Un-churched in Miami

"Leaving and Cleaving and Becoming One"

2010-05-16T16:09:00.000-07:00

Principle #1: Leave your parents and cleave to your spouse

Genesis 2:24 For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.

Matthew 19:5 and said,' For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh'?

Ephesians 5:31 For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh.

INTRODUCTION: God created marriage and His word is the handbook and owner's manual. There are just a few biblical principals that can make a tremendous difference in our marriages if we apply them in our lives. The principle of "Leaving and Cleaving" is one of them.

Whenever a scripture appears in the Bible more than once, the Holy Spirit is making a special emphasis. Whenever a biblical truth appears in the book of Genesis, it is one of the fundamental truths of God's word. The principle of Leaving and Cleaving first appears in Genesis chapter two and appears again in the New Testament in both the words of Jesus and Paul. It opens to us a tremendously important biblical principle about marriage that we ignore at our own risk.

The first step in marriage is to leave your father and mother.
The top four causes of divorce are finances, sex, child discipline and interference or influence of the in-laws. Many marriages fail because the husband or wife fail to "leave" their father and mother. Biblically speaking, how do we leave our father and mother when the Bible also tells us to respect and honor them?
Changing Priorities
The issue is one of priority. The Bible is not telling us to cut off our relationship with our family, or to dishonor our parents -- it is telling us that we must be released from their authority and commit ourselves to our spouse. Our wife or husband becomes our family -- our spouse must become our first and highest priority!

In other words, if a man continues to prefer his mother over his wife and to put more priority on his mother's wishes than his wife's, he will damage his marriage and violate a basic spiritual law.

In the same way, if a wife continually compares her husband with her father and runs back home to "daddy and mommy" whenever there is a conflict in her marriage, she will also damage her relationship with her husband and endanger the future of her marriage.

Wise parents understand this and release their children to their new family. Wise parents will not interfere in their children's relationship with their spouse. However, many times family members will unintentionally try to continue to control or manipulate a son or daughter and will eventually succeed in destroying their marriage and keeping the child dependent upon his/her parents.

We must honor and love our parents, but firmly resist any efforts on their part to interfere with our new family.

Changing Patterns:
Another way in which we should "leave" our father and mother is to leave behind their patterns of relating and raising children. We all enter marriage with models of relationships what we have learned in our parents home; some good and some bad. We tend to carry these models or patterns into our new relationship with our spouse. Unfortunately our spouse also enters into the relationship with patterns and models from their childhood.

Chances are that even the good patterns we have are vastly different from our spouse's patterns, since they were raised in a different family. In order to have a successful marriage, we must work together to choose and develop the model of marriage and the patterns of relationship that we both agree are desirable The negative patterns need to be removed from our minds. We can keep the positive patterns provide we both agree to incorporate them into our family life.

Example of a negative pattern: Alcoholism and abuse.

Example of a positive pattern: Family conversation at the table.

The second step is to cleave to your wife.
Cleaving to your spouse means making him or her the first priority. The traditional wedding vows include the words, "and leaving all others, will you cleave only unto him/her?" and the answer is "I do." The choice to marry someone is a choice to cleave to that person for the rest of your life and to make their happiness and well-being your top priority, even above your own needs in many cases.
Cleaving to your spouse involves making him/her your priority, bonding to him/her and maintaining communicating with him/her on a regular basis. According to the book Bonding by Dr. Donald Joy1, there are 12 steps in the bonding process. It would be well for each of the marriage partners to learn these steps, especially the husband. Below are listed the normal steps in the bonding process.

How is the Spirit moving these days?

2009-07-25T08:05:00.000-07:00

Many of you may disagree with me, and thats alright. But I think I am seeing a new way that the Spirit is moving in the world and in people's hearts lately. Please watch it all the way to the end for the full effect. Watch it with your heart and discern what the Spirit is blessing. Check it out:

The Spirit used to move mostly in church, or at least that is my impression. I suspect the Spirit has always moved far more frequently and dramatically outside the church than we ever knew. After, it is the Spirit through which Christ holds all things together with his word (Col) and it is the Spirit who not only ordered the universe (Genesis 1) but probably operationally manages it. I believe the Spirit is always at work in social settings ... like the one in the reality show above. I often sense the Spirit working through the popular Radio Show called Delilah, for example. (In Miami after 7 pm on 97.3)

Stop looking for the Spirit only in church meetings (my impression is that he does not go there much anymore, but I really don't know since I don't go either) and start looking for his initiative all around you, Monday through Saturday in the mundane world. You will be amazed....

