Mars Hill Update.

Easter is the season of HOPE. The message of Easter is that the way of being in Jesus, the way of living the new resurrected life is through participation. The original metaphors of the faith found in the New Testament and early church are old metaphors that need to be made new. The Easter Season is the time to recapture some of these old metaphors and make them new and fresh. The primary metaphor for the Easter season is the church as the resurrected people living a resurrected spirituality. Because of Easter we are in union with Christ.

The Mars Hill schedule will change some for the summer months. There will be a number of opportunities for us to continue to engage our surrounding community. We will be creating time and space for relationships to grow and friendships to be made. We will also continue to partner with other downtown area church plants to serve and celebrate. Please pay special attention to the announcements that are given and the email updates you receive. Be sure to ask lots of questions along the way and spread the word on where and when we will BE the church together.

Next Sunday, May 11th is Mothers Day. We will be gathering together on Sunday morning at 11:00am with the newest downtown church, Skyline. For those of you who recall, this community served alongside of the Mars Hill community for Sharefest. Skyline is located at 123 Robert S. Kerr. Parking is available off Dean McGee between Broadway and Robinson. KidCity is available for all children up to 5th grade. Check out http://www.skylineokc.com/ for a map and more info.

There will be no KAMP's Gathering on Sunday evening May 11th or 25th. We will be Gathering on May 18th and again on June 1st.

This Sunday, May 4th is the Seventh Sunday of Easter: The Prayer of Jesus. On the Sunday before Pentecost it is fitting that the church remember the final prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane (John 17). Here is yet another sign of resurrection spirituality: the oneness of the church. This does not mean that we can't recognize the diversity of the church, but it does speak to our prejudices and our failure to affirm the essential oneness of the church. The true truth is our unity in the person of Jesus Christ - God who became man to restore fallen creatures and creation. We are a community of communities. We may have our differences, but they are slight by comparison to what we hold in common.

Harry Truman said, "You can accomplish anything in life, provided you do not mind who gets the credit."

We will be taking a special offering this Sunday in order to bless some of the single Moms in the neighborhood for Mother's Day!

Please join us this Sunday for the KAMP's Gathering to be followed by dinner together.

Better Together.
Ben.

PS - In the spirit of oneness, check out and join ONE - The Campaign To Make Poverty History (http://www.one.org/).

Something I read this morning.

Something I read this morning...

Henri Nouwen wrote in “The Way of the Heart”…

“In solitude I get rid of my scaffolding: no friends to talk with, no telephones calls to make, no meetings to attend, no music to entertain, no books to distract, just me - naked, vulnerable, weak, sinful, deprived, broken-nothing. It is this nothingness that I have to face in my solitude, a nothingness so dreadful that everything in me want to run to my friends, my work, and my distractions so that I can forget my nothingness and make myself believe that I am worth something.”

Get It.

I have one of the most remarkable "Grand-Father-In-Laws" in the world. He is a remarkably hardworking and generous man. He has accumulated some measure of wealth over the years but it has never gone to serve or benefit himself or his standard of living. It has always been about the other. He has taken an interest in me from the first time I met him when Shannon and I were just dating.

He loves God and the church, so there has always been a particular interest in our church endeavors. He has contributed financially to the Mars Hill community from the very beginning, even when he didn't always GET IT.

This past Saturday he was in Oklahoma City visiting. He came over to KAMP's during the middle of Sharefest and witnessed us meeting Jessica and shifting gears to help her move. I was able to tell him about urban OKC, Kamp's, the neighborhood, what God is calling us to BE, etc. We sat on the porch and just discussed all sorts of things.

Here is an email I received yesterday from Shannon's Uncle Dan regarding my Grand-Father-In-Laws experience and perspective:

ben

i can't tell you how much my dad was impacted watching your efforts on Saturday. he related the shopping cart story. his words were, 'i never have seen anything that is more "Jesus" than what they were doing that day.'

i think my dad sometimes struggles with the social gospel aspect of the emerging churches. but when he sees it played out in real life - HE GETS IT.

love what you are doing. glad to hear you can see God in the failure of your own home buying situation.

take care,
dan

Robbie Seay Band - OKC.

Just Spreadin' The Word...

Robbie Seay Band will be at the Backroom of Bridgeway Church this Sunday night. He is the last band of the night, so I plan to slip over after the KAMP's Gathering. Perhaps you'd like to join me...

The Fruit of Sharefest.

