self-feeding market-place apostles

I recently had the pleasure of spending time with a 75 year old minister who has spent his whole life persueing the spirit and saving souls within the church system backing up his behavior with the words of the bible as proof of Godly-ness. He is presently a mentor for ministers in the Vinyard system and travels the world as a missionary. This type of bible totting zealot usually disgusts me but this fellow was trying to shake up his peers and wake them to the new order of the world and new understanding of spirit. He gave me a draft of his soon to be published thesis wich explains his shift of perspective to read and comment on before submission.
Interestingly enough I found that he refered to characters like myself and many of you as the new leaders of the spiritual movement and considered the old congregations os sheep in the pews as a failing system. He coined a new title to fit who I we are and I must concur that it is a fairly acurate description. First he stated that we were Revolutionaries fed up with the standard ways of viewing sprituality and judjement. Then he stated that instead of requiring reassurance from church, preacher and bible we are self-feeding, that is we have an open heart which speaks the truth of God to us directly and motivates our spirit to proper behavior. He refers to us as Marketplace Apostles which are everyday Johns and Janes who lead by example and speak love from our hearts without embarasment or fear of judgement. He claims that we are replacing the preachers spouting from their pulpits and doing the work of the Lord.
Now he and I had some lively and tense discussions concerning the Bible, abortion, stem cells, homophobia, etc., and agreed that we disagree on some particular issues yet after all his years of preaching he accepted me as a true leader of spirit and the hope for the future because I was centered in love. I am not quite ready to do the same for him with all his bible quoting and judgement, but I was pleased to find a common ground to work from. If he can convince other righteous ministers of these facts them he may help the cause of love and Oneness. At least he has found the Oneness of all paths and believes in the true path of love of All.
So as a revolutionary, self feeding, market-place apostle, I love you all and feel blessed by your telepathic and electronic touch, and I recognize many of you as performing similar roles in your communities and families. The knowledge that you are there being you makes my heart smile and open wide with an embrace of encouragement and a kiss of faith that we are the ones we've been waiting for.
p.s. Thank you for taking the time for reading this post and any and all comments would be appreciated. What do you think?……………e

Re: self-feeding market-place apostles

What a great post, thank you so much. I rarely read an entire post, generally the writer will loose me in the second or third sentance. yours was quite enlightening and educational.

I appreciated some of the views your college had, don't give up on him, he seems to be still learning. Love is truly the power of truth, i'm not so sure that any belief can be a true one, if it is so restrictive that there isn't room for breath or growth.

I experienced some ministers in fundamental churches who did their best to shift the focus to love rather than doctrinal dogma.

we all truly are blessed

Re: self-feeding market-place apostles

What an interesting image - and that is really a breakthrough for someone, who has been in ministry for so long, to realize that some of the old paradigms are not serving in the way they used to.  As a person who still finds himself in a UU church with a minister - we seem to stay current and active, we don't allow ourselves to get “stuck in the mud”. 

But I think this serves as fair warning to all the established churches, that getting in touch with that fundamental reality that undergirds all human experience (be that “God” or “Ground of all Being” or “the divine” or whatever you choose to call it), is not something that is the exclusive realm of churches, synagogues, temples, what have you.  This would CERTINALY be a revelation in the Muslum and Christian clergy.  What a wake up call to the radical elements in all faith traditions.

Bravo - thank you for sharing.

Re: self-feeding market-place apostles

Thanks for your comments here fellas.  I am glad you share my sense of hope.  Here is a snippet from Niel's writtings, he sufggested that i share it as I see fit so i may cut and paste a few of the ideas here as I proof - read…………e.

Everywhere I went, I found that a great many people, from a great many religions, were chasing after God. My fundamental question, “Does my loving God love me more than these other people?” I further extended my experience of other cultures by traveling the world. was expanded to include Muslims, Hindus, Animists, and all other people. I turned the question around, “Does my God really love those people as much as He loves me?”
After years of evaluating the questions above, I now realize that God loves everyone with the same, consistent, endless love, and He is giving everyone opportunities to have a personal relationship with Him. The weak, unsupported answers given to me as a child made no sense to me.
A fundamental problem in the United States is  the belief that to “know” means to have collected data on a subject, giving us knowledge “about” that subject, but to “know” biblically means to understand from relationship or personal experience with a person or subject. The vastness and beauty of our amazing universe may lead to a belief in a higher power; but it does not lead to a personal, intimate relationship with God—to “know” God in the biblical sense. To truly know God in this manner requires a revelation from God. Instead, Western Christians attempt to build their theology from human intellectual reasoning, which distorts the truth.
Flowing from the understanding that it takes God to know God, I have modified my world view. Everyone in the world has opportunities to know God, in the biblical meaning, as God reveals Himself. They do not have to wait until the white man sails to their shores thousands of years after Christ rose from the dead. Westerners are not necessarily better informed about the things of God than are people on the other side of the earth. Is it not obvious that everyone tends to distort God’s revelation to better fit their own selfish desires? Christians try to add to Scripture and claim their “birthright.” This attempt to advance theology by adding to Scripture apart from the revelation of God puts people in the whitewashed sepulcher category with the Jewish Rabbis. They expanded the Ten Commandments until thousands of rules and regulations took precedence over a listening relationship with God. Christians do the same when they add regulations to baptism, or to the Lord’s Supper, or to their unique systematic theology. Christians divide the Body of Christ with man-made religious prosthetics.

