Update

I wanted to take a few minutes & talk about the progression of the "Loved & Loving" project & the Campaign for Brokenness. If you haven't heard about these yet, there are some blogs that sort of chronicle what they are & what we've done already.

Real quickly  I want to give you the goals for the next few months:

1) Keep meeting & growing the L&L project for the spring semester.

2) Develop a website for the Campaign for Brokenness as well as logos/graphics for L&L by next fall.

3) Work on developing a peer mentorship program for APU.

Loved & Loving:

Right now there are 20 members of the launch team. We're trying to stay low-key & under the radar at APU so that our wristbands don't become too watered down & so that this project can naturally run a course of its own, rather than a course we prescribe it. Right now there are, I'd estimate, 600 wristbands floating around APU, we also sent/will send 95 wristbands to the Lost Boys of Sudan within care packages from APU. In the last couple weeks I've begun to adopt a sort of duplication model for the deployment of the project, this is the first point I want to highlight.

What seems to have happened naturally is that, as the project spreads, new people ask about the project. Consequentially, I've been sitting down with some of these people and getting them involved (i.e., I give someone a wristband, they ask me about it, I talk to them about it, I give them 20 wristbands, then someone they give a wristband too asks about it, etc, etc, etc.). Maybe a "discipleship" model is a more appropriate name for this model, which brings me to the next point.

I've had many encouraging conversations over the last few weeks with a lot of very passionate & able people who want to be involved with the project or who are already involved with the project. I can also say, easily, that I've made new friends & strengthened existing relationships this way. I really think it's powerful just to sit down & have conversations with one another, build relationships, and talk about what we're struggling with. I've been thinking a lot about these conversations because they are the real purpose behind the Campaign for Brokenness.

Campaign for Brokenness: Peer Mentorship?

The big idea behind the Campaign for Brokenness, as I've outlined already, is to acknowledge our brokenness & to be open about it, to talk about it with each other. That's why the first & primary concern of mine is to develop some kind of peer mentorship program at APU, and possibly to bring this program to other academic institutions if proven useful.

I hope to work with APU (specifically, the office of campus pastors) over the summer to develop this program. I'm not sure yet what it will look like, I only know there is a need for SOMETHING like this...

That's about all I've got so far. Again, our goals are to create a website & develop the beginnings of a peer mentorship program by Fall 2008. Thanks!

Inclusive Romance

Inclusive Romance is an idea I've been thinking about for quite some time. The seed was planted a few years ago, I think, when I heard a story about pie. 

There was a couple at church who, as part of the prayer team, were aware of not only all "church office" related issues, but specific congregation-related issues. That is, they knew almost everything that was going on with the congregation. Much of it broke their hearts, and they decided to do something small to mend the brokenness that was ever-present in the congregation. 

Naturally, they gave people pies. 

They would bake pies & leave them on people's doorsteps anonymously. Nobody really knew who did it, but it became a somewhat well-known & common occurrence.

So, what if we all did things like that for each-other on a regular basis? 

When you date or marry someone, romance ensues. The individuals in the relationship, being full of compassion for each-other,  naturally give each other things. Flowers. Chocolate. Love notes, a candlelight dinner. Even better, compassion leads to creative passion. Flowers delivered to you at work, chocolate on your doorstep (or a pie), Love notes under your windshield wipers in the morning, a candle light dinner on a hillside overlooking the San Gabriel Valley. This is the natural result of loving someone, longing to experience an intense unity with another person. Romance is what instigates joy and love in response to joy in love. 

So what does "Inclusive Romance" mean?

Inclusive Romance is a pie-idea. It's about being romantic with your peers. Imagine finding an anonymous box of chocolates at your doorstep in the morning... or breakfast on fancy dishes. Imagine an anonymous love note on your car after class signed "Your Friend" or "Your Sister." 

I think it's an idea worth toying with. I think its something worth encouraging. Let's be loving to our brothers, sisters, friends, parents, trolley drivers, and teachers. Let's be mutually appreciative & inclusively romantic.

LOVE

And so it begins. 

On tuesday I met with about 10 students at APU. On wednesday I met with about 7 other students at APU. We opened by saying the prayer of Saint Francis Assissi together, as one:

"Lord, make us instruments of your peace

Where there is hatred, let us sow Love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master, grant that I may mot so much seek

To be consoled as to console;

To be understood as to understand;

To be Loved as to Love.

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen."

And so, those are our objectives; to sow Love, pardon, faith, hope, light, joy and to also allow ourselves to be embraced by these things, so that we may combat the evil which exists in their void. 