On Sharefest Saturday as we mowed, pulled weeds, picked up trash, hauled off debris, planted flowers, etc., I had the wonderful opportunity to meet Jessica, a single mom of four.

That particular day she was moving - from her sister's house on 11th & Indiana to 33rd & McKinley. She was pushing a shopping cart down the street with her personal belongings overflowing. I inquired as to what she was doing and she informed me that she was moving. To which I asked if she was moving with a shopping cart. To which she replied yes. To which I said, not anymore you're not.

We shifted gears that afternoon and help Jessica and her four beautiful kids - Jaeviyon age 7, Anthony age 6, Jada age 2 and Montrell age 1, move into their own place, a little garage apartment.

Sunday night we took an offering in order to help fill her fridge and pantry with food. While I delivered the groceries last night, I noticed she didn't have a washer or dryer. And because of a minor housing disaster in my own family, we happen to have our washer and dryer sitting in storage for the next six months.

So later this week I will take her ours. I would gladly go through our housing disaster again, because of it we are now in a place to give her a washer and dryer.

Acts 4:32-35 says, "All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were NO NEEDY PERSONS among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles fee, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.

My New Working Home.

Recently I moved into some office space at Bridgeway Church (www.BridgewayChurch.com). They have been so gracious to welcome me into the mix and provide a "working home". It's been beautiful to collaborate with these wonderful men and women. Amazing what we can accomplish together when we don't mind who gets the credit or what church name is on it, etc. Go figure, multiple churches and leaders working together for TRANSFORMATION!

Mars Hill Update.

Easter is the season of HOPE. The message of Easter is that the way of being in Jesus, the way of living the new resurrected life is through participation. The original metaphors of the faith found in the New Testament and early church are old metaphors that need to be made new. The Easter Season is the time to recapture some of these old metaphors and make them new and fresh. The primary metaphor for the Easter season is the church as the resurrected people living a resurrected spirituality. Because of Easter we are in union with Christ.

Please join over 80 churches for Sharefest ( www.ShareFestOKC.org ) this Saturday, April 19th from 9-3pm. We will be gathering in front of KAMP's (NW 25th & Classen) at 9am to receive instructions and group assignments. Each group will be assigned one side of a street to accomplish whatever is necessary to "BEAUTIFY" it. This will happen through mowing, tree trimming, limb removal, litter clean up, and planting flowers, etc. Please bring whatever equipment and supplies necessary to tackle these projects and leave the neighborhood surrounding KAMP's looking a bit more like heaven on earth.

This Sunday, April 20th is the Fifth Sunday of Easter: Ministry of the Church. Beginning with the fifth Sunday of Easter, there is a decide shift in the Easter emphasis. We know the time between the resurrection and the ascension was a time of teaching. Luke informs us that Jesus appeared to his disciples "during forty days...speaking about the kingdom of God" (Acts 1:3). Here is the shift. Jesus know that he had to prepare his disciples for his ascension and return to the Father. He had to address the question of how he would continue to remain present with them and guide them in his physical absence. Jesus prepares his disciples to BE the church, his body, the continued presence of Jesus in the world. Jesus taught his disciples that "the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28). Now the disciples and soon the church had to learn how to become ministers of the people, following the example of their Good Shepherd.

I look forward to being the church with you this Saturday and then celebrating with you on Sunday at KAMP's. Tommy Bailey will be with us to lead the worship celebration.

Experience The Shift.

Ben.

Mars Hill Update.

Easter is the season of HOPE. The message of Easter is that the way of being in Jesus, the way of living the new resurrected life is through participation. The original metaphors of the faith found in the New Testament and early church are old metaphors that need to be made new. The Easter Season is the time to recapture some of these old metaphors and make them new and fresh. The primary metaphor for the Easter season is the church as the resurrected people living a resurrected spirituality. Because of Easter we are in union with Christ.

Please mark your calendars and join over 80 churches for Sharefest (www.ShareFestOKC.org) on Saturday, April 19th from 9-3pm. We will have four working teams to engage the neighborhood surrounding KAMP's with kind acts and practical help. We need all kinds of lawn and tree trimming equipment to tackle some of the projects we have planned. Please let me know if you are willing and able to contribute in this way.

I would like to point your attention to a series of five videos that Ryan Marshall has posted on his blog (www.5and2fish.com) from Oklahoman Editor Ed Kelley. I love how Ed Kelley is leveraging his influence and joining the God of the oppressed for the good of others, to be a voice for those who have know voice.

