Encounters with Jesus

Soo... after long last, Encounters with Jesus is now available in book form.  I really fought with myself about publishing these stories formally because my heart is that they'd be available and usable to anyone who wants them.  So you can still get the individual stories at www.annarapa.com.  But in the end, I think the book form is important because people are much more likely to pick it up if they can hold it in their hands and look at it instead of having to print it out at home.


So, without further ado, here's the link to the hard copy, and here's the link to the Kindle version.  After a couple of weeks, it'll be available through other bookstores online and by special order in the brick and mortar stores.

Free stuff :)

In lieu of actual thoughts for the week, I thought I'd take the chance to share 2 resources that are free to download tonight and tomorrow all day on Amazon.com.

Second Story
     Alex Cunningham's recent motorcycle accident changed his life - now he sees every day as a mission to share the good news of the gospel. But his long-time girlfriend, Annie Russo, just doesn't understand. And if that isn't enough, every time Alex opens his mouth to say something about God at work, everything backfires: his co-manager Drew rarely even looks at him now. But help comes in the form of Sara Locke, an ex-missionary widow with wisdom to spare. Together, Alex, Annie, and Sara discover how to see people's unspoken emotional barriers to faith in God. Along the way, Alex and Annie explore how to engage those barriers in natural and nonjudgmental ways as they begin to talk about their Christian faith with their friends. But one of them has more success than the other, and the stress on their relationship might just be too much. A blend of fiction and evangelism training, author Anna Rapa uses narrative storytelling to communicate key truths about evangelism in today's postmodern world. Dive in to the story of Alex and Annie, and let this story show you how to reach people in today's culture with God's transforming story of rescue.

Encounter Jesus
    Have you ever wondered what it was like to meet Jesus? This book is a set of imaginative stories based on seven important dialogues Jesus had with people in the gospels. Written in first-person, they invite you to experience Jesus as these people did. There are also discussion questions and questions for reflection if you want to discuss the stories with others.

These resources were created out of my own experiences walking beside people for the last 10 years or so.  They're based on things I've learned and observed and felt like I would've wanted when I was first starting to analyze what it looks like and means to live a life of faith in front of people who may or may not have any interest in that type of thing.  Hope they're helpful!  If you want more information about the resources, there's some good stuff at Da[w]bar House--the publisher's website.

Before the Conversation...

When I read stories like the one we talked about on Sunday--Philip walking up to the Ethiopian guy and being able to just jump right in and say all the right things so that he was immediately ready to follow Jesus--well, it feels a little bit intimidating.  Of course someone who walked and talked with Jesus, who ate with him and watched him talking to thousands of people, who could ask him all the questions that I always have rolling around in my head--of course Philip would know what to say.  But faith feels so different when it's not based on that kind of tangible interaction.

But over the years that I've been hanging out with people who are not yet following Jesus, I have learned that there are a whole lot of things I can do to prepare for the opportunities I might have.  In fact, if I'm really paying attention to what my friends are doing and what they're experiencing, I can often prepare ahead of time for conversations that may come up.

For example, I think that there are certain times in a person's life when he or she might become more spiritually sensitive--like the birth of a child or a marriage or a death.  If I see that coming on the horizon, I can begin praying weeks and even months ahead of time (1) that the Spirit would be working in that time to draw the person to Jesus, (2) that the Spirit will show me the questions of the heart that my friend might be asking, and (3) that the Spirit would show me what stories from Scripture or from my own life might connect to those questions my friend might have.  So when I get to the actual conversation, I've been thinking and praying for weeks and months about what I might say.

So much of evangelism, at a practical level, is about being watchful and prayerful.  It's about looking for what God is already doing in the hearts of the people around you.  It's about being willing to say something when the time is right.  It's about praying for wisdom and God's leading so that you say something that will help rather than hurt.

Here's a link to a page of questions that you can prayerfully think through as it relates the friend or friends that you're praying for right now.  I hope you'll take some time this week to begin the process of preparing to be there, at the right place and the right time with the right heart.