Re: self-feeding market-place apostles

what a neat statment “chasing G*d”, I love it!

I agree with much of what he says in the documentation, I think that there is a new trend to re-evaluate the traditional dogma rhetoric, and grow beyond them. I am not so sure that Christians in the west have a foot hold on twisting extra lengths into the vine.

I myself, as a result of years of study in a fundamentalist church, then years of study away from it. have learned that G*d is a lot bigger than anyone of us could every fathom or comprehend. I certainly can agree about the knowledge part. I have seen ministers take very simple text and spin it into something that isn't even close to what the esoteric literature they are referring to says.

mental knowledge is a good thing, but spirit filled revelations of the knowledge is much more powerful. When we are quiet, in the stillness… we can hear G*d.

peace
BWW

Re: self-feeding market-place apostles

''…a lot bigger than anyone of us could every fathom or comprehend.''
My concept of G*d and my biggest problem with the Christian or Muslim concepts is just that : I think of G*d as being a life force (for everything, not just human beings) and is beyond ANY person's comprehension. Certainly, it does not have the ''man-like'' qualities which have been given in the Bible.

Further, after study of the Pagan ideas conceived  hundreds of years before the Bible was put together and then rewritten in Nicea, to me, it is fairly obvious that the attributes given to Jesus were really copied from previous persons or deities, especially that from the Zoasterian Mithra/Mehur and I find it incredulous that so many on this earth have bought the various programs by the ''churches''.

More to come later.
Lance Dazzle

Re: self-feeding market-place apostles

''…a lot bigger than anyone of us could every fathom or comprehend.''
My concept of G*d and my biggest problem with the Christian or Muslim concepts is just that : I think of G*d as being a life force (for everything, not just human beings) and is beyond ANY person's comprehension. Certainly, it does not have the ''man-like'' qualities which have been given in the Bible.

Further, after study of the Pagan ideas conceived  hundreds of years before the Bible was put together and then rewritten in Nicea, to me, it is fairly obvious that the attributes given to Jesus were really copied from previous persons or deities, especially that from the Zoasterian Mithra/Mehur and I find it incredulous that so many on this earth have bought the various programs by the ''churches''.

More to come later.
Lance Dazzle

Re: self-feeding market-place apostles

“My concept of G*d and my biggest problem with the Christian or Muslim concepts is just that : I think of G*d as being a life force (for everything, not just human beings) and is beyond ANY person's comprehension. Certainly, it does not have the ''man-like'' qualities which have been given in the Bible.”

I agree, though after being in Christian churches up until I was 41, I can say that not all Christians have the traditional old man in the sky view of God either.  I know that I didn't, even in the last several years I was a Presbyerian.  I consider myself a panentheist and have more of a metaphysical than “human” concept of God.

“Further, after study of the Pagan ideas conceived  hundreds of years before the Bible was put together and then rewritten in Nicea, to me, it is fairly obvious that the attributes given to Jesus were really copied from previous persons or deities, especially that from the Zoasterian Mithra/Mehur and I find it incredulous that so many on this earth have bought the various programs by the ''churches''.”

I can relate to this as well.  I think the big issue is that most Christian churches do not encourage members to learn about Christian history in a scholarly way.  In all my years as a Presbyterian, I can't remember anyone else I met who was reading books by authors like Elaine Pagels who look at Christian history outside of the “orthodox” traditions.  Her books, ideas from the Jesus Seminar, and studying mythology and eastern religious challenged   my beliefs, but never changed the way I tought of the teachings attributed to Jesus.  When I read “The Jesus Mysteries” and other books by Timothy Freke and my conceptions of who Jesus was and his historocity were challenged, I still remained interested in those teachings, even if I now felt the storied were pure myth.  I still to this day and not sure if Jesus was a real person or a Jewish version of the Pagan ressurected godman, but either way it does not matter.  The truth in the teachings is universal truth. 

So, my ideas of Jesus are not your mainstream Christian ones, but at my UU church, many folks seen to hold a fundamentalist view of Christianity and don't want Jesus, God or the Bible to be mentioned at all in services.  So, once again, I find myself in the apparent minority in feeling that the teachings attributed to Jesus (and the true ones, not teachings falsely attributed to Paul and assumed to be those of Jesus) are important.  Many UUs seem to buy the fundamentalist type of Christianity as what Christianity is all about and aren't open minded to the fact that folks drawn to UUism but who value Jesus are a different type of “Christian”.  Enough of my rant… sorry.

Jim