The Advent Experiment

So the Advent experiment that Imago Dei and four other churches are engaging in is this: What if we took what we normally spend on Christmas gifts and instead give it away to those who need it most? What if we gave oursleves relationally to our loved ones, as Jesus gave himself relationally to us, rather than give each other material gifts that we don't even remember the following the year?

You can already hear the "devil's advocates" (more on that term later) saying, "But the wise men gave gifts!"

Yes. To JESUS! Not to each other. In his sermon Rick McKinley illustrates the re-imagined magi scene like this:
(First wise man) "Oh look at the baby." (Pause. Turn to Bill.) "Bill, here's some frankincense for you."
(Second wise man, aka Bill) "Oh thank you, my wife will love this. And here's some mirh for you."

People make things.
Other people convince us we need them.
We buy them.
"That's how the empire works," says McKinley.

McKinely goes on to say, "We can almost hear the economists responding to this crazy idea with, 'Well that won’t be very good for the empire.'

And if we actually take our faith seriously and start redistributing our wealth instead of buying junk for each other, we might hear the economists say, 'We should probably get rid of the baby and keep Santa, that would be better for the empire.'”

Giving and receiving IS part of the advent story. God is giving himself and we are receiving. We don’t serve a God who just gives us stuff. He's not like one of those busy, detached dads who doesn't have a relationship with his kids so he gives them a big check at Christmas to try to make up for it.

This experiment isn't about not giving gifts. It's about trying to immitate Christ by giving ourselves as gifts to others. It's about learning how to do this. It's about trying to point to the Christmas story in the way that we give.

The average American spends $300 – $1100 on Christmas presents each year. Imago Dei and the four other churches that are partnering together have figured out that if two-thirds of their congregations take on this experiment (based on the low end of the average mentioned above) they would collect 1 million dollars! 1 million dollars of our wealth to redistribute to those who need it most. (Click here to see where the $1 million will go.)

And this is only 5 churches! What if every church participated in this experiment? What if we all decided that this just might be a gift that would bless and honor the Baby more than giving stuff to each other?

(Most of this post was taken from notes from Rick McKinley's Advent sermon.)

More on the "Vision of Advent"

I took notes on the sermon I mentioned in my previous post and wanted to share some of them.

An underlying theme of the sermon is that a defining characteristic and call to Christ-followers (ie. "the Church") is to live prophetically in a culture, which sometimes means critiquing it.

When Jesus entered the culture as a poor baby, it caused an upheaval in the society. So much so that the king had all the baby boys two-years-old and under murdered out of fear of this newborn king.

As American followers of Christ we have somehow married our capitalist consumerism culture with Jesus in an attempt to smooth out the tension that exists between the story of Christmas and the values of our culture. But by doing this, we’re missing/changing the Christmas story.

Paul sums up the story of the incarnation in 2 Corinthians 8:9 when he says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor so that you through his poverty might become rich.”

The Christmas story is a story of the redistribution of wealth – that Christ who had everything in heaven become impoverished and entered into a world of poverty so that we might enter the blessing and wealth of His life.

Jesus didn't cling to his status or his wealth. He layed it down and gave it away so that the world could be blessed. Does our celebration of Christmas reflect this? Do we who are rich lay down our wealth and give it away so that others can be blessed?

Check out these statistics:
The U.S. spends $7 billion on Halloween
The U.S. spends $450 billion on Christmas

Then we read about the $20 billion that needs to be raised to solve Aids problems and the $100 billion that the UN is trying to come up with to solve the water crisis (lack of clean water is the cause of a huge amount of disease in developing countries) and we think, "How can we ever come up with the money to solve these problems?"

Hmm...any ideas?

"Vision of Advent"

I recently listened to a sermon from a church in Portland called Imago Dei. (You may have heard of this church through Don Miller's books.) I am so challenged by this sermon and their vision of advent that I can't stop thinking about it or talking about it with people. I've copied and pasted the sermon summary from Imago Dei's website below. (I don't think they'll mind.) You can also listen to the sermon here, which I highly recommend. I'll share some more thoughts on this vision in another post.

"The gospel is not bound to any given culture. It is a-cultural. It can enter any specific culture and engage with different redemptive windows of that culture. This is our philosophy of ministry at Imago Dei in a nutshell. However, when the gospel enters a culture, in addition to redeeming aspects of it the gospel also critiques pieces of the culture that are opposed to the values of God’s Kingdom. This is what it means to live a prophetic life. We see this type of critique in the incarnation itself. Herod’s Kingdom (the culture in which Christ literally showed up) was one driven by the values of mass wealth, power of military force, greed, and personal gain. Christ enters this culture through poverty, weakness, dependency, and sacrifice. This is the biblical picture of advent.

How does our current celebration of Christmas reflect this incarnation? That is, does our experience of the advent season match the biblical values of the gospel? What can our advent season look like this year if we intentionally choose to be a prophetic voice in our culture? The last thing we want to do is be obnoxious about it. But if we choose to reflect the Kingdom values in this season, we probably will be looked at funny. Are you willing to be looked at funny this season for the sake of the gospel? Here are three themes we see in the advent of Christ that we would like to pursue as a congregation:

God became poor so that we could be rich.
What are the social implications of this for us? How can we choose not to waste what we have but give it away in ways that meet significant needs of those around us? Can our gift giving feed hunger instead of greed?

