The Intentional Conversation | The thought process of Robbie Shreffler

Pop Question: What is the church?

If you answered the building where you go on Sundays to sing a few songs and hear a sermon, you couldn’t be more wrong! Welcome to the western world where we think that we have invented everything! My dad likes to complain about people in their early 20’s. He is always talking about how we think that when we come to recognize something, we believe that we are the inventors and sole proprietors of the intellectual property. To some, it is the ramblings of an old man. To others it is the sage wisdom of an old man. It seems to me that what he accuses younger generations of represents more than just a phenomenon of one generation. To me it seems like the whole Western Culture is probably guilty of this same mentality.

Take the church for example. The title church has come to represent a building where people worship. It is likely that the building was not intended to become the house of God but indeed it has turned  into that very thing. And when I say the house of God I’m not talking about it in the holy-roller, welcome-to-the-house-of-the-Lord way. I’m talking about it in the way that God originally considered a structure that was intended to be his “house”. When David wanted to build a house for God, he was told not to bother because God didn’t want to be boxed in. Surely David didn’t intend to box God in but it appears that God knew what was in store for him.

Here we sit in the United States thinking that we’ve got everything together, that we’re the inventor of all good things, that we are the owners of all intellectual property and we’ve put God into a box. We’ve come to know the church as a building. Back in the days of David, God was trying to tell his people that it wasn’t about a place or the ceremony even though they didn’t want to listen. God was trying to tell them who they were. The Israelites were his people and just wanted them to follow and trust in him.  

Today it still isn’t about the place. Now we are his people and all he wants is for us to follow and trust in him yet what we’ve done is make him a home to box him in. In calling the building we meet “the church” we have a nice separation from God for the 6 days that we aren’t there. No responsibility, no calling, nothing to worry ourselves about except what we want to be worried about.

Here’s the truth, we are his people. The people are the church, not some building. When we come to that realization there isn’t a separation between us and God. Church isn’t a place we go to, it becomes something that we are. I am not just a Christian but I am a part of the church. When I go to the grocery store, I’m the church. When I am jogging in the morning, I am the church. When I’m driving in my car, I’m the church. It opens our lives to a more considerate and worshipful way of living. When we think of ourselves as the church, we will consider God in everything that we do. So…

Pop Question: What is the church?

What did I learn? We have a big church and we are not the center of it!

How many of us are guilty of thinking that the church in America is the center of the Christian World and that all things revolve around us? I know I’m guilty and I should see some of your hands raised as well! Read the rest of this entry »

This coming Saturday I will be boarding a plane and shipping myself off to India for three weeks. It has been an intense few weeks ramping up and preparing for this trip. I enjoy going into different cultures and observing what is happening. I need your prayers as my team and I handle that last bit of preparation for departure.

Prayer is a topic that can sometimes get pushed to the side in the conversation of compassion and justice. Recently I’ve observed pastors trying to wrap their mind around what it means to be an emerging church. There is no doubt that the church is changing to a more active and outwardly focused entity. To a lot of us we think that we are inventing the wheel on this service/justice thing. I’m sure that as we expand our point of view we will see that we are just getting back on track with people like Assisi, Wesley and Bresee (for all you Nazarenes!).

The emerging church is scary for a lot of people because they see it as a departure from the “old” way of doing things which was so inwardly focused. We worked on our own personal salvation, we went to church to make sure our hearts were focused on God, we confessed our sins… we were very much in control of our religion. For people raised and entrenched in this version of Christianity the thought of changing is extremely daunting!

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I’ve been missing recently. Same old excuse; life gets busy, blog falls to the wayside till we get stuff back together!

Our church here in Fremont is getting ready to do a special service in June. We are calling it a Service Sunday (I know, real Creative right?!). Anyhow, the point is that we are going to take a Sunday off and GO do the work of the church for our community. There are a lot of churches trying this out as part of a curriculum. They want their people to remember that there is such a thing as social holiness (wha?!).

We tend to push the social side of spirituality at the Nazarene church here in Fremont a little more than the personal side. Some people would have a fit that we don’t preach sweet little sermons about properity and hope found in heaven. Truth is that some people don’t want to come here on Sundays. The reason for that is partly because we are always hollering at people that there is so much more to their spiritual lives than just showing up at church on Sunday and believing that God’s plan is to make you rich. Anyhow, the social side of spirituality and holiness has been swept under the rug for years… probably decades and there is a major need to remind a generation that has forgotten about the social side of spirituality how important it is.