You gotta serve sombody ...

2009-06-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

Do you support Torture?

2009-05-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

one of the reasons so many people are dropping out of church, is the terrible image problem that Christians have. Check out this article from CNN

Religion and Torture

As a post-evangelical, post-conservative, I have had to face the fact that my "pro-life" views have been terribly inconsistant. I am personally against abortion, but I have had to re-examine my views on war, torture and capital punishment, and I have found myself moving toward a Quaker-Catholic or anabaptist view on all of these issues of human rights and respect for life.

In a recent book "UnChristian" by David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons documents the terrible image problem that evangelical Christians have in contemporary U.S. society. In my own opinion, it is because evangelicals are more "conservative" than they are "Christian" -- they have exchanged their faith for a cause. Below is a quote from the article on torture:

.........................

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.
.........................

In my humble opinion, it no wonder that when normal, everyday people find out that someone is a "Christian" they run in the other direction. This is not persecution, this is simply "Christian" stupidity to put it crudely but honestly.

Click here to read the entire article on CNN.com

The greatest thing you will ever learn....

2009-04-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

I have been giving this a lot of thought ... and I have come to the conclusion that the writer in Moulin Rouge was right: the greatest thing you will ever learn is to love and be loved....

Justin Timberlake and the seeds of the LOGOS

2009-03-16T05:35:00.000-07:00

Justin Martyr once described Plato as a “Christian” who had some intuitive pre-revelation of the divine LOGOS in Christ (McDermott, 2007:93). He reasoned that if Christ is the Logos who lights up the whole world, then there must be “seeds” of ultimate divine reason or the LOGOS of God scattered in many non-Jewish or non-Christian cultures (of course, this was before there actually existed a “Christian” culture, properly speaking – at the time there was only a growing Christian subculture within Hellenistic and Roman paganism).

Nearly ten years ago, in August of 2001—a very traumatic year as you might remember-I stopped over at my friend Steve Humble’s house to speak at his church. Steve treated me to my first exposure to the FIRST LOVE videos that document the testimonies of most of pioneers of early “Jesus” movement music. Worship, music and testimonies from such musicians as Honeytree, 2nd Chapter of Acts, Chuck Girard and Love Song, Terry Clark, Randy Matthews and Randy Stonehill, and Keith Green posthumously were deeply inspiring and helped me to reconnect with my own “first love” in the months around my visit to Steve. I had listened many of those albums back in the early to mid-seventies. Long Song was the very first Christian worship band I had every been exposed to. At that time John Meadows had an afro and was organizing live Christian rock concerts in Ohio. I attended the one he did with Andre Crouch. (Ok … hang with here, I am going to make point in a moment).

Over the last ten years, I watched the FIRST LOVE videos probably a dozen times, not only for the worship, and the encouragement about loving Jesus, but also with a weeping longing to see the divine initiative of the Spirit again in a new generation that is very lost.

I also used the video’s analytically, as a way of getting at primary oral histories of the beginnings of the Jesus movement (I didn’t realize that was what I was doing until I got into the methods class in the history department).

Here are a couple of facts about the pioneers of the Jesus movement:

LOVE SONG wrote a lot of their much of their best “spiritual” music of devotion to God and Jesus BEFORE they became Christians. After they were initially baptized, they went out and got “high” to celebrate.

Keith Green was writing devotional music to God BEFORE he was a Christian, while he was still a secular Jew. In the interview, Melody Green reads from his journal about his passion for God months before his official conversion.

The same kind of testimony is shared repeatedly by artist after artist. Only three of the pioneers out of nearly twenty, were raised as Christians, and they were not the prime movers of the early Jesus movement music.

Conclusion: Most of the impetus for the Jesus movement came through the activity of the Spirit working through marginalized secular young people who were desperate. After they were already tracking along with the Spirit, they became involved with Calvary Chapel or The FourSquare church and some with the discipleship movement, and others later with the Vineyard. A separate discussion would be to look at the fruit of these "church" movements today and to ask oneself if the discipling they received was a good thing or not so good.

