church planting vs. conceiving a new church

Two things that are worth sharing.

First, a psalm from U2/Bono & The Edge…a song that, as Bono introduced it in Philadelphia back in May, is a “new song that feels like an old song.”

Yahweh

Take these shoes/Click clacking down some dead end street
Take these shoes/And make them fit
Take this shirt/Polyester white trash made in nowhere
Take this shirt/And make it clean (clean)
Take this soul/Stranded in some skin and bones
Take this soul/And make it sing

Yahweh, Yahweh/Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh/Still I'm waiting for the dawn

Take these hands/Teach them what to carry
Take these hands/Don't make a fist (no)
Take this mouth/So quick to criticise
Take this mouth/Give it a kiss

Yahweh, Yahweh/Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, Yahweh/Still I'm waiting for the dawn

Still waiting for the dawn... sun is coming up
Sun is coming up on the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean
This love is like a drop in the ocean

Yahweh, Yahweh/Always pain before a child is born
Yahweh, tell me now/Why the dark before the dawn?

Take this city/A city should be shining on a hill
Take this city/If it be your will
What no man can own, no man can take
Take this heart/Take this heart/Take this heart
And make it break

Second, a poem that I read in the recent edition Sojourners magazine. Read “Come As You Are” by Debra Elramey here. It really is worth the time.

Always pain before a child is born.

Just come as you are.

Here’s the connection…that which is born is a community of faith built on mouths that kiss instead of criticize, hands that bring help instead of violence, hearts that break instead of harden. Even further, it is a community where…

You have nothing to fear, nothing to dread
There is no religion here, but for the laying
on of hands and the resurrection of the dead.