Encounter Jesus

About a year ago, just after I published Second Story, my friend and I started dreaming of the next book project.  What did the church and its people truly need in order to take additional steps toward inviting others to know and follow Jesus?

We talked about her dad and his days of ministry to college students long ago.  He had this series of studies about Jesus that he simply called the John studies--they went through many stories from John where Jesus had important, life-changing conversations with people.  She explained how every time he took people through that study, they would give their lives to Christ.

We needed something similar for today.  The problem with the old studies, at least for today's culture, was that they were written in kind of a fill-in-the-blank style.  They were more authority based than story based.  So we started to ask ourselves, what would work today?  What would introduce people to Jesus--who he said he was and who he showed he was?  What would give people an opportunity to respond to his claims and his invitation without being overly simplistic? 

So I spent the next year writing these seven stories for a group of people who were willing to come to my house to participate in "storying" on a Sunday night.  We met off and on for the whole year.  That group saw me through my dad's death.  We prayed for each other.  We grew together.  And along the way, every single person saw their lives changed in some way.  We only meet sporadically right now, but we saw several take a significant and life-changing step into Jesus's kingdom.  Most of them are now involved in churches in some way.  Along the way we met Jesus, and he changed us.

I'm working on an app so that the stories will be easily sharable.  But for now, there's a dedicated page on my website that links you back to all the times I blogged about our discussions after the fact.  I'm praying every day that through these stories, many, many people will be introduced to Jesus and hear his invitation to join his kingdom fellowship and work.

If there's anything I can do to support or help you along the way in that endeavor, let me know.

Encounters with Jesus VII - Cleopas

 Well, after several months we finally were able to get together to do the last Encounters with Jesus story on Sunday night.  It was a great time of fellowship and catching up, and as far as the story is concerned, I felt like it caps off the series really wonderfully.  It is really meant to be an invitation to the life and kingdom work of Jesus, and I think that it does that.

It's been so amazing to see how people have grown and been changed by their encounters with Jesus through this series.  We are not in the same place as we were when we started.  My deepest prayer for this community now is that we will all be able to find out how God wants to use us in his work of reconciliation in the world.

As a community update, we're still trying to determine where to go from here.  What I'd love to do is start with the beginning of the Bible, maybe going back to Michael Novelli's Echo the Story curriculum.  I really want this community to know where Jesus fits into the overall story of God's interaction with humanity throughout history.  So we're still talking about it and will figure it out.

As an Encounters with Jesus update, I've got a couple of things in the works.  I've updated my website so that Encounters has its own page.  I've also been working on developing an app so that people can use these resources in conversations with friends about Jesus.  I'm not exactly sure what that would look like or how that would work, I only know that the days of little paper booklets (which is the other way I'm publishing the stories) are pretty much over.  It's basically a test case to see whether it's something people could use if they wanted to have some kind of guided discussions about who Jesus is and what that means to our lives today.  So stay tuned for announcements.  I'm working right now on getting the app approved for both Apple and Android devices.

meditations before the bar exam

So I've mentioned before that one of the things I'm trying to grow into is the reality that, after people have taken some significant steps toward faith, they really need additional support and connection to resources if they're going to continue growing.

Someday I hope to have a whole body of believers who can surround my newly believing friends and help them to struggle through all the questions and challenges of walking with Christ.  Right now, though, I'm in kind of a gap period, so I'm finding that I need to create at least some of the resources that they need.

So I've been hanging out with some former students and some other friends who are getting ready to take the bar exam in a couple of weeks.  When we met together 2 weeks ago (to vent about the bar exam and then practice some essay questions), several of them expressed a lot of anxiety and uncertainty.  Two of them have been coming to my Sunday night storying group and I was feeling like maybe I should work up some sort of little devotional thing that would help them to take their anxieties about this test to God and remember every day that they belong to God.

So I sat down that weekend and created that resource.  I thought I'd post it on my website and link to it here, just in case there's anyone out there reading who might find it useful. 

