Posts Tagged ‘Shane Clairborn’
Things I Like [7]
Posted on: September 23, 2011
I love reading. I don’t do it as often as I should, but I love getting lost in a story, fiction or non-fiction…I love reading people’s stories. I prefer story books, whether you are telling me someone else’s story or your own. I don’t so much like self-help books or teaching books.
Anyway, my top 3 books: (click on pic to find out more about the book)
The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborn
The Shack by William Young
Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
(first 44 pages of blue like jazz available to read online)
Some authors I really dig:
Stephen King (IT, Carrie, The Shining, etc - fiction, horror)
John Grisham (An Innocent Man, The Client, The Firm, The Pelican Brief, etc - fiction, law)
Jeff Lucas (Lucas out Loud, Lucas on Life, How not to pray, Grace choices) - humour, christianity
living with strangers
Posted on: November 30, 2010
- In: blog carnival | my life
- 4 Comments
they say to watch the company you keep because you tend to become them or something. i always try to surround myself with good people, and i think i’ve done very well so far. god has brought some super awesome people into my life.
sometime this year i was going through some hectic spiritual stuff – lots of doubt, which i’d never really experienced before – so it was really scary, but the people from church helped me through it.
str
a few years ago i read donald miller’s blue like jazz and shane claiborne’s irresistible revolution and fell in love with the idea of living in community. i decided then that i didn’t want to live alone anymore – at that point i was living in a batchelor flat all by my lonesome. anyway, the following year i moved in with my friend lindri and that was really good. i think i needed that transition of moving in with just one person first to get me out of my “bubble” space mentality…and it was a really huge bubble. anyway, by the end of the year i was so used to lindri coming to my door all the time to talk that i’d so miss it when she wasn’t around. i got to a point where i didn’t just put up with being around people but i actually wanted and craved to be around other people.
the next year i moved in with 2 strangers. even more growth. atleast with lindri we’d been friends before we moved in together so i kinda knew what to expect but with these new flatmates i knew nothing. i only met them once i’d already moved in. and although there were some disagreements here and there – mostly about housekeeping: washing the dishes, cleaning the bathroom, etc etc – it was a really cool group of people so it all worked out in the end.
i just moved into a new house last week that i will be sharing with 4 other people – eek. 4 stragers. i lucked out though because they all seem like genuinely great people and we get along quite well. i actually went away with one of them this past weekend – after only knowing her for a week – to a music festival…she’s also a fan of music and dancing – yayness!
i think my biggest problem this year is going to be being farther away from my church people, especially since my flatmates aren’t Christians. i think i took that for granted while i had it. lind would always come to my room when she got something new from the bible and share it with me and we’d have hectic chats on the Bible and God and pray for each other and stuff. and last year, while that didn’t happen, knowing that my flatmates where Christians and being close to my friends whom i could always call on for coffee and a chat when i was feeling down or whatever was really encouraging.
i think church attendance and cell group are going to play an even bigger role in my life next year. i’m gonna be more dependent on that christian fellowship. and i’m gonna try to remember not to take it for granted but to really appreciiate it.
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this post was written for the one word at a time blog carnival. this week’s theme is “fellowship”. Click here to read other posts from some awesome bloggers.
the ark really does stink…
Posted on: August 11, 2010
…or why i still call myself a christian
“The Church is like Noah’s ark: it stinks, but if you get out you’ll drown” – Shane Claiborne paraphrasing Reinhold Niebuhr.
that explains my feelings on the church on the moment. i really can’t say i love the Church right now. i’m talking about the universal church here, not my congregation – which makes it sound like i think my congregation is the right one or the only one who are trying to do right, but i’m not. i don’t think my congregation is perfect – i know it’s full of broken people, but broken people who are seeking christ and seeking to be christ-like. and i guess that is most chris-followers, right?
but then once in a while i come across a comment from a “christian” or a church who are planning to burn korans or protesting a comic book convention (what?), or church daycares that have fight clubs…for the kids…and i feel embarrassed to say i am one of them – aren’t we supposed to be known for our love? and i cringe to think what God is thinking about all the things people are doing in his name. and in those moments i want to disassociate myself from the religion. i don’t want to be one of them.
i read something a little while ago that said “While I do have many issues with our modern-era, western-style church structures and culture, I still believe that Church is the best idea we have” (Sean Tucker). while i realise that the church is not what’s it’s meant to be, i also realise that i was created with a need for relationships – we all were – and i honestly don’t think i could do this christianity thing on my own. i crave that community, and yes i could find community outside the Church, but it probably wouldn’t be good for my walk with Christ.
the institutionalised church is very much broken, but it is the bride of Christ. within the brokenness and the scars and the uglyness, there is a quiet and beautiful purity waiting to break free. there’s been a lot of publicity (at least in the circles where i roam) around the anne rice facebook updates and the john ellis interview. and i think as long as we have people who are willing to call out the Church when they step out of line like that, i think the church has a chance to show it’s beauty.