This weekend I had the privilege to meet Miki Farris, founder and executive director of the Infant Crisis Services (www.InfantCrisis.org). Infant Crisis Services believes every baby and toddler deserves life's basic necessities. With the help of the community, Infant Crisis Services supplies life-sustaining formula and food as well as diapers and clothing for babies and toddlers in times of crisis. It is hard to imagine that in the richest nation of the world there are babies and toddlers who go to bed hungry, yet it happens every day right here in Oklahoma. Our state has the 8th highest incidence of childhood poverty in the U.S.Infant Crisis Services serves more than 900 babies and toddlers in central Oklahoma each month.

This Sunday is the Fourth Sunday of Easter: The Good Shepherd . The image of the good shepherd, the shepherd who will give his life for his sheep, is that of servant leadership. Jesus the Good Shepherd has given his life for us, his sheep. And having been raised from death, he now leads us on into green pastures. This is the primary mark of a good shepherd. He is willing to die that the sheep might live. This is what the story of the cross is all about. The fourth Sunday of Easter reminds us that we have a leader, the Good Shepherd whose voice we are to hear, whose life we are to follow (see John 10:1-21).

Please let us know if we can serve you or serve with you in any way this week.

See You Sunday At KAMP's.
Ben

The Story of The World.

I have the unique privilege to serve on the teaching team at Skyline Church (http://www.skylineokc.com/). This mean I get the share with a wonderful new downtown community once a month. This Sunday I was with them and the notes and thoughts from the talk are included below. Help came from Robert Webber, NT Wright, Donald Miller and John Eldridge. We explored God's word, as much more than a guide book for Christians but as the reality and story of the world.

We are in the midst of an incredible story.

In a world of competing stories, we need to recover the truth of God’s word as the story of the world, and to make it the centerpiece of life.

Our story is ANCIENT and it is FUTURE. We REMEMBER where we came from and ANTICIPATE where we are going. To know where this journey will take us we must know where it has been. We have roots that take us back to the BEGINNING OF TIME, to the beginning of God creating and entering into relationship with HIS people.

Principles are used for a story to make sense –

Lead Character or Protagonist: All good stories have a good lead character. You evaluate a good lead character by asking, “What would happen to the story if we removed the character from it?”

25 year old Jenna Lee leads an organization called Blood Water Mission, an effort to drill 1,000 clean water wells. What would happen if you removed Jenna Lee from the story? One person is seven (around 1 billion people) has no access to clean water.

As we approach the story of God through the scriptures, we must fundamentally believe and experience God as good and merciful and just and loving and true.

Ambition or what the character wants: Most good stories are not centered on a man longing to acquire a Volvo and when he gets his Volvo and drives it off the lot the credits role.

Conflict or hard times: lead to change with negative and positive turns. There has to be conflict in a story. We hate conflict but we must learn to love it (James 1).

If I were to tell you that I woke up and walked up and down a set of stairs twice OR if I told you that last year I climbed Everest twice. Same story, one is just more interesting than the other. One has more conflict.

Resolution or how the story comes to a close.

The most powerful way to teach and educate is with story. We talked about how to become a disciple is to not simply know what the rabbit knows, but to be like the rabbit, to do what the rabbit does. Now it was said of rabbis that they would learn the text, live the text, teach the and die the text. Our western world is a world of analysis and logic, whereas the eastern world of Jesus and the scripture was a world of mystery and imagination. A world of story.

Neuroscience tells us that the brain reconceives reality in the shape of story and that we tell ourselves these stories. There were tourists in Indonesia who were laughing and videoing the tsunami wave because they could not reconceive another story than the one they were living in, which was fun, vacation, etc.

The scripture from beginning to end, keeps telling stories: Adam & Eve, Cain & Able, Noah’s Ark, Abraham & Isaac, Jacob & Esau, Exodus, Moses, Joshua & Jericho, David & Goliath, David & Bathsheba, Job, Solomon, Nehemiah, Daniel & The Lion’s Den, Hosea, Mary & Joseph, Elizabeth & Zachariah, John the Baptist, JESUS, birth, temptation, baptism, parables and stories and examples and displays, a bunch of letters to a bunch of people and churches, etc.

The bible is narrative after narrative, story after story and nowhere does the bible stop and say, “This is what the story is about or this is what the story means or this is what so and so is really saying”. The point of the story is the story itself. The story drives us back to and deeper into the story. And stories transform and change us.

