“You guys have ruined Starbucks for me!!”

At Northlake, we value relationships. And nothing in the Northwest quite gets people connecting like a relaxing atmosphere and a warm cup of Joe. That’s why we’ve taken our coffee to a whole new level, transforming brewing from an art into a ministry.

Coffee Bar Menu

Latte
Mocha
Americano
Breve
Blended drink
Iced drink
Italian Soda
Hot Cocoa
*soy or rice milk available upon request

We have many different flavors to choose from!

Items and Prices

latte, mocha, blended or iced drink

$2.50 12oz

$3.00 16oz
$3.50 20oz

Americano, hot cocoa

$1.00 12oz
$1.50 16oz
$2.00 20oz

Don’t want to worry about forgetting your cash? We sell punch cards for $20, with a free drink, any size, at the end!

*cash or check only please

My dad loves to tell the story of the first he ever set foot inside a church.  He was 13 years old and the congregation sang,”there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins.”  More then a little disturbed, he wondered, “What did they have against the Mexican?”

Can you sympathize with his confusion?  If you can you probably didn’t grow up in church. This is an example of what is sometimes known as Christianese – the special insider language of the church that outsiders don’t understand.  There’s a growing confusion about Christianese in recent years.  Because it divides Christians from nonChristians, more and more Evangelical Christians are trying to get rid of it.  While I agree that we shouldn’t place any unnecessary boundaries between ourselves and those we seek to invite, our language must and always should be distinct.  Here’s why.

It’s not a mark of Holiness or Genuine Spirituality.

It’s not a means to Witness

Confession.  It’s what we believe

Common Story

Because it divides insiders

It’s a good example of what those inside the Church commonly refer to as Christianese – the special insider language of the church that outsiders don’t quite understand.  Because it divides Christians from nonChristians more and more Christians bemoan the use of such language within the church.  While I agree that we shouldn’t place any unnecessary boundaries between ourselves and those we seek to invite, our language must and always should be distinct.  Here’s why.

that fact alone many younger Christians bemoan such language.

The Urban dictionary defines Christianese as

a communicable language within the Christian subculture with words and phrases created, redefined, and / or patened that applies only to Christian sphere of influence.

or

Christianese is the language spoken by Christians.  It makes no sense to anyone unfamiliar with biblical texts, but earns you major points in the eyes of other Christians, because it means you are holy.

or

Words used by Christians that the unsaved masses are unlikely to understand.  Christian buzzwords.

or

Such words have become the dreaded Christianese.  The insider language of the church that no one understands except those who have been in church.  What most people think what’s wrong with the church.  But while there is a danger in Christianeese – in pushing people away with our language there is something great about Christianeese – a reason we need.  A reason that without it the Church would die.

It’s the stories we tell!  It’s the outworking of our belief and the reminder of what we truly believe.  If we didn’t have Christianese we would be like the world.  The reason that we have our own jargon is because we are definition different than the world, we tell different stories than the world and we are different than the world.  I know its shocking huh.  Without Christianese there would be confusion.  As the tower of Babel illustrates.  There’s nothing wrong with speaking your own language at home but we must use the common language that’s in use in public forums.  A country can never successfully have two official languages.  Just look at Canada – where there’s two different languages that’s where the fault line lays.

This is the problem with what the church is doing by denying Christianese in order to reach the world.  In denying Christianese the Church is allowing the world to infiltrate the church. Instead of the bible they use a movie to tell the story of scripture.  The problem with that is that in using a movie instead of the bible the church simply becomes like the world.  But as Christians we believe there is something uniquely different about those who believe in Jesus Christ and those that don’t.  The stories that we tell matters.  The language that we use matters.  It’s not the problem.  The problem is when we cease to have a discipleship thrust to adequately teach people the story of the scriptures and the language of the church.  That’s the real problem.  Not the language itself.

