Christ the King Sunday

This next Sunday (November 25) is Christ the King Sunday. Christ the King is always the last Sunday before Advent. Check out some history about the day. This is also a good article. Our worship bulletin for Sunday is here.
Our focus is this week is simple. What if the words we pray came true? What if God's kingdom did come? What if God's will WAS done on earth JUST AS it is done in heaven? What would that look like? Will that ever be a reality? What is our part in that?
The Scriptures for this week are:
John 18.28-19.16
Matthew 20.25-28
Colossians 1.11-20
Luke 4.16-21

This is another email article from Relevant. I am interested in the documentary described.

'Tis the season for shopping insanity. From the day after Thanksgiving (“Black Friday”) through Christmas and New Years, the malls teem with long lines and crying babies and the credit card companies cha-ching-ing their way to a fat and happy holiday. But what is wrong with this picture? How twisted is it that the sacred holiday we know as Christmas has been commandeered by our unquenchable obsession with acquiring things?

For one “preacher” and his “church,” something can and must be done. Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping are taking matters into their own hands—preaching against consumerism all over the country, calling out in the wilderness of bling for an urgent exorcism of credit-obsession and a preemptive strike against the evil empires bringing about the “shopocalypse.” Yes, this is for real.

In the new Morgan Spurlock-produced documentary, What Would Jesus Buy? (releasing this week in select cities), these questions are given some comically serious consideration. The film follows Rev. Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir during their cross-country bus tour in the Christmas season of 2005, performing cleverly subversive protest “gospel” songs in churches, malls, Wal-Marts and Abercrombie & Fitch stores (among others).

I should probably clarify: Reverend Billy is not an ordained minister and doesn’t even call himself a Christian. The preacher persona (modeled after a sweaty, over-the-top televangelist) is simply a stage name for Bill Talen, an actor-turned-activist from New York City (via San Francisco) who grew up Christian but left the faith as a teenager. He adopted the “Reverend” title in 1997 as a way to creatively protest America’s increasingly excessive consumerism and corporate homogeneity (with Starbucks, Wal-Mart, and Disney being his version of the “axis of evil”). What began as his solitary street “preaching” in Times Square (the “Stonehenge of billboards”) soon became a “ministry” of sorts—the Church of Stop Shopping.

The “church” is essentially a volunteer performance art/activist group, comprised of 50 singers and an eight-piece band. Though several members of the “gospel” choir are preachers’ kids, the group does not claim Christian orthodoxy. The songs they sing may sound like Jesus jams (complete with robes, swaying and hand raising), but the lyrics are more about slamming Starbucks than praising God.

Indeed, the most provocative (and potentially offensive) thing about this film is the way it blurs the lines between sacred and secular, using the forms/traditions of Christianity to proclaim its message (anti-consumerism) that is more or less secular. Is it OK that Rev. Billy and the “church” of Stop Shopping poke fun at certain brands of Christianity as a means to get their message noticed? How should Christians feel about this? Are their methods—however subversive—worth the good ends toward which they fight?

These are all questions I discussed with Morgan Spurlock in an interview last week. A very gracious and affable man, Spurlock (best known for his film Super Size Me) understood and shared some of my concerns about how Christian audiences might react to the film. Spurlock agreed that Billy has a tendency to alienate audiences, but noted that, “Reverend Billy may turn off some people, but the strength of the film is not in the man but the message.”

When I asked him what exactly that message was, Spurlock responded, “Billy’s message is similar to the message of Christianity that we’ve lost sight of … Jesus was a radical guy,” he said. “He drove the moneychangers out of the temple. Billy is acting within the tradition of Christ by using theater as a means of reform and activism.”

For Spurlock, the over-the-top theatricality and subversive comedy in the film serve a larger purpose. “It’s a movie that reminds you what is important in your life,” he said. “The question of ‘what would Jesus do?’ forces people to consider their own actions and priorities.”

Spurlock hopes the extreme exhortations of Rev. Billy (“Stop shopping! Mickey Mouse is the Antichrist!”) will not turn people off but rather get them thinking about consumerism as a serious problem. “Stop shopping is a way to open a door,” he said. “No one is going to stop shopping completely, but we have to ask questions about the products we buy. Where is it made? Is the money going back into the local economy? We don’t think about these questions enough.”

“I think we can be conscious consumers, where we don’t just buy blindly,” notes Spurlock, who believes that Christians should especially resonate with the message of the film—since they of all people can understand how far we’ve strayed from the true message of Christmas.

Even so, I can’t help but question the extent to which the “Christianity” invoked in this film mirrors the actual gospel that Jesus espoused. It seems to me that Spurlock and Rev. Billy’s group see Christ mostly as a great moral leader whose “message” could be summed up in words like peace, justice, equality and universal goodwill. But while this is all true of Christ’s message, isn’t there more to it?