The story is powerful enough. We tell and hear stories and it’s like adjusting a compass. We hear and engage the story and we find true north.

Maybe the narrative is enough. When we hear or see a great story we don’t stop and talk about what we can learn from a story, we relive it and retell it and allow ourselves to be shaped by it. It’s not about extrapolating the 5 steps to a great this or 3 steps to the best that.

How do we approach and read the Bible? Most of the Bible does not consist of rules and regulations, lists of commands to be obeyed. Nor does it consist of creeds, lists of things to be believed.

Much of what we call the Bible is not a rule book; it is a narrative. And how we approach the Bible is of utmost importance. If you don’t understand or know the purpose of a thing all you can do is abuse that thing.

It’s one thing to go to your commanding officer first thing in the morning and have a string of commands barked at you. But what would you do if, instead, he began “Once Upon A time…” or in our case, “In the Beginning…God”. And what if Genesis was more about story than it was about science.

The authority which God has invested in this book is an authority that is wielded and exercised through the people of God telling and retelling their story.

The story is told in 5 Acts:

Creation – Many stories begins “Once Upon a Time” but our story begins “In the Beginning God”. Our story, our journey, our view of the world begins with a creation poem. Can you feel the beat, the rhythm? And God saw that it was good…6x…and God saw that it was very good. Here we find a vision of how the world once was and what the world will once again become.

Psalm 8:3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what are mere mortals that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them? You have made them a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned them with glory and honor. You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet: all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas. LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Fall - The enemy tempted the first humans, and darkness and evil entered the story through human sin and are now a part of the world. This devastating event resulted in our relationships with God, others, ourselves, and creation being fractured and in desperate need of redeeming.

Israel – the clan of Abraham and later the nation of Israel (and later the church), which develops out of this clan, will be an instrument of blessing to the surrounding tribes and nations.

Jesus - Isaiah 7:14 says, “See, a young maiden will conceive. She will give birth to a son and name Him Immanuel, that is, “God with us.”

John 1:1 – In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God…John 1:14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us…God took on flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood…

Church - We believe that we live in the age of the church and that God continues to take on flesh and blood and move into our neighborhoods and that he does so through you and me, his people.

Acts 2:42-47 says, “They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

The New Testament would form the first scene of the 5th Act, giving hints of how the play is supposed to end.

God wants to catch human beings up in the work that he is doing. He doesn’t want to do it by-passing us. He wants us to be involved in his work. And as we are involved, so we ourselves are being remade.

Story is the authority that really works. Throw a rule book at people’s heads, or offer them a list of doctrines and they can duck or avoid it or simply disagree and go away. Tell them a story, though, and you invite them to come into a different world (a kingdom reality).

Great revolutionary movements have told stories about the past and present and future. This past Friday, April 4th was the anniversary of the death and assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. They are still telling his story. They are still going back to an old motel. They are still remembering and recalling. Quoting and reciting.

And that is exactly what the Bible is: the story of the greatest revolutionary movement the world has known.

How can we handle this extraordinary treasure, responsibly? How then shall the bible be read? We have to let the Bible be the Bible in all its oddness and otherness. We have taken the Bible and made it ordinary.

A dominant error of some Christians is to say, “I must bring God into my story. The ancient understanding is that God joins the story of humanity to take us into his story. There is a world of difference. One is narcissistic; the other is God-oriented. It will change your enter spiritual life when you realize that your life is joined to God’s story.

I once understood the gospel as God asking me to let him into my narrative, to find room for him in my heart and life. But now I realize that God bids me to find my place in his narrative.
One crisis of Scripture is that we stand over the Bible and read God’s narrative from the outside instead of standing within the narrative and reading Scripture as an insider.

The original meaning of the biblical narrative became lost as conservatives rushed to verify the Bible as a historical and scientific document.

In our reading of the Bible we have been stuck between extreme objectivism and extreme subjectivism. The overly objective approach would work to uncover the one single meaning the author intended to convey. The subjective approach would disregard the author’s intent and argues that the meaning of the text is the meaning the reader takes away from it.

We must read the bible as true, as God’s true story.

Scripture is the book that assures us that we are the people of God when, again and again, we are tempted to doubt.

Scripture is the covenant book through which the spirit assures us that we are his people and through which he sends us out into the world to tell the Jesus story.