Encounters with Jesus VI - Zaccheus

We had another Encounters with Jesus evening.  Started with a barbeque and just enjoyed some relational time together.  And then we did the Zaccheus story.  You can find the story here.

First off I have to say again that this community has become a real community.   It's amazing to me to see how they have pulled together to be there for me.  We have become the church.

Second, we talked a lot tonight about transformation--what is it, where does it come from, how does it happen, etc.  The application question was focused on how Jesus has changed us and how we would like to ask Jesus to transform us.  That part was probably the most encouraging to me tonight.  A couple of people shared things tonight about ways they've been transformed, and I think they actually have.  Like I can confirm as an actual witness of how they actually have changed in these areas.  It is a gift to be able to see these tangible changes in people's lives because it's often so hard to see them in my own life.

The questions in my community seem to be changing some.  People seem hungry to know more about how to apply the stories to their own life.  I think that we're going to have to start producing some practical devotionals that people can use to get deeper into the stories and deeper into the ways that God wants to use them to change us.  I think we've moved now from a seeking community to a growing community and we need to provide some more materials to help people on that journey.

I'm struggling too to determine whether we need to keep doing storying or move on to something else.  I am still challenged by the stories I read--they still motivate me to action and transformation.  But it feels like maybe we need to move toward more typical teaching--having a certain point we're trying to make.  Like maybe using the pastoral books or something.  But I wonder if that's because it's more comfortable or because that's what I know rather than what will actually be more effective.

So I don't know.  I don't know what we'll do or where we'll go from here.  But I'll keep sharing how it's going and what we're doing.

Harold and the Purple Crayon

If you struggle to conceptually understand the different between a modern thinker and a postmodern thinker, this link may help.  It's a video remake of a book that was written over 50 years ago.  It's about a little boy who creates his own reality by drawing what he wants to see and experience.

I don't want to say much more about it because I think to truly see the differences in the ways of thinking, you probably have to experience the book yourself.  But it's as good an example as I've seen of postmodern thinking.  The book itself is available here.

Encounters with Jesus V - The Rich Young Ruler

Wow!  I totally procrastinated on reporting how the Sunday night group went this week.  I got a new computer which required much work, so it's Thursday already and I'm finally getting around to this.  Anyway, you can find the narrative and discussion questions here.

We had a really great discussion this week.  Some of our attenders were really disturbed by this story because Jesus seems to be expecting more from the rich young man than simple belief in who he is.  So we had the chance to talk for a while about what it means to actually believe--that there's an element of mental assent to certain ideas, but there's also a requirement of actually following.  I got to whip out the old chair illustration from my childhood - you know - the one about how you don't really know if you believe a chair will hold you until you sit in it.  I'm not sure how helpful that was though.

We're still struggling through what life with the Eternal One looks like.  The stories we've talked through up to this point have been all about the actual encounter with Jesus and who Jesus claimed to be.  Jesus often mentions eternal life, but doesn't often describe what it is.  I think this coming week we're going to talk about Zaccheus and how his encounter with Jesus transformed his life.  I'm looking forward to some plain old relational time with the group in a couple of weeks where I also hope to tell part of my own story and how my encounters with Jesus have shaped my own life.

The one thing that I would say about this narrative is that I almost think it should come between the blind man and Lazarus.  Apparently this is where scholars feel that the story fits anyway, and I think that it actually probably makes more sense there.  If I was just going to offer 5 narratives for a 5 week series, that's probably how I'd rearrange them.  But it turns out that we've actually formed somewhat of a community in those 5 weeks, and our people want to continue meeting.  So we're off on new adventures.  The focus now will be on the development of materials and stories that will create the possibility of true discipleship.  It'll be exciting to see how that turns out!

Encounters with Jesus IV - Martha (Mary & Lazarus)

We had another Encounters with Jesus night last night.  We did the story of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus from Martha's point of view.  You can find it here. Everyone was there, and it was a sweet time of fellowship.  It has been so amazing to watch God working through these stories and working to develop community.

