Handling Static: The Book

Hello everyone!

After 4 1/2 years of writing, re-writing, and growing as an aspiring author and wretched person, I am excited to announce that my book Handling Static will be available this Monday, July 23rd at Amazon.com!

I hope all of you will pick up a copy and join along in the never-ending, ongoing discussion about reconciling the church with those in the world whom we have isolated and/or hurt.

Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this journey. This book is our story and our call for change in the global church!



Love in Christ,
Brad Henry

Jesus > Religion

Wanted to share this video with all of you...LOVE THIS!

Girl Power

Men have a hard time conceding anything, especially authority.

A large majority of men are built with this inherent desire to always be right, always have an answer, and to always be an authority on wisdom and experience. We like to be the decision-makers on just about everything. It’s in our blood, and it is also very much a part of how God created us to function.

But there is this other thing that men have a tendency to do that is exactly the opposite of how God created us to be. We like to take over everything, dominate conversations, use force in both our words and our actions, and we silence the voices of those who bring balance to our chaos. Men, left alone, quite frankly are chaotic.

In the same way that God said “It is not good for man to be alone” because we are in fact created to be in relationship with other people, I believe He also knew it was not good for men to be alone because He knew, that left alone, we would destroy everything God had created beautiful. We’d miss the important opportunities to see the world in a much broader perspective and a more full scope of understanding.

Thus God, in His infinite wisdom, created woman. He created her from Adam’s rib. This is a very important part of how God created woman. God could have just made woman materialize out of nothing. He could have made her from the dust of the earth in the exact same way as He made Adam. He could have made her from Adam’s head or from his big toe.

Why his rib? I think it’s symbolic of something. I heard it put perfectly in this quote from an unknown author:

Woman was created from the rib of man.

She was not created from his head to be above him

Nor was she created from his foot to be trampled by him

She was taken from his side to be his equal,

From beneath his arm to be protected by him,

From near his heart to be loved by him.

I don’t mean to be the constant downer, but this isn’t exactly how many churches portray women today. Women are the silenced members of our church congregations, the ones who are allowed do special music and volunteer to teach Sunday school. They get to cook the food for potlucks, babysit the kids in the nursery, and head up the knitting clubs and women’s Bible studies during the week.

But on Sunday, the men preach. That’s when the so-called real authority is displayed. The men have the power. Women have to keep quiet and look pretty. And the longer this mentality thrives inside churches across all denominational affiliations today, the church is only half as effective as it needs to be and is designed to be.

Churches seem to love grabbing a hold of a passage like 1 Corinthians 14:34 about women being silent in the church, and they use a loose understanding of its context to supplant women and place them into a subservient role inside both the home and the church. The Bible also mentions the sad reality that people in those days owned slaves, and America spent much of its early years using those passages to support slavery. It’s amazing what we can do with a Bible taken out of context.

There are these important and distinguishing commands that we receive in the Bible that most people don’t look very closely at these days. There are situational and contextual commands that God and His disciples give us throughout Scripture, and there are also very sweeping generalized commands and truths that God gives us to obey and follow in all circumstances. It’s crucial that we know the difference.

Churches in Corinth were dealing with some pretty heavy stuff in their local congregations when Paul made his famous 1 Corinthians 14:34 remark, and he was speaking to a very specific group of women (who had some issues with gossip) in a very specific church of a very specific part of Corinth. It’s about as relevant to the structure of the church today as God’s specific ark measurements and requirements to Noah were compared to us building or purchasing a speed boat today.

Then there are places when God says pretty sweeping remarks to us, one of which is found in Galatians 3:26-29 which says this:

You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.

I’m not a theologian or pastor, but that’s a pretty bold and all-encompassing statement in the context of our faith. It seems to presuppose that there is a way that the world looks at all these things and a way in which Jesus and the church reconcile these things.

If the church has become a place for gender and racial inequality, then the church is a very ineffective and incomplete body with missing body parts. Needless to say, it is crippled.

My wife is a youth pastor, and she gets a lot of flack for that, mostly from Christians believe it or not. A guy in my parent’s church once told me, “You better get her in line and put her in her place.” Another guy in Sarah’s dad’s seminary once said to her, “Have you even read the Bible?!”

The most puzzling thing about these attacks is how people react every single time I respond by asking the question, “Where does God say that women can’t be leaders in the church?” After quoting the only two most misquoted passages in the entire Bible about women in the church (1 Corinthians 14:34 and 1 Timothy 2:12), most people start using their own feelings and perspectives to explain the logic and common sense that they believe supports a male-only lead church body. I start to hear things like “Women are too emotional” or “Women only use feelings to interpret Scripture”. My favorite terrible thing someone said to me was “How can she relate to the boys in her youth group?” Clearly all those football analogies and all that talk about “hitting a home run for Jesus” are really resonating with the girls in the youth group.

