Mark Driscoll’s sermons are mostly too racy to post on GodTube, the evangelical Christian “family friendly” video-posting Web site. With titles like “Biblical Oral Sex” and “Pleasuring Your Spouse,” his clips do not stand a chance against the site’s content filters. No matter: YouTube is where Driscoll, the pastor of Mars Hill Church in Seattle, would rather be. Unsuspecting sinners who type in popular keywords may suddenly find themselves face to face with a husky-voiced preacher in a black skateboarder’s jacket and skull T-shirt. An “Under 17 Requires Adult Permission” warning flashes before the video cuts to evening services at Mars Hill, where an anonymous audience member has just text-messaged a question to the screen onstage: “Pastor Mark, is masturbation a valid form of birth control?”

Driscoll doesn’t miss a beat: “I had one guy quote Ecclesiastes 9:10, which says, ‘Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.’ ” [Read on...]

Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
N.T. Wright

Harper Collins—Religion | Theology – Eschatology | Church Life
295 Pages

“Surprised By Hope is this generations Mere Christianity,” commented a fellow pastor here in the city of San Francisco. There has been a great deal of attention paid in the media to this work from a spot on Nightline and The Colbert Report to an article in TIME Magazine and an insightful interview by Brian Lowery in Preaching Today (among many others). Each article and interview seems to deal more with his conclusions rather than the framework by which he works to arrive at those conclusions (a good third to half of the book creates the framework through which his conclusions are derived.)

Wright concludes from his extensive New Testament research that our understanding of the afterlife is incomplete and because we fall short in our understanding we’ve constructed an after-life that is completely foreign to the understanding of the New Testament and early Christians. Instead of living out eternity in heaven (according to Colbert it entails getting a harp, drinking a mint julep and asking Ronald Reagan questions) singing songs to God all day while sitting on clouds, heaven is a mere step in the process before life after life after death occurs when the new heaven and the new earth are merged into one as described at the end of Revelation.

Therefore, the Christian response is to work towards new creation not sitting back to wait for the end of the world to occur. Perhaps what is most intriguing about this position is Wright alludes to and at several points calls out the fact that many Christians, including those in the United States are contributing more to the destruction of the world instead of new creation. We participate in this destruction with how we treat the environment (pollution, nuclear proliferation, destruction of rain forests and other environmental concerns) as well as how we treat others through economic slavery (the insurmountable debt we place upon third world countries, trade regulations, etc) and a slew of other ways. None of these hep to bring about new creation, but instead play into the systematic injustice of the worlds ruling structure.

Perhaps the most important thing to recognize about this book is the underlying thesis that your eschatological position truly does determine how you act and respond in the world. If you live as if “Left Behind” and the Rapture are to occur (Wright does a great job of de-bunking pop-theologies interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4) then there is no reason to give a rip about anything on this planet, from poverty and economics to war and violence and the only point become “saving souls” in a very gnostic understanding so that our spirit can enjoy life in the spiritual realm.

This is hands down the best book I have ever read. The call to action integrated with the amazing framework created by Wright for you to enjoy in Part 1 is a veritable playground for the mind.

I stepped on the bus and worked my way through the crowd at the front nearly getting knocked over as I tried to find a single opening to stand when out of nowhere a massive opening emerged and not only was I able to stand but there were several empty seats right in front of me. (This isn’t a normal occurrence during the morning rush hour on the 10-bus to the Financial District.) I paused for a moment, looked around and took a seat. It wasn’t until I settled in that I realized why these seats around me were nearly vacant.

To my left sat a man hidden behind a newspaper. As he lowered the paper in a jerky, almost spastic fashion he revealed his unshaven, unkempt appearance, complete with a slight odor. The spastic nature of his movements continued on as he began to mumble, speaking to himself, laughing, grunting, moving from side to side in a random, twitchy sort of way. This is why no one was sitting down, this is why everyone else chose to stand and be randomly tossed about as the MUNI driver made his sudden stops, starts and bus tipping turns.

As I looked around at the people’s demeanor it was quite obvious that although no one was looking at this man, they certainly felt his presence: clutching their briefcases a little closer, closing their jackets a little tighter and tensing their body a little more. One man stood chuckling to himself as he glanced at the man from time to time. As I sat a mere 12 inches from the man listening to his grunts and mumbles, I held my bag a little closer, tensed my body a little more and looked as straight ahead as possible until my stop came and I quickly exited the bus.

As I walked the few blocks to the coffee shop I would inhabit for the rest of the morning I wondered about my reaction to this man and questioned what love looks like in that situation. Could I have treated him differently, responded to him differently that would have created an in-breaking of the Kingdom?

San Francisco is home to over 15,000 homeless people. It’s not hard to step over them every single day, ignore them as you pass them by and treat them as invisible people. When inundated with such poverty in the midst of such beauty it’s easy to overlook the ugly, the downtrodden, the hopeless and focus our attention on the spectacular and beautiful things of the city. This is a daily situation that takes shape in different forms and yet each day I feel farther and farther away from knowing how to respond. Poverty, homelessness in the urban environment is a systemic problem that requires some sort of revolution in order to change. Until we learn to see the people behind the poverty, change is far away.

How does the Kingdom break into this kind of system and how does an individual affect change one day at a time by learning to see the people behind the poverty?

A month and a half ago I decided to take a break from blogging to allow myself some much needed rest and reflection on what this blog is and will be. Although I’m not 100% sure of what it will be (because you, the reader/commenter are instrumental in shaping and forming this blog) I am sure of where I want to go and with you’re help we can move in that direction. I’m looking forward to sharing my experiences of life in the city of San Francisco as well as the joys and struggles of church planting, but what I’m most interested in sharing and forming is how these experiences and how life in general intersect with the Kingdom of God. Obviously there will be debate about the intersection of some of these experiences (which is healthy) and there will be agreement and question about how my opinion and understanding is formulated (also healthy) but ultimately I see this as a journey in which your presence is not only invited but essential.

Journey with me, take a seat and contribute to what this space can and will be. A space where we can venture together into the hope that is the Kingdom, lifting the thin veil in preparation for what is to come.

So, it’s been almost 2 months since my last post and the break has been tremendous for me. I’m thinking through what it looks like to blog once again and what it is that I truly want this to be(come). In the next week or so I’ll resume posting on a regular basis (although I’m trying to figure out what regular will be as well).

For now, follow me on Twitter (http://twitter.com/aaronmonts) and I look forward to starting again soon!