Christianese should not be used when engaging in outsider witness.  This is where we fail miserably.  That’s where movies are appropriate tracks and witness to the truth of the gospel.  They are fitting illustrations to help the church in its efforts to reach the lost.  But among believers Christianese is vitally important.  The question is is our services for believers or nonbelievers.  That’s the problem with Church today.

This is the problem we want to use our language and

But boundaries are essential to identity.  Our common stories effect our language.  Like friends sitting around a table, talking over a meal there is plenty of insider speak going on.  It’s born out of experience with each other.  Two friends that laugh over an event and then say I guess you had to be there.

While it’s true that Christianese creates a boundary between the Church and the world.  We hate it because it separates us from the world and the world is separated from us.  When we want to witness – it becomes a terrible means of communication.

The Passion of the Christ was a form of Christianese.  Christians saw the beautify in the cross, outsiders saw a man brutalized for two and half hours.

And this boundary is a tension in Christianity.

The Bible is the source of our language.  It’s the source of the story that we tell.  It’s the source of our unity.  When we make the Bible a little less or tell other stories that our louder then the story of scripture we cease to have unity within the church.

The word “Holy” get’s on my nerves.  Not because there’s anything wrong with the word Holy.  In fact it’s a great word.  The reason it gets on my nerves is that few people in the church can define exactly what it means.  It’s a word that the church can’t do without and yet no one seems to know what it means.  We aren’t teaching people Christianeese.  The insider language of the church.  The words and stories that have meaning.

Language is important to tell our story.  Why we are here and why we exist.  Why we are not the group down the street.  What’s unique about our story.  Language does that.  It becomes the short hand vehicle for telling those stories and reminding us of what we’re about.

Meeting someone new is always awkward.  What do you talk about.  What do you share.  What do you have in common.  The more time you spend with someone though the more you find that you have things to talk about.  The memories that you have become insider jokes and reference to events that mean something to each one of you.

That’s what Christianeese it’s an important language of communication that helps us to remember our relationship with each other.

The problem is that when we cease to explain the language – cease to help people move from the language of the world to the language of the church.  Without Christianeese the church just becomes another entity of the world.  Christianeese makes us distinctive.

Paul’s collection for the Jerusalem church occupies significant portions of his letters (1 Cor 16:1–4; 2 Cor 8:1–9:15; Rom 15:14–32). It is so important to Paul he is willing to face hostility (Romans 15:30-31) and is indeed arrested in Jerusalem in part because of it (Acts 24:17). What compelled Paul to raise funds among his Gentile converts for the poor in Jerusalem? Why did he feel this money would be better spent on the Jerusalem poor than on the poor Gentiles surrounding the communities where he collected it? What did he hope this offering would accomplish?

In short, Paul sees his outreach to the Gentiles as a ministry to Israel (Romans 11:12-15). God promised Abraham that in his seed all the nations (Gentiles) of the world would be blessed (Genesis 22:18; Galatians 3:15). And Isaiah prophesied

In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. (Isaiah 2:2)

Paul’s understands his ministry and particularly this offering as a fulfillment of God’s promises. Through this offering the Gentiles are journeying to Jerusalem to worship the God of Israel and in so doing offering themselves as proof to the Jews that Jesus is the one Christians claim him to be.

In Galatians, the origins of the offering appears as a important bridge between Paul’s Gentile ministry and Peter, James and John’s ministry to the Jews. To see this we need to understand the context in which the mention of an offering first appears.

Paul wrote Galatians to defend against Jewish Christians who taught that Gentile believers in Jesus needed to follow the traditions of the Jews. Paul is resolute in his hostility to such a doctrine, eternally condemning any who preach a message other than the one he delivered to them (Galatians 1:8-9). To give context to his opposition, Paul recounts his own history; his former zeal for these traditions, his conversion and his subsequent relationship with the Jerusalem church who are presumably the source of the present conflict.