One of the primary ideas I wanted to share was that Christians constantly refer to God as Love (God=Love), but I think there's a lot more to it. I think if God is Love, Love must ultimately lead to God, that is, if God DOES exist, Love is what will expose His presence in our lives (1 John 3:11, 4:7; John 13:34; I Corinthians 13:13). Basically, we use the rules of simple algebra (& reason) and we flip the equation, making it: Love=God. My hope in this project is to convey that point, to convey God & the Gospel, just by simple extending hands of Love toward my peers and colleagues. 

At our meetings, me and some exceptionally caring people tried tackling the challenge of this movement. That is, HOW?  We decided a couple things. 

First off, we want the whole thing to be somewhat underground, completely free, and very dependent on word of mouth. We want to remain unique, special, and moving this way. We stay underground so that our wristbands are somewhat unexpected and those who are hoping to gift the wristbands are somewhat secret. The idea of grace is VERY important when we discuss Love, that's why it HAS to be free. It has to be a free, unearned, token of appreciation, which brings us to our next point.

Our second stipulation is that we make efforts to give each band a special meaning and an associated story. We want each and every band to remind someone of something they did, something someone did for them, someone that appreciates them, etc. You're not a trick-or-treater and this isn't halloween. 

Given these ideas, there is also a question of WHO. Do we target any particular group of people?

I want that to remain somewhat open. I want us to be free to target whoever we feel honestly needs to be touched and moved by this endeavor. It's your own perogative, just try not to water down the token of Love which I believe the wristbands can be, however silly that may sound. 

Finally, we must remember that this is not REALLY about the wristbands. It's about Loving each other. It's about keeping our head up on the sidewalk so we can smile and say hello to passersbies. It's about walking with those who walk by themselves, eating with those at empty tables, and remaining open to be Loved and embraced by others.

That's about as simple as the summary is going to get. I hope to see this project become successful at APU, that is, I hope to see this project increase the friendliness and openness and Love found at APU. We should stand out, as a private Christian school. 

We should be different, more Loving, and we should provide that atmosphere that no one else can provide. 

We should want to encourage Love at APU, not for the sake of "obeying" rules or religious stipulations, but because we believe in the restoration power of Love. 

Grace

And so, without a doubt, every decision comes down to a simple choice regarding the employment of our own character: Grace?

It is free, though it isn't deserved. The producer pays the consumer. And, because it is not "just" that one should receive what is not rightfully theirs, nor what should ever be theirs, we fail. We deny grace to such a degree that the undeserved act itself is deserved more than we are willing to reward it. 

It isn't a battle over Love v. Hate, but rather over Something v. Nothing. We don't breed evil, but neither do we breed good. We have a choice to be boiling hot or to be simply warm- a state of being which neither kills nor debilitates the bacteria of our lives; a state of being which allows the evil around us to feed on the flesh of those who allowed its very existence. No, the choice we make to deny grace is not evil or wrong, but it allows evil and wrong to coexist amongst goodness, and is therefore not by any means "right."

We choose to pay only whatever forced gratuity that comes at dinner. A bigger tip isn't necessary, they get exactly what they "should" get.  It's not about right or wrong, because it's not wrong to do the bare minimum, but we could do better. Maybe the waitress was bad, so the tip was the minimum. 

What if the waitress isn't a waitress, but instead a single mom, stressed because she's 20 dollars short for her rent today. Stressed that there's no way to buy her son new shoes as his wear into nothingness. Maybe on any other day or in any other life situation she would have been a wonderful waitress, but because so many have failed to show her grace she is in the situation she is in today. And so, the question is still: Grace? 

We do have a choice. Give more than we should give. Take less than we need take. Boil away the bacteria; suffocate it. 50% tips to undeserving waitresses. Money or food to the impoverished drunkard who's life is in ruin because of bad choices he himself has made. There is no place for doing what is "just" as a human being, we should never provide only what "should" be provided, because "just" is just "just."We can always go beyond what is necessary, give more than we have to, reward those who don't deserve or expect a reward, Love when hated, Love when ignored. More goes on that what we see, as the bad waitresses gets evicted, her child's feet contract diseases, the poor man takes his own life. We have a choice. Learn to Love-Grace the world.

Kenneth

Since this Loved & Loving project is in effect, at least to some degree, I'm trying to practice what I preach. I don't claim to be the most Loving person on the face of the planet or at APU, in fact I'm among the most closed off at times. So I've been making an effort to do what I say. Here's what the goal of all this is:

To Love our community that is APU by acknowledging and reaching out to each other.

To Love our community that is the world. To reach the broken and Love all people. 

The means are this:

Say hello to people you see and be willing to talk to them and care about them....


It seems like a modest goal, a small thing. I wanted to share with all of the possibilities of just saying "Hi" to a stranger. I hope this isn't scary:


I was walking to my apartment when I saw a man walking towards me. He was in his late 30's, hispanic, nicely dressed, holding a beer. I said "Hi!" and he said "Are you studying Christian Theology?"