At one point near the end of the film, Rev. Jim Wallis is interviewed and remarks that what Christmas represents—the birth of Christ—is the only thing that will ultimately fill the dissatisfaction that drives people to consume. But while What Would Jesus Buy? is good at pointing out the dissatisfaction that leads us to over-consumption, it stops short of Wallis’ claim that the answers lie in the person of Jesus Christ. Revered Billy says near the end of the film that “Christmas is about a child that will grow up to show the world peace … and you don’t have to be a Christian to believe that’s true.” Yes, that’s right, but “showing the world peace” is not all that Christmas represents. We can (and should) decry consumerism, the commercialization of Christmas, and the commodification of Christianity, but the ultimate call should be for a re-cast consumerism: one that is consumed with Christ and His commandments rather than cars and cappuccinos.

Author: Brett McCracken
To hear our interview with Morgan Spurlock, be sure to download this week's RELEVANT Podcast.
Brett is a grad student at UCLA's Film School and has recently started a blog at stillsearching.wordpress.com.

Family of disBelievers

This is another excellent article that I found in my email from Relevant.




One year after my mom’s wedding, I found out that my stepdad used to be Christian prior to meeting my mother. I’ve never asked why he lost his faith. My mom agreed to marry him on one condition: that he never return to the Church. So now, among the books on their library shelf, sit titles like The Atheist’s Bible and The God Delusion, right next to the untouched The Good News Bible.

As a teenager, I discovered this dusty gold book in my family’s collection. My mom only told me that it used to be hers, but never explained further. Today, I cannot imagine a younger version of my mother folding her hands in prayer. I often wonder if she used to talk to God and what made her give up on Him. I want to meet that little girl with dirty blond hair and ask if she could trust Him again.

When my parents divorced, I became a Christian, and the distance between my family and me grew. I continued asking God why my family appeared fine without Him. If Jesus was the Truth and the Way, why weren’t they seeking Him? But I began to realize that the transformation began with me. As my faith increased, my heart grew to hold a greater love for others, and my family began to notice those changes. When I chose to live for Christ, His purpose became bigger than my own.

My sister asked me one time, “What kinds of things do you pray for?”

“I pray for people, for Dad to be safe, for Mom to be happy and for you guys,” I said.

She asked what I prayed for them, and I told her I prayed that they would do well in school and make new friends, but in actuality, I pray to be a better role model for them. I pray that they’ll continue asking about my faith. I pray that the desire for knowledge and friendship will lead them into more discussions about Jesus. I know He works in mysterious ways. And one day, they’ll see something or meet someone who will stir questions deep within their hearts, and they’ll begin to wonder if He’s real.

Sometimes in church on Sundays, I imagine my mom sitting beside me, drinking a cup of grape juice during communion. I imagine her discussing the pros and cons of the pastor’s sermon with me. I imagine her pointing out an important passage of the Bible to me with authority. “Turn to 1 John 4:7,” she would say. I wonder if she secretly consults that gold Bible of hers once in a while and dog-ears a page or two.

My mom is my best friend, but I struggle with introducing my faith to her. She never voiced disapproval over my decision of faith, but she didn’t exactly support me, either. So I step cautiously around religious. I find myself rewording sentences so as not to come across as a Bible-thumping fundamentalist, and at the same time, I refrain from pointing out every positive experience and saying, “See, that’s God right there.” I don’t want her to think I have an agenda or that I’m out to save a couple more lives for Jesus.

Salvation is one of the most important concepts of Christianity that continues to puzzle me. While flipping through one of my mom’s school yearbooks, I found a baptism certificate hidden in its pages. So is my mom saved, or must she start over and repent because she lost her faith? It’s too difficult for me to imagine her or anyone else in my family enduring an eternity without God, so I show them love and attempt to bring Jesus into their lives. But is that enough? If they died tomorrow, will I have done all I could? Or will I feel guilty for not having done more?

I want to tell my mom that in all these years of suffering, God has never left her side. No matter what she was told in the past, He loves and forgives. I have never outright said, “Mom, I want you to know that Jesus loves you more than anything,” because I’m afraid of my words failing. In my mind, she would answer sarcastically, “Nice to know he cares.” And she’d say it with a lowercase “h” because He is just a pronoun to her.

For every unclear, unfamiliar and unknown situation I face with my family, I remain hopeful about God’s promises and confident that He will move in time. Lamentations 3:25–26 promises, “The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord” (TNIV). My family hasn’t witnessed the hours of tears I’ve cried for them, and they haven’t heard the hours of prayers I’ve spoken for them. But I don’t think those hours have been wasted. I know God hears me. The Bible says, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer” (Matthew 21:22).

I visualize these plans He sets before me—dozens of moments, hundreds of conversations and thousands of opportunities for me to witness and spread His message. I am called to love Jesus, to love others and to live a Christ-centered life. But how do I share the most important facet of my life with the most important people in my life when the two are incompatible? The answer is simply to love.
Author: Morgan Kirk

Morgan Kirk is an intern at RELEVANT Media Group.

Free Rice

Check out this simple vocabulary game. As you get words correct, the sponsors pay to donate rice to hungry people. You play, they pay, others get to eat. Simple enough, huh? BTW, my rating was 41. Thanks to Marko for this one.