I have always been fascinated by the well-developed and thoroughly thought-through ideas taught by John D. Martin on the Kingdom of God. His teachings and the teachings of others like him are what first drew me to Anabaptism in general and to conservative Mennonites and the “Charity Movement” in particular. Of course, as with any other movement/denomination there were things I didn’t fully understand, some of them purely cultural oddities, but the radical ideas as delineated in the following blog post by Christian thinker Greg Boyd, are some of the touchstones that have aided me in my quest for a practical and intellectually satisfying Christian reality.

Original post | About Greg Boyd

A Word to my Mennonite Friends

Hello friends,

I plan on getting back to the problem of violence in the Old Testament soon, but today I want to share a marvelous experience I had last week.

About eight months ago I spoke at a conference at Hesston college (a Mennonite college) on faith and politics (I posted on it here). While at this conference I sensed very strongly God telling me there was some sort of relationship I (and possibly the church I pastor) was to have with the Mennonites. More specifically, at the end of the conference I received a very clear and burning message I knew I was to share with the Mennonites. Whatever else this “relationship” entailed, I knew it included sharing this message. Yet, I had no idea when or how this message was to be shared.

Then about two months ago I received an invitation to speak at a historic gathering of Mennonite leaders in Columbus, Ohio. When the Executive Director of the Mennonite denomination (Jim Schrag) explained to me what he hoped my talk would accomplish I got goose bumps because it was exactly what God had put on my heart at Hesston seven months earlier. I have rarely been part of something that was so obviously providential. I was humbled and delighted to be given this important assignment. My message was — and is — basically this.

There is a beautiful and powerful grassroots Kingdom movement arising all over the globe that Mennonites in particular need to notice. Millions of people are abandoning the Christendom paradigm of the traditional Christian faith in order to become more authentic followers of Jesus. From the Emergent Church movement to the Urban Monastic Movement to a thousand other independent groups and movements, people are waking up to the truth that the Kingdom of God looks like Jesus and that the heart of Christianity is simply imitating him. Millions are waking up to the truth that followers of Jesus are called to love the unlovable, serve the oppressed, live in solidarity with the poor, proclaim Good News to the lost and be willing to lay down our life for our enemies. Multitudes are waking up to the truth that the distinctive mark of the Kingdom is the complete rejection of all hatred and violence and the complete reliance on love and service of others, including our worst enemies. Masses of people are waking up to the truth that followers of Jesus aren’t called to try to win the world by acquiring power over others but by exercising power under others — the power of self-sacrificial love.

What many who are being caught up in this movement lack is a sense of tribal identity and historical rooting, and many are looking for his. A central feature of post-modernity is the longing to “live in a story” that’s bigger than oneself. Many, therefore, are looking for a tradition they can align with.

The only tradition that embodies what this rising breed of Kingdom radicals is looking for is the Anabaptist tradition (which the Mennonites are heir to). This is the only tradition that consistently refused political power and violence. This is the only tradition that made humble, self-sacrificial love the centerpiece of what it means to follow Jesus. It’s the only tradition that isn’t soaked in blood and the only tradition that looks remotely like Jesus. Many (in fact, most) of the early leaders of this movement in the 16th century paid for their non-compliance with the Christendom paradigm by being martyred. This tradition is a treasure to be cherished. And it’s a tradition whose time may have come, for this is precisely the vision of the Kingdom that millions today are waking up to.

The irony is that, just as millions like myself are running toward this treasure, many Mennonites are running away from it. In the name of becoming culturally relevant, the distinctive, radical aspects of the Anabaptist tradition are being downplayed by some as they become “mainstream” American Christians. For example, some Mennonite churches now allow national flags on their premises — even in their sanctuaries! This was always taboo among Mennonites, for they have always (wisely) been keenly aware of the danger of mixing the Kingdom with nationalism. So too, some churches are now letting their Kingdom message get co-opted by politics — some on “the right” and others on “the left,” which in turn is beginning to create tensions in the church. And some churches have even begun to back off the centrality of their stance against violence.