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Our garden day was a relative success. I hope for good things to come from our ministry partnership with a second local church in the Fremont area. In retrospect the theme for the workday was Fellowship and Farming. We had a tractor rolling through the garden; mowing and tilling the ground in preparation for the coming growing season. Meanwhile we were building relationships between two congregations that are ready to do something more for our community than provide Sunday Services. We believe that we were called to more than the bare minimum effort in spreading the Gospel. We believe that in order to spread the gospel more effectively we need to be involved in the lives of community members.

The question for you is how are you making an impact in your community? If we are to preach the gospel to the poor, how are you being active in persuing that? We’ve come to believe that it’s a personal call to each Christian and that it is not good enough to pass the buck along in the form of I’ll-pray-for-you or here’s-a-few-dollars. Prayer and money are needed but the poor, the hungry, those that are in need; need you your time and your attention.

So think about it, think about what you are doing… Is it enough? Can you do more? Should you do more?

It has been a couple weeks since I last wrote on the blog. Life get’s crazy! Right now at Fremont Journey of Faith we are preparing to launch our garden: Year 2. Last year the garden was planted and run more or less by myself with a lot of help from a few committed gardeners. This year we are teaming up with another local church here in Fremont to help us carry the load. I’ll update the garden here as we do more and more things with it.

 I came across this the other day. Althea Taylor is the Coordinator for Nazarene Compassionate Ministries in the USA/Canada Region. She writes a blog here at nazareneblogs.org called Courageous Conversations. You can see how this need to talk about the issues at hand is an important thing.

Her most recent post is titled, GUILT By Association. She has a great vision and passion about compassionate ministries through the church and also a wealth of knowledge in regards to Justice as a necessary action of the church. Check out her Blog and what she has to say at Courageous Conversations!

 So the question we need to ask today is… Why? It’s about to sound like a four year old up on this blog, so get ready! We determined that single mothers are oppressed by poverty at a higher rate than most everyone else, now we ask why is that?

But… before I get into the social justice meat, let’s think about why women become single mothers.

The obvious reason is that they have at least one child and they are raising that child on their own (I told you it was obvious!). perhaps the better question is why are they raising their child(ren) on their own. I would say that there are three main reasons.

First (and these aren’t in any type of order), perhaps the children’s father died. I’ve stated before that single mothers are the modern day equivalent to the bible’s widows. In some cases they are in reality; widows.

Second, the father leaves. In our day and time divorce rates hover around 50% but that only accounts for married partners. Marriage in our society is not such a binding legal/ moral force that some advocates would have you believe. Some people have children while not being married. Regardless of the reason the father leaves, leaving the established family behind.

The third reason is similar to the second but under slightly different circumstances, the father leaves prior to the birth. Generally this situation will happen to unmarried couples in which the level of commitment at conception is less than desirable for long term commitment. Luckily we are not here to judge, we are here to deal with the realities of our day. This can happen to couples that are not ready for children, casual sexual encounters, more unfortunate sexual encounters including rape and incest. Children are born and the mother is left to fend for herself.

Moving further, the obvious reasons for single mothers and their families being in poverty at a higher rate than any other family group are all out there for us. Women make less money than men, the more family members we have the higher the poverty line goes, the younger a person is the less money they make… the list goes on and on and it’s a sociologists basic check list to poverty. Check, check and check!

So women make less money than men, is that an issue of social justice? In the instance of single motherhood it is an issue. The reason why single mothers get more airtime than single fathers is closely tied to this reason (also the fact that women inherit the children of a split relationship at a much higher rate). Single fathers annual income is substantially higher than that of their female counterparts and therefore do not fall into poverty  at the same rate. It’s not even close. So the answer is yes the fact that woman make less than men is an issue of social justice.

Youth makes a difference in the amount of money that you are paid. Obviously, we make more money in our jobs with more experience. This is an issue with to take into consideration when we think about single motherhood. Many of these mothers are having children at an age in which they are not steeped in experience and are therefore on the low end of the pay scale. There is actually more to this as many of you parents already know. Having children takes up a lot of time and for an aspiring ladder climber, having children can put a big dent in the amount of progress you can make… but we’ll get back to this in a little while.

These are just two reasons why this is considered a social justice issue. Ask yourself, is it fair that these women are left to fend for themselves and their children? Is it fair that women in general make less money and therefore it is more difficult for them to provide for their families? Here’s another question for you… What should the church do about it? Is it up to the church to help these mothers?