Paul claims to initailly have been extremely zealous for the traditions of his fathers, alluding to God’s commendation of Phineius who killed an Israelite man in the very act of fornicating with a Gentile woman (Numbers 25:1-8). But a revelation of Jesus and Paul’s call to the Gentiles changes all that. Without consulting anyone (once again presumably leaders in Jerusalem), Paul journeys to Arabia (2:17) and possibly even Mt. Sinai (4:25). Its only three years later that Paul briefly meets some of the apostles, Peter and James, in Jerusalem. In all this Paul stresses that his message came from God and not from any man.

14 years pass before Paul feels compelled to consult with these leaders in Jerusalem again. Paul presents the message he preaches among the Gentiles privately to them in the hope that they will see it from his point of view. Peter and James agree that they should go to the Jews and Paul should continue his outreach among the Gentiles. The one thing they ask is that he “continue to remember the poor.”

This last phrase, “continue to remember the poor,” appears to refer specifically to the poor in Jerusalem. Paul gives ample evidence to a serious tension that existed between Jewish Christians in Jerusalem and his ministry among the Gentiles. That this meeting and agreement occurred “in private” likewise suggests that Peter and James felt apprehensive in giving Paul the right hand of fellowship. A financial offering from Paul and his Gentile converts would certainly help to smooth out any difficulty that might develop among the believers in Jerusalem.

There are also other reasons to see this phrase as a reference to the poor in Jerusalem.

James and Peter’s request that Paul “continue to remember the poor” indicates that this something Paul is already doing. If Galatians is written prior to the Jerusalem council (Acts 15), than this meeting occurred when Paul delivered aid from the church in Antioch to the famine starved church in Jerusalem (Acts 11:27-30).
Paul claims his offering for the Jersualem church is for “the poor among the saints in Jerusalem” (Romans 16:26).
His audience would presumably understand the shorthand reference since they themselves had been instructed about Paul’s collection (1 Corinthians 16:1-2).
Paul’s commitment to the poor in Jerusalem does not originate with Peter and James. It’s an idea which appears to be fundamental to his understanding of his ministry among the Gentiles. This can been seen in his letter to the Romans.

Scholars are apt to point out that Paul wrote to the Romans to prepare for a further missionary trip to spain (Romans 15:23-24). But what we often overlook is that Paul’s occasion for writing is more immediately connected with his journey to Jerusalem where he will finally deliver this gentile offering. (Romans 15:26-32). And it apparently weighs heavily on his mind (Romans 15:31).

Read in this light, the theme of Jew and Gentile makes a great deal more sense. Romans is a meditation on Paul’s gospel and what he hopes to achieve through his ministry to the gentiles. In Romans 11:13-14 Paul states

I am talking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them.
It appears highly likely that Paul saw this arousal as coming from the prophetic fulfillment of a later day worship of God among the Gentiles.

What are we to make of Mark’s apparently unresolved ending? The earliest manuscripts we possess do not contain anything after 16:8. 16:9-20 appears to be one of at least two attempts to erase the uneasy feeling the ending at 16:8 leaves.

Here, the women encounter the angel at the empty tomb, are told of Jesus’ resurrection and instructed to tell the disciples that Jesus will meet them in Galilee. But instead of recounting this meeting, Mark 16:8 draws the narrative quickly to a close.

They went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had gripped them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

The end?

It’s easy to see why so many are reluctant to accept 16:8 as Mark’s intended ending. Why would the author choose to end his book with the disobedience of the women, leaving his audience aanticipating an appearance of the resurrected Jesus that, as far as the narrative is concerned, will never come?

But there’s good reason to beleve Mark intended to end his gospel at precisely this point. In highlighting a future meeting in Galilee, Mark has, of course, ignored the more imminent resurrection appearances in Jerusalem and Judea which we know from Luke and John. Galilee is a three day journey from Jerusalem. In predicting a future appearance in Galilee, Mark has in fact established that this predicted meeting will occur off-stage, in another time and place. The women receive the good news and rush off. The curtain closes. There is nothing unresolved. Due to Mark’s emphasis on fulfillment of Jesus’ predictions throughout the gospel, the meeting between Jesus and disciples is assured.