So, my message to the Mennonites, in a nutshell, was (and is) this: Cherish Your Treasure! Not in a prideful way, of course, but simply as a precious gift God has given you and that God wants to give the world through you. Be daringly flexible on all matters that aren’t central to the Kingdom (e.g. worship styles, dress, etc.), but be utterly uncompromising on all matters that are central to the Kingdom (viz. everything that pertains to living a Jesus-looking life). My Mennonite sisters and brothers, you have what multitudes in the rising Kingdom movement are longing for. You can provide a home to so many who right now are looking for one. If you hold fast to the faith you’ve been entrusted with (Jude 3), you may just find your fellowship exploding in the years to come. For, I believe, the Anabaptist vision of the Kingdom is a vision whose time has come.

I am deeply humbled and honored to have been invited to share this word with the leaders of the Mennonite Church last week. My prayer is that God uses it to prepare them to fulfill the vital role God has for them in the Kingdom movement he’s inspiring in our day.

Blessings

Greg

I have been really challenged in the last two weeks after returning from the Middle East in how I invest my God’s time. Here’s a quote from an excellent message (worth the time investment) that God used to kick-start some changes I’ve had to make in my schedule for the things that really matter.  Full Audio Here.

The concern that I have… is not first and foremost that we will fall into some great scandalous sin. My greatest concern for us is that our spiritual passion and zeal for Jesus Christ will be drowned in triviality. That our love for the Savior and our service for His kingdom will grow cold as we waste our lives on a million different allowable, permissable, absolutely inconsequential pursuits. And all the while, all around us there’s a spiritual battle to be fought, and there’s Gospel Truth to be gloried in, and there are souls to be won for Christ, and there are churches to be built, and there are nations to be won for Christ, and children to be discipled and hurting people all around us who are dying in their addictions…  Are we going to be Salt and Light?

I was with a group of young people on Tuesday trying to learn a new song and no one happened to have a pitch pipe along. That steel cookie just doesn’t always make it into our pockets along side the requisite wallet, mobile phone and keys. So we stumbled along and made do without it for the duration of our song learning efforts.

Later, I got to thinking about how if we could just use our cell phone’s ability to play audio and use a pre-recorded set of auditory pitches, we wouldn’t ever have that problem again, since most people always have their cell phone with them. So I went hunting online to find something of that nature that would work for our future music endeavors. I came across the Online Pitch Pipe and figured the MP3’s found on that page would be just the ticket.  Unfortunately, they are no longer available, but thanks to our friends over at the Internet Archive and their Wayback Machine, I was able to download the files from the 2005 version of the website.  I have linked to them below in a zipped folder which you may freely download and unzip before loading them on your cellphone.  Now before anyone argues that the sound from a genuine free reed aerophone is far superior than the sound of an electronic micro-sized speaker on a cellphone, I will quickly agree.  However, having your cellphone blow the pitch is better than no pitch at all    So, I wouldn’t recommend this as an alternative for any of us Mennonite, Beachy or other Acappella singer-types on Sunday morning at church, but it works for impromptu singing events when the Real McCoy isn’t available.

Enjoy!

Cellphone Pitch Pipe.zip

Working in IT and being in conservative Christian circles has allowed me to have some great discussions on how to implement (or not implement in some cases) the use of the internet by Christian families seeking to follow the Biblical mandate to be “in the world,  not of it”. I want to share some thoughts on this, as well as link to free resources that I have used and recommended to Christian parents who have asked for resources that work.

The internet is an interesting social phenomenon in that there is no central governing agency. Any one government can only control what “nodes” of the internet are physically located within its borders. So any person on the planet can post whatever content they choose to post and as long as that content is hosted in a geopolitical area that doesn’t restrict that particular type of content, anything goes.

As a result, it is up to individuals, familes, businesses and other organizations to “filter” what parts of the internet can be viewed by the computers under their jurisdiction. I’m going to focus on the family and a few best practices that make the use of this tool as trouble free as possible.