I said Hi, and we ended up talking for an hour right outside of Bowles. I won't get into the details of the conversation now, but tonight I made a friend. I think he needed an outlet to talk, and I think he needed to hear what I had to say, and that I needed to hear what he had to say. After an hour I prayed with him, gave him a hug, a handshake, and my email address. We showed Love to each other and we talked about how we could show Love to others.

Kenneth is a broken man, just like anyone else. He's in his late 30's/early 40's and he's been divorced. He definitely wasn't sober (which at times made conversation difficult). He's angry at a lot of things in the world, but we agreed on at LEAST one thing: Jesus is God, Jesus is our Savior, Jesus is Love. We both felt like the two things went hand in hand. 

Tonight I met Kenneth, we had a wonderful conversation. He's my friend and I Love him. I know that tonight, God brought Kenneth and I together and I wanted to share that with all of you. 


Say "Hi", it really does mean more than you think.

We're all broken and we all need Love... 

A Campaign for Brokenness

I have been presented with a vision that I consider wholly separate from myself. 

The vision is to embrace and Love all people, not just those we agree or identify with. Here is what the Campaign is formed upon, four basic principles:

1) People are members of a community. A non-discriminatory community we call "humanity."

2) All members of this community, humanity, are broken.

3) All members of this community can repair pieces of this brokenness. We all have a different purpose and place in this restoration. 

4) This final principle may be harder to accept than the others, but it is essential: Christ is the key component and plays the key role in this restoration. He has redeemed all, should we choose to receive the redemption he has brought. He unites all people better than this Campaign will if it is without Christ. Without this component, we have nothing. God plays the leading role in this Campaign.

So here are the steps SO FAR:

Fall 2007: Josh (me) learns to Love before he REALLY embarks upon the Campaign. 

Winter 2007/08: Azusa Pacific University is brought together, hopefully, on the purpose of mutual, active, Love. This is an immense project, hopefully it goes well. Put together a leadership team.

Spring 2008: Loved & Loving

Summer 2008: Website & planning.

Fall 2008: Peer mentorship programs? Inclusive Romance?

Prayer and support would be helpful. Thanks.

Campaign for Brokenness: LOVED & LOVING

LOVED & LOVING

I believe in God. 

I believe in Jesus Christ, the son of God, the LORD of creation and redemption, the Savior of the World. God and Jesus are of the same substance, and function as one with their spirit, THREE IN ONE: Father. Son. Spirit.

I affirm all of these Christian beliefs;

I believe that many people disagree with me. 

But there’s one thing I haven’t mentioned directly:

Love

I believe in Love. 

I believe that it is the central message of the Gospel.

Even salvation itself is the subject and result of Love.

Even life itself is a gift and a picture of Love.

Love is the root of endearment, belief, hope, and endurance;

I believe that many people agree with me. 

About a month ago, I set out to begin something. I called it “Campaign for Brokenness.” It came through a series of specific experiences that I will share if anyone cares to know, but the point is that I see a need. All people are broken, all people need Love, and NOT all people give and accept Love as much as we could. Before I did anything else, I pointed myself in a specific direction: LEARN TO LOVE. I still have a long way to go and a lot to learn in regards to showing Love, but its at this point that I feel a need to invite others to join me in this quest. Or maybe you’re on the quest already, in which case I say: “BUDDY SYSTEM!!!”

So the next step in this “Campaign” is embracing people at large, and bringing people to embrace people at large. I mean LOVING PEOPLE.

I have found that the most difficult part of Loving, both on this campus on elsewhere, is that people seem closed off to it. Our society is individualistic, and we are individuals. Instead of choosing to be together, we walk with our heads down, unwilling to accept or extend a simple “Hello” or “How are you?”

Though this is my perception, I hope it isn’t a concrete reality. I think we close ourselves off from Love, but I still think we want Love and I still think we want to show Love. We put down our heads because we feel the same sort of closed off attitude resonating from those around us. It’s hard.

So I began to think, “If people wore SIGNS that said “I’m open to be Loved” then I would feel comfortable extending a hello or a how are you. I would feel comfortable talking to strangers as if, somehow, we were bound together by some greater innate force.”

So, that’s exactly what I propose. The second step of the campaign is to grow, as a community, in order to show and accept Love. So let’s wear signs. I ordered a few  thousand silicone wrist bands (like the yellow Live Strong bands)that bear the words: 

“LOVED & LOVING.”

