10.21.05 FROM THE ROAD: COLUMBIA, SC

Story and pics after the show tonight In Columbia, SC:

Jammin Java -8 pm -$8 advance and $10 at the door

Tomorrow night I’m in Apex, NC at Salem Baptist Church at 6PM.  The concert is for Hurricane Relief.

10.20.05 $100 LAPTOP

”The MIT Media Lab has launched a new research initiative to develop a $100 laptop—a technology that could revolutionize how we educate the world’s children. To achieve this goal, a new, non-profit association, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), has been created. The initiative was first announced by Nicholas Negroponte, Lab chairman and co-founder, at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in January 2005”

More here.

10.18.05 GOOD AND BAD NAKED

When a voluptuous blonde with extensions sauntered toward me after a show two years ago I had no idea I was about to learn something.  Her breasts sat high enough to threaten air flow, her heels elevated her to over six feet, and her glittered nails stabbed out of long tight sleeves like diamond studded knives.  She stretched out her slender hand, broke into a blinding bleached smile, wrapped her other arm around my shoulders and leaned in close for a picture.  She smelled good.  I signed her CD and answered her questions while something inside me radioed for help, “SOS, something’s not right here.  Be afraid.” And I was.

She handed me her business card.  “Stripper for Jesus” it said in large glittery letters that matched her nails and heels and belt.  “Paul said that after you find Jesus you should go on with the way of life you were in before so you can spread the Good News to those people you hung out with before you got saved.  If you’re a plumber you should keep being a plumber you know? Well, I was a stripper so I’m putting it to good use,” she explained.

I stood spellbound, my head aimed in her direction but my eyes occasionally casually searching the room for a hidden camera or a giggling friend peaking out from behind a fern in a corner, taking the whole awkward scene in with great pleasure.

Then there’s my Republican/NRA/"Growing Kids God’s Way"/Southern Baptist friend who, with equally admirable intentions, gets dressed in the dark so that she won’t tempt her husband needlessly.  She listens only to the bible on CD, teaches her kids that other four year olds who hit do so because they need Jesus, has to find a way to interject “Jesus” blatantly into every conversation and situation and believes that if a conversation or situation cannot be Jesus-ed then it shouldn’t be participated in in the first place.  If there is not an obvious and intended “Christian message” to a night of fun or a movie or a book she wants no part of it.

The stripper believes Jesus sets no limits for Christians because all things are pure to the pure.  My Baptist friend seems to think that some things are plastered with bold faced “THIS IS A JESUS THING” labels and that only those things are safe and everything else is dangerous.  If you can’t read the label just avoid it, better to be safe than sorry - she says.  One lives in a world without walls, the other in a world without windows.

And I see the stripper and the Baptist both when I look back upon my life - or even back upon the last few days.  We probably all do.  And then, realizing I have both of these people taking turns at the wheel inside my psyche, I’m driven to decide which one to hand the keys to.  Which one is good and which is bad?  Which should I let take over?

Then I think about being naked.  I think about men with pockets full of ones sitting at darkened tables masturbating to nakedness.  I think about the fertilizer nakedness in that place douses onto the seeds of reckless infidelity and base self-centeredness in every human heart present.  Then I think of my honeymoon, of any night of my married life for that matter, my wife able to stand unashamed and naked before me, me before her, of how sex in that place feels like holy communion, rapturous, selfless and soul intertwining.

Then I think about Halloween.  Every year evangelicals fight about it on my message board and at my concerts.  The question is inevitably asked, “Shaun, is Halloween bad?” And I think that’s a bit like asking if naked is bad.  Depends why you’re naked doesn’t it?  In the words of the great prophet Jerry Seinfeld “There’s good naked and there’s bad naked.” Isn’t that true?

We need walls sure, but we also need windows.  The question I’m asking myself isn’t whether Halloween or anything else is good or bad, but rather I’m asking “Do I have enough windows in my life to keep my faith from growing mold and dying” and “Where did this wall come from exactly?”

10.17.05 DUST

The following is an excerpt from VELVET ELVIS by ROB BELL of MARS HILL BIBLE CHURCH in Grand Rapids.  I like the implications of this passage for the modern church, the reminder that these words are to us pastor types to invest in disciples, to let someone follow behind us closely enough to get dusty. I haven’t read the book yet, only pieces like this one.  Have you?  If so, what’d you think?

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One of the earliest sages of the Mishnah, Yose ben Yoezer, said, “Cover yourself with the dust of their feet.”

This idea of being covered in the dust of your rabbi came from something everybody had seen. A rabbi comes to town and right behind him would be this group of students doing their best to keep up with rabbi as he went about teaching from one place to another. By the end of a day of walking in the dirt directly behind your rabbi, you would have the dust from his feet all over you.

And that was a good thing.

So at the age of thirty, when a rabbi generally began his public teaching and training of disciples, we find Jesus walking along the Sea of Galilee. “He saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen.”

They are fishermen because they weren’t good enough. They didn’t make the cut.

Jesus calls the not-good-enoughs and, as the story continues, “at once they left their nets and followed him.”

This is strange, isn’t it? Why do they just drop their nets? And those Christian movies don’t help. Jesus is usually wearing a white bath robe with a light blue beauty pageant sash and he has blow dried hair.

And he’s Swedish.

But given the first-century context, it’s clear what’s going on here. Can you imagine what this must have been like-to have a rabbi say, “Come, follow me”?

To have a rabbi say: “YOU can be like ME.”

Of course you would drop your nets.

10.14.05 CHINESE CHURCH PERSECUTION

House Church Pastor and Evangelist Arrested in Henan
October 4, 2005

From China Aid Association
Midland, Texas (CAA, 10-4-2005)—Mr. Ma Shulei, a full time house church evangelist, was arrested in Mianchi County, Sanmenxia City, Henan Province, along with his 58-year-old father, Mr. Ma Yinzhou, who is a house church pastor.

On September 26, 2005, Mr. Ma Shulei returned home from Yunnan Province to visit his father. Someone immediately reported this information to the police. When the police arrived, Mr. Ma Shulei was not at home. Therefore, the police arrested his father Pastor Ma Yinzhou, and forced him to reveal his son’s whereabouts. To save his father, Mr. Ma Shulei turned himself in October 2. However, his father was not released and both are now in police custody.

In 2002, Mr. Ma Shulei and his father were detained in Beijing for more than 40 days after a church leader’s meeting was raided by the police. Later they were put on probation and ordered to report to the police every five days. Instead of following the probation order, Mr. Ma Shulei went into Yunnan Province as a house church missionary. Mr. Ma Shulei graduated from a Chinese seminary in Myanmar in 2002.

“To hold the father in order to arrest the son is certainly a very harsh tactic to use against two innocent individuals.” said Bob Fu, “We urge the Chinese government to immediately release Pastor Ma and his son.”

Voice Of The Martyrs would like you to write a polite letter of protest on the behalf of Mr. Ma Shulei and Mr. Ma Yinzhou.  Send to:

Embassy of the People’s Republic of China
Zhou Wenzhong, Ambassador
2300 Connecticut Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20008
Phone: (202) 328-2500
Fax: (202) 588-0032