The problem is not that women break Scripture or disobey God when they take up leadership roles in the church. The problem is that women break societal norms that we as fallible human beings have created everywhere, including in our churches. This makes many of us uncomfortable.

Men don’t like to give up authority. Men don’t like to share the load. Men don’t like to walk hand in hand as equals with women, whether in a business or inside the four walls of a church. It’s part of the fall. It’s part of our messed up imperfections as fallen creatures who take God’s perfect picture and distort all the edges and remove so much of the vibrant colors. Let’s learn to paint in color again and let God take our hands and trace a masterpiece.

Perspective

Fall is my favorite season. It always has been. It always will be. I love the colors. I love the way the morning is sharp with its cool but refreshing in its touch. I love pumpkins and pumpkin pie. I love NFL Sunday and flag football in the yard. Fall is an incredible, incomparable season. I would even humorously argue that Creation had to have taken place in the fall...it's that "good".

But do you ever notice how when the weather starts to turn cold at the end of summer, people sort of get sad as they take out their light jacket or put on their first sweater for the year? The cold seems extra bitter, the sky seems extra gloomy, and it seems as if the joy of sun and sand will soon be long behind us. We humans rarely seem to be content with what is in front of us. Cold itself is a foreign concept, and 60 degree weather feels like we might as well be stranded in the middle of the arctic.

Then something strange happens around April sometime (March, if we're lucky). A 60 degree day rolls in, and the whole world celebrates. People lay their coats in a pile and dance in the streets. Business men and women decide to eat lunch on the patio that day. People seem extra chipper, waving to each other and commenting to each other about the incredible change of fortune.

As I was walking to work this obvious fall morning, these thoughts were running through my head. I began to think about my faith, and how much of what Christianity and God have become to this world is a season taken out of context.

For those of us who grew up in the church (or had a bad experience there), God and faith are the fall season at the end of a gorgeous summer. We know we should value it, we remember a time when we appreciated it and clung to it with joy, but somehow it has taken on a bitterness, something that bites at us rather than awakens us, inspires us.

For those who have been anywhere but the church, have tried everything else and failed, for the alchoholic or drug-addict who found their freedom in Christ, for the gay man or woman who felt welcome in a church for the first time, or for a marriage on the rocks that finally found its unity in a triune God, He along with His church feel more like spring. After the cold, hard aches of an endless winter, the sun shines for the first time. The clouds roll away and a foreign warmth stuns our bodies with wonder.

God and faith are reacted to by the people of this world based on perspective. Perspective is this powerful, insurmountable object. Think of it as the ground on which we stand to see what there is to see, be it a valley or a mountain top. What we see and how we see it depends on where we stand to look. Many times, if not most of the time, the place we stand is the hand we're dealt. We're like Bear from the show "Man Vs. Wild", dropped in a random, remote location...expected to survive.

To a poor person, a mega church seems cold. To a rich person, a mega church feels warm, comfortable. To a person with loving parents and a good home, the idea of God as Father sounds intimate, reassurring. But like Donald Miller writes in his book Blue Like Jazz, the idea of God as Father sounds very unappealing to the kid whose dad walked out on him. To a Christian refugee in the middle of Sudan, the idea of "God Bless America" sounds more exclusive than inclusive, but to the marine clinging to his faith in the middle of a battlefield, he hopes those words ring true. To a white CEO in suburban America, the idea of serving the poor and selling away all of his positions seems very intrusive so he chooses to take it as metaphoric, but to the homeless man in the middle of a busy downtown Los Angeles street, he has seen very few Christians who are actually Christ-like. To the middle-aged married couple at a Baptist church who refers to a gay community as "hate the sin, love the sinner", they feel as though they are learning how to love in spite of, but to an isolated gay man in the back pew of that church, he wonders if he will ever find a friend in God or His people.

Perspective is what makes God and faith such a delicate and difficult thing to understand for many people in this world. If we're honest, even we who claim this faith have a hard time separating perspective from truth, opinion from God.

If we could simply see the world and those who are in it as the seasons that come and go and come again, we would start to understand that we all need to come to terms with our perspective, the past experiences (good and bad) that have shaped our view of God and our understanding of Who He is to a broken world.

Like I said, I like fall. But when winter comes, that's when I start to lose perspective. I'm always looking for spring, until I realize that I hate summer. God save us from our perspectives.

Loving a Terrorist

So I haven’t posted now in quite some time, but every so often something begs of me to respond.