It’s not necessary for us to assume that Mark planned on recording this meeting. The desires of readers is not always in line with the plan of the author. Mark, of course, isn’t the only book in Scripture to end without gratifying readers curiosity. For instance, readers of Jonah never find out if Jonah repents and those who read Acts never find out if Paul wins his trial before Ceasar.

A decision on Mark’s part not to record a meeting with the risen Jesus is of course a much bigger issue. So why would Mark choose to end his Gospel without recording this all important meeting? The meeting would detract from the message he already convese in the ending he wrote. By not recording this resurrection appearance, Mark has placed greater weight on the details leading up to his ending. Among the details he focuses on are

In looking for the meaning in Mark’s abrupt ending, we find that these details speaking far more than what we might otherwise hear them say.

Before we discuss the significance of these details, however, its important to point out Mark’s special enigmatic quality. Its typical of Mark not to explain his meaning but instead to leave a trail of bread-crumbs for his readers to follow. Mark shows. He doesn’t usually tell. Here’s an example: Mark never identifies John the Baptist as Elijah. What Mark does is describe John as dressed in a leather belt (Mark 1:6), which if you know the OT will point you to Elijah (2 Kings 1:8). Mark also presents John’s death through the machinations of a royal couple who, if you know the OT, will seem surprisingly reminiscent of Elijah enemies, Ahab and Jezebel (Mark 6, 1 Kings). Mark even quotes from Malachi and alludes to the promise of Elijah’s coming at the end of that book (Mark 1:3, Mark 9:9-13). But not once does Mark explicitly say that John the Baptist was Elijah or an Elijah figure. That explicit connection is found only in the other gospels. Matthew, for instance, adapting Mark, makes this identification plain (Matthew 11:14). Mark, on the other hand, is not plain. He leaves his readers to follow a trail of clues to arrive at this conclusion. From this example and other like it, its clear that Mark expected a great deal of knowledge and sensitivity on the part of his readers.

Now let’s turn to the details mentioned above. Each of these concluding details is extremely significant and bears further reflection in light of Mark’s narrative. Let me start with the third point, the invitation to meet Jesus in Galilee, and work back towards the first.

The Invitation to Meet Jesus in Galilee

Though Jesus could have met the disciples in Jerusalem, as both Luke and John record, Mark points to an appearance of Jesus outside the environs of the empty tomb, Jerusalem and even Judea. Does that seem odd? It should. As we have already seen. It appears from a reading of Mark’s narrative that this is a riff on the command to follow. Its the promise of a restoration for the disciples after their failure to follow Jesus in the crucifixion.

The Gospel of Mark is divided into three sections: Jesus’ ministry in Galilee (Ch. 1-8): a central journey to Jerusalem (Ch. 8-10), and finally Jesus ministry in Jerusalem (11-16). The central motif of Mark’s gospel is a journey. Over and over again Mark stresses the disciples call to “follow” Jesus. Peter, Andrew, James, and John left their boats and nets (Mark 1). Levi left his tax collectors booth (Mark 2)

Mark certainly sets his readers up for not seeing the risen Jesus by the end of narrative. He does this by predicting a future meeting in Galilee. In promising this meeting, Mark bypasses any hint of a more imminent resurrection meetings in Jerusalem and Judea which we know of from Luke and John. Galilee is a three day journey from Jerusalem. In this prediction, Mark establishes the fact that Jesus will appear off-stage in another time and place. The women receive the good news and rush off stage. The curtain closes. There is nothing unresolved. Due to Mark’s emphasis on fulfillment of Jesus’ predictions throughout the gospel, the meeting between Jesus and disciples is assured.

So why would Mark choose to end his Gospel without recording such a meeting with the resurrected Christ. In not showing Jesus, Mark places greater weight on several details leading up to his ending. Among the details he focuses on are

In looking for the meaning in Mark’s abrupt ending, we find that these details speaking far more than what we might otherwise hear them say.

