one more thing.....

if you have read my last two posts and are a bit worried that this idea might inspire a lack of commitment to one's local/home church, please read this article on the Small Ritual website (which i have added to my links on the left) about the idea of Network Church. the ideas set forth in this article have effected me quite a bit as far of my view of the church structure. here is a bit from one of the articles on the site about Network Church:

"I think this is an acute coinage which accurately captures how many of us behave nowadays with regard to the Church. We don't have allegiance to just one, and we don't only connect locally. Our spiritual lives reflect the mobile and dispersed patterns of the rest of our lives. Once upon a time a geographical parish was a real community, within which people were born, lived, worked and died, sometimes without ever travelling outside it. Few of us in the Western world live such localised lives today. We move in a series of networks, enabled by our technologies of transport and communication."

so please, read the linked article to provide some back-story about the view of the local church i have set forth in my posts. the Church is bigger than we think, its time we realize that.

more on that.......

thank God above its the weekend, the past couple of days have been murder; but at least its basically over. there's a part of me that cannot wait to be done with this "job" over here....oh, did i say that?

anyway, let me try and give you an example of what i was saying in my last post about Brand Loyalty, and thus a business mentallity, in the church. a few weeks ago i had a conversation with one of the staff at the Ascension, Althea, and she told me about a lunch meeting she had with one of the other staff at the church months earlier. they went out because he had something to tell Althea and judging from his behavior, something really big and/or bad; due to the fact that he was visibly nervous. they got through most of the lunch without him bringing it up, but getting more nervous. she was wondering what it was he had to tell her, was his fiancee pregnant? does he have cancer? did he kill someone? finally, near the end of the lunch he told her, and this is what the big news was: he was planning on going back to school to pursue graphic design this next fall and he would have to quit his job at the end of the summer. wow, why was he so nervous about saying that, i thought, then it occurred to me. due to the sense of lotaly that is demanded of congragants and staff at churches these days, he was afraid that the leadership at the church would see his pursuing of a carreer that wasn't the church as a lack of loyalty to them. as if he worked for a company that demanded nothing less than total loyalty to the job, like he had signed a contract and, by leaving and pursuing a passion, he was breaking it to the uttermost penalty.

when i told the Ascension that i was cutting my year short, they responded with nearly accusational disbelief. then, as well intentioned as they were, they tried to scare me into staying the rest of my time, saying that if i cut my year short, there would be no way that i would be able to benefit from my experience here in London. what a crock of non-sense. they reacted as if i had broken trust with them, as if i was working at KFC and had shared the Colonel's Secret Recipe with the world. the same is sometimes true of people that deicde to go to a different church. i have sometimes seen people like that treated by people at their prior church as if they had left the faith, "no longer could they be serving/loving the Lord if they don't do it at our church" they think to themselves. maybe i'm reading something into all these examples, but i don't think i am. its just one more adverse result of seeing the church as a business and not as a family of messed up people who are all on the path toward heaven. there is little or no grace in the business world, and i surely, a lot of the time, don't see much grace in the church either..... how sad we have become. may God help us.

Brand Loyalty

this is something i have been mulling over in me head for sometime now: the idea of "Brand Loyalty" in the church. i have waited to write anything about it here because i haven't really formulated it all out in my head, its still a fragmented idea. however, i thought it would be ok to simply lay out the general idea for you guys and you can add to it if you want.... i know i will be adding/subtracting to it as i think more about it.

anyway, as i said above, i have been thinking about this for a while. here is a bare-bones, Readers Digest version of what i see: people (both worshipers and church staff) see the specific church they attend as a specific brand of a product (worship or church). as a result they have certain Brand Loyalty to their specific brand that they consume and see all other brands of the same product as a rival to be competed against. if they see someone decide to "consume another brand" (go to a different worship service at a different church), they see that person as be a traitor to their brand. you see this in the market all the time: if someone, say, consumes the same breakfast cereal for years on end, they both feel a strange connection to others who consume the same breakfast cereal as them and see it as a huge deal to decide to change brands and consume another breakfast cereal; so it is in the church. in my time here, i have chosen, on one occasion, to check out an alt.worship service here in London on a sunday evening, instead of attending our sunday evening worship service. when certain people heard about it, especially certain members of the leadership, they frowned a bit, being utterly confused as to why i would want/need to go to a different worship service; isn't ours all i would need? i could sense an air of awkwardness when i would talk to my fellow staff about it, as if i had betrayed them somehow and was parading it around, "shouldn't he know that what he did was wrong, going behind our backs to worship God at another place?"

here's where i see the problem in this mode of thinking/acting (to continue the analogy of Brand Loyalty): each individual church is not a separate brand, demanding strict Brand Loyalty of it's worshippers, to the exclusion of full support of all other members of the Body. instead, i see the Worldwide Church of Jesus as the brand to be loyal to and each individual church is simply a different product within the large brand of the Church. for instance, if someone decides to buy a Pepsi instead of a Mountain Dew, they are supporting different products, but still showing Brand Loyalty to PepsiCo. if i decide to go to Vaux on a sunday evening instead of the Ascension, i am not being a traitor to the brand, i am still showing brand loyalty to the Worldwide Church of Jesus. i think if we adopted this mindset, especially those in leadership roles at each church, we would be in a position to experience a real sense of unity and connection with the wider Church. i think we would be more inclined to support, both with resources (finances, people, space) and with prayer/cooperation, other churches in the local area/world that are seeking to lift of Christ and love people. walls would be torn down because we would realize we are all "working" for the same Brand, if something benefits one specific church, it benefits the Worldwide Church of Jesus. we are all connected and we are all one body, ONE BODY. lets try and change our thinking about this and start operating as Christ intended for us to operate: as one family, one body. there is only one brand to be loyal to: the Worldwide Church of Jesus.

well, there it is. sorry if its sort of fragmented, i am still trying work out in stunning clarity what i am exactly trying to say about what i see in the church today in relation to this. it feels good, though, to at least get it out of my head and into words. as i said before, i will continue to think about this idea and post anything new i come up with. feel free to post any comments you have as a result of this, i am interested in hearing what you guys think about this idea.

what heaven will be like.....

its late tuesday afternoon and i'm just chillin here at my favorite spot, The Glow Lounge; enjoying the
rest. sorry i haven't written in a while, had a big break over New Years (as i'm sure, most of you know).
anyway, i'm back and I am posting.

went to possibly the coolest place i've ever been.... The Apple Store-Regent St. here in London; the
picture above is various shots of it, from the outside to the main stairs that go up to the Theatre. it was
so amazing, wall to wall Apple's out for free use. not to mention all of the gear, accessories, software,
etc.... while i was there they were giving a little seminar on GarageBand in the Theatre they have; very
cool. it was so nice to be in a place just for Mac stuff and Mac people, so often its the other way
around... nothing for Mac people; i'll definitely have to visit again.

also, some big news for you people........ after much prayer and thought, due to some personal
responsibilities i need to take care of at home, i have decided to cut my year here short. my last day of
work at the Ascension will be the 6th of March. hopefully, my parents will be able to come out here for
a week at that time to hang out and see London and help me take some stuff back home. my time here
has been incredibly awesome in every way, i thank God that He allowed me the chance to do this, even
if it is for six months instead of a year. i am excited to see what He has in store for me when i get
home.