This week our campus community has been fortunate to spend some time with Brian McLaren.  Brian’s messages have been challenging and inspiring… and have served as the catalyst for some great conversation around campus!

This is the fourth, and final, of my posts reflecting on the four different conversations that Brian has led us in… the other three are (click on one of the links):

• Inherited Faith vs. the Faith We Will Live
• Reading the Bible Naked
• The 4 Stages of Faith Development

All have been great conversations… each of which will likely have me thinking for weeks to come, I’m sure!

This final session was focused on the Christian faith as a revolutionary movement…

Brian started with 2 important questions:

1. What are the top global problems?
2. What does the message of Jesus say to those problems?

Those two questions alone would have been enough to keep us all thinking for the rest of the day.

Next, Brian identified 4 “emergencies” or “crisis” that are serving to shape our world:

1. Planetary crisis – the plundering of the world’s resources and polluting it with toxins t rates that we cannot manage (Prosperity)
2. Poverty crisis –  a gap that continues to grow between the rich and the poor and an equity system that only furthers the problem (Equity)
3. Peace-making crisis – increasingly levels of fear, pain, tension and oppression in a world with increasing access to dangerous and destructive weapons (Security)
4. Religious crisis – the failure of the world’s religions to provide a framing story that addresses the first three issues (Spirituality)

The last of the four emergencies should cause us to ask questions about the faith we have… and the ways that we live it.  Right?!

Brian made the case for how many of the world’s religions have followed the same unfortunate, and misguided, path(s) of those who were trying to bring about change during Jesus’ day:

• The Sadducess, Herodians and Romans — through domination
• The Zealots — through revolution
• The Pharisees — through purification (scapegoating)
• The Essenes — through isolation
• The Wealthy Judeans — through accumulation
• The Poor Galileans, sinners, lepers and outcasts — through victimization

Which he then contrasted with the Good News of the Kingdom of God…

Instead of:

• Domination — service and love
• Revolution — forgiveness and reconciliation
• Purification (scapegoating)– embrace and inclusion
• Isolation — incarnation and healing
• Accumulation — self-giving and sacrifice
• Victimization — empowerment and mission

Brian concluded by revisiting the 4 “emergencies,” but looking at them this time through the framing story of the good news of Jesus:

1. Prosperity — through love of neighbor as self, pursuit of common good, learning from birds and flowers
2. Equity — through concern for the least of these, seeking justice for all
3. Security — through forgiveness and reconciliation, turning the other cheek and walking the second mile
4. Spirituality — through loving God “in spirit and truth,” with all one’s hear, soul, mind and strength

There’s so much here.

I’m still trying to process it all…

I see a lot of this final list in the ideals and priorities of our students… and at the same time I see them struggling to work/fit within the systems that we offer them…

I think we need to figure out how we can help to bring about the kinds of changes to our systems that will help more and more of us to live lives through the framing story of Jesus’ good news — helping to bring about God’s Kingdom here on earth.

I hope that as I have some more time to process I’ll have some more to share.

What do you see here?  What comments or observations would you make?