We don’t need another outlet for the distribution of Christian materials. We don’t need to keep up with the Joneses and the Kims and whatever “40 Days…” they’re pitching.  We’re tired of consuming whatever the industry is producing. Sure, you say we need “daily bread”, but we still leave hungry because we’re tired of processed food.

We don’t need the “church is a hospital” mentality. We’re sick of seeing doctors who are great at diagnosing but doesn’t treat the problems. Or you know what? We’re even more sick of seeing doctors who are sick themselves.

We don’t need a new building or a new cause. We’d actually like to see some collaboration and sharing between churches. And I’m not talking about a basketball league or a softball tournament.

We don’t need marketing. Quit creating things that we “need”. We want to see some organic growth. We’ll spread the word ourselves if it’s valuable enough.

We don’t need another program. Missions is not a summer event – it is a lifestyle. Welcoming is not a team – it is a posture. Small groups is not a department – it is a circle of friends.

We don’t need hard answers from the pulpit. We need to be asked tougher questions and to think through our faith more. We are great do-er’s and thinkers, but our souls have grown cold. We have become consumers and not producers of the Word. We are moral, but sterile. We are educated but ignorant of how to apply the power of the Gospel in our lives. We complain because this had the look of a performance, but we didn’t realize that we were the ones being asked to bear the fruit.We need to learn to live in the tension between ancient and future, already but not yet, motherland and fatherhood. We need to learn how to dream again and get dirty. We need to learn to take risks again, and we need to see that risktaking as a value in our churches. We need you to acknowledge the materialism in our midst – the alcoholism, the workaholism, the addiction, the pornography, the loneliness, the depression, the racism, the sexism, the xenophobia, the homophobia, and whatever else you and all of us are all aware of and afraid of talking about. We need courage to address the taboo.

It’s OK if it’s not the same as before. It’s OK if you’ve never been there before either. It’s OK if we make mistakes and you make them too. Let’s quit pretending that no one should.

This is an acknowledgement that what we have is a failure to communicate the gospel to this generation.

from David Park, in
 Next Generation Asian Church: the collision of faith and the Asian-American culture

An Endangered Species
A True Friend

September 24, 2007

Note: This commentary was delivered by PFM President Mark Earley.

If you find yourself longing for someone to talk to, a true friend to whom you can bare your soul, you are not alone. Recently, a Duke University researcher concluded that 25 percent of Americans have no one with whom they can have a meaningful conversation. And 50 percent of folks have two or less people of that sort in their lives. The statistics also indicate that the confidante network of the average American is shrinking.

These trends disturb me on a number of levels. In the culture at large, studies show that social isolation leads to greater risks for addiction, criminal tendencies, and depression. It also leaves the fabric of our community threadbare.

For the individual Christian, the amazing disappearing act of deep personal friendships is a tell-tale sign of spiritual malnutrition. Think about it. As Mindy Caliguire asks in her new small-group study guide, Spiritual Friendship, "What do you do when you can't stand the thought of praying, when the words of the Bible seem plastic and false . . . when you have been doing everything 'right' and the bottom falls out?" It's at these times when it is the spiritual friends who throw us a life-preserver. They are, as one Puritan prayer says, God's "hands and fingers taking hold of me."

But having trustworthy, life-giving friendships is also necessary for the ordinary business of spiritual growth in the daily routine. These are the people who can lovingly point out our blind spots, with whom we confess our struggles and our sins, who help us in discerning God's leading in our lives, and who share our everyday joys and sorrows. David had his Jonathan, Naomi her Ruth, and even Jesus had an intimate circle of three among the 12.

The Irish called these special people anamachara, or soul friends. And around 600 A.D., when Christianity was spreading across that land more quickly than clover, soul friends were a mainstay of Christianity. In addition to spending regular times alone, times with the community at large, times with a small group, and times sharing the faith, each Christian had a soul-friend. According to scholar George G. Hunter, this was a peer, someone with whom one could be vulnerable and accountable.

Not only were these soul-friendships seen as the necessary ingredient for iron-sharpening-iron, but they were also a primary tool for spreading the Christian worldview. Any time that seekers, refugees, or aliens found themselves in the midst of these Christian communities, a particular believer in that community befriended them with the intentionality of becoming a soul friend. It began with what they called "the ministry of conversation" and often lead to the miracle of conversion.

A biblical worldview teaches us that God is inherently relational. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit left their relational mark on us when they created man in their image. But today we live among people who, despite their cell phones, instant-messaging, and MySpace "friends," are lonelier than ever. So seek out a soul friend yourself, and more importantly, be one. You can help make sure that a true friend is one thing that never becomes extinct.

Copyright (c) 2007 Prison Fellowship

• End of the Spear - Steve Saint
• Sutter's Cross - W. Dale Cramer
• The Path: creating your mission statement - Laurie Jones
• Nazareth's Song - Patricia Hickman
• Cleared For Takeoff - Wayne Rice
• Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience - Ronald J. Sider
• Soultalk - Larry Crabb
  

• Revolution - George Barna
• Taming Your Gremlin - Rick Carson
• Blink - Malcolm Gladwell
  
• Developing Your Prophetic Gifting - Graham Cooke
• Frankie Manning, Ambassador of Lindy Hop - Manning & Millman
• Blindness - Jose Saramago
  
• Stewards in the Kingdom of God - R. Scott Rodin
• Whisper Town  - Patricia Hickman
  
• Handbook for Spiritual Warfare - Dr. Ed Murphy
• Katrina's Wings - Patricia Hickman
  

...I can't deny that there is a hand on my life constantly steering me to safety.  And I believe the hand is God's.  But as I've told Bethany and Sasser, I have a sense there is this thick barrier that keeps me from fully knowing Him the way they do.  I don't know what the barrier is or what I can do to remove it, so after a momentary blip of danger passes on the screen of my life, it is all too easy to forget about Him and His seemingly invisible hand.  Sasser says it's like a kind of amnesia that I contract over and over again, and I need to find a way to wake up from it.

...I look up Deuteronomy 31:8.  I wonder if it is really true - if God is going before me, making my paths straight.  I have a hunch that this is true, but it's so hard to let go into it.  Before I ponder it fully, my spiritual amnesia sets in, and I work hard to fight it and the desire for sleep.
As I shut my eyes, I picture the back of God, with a great machete in some sort of tropical forest, cutting a path before me to walk safely through.  So maybe the path that the Lord is going before me is in my heart.  And though the thick and gnarly vines of this world are wound tight around it, He is cutting through them, and I wonder how long it will take for Him to get to me.

It's this instability that has gotten the best of Daddy.  Instability and unplanned events are the things that will drive a man like my daddy crazy.
It seems to me that a man who loses control and does not turn to God in his time of need is sad and dangerous.