My point:

If another "Jesus" movement is ever to come to those young people born after 1982 (and there is some sociological support for this generation to be a strong and activist generation: See Strauss and Howe, 1992), it will not likely originate within the church. It will originate with the initiative of the Spirit OUTSIDE the walls among hurting, lost and desperate kids.

check out this Youtube video by a rapper named T.I. and Justin Timberlake

I discern the activity and the LOGOS of the Spirit speaking through their song, “Dead and Gone” amidst some really bad words by our evangelical baby boomer sensitivities. I think the Spirit is already moving in the hip hop generation in a similar fashion to what He did in 1968-1971 in the hippie movement. The question is, do we have the “ears to hear” through young people who may be as offensive to us, as the long-haired hippies were offensive to our parents generation? (I was one of them). Are they doctrinally correct? Highly unlikely. Is the Spirit moving in them? I really think so. You may disagree with me.

Second question: If this is true, how will we disciple them? (assuming they give us an opportunity). Will we raise up some new Calvary Chapels? Or can we do better than that? Even more important, how can we connect with those rappers and gangsters (vampire and tribal people?) in whom the Spirit is already at work so that we EVEN HAVE A CHANCE to offer some discipleship? Hint: it won’t happen at church on Sunday morning.

The Frog in the kettle continues to boil....

2009-03-09T07:07:00.000-07:00

More Americans say they have no religion

By RACHEL ZOLL, AP Religion Writer Rachel Zoll, Ap Religion Writer – Mon Mar 9, 12:14 am ET

A wide-ranging study on American religious life found that the Roman Catholic population has been shifting out o of the Northeast to the Southwest, the percentage of Christians in the nation has declined and more people say they have no religion at all.

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.

"No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state," the study's authors said.

In the Northeast, self-identified Catholics made up 36 percent of adults last year, down from 43 percent in 1990. At the same time, however, Catholics grew to about one-third of the adult population in California and Texas, and one-quarter of Floridians, largely due to Latino immigration, according to the research.

Nationally, Catholics remain the largest religious group, with 57 million people saying they belong to the church. The tradition gained 11 million followers since 1990, but its share of the population fell by about a percentage point to 25 percent.

Christians who aren't Catholic also are a declining segment of the country.

What if Starbucks Marketed Like a Church? A Parable.

2008-11-11T06:58:00.001-08:00

What if Starbucks Marketed Like a Church? A Parable.

2008-11-11T06:58:00.000-08:00

"Religulous" Review on Dan Kimball's blog

2008-10-06T06:07:00.000-07:00

There is a great review of Bill Maher’s humorous new documentary film about religion, called “Religulous” on Dan Kimball’s blog. I would encourage Christians who are reformationally re-thinking Evangelical faith to go see the film and to read Kimballs review. Below is a brief portion of the the review.

vintage faith

“…Bill Maher is trying to show how "religion" in general is messed up and even very damaging (which it can be). He tries to make his point in a very, very humorous way. But it also was very predictable in what it covered. I have either listened to or read most of the arguments he made in the film, so what was in the film itself wasn't really new information...

…Although it was a humorous film, and although it raised great questions which need to be asked - it only showed a very one-sided perspective. Thus, to me it was a poor film journalistically as it misrepresented Christianity by only showing the extremes of it...

… A somewhat tender moment in the film actually was in the beginning when he was interviewing some attending a truck stop chapel. As he left he thanked them for "not being Christian, but being Christ-like". That was the best moment in the film to me. Maybe one day someone will make a movie called "Jesusology" or something and it will be a film done as professionally as this one in quality.”

MOVIE TRAILER

Tuesday night "God" party in Miami

2008-10-01T10:06:00.000-07:00

This is a group of young, church-drop-out, 20-something single Christians gather on a back patio in Miami with a group of truth seeking young agnostics and new age seekers to discuss God, the scriptures, ethics and morality.

we had a good time last night ... conversations continued after our serious discussion about authenticity, integrity, and transparency. You have to listen closely to the background conversation between Ruth (the girl in the white sweater) and her friends.

"Jesus" in the eyes of people outside the church

2008-03-16T07:56:00.001-07:00

This is a great Youtube video interviewing young people to ask them what they think about Jesus.

A New Imagination for the Church?

2008-03-08T05:37:00.000-08:00

I came across a good article by David Dunbar, president of Biblical Seminary, about the need for “A New Imagination for the Church” on his Missional Journal website.

Missional Journal

I am posting a few excepts below…I encourage you to go read the original article.

……
In the last issue of the Journal I suggested that the challenge
for Christians in the West is re-imagining the shape of the
church and its ministry in a post-Christendom environment
where it must function on the margins of (worldly) power.
What will such churches look like? Are there any obvious
patterns that will characterize their structure and function?