We set out with the goal of introducing people to Jesus - to who he said he was.  I think we picked some really powerful stories.  Last night we really hit on spiritual life and death and how that compares to physical life and death.  There were some great questions from people about why Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.  We also had an interesting time imagining what it might have been like to be Lazarus.  We wondered if he had any memory of his time being dead.  But probably the most interesting conversation happened around Jesus weeping.  We talked about the possibility that he was weeping because he was sad for the loss of his friend.  We talked about how much he knew of the future--did he know he was going to raise Lazarus at that time or not?  And we talked about how the commentaries explained that he may have been weeping at the brokenness of the world and the fact that it's so far outside of what God designed life to be like.

From a practical point of view, we're struggling a little bit now with the mixture of some people of long-time faith and some of newer (ie, since the group has started meeting) faith.  We actually have at least one attender who is not post-modern/post-Christian and who sees the world in a very structured way.  This attender's certainty about how God interacts in life has caused at least one other attender to wonder whether he's able to hear God in his life at all.  Because he's not certain, he questions the reality of God's interaction in his life.  But I can tell you (and him) that I have seen an amazing shift since the time we've been meeting in his life and his orientation toward God.  There is a totally different spirit of question now.  At some point in this process, he moved from questioning whether God was real to questioning how to invite God into his life and how to hear from God.  So it's going to be really important for me, I think, to meet one-on-one with him to share a different, less structured approach to faith.

This, I think, is one of the most major struggles that a church that's reaching post-Christian people is going to face.  The language of the long-time Christians to describe their spiritual existence has worked for them.  It makes sense to them.  But that language actually has a tendency to either alienate the post-Christian person or to make them question whether they are able to have a relationship with God at all.

So that's where we're at right now.  We have just one more week of Encounters with Jesus.  But I think the group is kind of taking off, and I think that we'll keep meeting after that.  So watch for the final installment in a couple of weeks.

Encounters with Jesus III - The Man Born Blind

Last night was the third installment of Encounters with Jesus.  The leaders/participant's guide can be found here.

I thought the story of the blind man is remarkable.  As I was studying to write the narrative, I was struck by what a strong personality the man was.  He had no fear to tell things how he saw them, even to the people in power.  In this story, we also have a remarkable claim by Jesus that he is the Messiah.  And then the blind man worships Jesus and Jesus doesn't tell him not to.

It's amazing what having Jesus present and speaking for himself does in a person's life.  There was no surprise within the group that Jesus allowed the man to worship him - they basically felt that this was a natural extension of what's been happening in the stories up to this point.  In other words, Jesus's deity has become self-evident in the exploration of these stories.

We spent a lot of time discussing the tension of faith and doubt and fear that the man must have felt before he washed in the pool.  We questioned how he had the strength to hope that his sight had been restored and whether we would have been willing to risk that or not.  That led to some very interesting conversations about being able to hear what Jesus asks of us and how we have the strength to follow where he leads.  It is such a beautiful thing to see people seeking Jesus, particularly those who have never tried to do it before this time.  In all, this story lends itself to great conversation and discussion, and a great opportunity to invite Jesus to restore/redeem our own spiritual blindness.  We also had the opportunity to talk about what true worship is.

Now for some practical notes:  My group members requested the participant guides so that they had something to refer to during the re-telling of the story and the discussion times.  But last week I handed them out during the story time, and it seemed to take away from the imaginative listening.  So I think the default will be to hand them out during re-telling so that people can listen once and then refer to the guides later.

Second, we have been making sure to take time to respond and give some quiet time for reflection after the discussion.  For us, this has come in the form of drawing or writing in response to questions on a sheet of blank white paper.  I've been including those in the resources too.  After that time, we have everyone share their responses, and then we pray for each other.  I think that this has become the sweetest and most enjoyable part of the group time.  The response questions give people the opportunity to reflect, and they are sharing some really deep things about the way they perceive themselves and God.  Then we are able to pray for one another, inviting both those who are familiar with prayer and those who are not to pray for one another.  This allows us to keep forming deeper relational bonds, and it also allows people to see God moving and working in their own lives.  I don't want to get into a rut with the response times, but it seems to be working for us right now.