Before we discuss the significance of these details, however, its important to point out Mark’s special enigmatic quality. Its typical of Mark not to explain his meaning but instead leave a trail of bread-crumbs for his readers to follow. Mark shows. He doesn’t usually tell. Here’s an example: Mark never identifies John the Baptist as Elijah. What Mark does is describe John as dressed in a leather belt (Mark 1:6), which if you know the OT will point you to Elijah (2 Kings 1:8). Mark also presents John’s death through the machinations of a royal couple who, if you know the OT, will seem surprisingly reminiscent of Elijah enemies, Ahab and Jezebel (Mark 6, 1 Kings). Mark even quotes from Malachi and alludes to the promise of Elijah’s coming at the end of that book (Mark 1:3, Mark 9:9-13). But not once does Mark explicitly say that John the Baptist was Elijah or an Elijah figure. That explicit connection is found only in the other gospels. Matthew, for instance, adapting Mark, makes this identification plain (Matthew 11:14). Mark, on the other hand, is not plain. He leaves his readers to follow a trail of clues to arrive at this conclusion. From this example and other like it, its clear that Mark expected a great deal of knowledge and sensitivity on the part of his readers.

Now let’s turn to the details mentioned above. Each of these concluding details is extremely significant and bears further reflection in light of Mark’s narrative. Let me start with the third point, the invitation to meet Jesus in Galilee, and work back towards the first.

The Invitation to Meet Jesus in Galilee

Though Jesus could have met the disciples in Jerusalem, as both Luke and John record, Mark points to an appearance of Jesus outside the environs of the empty tomb, Jerusalem and even Judea. Does that seem odd? It should. As we have already seen. It appears from a reading of Mark’s narrative that this is a riff on the command to follow. Its the promise of a restoration for the disciples after their failure to follow Jesus in the crucifixion.

The Gospel of Mark is divided into three sections: Jesus’ ministry in Galilee (Ch. 1-8): a central journey to Jerusalem (Ch. 8-10), and finally Jesus ministry in Jerusalem (11-16). The central motif of Mark’s gospel is a journey. Over and over again Mark stresses the disciples call to “follow” Jesus. Peter, Andrew, James, and John left their boats and nets (Mark 1). Levi left his tax collectors booth (Mark 2)

In the central journey (8-10), Mark hammers home what Jesus means by his call to follow. Jesus says in 8:34-35,

Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.
Jesus call to follow is a call to come and die with Him. The disciples, however, in Mark fail again to again to understand this crucial point. Peter does, however, remind Jesus that, “We have left everything to follow you!” (Mark 10:28)

But in the end the disciples do not follow Jesus in his death. They abandon their call and run away. The invitation to meet Jesus in Galilee at the end of Mark’s gospel is once again Jesus call to follow. And not surprisingly its a call to meet Jesus at the very place where they were first called: Galilee. The reason Mark does not show his readers a meeting with the risen Jesus is that the invitation is left open for them. The abrupt ending leaves the invitation ringing in the readers ears. The question Mark leaves his readers with is “will you follow? Will you see Jesus? Even if it means going to your death?”

The Young Man Dressed in White.

The appearance of the young man is another indicator that Mark’s ending is about the restoration of the disciples. Surprisingly, Mark never calls this person an angel. This is important. The only other time we read about a “young man” in Mark’s gospel is the “young man” who flees naked from Gethsemane. Mark has established a literary connection between these two figures. The connection suggests that together they are representative figures of the disciples. For instance the “young man” mentioned in Mark 14 appears immediately after the disciples run away. Like the disciples he is following Jesus and has left everything to follow Him. Mark notes that he’s wearing only a linen sheet. That a linen sheet only appears elsewhere wrapped around the dead body of Jesus (Mark 15) also suggests this “young man” has left everything to embrace the call to come and die with Jesus. But when that opportunity finally comes, he like the disciples abandons his call, and runs away naked, a clear scriptural reference to shame.