By now the whole world is aware of the assassination of Osama bin Laden. If not, you may live under a rock. 24/7 the news media has begun covering this event, and spontaneous celebrations of people have filled the streets of Washington D.C. and New York City, among countless other places in our country.

Almost immediately upon hearing this announcement, I began to hear over and over again the words of Jesus in Matthew 5. “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”, “Do not resist an evil person”, “Do not repay evil for evil”.

Osama bin Laden was no doubt a mass murderer, and deranged terrorist, and someone with immense hatred in his heart. He killed thousands of innocent people and spent his entire life plotting attacks on innocent men, women, and children. There was no doubt justice that needed to be served. But whose justice? What does justice look like? Is killing someone who killed someone just? Does it look like love? Does it look like Jesus? Can we honestly use violence for peace and then in the next breath say “May God bless America”? And if we do, will He?

Please don’t brand me as anti-American, unpatriotic, or a sympathizer of terrorists. Certainly Osama bin Laden deserved to be punished, locked away in a cold prison cell for the rest of his life. But are we accomplishing peace if the means to that end is violence? And if we do, can we claim it as just? As good? As Godly?

May God have mercy on us when we rejoice in the killing of another, even a terrorist. If terrorists are beyond redemption, then St. Paul and the writings in over half of the New Testament should be burned immediately. To say someone is beyond love, beyond God’s redemption…well, that doesn’t sound very Christ-like at all.

Is it a good thing that bin Laden can no longer hurt or kill innocent people? Of course. Is it worth the compromise of integrity and justice? I don’t believe so.

As the world and much of America celebrates the murder of a murderer, may we as follows of Christ remember that by grace we all have been saved, and that all of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, but by His love and grace.

Amen.

Aid for Japan

Hey guys and gals!


In the wake of the devastation that has taken place over in Japan in recent weeks, I want to let you guys know about a great opportunity to help the people of Japan during these difficult times of hardship and loss.

Saturday evening, April 9th, I will be doing a benefit concert in Chicago to raise support for the relief efforts in Japan. The concert will be a night of my original music, with all proceeds (every penny raised) from the event going straight to the Covenant World Relief Fund currently aiding the people of Japan. We will be selling music and holding a bake sale, and we’ll also have a suggested $5 entry donation to the event. All of this money will go to Japan.

Not to mention it is going to be an incredibly fun night of music. I haven’t played out like this in almost 2 years, so I’m very excited to host this event and even more excited for the cause it is going to. I will also be joined by some incredible musicians on stage, including the drummer from the Least of These and some musician friends from some of my previous music projects/bands.

The address for the event is:

Edgebrook Covenant Church
6355 N Spokane Avenue
Chicago, IL 60646


The show will begin at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday April 9th, and I am really hoping each of you will be able to join us for this important and equally fun benefit concert.

Much love and God bless!


Sincerely,

Brad Henry
www.myspace.com/bradhenrymusic
www.youtube.com/mylifeisasoundtrack

Held Accountable?

Maybe this is the socialist in me (haha!), but does anyone else in the world think that it’s absolutely ridiculous that Hollywood stars, professional athletes, and entertainment folk on a large scale make enough money for entire nations to survive on, and yet in an economic time such as ours, and in a world with so much unemployment, widespread hunger, and poverty, that it’s somehow ok for Kim Kardashian to have a diamond studded birthday cake that's worth over $1 million?! Or is it ok that athletes wear outfits that could pay for an entire families sustainable income a thousand times over?

I confess, I along with most people give these entertainers my business, my attention, and my approval simply in the way I go to movies, buy tickets to a football game, or buy someone’s new album on I-Tunes. As a generation of social networking, we’ve become more infatuated with celebrity than at any other time in our history. We follow them around, take their pictures, spot them at airports, dress and act like they do, and aspire to live up to their impossible standards and lifestyles.

So why in times like these do we wonder why times like these are so difficult? We are the catalyst for our society’s own demise. After reading more and more articles and ads about what celebrities do with their money (and how they waste it), I have become fed up and want to see change, to demand change, and to take ownership of the way I fund this madness (the Kim Kardashian cake thing was the LAST straw!!)

So here is what I’m asking from all of you (because this is too big to just vent about, and I’m frankly sick of talking)- I want each of you to come up with a practical way that we can stand up as one voice and call out the overly lavish and ridiculous spending of Hollywood America and celebritydom (or dumb…haha!) I want us to hold the rich and powerful accountable for their spending, and demand that this country be better with its resources and blessings.

When there are millions of starving and dying people around the globe, a $1 million birthday cake sounds pretty messed up!



Peace!

BRAD