Encounters with Jesus II - Woman at the Well

After being snowed out last week, we had our second Encounters with Jesus storying group tonight.  We had another good turnout, with most of the same people coming back a second time.  The narrative and participant guide, including the response page, are available here.

One of the challenges tonight with the story was that this one had a little more fictionalized content than the last one.  I have mixed feelings about the fiction.  The most important thing is to clearly communicate which parts come from my own imagination and which parts come from the Bible and which parts are historically verifiable.  We were able to make that clear during our session tonight, but I think for the resources I'm going to have to go back through and do different fonts for each of those.  If we don't do the fictionalization, then we'd have to do some introductory background information, which sort of takes away from the storying atmosphere.  At the same time, I don't want to take away from Scripture and the power of the stories by interspersing too much of my own vision and imagination.  But perhaps this is what pastors always struggle with.  Because how can we teach people without bringing in some of our own culture and interpretation and life experience?  For the time being, I'm trying to keep the fiction as the kind of details that just give background of what life was like, but I may have gone a little too far with this story.

On the positive side of things, we had some really meaningful discussion about what life with the Eternal One looks like.  We talked about how to find it, how to grow in it, and how it should actually look.  There were some really insightful comments from everyone involved, including those with no real background in the church.

The application time was amazing.  Some people are really getting into the drawing part of it, and some just write down answers to the questions.  But everyone is actually really willing to be real and then to share what they drew or wrote.  We're being really intentional about praying for each one as they share.  Today's question was what you are looking for in life and inviting people to ask Jesus for those things.

So in all, it seems like there are more positives than negatives here.  What's even more amazing is being able to see God work in the people's lives throughout the week.  I've had some awesome opportunities to have conversations with people, building on what we've been talking about during the week.  I can't emphasize enough how the relationships that I have with the people who come are just as important as the content we're covering.  I think the content and approach are important, and they're working for where we're at right now.  But without relationships, I don't think that we'd be seeing the kind of fruit that we are.

Encounters with Jesus, Part I

Last night was the first night of our "Encounters with Jesus" storying group.  It's a group that's going to meet for the next couple of weeks around stories from the Bible of people who encountered Jesus and were changed by him.  I'm working on developing the narratives, discussion questions, and response activities.  Our target audience is people who have not read the Bible and do not attend church, but who have a level of spiritual interest that motivates them to attend.  In my case, the spiritual interest has developed with this group of people over a long period of time and a significant relational investment on my part.

You can get a copy of the narrative and planning materials here.  Once we have all the weeks completed, I'll edit them and get them into one booklet kind of thing and post that on the blog and my website.

So let me debrief the evening.  The narrative in this case is quite long.  It's the story of Nicodemus's encounter with Jesus and how it changed him.  The source material for the narrative is the Biblical passage of John 3 and The Expositor's Bible Commentary and the Interpreter's Bible.  I spent several hours researching and reading.  The Nicodemus passage is so complicated and theologically deep that I knew there would be a lot of background that people would need to understand it.  I built some of that background in, but it still felt like maybe there wasn't enough.  We had to spend time during the discussion explaining what the Jewish ruling council was, how and why the Jews were longing for a political rescuer, and quite a bit about the story Jesus referenced from the Old Testament about the Serpent in the Wilderness.  A person leading the discussion would probably want to take some time to make sure they understand those things and be able to explain them.

As far as the response time, there were a couple of interesting things.  First, those who attended who are from the church were surprised at how open everyone was related to the question of brokenness.  People had no problems sharing how they are longing to see God intersect their lives and the things they are struggling with.  For church people, who are accustomed to presenting the best possible facade of their lives to other church folks, the inherent realness about brokenness that exists in the world can be quite shocking.  For me, it's one of the things I love most about walking with people outside the church.