God gave himself relationally.
First and foremost we desire to give gifts to each other this season that are relationally driven. We desire to learn what it means to give of ourselves and not just give stuff. We will be resourcing you with many ideas on how to approach this.

When Jesus showed up, people worshipped him.
What would it look like if Jesus was actually the focus of Advent? Can we respond like the shepherds and Magi, who celebrated the first Advent by praising God and worshipping the Son?

When we receive, we receive Jesus, not stuff.
If Jesus became poor that we may be rich, are we truly receiving the riches that he has given us? Are we receiving Him? How do we as a community ultimately embrace Jesus this Advent season and not be distracted by all the hype around us?"

"Women Of Vision"

Andy and I just heard Renee Stearns, wife of World Vision President Richard Stearns, speak in Lake Grove. It was a "speaker event" for Women of Vision, a volunteer ministry of World Vision that is a "partnership of Christian women who are called to invest their time, intellect, compassion, creativity, and finances to meet the needs of impoverished and oppressed women and children throughout the world."

As of now there are only 13 Women of Vision chapters in the world and one of them is in our backyard, the Columbia-Willamette Chapter. I am excited about this group and wonder if anyone else might get excited too. Check out the links. If you only have time for one, go to the local chapter's website. I'm particularly interested in their Advocacy page and the Contact Your Representatives page.

Seven Ways to Pray in 2007 (from an insert in World Vision Magazine, Winter 2006)

When You
1 Take a shower - pray for clean water
2 Go to work - pray for child laborers
3 Eat lunch - pray for hungry and malnourished children
4 Watch the news - pray for education
5 Arrive home - pray for displaced children
6 Take a vitamin - pray for medical access
7 Go to bed - pray for orphans

"And prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise him up. ... The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results." - James 5:15-16

One other great resource that I want to check out is a bible study they've put together called "The Heart of the Matter: Touching the Lives of Women in Poverty."

I think I'll save their "Five Ways You Can Be an Advocate for Children" for another post. If anything in this post tugged at your heart, pray, and then let me know. Let's open ourselves to whatever God has for us.

A Beautiful Mother

I haven't had time to post more stories and pictures from our Thailand trip, but go read this moving story on Andy's blog.

Mercy

On one of the days of our trip our team visited a hill tribe village in Northern Thailand. We were quite close to the Burma border and this village was made up of Burmese refugees who have been living in Thailand for nearly 30 years. Like the vast majority of the hill tribes people in Thailand, these villagers do not have Thai citizenship which means they have little access to health care, quality education, or a means to move beyond their current level of poverty.

Many people were sick in this village and Charles, the missionary who was with us and our spur-of-the-moment divinely appointed prayer coach, felt a strong sense that that we needed to pray for everyone who was sick. So we gathered around the people, put our hands on them and prayed.

Of all the people in the village, one little boy captured our hearts the most. His name was Garrun, which we were told meant "mercy." He was about two years old, the age of my son, and his eyes were crossed. His father had abandoned him and his mother when she was 6 months pregnant with him. His face was so sweet and so serious.

A couple of the dads in our group spent time holding him and playing with him. We pulled out some bubbles and began blowing them to the kids. We held the wand in front of Garrun's mouth and he blew out a strong breath that puffed his cheeks out (the same way my son does). He blew bubbles over and over again, sometimes pinching the wand with his thumb and index finger. On three occasions when he blew a particularly large batch of bubbles, we cheered for him and he cracked the tiniest of smiles. I think one person caught his tiny smile on film. He was precious.

Later that night when our team met to debrief the day and pray, God spoke to our friend Steve and he said, "You guys, it just hit me...our team verse (that we all memorized before leaving)... Micah 6:8, 'What does the Lord require of you? To do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.' We loved Mercy today."

It was a total God-moment.

A day or two later, God spoke to one of the teachers on our team whose own son had been born cross-eyed. She said God told her that she couldn't help everyone she met in Thailand, but she could help this little boy. So she and her family will be praying for and paying for a doctor to help this precious child.

God could heal this child instantly, but instead he chose to use this teacher and her family to heal and bless Garrun. I'm guessing there's going to be healing and blessing for her family too. What a God!

Way To Go Kay!

I just read another great interview, this time with Kay Warren (married to Rick Warren) who has recently found her passion, and compassion, to fight the global aids crisis. She confesses her former apathy and judgementalism, and challenges us to "lead the way in loving."

Aside from the title, "Purpose-Driven Wife" (enough already!), it's a very good read. Here it is.

Bono speaks at National Prayer Breakfast

I don't think I've mentioned this before. I'm a Bono fan.
Click here to see and hear what Bono had to say at the recent National Prayer Breakfast.

Update: I don't think you can view that video any longer for free, so here's
a link where you can read what Bono said.