Thursday, September 10, 2009

One Love, One Blood: UT, FB, OW and JC










It is interesting how things sometimes come together when you are being attentive. Here are three stories woven together that got me thinking.







I have been reading One Heartbeat by coach Mack Brown. Coach Darrell Royal's quote stood out in the very first pages of this story that is hard to put down. Coach Royal said, "To be successful as a team you must bring all the parts together and play as one heart."

I am reminded of the incredible A&M games I have attended as an Aggie fan, participating in the yells and songs.



This idea of one heartbeat translates easily into our Body of Christ imagery and theology.





What if the church moved with one heartbeat? Does the church move with one heartbeat?



The second piece of this connection came while rereading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky. Shirky begins his book by helping the reader discover that 15 people can have over 15 connections. An example of the possible connections begin to take shape on facebook when one does a friend wheel. You are able to see how you are connected but how all your friends are connected and how all friends could be connected. The multi-colored wheel above are the real connections of the 1000 friends I have on facebook, but each friend has an opportunity to connect tomorrow with someone new raising the possible real life connections.



What if the church as the body of Christ was as connected as we are online? What if we used our online connections to make incarnational connections?





The last piece happened when I got home tonight. JoAnne was watching the opening season party for Oprah and we witnessed what is called a flash mob. I love the Black Eyed Peas and enjoyed seeing a crowd of over 20,000 do a choreographed dance. See the video and how they did it here: http://bit.ly/12zpKU.



What if the church as the Body of Christ showed up and dance?



It is an interesting thing to think about the possibilities for the body of Christ that are emerging as people's hunger for community lead them to learn how to dance, gather and connect, and seek to work together as one heartbeat.


Is it getting better

Or do you feel the same

Will it make it easier on you

Now you got someone to blame
You say

One love

One life

When it's one need

In the night

It's one love

We get to share it

It leaves you baby

If you don't care for it
Did I disappoint you?

Or leave a bad taste in your mouth?

You act like you never had love

And you want me to go without
Well it's too lateTonight

To drag the past out

Into the lightWe're one

But we're not the same

We get to carry each other

Carry each otherOne
Have you come here for forgiveness

Have you come to raise the dead

Have you come here to play Jesus

To the lepers in your head

Did I ask too muchMore than a lot

You gave me nothing

Now it's all I got

We're one

But we're not the same

We hurt each other

Then we do it again
You say

Love is a temple

Love a higher law

Love is a temple

Love the higher law

You ask me to enter

But then you make me crawl

And I can't be holding on

To what you got

When all you got is hurt
One love

One blood

One life

You got to do what you should
One life

With each other

SistersBrothers
One life

But we're not the same

We get to carry each other

Carry each other
One
One
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Quotes

  • "Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process." Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • "Most people are willing to take the Sermon on the Mount as a flag to sail under, but few will use it as a rudder by which to steer." Oliver Wendell Holmes
  • "Perfection, in a Christian sense, means becoming mature enough to give ourselves to others." Kathleen Norris
  • "Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can." John Wesley
  • "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." G. K. Chesterton
  • "One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans." C. S. Lewis
  • "When we say, 'I love Jesus, but I hate the Church,' we end up losing not only the Church but Jesus too. The challenge is to forgive the Church. This challenge is especially great because the church seldom asks us for forgiveness." Henri Nouwen, Bread for the Journey
  • "Christians are hard to tolerate; I don't know how Jesus does it." Bono
  • "It's too easy to get caught in our little church subcultures, and the result is that the only younger people we might know are Christians who are already inside the church." Dan Kimball