Second, we noticed that the idea of "life with the eternal One", which is what the commentaries say "eternal life" means in this passage, was something that people struggled with.  For those who were trying to imagine what life with the eternal One looks like, they drew pictures of paradise.  Even while acknowledging that Jesus was probably talking about how life with the eternal One could start now, their visions of what that means was idyllic.  So one of the goals for the next few stories is to continue developing this idea and giving people a picture for what walking with God in the present means about life in the present.  I don't know about you, but my life is far from ideal.  Even so, walking with God gives me an eternal (and mostly hopeful) perspective that allows me to thrive in the midst of difficult situations.  While I long for people to know the peace of eternal life in paradise, I also really want them to know the peace of life with the eternal One now.  And that is what Jesus invites people into.

Overall, everyone enjoyed the conversation and we had some fantastic questions and observations from the group.  If you're not familiar with the storying concept in general, you should definitely check out Michael Novelli's Echothestory.com.  I am following and adapting his process for use with the adults in my world.

Here's where I'm headed...

So here's a little bit more of the back story of how I got to be where I am...

I love the church.  I believe very strongly in the need for fellowship and attachment to the body.  I haven't had that much over the last few years, and it's put me in a really vulnerable position.  But I also have a strong calling as a minister of reconciliation in the world.  I don't always know how to balance those things.  About the time when I started feeling like I had to fight the spiritual battle on 2 fronts - against the church and against spiritual forces of evil in the world - was when I stopped being as committed to church as I'd grown up being.  About 10 years ago, my church at that time taught me that sometimes the church can stand between its people and doing the work of God.  The institution of the church is something that I still struggle with and have a hard time trusting because I've seen in the past how it's hurt people, and how it stopped me from doing something I believed God called me to do.

What I currently view as my calling in the church was dropped in my lap when my friend asked me to write a book for her.  This calling to be somewhat of a spokesperson between 2 worlds - the world of the church and the world of the "world" so to speak.  I have all of the appropriate skills and giftings and experience for this.  Growing up with a theologian as a father and in the church, I know the language that's necessary.  I know the issues that church people have with post-modern and post-christian culture.  But I also see the other side of things and have a healthy distrust of institutions myself.  I share modern and post-modern values in a weird concoction that is also mixed in with Asian and American values - it's a mixture that probably exists almost no where else.  I resisted this calling for a long time.  I didn't believe I could do it.  I didn't want to do it.  I didn't want to give up what had become a comfortable place in the world as just a nice Christian who loved people one by one and probably would never be around to see the harvest of lives transformed because of how transitional my community is and how nonconfrontational I am.  I am great at being the person to help a person get rid of the hostility, but I had given up on being around to be able to walk with people through the actual gates of faith and transformation.

And yet here I am and several of my friends are on the threshold, and I see now that I have to make the transition here too.  I have to be one (hopefully among many others who are doing this around the nation) to learn to translate the truths of Scripture and of early spiritual formation and discipleship and figure out how to communicate those things in today's world.  I'm burdened not only to discover this for myself but also to develop resources that can be given away to provide for the church at large.  I don't know this, but I think it's very possible that I could spend a lot of time teaching and training this stuff once I figure it out.

So that's what I'm doing right now--developing resources, trying them out, and then posting them here and providing them on my website.  I'm in the uncomfortable position of trying to develop something that fits with culture as it is now (read non-linear/story-based) and then put it into linear/modern-thinking form so that it can be taught and learned.  It would be much more natural and culturally appropriate to teach it one person at a time so that it could be caught rather than abstracted so that it can go further and wider.  Only time will tell whether we'll be successful or not, but I can't shake the feeling that this is what I'm supposed to be doing.

My current project is to develop a short series of narratives to use in storying that will show what some of the key encounters with Jesus from the Bible looked like and how they changed the lives of the people who encountered him.  I'll start posting the first of those soon.

Prayer that changes things

Several years ago I heard about this movement of people who were creating "houses of prayer" in their neighborhoods.  The basic premise was that you could pray that from the time of Abraham, God's desire has been to bless the world through his people.  They were encouraging people to find the five neighbors that surrounded them and start praying that God would bless them in five different spheres.  If I remember correctly, those were emotional, physical, relational, spiritual, and vocational.