Best Practices for Families:

• Parents, take time to learn how the internet works and keep current with any major developments. If you aren’t very technically inclined, ask a Christian friend who is, to keep you updated.
• Parents, use some form of reporting (internet history, reporting software, Vista’s or OS X’s parental controls, etc) to keep family members accountable for where they goes on the internet and for how long.
• Use a form of internet filtering that is effective and can’t be easily circumnavigated. This is not a silver bullet. Parents, train your children in areas of moral purity and in the use or avoidance, depending on age levels and parental choice, of social web applications such as email, IM, blogging, Facebook, micro-blogging (Twitter), and other social media.
• Computer use should be in an open area where parents can easily walk past and see anything that is being displayed on the screen.
• If you can, go on an internet “fast” as a family occasionally, so you can see how the use of the internet affects your family life.
• Parents, make an Internet Use Agreement for your family and post it by the computer or in another prominent area of your home. This is something used even by non-Christian families. Microsoft has an article on this as well HERE.

Free Internet Filtering and Reporting Software for Families:

• Adblocker Plus - If you use the Firefox web browser, install this plugin to eliminate all those flash banner ads, which often promote selfish consumerism and immoral sensuality.
• Open DNS – This filtering solution is easy to implement and can be installed on either individual computers or your router.  The router option is better as it is harder to get around.
• K9 Web Filtering -   Mac/PC compatible software gets installed on a computer and provides filtering and reporting capabilities.
• File Sharing Sentinel -  Prevents peer-to-peer software such as Limewire, BitTorrent, eMule, etc from being installed (Windows only).
• McGruff SafeGuard – Excellent reporting software. Description from the website: McGruff SafeGuard is a service that intelligently monitors kids’ internet activity, including: website visits, chat and instant messaging, search engine phrases, social network profiles on MySpace, Facebook and many others. The Service alerts parents to problems such as Internet predators, dangerous behavior, underage/illicit sexual activity, suicide, drug use, credit card abuse and crime.
• XXX Church’s X3Watch – Accountability reporting software. The free version sends out biweekly reports and you can have up to 2 accountability partners.

Other Books, Articles and Resources:

• Logged On and Tuned Out: A Non-Techie’s Guide to Parenting a Tech-Savvy Generation |  Excellent book by Vicki Courtney who has done a lot of research in this area. You can read a sample chapter HERE (PDF).
• Internet Safety – Building Character and Building Walls (PDF) |  Top-notch article by Focus on the Family that focuses on the core issues.
• Making Space for Character in a Tech-overloaded World (PDF)  |  Another article from the FoF website with some wisdom and insight I found helpful.

Those are the thoughts and resources that come to mind at the moment. Feel free to share your own experiences, insights and other resources in the comments and I will add them to this post for the benefit of others.

Trouble in Amish Paradise is an amazing true story about Ephraim and Jesse Stoltzfus and and their respective families who go through the process of leaving the Amish community after reading and studying the Bible for themselves (something which is forbidden in many Amish circles).  The clarity of the gospel message and the theme of the powerful effect of these families’ faith in Jesus throughout this documentary is truly astonishing.  It is produced with the usual quality of any good BBC production, yet the message of salvation and hope in Jesus is as strong as if it had been produced by a Christian media group.

I have had the privilege of meeting several of the people featured in this work, people whose lives are being poured out for Christ’s Kingdom; and my prayer is that the usual “buzz” generated around a media production of this nature would bring glory to God and bring more people to know, understand and embrace the life and teachings of Jesus for themselves as a result of watching this story.

Broadcast exclusively in the UK on February 18th, it averaged 2.2 million viewers.  From what I hear, it is set to broadcast in the US sometime next month. Over 100 hours of footage was condensed into this one hour video chronicling the events of shunning, tent revival meetings, life-threatening illness in the family, and so much more.

For now, you can watch the first ten minutes of it from Youtube, below.

FURTHER READING:

From the BBC’s website:

An extraordinary insight into the secretive world of the Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.

When two radical Amish men, Ephraim and Jesse Stoltzfus, start to question some of the most fundamental aspects of their Amish culture, they face excommunication from their church and total rejection by their friends and family.

