A friend of mine recently read 12 Steps for the Recovering Pharisee (Like Me). He emailed me the chapter titles. Thanks Jim.

1. We admit that our single most unmitigated pleasure is to judge other people.
2. Have come to believe that our means of obtaining greatness is to make everyone lower than ourselves in our own mind.
3. Realize that we detest mercy being given to those who, unlike us, haven’t worked for it and don’t deserve it.
4. Have decided that we don’t want to get what we deserve after all, and we don’t want anyone else to either.
5. Will cease all attempts to apply teaching and rebuke to anyone but ourselves.
6. Are ready to have God remove all these defects of attitude and character.
7. Embrace the belief that we are, and will always be, experts at sinning.
8. Are looking closely at the lives of famous men and women of the Bible who turned out to be ordinary sinners like us.
9. Are seeking through prayer and meditation to make a conscious effort to consider others better than ourselves.
10. Embrace the state of astonishment as a permanent and glorious reality.
11. Choose to rid ourselves of any attitude that is not bathed in gratitude.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we will try to carry this message to others who think that Christians are better than everyone else.

In Preaching Biblical Wisdom in a Self-Help Society Alyce McKenzie writes:

I bumped into an acquaintance from church recently browsing in the self-help section of the local Barnes and Nobles bookstore. She was scanning book spines with titles I wish I’d thought of like Getting Over Getting Older, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, Pulling Your Own Strings You’ll See It When you Believe It, and Manifest Your Destiny. She was holding a half-dozen copies of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff: And It’s All Small Stuff. ” I give this to everyone I know when they have milestones in their lives, graduations, birthdays, anniversaries, ” she enthused.

What about other events that are milestones, though not happy ones? What about the death of a child, a parent fading away from a debilitating disease, or the kidnapping and murder of a youth? They are not small stuff! What can we read to help us as we “sweat the big stuff?”

Last week Shannon gave me an article by Tim Baker which was in the September/October issue of Youthworker magazine and is entitled “Building a Bridge: The Frustration between Theory and Practice.”

Here’s the gist of the article:

I’m struggling with trying to stay current (and look toward the future) of my youth ministry, while at the same time honoring the needs of my current student population and church culture. While I love the current thoughts and trends happening within the emergent church conversation, I struggle with taking the current trend toward postmodernism into my wonderfully clueless church. I’m finding that it’s nearly impossible to reconcile the new era of the church with where I am in local ministry. I love the trend, but the trend doesn’t fit me.

This struggle gets worse. When I go to the bookstore, surf the Net, and read through the current ministry magazines, there’s nothing available to me that helps bridge this gap. There’s nothing that helps me take current emergent thoughts and trends into my ministry situation. Yeah, there’s loads of philosophy by some pretty important, well-spoken people. They’re all philosophy, no praxis; approach leaves me and my ministry cold and stuck in what many would consider the ministry past.

This article was posted on the emergent board, but didn’t get much of a response.

As a staff we’ve been talking quite a bit about bridging the postmodern/emerging-modern/residual gap at our church. As a staff, we’re being shaped more and more by the emerging church literature, but we are working with a church that would definitely be considered residual/modern. We’re here because this is where we believe we’re supposed to be. We’re “tweeners.” We’ve grown up in modern churches, we’ve been trained by modern professors, but are discovering and in many ways have already bought into emerging church models. We’re trying to bridge the gap. Why? Because it needs to be bridged. That last thing we need in the church is another chasm separating people.

I have no quarrel with those who set out to plant emerging churches in an emerging culture. I have no problem with modern missionairies reaching modern people. I do have a problem with anybody who says the two populations can’t exist together in the same church. If the gospel can tear down the dividing wall between Jews and Gentiles in the first century, then I believe it can tear down the newly erected walls separating moderns/postmoderns/post-postmoderns/boomers/busters/blamers and whatever other categories we come up with.

No, it won’t be easy, but it’s worth the effort.

Andrew Jones has given me a new phrase to add to my vocabulary: Residual Church

“Residual Church: The existing church that remains, that has existed and functioned previously and the impact of which still remains. The early church in the Book of Acts (emerging at the time) was influenced by the synagogue structure, secular assemblies (ecclesia) and Temple culture. Emerging Church today is paritally inherited from Residual Church and Residual Church is challenged and impacted by Emerging Church.
Both are cool. New and Old Wineskins have their place and appeal to different demographics. Both are needed. The Residual Church of our fathers and the Emerging Church of our children.”

Interested in buying me a gift? Would you like to see me expand my knowledge by reading a book from time to time? Want to inspire my imagination with a good movie?

Check out my Amazon wish list. I’ve just finished updating it.