Over the years, I've done that a couple of different times.  I've picked a couple of people - maybe they were neighbors and maybe they were people who I worked with or went to school with, but I started praying that God would bless them in those areas.

It was amazing to see how those prayers changed things.  I didn't always see all the "blessings" that I asked for.  But I did see those people become softer toward me and toward God.  It was amazing.

I think that at first, it really changed the way I viewed them.  I believe I became more interested in what they were saying.  I remembered what they'd said before and could follow up on it.  I became more interested in hearing their stories and their needs.  And in turn, they became much more open to me.  They started sharing things more deeply.  Whatever friendship we had was allowed to foster because it had been nurtured.  I also noticed that many of them also had a softness toward God that they didn't before.

I still think this is a great way to be a minister or a vehicle of God's blessing and mission of reconciliation in the world.  I have met very few people who would be upset or offended to be prayed for in this way.  If you're interested in trying this out in your own life, you can get a little worksheet here that will help you to keep track of your prayers for blessings and the ways that you see God answer.

Common emotional barriers to faith

I've told some stories about emotional barriers to faith, but today I just want to give a list of some of the common emotional barriers I have seen when talking to people over the last few years.

My question for you is what you think the appropriate response to these barriers is.  Is there a way to engage those barriers within a relationship?  Do you have any resources that you use to help people walk through these barriers?


Common emotional barriers/questions

Hell
•    How can God send people to hell?
•    If I believe in God, then I have to believe that my recently deceased family-member is in hell.
   
Suffering/Evil
•    I could never serve a God who allows so much suffering in the world.
•    How can God be good and allow people to starve?

Effect of faith on my life
•    If I become a Christian, I will have to give up my favorite parts of myself and the things I like to do?
•    If I become a Christian, will I have to look and act like all the [fake, annoying, disconnected-from-reality] Christians that I know?
•    If I become a Christian, will I have to forgive . . . [my abusive father, the man who raped me, my spouse who left me]?

Church/hypocrisy
•    I believe in God, but the church kicked my family out when I was 5.
•    I believe in God, but the church is mean to people.
•    I believe in God, but the church takes a political position that goes against my values.

Excluded by the Church
•    I am a strong, professional woman.  There is no place for me in your church.
•    I am a homosexual.  There is no place for me in your church.
•    I am a minority.  There is no place for me in your church.
•    I am divorced or unmarried.  There is no place for me in your church.

Other
•    I’m doing just fine on my own, thank you very much.
•    Things are a mess right now, but I’ll start going to church again once I have my life together.
•    I don’t trust you, and I don’t trust God.
•    I’m not good enough to be loved by God.
•    If God the Father is anything like my father, I don’t want anything to do with him.

A pdf version of this list is available here.

Second Story is Now Available!

You can buy Second Story at either Amazon or Barnes & Noble.

It's unreal, but exciting.  I've been busy sending out copies and doing marketing.  I'll get back to blogging soon.

Introducing . . . storying

In a slight change of pace, I really wanted to take a couple of minutes and recommend a great resource to you.  About a year and a half ago, I stumbled on the idea of storying from Michael Novelli.  His website is here.

The basic idea is that it's a really powerful thing within a community to return to the power of the story of the Bible.  The Bible was written in narrative form, but so often we break it up and analyze it into tiny, bite-size pieces.  It's really easy to misinterpret.  It's also really easy to sort of contain God if we can categorize and analyze things to the point where they all make sense.

Last year a small group of people met in my house about twice a month to story through the Old Testament.  I was immediately captured by the stories.  I was confronted by the character of God in those stories, who was so much bigger than I'd remembered.  We had great conversations about the stories and about what they challenged us to do in our own lives.

As I've learned to recognize emotional barriers to faith in my life and in the lives of those around me, this idea of story has really jumped out at me as a way to engage with those barriers.  Through story, we can introduce ourselves and our friends to the person of God rather than just ideas about God.  And those stories have the power to transform.  They challenge our preconceived notions and ideas, and they force us to engage with God in a different way than if we just talk about him in the abstract.  I would highly recommend this resource.