All these details makes it all the more significant that the “young man” who appears to the women at the tomb is also described by what he’s wearing. He’s dressed in a white robe. Elsewhere in scripture we find that a white robe is a symbol for the saints and their purity. Again, all this suggests that Mark records and describes these two “young men” as symbols of the disciples abandonment and restoration. I am not saying that these two men are not historical figures or that the young man at the tomb is not an angel. I’m saying that Mark is using this historical material and presenting in such a way that we see this deeper meaning.

The Rolled Stone

Given the fact that Mark does not record an eyewitness meeting with the risen Jesus, its interesting that Mark spends much of his ending returning to the movement of the stone – three times in fact. In 15:46, Mark informs reader that Jesus’ tomb “had been cut out of the rock” and it was sealed by rolling a stone against the entrance. And when the women arrive in 16:3, three verses later, they wonder, “who will roll away the stone?” The answer comes in the following verse when they discover the “stone had been rolled back.” Mark further adds “that it was very large.” Why such stress on this detail?

Interestingly, the only other place in Mark we read about stones is in the section dealing with Jesus’ judgment of Jerusalem and the temple (Mark 11-13). There we find two scenes referring to stones. The first occurs at the end of Jesus’ parable of the tenants and deals with the reversal of fortune for the rejected stone (jesus and or the “others”) in the coming destruction of the temple. The next appears less than a chapter later at the introduction of the Olivet Discourse. The disciples admiration for the stones of the temple, prompts Jesus to remark that they will all be thrown down. Again the readers are pointed to a reversal of fortune for stones brought about by the coming destruction of the temple. For these two references, at least, stones are clearly connected with Jerusalem’s destruction.

Is it possible then that the rolled stone from the tomb’s entrance points to the same meaning? In the Olivet Discourse, Jesus explicitly connects the coming destruction of Jerusalem and the temple with the coming of the Son of Man, which is a clear reference to Daniel 7. In Daniel, that event brings about an end to the four beastly kingdoms and the establishment of a kingdom without end, represented in the coming of the Son of Man. But readers familiar with Daniel should in this reference also recall Daniel 2 and its related prediction. There, we find an idol/image with four different metals, also representing four kingdoms, which are likewise destroyed and supplanted by an everlasting kingdom. Instead of the Son of Man, however, the image in Daniel 2 is destroyed by a stone cut out from the mountain without human hands.

Daniel 2’s description of the stone matches in several ways Mark’s depiction of the tomb and its entrance. Daniel says it was a stone cut out from a mountain (Daniel 2:34, 45) while Mark tells his reader of the apparently otherwise-needless detail that the tomb had been cut out of the rock (Mark 15:46). Daniel also points to the divine origin of the stone which was “cut out by no human hands” just as Mark seems to point to some invisible hand which has rolled the “large” stone. All this appears to suggest that the destruction of the temple and the establishment of Jesus’ eternal kingdom are assured in Jesus’ resurrection.

In these three details, Mark has left his readers enough clues to piece together a coherent resolution.

By placing an eyewitness meeting with the risen Jesus outside the environs of the Judea, Jerusalem and the tomb, Mark calls the disciples and his readers to once again follow Jesus into the unknown.
By describing the angel as a “young man,” Mark symbolizes the disciples restoration though a literary restoration of the “young man” who represented the abandonment of the disciples in the garden.
And by emphasizing the movement of the resurrection stone, Mark points to the coming of the Son of man and the assured destruction of the temple and idolatrous kingdoms of this earth.
For those of you who are reluctant to accept such a “symbolic” reading, I must once again point out that this reading is not to say that these events are not historical. Mark clearly presents these events as occurring in real time and space. But Mark’s narrative is more than history. As with the leather belt wrapped around John the Baptist, Mark draws his readers in by presenting details which he expects his readers to decipher. Like Jesus’ parable of the sower (what is in fact Jesus’ parable of the parables), Mark’s gospel is also seed looking for the right soil.