This means that YOU are LOVED by everyone who wears this band. In the same sense, it means you are responsible for LOVING ALL who wear the band. This band is a welcome sign. It welcomes and warrants a “Hello” and a “How are you?” It welcomes and warrants a genuine response to these questions. It welcomes and warrants Love, however small or “insignificant.” All Love is significant. It reminds you to show Love, and it reminds others to show you Love. Further, I hope that it inspires you to Love outside the campus as well, though Loving within it is my primary concern right now (if we cannot Love each other, how can we Love the world? Start small (APU), but progress (The World)). 

My hope is to spread the message of Jesus Christ. I believe that in showing Love, we fulfill a part of Christianity that has in many cases been forgotten. I believe Christ is Love; I believe God is Love; I believe Love will further God’s Kingdom, as I believe Love brought God’s Kingdom, of which we ALL can be citizens. You may think Love comes from people, or from the earth, or from a God that is no longer living.  Yeah, You may not agree with me- and you don't have to- but again, I hope that this universal purpose of Love can unite both Christians and Non-Christians under a very specific and in-discriminatory purpose.  The fact remains: Love exists. Love is powerful. The world needs more of it, and we can Love. So I propose agreement on one thing, and on one thing only: LOVE. 

The goal isn’t to create a new fad, it’s to bring about a lifestyle.

What Does Love Look Like?

My eyes are glazed and my ears are shut lately, that's because I can't seem to think about anything except "Theology."

Today I went to my car to go to Pasadena. I was going to sit in my car and read for an hour before I left. 

When I sat down, I looked across from me and this beautiful, happy girl got into her car. She didn't know I saw her, I guess... She started bawling. Broken. Hidden. Who knows? Anyone? Who shows her the Love she needs?

Then it made me think more about what's been on my mind, that Christianity is all about Jesus. Could that be the wrong focus if we still fail to see what Jesus was, why he was, how he was, who he was, what he did?

"Theologians" spend their lives debating things, like grace and righteousness, which are important, but not as important as we make them. Why is it important? 

God IS LOVE, and ONLY LOVE, because everything else that He IS comes FROM LOVE. 

What it all comes down to, then, is ONLY twofold: loving Christ, because He loves us, and showing other people Love- all other good things will come through acts of love. Not some people, not just Christians-Everyone. (For example, if there was a debate about whether people are saved by their "own will" or by God's will or by a combination of the two, I think scripture teaches us, Paul in particular, to not boast about anything. Even a decision to take up our cross. So aside from not boasting, it doesn't matter who's will saves us- we still need Jesus, we still need to spread his message of Love, and that's what it comes down to any way you look at it. As for an issue like (double or single, if there is any real difference) predestination? Does it matter? I don't think it matters to us. Either way, we don't know who is predestined for what, and therefore our purpose is the same: Evangelize through love.)

What does Love look like?

What theologian only writes about how to Love?

We are so far from Christianity should be, if we only argue about the meaning of mere words.

One thing I've been thinking about is to start what I am thinking about calling "Campaign for Brokenness" and God moved my hand to jot more ideas about it today... I'm sure He did.

How do I employ the vision when I'm so busy...?

How can I neglect school, my friends, my family, my coworkers, my church, or YOU to preach about Love, when any sort of neglect would seem like the opposite of love.

I just don't know what it all looks like...

Love...?

Two people were sitting on the street in Pasadena today. Maybe they are 17, 18, or 19? They were a couple, apparently. Dirty. Their whole life apparently in the bag next to them. Their sickly kitten in their arms and a hat in from of them with a dollar, a quarter, two dimes, three pennies, and 5 nickels. The man had his ears gauged so big that an empty green prescription bottle fit inside the hole comfortably.

Genuine poverty? Drug addicts? Kicked out of the house? Does it matter? What does love look like in a situation like this?

What is my inherent responsibility, as a follower of Jesus, as I walk by?

Or take APU, thousands of Christian people, many of whom are relatively wealthy. Some grew up in broken homes, some didn't, some didn't realize how broken their home had been until recently... 

They, we, are on our own for the first time in our lives.

They, we, question our identity, we think about the future, we contemplate marriage and life beyond our degrees.

They, we, become overwhelmed.

And in the midst of it all, things break us. 

People die. 

People leave. 

People just don't care. Nothing seems to be fulfilling. 

So, like the girl I saw, they fix their makeup every 30 minutes, sing during worship, and smile all the way to their car. Only to expose every drop of moisture contained in them, through their eyes, the second they are "alone."

So how do they show love to those people in Pasadena?

When no one, aside from God, has shown them love and given them an example?

So that's where it has to start... 

With Christians first so that WE as a BODY can LOVE.

Instead of just preaching God to people who are broken... They might not be ready for God yet... They are ready Love, and through Love God will be revealed to them.

And to give them we have to have,

And to give God we have to FIRST give Love.

God is Just, God is Understanding, God is Loving. Let's not forget to be also.