Broadcast on:  BBC Two, 9:00pm Wednesday 18th February 2009

Duration:   60 minutes

Update 3/14/2009: I was just made aware through a comment by Arlen Beiler about the new website www.troubleinamishparadise.com.  They have some slideshows featuring scenes similar to what is found in the documentary, Ephraim and Jesse Stoltzfus’ personal testimonies and links to Christian and Anabaptist resources as well as a preview of the new book being written by Ephraim.

So in my search for the best savings interest rate, I tripped across the Christian Finance Blog’s review of Dollar Savings Direct (which by the way has a 4% interest rate on their savings accounts).  One of the posts on the blog was asking people to comment for the chance to win $35 worth of tax prep software.  I spent 60 seconds writing my thoughts about Christmas and a few days later was contacted with a congratulatory notice.  Not bad.  Of course, the odds weren’t stacked too hard––there were 11 comments

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After months of putting it off, I finally got around to changing my header graphic to a nice dynamic slideshow of some of my photos utilizing Flash and a little PHP magic.  I went and downloaded the Flashfader Plugin and then had to find the magic spot in my header.php file to place the code.  Then came the resizing of the photos and uploading them with the plugin management tool.  45 minutes later, I had a nice header with enough photos in the “repository” to keep any of you blog viewers from getting bored looking at the same old header graphic all the time

Video games have always fascinated me, not because of the games themeselves, but because of their effect on the individual playing.  Here’s a video from TED that covers the topic illustrated by a video clip of someone who was born the same year I was.  (A side note: I rarely play video games because I feel the disadvantages from a spiritual, physical, and sociological view far outweigh the benefits.)

It looks like mankind has not given up on building a tower that reaches to “heaven”.  CNN has an interesting story.

‘Space elevator’ would take humans into orbit

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/10/02/space.elevator/index.html

Yesterday, I started a new blog, and I thought I would document all the technical details of setting it up, partly for my own future reference and partly to help out others who want to go all out and do this thing properly.

This step-by-step is for the Wordpress blogging platform:

1. Register a domain name and sign up with a web host. I currently use Lunarpages. They have great hosting plans at very competitive rates with good technical support when you need it.
2. Install Wordpress.  You may need to download it from wordpress.org.  If you are using Lunarpages, they have a simple click through installation using Fantastico.
3. Explore the thousands of Wordpress Themes available and pick one you like.  A good place to start is the Wordpress site.
4. Download the theme, unzip it, and upload it via FTP to your “blogdomain/wp-content/themes” directory. For FTP, I use the FireFTP plugin in combination with Mozilla’s Firefox web browser.
5. Now comes the fun part, customizing your Wordpress installation.  For a detailed look at what all you can do to customize everything from timestamps to maximum comment links, check out the Wordpress Codex, Blog and Forums.
6. Something else you’ll want to look into are plugins. There are way too many of these all waiting for you to bloat your blog with them. Here are the ones I use regularly and find very useful:
   1. Akismet spam blocker. This does an excellent job of keeping comment spam at bay.
   2. Google Analytics for Wordpress. A best-of-breed website statistics suite. You’ll need a Google Account.
   3. Wordpress Stats. For when you just want to see simple statistics in a very elegant way. I actually prefer using this over Google’s most of the time. You’ll need a Wordpress.com account.
   4. Google sitemap generator.  This tells the “big three” search engines (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) how to list your website in their search results.
   5. All-in-one SEO Pack.  Used in conjunction with Google’s keyword tool, you can drive more search engine users to your website with carefully crafted page titles, meta tags, keyword rich content etc. This is just one tool in a Search Engine Optimizer’s toolkit of wizardry.  It works quite well.
7. One last step I usually take is publishing a feed using the Feedburner service.  This gives you detailed statistics on who has subscribed to your blog with a feed reader of their choice (example: Google Reader) or via their email.  There are many more features to this service, but statistics is what I mainly use it for.
8. Once your blog is set up, you can start posting about whatever fires you up to start writing or linking, or embedding media from other websites.  I may write more about this last process in a future post.