cloud ever major track event. It is hard to trust the greatness we see from the athletes we watch. I really hope that none of the major competitors get busted for drug use. That will damage the already fragile trust we as spectators have for our heroes.

None of this will help China - The more I read about all the money China has spent and the new social policies they have implemented to show how far they have come as a country, the further behind they seem as a country. The IOC really deserves some blame for the way they have allowed China to ignore human rights and thumb their noses at the rest of the world. The IOC is not responsible for what China does, but they are responsible for their own inaction. This country is so far away from knowing justice and freedom, and I just don’t know that these games will do anything more than reinforce the governments delusions about either of these major issues.

Here are the events I am most excited about in no particular order…. Kayaking, Sailing the sea of green algae, Weightlifting, Wrestling, Women’s Sand Volleyball, Men’s Basketball, Rhythm Gymnastics (seriously this is the most underrated event of the Olympics, they use ribbons, hula hoops, yoga balls, nun-chucks, throwing stars and bottles of mayonnaise) the Steeple Chase, and of course the triple jump. I love slightly strange and highly specialized sporting events.

For nostalgia’s sage here are some great highlights from past years

So bring on the acrobats, the former Maoists, the General Tso’s Chicken and let’s hear sing the theme music shall we….. Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah, Dah,

What are we as Christians to make of dreams? Dreams are one of the least talked about spiritual encounters in the church, yet we find God speaking to people through dreams throughout the scriptures. It is impossible to miss all of the encounters that people have with God in scripture. Yet, we are typically very dismissive of the power of dreams and their ability to connect us to God. We often believe the words of this Despair poster, that only idiots chase dreams.

Certainly some of this struggle comes from our Enlightenment manufactured education and culture that tells us that reason is the primary vehicle for understanding God. But, it goes beyond that. For some reason we take our dreams and relegate them to simply the dark or difficult to understand parts of our brain that having nothing to do with the active reality of living. But I don’t think that is true. The more I think about the dreams I have, both actively and subconsciously, the more I realize that my dreams give me a lot of insight into my soul.

Dreams have an ability to connect us to the mystery of God. As you think about God as creator, doesn’t seem that somehow God dreamt us up. God imagined us and spoke and crafted us into existence. God imagined us and then we existed. Our ability to dream reconnects us with the very act of creation. So we need to learn how to dream in order to really explore who it is God has created us to be.

I have a lot of dreams. Most of my dreams growing up were for fame or glory. I dreamt of being a star athlete, the lead singer of a band, or even president. But at the heart of those dreams was the belief that something great could come from my life. That is still my dream, but I understand greatness a lot better now. As I dream about God’s plan for me and God’s call for me, fame, money, and acclaim have nothing to do with greatness. I desire now to see God do great things all around me and through me, but understand that none of it will be done through my efforts or gifts. God can use each of us to bring about the greatness of his kingdom on earth simply through our submission and faithfulness. All glory there is to be had is God’s glory.

So I dream of churches that are thriving. I dream of churches that lay aside all that entangles and traps us from truly loving God (money, sex, power, success, the praise of others) and really discovers God’s mission for the church. I dream of seeing a revival sweep across our nation. Ever since I was in college and had visions of revival I have believed that our generation will see a spiritual awakening the likes of which haven’t been seen in a hundred years. I dream of being overwhelmed by the glory of God manifested in transformed lives all around me. I dream of God.

We need to dream more. We need to share our dreams together. We need to encourage one another and offer input and interpretations to our dreams. We need to take seriously the connection that our dreams can have with our creator. So what are your dreams, everyone has a dream…..

Cake makes you happy

Today is my son’s 2nd birthday. That sure went fast, wow! I always dreamed about having a son, but the reality has been far more wonderful than anything I imagined. What I really appreciate about my son is his spirit. He is gentle, laid back, full of life,  very loving and he thinks he is hysterical. I can’t imagine where he got that.

Here are some highlights from the weekend.

Jack Kent Cooke is Smiling Today

What a great weekend to be a part of Redskins Nation! Seeing two all time great Skins like Darrell Green and Art Monk go into the Hall of Fame together was amazing. The entire stadium was decked out in Redskins jerseys, mercilessly booing every time a Cowboy was mentioned and giving Art Monk a 4 minute ovation when he stepped to the podium. It was awesome. The ovation made up for the ridiculousness of Monk having to wait 8 years to be inducted.

My favorite moment from Darrell Green’s career was definitely the playoff game against Chicago, a classic grind it out cold weather battle that Green won with a punt return for a touchdown. He actually torn his rib cartilage on the play and still scored. The man intercepted a pass in 19 consecutive seasons, that is absurd. My favorite Art Monk moment was the game when he set the then all time record for career receptions. Monk, like Cal Ripken, was marked with consistent steady production that showed unbelievable dedication and sportsmanship. Plus he rocks a sweet ’stache. I am glad for them both.

Then in an absolutely meaningless game the Skins looked pretty good, especially the QB’s. How about Colt Brennan flinging the ball around like he belongs in the show? It was meaningless, but at least no one had a devastating injury. Of course it was hard to even realize there was a game since it was mainly a three investigative report as to whether or not Brett Favre’s plane had landed, which seat his wife was sitting in inside the luxury box, and what he ate for dinner. This whole thing has made me not ever want to root for Favre again. Let’s go Vikings!