Unselfish Economy
Posted on: January 22, 2010
- In: from others | likes | my life | thoughts
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Ok, it looks like I’ve finally come to some sort of rhythm for this blog. here’s what it’s going to look like: monday – lyrics; tuesday – one word blog carnival/whatever is on my mind; wednesday – book excerpts/concert feedback; thursday – my stuff; friday – blog/article excerpt; saturday – reads of the week; sunday – worship setlist blog carnival.
Don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up the everyday blogging for long, but I promise to try…
Anyway, today is Friday, so…
Blog Excerpt:
‘What is the total income of the global church annually? It’s gotta be well into the hundreds of billions of dollars. What is the total land ownership of the church globally? I heard scary stats in this regard but can’t find anything solid. Most of this money goes into maintaining this massive amount of property in one way or another, which only gets visited a few times a week for very specific meetings. What if we sold all that property? What if we gave all the money we usually give to people who actually need it, instead of giving it back to ourselves in a round about way? I would love someone to do the numbers for me on this stuff but I am sure that we would be living in a very different world tomorrow. I once heard a stat that said to provide clean drinking water, health care and basic nutrition for everyone on the planet would cost about 20 billion Dollars… which is how much Americans spend in one year on Ice Cream! Heaven forbid that America decides to give up something as frivolous as Ice Cream, before the church gets off it’s ass and does it’s job!
There is a line Shane quotes in the middle of the video which sums it up nicely. It says something like, “If we all lived this way Capitalism would be impossible, and Marxism would be unnecessary.”’
- Sean Tucker
check out the full article here
God of Justice
Posted on: April 22, 2008
What if Jesus really meant what he said to the rich young man when he told him to “go sell all his posessions, give the money to the poor, and come follow me”. That’s the question Shane Clairborn asks in his book “Irresistible Revolution”. It was probably one of the scariest books I’ve ever read. Made me think about my walk with Christ. Made me want to be a follower of Christ. Now I’m not saying I’m gonna sell all my posessions (not that I have a lot of them anyway) and be poor, but it means letting the things that break God’s heart break mine. Jesus wasn’t too concerned with the rich and religious people of his day – I mean he did want them to see the light of course, but his main purpose is seen in the people he chose to reside with, the broken, poor, and untouchables. The people society had rejected. As he said, its the sick that need a doctor not those that think they are healthy.
Jesus could have chose to come into this world into a royal family – and maybe more people would have been his followers then (no matter how shallow their following would be) but he chose to come into the world in a manger as the son of a carpenter and become homeless with “no place to rest his head”. Makes you think…
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We live in plenty. There’s more than enough for what the world needs but not for our greed. –quote from Mother Theresa paraphrased by John Ellis in the song Revolution (Sunday, Tree63 – and by the way that is my favorite band if you ever feel like giving me a little prezzie).
What would the world look like if we all unselfishly shared what we had with our neighbor? This is what the early church was all about. This thought kinda follows on my train of thought on living in community – real ubuntu, or at least my understanding of it. It looks really beautiful in my head.
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Matther 25: 34 – 36 and 40 gives us a very practical way to live church and to live all out for Christ. Isaiah 58: 6 – 8 tells us how to let our lights shine before all men that they may see our good works and praise our Father in heaven.
I have fallen in love with 2 songs that talk about this topic – I’ll just give you a little taste.
search my heart and make it clean
open up my eyes to the things unseen
show me how to love like you have loved me
break my heart for what breaks yours
everthing i am for your kingdom’s cause
as i walk from earth into eternity
God of Justice (we must go) by Tim Hughes
freely we’ve recieved now freely we will give
we must go live to feed the hungry stand beside the broken
we must go stepping forward keep up from just singing
move us into action, we must go
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I had a revelation the other day – thanks to a friend of mine (Josh Ratiani). For a while my mindset was, live all out for Christ cos if you do then you’ll be covered even if Christianity turns out to be a hoax. Think about it: you’ll be ok with Allah cos you’re a good person, you’ll get to come back as something really good cos you’ll have good karma build up if bhuddism turns out to be true, etc. Here’s the revelation: live so all out for Jesus that if you were to die and find out its all a lie you would want a do over. Paul says we should live our lives so much for Christ that if Christianity is a hoax we should be pitied above all others. In a sense we should live our lives so all out for Christ that even if we are good with Allah, we should look back and say “dude, in that time I was serving JC, I could have [fill in whatever here]“. So that’s my goal: to let my light shine, to do for the least of these, and to recklessly abandon my life to him.
I am gonna need lots of prayer.
The link, by the way, leads you to Josh’s blog. If you have questions on the topic of “God of Justice” I would refer you to him cos that is his passion so i’m sure he’ll have something to say on it. He has unknowingly been instrumental in my spiritual growth in the last year and 4 months that I’ve known him. So yea, even though he’s not gonna read this: thanx Josh.