The purpose of the Church’s life is to be the people of God for the world. The church can only be this if she is constantly being recalled to the story and message of scripture.

Listen to the words of Tim Keel, “NT Wright describes the story of God in time happening over five acts: creation, fall, Israel, Jesus, and the church. The church is the human society that bears the image of Christ and participates alongside God in the redemption of all things. While each of the previous acts come to an end somewhere in our distant past, we still live in the age of the church. It is our vocation to continue what we see happening in the pages of the New Testament – the whole bible actually – not exactly in the same ways as those who have come before, but postured in similar ways as those who have come before, but postured in similar ways in the power and under the inspiration of the same spirit. To do so requires us to live deeply in the story of God, not in the collected facts about God.

In the book Colossians Remixed, authors Brian Walsh and Sylvia Keesmaat describe this story as an unfinished drama. They add a sixth act to Wright’s five: the consummation of all things in God. “We are now living in Act V and are on the stage as actors in this divine love story that seeks to restore the covenantal bond between the Creator and his beloved creation. Our task is to keep the drama alive and move it toward Act VI, recognizing that in this final Act God becomes the central actor again and finishes the play. But how do we move the drama forward? We turn to the Author and ask for more script. And the Author says, “Sorry, but that’s all that’s written – you have to finish Act V. But I have given you a very good Director who will comfort and lead you.” So here we are with an unfinished script, at least some indication of the final Act and a promise that we have the Holy Spirit as our Director and we have to improvise. If we are to faithfully live out the biblical drama, then we will need to develop the imaginative skills necessary to improvise on this cosmic stage of creational redemption. Indeed it would be the height of infidelity and interpretive cowardice to simply repeat verbatim, over and over again, the earlier passages of the play.”

Revelation 12:11 says, “They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony;

Many Stories end with “And they lived happily ever after”, and as we see in Revelation 21 our stories ends like this,

“Then I saw "a new heaven and a new earth," for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 'He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away." He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true." He said to me: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life. Those who are victorious will inherit all this, and I will be their God and they will be my children.

And we are giving our lives to living out that future reality now.

A Re-Re-Post.

This is mostly for my own benefit som I don't forget this thought from Ron at Cross & Crown. Thanks Ryan (www.5and2fish.com) for the reminder.

“What if just one small group of people from 1/4 of the churches listed in the phone book picked a specific area of their community, set up a “home base” and just started doing what Jesus did? They would begin meeting their neighbor’s needs, meeting each day to pray, intentionally invest into the youth and children of that community, share their life and faith. What would happen? I bet you could use your imagination. I think you would have some very frustrated news stations. They would have to spend their time reporting on all the cool transformations because fewer bad things would be happening. The city would change. Other towns would take notice. Why don’t we do it?"

Ancient Future Worship.

Yesterday evening as I entered the house around 5:45pm or so I noticed that a new book from Amazon had arrived and was waiting for me on the arm of the couch. I always get an email update letting me know that my order has shipped. So I was anticipating receiving "Ancient Future Worship" by Robert E. Webber.

http://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Future-Worship-Proclaiming-Enacting-arrative/dp/0801066247/ref=pd_sim_b_img_3

I have been reading through some of Webber's writings and leaned on them during the season of Lent (you may have noticed). Through getting familiar with him I realized that he had been diagnosed with cancer.

Robert Webber died of pancreatic cancer on April 27, 2007. So this would be his last work. As I cracked its cover and even now as I write I was overpowered by the work and words of a man in his final months, weeks, days and moments of life. These are among his final words to the world, to the church, to us.

Here is an excerpt from the back cover:

God has a story. Worship does God's story. There is a crisis of worship today. The problem goes beyond matters of style--it is a crisis of content and of form. Worship in churches today is too often dead and dry, or busy and self-involved. Robert Webber attributes these problems to a loss of vision of God and of God's narrative in past, present, and future history. As he examines worship practices of Old Testament Israel and the early church, Webber uncovers ancient principles and practices that can reinvigorate our worship today and into the future. The final volume in Webber's acclaimed Ancient-Future series, Ancient-Future Worship is the culmination of a lifetime of study and reflection on Christian worship. Here is an urgent call to recover a vigorous, God-glorifying, transformative worship through the enactment and proclamation of God's glorious story. The road to the future, argues Webber, runs through the past.

Robert E. Webber (1933-2007) was, at the time of his death, Myers Professor of Ministry at Northern Seminary in Lombard, Illinois, and served as the president of the Institute for Worship Studies in Orange Park, Florida. His many books include Ancient-Future Faith and The Younger Evangelicals.