Think about it and let me know what you come up with…

He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:8

Open your mouth for the mute, For the rights of all the unfortunate. Open your mouth, judge righteously, And defend the rights of the afflicted and needy.

Proverbs 31:8-9

Throughout the Bible there are calls for God’s people and the Church to do justice and to be the voice for those who cannot speak for themselves. It is a theme of the Bible that is becoming more and more relevant in our society.

The term Justice is also one that has recently come up with more frequency in the realm of the church, but it is important that we understand what justice means when applied by the church.

The church does not administer justice in the same way as the world does. In the world, justice means imprisonment. In the terms of the church, justice means freedom from oppression.

We are called to bring Gods justice for those without a voice. This will require more of us than to give stuff once in a while because justice is more than the act of our giving. Justice requires our lives invested in the well being of all men and women. Justice will require a higher level of activity and interatction between those of us in the church and those we claim are the aim of our evangelical endeavors.

Justice is not a physical or monetary gift to people because we pity them or we feel guilt for their situation. Our fire for Justice may start with pity or guilt, but it will not move to ginuine action until we can find ourselves in association with whomever we seek to build up holistically. Widows are people, orphans are people. The homeless are people. Immigrants, legal or not are people. They are all exploited by our society or culture or by our lifestyles.

Justice might not be as much of a change for these “exploited” people as it is for you and I to change the ways in which we live. No one can claim that they do not live in comfort or excess without doing so at the expense of another person. Justice means that we had better be ready to turn the interrogation light toward ourselves and examine the ways in which we live that are not condusive to the kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven.

This is what justice is: To make right the injustices of the world. Our job right now is to come off of our seats of comfort and open our eyes to what is really happening in the world. Christ called us to make disciples of all the nations, but he also showed us the way in which to do it. We have to care for the person… the whole person. Not simply their soul that it would go to heaven, but also that they would know the Kingdom of God on Earth. That is Justice that even the most exploited people would know Christ love for their future after this life but also that they would know Christ love for them in this life.

How rude of me! I asked you to share what your neighborhood was like without first telling you about mine. I reside, as I’ve previously mentioned, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Bay Area is home to roughly seven million people, making it one of the larger metropolitan areas in the nation.

My home town is Fremont, California. It lies across the bay and southwest from San Francisco, the city. Fremont, as is the case with every city in this metropolitan area is a rapidly growing commmunity that consists of people with countless backgrounds. Fremont is home to a large Asian population that constitutes the largest ethnic group in the city holding a 45% share of the cities total population. 38% of the population is Caucasian, 13% is Latino, 3% African American and 13% are classified as other races or multiracial. Fremont also holds the largest population of Afghans outside of Afghanistan. Some of you  may have seen the movie or read the book, The Kite Runner, the book’s author is an Afghani immmigrant and longtime Fremont resident.

The Bay Area is known as a wealthy area. Fremont’s average family income is over $88,000.00 a year. It benefits from being at the north end of a regional area known as Silicon Valley. Many high paying, high tech jobs are found in the city though  most of the cities population commutes an average of 45 minutes each way to work every day. Also, a large portion of the population of Fremont is not indiginous to Fremont. As is the case with much of California, you could say that no one is from Fremont because they all come to Fremont.

Despite all of the money that can be made, the Bay Area is the most expensive place to live in the US. Housing, food, gas, taxes and other major expenses can make life in the Bay Area very difficult for some. Therefore, Fremont deals with a large population of homeless individuals and families. Also many of the immigrant groups living in Fremont struggle to make ends meet as a result of the high cost of living here. Crime is not a huge issue through my eyes but to someone in a more rural area it might be a hugh problem. Recent studies have shown that San Francisco is the major US hub for illegal sex trafficking. This report would lead me to believe that Fremont, with it’s large immigrant population could play a hand in that horrible trade.

I say all of this to give you an idea of where I live. There is not one identity for the city of Fremont, CA. I can’t say that it is a normal city, a small town, a tough area, very poor or influential. It is all of those things. It is also those thing within the larger context of a major metropolitan area. I cannot look at the vast majority  of the people in Fremont and claim that we are alike or that they are my “neighbor” in the just-like-me-sense.

So let me ask you. In Fremont, CA who is my neighbor? I’m not of Asian decent but are my neighbors Asian? I’m not homeless, but are my neighbors homeless? I’m not an immigrant, but are my neighbors immigrants? As Christians, we are trained to claim them as our neighbors in word. But the question for us is how do we, in reality claim them as our neighbor? How do we love these people as we love ourselves?

I’ll leave that to the discussion of our conversation…