Worship is better with bubbles

I got a chance to preach outside yesterday at Green Chapel. It was wonderful. What a joy it is to worship outdoors. The simplicity of the service, the relaxed and welcoming spirit of the people, and the joy of feeling connected to the creator were such a blessing. Come and check it out if you haven’t yet. The kids were even blowing bubbles throughout the service yesterday, so the Spirit was with us!

A Holy Headlock

Yesterday the lectionary took us to the story of Jacob wrestling with God. This story has so many levels, but the part that stuck with me yesterday was Jacob’s determination to grab onto God until he received his blessing. That kind of determination to seek and know God is vital to maintaining our zeal and passion for the gospel. This week let us all renew this zeal and grab hold of God with all we have, knowing that the blessing that come are not because of our determination, but because of God’s never changing mercy and love for us.

Last night Shay, Loren, David and I ventured to Raleigh for the Church Basement Roadshow with Tony Jones, Doug Padgitt, and Mark Scandrette. It was truly a unique experience (except that the Jesus for President show that Shay went to last week was very similar in format) and very entertaining. Here is a video from the show. It was a hybrid show/revival/book tour that you have to experience to really understand. Thankfully, David, Shay and I recorded a podcast this morning so that we could share all of our thoughts about it with you.

So go to my podcast and check out our review. If you have seen it, we would love to have your thoughts as well.

Sorry this week’s ramblings and links are a day late, I know many of you had the entire rhythm of your life upset by my tardiness. Yesterday was 7 hour staff planning meeting day. The meeting was good. The meeting was long. The meeting took away my capacity for proper cognitive function. So here you go…

Middle School Drama on the Gridiron

The Brett Favre saga is difficult to make sense of. In some ways I feel for Brett because all he wants to do is play football for the team he loves, that he has lead so effectively, and that he has been loyal to for so long. On the other hand, he brought this on himself. Every off season for the past 3 years it has bee the Brett Favre retirement watch. He loves the drama. He assured them he was done playing, and they had to move on. If they allowed Brett Favre to come back now and reclaim his starting job, they might as well trade Aaron Rodgers because he would never recover from that. Sorry that it has ended up this way, but in the end I don’t feel sorry for anyone involved except for Aaron Rodgers whose entire career is being dictated by his misfortune of being drafted by the Packers. After all this drama, I would be shocked if Rodgers has anything more than a pedestrian career.

The Leadership Market is showing great returns

Every church has its distinctive culture. God works in each place uniquely through the setting and the people who are there. At Christ Church one of the real distinctives is that this is a place leaders are called and trained for ministry. We have had a major hand in developing and sending off  over a dozen pastors in the past 10 years. That really is extraordinary. This is a place where we readily invest our resources in raising up new leaders for the church. There is a huge cost in time and resources associated with it, but we never seem to mind either because it is so important. During meetings yesterday we were talking about this part of our church and it made me feel privileged for Christ Church’s investment into me and humbled by the opportunities I have had to invest in others.

Your New Best Friends

I have not and probably won’t see the movie Step Brothers, however, there is a really funny link where you can insert your friends into a video with Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly and they will call their phone. Check it out.

An Old Timey Revival Sort Of

I am going to go and check out the Church Basement Roadshow with Tony Jones, Doug Padgitt and Mark Scandrette tomorrow night in Durham. The whole concept makes me laugh, but I am sure it will be an interesting show and involve some cool discussions. I don’t expect to encounter many new ideas, since I have read a lot of their stuff, but I am interested in the spirit of the gathering. Emergent gatherings have a tendency to go one of two ways for me. They seem to bounce back and forth between this disenchanted and reactionary sessions and the most gracious, Spirit filled sessions of exploring our faith and trying to grapple with the gospel. I am definitely hoping this will be the later.

On the blog Stuff Christians Like, they had a post the other day about the different roles of the Pastor’s wife. He suggested that most pastor’s wives fall into one of three categories: Sunny Rainbow Happy Lady, The Grumpiest Person on Earth, and Keyser Soze. The post was problematic in a couple of ways. First, the categories he alloted for this role were very limited. Second, the changing scope of pastoral ministry needs more categories for the role of the pastor’s husband, a difficult and changing role indeed. I can’t say much about the role of the pastor’s husband, but I can talk about the the role of the pastor’s wife.

For a long time the pastor’s wife has conjured up images of jumpers, hair in a bun, running bake sales, playing the piano, running VBS and being an ever present part of the church. This however, is not the role of my wife, nor will it ever be. The only thing I usually say about my wife on my blog is that I don’t talk about her much, because I try to keep protect her from the public nature of my job. Gretchen does, however, have a very significant role in my ministry and the church. It will just never be the role that other people assign to her, it will always be the role she desires.

If I were to offer a category for the role my wife has chosen to take in our church, it would be what I call the First Lady pastor’s wife. This is the well loved pastor’s wife who shows up to make otherwise dull events look better, who had personal projects they are passionate about that they throw themselves into, and whose style and charm make them far more liked than the pastor. This is a formal role that my wife excels at. She is a very gracious hostess, excels in front of people, and has parts of ministry that she is very passionate about.