1. Missional is not McChurch
Since the 1990s the term "McChurch" has referred to a
consumer-oriented Christianity which pursues church growth
by offering more and better spiritual goods and services.
Sometimes the notion of franchising is even included, i.e. the
practice of marketing to the larger Christian community the
programs, practices, or strategies of churches regarded as
particularly successful.

The problem with this approach is that it is not
missiologically sound. It doesn't take into consideration the
fact that the medium and the way the message is presented
will vary, at least in emphasis, from one local context to the
next. Most Christians recognize the need for missionaries to
translate or contextualize the gospel in appropriate ways to
specific cultures--our churches need to do the same.

As the church confronts wide-spread cynicism about the
Christian message, the gospel displayed will give credence
to the gospel declared.

I don't want to argue for missional to the exclusion of all
attractional aspects of current church practice. Many people
are drawn to the church by good preaching, good programs,
and fine facilities. The problem is that 1) many of those
attracted (not all) will be disgruntled members of other
churches and 2) the percentage of the population who can be
reached in this way is rapidly shrinking.

In the culture of late modernity many churches adopted a
corporate model for leadership, decision-making, and
planning. Pastors became CEOs, elders (or deacons)
transformed themselves into corporation directors, and topdown,
vision-driven planning became the order of the day.

It is a sign of biblical-theological health that this paradigm
is being questioned in the missional church movement.
....

To read the entire original article, click on the link below.

http://www.biblical.edu/images/belong/PDFs/vol2no2.pdf

"Friends" part 2

2008-02-22T05:57:00.000-08:00

hi, this is part 2 of a series of postings on the friendship model of church life. I have several friends working with this model in Europe and the U.S. ~ Joseph

By Wayne Jacobsen
BodyLife • September 2007

This summer, however, I stumbled upon a definition that expresses the life of the church better than any I’ve yet run across. It crystallized in my thinking at a worldwide gathering of believers this summer and it has grown on me more ever since. Its application to a variety of settings seems to bear witness to its clarity as well as practicality. What is that definition? Simply I am coming to see the beauty of the church of Jesus Christ emerge in this day as “friends, and friends of friends.”

Now, I realize that needs a bit of explanation, so let me try.

An Example In Ireland
Those who read my blog or listen to The God Journey know I was part of an incredible gathering of believers this past June in Ireland. It was hosted by a number of people who have been living relationally around Dublin for almost 30 years. They were in the midst of forming a congregation in the 80s when God made it clear he hadn’t asked them to do so. They stopped meeting regularly, but continued to share the life of Jesus together as friends living alongside each other. They rarely all get together for a meeting, though it would also be rare if on any given day a number of them weren’t together in one way or another—sharing their journeys and helping each other.

This summer God brought together people from all over the world who are learning to live relationally in his family for a week of sharing life. People came from 10 different countries including Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the United States and other countries in Europe. Most of those who came did not know each other beforehand, and many had never even been to Ireland before.

We spent the week together, beginning with a picnic on a Sunday in a field and ended in the same field the following Saturday with a barbecue. Nothing was planned beyond the meal for both of those occasions and the rest of the week we did not gather as a large group except to take a bus tour of that part of Ireland. But throughout the week in various homes and other venues pockets of people got together for meals, recreation, and conversation. By the end of the week we were blown away by all Father had accomplished without planning or scheduling any ‘ministry’ times. Friendships blossomed, deep issues discussed, insights shared and questions answered. We prayed together, cried together, and laughed together all the while watching Jesus emerge among us. Significant time was spent helping individuals through rough spots on the road through prayer and counsel. Friends and friends of friends could be together for a week and Jesus could accomplish all he wanted through that simple reality.

For the original article, click on this link:
http://www.lifestream.org/LSBL.Sept07.html

Friends and Friends of Friends

2008-02-19T10:21:00.001-08:00

Friends and Friends of Friends
By Wayne Jacobsen
BodyLife • September 2007

This is part 12 of an occasional series on Life in the Relational Church. Check our archive on-line for the previous articles in this series.

Since I first wrote The Naked Church twenty years ago now, I have searched for a definition of the church that encompasses her majesty and yet explains in simplicity who she is and how she functions in the world. At first I thought that could be answered in structural ways as I moved from the mechanics of large institutions into more relational structures, like cell groups, home groups, and house churches.