Luby's Love.

Okay, so I have a bit of a confession to make. My family has been to Luby's the last two Wednesday nights. I secretly like going to the cafeteria. I think I like it because it has ties to my childhood when we would meet my Grandparents there for lunch many Sundays after church. The crazy thing is I still recognize some of the employees. The cool part is that on Wednesday nights kids eat for free, so it makes it a great option to eat out and still get some veggies in your kids.

Last night as we walked in I instantly saw a new friend and ministry partner, Matthew Myers. Matthew owns a company called Giant Partners, which recently purchased Catalyst, etc. (www.CatalystSpace.com). Matthew was there will his lovely wife, Kim and their two delightful children, Tess and Jesse. Matthew invited us to join them for dinner. So they stepped out of their place in line and joined us at the back of the line so that we could share dinner together. I was taken aback by their willingness to engage my little family with such kindness. You never know what you're going to get when you invite a family with a 1.5 year old and 5 year old to join your for dinner. You just might end up mashed potatoes in your lap, etc. But nonetheless, they braved the elements and made the invite. It was a gesture that will not soon be forgotten.

As we sat down to enjoy our meal. I realized that Matthew and his family have been coming to Luby's on Wednesday nights for some time. And each time they come, they always invite someone in line to join their family for dinner. Most of the time it is a elderly single person. You see Luby's is one of those happy and sad kinds of places. You have families dining together. You have a diverse racial mix. But you also have little old men and women eating alone. And I am proud to have a friend like Matthew Myers who is not afraid to give a little Luby's Love!

Mars Hill Update.

Easter is the season of HOPE. The message of Easter is that the way of being in Jesus, the way of living the new resurrected life is through participation. The original metaphors of the faith found in the New Testament and early church are old metaphors that need to be made new. The Easter Season (the time between Easter Sunday and Pentecost) is the time to recapture some of these old metaphors and make them new and fresh. The primary metaphor for the Easter season is the church as the resurrected people living a resurrected spirituality. Because of Easter we are in union with Christ.

Please mark your calendars and join over 80 churches for Sharefest ( www.ShareFestOKC.org) on Saturday, April 19th from 9-3pm. We will have several working teams to engage the neighborhood surrounding KAMP's with kind acts and practical help. We need all kinds of lawn and tree trimming equipment to tackle some of the projects we have planned. Please let me know if you are willing and able to contribute in this way.

This Sunday is the Third Sunday of Easter: Worship. Worship is the constant celebration of the Easter event. It is in worship that resurrection spirituality is learned and experienced. We gather - To hear the good news - To break bread together - To go forth and tell others. Inside this fourfold pattern is the content of the death and resurrection and the message of hope.

Our work in worship is to do the work of remembrance and hope. In worship we remember God's acts of salvation in history, especially God's work in the death and resurrection of Jesus to be a sacrifice for our sins and to be a victor over the powers of evil. Therefore in worship we anticipate his coming again, the total destruction of evil, and the reign of God's shalom (meaning: peace, nothing missing, nothing broken, and complete) over the entire created world.

So worship signifies God and God's mission to rescue creatures and creation. But note what this kind of worship does. It does something for those who do the work of proclaiming and enacting God's work. It transforms them. Every Sunday is a "little Easter," a celebration of the Easter event (Robert Webber).

I look forward to sharing and celebrating communion with you this Sunday, April 6th to be followed by dinner together.

Shalom.
Ben.

City Rescue Mission.

Last night I spent a couple of hours with Ryan Edwards over dinner at Lido.


Ryan and I go back a few years now to when we were living in Colorado Springs. It's amazing to think about how God has led Ryan through a wild journey in the last year or so.


Ryan connected with the mission and vision that surrounded the Mars Hill Journey from the get go. He and I spend Friday afternoons in Colorado just talking and dreaming about the future of this church that did not yet physically exist but existed very much in our hearts.


Ryan quit his job, left his friends and moved to OKC where the only people he knew was my little family. He has faithfully served this church-planting effort in ways that only God can adequately reward him for.


Today, he is living among the beautiful and broken people at the City Rescue Mission along with Ester Kim from the Mars Hill Community and several others. I love that young men and women in their twenties are pursuing and spreading a kingdom that lasts forever.


And yes, that's peanut butter easy cheeze style - disgusting, I know!