But, one of the things that comes with being a pastor’s spouse (wife or husband) is that other people constantly try to add to your role. The roles that other people try to assign to the pastor’s spouse include, the press secretary (the person who has all the information), customer service representative (the person you come to complain about the church to) and pastor (assuming the spouse can or will do anything their spouse will). This can be really hard on any spouse whose life is already made so much harder by their spouse serving the church.

So give your pastor’s spouse some serious love. They have a difficult life as it is. Allow them some boundaries, love them no matter the role they take, and don’t project your expectations on them, their spouses already deal with that enough.

I would love to hear from any other pastors or their spouses out there about the difficulties of these roles and what they experience.

Editor’s Note - I found this picture and thought it was hysterical. That is the only reason it is here. This is not a picture of my wife, just for the record

For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like those condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored! To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world—right up to this moment.

-1 Corinthians 4:9-13

Hey all! Shay here. Guest blogging on Greg’s blog again. I have an interesting story for you from last weekend:

I was invited to guest host a local improv comedy show on Friday. What this means is I stand up and share stories and between each story the players do a series of short skits based on material from my stories. This show generally features artists, authors, poets, musicians, local politicians, radio DJs and other similarly known personalities. As a youth pastor I was immediately confused at the proposition that I should host this show, but I agreed.

I prepared several humorous anecdotes about some kids in my youth group and even a few about when I was in youth group growing up. As the show began, I slowly realized what I had gotten myself into. I had hoped that my beliefs and values would not be exploited or ridiculed and that the material for their show would come from the wacky antics of teenagers rather than from the religious setting in which these antics took place. I was wrong. After the first set of scenes, I didn’t know what I could possibly do to redeem the show. The scenes involved an angry Jesus who cussed kids out, people wiping their private parts with cake and then feeding it to others, a demon bird, drilling holes in Bibles for fun, a lot of sex, a lot of random cussing, and a lot more potentially offensive material that I cannot recall right now. It seemed as if the Church, Christianity, and Christ were quickly becoming fodder for cheap jokes and bitter ridicule.

I have spent a lot of time reflecting on that evening since then and have a few thoughts on the situation. I love comedy. I think good humor is better than most things in life. I love laughing and having fun and witty conversation and good jokes. However, as with most good things, humor and laughter can be twisted into something harmful or degrading. C.S. Lewis addresses this concept when he identifies several different types of laughter: joy, fun, ‘the joke proper’, satire (or mockery), and flippancy.

With improv, the challenge is to avoid the easy way out. The easy way is flippancy and a close second is exaggerated satire. In the world of acting this is known as ‘going blue.’ Crude and vulgar content is often used in place of wit, good satire, observant jokes, fun, and joy. In the show there was a lot of mockery, satire, and flippancy. And this is where the conversation begins. Paul warns us of the worse part of satire and all of flippancy when he writes, “Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving (Eph. 5:4).”

Standing on the line between the Kingdom and the World, I could have seen myself as being too sensitive and prudish and taking the whole thing a bit too personally, but at intermission and after the show a couple of the players came up to me and apologized and said they would try harder to keep the show “clean.” I even got an email later that night from the friend who asked me to host the show but couldn’t actually be there that night. He apologized because he heard the show was very raunchy and crude.

Sure, I could have been offended and angered because I was invited as a guest and then not treated with respect. I could have been upset that the things I care about were mocked and the values I hold were disregarded. I could have puffed my chest out and declared that my God and I did not deserve to be treated that way. But I don’t think this is the attitude or mindset Christ would want me to take.

If you read the letters of Paul carefully and have some understanding of the language and culture of drama and spectacle of Paul’s time you can start to see a very specific message about the image we as Christians should take in the world. One key passage is found in Corinthians: “We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to human beings. We are fools for Christ (1 Cor. 4:9-10).” In Paul’s letters, he makes a comparison between Christ on the cross and the spectacle of being the buffoon like ‘fool’ character in the theater productions of his time or those who were sent into the arenas to be humiliated and killed.

We are called to “have same attitude of mind Christ Jesus had” as Paul writes in the Philippians hymn: “Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be exploited, rather, he made himself nothing by taking on the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human being, he humbled himself by being obedient to death, even death on a cross (Phli. 2:5-8)!”

Instead of seeing this evening as a humiliating waste of time, I have come to see it as being an opportunity to live the humble gospel out with joy. The actors and the audience have a new perspective on Christian leaders because I was willing to go into their world and sit among them. I showed them I can have fun and be gracious even in the face of obvious ridicule. Nothing I did or said was condoning their behavior, but nothing I did or said condemned them, either. I even ended the night with a brief summary of my sermon for the following Sunday and an invitation for them to join me for worship. I made a few new friends and hopefully opened some eyes to what it means to follow Christ.

What would you have done in my situation? What are your thoughts on playing the ‘fool for Christ’? How do we as the Church fail to accept the role as ‘Christ’s fool’ and instead join the world in their image game?