But it didn’t work out that way, for which I am incredibly grateful. Defining the church structurally has two problems. First, the life of the church is found in the affection and cooperation of people who are living in Christ. No structure guarantees that reality. In fact, smaller groups who practice performance-based religion are even more dangerous than larger ones who do. Second, these definitions were inherently divisive—excluding brothers and sisters who met in different structures and inculcating a false sense of superiority in those who think they have finally recaptured ‘the secret’ of New Testament church life.

For the rest of the article: go to http://www.lifestream.org/LSBL.Sept07.html

Simple Church Movement

2008-02-10T07:10:00.000-08:00

this video is good ... it shows that this 'out of the box' thinking is no longer quiet so pioneering but is becoming much more mainstream ... (click twice to view it)

there is, however, more than a small element of idealistic romanticism that one detects in the video ... As we have learned, it takes hard work...working at relationships. 20 years down the road all of the ugly warts and defects and human carnality of the "simple church" approach will be evident ... it is still going to take men and women who surrender their will and ego, and embrace the cross of Christ to coach and perfect the saints for the work of ministry ... it will still take apostles to start groups, help them multiply and reproduce, keep them from becoming isolated, or ingrown or even from veering off into error ... it will still take prophets, teachers, pastors and evangelists to equip and coach among the simple churches ...

nevertheless, I see this as a healthy corrective and we (in Princeton, FL along with our friends in Columbus, Oh) already have 4 to 5 years experience with it ... as we continue to work out the bugs ...

I hope you will contribute some comments for discussion....

Fox News Miracle

2008-02-09T08:58:00.000-08:00

This is a fascinating story of a cardiologist who prayed for a patient who's heart has been stopped for nearly 30 minutes ... Is this an example of the power of prayer? Watch the video and you decide. Click twice to see the video.

BWAB in Costa Rica

2008-01-30T15:21:00.000-08:00

check out our friends in Costa Rica!

Merry Christmas

2007-12-23T16:03:00.000-08:00

peace on earth and goodwill to all the peeps!

Claiming no religious afiliation in Miami

2007-12-03T20:15:00.000-08:00

I am taking a class on religious diversity in Latin America with a professor at FIU. Tonight she shared some demographic data with our class that was very surprising to me. The data is taken from the ARDA, Association of Religious Data Archives.

Miami-Dade County, Florida Religious Affiliations, 2000

Evangelical Protestant - 158,052
Mainline Protestant - 49,777
Orthodox - 3,570
Catholic - 542,984
Other - 138,551
Unclaimed - 1,360,428

I am not entirely confident that the data is accurate…it seems to me that the “Independent Charismatic Churches” membership data should be much higher…I am away of several independent Charismatic Spanish speaking churches that are over 2000, one that is nearly 20,000. However, the rest of the data is probably pretty accurate.

http://www.thearda.com/mapsReports/reports/counties/12086_2000.asp

What does this mean for missioners? Where do we go, and how to we connect with the million and a quarter people in our county who claim no religious affiliation? How do we serve them? What are they looking for that organized religions are not providing?

I remember a recent survey by George Barna that claimed that most people were looking for an "experience" with God...only a very small percentage of church-going Christians actually "experienced" God's presence in church over the course of a year.

I decided that "I want to know what love is" by Foreigner would go well here... over a million people within a one hour's drive of my house are likely singing this song in their hearts:

Un-churched and loving it!

2007-11-05T14:33:00.000-08:00

Hi friends,

This is a blog discussion group for people of faith who have dropped out of churches or have given up on church life for a variety of reasons. Some may be praying in homes with your families, others might be meeting with a few friends in a house church, at a coffee shop or in a bar for discussion and prayer. If you are in any of these categories, I would be interested in talking with you about your experience. Feel free to email me at joseph.holbrook@fiu.edu or join this group for group discussion about how to live a life of churchless faith.

By-way-of introduction, I am a former pastor and church planter who left organized church life several years ago and began to meet with my adult children and their friends for prayer and fellowship. I recently finished my master's in Latin American Studies at FIU, and am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in History at FIU. I am doing research on religion in Latin America (mostly Brazil, Colombia and Cuba) and this semester, I am working with some other graduate students to do research on unchurched religion in Miami. Please let me know what your experience has been.

We also have a google discussion group where we can upload files at the following URL:

http://groups.google.com/group/un-churched-Miami

Thank you!

Joseph Holbrook
joseph.holbrook@fiu.edu
History Department
Florida International University